This obscure, 80-year-old machine might be the key to unlocking the full potential of AI today
Many years ago, long before Internet Or artificial intelligenceAn American engineer called Vannevar Bush was trying to solve a problem. He could see how difficult it had become for professionals to do research on anything, and saw the potential in a better way.
It was in the 1940s, when anyone looking for articles, books or other scientific recordings had to go to a library and search in an index. This meant drawers on drawers filled with sheets, generally sorted by the author, the title or the subject.
When you had found what you were looking for, creating copies or extracts was a tedious manual task. You should be very organized to keep your own files. And woe to anyone worked on more than one discipline. Given that each book could only be physically in one place, they all had to be deposited only under a main subject. Thus, an article on the art of the caves could not be in art and archeology, and the researchers often lost additional time to try to find the right location.
It had always been a challenge, but an explosion in research publications at that time had made things very worse than before. As Bush wrote in an influential test, As we can thinkin the Atlantic in July 1945:
There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the conclusions and conclusions of thousands of other workers – conclusions that he cannot find the time to grasp, even less to remember, as they appear.
Bush was dean of the MIT engineering school (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and president of the Carnegie Institute. During the Second World War, he had been director of the Scientific Research and Development Office, coordinating the activities of some 6,000 scientists working tirelessly to give their country a technological advantage. He could see that science was radically slowed down by the research process and proposed a solution that he called the “same”.
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The same should be a personal device integrated into an office that required little physical space. It would be on the microfilm for data storage, a new technology at the time. The same would use it to store a large number of documents in a very compressed format that could be projected on translucent screens.
More importantly, the same Bush had to include a form of associative indexing to link two elements together. The user could use a keyboard to click on a code number next to a document to switch to an associated document or display them simultaneously – without needing to scrust an index.
Bush recognized in his test that this type of keyboard clicks was not yet possible technologically. However, he thought it would soon be, pointing to existing systems to manage data such as perforated cards as potential precursors.
He planned that a user would create the connections between the elements because he has developed his personal research library, creating microfilm frame channels in which the same document or extract could be part of several trails at the same time.
New additions could be inserted either by photographing them by microfilm, or by buying a microfilm of an existing document. Indeed, a user would be able to increase his same with large reference texts. “New forms of encyclopedias will appear,” said Bush, “ready to use with a network of associative trails that cross them, ready to be placed in the same.” Fascinatingly, it is not far from Wikipedia today.
Where he led
Bush thought that the same would help researchers think in a more natural and associative way that would be reflected in their files. He would have inspired American inventors Ted Nelson And Douglas Engelbartwhich in the 1960s independently developed hypertext systems, in which documents contained hyperlinks which could directly access other documents. These have become the foundation of the World Wide Web as we know it.
Beyond the practical aspects of having easy access to so much information, Bush thought that added value in the same one was easier for users to manipulate ideas more easily and trigger new ones. His essay made a distinction between repetitive and creative thinking, and provided that there would soon be new “powerful mechanical aid” to help with repetitive variety.
Perhaps he thought of mathematics, but he left the door open to other thought processes. And 80 years later, with AI in our pockets, we automate much more reflection than ever possible with a calculator.
If it looks like a happy end, Bush did not seem too optimistic when he saw his own vision in his 1970 book Pieces of the action. During the 25 years that followed, he had witnessed technological progress in fields like IT that brought the same closer to reality.
However, Bush estimated that technology had largely missed the philosophical intention of its vision – to improve human reasoning and creativity:
In 1945, I dreamed of machines that would think with us. Now I see machines that think for us – or worse, control us.
Bush would die four years later at the age of 84, but these concerns are still feeling surprisingly relevant today. Although it is great that we do not need to look for a book starting from the sheets in drawers, we could feel more uncomfortable about the machines that make most of the reflection for us.
Does this technology improve and display our skills, or does it make us lazy? Without a doubt, everyone is different, but the danger is that whatever the skills we leave on the machines, we ultimately lose and younger generations may not have the opportunity to learn them in the first place.
The lesson of what we can think is that a purely technical solution as the same is not enough. Technology must still be focused on man, supported by a philosophical vision. While we are considering great automation in human thought in the years to come, the challenge is to somehow protect our creativity and our reasoning at the same time.
This published article is republished from The conversation Under a creative communs license. Read it original article.
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