6 Matching Annotations
  1. Sep 2021
  2. drive.google.com drive.google.com
    Bush - As We May Think.pdf
    6
    1. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      It is readily possi-ble to construct a machine which will manipulate premis-es in accordance with formal logic, simply by the cleveruse of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such adevice and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out con-clusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law,and with no more slips than would be expected of a key-board adding machine

      This feels like the predecessor of the modern computer. While this "didn't exist yet" and was much less feasible back then, it actually did! While it feels far off and like an innovation of the future, there was the top secret Turing machine the UK created to crack enigma. This makes me wonder if there are things today that feel like far off and distant technology that actually exist already in top secret government labs.

    2. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      It is strange that theinventors of universal languages have not seized upon theidea of producing one which better fitted the techniquefor transmitting and recording speech.

      Could this be the origin of programming languages? Are programming languages simply universal languages that are "better fitted for transmitting"? I think that may actually be the modern implementation of this idea of Bush's.

    3. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      The other element is found in the stenotype, that some-what disconcerting device encountered usually at publicmeetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks aboutthe room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquietinggaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a pho-netically simplified language a record of what the speaker issupposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordi-nary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible onlyto the initiated. Combine these two elements, let theVocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machinewhich types when talked to

      I find the stenotype an interesting example of Bush's innovations of the future. The stenotype still today feels like a novel machine in circles outside of stenographers–a machine which allows for ultra fast typing and record-keeping. I don't think much has changed about the machine since 1945 except I would think (?) it is now digital and maybe there isn't a typed strip that emerges?

    4. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      more automatic cameras

      I wonder what Bush meant by this quote. What classified an automatic camera—or better yet—a MORE automatic one? Did Bush have digital photography in mind? Could that have been imagined at this time. Digital feels like the modern implementation of "more automatic"

    5. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      Note the automatic tele-phone exchange, which hashundred of thousands ofsuch contacts, and yet isreliable

      It's quite interesting how Bush views this as an innovation of the time when today we find this archaic. The telephone system has changed dramatically from the days of calling an operator and asking for a different county and them manually switching your call on a switch board. Bush likely couldn't have imagined the "decentralized" system we have today.

    6. zrosenfeld 16 Sep 2021
      making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge.

      Perhaps a task as daunting as this felt unachievable in 1945 (unless through some form of library systems) however I would argue that nowadays, knowledge is more accessible than ever before and with each passing day, the accessibility only augments from that of the day before. The WWW has created a global and open source store of knowledge that can be read and written by all.

      accessibility
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