Little does the author know the technologies of the future would store much more data on a drive a fraction of the size, with the ability to encode all sorts of data. Another testament to the inconceivable nature of computing technologies even ten years in our future.

The human media of writing and pictures have endured for millennia, but are continually changing as technology progresses. Even as the author tries to imagine the next frontier of photography, he could not envision mobile phones as they exist today.

For all his exploration into the theoretical, seemingly infinite applications of computers, this is an important distinction to make. Despite the computer's ability to crunch numbers, the skill of the human in studies of a more symbolic nature will remain unmatched.

This presents the challenge of collating large amounts of data within a hypertext system so that each piece is easily indexable and retrievable. This is also perhaps where hyperlinks shine, connecting a web of related data in an intuitively navigable way.

This reminds me of the development of the world wide web by physicists at CERN to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing by scientists around the world. I think it speaks to the highly intersectional nature of early computing and hypermedia advancements. The utility of computing power made computer scientists out of researchers across the sciences and furthered discovery in these fields like never before.