|
|
This has not been
a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The
scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of
a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating
to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching
an end. What are the scientists to do next?
For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists,
there can be little indecision, for their war has hardly required them
to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war
research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain
much the same.
It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who
have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets,
who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments.
They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn
back the enemy. have worked in combined effort with the physicists of
our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement.
They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks
where they will find objectives worthy of their best.
1
Of what lasting benefit
has been man's use of science and of the new instruments which his research
brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his
material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter;
they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage
of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own
biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease
and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions
of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of
an improved mental health.
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.
There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence
that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator
is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers
-- conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember,
as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for
progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly
superficial.
Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of
research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their
purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in
reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time
might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast
of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous
reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how
much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call. Mendel's
concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation
because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping
and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated
all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass
of the inconsequential.
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. 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.
But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities
come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense,
advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not,
thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance
of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes
rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond
is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences
of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousands of times
as fast -- there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a
transformation in scientific records.
Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied
most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could
not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it:
the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production,
exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish
could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it
would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have
been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability
were synonymous.
Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not
produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but
construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh
been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he
understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom
to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car
would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.
Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great
economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably.
Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.
Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note
the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such
contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin
glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic
tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages,
plugged into sockets -- and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise
location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied
a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty
cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great
reliability; and something is bound to come of it.
2
A record if it is
to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored,
and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally
by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on
film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording
procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process
of modification and extension.
Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material
and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds
to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us
project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The
camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger
than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected
or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present
practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated
by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There
is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least
one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination.
There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for
operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when
the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may
well be stereoscopic, and record with two spaced glass eyes, for striking
improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.
The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within
easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken.
On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of
one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object
appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist
of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks
at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes,
without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic
thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result
from its use.
Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady
made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure.
Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps
it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with
diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already
there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia
gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out
into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may
speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic
researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the
camera and to look at the picture immediately.
Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For
fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every
point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical
change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They
have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave
a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as
it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.
This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a
set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it
moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received
over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced
by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant
the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of
the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the
whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.
A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell
in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes
a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired,
of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor
in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in
which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.
It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always
remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today
transmits sixteen reasonably good pictures a second, and it involves only
two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the
record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer,
for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very
rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen
which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically
treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary
in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.
Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the
apparatus to transmit one picture only rather than a succession, and a
rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be
far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be.
More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the
film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only
in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing
the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing
the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow
the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent
them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could
certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.
Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The
basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection
rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination
of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing
some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities
are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor
of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material
is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of
the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of
the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.
Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same
thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even
under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between
the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The
Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox.
A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk.
If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total
record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising
blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books,
the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving
van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to
make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect
of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally
consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.
Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material
for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could
be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies?
To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction
of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm
form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it
is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future,
duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent
apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy?
That introduces the next aspect of the subject.
3
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. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the
author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly
to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or
a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have
his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take
advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language.
At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked
its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal chords entered
into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically
produced vibrations and passed these on to a loud-speaker. In the Bell
Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder.
The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak
to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the
postulated system.
The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting
device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys
languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a
disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically
simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said.
Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent
form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements,
let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types
when talked to.
Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization,
it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have
not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique
for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the
issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon
would become still less intelligible to the layman.
One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands
are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs
and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together.
If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder.
As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments
into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both
be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.
Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations,
the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the
final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record.
For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought
and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the
latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.
Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was
long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes
controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the
figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable.
Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and
then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells
for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations,
and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids
to pull the keys down.
All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we
have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply
by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading
mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact if the dots are holes,
we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the
purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of
complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.
Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves
also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method
for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation,
and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes
are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually
controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled
as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines
in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines,
and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms
are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both
are still in embryo.
Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it
desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists
promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical
impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines
of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100
times present speeds, or more.
Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines,
so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations.
They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their
own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted,
they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high
speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available
for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will
have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from
a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will
deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always
be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of
people doing complicated things.
4
The repetitive processes
of thought are not confined however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics.
In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with
established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned
only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed and
the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter
to be relegated to the machine. Not so much has been done along these
lines,beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because
of the economics of the situation. The needs of business and the extensive
market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical
machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.
With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there
was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating
data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines
for solving differential equations -- and functional and integral equations,
for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic
synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing
certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic,
we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One
might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of
the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel
wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero
many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool
-- so useful that it still exists.
It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine.
It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But
even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go.
Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher
mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something
more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established
rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures;
often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations
of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who
is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially
he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes
he employs.
All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently
as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism
under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in
bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of
the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this
reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for
the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most
fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.
5
The scientist, however,
is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about
him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this
appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much
in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood.
Whenever logical processes of thought are employed -- that is, whenever
thought for a time runs along an accepted groove -- there is an opportunity
for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands
of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible
to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with
formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of
premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass
out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and
with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.
Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well
to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis
have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for
equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed
by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress
is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express
their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and
has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.
A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction
of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond
the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in
everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with
the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the
machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even of the streamlined
model.
So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record.
Thus far we seem to be worse off than before -- for we can enormously
extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult
it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for
the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by
which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime
action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may
be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which
they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural
form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search,
his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.
Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker.
Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been
done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops
a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets
a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a
short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish.
Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching
a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices
of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing
data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm
they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print
out duplicates of those selected.
This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in
turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which
have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection
best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number
and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations.
It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given
by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second
digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the
selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although
the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted.
If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube
switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be
made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the
money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general
idea is applicable elsewhere.
Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge
sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs
to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the
general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs
to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much
of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the
customer's identification card, his own card, and the card taken from
the article sold -- all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts
are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary
computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman
to pass to the customer.
But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the
store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select
the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection
can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and
return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must
read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item
to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have
described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new
total entered by an electron beam.
The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They
must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position
so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots
can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made
to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which
no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be
occupied in bringing the correct card into use -- a second should suffice
for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by
magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed
optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on
a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease
of erasure. By using photography, however one can arrange to project the
record in enlarged form and at a distance by using the process common
in television equipment.
One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection
for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an
operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes
thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libaries,
but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting
combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone,
in the manner described in connection with the speech controlled typewriter,
and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.
6
The real heart of
the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption
of mechanisms by libaries, or a lack of development of devices for their
use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the
artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed
in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information
is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It
can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have
rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having
found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter
on a new path.
The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With
one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested
by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web
of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics,
of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade,
items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of
action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring
beyond all else in nature.
Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but
he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even
improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however,
to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association,
rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal
the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail,
but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the
permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.
Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized
private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random,
"memex" will do. A memex is 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.
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.
In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care
of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex
is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted
5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill
the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.
Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion.
Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus
obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same
path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex
is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs,
memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of
a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section
of the memex film, dry photography being employed.
There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual
scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps
its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears
before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used
codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when
he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has
supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he
runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at
a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects
it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time;
still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him
the same control backwards.
A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index.
Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with
far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several
projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls
up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of
one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so
that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the
telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the
physical page before him.
7
All this is conventional,
except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry.
It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic
idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to
select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature
of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important
thing.
When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his
code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items
to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom
of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set
to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and
the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code
word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots
for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions
designate the index number of the other item.
Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other
can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding
code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together
to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting
a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly
as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated
sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for
any item can be joined into numerous trails.
The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties
of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish
bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes
of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles
in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting
but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds
another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building
a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either
linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular
item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available
materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side
trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical
constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he
builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available
to him.
And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend
turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of
vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans
still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A
touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of
the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items,
going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to
the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole
trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex,
there to be linked into the more general trail.
8
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
patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar
trails to every point of his client's interest. 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 chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has
all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails
following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical
and chemical behavior.
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. The inheritance from the master becomes,
not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the
entire scaffolding by which they were erected.
Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and
consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities
of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods
and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done
here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly,
but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate
technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube.
In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking
to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility,
not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension
of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only
a doubly involved guess.
All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed
through one of the senses -- the tactile when we touch keys, the oral
when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that
some day the path may be established more directly?
We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted
to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic
nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur
in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells
which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know
further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments,
we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical
induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted,
just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.
The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers
the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that
the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents
be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed
to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then
proceed to the hand?
By bone conduction we already introduce sounds: into the nerve channels
of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may
learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming
electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly
transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on
the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear
some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself.
True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross
misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds
on where such a thing may lead?
In the outside world, all forms of intelligence whether of sound or sight,
have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit
in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly
the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical
movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another?
It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without
losing touch with reality and immediateness.
Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his
shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems.
He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his
records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion
and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited
memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege
of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately
at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove
important.
The applications of science have built man a welI-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.
|
