Archive for the ‘predictions’ tag
Wikipedia Foretold
I was revisiting Vannevar Bush’s 1945 essay “As We May Think” the other night, a text credited with having presaged the Web. Reading it, I realized that Bush had also foreseen Wikipedia: “Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.”
Best of all, Bush provides an excellent description of the role of tomorrow’s journalist: “There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.”
Find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. That’s a mission statement I can believe in.
