Chapter 2

Who: Vannevar Bush

When: 1945

What: He invisioned the "memex" and essentially the idea for the modern day computer. This man was clearly ahead of his time, as he imagined many advances in technology that was yet to be established because of lack of funding. He imagined a camera using "dry photography" in a similar way to how the television works, and he imagined compressing books and information to make more accessible to scientists, and looked into new ways to call up this information and link it all together the way a brain works. Surely, Bush would be pleased by the innovations today that have made his ideas, realities. One of his innovative ideas that we haven't really seen much of today is the voice to type device. We have the technology for this today, and programs that use it, but it doesn't seem to be as prevelant, and I wonder why that is. Another is the device the piece of the Memex that would automatically photograph notes and sketches that the user would write/draw onto the machine. Again, we have this technology but it's not commonplace yet and I think it could be very practical.