As We May Think

"As We May Think"
Short story by Vannevar Bush
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)essay/article (about 10 pages long)
Publication
Published inThe Atlantic
Media typePrint
Publication dateJuly 1945
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Vannevar Bush

"As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush which has been described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of information society. It was first published in The Atlantic in July 1945 and republished in an abridged version in September 1945—before and after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bush expresses his concern for the direction of scientific efforts toward destruction, rather than understanding, and explicates a desire for a sort of collective memory machine with his concept of the memex that would make knowledge more accessible, believing that it would help fix these problems. Through this machine, Bush hoped to transform an information explosion into a knowledge explosion.[1]

  1. ^ Wardrip-Fruin, Noah; Montfort, Nick (2003). The New Media Reader. The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262232272.