After reading “As We May Think”, the thing that struck me wasn’t so much the predictions that Bush got right (which were many), but one particular technology th

After reading “As We May Think”, the thing that struck me wasn’t so much the predictions that Bush got right (which were many), but one particular technology that he missed: digital image processing and printing. Everything he describes is based on photographic reproduction of handwritten or traditionally printed material, with an extremely small number of annotation bits encoded by exposing film to individual lamps. He more or less describes barcodes, but misses that they can be printed on the product packaging without special equipment. The idea that a computer could draw things was completely unimaginable. I actually think that this oversight helps sell how visionary his ideas were. This really isn’t a paper that could be written today, because there’s this really fundamental thing that everyone takes for granted that’s conspicuously absent— It helps anchor the text in the time it was written.