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  • Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory

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    Author(s)
    Yeo, Richard
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Yeo, Richard R.
    Year published
    2007
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    Abstract
    In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a "supplement" to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this "memex" recorded "trails" of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative processes of natural memory, Hooke and Locke concluded that an external archive had to allow collective reason to overcome the limits of individual memory, including its tendency to freeze and ...
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    In 1945 Vannevar Bush proposed a machine that acted as a "supplement" to memory and met the particular information needs of its user. Because this "memex" recorded "trails" of selected documents, it has been seen as a precursor to hypertext. However, this paper considers Bush in relation to earlier concerns about memory and information, via the ideas of Robert Hooke and John Locke. Whereas Bush modeled the memex on the associative processes of natural memory, Hooke and Locke concluded that an external archive had to allow collective reason to overcome the limits of individual memory, including its tendency to freeze and repeat patterns of ideas. Moreover, they envisaged an institutional archive rather than one controlled by the interests and mental associations of an individual. From this early modern perspective, Bush's memex appears as a personal device for managing information that incorporates assumptions inimical to the strategies required for scientific analysis.
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    Journal Title
    Science in Context
    Volume
    20
    Issue
    1
    Publisher URI
    http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=SIC
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889706001128
    Copyright Statement
    © 2007 Cambridge University Press. The attached file is reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal's website for access to the definitive, published version.
    Subject
    History and philosophy of specific fields
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/15207
    Collection
    • Journal articles

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