Claire Baumgartner

T.H Nelson begins his paper, Complex Information Processing: A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate, by stating that the use of a computer for personal reasons is very different than the use of a computer for business reasons. He references Vannevar Bush’s Memex, which we read about last week, to explain that personal use of a computer is much more creative and therefore sometimes more difficult to cater to. Every person has different personal tasks that they will use a computer for, as opposed to the relatively more uniform usage of computers for business purposes.

In his paper, Nelson declares that he will explain three things:

• The original problem of specifying a computer system for personal information retrieval.
• Why the problem is not simple but the solution must be simple.
• The philosophical implications of such an approach.

He goes on to say:

“I knew from my own experiment what can be done for these purposes with card
file, notebook, index tabs, edge-punching, file folders, scissors and paste,
graphic boards, index-strip frames, Xerox machine and the roll-top desk. My intent
was not merely to computerize these tasks but to think out (and eventually
program) the dream file: the file system that would have every feature a novelist
or absent-minded professor could want, holding everything he wanted in just the
complicated way he wanted it held, and handling notes and manuscripts in as subtle
and complex ways as he wanted them handled.”

-T.H. Nelson

According to Nelson, there have only been a few impediments to the process. The three main ones were:

1. High cost
2. Little sense of need
3. Uncertainty about system design

However, he adds that the third one is the only real problem left, and proposes a system called ELF (evolutionary file structure) to remedy that. This file structure is relatively fluid and has the potential to be shaped to fit the needs of the user. The ELF has a very simple structure, with only three elements:

• Entries
• Lists
• Links

This is a hypothetical drawing of ELF’s capacity for filing as used by a historian.

My Thoughts: 

I’ll be honest, not much of this article made sense to me. However, I do understand that Nelson was intent on building on the framework provided two decades earlier by Bush, whose article I did understand (a little). It’s clear that both of these men were eager to find a way to organize and simplify both business and personal lives by introducing modern, digital filling systems. I think it’s a little brilliant that they were thinking so far ahead, considering that computers have become integral parts of our lives in a relatively recent amount of time. It amazes me that there were people sixty or seventy years ago who were already visualizing the machines that we take for granted in this day and age.

It’s very odd to read Vannevar Bush’s thoughts on the future of technology, to say the least. In his article As We May Think, Bush describes a new information system that he believed would come about in the near future, a future that-for us-has already occurred. He writes of a machine that will be able to spit out information more quickly than ever before, a machine that would simplify everyday life in extraordinary ways.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

– Vannevar Bush

It is clear to us, as readers from the 21st century, that he is in effect describing a computer. For most modern day members of society a computer is an everyday household object that is not given much thought until it needs to be fixed or updated. for most of us it is hard to imagine a world where computers only exist in the minds of a few. It is unbelievable that an article written in the 1940’s can still be so accurate in 2012.

Bush does not only describe future technology- in fact, I am not entirely sure that was the point of his article. At the very end he states:

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

-Vannevar Bush

Bush is intent on impressing to his readers that, although he believes technology will be helpful, it can also be harmful. The technology we possess today allows us to do extraordinary things, but it also has the ability to do absolute devastation. We must consider the power we now wield, especially because technology will only continue to advance.