The Technical Evolution of Vannevar Bush's Memex

I found this article particularly interesting because not only did it describe the Memex, and all that was created as a product of this idea as the other articles we read, but it explained what went into the creation of this Memex:

"What is not so well known is the way the Memex came about as a result of both Bush’s earlier work with analog computing machines, and his understanding of the "mechanism" or technique of associative memory. I would like to show that Memex was the product of a particular engineering culture, and that the machines that preceded Memex — the Differential Analyzer and the Selector in particular — helped engender this culture, and the discourse of analogue computing, in the first place."

This article goes in depth describing the Analyzer that preceded the Memex. This is significant because the article brings up the idea that new technologies create cultures of use around them, new strategies or skills that are created solely for those prototype technologies. The article argues that this was especially true for the Analyzer.

The main point of the articles we read is that the Memex created a revolutionary way of thinking, and had a large social and even political effect. This article is just a preface to this idea, and certainly makes one see the Memex in a new light. 

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/2/1/000015/000015.html