As We May Think

• Original Text @ The Atlantic

"As We May Think" is a 1945 essay by Vannevar Bush, described as visionary and influential, anticipating many aspects of the information society. It was first published in The Atlantic in July 1945 and republished in an abridged version in September 1945—before and after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bush expresses his concern for the direction of scientific efforts toward destruction rather than understanding and explicates a desire for a sort of collective memory machine with his concept of the memex that would make knowledge more accessible, believing that it would help fix these problems. Bush hoped to transform an information explosion into a knowledge explosion through this machine. As We May Think