If we all had the Memex that Vannevar Bush proposed[1,1*], many of the losses we all discuss in these threads may have been avoided. We now have massive local s

If we all had the Memex that Vannevar Bush proposed[1,1*], many of the losses we all discuss in these threads may have been avoided. We now have massive local storage, and should be able to freely share data by hosting our own stuff on our own machines. We could have done what the editor of the magazine implored us to do: "As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coordinated 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 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 not 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" We don't have that, and it makes me sad. We should fix this inadequacy, but there are now so many interests in the entrenched model that I think they would squash something that freely allows copying like a bug. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m... [1*] https://web.archive.org/web/20220301051333/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220301051333/https://www.theat... [edits - quoted editor's introduction, revised/extended]