memex

The Memex is probably one of the more influential machines never to have existed... certainly as far as hypertext is concerned. The memex was a theoretical analog computer, a sort of microfiche library which would track the activity of the user and allow the user to create navigable links between works. It was first described in the 1945 Atlantic Monthly article "As We May Think". Wikipedia has a good entry with more factual information. Dynamic Diagrams has produced an excellent Interactive Animation of the Memex. The memex is often cited as an origin of hypertext alongside Project Xanadu.

I think it's interesting as a case study in the articulation of nascent concepts. Watching the video of Vannevar Bush demonstrating the concept of the memex is like watching the silent movies of early airplanes. The ideas are there but the technology hasn't caught up yet.

(In terms of t.org, I suspect that this note will be more useful as a connective and referential node than it will be informative on its own.)