This week’s reading was on hypertext, but in this reflective blog post I want to focus on one aspect that was mentioned during the reading: the article “As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush in July 1945.

Just to give a brief history lesson to help us wrap our minds around that time period, 1945 was a huge year. Major stories that covered newspaper headlines included the death of President Roosevelt, two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan, the death of Adolf Hitler and his wife, the end of WWII, the creation of the United Nations, and so much more. The average cost of a new house was $4,600 and the cost of a gallon of gas was 15 cents. There was no internet, cell phones, or social media. It was a different time back then.

In his article, Bush coined the term “memex” which he described as “a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library”. Weirdly enough, in Bush’s mind the memex had a “special button transfers [the user] immediately to the first page of the index”, much like the home button of a phone. Additionally, the memex was also intended to study the brain itself. It was a tool to aid mathematics and store TONS OF INFORMATION.

So, with this information, consider the fears that Bush had about the direction of science moving away from knowledge to destruction. Consider my web artifact of the week: data brokers. This might be a stretch, but stay with me and I promise I will try to not get too political even though this is a touchy subject.

In a nutshell, data brokers (aka information brokers) are companies that collect data themselves or buy it from other companies. Why would a company do this? There are multiple reasons, but some include marketing and advertising, fraud detection, risk-mitigation, and people-search sites. There is more information about each of those topics here.

But what does this have to do with that 1945 essay? Consider this: Bush thought that the future of science and technology was moving towards the unpolished idea of the memex with the direction of science moving towards destruction. Bush even thought there would be improvements in tools used for mathematics. What if we could go back in time and tell Bush about the internet and social media websites? What would Bush think about the development of data collection from the internet, social media, and all things digital? What would he think about the way this new wave of data is influencing politics? On the other hand, how impressed would he be to see the drastic improvements made to technology since 1945?

I challenge you to do your own research on data brokers and how data is collected online. Then fully read Bush’s article, and see if you are just a little freaked out like I was when I realized this man actually predicted the way technology was heading. Science and math and technology, oh my!