Sunday, April 3, 2011

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush

In the article As We May Think by Vannevar Bush, what had caught my eye was how he described complexity in machines with time. Bush had mentioned Leibnitz which stated, “invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it:...”. Then Bush mentioned, “Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely,... that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.”. To me, it sounded as if science, or rather the machinery could not evolve without time. Although time is not enough. It seems that time or history which people live in effect how well machinery is used. I could understand where Leibnitz did not have enough money to produce his machine and that “all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper.”.


I was then interested in the machine called “memex”. It was eerie to see such similarities to today. It was amazing to see an idea of something and actually have a piece of machinery that is similar in the present. Bush had made me wonder about our future. In particular I thought of androids. For a very long time they have been imaginary and seen in sci-fi. Like an idea Bush had, the idea of androids seem less far fetched now. An example would be an android (actdroid) called DER2 which was made in Japan. It is able to move and respond to questions which in the past people might have not believed could happen. So I suppose that ideas can change in the future and could be invented, but if there is no finances or time is not ready for such ideas, it may fail.

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