Reference:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/archives/1945/07/176-1/132407932.pdf An essay published by The Atlantic in 1945 by Bush, Vannevar
Perhaps one of the most impactful essays I’ve ever read for information processing and storage today. Particularly with personal knowledge management like Zettelkasten. Zettelkasten helped me realize the strength analogous thinking.
A lateral idea: Rebooting the attention machine how what Bush talked about could help us un-fuck social media.
Notes:
On volume presenting a search problem:
“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.”
“Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.”
On programming and machines working under the hood:
“A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs. All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge.. to the useful solution of the advanced problems..”
On artificial vs. human memory
“Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.
“Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.”
“Consider a future device … in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”
“associative indexing.. whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.”
Prefer associative links > indexed files High-fidelity association
I see two things here: Spaced repetition, your focus within the knowledge system acts as a repetition system keeping the work fresh in memory. Though, it would be better to be recall rather than review. I imagine this could spread thin, or not be recommended due to size of cognitive RAM. The other is that the storage system has more and more adaptable association. If access is nigh the speed of remembrance, or even exceeding such memory, then this supplement of our memory becomes stronger and offloads more of our brain.
We may offload more work (like in the case of non-navigating because of google maps) but also get more exposure (through repetition) to make the creative connections rather than lower-level cognitive work being devoted to memory.
Contra: Memory is hugely important in knowledge work, and when we offload things (such as having calculators at hand) we end up with weaker minds. (I don’t think memory within zettelkasten would really become an issue for me though)
His idea of such a mechanism takes the imaginative form of the Memex.
On Memex opportunities:
“There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.”
Synthesizers of information. I think this is how I see most popular wisdom coming in this decade. Most of Peterson’s (better) work is synthesis and how many hundreds of youtube channels and twitter guys are synthesizing older information with newer, more popular style. Though outside of the surface, this kind of Trailblazer Bush talks about is genuinely the new knowledge worker of today.
In closing
“Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.”
Additional:
I liked this tracing of the tech inspired by some of the concepts in Bush’s essay done by Rebooting the Attention Machine
“The Memex never shipped, but its blueprint seeded three milestones:
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Doug Engelbart’s NLS (1968): clickable links and collaborative editing, precursors to today’s GUIs and Google Docs.
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Ted Nelson’s hypertext (1960s-70s): the very concept and term for digital linking.
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Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web (1989): a Memex-like lattice on the global Internet.”
The essay by Cosmos Institute makes me think in particular how important it is to have Bush’s philosophy of knowledge growth baked into the code of the algorithms that take up so much of our waking life. As it is our attention which is the ultimate upstream of all consciousness, it must be protected.