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.

How to manage information overload? What are the real bottlenecks? How can we make vastly better computer note taking systems? Why haven't we gone beyond the file metaphor? How can we build better personal memory systems? Better collective memory systems? So many great problems!

Very interesting thread Michael. I'll take this opportunity to say that out of everything I've tried and/or come across @TiddlyWiki has been by far the best solution for my version of information overload, particularly because of how easy it is to customize to *how my mind works*