User:Laurier Rochon/readingnotes/as we may think

Vannevar Bush > As we may think

Notes

"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."

"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 world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it."

"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."

Technology : improving, compressing (physically) and optimizing records that can be consulted later

"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."

How to record scientific progress (mini-steps)?. How does this improve distribution and democratization of knowledge? What will this change in the long run?

"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."

Indexing : step1 -> step2 -> step3 -> step4 -> FINAL DESTINATION (slow process) VS step1 -> SOMEWHERE CLOSE TO FINAL DESTINATION (quick process)