I found a piece from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, presented at the 26th Very Large Databases Conference in Cairo, Egypt, in 2000. It proposes the creation of a software that does what Vannevar Bush said the memex would do. The authors, Soumen Chakrabarti, Sandeep Srivastava, Mallela Subramanyam, and Mitul Tiwari, argue that their memex would provide what simple web browser bookmarks and search engines cannot.
"Memex blurs the artificial distinction between browsing history and deliberate bookmarks. The resulting glut of data is analyzed in a number of ways at the individual and community levels. Memex constructs a topic directory customized to the community, mapping their interests naturally to nodes in this directory" (p. 603). This software is designed to do exactly what Bush envisioned. Users are able to use what is essentially in-depth metadata to find context in previous browsing history.
I found this particularly interesting because the creators were testing out this software on people, and it seems as though they have some pretty complicated algorithms. They talk about how their system is related to other systems, and it makes me wonder whether this project was ever merged into something that we are familiar with today.
Back in 2000, this was probably a fairly substantial proposal given the relative age of the internet. Now, it still seems like a unique idea, but there is enough software and plugins now to make it seem less necessary. Still, it would be interesting to see where this went from here.
Link: http://www.vldb.org/conf/2000/P603.pdf
While reading this, I was starting to think life without the perfect "memex" was not so bad at all, and you mention that in the end of your piece.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, although one machine does not perfectly capture what the memex was described as, does not mean that the computer stinks! It does far more than was even close to being created in the time Bush wrote his piece. Such ideas may have had insight into future technology but not all of it is possible! And yes, even with the computer not being able to mimic exactly the memex, we have other technology that mimics those various aspects not found currently in computers.