As We May Think

Published in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945, "As We May Think" presents Vannevar Bush's vision for a personal information retrieval device called the memex. Bush, then director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development, argued that the explosion of scientific knowledge required new tools for organizing and accessing information. The memex would allow users to store documents, photographs, and records on microfilm, retrieve them rapidly through associative indexing, and create personalized trails of linked information.

The essay is structured around Bush's observation that human thought works through association rather than linear indexing, and that existing library and filing systems fail to mirror this natural cognitive process. He proposed a mechanical device that would enable users to create custom links between documents and build personal knowledge networks—a concept that directly anticipated hypertext and the World Wide Web by decades.

"As We May Think" became foundational to information science, computer science, and the philosophy of technology. It influenced generations of researchers, including Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson, who built on Bush's ideas to develop interactive computing and hypertext systems. The essay remains widely taught and cited as a prescient articulation of how technology should augment human cognition and information management.