essay · 1945
Vannevar Bush · read the source
“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.”
Vannevar Bush, As We May Think (1945) · Section 6, on the human mind · read it
Kept because it is the design brief for the web, the wiki and this book, written in 1945. Filing systems sort; minds link. A commonplace book is an attempt to keep notes the way the mind keeps them.
“The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.”
Vannevar Bush, As We May Think (1945) · Section 1 · read it
Kept because it is still true, with better ships. The volume of what is known grows faster than the tools for finding the right piece of it, and the gap is where most of the useful work in software lives.
