Just quickly read through Brewster Kahle's “As We May Think Paper (Memex) seen through eyes of the Current Web” and this part (from the original paper) stands out to me:

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.

Vannevar Bush, in The Atlantic, July 1945 Issue

The whole original article as well as the interpretation might be worth a read if you work in the field but right now, this part stands out to me because I think this could be a more central aspect of browsing.

So far the closest things I have found is:

• Tree Style Tabs – allow me to see a structured tree of where I've been.
• pinboard.in – “social bookmarking for introverts”. With a little creativity it might be used to map trails through the web.
• Worldbrain memex Looks extremely promising, both their idea and their business model, but I haven't had time to really test it out yet.

Filed under #reading #internet #computinghistory

Edit: thanks to Stoicism & Me I have now fixed a funny spelling mistake in the title. And yes, it made me smile as well.

prettywords writes:

I read this book at school and remember hating it, because it was homework. Nothing spoils a work of literature quite like a pedantic search for meaning in every sentence.

Haven't read the book in question, but this is my experience as well. It took 10+ years to start enjoying fiction after finishing school.

Filed under #reading and #education