http://www.newsless.org/2009/03/wikipedia-foretold/
'I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it, I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “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.” '
Also some nice words for Wikinews and similar endeavours.
- d.
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:49 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.newsless.org/2009/03/wikipedia-foretold/
'I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it, I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “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.” '
I think Joseph Reagle discusses this (along with a number of other precursors I hadn't been aware of) in his dissertation.
-Sage (User:Ragesoss)
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:49 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.newsless.org/2009/03/wikipedia-foretold/
'I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it, I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “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.” '
I think Joseph Reagle discusses this (along with a number of other precursors I hadn't been aware of) in his dissertation.
Do you have details or links to this Reagle dissertation?
Carcharoth
On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 3:01 AM, Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Sage Ross ragesoss+wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:49 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
http://www.newsless.org/2009/03/wikipedia-foretold/
'I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it, I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “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.” '
I think Joseph Reagle discusses this (along with a number of other precursors I hadn't been aware of) in his dissertation.
Do you have details or links to this Reagle dissertation?
http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html
I think was was the 2005 draft of his first chapter.
According the final (2008) table of contents, it looks like the part on Bush has been expanded to its own section of that chapter: http://reagle.org/joseph/2008/03/dsrtn-in-good-faith
-Sage
Hi David, you can pick up on some of WP's ancestors in: http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html This work (and attention on "documentalists") is further developed in my dissertation, and book manuscript.
Bush's contributions/prescience is exaggerated according to Michael Buckland.
[[ http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/%7Ebuckland/goldbush
Abstract: Vannevar Bush's famous paper "As We May Think" (1945) described an imaginary information retrieval machine, the Memex. The Memex is usually viewed, unhistorically, in relation to subsequent developments using digital computers. This paper attempts to reconstruct the little-known background of information retrieval in and before 1939 when "As We May Think" was originally written. The Memex was based on Bush's work during 1938-1940 developing an improved photoelectric microfilm selector, an electronic retrieval technology pioneered by Emanuel Goldberg of Zeiss Ikon, Dresden, in the 1920s. Visionary statements by Paul Otlet (1934) and Walter Schuermeyer (1935) and the development of electronic document retrieval technology before Bush are examined.
]]