Vannevar Bush

The mind operates by selection, not by construction.

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record.

Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.

The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

For years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind.

The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing.

The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed.

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution.

He [the scientist] notes an item, snaps a switch, and it is permanently stored, to be recalled at the touch of a key.

Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities.

The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch.

There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

Science, by itself, provides no panacea for individual, social, and economic ills.

It has been said that the scientist lives in a world of his own, and that he is irresponsible. He is not.

The responsibility for the creation of new scientific knowledge rests on that small body of men and women who understand the fundamental laws of nature and are skilled in the techniques of scientific research.

We must renew our scientific talent and utilize it in the years to come.