"Do you think these people are mentally ill? Do you think it is possible they are making all this up?"

You don't have to deny it. There's a wonder to seeing so much order laid out in front of you. And people are walking around, whispering statistics in your ear. It's easy to slip into a kind of Stalinist wet dream. And I try to subvert that by locking onto actual faces as they take me up and down the aisles.

"That's true. I'm not going to buy their products." And she says, "You will lie to them." And I say, "Yes, Kathy. I'm going to lie to lots of people."

First there's one worker waiting. Then there's two. Then there's three.

The whole point of granite, that it is hard and durable, is also the reason it is difficult to mine and process

12 suicides at the Shenzhen plant in 2010.

I talk to an older man with leathery skin. His right hand is twisted up into a claw. It was crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. He says he didn't receive any medical attention, and it healed this way. And then when he was too slow, they fired him. Today he works at a woodworking plant. He says he likes it better. He says the people are nicer, and the hours are more reasonable. He works about 70 hours a week.

And so when you start working at 15 or 16, by the time you are 26, 27, your hands are ruined. And when they are truly ruined, once they will not do anything further, you know what we do with a defective part in a machine that makes machines. We throw it away.

a worker at Foxconn dies after working a 34-hour shift. I wish I could say that's exceptional, but it's happened before. I only mention it because it actually happened while I was there.

They can exert a kind of eerie fascination. There's a beauty to industrialization on such a massive scale. You don't have to deny it. There's a wonder to seeing so much order laid out in front of you.

And I say to her, "You seem kind of young. How old are you?" And she says, "I'm 13."

And along the edges of each enormous building are the nets. Because right at the time that I am making this visit, there has been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings, and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets.

The Foxconn plant in Shenzhen has 430,000 workers. That can be a difficult number to conceptualize. I find it's useful to instead think about how there are more than 20 cafeterias at the plant. And then you just have to understand that workers told me that these cafeterias can hold up to 10,000 people. So now you just need to visualize a cafeteria that seats 10,000 people. I'll wait.

The only sign that the exit ramp ends is a single solitary orange cone.

And on the other side of the gates, it's the factory zone. And, whew. It's like going from the Eloi to the Morlocks. Everything changes. I've never seen anything like it. Everything is under construction. Every road has a bypass, every bypass has a bypass. It's bypasses all the way down.

And in all that time, until I saw those pictures, it was only then I realized, I had never thought, ever, in a dedicated way, about how they were made.

I should specify, have no actual news in them. They are instead filled with rumors about what Apple will do next, written exclusively by people who have no goddamn idea what Apple will do next

I will go back to my apartment and I will field strip my MacBook Pro into its 43 component pieces. I will clean them with compressed air. And I will put them back together again. It soothes me.

Can I say, I love, especially, "I am not allowed to say"? Because it implies that Siri somehow knows the answer, but she's just not allowed to tell me, which is insane, because she's a machine. Especially because-- flip over the phone. Right here, on the back, it's printed-- "Assembled in China."

Slavery in granite quarries is a family affair enforced by a tricky scheme based on debt. When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in. The rice and beans they eat, the scrap stones they use to build a hut on the side of the quarry, the hammers and crowbars they need to do their work, all of it is provided by the boss and added to the family’s debt. Just when the family feels they may have finally found some security, they are being locked into hereditary slavery.

We think of Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the origin of our iPhones, or imagine a local funeral director carving a loved one’s name into a tombstone. Whether we are grilling shrimp for our friends or buying T-shirts for our children we generally think of these things as beginning where we first encountered them, at the shop, at the mall, in the grocery store. But just as each of us is deeper than our surface, just as each of us has a story to tell, so do the tools and toys and food and rings and phones that tie us together.

Back in Germany the filmmakers quizzed the businessmen that sold the tombstones; these men were appalled when they saw footage from the quarries.

Slavery is a great way to keep your costs down, but there’s another reason why that granite is so cheap—the quarries themselves are illegal, paying no mining permits or taxes. The protected state and national forest parks rest on top of granite deposits, and a bribe here and there means local police and forest rangers turn a blind eye.

Slavery in granite quarries is a family affair enforced by a tricky scheme based on debt. When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in. The rice and beans they eat, the scrap stones they use to build a hut on the side of the quarry, the hammers and crowbars they need to do their work, all of it is provided by the boss and added to the family’s debt. Just when the family feels they may have finally found some security, they are being locked into hereditary slavery.

No electricity or running water, no paving on the roads, and good luck if you needed a doctor, but incredibly I had a signal. “This is why I am here,” I thought, “I can’t live without my phone, and people here are dying because of it.”

the enemy at the gates.

Out of our sight, slaves numbering in the hundreds of thousands do the work that slaves have done for millennia: digging, cutting, and carrying.

Slaves are producing many of the things we buy

these men were appalled when they saw footage from the quarries.

a bribe here and there

When a poor family comes looking for work, the quarry bosses are ready to help with an “advance” on wages to help the family settle in.

Granite for German tombstones used to come from the beautiful Harz Mountains, but now no one is allowed to mine there and risk spoiling this protected national park and favorite tourist destination. So, like France and many other rich countries, including the United States, Germany imports its tombstones from the developing world.

It’s not because they don’t know that people are going to die; it’s more a product of the complete control the government exerts over death and funerals.

No one “won” the Second Congo War; it simply collapsed from exhaustion as resources and energy ran out.

By its end 5.4 million people were dead, a body count second only to the two world wars.

life has become a scramble for survival in a population divided between those with guns and those without. This chaos is the perfect breeding ground for slavery.

“This is why I am here,” I thought, “I can’t live without my phone, and people here are dying because of it.”

There’s always been a moral case for stopping slavery; now there’s an environmental reason too.

But all this normally happens far from any prying eyes. It’s a hidden world that keeps its secrets.

Slaves are producing many of the things we buy, and in the process they are forced to destroy our shared environment, increase global warming, and wipe out protected species.

these men were appalled when they saw footage from the quarries.

“See the little girl playing with the hammer?” asked a local investigator. “Along with the child, the size of the hammer grows, and that’s the only progress in her life.”

tombstone.

he good news is that slavery can be stopped. We know how to bust slaveholders and free slaves, we know how much it costs and where to start, and we know that freed slaves tend to be willing workers in the rebuilding of our natural world. Ending slavery is a step forward in fixing our earth. There’s always been a moral case for stopping slavery; now there’s an environmental reason too.

Slaves lured or captured from the pool of vulnerable migrants are then forced to rip up the earth or level the forests, completing the cycle. Out of our sight,

If slavery were an American state it would have the population of California and the economic output of the District of Columbia, but it would be the world’s third-largest producer of CO2.

Cellphones have become electronic umbilical cords connecting us with our children, our partners, and our parents with an immediacy and reliability hardly known before.

It’s never a happy moment when you’re shopping for a tombstone.

slaves tend to work with primitive tools, saws, shovels, and picks, or their own bare hands

an extraction that we never actually see.

Our lives are full of ways that we connect with other people—the food we serve and share, the rings and gifts we exchange

We know that, even though it comes all the way from India, slave-produced granite is cheap. We also know that, while some polishing and skillful carving of names and dates is needed,

Our view of cemetery monuments is normally restricted to what we see when we bury our loved ones or visit their graves. If we think about where the markers come from at all,

Fortunately, early evacuation kept the death toll to 150.

hese groups work to protect human rights and women’s rights, end sexual violence, meet the needs of children and orphans, and promote disarmament, environmental justice, rule of law, medical care, food security, education, religious tolerance, democracy, and more.

The ‘resource curse’ falls on the poorest parts of the world when their muddy pebbles, little-used forest, or some other natural resource suddenly becomes extremely valuable

There’s a squad waiting to ambush you as soon as you leave town.”

Experts believe that ten million people died

Rubber and ivory worth millions were arriving in Europe, but the ships going back carried little besides weapons [and] manacles.

by the end of 2013 sales were up to two billion and there were more phones in the world than people.

Moments later, after our papers were checked, the UN pilot, a Russian with a rich baritone, called the children together and got them singing French folk songs. From the way the kids mobbed him, this had to be a feature of every landing. Their voices rippled with giggles, like water flutes.

The good news is that slavery can be stopped. We know how to bust slaveholders and free slaves, we know how much it costs and where to start, and we know that freed slaves tend to be willing workers in the rebuilding of our natural world. Ending slavery is a step forward in fixing our earth. There’s always been a moral case for stopping slavery; now there’s an environmental reason too.

how can the estimated 35.8 million slaves in the world really be that destructive?

The profits generated when we go shopping flow back down the chain and fuel more assaults on the natural world, drive more people toward enslavement, and feed more goods into the global supply chain. Round and round it goes— our spending drives a criminal perpetual motion machine that eats people and nature like a cancer.

you can’t afford to die in Germany.”

the cremated can be buried only in approved cemeteries, never scattered in gardens or the sea.

We think of Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the origin of our iPhones

In the United States, the average cost of installing those countertops runs from $2,000 to $8,000, but the price charged by Indian exporters for polished red granite is just $5 to $15 per square meter—that comes to about $100 for all the granite your kitchen needs

Environmentalists are right to call for laws and treaties that will apply to the community of nations, but that is not enough.

Laws and treaties may control law-abiding individuals, corporations, and governments, but not the criminal slaveholders who flout the gravest of laws.

That cutting and digging moves like a scythe through the most protected parts of our natural world—nature reserves, protected forests, UNESCO World Heritage Sites

When they’re looking for territory to grab, the militias first seek out minerals. Throughout this part of the world, there’s gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite (the ore that gives us tin), and niobium for electronics, as well as molybdenum and wulfenite for making highgrade steel; all of these are near the surface and easily mined

We pull food from the earth, of course, but we also pull our cellphones from the earth, our clothing, our computers, our flat-screen televisions, our cars—it all comes from the earth, ultimately.

Nyiragongo’s unusually fluid lava sped down streets at up to sixty miles per hour, swept away buildings, covered part of the airport, destroyed 12 percent of the city, and made 120,000 people homeless.

The same cycle that fueled the slavery and genocide of 1901 continues to revolve today, not just in Congo but around the world. It’s a four-step process; simple in form yet complex in the way it plays out.

But the truth is out under there in the rain forests and protected habitats suffering the onslaught of slave workers driven by rogue militias. That’s why I’m in Walikale with my co-worker Zorba Leslie, lugging my backpack along a dirt track with ruts that would swallow a motorcycle.

At the very beginning of the twentieth century there was an unquenchable demand in America and Europe for an amazing new technology—air-filled rubber tires. The Age of the Railroad was ending

Nineteen years later they are still there, living like parasitic plants, their roots driven deeply into the region

“This is why I am here,” I thought, “I can’t live without my phone, and people here are dying because of it.”

Adding together their slave-based deforestation and other CO2-producing crimes leads to a sobering conclusion. If slavery were an American state it would have the population of California and the economic output of the District of Columbia, but it would be the world’s third-largest producer of CO2, after China and the United States.

how can the estimated 35.8 million slaves in the world really be that destructive?

Some of the best and cheapest tombstones come from India. In 2013 India produced 35,342 million tons of granite, making it the world’s largest producer

We think of Steve Jobs in his black turtleneck as the origin of our iPhones.

It’s never a happy moment when you’re shopping for a tombstone

There is a deadly triangular trade going on today that reaches from these threatened villages and forests in the most remote parts of the earth all the way to our homes in America and Europe

The good news is that slavery can be stopped

Slavery, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas producers, is hidden from us.

Surprisingly, slavery is at the root of much of the natural world’s destruction

he engineers that made our phones smaller and smarter

By 2014, 91 percent of all human beings owned a cellphone.

Yours is probably within arm’s reach right now. Our phones are so ubiquitous, we tend to forget that they only arrived on the scene about twenty years ago.

It’s no wonder that we struggle and often fail to stop climate change and reduce the atmospheric carbon count.

Especially in countries where corruption is rife, slavers act with impunity after environmental devastation, luring and capturing the refugees, the destitute, and the dispossessed.

But there’s no secret about the engine driving this vicious cycle. It is us—the consumer culture of the rich north.

i

destruction

once

earth

Understanding American peonage slavery is important because it helps us to see Congo slavery as part of the long history of bondage. The close link between conflict, prejudice, and slavery unites the two stories.

Black markets also need some stability, and with territories carved up and guns pointing at workers instead of other armed gangs, the lean and hungry men begin to grow fat themselves. Step four builds on this new stability that serves only the criminals. Secure in their power, the thugs ramp up production, finding new sources of raw materials and new pools of labor to exploit. Thus the curse has reached its full power. In that lawless, impoverished, unstable, remote region, slavery and environmental destruction flourish.

Especially in countries where corruption is rife, slavers act with impunity after environmental devastation, luring and capturing the refugees, the destitute, and the dispossessed. This has happened in countries like Mali, where sand dunes drift right over villages, forcing the inhabitants to flee in desperation, seeking new livelihoods, only to find themselves enslaved.

at an incredible human cost.

Henry Ford was making cars by the million, bicycles were pouring out of factories, freight was moving in gasoline-powered trucks, and they all ran on rubber. The Congo had more natural rubber than anywhere else. To meet this demand King Leopold II of Belgium, in one of the greatest scams in history, tricked local tribes into signing away their lands and lives in bogus treaties that none of them could read. He sold these “concessions” to speculators who used torture and murder to drive whole communities into the jungle to harvest rubber.

No electricity or running water, no paving on the roads, and good luck if you needed a doctor, but incredibly I had a signal. “This is why I am here,” I thought, “I can’t live without my phone, and people here are dying because of it.”

Especially in countries where corruption is rife, slavers act with impunity after environmental devastation, luring and capturing the refugees, the destitute, and the dispossessed. This has happened in countries like Mali, where sand dunes drift right over villages, forcing the inhabitants to flee in desperation, seeking new livelihoods, only to find themselves enslaved.

The profits generated when we go shopping flow back down the chain and fuel more assaults on the natural world, drive more people toward enslavement, and feed more goods into the global supply chain.

But all this normally happens far from any prying eyes. It’s a hidden world that keeps its secrets.

This American Life has retracted the above story because we learned that many of Mike Daisey's experiences in China were fabricated.

Our staff did weeks of fact checking to corroborate Daisey's findings

Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them.

This American Life has retracted this story because

Each report surveyed over 100 Foxconn workers, and they even had a researcher go undercover and take a job at the Shenzhen plant.

Daisey sees some photos online from the inside of a factory that makes iPhones, starts to wonder about the people working there, and flies to China to meet them

We have removed the audio from our site

What should we make of what Mike Daisey saw in China?

This American Life has retracted the above story because we learned that many of Mike Daisey's experiences in China were fabricated.

This American Life has retracted this story because we learned that many of Mike Daisey's experiences in China were fabricated

This American Life has retracted the above story because we learned that many of Mike Daisey's experiences in China were fabricated

“A tribal chief will decide he wants to dig a big fishpond, so he will make a deal with a local militia captain. The captain will arrest people and find them guilty of some crime and then sell them to the chief to ‘work off’ their fines.” Businessmen buy workers this way as well. As one man put it, “A businessman will pay the police to arrest people, and then sentence them to three or six months of work, but once they are in the mine they just belong to the businessman, they’re not allowed to leave.”

“hippie chimp,”

Yours is probably within arm’s reach right now.

There’s an intimacy in the stone we use to mark the final resting place of someone we love; there’s another sort of intimacy in the less obvious but still essential minerals that let us speak with our loved ones on phones or write to them on computers.

The red granite tombstones that sell for $500 to $1,000 in the United States,

which predicts the tides.

Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent

advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not

“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.”

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter.

educing the size of the record,

The treated film

conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear

aterial environment.

turn back the enemy

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

giving the promise of an improved mental health

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride

There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

vironme

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence

it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility

In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move.

the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it,

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.

Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.4The repetitive processes of thought are not confined however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with 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. Not so much has been done along these lines, beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations—and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool—so useful that it still exists.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.

They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

“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.”

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.

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.

manipulate

Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices,

“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.”

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.

Adding is only one operation

Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires

The economics of the situation were against it

will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record?

Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

fighting has ceased

truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential

It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”

security

The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color.

The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

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.

Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.

If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.

Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Som

As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.

The Encyclopædia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk.

but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click.

Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color.

Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages.

On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist.

the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population

will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record?

A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk.

Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable.

The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers.

record on film

They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy, have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end.

Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together.