Going down a wiki-hole on Vannevar Bush, who would have loved the fact I have 300+ tabs open on my browser right now.

Sadly Vannevar, although we have access to Information, what if the data is of poor quality, and what if people are purposely putting false data in for nefarious ends?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush

#InformationTechnology #VannevarBush

Upwards

As the edges of human knowledge are advanced, the total amount one must learn to be able to then contribute to further advancement grows. If there’s a proverbial mountain of knowledge, it grows taller as each contributor adds. If you start from the beach (at birth), wander inland in your early years of not-guided-by-you learning, and eventually decide to scale the mountain… well, it really matters in what epoch you happened to be born. Or maybe it doesn’t?

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers-conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

Bush played a complex role in the history of the United States. (It’s better if you form your own opinion about him and his work.) His short essay from about 80 years ago is these days seen by technophiles as heralding our own, current Internet and information age. In particular, a lot is read into Bush’s description of a desk which behaves like our modern Internet, information systems, and data processing. That’s fine. It’s like reading 80-year-old science fiction that became science fact.

Much more interesting to me is the point that with just a bit of squinting, it looks like nothing has changed in 80 years. Everything about this—the mountain of information, the tools [eg, Bush’s imagined desk, our internet], the people feeling overloaded, the specialization—feels fractal.

ɕ

Vannevar Bush wrote "As We May Think" in 1945. In it, he imagined a device called the "memex" that would store all of a person's books, records, and communications, and let them create trails of linked information between documents.

He was describing the internet, hypertext, and search engines decades before any of them existed.

If you want to understand where our entire digital world came from, this 80-year-old essay is still the clearest blueprint.

#AI #ComputerHistory #VannevarBush

“It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future”*…

It’s that time of year: predictions and forecasts and outlooks for 2026 on just about everything are everywhere. Scott Belsky‘s list is eminetly worth a read…

From talent arbitrage and “proof of craft” to hardware moats, ambient listening, homegrown software, and the end of waste – what should we expect to see in the coming year? What are the implications?…

“12 Outlooks for the Future: 2026+”

For a bracing list of “black swan” possibliities in the new year, see “15 Scenarios That Could Stun the World in 2026.”

But in the interest of starting this year on as positive a note as possible: “1,084 Reasons the World Isn’t Falling Apart.”

* an axiom attributed to Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra, among others

###

As we contemplate what’s coming, we might recall that it was on this date in 1902 that Andrew Carnegie filed the incorporation papers for what he called the Carnegie Institution of Washington– which we now know as Carnegie Science. The first of 20 not-for-profit institutions he founded (in addition to his other philanthropy, e.g., funding over 3,000 public libraries), Carnegie Science conducts fundamental research both directly and in collaboration with other organizations (mostly research universities). In its 120+ year history, it has contributed scores of foundational discoveries– e.g., the expanding universe, the existence of dark matter, transposons (“jumping genes”)– across multiple scientific disciplines. Its principals have won multiple Nobel Prizes (and myriad other awards) and have contributed to scientific and technical policy (e.g., Carnegie President Vannevar Bush) and to scientific education.

Getting some Bell, Book & Candle vibes on #VannevarBush 's take on #stenography in 1945 lol

"The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly & looks about the room & sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip... Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/

Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing.
-- Vannevar Bush

⬆ #Wisdom #Quotes #VannevarBush #Knowledge

⬇ #Photography #Panorama #Vegetables #Market

The forgotten 80-year-old machine that shaped the internet – and could help us survive AI

https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-80-year-old-machine-that-shaped-the-internet-and-could-help-us-survive-ai-260839

#TheConversation #Memex #VannevarBush #WWW #Internet #AI