It's always fun to read 60-year-old predictions for the future. And, of course, Dr. Bush is uncannily accurate, at least when describing the type of device a computer would eventually become, if not the means by which it would operate. Of course, there were computers that existed even then..the Univac, wasn't it? Nope, just googled it and it looks like it didn't become operative till '51. Well, that's just 2 years later. I saw a piece of it in the Smithsonian a few years ago. Lots of vacuum tubes, always exciting if you're a fan of old electronics.Well, information is certainly more accessible these days, even more so than Bush envisioned. What he doesn't seem to have considered is that, like a highway widened to accommodate more traffic which only ends up being just as congested a few years later because the new ease of travel just attracted more cars, the ability to access information easily just created more of it. I'm not sure, in the end, it's easier to sort out data now than it used to be when it was harder to get. But it's certainly easier to get a picture of a gas station if you want to draw one and don't want to have to drive to the corner and make a sketch.Bush's contraption, as much as it resembles in many ways what we have today, is basically a glorified file cabinet--the owner would find his information the traditional way and microfilm it. The thing Bush really couldn't envision was the limitless info-realm of the internet, heaving out there like an ocean, with every sort of media heretofore devised instantly accessible from anyone's laptop. I mean, the guy hadn't even really experienced TV yet. We are, truly, a new version of human being.
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