Week 3

As We May Think

by Vannevar Bush, 1945

Click to read more about Vannevar Bush

As we may think is an essay by Vannevar Bush describing his thoughts on informational technologies and suggesting what science should do next from the POV in 1945. Bush mentions that technologies back then were not efficient enough, which an imperfect indexing system constrained access to knowledge, so he envisioned the Memex. It was a personal hard drive that acted as a library with communication, books, and records stored. I think Bush has considerably predicted the future, where people have personal electronic devices such as phones and computers that use the internet for more functions than what Bush proposed. If Bush were alive today, he would approve what we have today and maybe present new thoughts to expedite development.

Long Live the Web

by Tim Berners-Lee, 2010

Click to read more about the World Wide Web

The article was written by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, discussing his thoughts of the web. The internet, built upon the web, is a powerful tool we use now, where people use to communicate universally. There are also problems with the web. When social networking companies become too big, they can slow down innovation as their focus on the field is not so much on innovation anymore. Snooping, I believe, is one large problem that needs to be fixed. People leave digital footprints everywhere and as more people use the internet the more data there is for trafficing. Especially now, during the pandemic, resellers are forced to think about more of their supply chain, which might increase the use of digital footprint data.