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That’s because Vannevar Bush had no idea what he was talking about
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Wow: “(Vannevar) Bush’s writings reveal little real understanding of information retrieval and, it seems, little respect for those who were expert …” And yet, here we are, a hundred companies building memexes. twitter.com/gwern/status/1
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Out of curiosity, why would it matter if he understood information retrieval? With pre-1990 computers, he seems no more likely to build a anything useful than Ada Loveless, anyway. Seems he was limited to demos.
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Bush’s ideas were hugely influential to the computer scientists (and information technologists) that came after him. To this day, memexes are considered a goal worth pursuing. Hypertext itself can be traced to Bush’s influence.
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