michael_nielsen

It's fascinating that he's imagining this all through the lens of analog machines. In fact, Bush never really got into digital computing. It passed him by. But hardware aside, he was thinking about the right problems and at a great level of design abstraction.

Anyways, there's much, much more in the article. Well worth reading!

More fun things: see @hyfen's project to build a memex: https://hyfen.net/memex/ 

And @TrevorFSmith's memex: https://trevor.smith.name/memex/ 

Just a small appendix. Reading back over my thread, it's got too much of the "gee-whiz, wasn't that a clever insight of a giant of the past" trope about it.

Yes, Bush was clever. But that's not so interesting. I think it's more interesting to think about the big, broad fundamental questions he was addressing, and how far we are from really solving them.