The way Vannevar Bush relayed his ideas in this piece is very astute. The fact that this was produced in 1945 makes me wonder what other technological as well as medical advances could be made if the data is given to the right people. I found his predictions quite interesting as they are very accurate. In a time of war, as this piece is written, I’d imagine it’d be difficult to make predictions like these. Bush has proven that he was an able-minded man and capable of seeing past the destruction and setbacks of the current time and into the future. To me, his predictions seem to be a quite accurate portrayal of what we have today. One I found particularly interesting is his prediction of the compression of the Encyclopoedia Britannica as well as other books. This quote really shows how accurate he was about what we have today; I found it very similar to Google Books,
“The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.” (Bush)
This article has really opened my eyes to what is to come in the near future. Human-beings have everything they need to improve and perfect this world we live in. Why would we want to have unnecessary spending or physical labor when we can compact and compress nearly everything we have in today’s world? The world needs more contemporary thinkers like Vannevar Bush. If he can form these predictions in 1945, imagine what a modern-day thinker could come up with. Bush was definitely a revolutionary thinker of his time and this piece goes to show that. His predictions may have not all been correct, but the fact of the matter that he had even envisioned things like a the storing of books in a tiny machine is incredible. It is phenomenal what science has brought about in today’s world. The future is smaller, faster and better.
“The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein.” (Bush)