by Gord Hotchkiss

In his famous Atlantic Monthly essay As We May Think, pub­lished in July 1945, Van­nevar Bush fore­cast a mech­a­nized exten­sion to our mem­ory which he called a “memex”:

Con­sider a future device for indi­vid­ual use, which is a sort of mech­a­nized pri­vate file and library. It needs a name, and to coin one at ran­dom, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an indi­vid­ual stores all his books, records, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and which is mech­a­nized so that it may be con­sulted with exceed­ing speed and flex­i­bil­ity. It is an enlarged inti­mate sup­ple­ment to his memory.