What all the authors whose works we read for this session share, is that they understand annotation (Jones, 2014), note-taking (Blair, 2004) and computing—or maybe better put: “memexing” (Bush, 1945) as based on and serving human interaction and communication, and therefore as not a merely individual undertaking, but one leading to a spread of knowledge, thoughts and/or their preservation, not only for oneself, but also for others.

Whereas Blair focuses on notes as a means to either intently or involuntary store knowledge, Jones describes a use of annotation very close to the ideal of ours’ in the virtual extension of our classroom by using hypothes.is—as a means to gain a “better understanding [of] a text through others’ experience” and knowledge, and as a space of discussion. And also Bush, even though he mainly focuses more on the technological specifics of the machines he imagines, mainly sees the memex as a tool to navigate through “the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things”, to keep track of chosen ones and share them with others, at any point in time. One of the liveliest anecdotes in his essay is his description of two friends meeting and discussing the advantages of a Turkish over a European bow resulting in one of them passing the other one a reproduction of what he had collected about this subject years ago in his memex. (The anecdote, strongly reminding of the uncountable links we send each other today, is also part of this video that show how the memex could look like and operate.)

Bush’s essay was remarkable to me concerning at least two aspects. First, I found that his astonishingly accurate predictions of the prospective technological developments are a good starting point to reflect upon the technologies we use in our everyday life today. His detailed descriptions of the machines he imagines provoke comparisons to computers, algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning. And by drawing those comparisons, by imagining a computer and checking which aspects of Bush’s prediction are accurate, I think about what a computer, the machine I use daily but nearly never explicitly reflect upon, actually is and does. The effect reading this text had on me was similar to what I experienced when I first read Adam Greenfields 5-pages long description of a smartphone in his book Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (Verso, 2017). It starts as follows:

“Though its precise dimensions may vary with fashion, a smartphone is fundamentally a sandwich of aluminosilicate glass, polycarbonate and aluminum sized to sit comfortably in the adult hand, and to be operated, if need be, with the thumb only. This requirement constrains the device to a fairly narrow range of shapes and sizes; almost every smartphone on the market at present is a blunt slab, a chamfered or rounded rectangle between eleven and fourteen centimeters tall, and some six to seven wide. These compact dimensions permit the device to live comfortably on or close to the body, which means it will only rarely be misplaced or forgotten, and this in turn is key to its ability to function as a proxy for personal identity, presence and location. (…)”

I still find this passage not only a fascinating with regard to the fact that people who might read this book in a post-smartphone era (or at least one in which smartphones function significantly differently) will actually need this description. But it also shows how I would actually not even rudimentarily be able to describe a smartphone, the thing that is with me all day, in detail. This again is very telling about the degree to which I have already accepted the existence and functionality of my technological environment as a sort of “second nature”.

Second, while I was unsuccessfully searching online for an interview with Vannevar Bush (who died in 1974) in which he reflects upon his predictions in the decades following its publication—I found out about his involvement in the Manhattan Project. This was a powerful reminder that technological advancement is never neutral and can’t, not even on a theoretical level, be separated from its (possible) applications. I think that a discussion about the text can only gain from being informed about his engagements within the development and testing of atomic weapons. Passages like the last paragraph in which Bush claims that “he” [referring to “man”] “may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome” become even more urgent to discuss, and telling about the discourse at the time in which it was written, in the light of this knowledge.