ChatGPT 和工业革命

从学会使用工具开始，人类才成为人类。

工业革命的意义在于，创造出了能降低门槛、提高效率的工具，极大提高了生产力。

机器如何降低门槛提升效率？核心在于简化工作流程。过去做一件衣服需要从纺纱开始，现在纺纱都由机器完成了，但制衣过程还需要人工介入。

AI 做的，也是一样。ChatGPT 能写代码，做 PPT，但不能直接拿来用，还需要人工修改。即便未来的 AI 更智能了，他的产出也需要人工修改才能投入使用。

记忆剧场（Memory Theatre）是文艺复兴时期意大利哲学家卡米罗构想出的奇异装置。

一个形如圆形剧场的空间，按不同的扇区分门别类存放着文献资料，人进入剧场中央，操纵装置即可将需要的文献、书籍呈现在自己眼前阅读。

这个构想蕴含着创造人类外脑的野心，也可视作是今日计算机与搜索引擎的概念原型。

来源：[传闻只要进入「记忆剧场」，一个人就能知道世上所有知识]

个体的远程办公是一个关于生活方式的选择题，但如果将远程办公放入更广的维度，它其实涉及到公司治理、经济趋势，以及随之而来的商业形态。参与方也不仅仅只有员工和公司，地方政府也有自己的小算盘。

因为疫情原因，我和这个世界上的大多数人一样，被迫远程办公了半年。现在疫情趋缓，有不少朋友已经回到了办公室。

在这场“被迫”发生的远程办公运动中，硅谷的不少大公司选择将远程办公常态化。Facebook 的 CEO 扎克伯格说计划 10 年内将半数员工转为远程办公，Twitter 的 CEO 杰克·多西也说，“如果员工不想回办公室，一直远程办公也没关系。”

美国一直有许多初创公司小团队倡导远程办公，其远程办公人口在2018 年达到了 25%。在这次疫情推动下，已经有更多公司加入这场运动，主动选择将远程办公常态化，或是让将更多岗位转为“可远程”。

不过，公司在考虑远程办公时，可不仅仅是将其作为对员工的福利，实际上他们有更多更现实的利益考量。

作为个体，我们在讨论远程办公的时候更喜欢将其定义成一种生活方式，赋予它各种各样美好的想象，关于想象有多不靠谱，我已经在之前的一篇译文[2020-1-31-24|远程办公的残酷真相|文摘#24中讲]过了。在这里，我想说的是，“远程办公”这个偏正短语和“自由职业”一样，落脚点“办公”和“职业”，至于他如何被修饰，其实并不重要。

从我自己的经验出发，其实居家办公时，我确实容易分心，工作时间会拉长一点。但总体而言，居家办公和我在办公室的效率差不多（我在办公室也喜欢摸鱼）。空余出来的通勤时间我用在了减肥（这半年胖了 10 斤……）和自己做饭上。因为不用搭车、点外卖，我每个月确实能省下来一笔开支，同时我的生活质量也得到了改善。

至于时间更自由，更准确的说法应该是能“自己支配工作时间”。简单来讲，你能选择在周一到周四熬更深的夜，加更晚的班，在保证完成 KPI 的情况下，让周五也变成休息日。当然，这一切的前提是客户和老板能不临时安排工作。

所以，从 Work-Life-Balance 的角度上讲，有一些工作其实并不适合远程工作，例如动画师、特效师、视频后期剪辑。这类职业需要一台高配置的工作站才能展开工作，所以下班回家以后可以以“家里的电脑性能较低”为由拒绝加班。如果他们选择远程办公，这类理由将瞬间丧失合理性。

其实远程办公最大的弊端在于个人的职业发展和未来晋升。张三在家办公每天勤勤恳恳，李四在办公室每天也很努力，同等条件下李四的晋升概率比张三高，因为李四是在老板眼皮底下加班。

这一点对于大公司员工而言尤甚，因为大公司的体系更大更复杂，基层员工的努力更难被高层发现。

对于公司来说，远程办公带来的利益不仅仅是能够节省租金，缩减食堂、零食、健身房这样的实体福利。

扎克伯格在 The Verge 的这篇采访里还提到了，他们实行远程办公的一大原因在于他们目前正在开发远程办公工具，他们需要先内部实验；另一个原因是可以更广泛地吸纳异地人才。

在理想的情况下，如果远程办公能在绝大多数企业中实行，所在地将不会成为我们求职的障碍，一个住在小县城的人也能为上海的跨国公司工作。

拿着一线城市的工资，享受小县城的消费，看起来确实美得很。但扎克伯格没有在采访里谈到的是，他们会根据员工所在地调整工资。换句话来讲，就是你选了远程办公就得降薪。

如果降薪也是可以接受的，那么在普遍远程办公的情况下，员工面临的第二个问题将是更加激烈的求职竞争。本来，所在地还是一个隐形的筛选条件，现在这个条件没有了，求职市场的供给量相当于变大了，县城小王在面试一个职位时，要同时面对省会小李、村镇小刘，甚至是印度人、俄罗斯人的竞争。

高新产业带来的人口集中几乎是一个世界性难题。中国的北上广深杭、美国的加州、纽约、波士顿，这些城市每年都要吸走一大部分大学毕业生，小城市的人口流失问题已经严重到了需要政府干预的程度。

中国的解决方案是降低落户门槛，给高学历人群安家费。美国的解决方案就是由地方政府推动远程办公。

2018 年，美国的佛蒙特州签署了一项吸引远程办公者安家的法案，给每一位搬到佛蒙特州的远程办公者 10000 美元安家费、再送一套办公设备，以及当地共享办公空间的会员身份。俄克拉荷马城也出台了类似的政策。

如果这些大公司继续推进远程办公，这些小城市的政府会继续加大力度吸引年轻人落户。不过，加州政府是否会对地方的抢人政策坐视不管就不得而知了。

题图：自己拍的

昨天（2019/2/20），小米 9和三星 S10相继发布。他们的配置和价格已经在两家的官网上公布出来了。小米 9 系列售价 2999 元起，三星 S10 系列尝鲜价 5300 元起。

这两款手机单论硬件配置大同小异。就像主流的科技媒体说的那样，如果能给三星 6000 元档位的手机打 90 分，国产 3000 到 4000 元档的手机就能打 80 到 85 分。对于消费者而言，两者在体验上的差距远没有价格差距那么大，甚至可以说国产手机在「性价比」上，狠狠地甩开了三星。

值得一提的是三星没有公开主摄像头的具体信号和参数，只说了 1200 万像素和 f/1.5、f/2.4 可变光圈，而小米使用的是索尼的 IMX586，1/2 英寸的 CMOS，4800 万像素 4 和 1，输出 1200 万像素的照片，也就是说单位像素面积达到了 1.6μ，光圈 f/1.75。这颗摄像头的尺寸是目前仅次于华为 P20 Pro 和 Mate20 Pro 系列上那颗 1/1.73 英寸的 IMX600。不出意外地话，大部分手机厂商 2019 年能用到的最好的摄像头就是这款 IMX586。这也说明小米在和上游供应链的合作上依旧没有达到华为和苹果那样可以任性定制的程度。当然，小米的数字系列旗舰一般都是采用通用方案的「水桶机」。在下半年，我们或许能见到索尼（或者别家）为小米独家提供的摄像头。

互联网服务是小米手机在「硬件利润不超过 5%」这个「紧箍咒」下重要的盈利点。但小米 2018 年国内销量暴跌 35%，能够实现增长全靠国际市场。这对于小米来说并不是说明好消息，因为小米在国外的手机价格依旧不高，不能为其带来多少利润，并且海外版的手机内置 Google 服务，所以也不能为小米带来互联网服务的用户。国内市场销量走低，就意味着小米的互联网服务用户更少了。在发布会前一直给网友「打预防针」要涨价的小米依旧保持了性价比，或许小米还是想在国内市场「冲量」，让跟多人在小米上为互联网服务花钱（或者看广告）。

顺便一提，在手机市场饱和的背景下，苹果讲的新故事也是互联网服务。但在手机销量不高的情况下，互联网服务用户数量不会增长。从苹果最近一系列动向来看，未来苹果的旗舰机或许不会涨价，但价格依旧会很高。苹果增加设备销量的办法可能是推出更多廉价设备，老款设备的价格可能也会降得多一些。

以上这些再一次印证了我此前的观点：[2018-10-2-3-5|智能机已经和 PC 一样无聊了吗]。

虽然每年都有让人眼前一亮的新技术，但是随着产业链得高度整合和快速迭代，一年以内这些新技术都会迅速普及。以屏下指纹为例，2018 年初，VIVO 推出第一代屏下指纹技术（可用度低）https://www.pingwest.com/a/151368，之后便是手机厂商集体对供应链技术进行改进，2019年推出的大部分主流价位手机都将搭载新一代高可用度的屏下指纹技术，也就是说，这个技术的普及只用了一年。这对于消费者来说是好事情，但这也说明智能手机行业，已经到达了天花板，和PC行业一样，大家的主流产品都将是现有供应链方案的整合，我们将越来越难看到让人兴奋的产品。

那么计算设备的未来在哪里呢？

三星在昨天夜里给出的方案是折叠屏，还有一部分「玩家」给出的方案是扩展坞。巧合的是，就在不久以前，也有媒体曝光了苹果申请的几个专利，既有可折叠设备也有扩展坞，看起来苹果也没有想清楚（所以全都保护性注册一下）。

如果让我来预言未来，我会选择扩展坞，因为这符合计算机小型化的历史规律。不过折叠屏和扩展坞并不矛盾，我认为折叠屏是一个适用范围更广的未来，而可折叠设备只会成为一部分人的选择，具体来说，未来的 iPhone 可能有两个版本，一个普通版和一个折叠版，可折叠的 iPhone 或将取代 iPad。

扩展坞的存在或许将让更大的个人计算设备——例如笔记本和台式电脑——变成专业设备，除非你从事视频后期或 3D 建模这类需要大量算力的工作，对于大部分普通人，一台手机提供的算力足够日常使用了，他们需要的只是更大的屏幕——这就是扩展坞存在的意义。

这种所有计算平台融合的趋势很早就出现了。在 2011 年的时候，摩托罗拉就推出过一款可以接入笔记本扩展坞的手机，型号为MOTO ME860，插入笔记本扩展坞后运行内置的 Ubuntu 系统。扩展坞本身不提供算力，只提供电池。不过这款手机很快就消失在大众视野里了，并没有掀起什么波浪。雷蛇近期也公开了他们为雷蛇手机准备的笔记本扩展坞，雷蛇的方案和苹果专利申请书上的方案类似，是将手机插入触控板区域当触控板使用。

那么我们能很快见到这些方案的普及吗？不可能。因为现如今无论是 Android 还是 iOS，本身都是为触屏设备设计的操作系统，他们的系统和软件在交互方式上与笔记本的桌面系统大相径庭，**即便在硬件层面上，这个方案的实现难度和成本都不高，但在软件层面还有很长的一段路要走。**已经倒下的锤子和它的TNT就是为了解决这个问题推出的 UI 方案，虽然完成度相比华为的电脑模式和三星的 Dex 模式更高，但软件适配始终是一个很大的问题，这个问题不是一两个厂商单打独斗能解决的，而是需要所有 Android 厂商齐心协力，共同制定软件标准。Google 研发新系统Fuchsia也可能是为了解决这个问题（毕竟，这些问题都是 Android 的碎片化导致的）。

微软早就预见了全平台融合的趋势，所以跟着 Windows10 一起新推出的UWP 应用能自适应各种屏幕大小，只要开发一款 UMP 应用，就能在 XBOX（电视机）、PC、手机（Windows Phone）里运行，无需单独适配。但是现实是残酷的，Windows Phone 死了，开发人员对开发 UMP 应用热情也不高，Windows 依然只能活在笔记本和台式机里，无法进入小屏幕。

唯一有可能掀起平台融合趋势的公司，只有苹果。只有苹果对自己的系统有绝对话语权，只有苹果能号召开发者重新编写软件适配新标准。而且苹果现在也确实打算这么做，2017 年，彭博社曾报道，苹果计划把不同设备上的应用集成起来，开发者将能够开发一次应用程序，在 iphone、ipad 和 mac 电脑上运行，实现 iOS 和 macOS 的应用程序兼容，该计划名为“Marzipan”，今天，彭博社又放出消息称该计划将在 2021 年完成。虽然就在半年前——2018 年 6 月 6 日——的 WWDC 大会上，苹果的软件工程副总裁明确表示没有融合 Macos 和 iOS 的计划。

总有一天，所有计算设备的边界都会模糊，而所有的软件，都能以最合适的形态出现在不同的屏幕上，让我们拭目以待吧。

文内图片来源于网络

本文系 Fast Company 今年 9 月 7 日刊发的文章《Get ready for the “splinternet”: The web might not be worldwide much longer》的中文译文。修改（和谐）版已首发于煎蛋。

现在是 2028 年。你从工作中抽身出来，准备看看暑假去亚洲旅行的女儿现在到哪儿了。你三天前给她发了一条 WhatsApp 消息，但现在仍然没有发出去，这说明她已经离开日本，现在正在一个没有接入美国互联网的国家，可能是菲律宾。

回到工作中，你在法国的合作伙伴发来了一封邮件给你。他刚刚看新闻里说，美国总统说美国和欧盟在数字贸易中的地位不平等，威胁说要切断欧盟的互联网接入。欧盟方面不甘示弱，也扬言说要禁止美国公司访问「欧盟网」（EUnet），你回复邮件，向合作伙伴表示现在暂时不用担心。

怎么可能不担心，所以你打开了美国总统演讲的直播。她讲到了五年前的「数字 9/11」袭击，一个外国间谍黑进了美国一半的智能汽车，造成了数千人死亡，数十亿人受伤的惨案，美国不得不竖起一道独立于互联网的数字高墙，并把这个「美国网」建设成了西方世界「第一大网」。她说，自那以后，数字恐怖袭击再也没有发生过，并且，美国如今在贸易和互联网接入协议的谈判中有着强大的影响力。

在上文的未来世界里，上网和如今相比是完全不同的体验。从上世纪九十年代诞生至今、遍布全球连接世界的互联网已不复存在。大部分有着经济实力和资源的国家都选择脱离互联网，在国境内建设一个局域网。局域网的高墙在民族主义、民粹主义、贸易保护主义和与日俱增的国家安全焦虑中拔地而起。每一个产业，从银行业到医疗保健业再到能源产业都已完全在线上运作，使得一个国家的基础设施和基础服务在面对外国的数字攻击时十分脆弱。

在这个世界里，局域网是常态。所有的围墙都建立在那些政府觉得能让国家更安全的技术上。在这个世界里，一些国家完全切断了和其他国家的网络联系—使得向异国他乡的朋友发邮寄这样简单的事情也不再可能，除非这两个国家互相接入了对方的网络。在这个世界里，同意接入一个国家的互联网更像是一个经济和地缘政治方面的武器。

这个场景是所谓「独联网」（splinternet）—四分五裂的互联网—的极端版本。但「独联网」的苗头已经出现了。

国家化、独立化的「互联网」早已有之。最显而易见的例子就是中国。但中国的大型局域网也没有完全切断和外界的联系，只不过这个网络的从外界接入和从里面访问外网受到控制。目前，中国建立局域网的主要目的倒不是为了保护国家安全，是为了限制本国公民看到政府不想让他们看到的信息。

不过，越来越多和中国有同样想法的国家在思考更深层次的摆脱互联网—一个依靠美国公司技术建立起来的并受美国科技巨头控制的网络—换句话说，一个输出美国影响力和软实力的网络。

如果中国要实现我们幻想的 2028 年场景，他就要跟随伊朗的脚步。从 2012 年开始，这个国家就开始着手建立自己的国家局域网。这个局域网又叫做「清真网」（halal net），这个网络可不是像防火长城那样设置网址黑名单，而是从线缆、服务器、数据中心等硬件上和整个互联网区隔开来。

有了一个物理上独立于互联网的局域网基础设施，使得外国在没有物理接入情况下，基本不可能进行数字攻击。不仅仅是伊朗，北朝鲜早就有了一个名叫「光明星」的局域网，古巴也完全实现了国家化的局域网，名叫「红古巴」（RedCubana）。

其他国家政府，如埃及和缅甸，也在利用限制性的局域网政策限制公民权利。例如，古巴的互联网是被监控的，持不同政见者的设备可能会被没收或本人会被拘留。

我知道你在想什么：当然，局域网只会诞生在独裁国家，永远不会出现在资本主义自由民主的世界。但是，事实并非如此。2013 年开始，巴西、印度、南非、俄罗斯和中国一同建立独立于互联网的远程通讯系统。也就是 BRICS 线缆，通过 3.4 万公里的水下光纤，它将连接这五个国家，如此一来，这五个国家建立独立的互联网将变得非常容易。

而且，越来越多的民主国家开始研发自己的局域网系统。2014 年，巴西和欧盟宣布计划投入 1.85 亿美金建立联通欧盟与巴西的海底光纤，如果他们愿意，一个双边互联网马上就能建起来。此外，同年，被视作自由世界领导者的德国总理默克尔，呼吁欧盟 28 国（英国退出以后就只有 27 个了）应该建立一个欧盟的局域网。

「我们会和法国商量如何保护数据，」默克尔说，「首先，我们要选择一个为我们公民提供安全保障的供应商，那样我们就不用在大西洋上发送电子邮件和其他信息了。」

为什么像欧盟这样自由民主的地方也热衷于发展自己的局域网了呢？原因是多方面的，但主要原因还是在国家安全方面。总体上，2013 年爱德华斯诺登的曝光棱镜计划，让欧盟（也包括俄罗斯和巴西）焦虑美国数字间谍活动。

那一年，斯诺登曝光了美国的间谍从全世界获取数据，从外国政府到贸易机构再到公民个人。因为所有数据在一个互联网上，加之互联网的大部分基础设施都由美国公司建造和维护，甚至这些设施有相当一部分就在美国，所以美国可以轻易取得这些数据。在棱镜门后的一年，德国总理就开始讨论建立自己独立于世界的欧盟网了。

当然，产生局域网的想法还有其他原因。由于从银行到医疗保健到交通到国防都依赖网络，互联网已经成为了政府和恐怖分子的战场。所以，现在的俄罗斯完全可以让美国东北部的电网系统瘫痪，并以此制造恐慌。俄罗斯完全可以兵不血刃地把这事干了，因为这些控制电网的电脑是联网的。

而 2016 年的美国大选中，我们看到了除基础设施以外同样容易被攻击的地方——媒体。间谍可以在不踏足别国的情况下，轻易地散播谣言。如此一来，民主的把柄就被别人抓住了。

上述种种能成为可能都是因为我们的互联网相互连接，人人都能上。而且像这样发展只会越来越糟。不过大部分国家在发起网络袭击方面都非常克制，真正让国家安全专家夜里睡不着觉的是哪个国家会成为高级人工智能或量子计算方面的取得领先。如果有谁办到了，那么他就可以轻松的攻破当下任何一个国家的数字安全防御系统——即便是当今最先进的加密系统。这就意味着，这个国家的每一个产业都大门敞开让你进攻，几乎无法防御。

完全脱离互联网是为数不多能防御 AI 或量子计算攻击的办法。毕竟，如果你和对手不再一个网络，他们技术再高超也得去访问你的网络才能发动进攻。

当然，民主国家要完全脱离互联网还需要取得民众支持。但这些支持很容易赢得，如果政府让足够多的人相信，局域网能保障国家安全。尤其是在国家真的遭到大规模网络攻击后，民意总会偏向于保护自己。

「Dan Coats，是国家情报部门的主任，在国家安全会议上曾警告过美国发送数字 911 的可能性。」Georgetown 大学商学院客座教授 Jeremy Haft 说，「Coats 举例几个例子，向我们说明了可能发生的情况，例如华尔街可能一周无法运转，或某个大银行被攻击。基础设施也不安全，例如核电站或净水设施也可能被攻击。如果数字 9/11 发生，我们会加强网络防御，包括但不限于会建立网络防火墙，以试图防止攻击。」

而这层数字壁垒在美国当局加重贸易保护主义的做法下，可能更加严密，当然理由依然是保护国家安全。毕竟，总统连从加拿大进口钢铁有风险这种话都能说出口，说开放互联网让美国企业需要投入巨大财力防止知识产权泄露又有何难？

「过去十年，企业间谍作为一种获取知识产权的手段越来越猖獗。有价值数十亿美金的秘密情报被泄露，大多数立法者和企业家都视数字间谍为国家安全的威胁。」Haft 说，「现在，议会、司法部、情报委员会已经在先办法遏制这种情况了。如果情况继续恶化，建立国家局域网保护重要知识产权也不是不可能。」

近几年，民族主义思潮席卷全球，从美国到欧洲到菲律宾和印尼。这些外国领导人很可能将以美国为主导的互联网事作对本国利益和网络主权的威胁。

这些经历了民族主义洗礼的国家还可能提出建立内网可以带来经济效益，因为局域网可以选择对外国公司开放或不开放。例如，巴西为什么要让搜索巨头 Google——一家美国公司——进入市场并攫取大量利益呢？

这样的保护主义思想很容易就让那些拥有大量中产阶层线上消费群的国家在贸易中偏向保守。「你想让你的公司赚我们的钱？那我们能拿到什么好处吗？」

于是乎，这种谈判反过来又会促成接入协议，在贸易协定中允许一个国家访问另一个国家的内网。这种接入协定将成为一国制衡另一国的经济和地缘政治手段。

不过，一个国家完全脱离互联网自成一派的难度有多大呢？我向欧洲首屈一指的互联网安全公司 ITC Secure 的 CTO Kevin Whelan 提出这个问题。

尽管，大部分发展中国在建造内网上有困难，但对于 G7（美、日、英、法、德、意、加）或是 Five Eyes（澳大利亚、加拿大、新西兰、英国和美国），成本基本等于没有。

「这些国家的基础设施已经具备内容过滤的条件，」Whelan 说，「对于 G7 国家来说，建一堵防火墙连三个月都不用。所需要的仅仅是一个『紧急状态』——一个来捣乱的间谍。」

如果有一部分国家先建起了自己的内网，其他国家会跟进吗？有可能，这得看这个国家是什么情况，Whelan 说。「一旦 G7 或 Five Eyes 走上这条路，就会为其他国家这么做提供合法性。」

现在，这个反乌托邦的未来还很遥远。尽管 Whelan 和其他数字安全与贸易专家表示，现在互联网的分裂还是小范围的——伊朗、德国和巴西有这个计划——并且已经开始了，但大范围的碎片化近期不会发生。

而能防止我前文所述的假象 2028 成为现实的力量主要是经济——至少美国如此，Rajneesh Narula 教授说。

在过去的 50 年里，美国在贸易的议价能力大幅下降。 这是因为有多个经济力量崛起，随着美国影响力减弱，其他国家发现，当美国打喷嚏时，其他国家不会感冒了—尽管还是人也会打个喷嚏。

但他还是承认，美国部分网络可能会从互联网中独立出来。「我认为未来的网络有两层，第一层是全世界统一的电子商务网络，而其他敏感的东西将会在区域性的网络中存在——这件事其实正在发生，」Narula 说。「这一点能被美国利用吗？可能只有一点点可以利用吧，因为美国的大型科技公司肯定会强烈反对。我非常怀疑没有他们的支持，只有一个川普这样的总统，这个假设能不能实现，不过一定会往这个方向推进。」

Haft 也承认经济方面的影响是阻止大部分资本主义民主国家「闭关锁国」的主要原因。「内网会对跨境贸易造成毁灭性打击。我们现在消费的大部分产品的供应链都是牵涉许多国家。这些供应链依赖网络，网络帮助他们交流、合作与贸易。而国家内网将会阻断这一切，并且影响美国上百万个就业岗位。」

但危险并没有解除。当民族主义和保护主义占领这个国家，当民粹主义的总统候选人公开谈论关掉互联网，当历史已经表明在民粹主义的时代大家认为摒弃境外势力比经济现实更重要时，当一个弹丸小国也想脱离美国技术实现数字主权时，理性的声音能让现状维持下去吗？

Narula 很乐观。「经济总能战胜民族主义。」

但愿如此。

译文：[2023-08-12-21-31|诚如所思|文摘#34]

by Vannevar Bush

This article was originally published in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It is reproduced here with their permission.

HTML version by Denys Duchier, University of Ottawa, April 1994. Updated August 1995, Simon Fraser University. - please email comments and corrections to duchier@cs.sfu.ca - an ASCII version is also available - both have been donated to Project Gutenberg.

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coördinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For many years inventions have extended man’s physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson’s famous address of 1837 on “The American Scholar,” this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge. - The Editor

This has not been a scientist’s war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?

For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war work has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same.

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy. They have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

1

Of what lasting benefit has been man’s use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers - conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month’s efforts could be produced on call. Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense, advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not, thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousand of times as fast - there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a transformation in scientific records.

Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile. Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages, plugged into sockets - and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

2

A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.

Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with spaced glass eyes, for striking improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.

The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man’s sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.

Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.

This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.

A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.

It would be a brave man who could predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today transmits sixteen reasonably good images a second, and it involves only two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer, for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.

Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the apparatus to transmit one picture rather than a succession, and a rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be. More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The _Encyclopoedia Britannica_ could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also to be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled by a few.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.

3

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language.

At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal cords entered in the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loud-speaker. In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system.

The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to.

Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman.

One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.

Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.

Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by the keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.

All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact, if the dots are holes, we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.

Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still embryo.

Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.

Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

4

The repetitive processes of thought are not confined, however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed, and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machines. Not so much has been done along these lines, beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business, and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.

With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations - and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads string on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool - so useful that it still exists.

It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformation of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.

All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there will come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.

5

The scientist, however, is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood. Whenever logical processes of thought are employed - that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove - there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students’ souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.

A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even a streamlined model.

So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record. Thus far we seem to be worse off than before - for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.

Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five millions on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of thousands a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted. If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.

Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done.. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer’s identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold - all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.

But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.

The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be occupied in bringing the correct card into use - a second should suffice for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease of erasure. By using photography, however, one can arrange to project the record in enlarged form, and at a distance by using the process common in television equipment.

One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

6

The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sort of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

7

All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outranged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.

8

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. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only at the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to the methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses - the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

By bone conduction we already introduce sounds into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?

In the outside world, all forms of intelligence, whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.

Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his record more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursion may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He 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.