Things as They Are.?

Charting the Memex Trail

I've long argued that many of the comparisons made between the Memex described in Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" and the current incarnation of the Internet are somewhat myopic, with my primary objection being that hypertext protocol does not create trails like those envisioned by Bush himself (trails many have said correlate to human-cognitive structures). Sure, we can look at the History files of our favorite web browser to get a sense of where we've been, but nothing in these links allow us to reconstruct any thought processes associated with our browsing. Until now, that is.

Enter How'd I Get Here? [HIGH], a free Firefox 1.5 extension that allows you to much more literally trace your steps through the web. As well as being just plain cool, I can already see some invaluable ways that this can assist with online research, . It also forces us to deal with one of the unspoken questions of Bush's essay-- is it access or organization that will usher (or has ushered) a new way of thinking?

Posted by marcusrp at December 9, 2005 1:36 PM | TrackBack