Hypertext, Hypermedia and the Semantic Web: Bush and his Memex

According to ‘The Good Study Guide’, (Northedge 2007), ‘learning through study doesn’t create a detailed replica of knowledge in your head; rather, it develops the way you think’. He points out that learning can be evidenced by a student’s ability to summarise a subject in their own words.

The book also talks of the academic disciplines of scholarship and debate. Scholarship is the academic requirement to read all that has gone before and debate is the ability to understand and analyse both sides of an argument before reaching a conclusion.

In this blog I will be discussing the Semantic Web, so it makes sense to have early postings that explain what it is all about. I should also be able to use my musings as part of my IT research and project report, so it is not wasted time.

The idea of a Semantic system is as old as the earliest computers.

It all starts with a man called Vannevar Bush. He received a doctorate in engineering from MIT and Harvard (jointly) in 1917. During World War I he worked on developing improved techniques for detecting. He rejoined MIT after the war in 1919. In 1922 he founded a company with a colleague to market a device called the ‘S-tube’, which was used to improve the efficiency of radios. This company later became Raytheon, a defence contractor. No doubt the S-tube was a result of his research undertaken during World War I.

In 1927 he started to construct a ‘Differential Analyser’. A Differential Analyser is an early type of computer. Mechanical and analogue, they used wheel-and-disc mechanisms to solve differential equations. They were later rendered obsolete by binary programmable (Zuse’s Z3) and electronic (Flower’s Colossus) computers.

‘During World War I, Bush had seen the lack of co-operation between civilian scientists and the military and in 1939 proposed a general directive agency.’ Bush presented a paper describing the proposed National Defence Research Committee (NDRC) to President Roosevelt on the 12th June 1940, which Roosevelt duly approved. Bush was chairman of the committee and continued to be involved with it throughout World War II, later becoming Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, (Wikipedia, 2009).

In July 1945 the Atlantic Monthly published Bush’s article entitled ‘As We May Think’, (it is described as having been written in 1936 but set aside when war loomed – Wikipedia, 2009). The article was to act as ‘an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased’ and was based on the premise that ‘knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual’, (Bush, 1945).

Bush realised that science depends on an ever increasing body of research and ideas. Scientists had to collaborate and devise new methods during the war ‘in the demand of a common cause’. Of course this meant a surge in the body of research available and Bush believed ‘there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialisation extends’.

We, as computer scientists, tend to think that this is a modern problem that goes with the advent of the web and social networking. But here is Bush saying this back in 1945 – he would definitely fit in today.

At that time, the dawn of computing, their methods for transmitting and reviewing research were inadequate and Bush realised this. Bush used the following example to illustrate the point:

‘Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us’, (Bush, 1945).

Bush discusses how the new technologies of Television and Microfilm could be used in the future. He then goes on to describe what we know today as Voice Dictation Software! His discussion of ‘machines for repetitive thought’ in the next part is crucial.

Punched card and Keyboard machines capable of arithmetic already existed:

‘Keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned;
and Punched-Card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another.
Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still in embryo’, (Bush, 1945).

He talked about the need to develop machines capable of using established logic processes and understood:

‘The selection of the data and the process to be employed and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machine’, (Bush, 1945).

The standard programming constructs of sequence, selection and repetition are central to computers today. So we can ultimately say that in 1945 Bush could envisage computers as we know them today.

He understood that the solution to the problem goes ‘deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms’ and that the ‘ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing’.

Bush also realised that the human mind operates by association, a very important point that we still strive to satisfy today. He noticed that this meant that selection of records must therefore be by association, rather than indexing.

‘Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a 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’, (Bush, 1945).

He details a desk style machine, with screen, keyboard, levers and buttons. Microfilm is projected onto the screen. The machine can photograph books placed on a platter into the next available slot on the microfilm. Books can be accessed by a traditional index and both books and index can be rapidly searched in the same way that microfilm is searched today. The user is also able to add marginal notes and comments to what he is reading.

‘All this is conventional... It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision 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’, (Bush, 1945).

‘When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item’ , (Bush, 1945).

‘Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by taping a button below the corresponding code space’ , (Bush, 1945).

Of course Bush in effect here is describing a modern day web page hyperlink.

1. Bush, V., 1945. As We May Think. US: The Atlantic Monthly Group. Available from: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush [Accessed 10 January 2009].
2. Northedge, A., 2007. The Good Study Guide. 2nd ed. Milton Keynes: The Open University.
3. Wikipedia, 2009. Vannevar Bush. Wikipedia. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush [Accessed 05 February 2009].