How the Internet REALLY Works

In 1945 Vannevar Bush published his article “As We May Think.” In this article Bush describes a device that would be used to store information; including photography, a compressed library, a voice recorder and transmitter, accounting features and would be a source of knowledge. This device could also be used to add or follow trails of links and notes created or recorded by individuals. Bush is describing a memex. Bush defines a memex as “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.”

Today’s memex is the iPad. The iPad holds books, pictures, and videos. It also allows the user to make charts, pages and use the internet to seek out information. We now have the device that Bush had imagined over sixty years ago at our fingertips. Today’s memex works as a memory bank to organize and retrieve data, and our society is connected to everything and everyone, just as Bush had described.

In “As We May Think” Bush describes what he views as the record. Bush wrote, “Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.” Today “the record” can be described similarly to what Bush stated; “the record” is on the internet. The internet holds a lot of ideas, and we are able to add on to that information with hyperlinks, comments or blogs. Today are able to keep a record of information all in one easily accessible location, and our society is connected. Our society is able to share ideas freely, quickly. We can use the internet to expand our knowledge by adding valuable information for future readers in an interactive writing space.

The new interactive writing space is much different than the writing space created by the printing press. Not only are we able to access information more quickly, we also are able to expand or add on to the text. After reading a book, that is all there is to it; there is no room left for you to write more about the subject. Hypertext allows us to be an “equal participant in an unfolding ‘social’ text.”

Hypertext is defined as, “text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access.” As stated by Stuart Moulthrop, “Books are not and never can be open discursive networks. No matter how assiduously we attempt its deconstruction, print retains closure and coherence.” At the end of a book there is nothing there that will automatically take you a new book. Hypertext, on the other hand, allows you to access a new reading immediately. “Electronic writing systems enable an unbinding of the text that allows you to continue into a new reading that touches on the same topic.” This unbinding of text was made possible because of hyperlinks.