“Consider a future 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.” - Dr. Vannevar Bush
This quote was the introduction to this weeks seminar. It was said by Dr Vannevar Bush, an American engineer and inventor, in 1945. What strikes me most about this quote is how accurately it describes smartphones and the internet. The idea of out phones/ the internet being a supplement to our memories is quite an interesting concept, and a true one. Personally, I use my phone to set reminders, look at pictures to determine what I was doing on a particular date and much more. My memory is intrinsically linked with my device.
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented HTML and the world wide web, made it so the source code was free- thus allowing everyone to make their own websites and have their own place online. Without this decision the internet today would be a much different place.
In this seminar we learnt about how during the early days of the internet, there were many different browsers and yet there was no universal HTML, meaning developers had to create multiple versions of their websites so they would work on every browser. It remained his way until web standards were put into place.
The internet has changed so much in the relatively short time it has been around, and it is still rapidly changing to this day. The internet is changing, but it is also changing us, the users, and how we interact with each-other and the world around us. It is interesting to think of out devices as extensions of ourselves, our consciousness and our memory, just like the memex describes by Dr Vannevar Bush.