Bush VS Hawthorne

I believe Dr. Vannevar Bush related his theory better to the internet in general, and my blog, rather than Nathaniel Hawthorne. To me it seemed that Bush’s reading made more sense, and was easier to follow than Hawthorne’s. Also it seemed that Bush was more creative, opened minded, and his memex was closely related to the computer. For me Hawthorne’s Fire-Worship was a piece of writing that related things to nature.
Bush and Hawthorne have two very different ways of looking at the situation. I do not believe that in either case it is a threat to anyone’s life. Hawthorne talks about the sunshine, nature, people’s bright face, and about domestic life. In Fire-Worship he basically relates most everything to nature in some way. In section two in Bush’s “As We May Think,” he talks about the camera and how they have been used just like our blog, to keep records of things going on in our life. “Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop” (Bush). Photography is just like the internet, it not going to stop. It is only going to expand more and more into the future. It shows us that it is not a threat to society, but that it has helped the demand of the fast growing population we are in today. People want to have to world at there hands and they love that the internet gives them just that. I’m sure it has hurt use in some ways you mostly hear more of the good news than bad.
“A memex is a 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” (Bush). Before the memex, “when data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature” (Bush). Bush’s dream of the memex is a good understanding of the internet. The memex had many features as well as the Internet does. There is such a growing mountain of research, and it’s getting bigger and bigger by the years. The memex was a device much like our internet today. It’s your own personal library, like we talked about in class. People don’t go to the library as much as they did years ago. Most all people have a computer and can do there research from home. Computers today are more efficient than say a type writer was. You have spell check and all this neat stuff on computers and when people were using type writers, which was not that long ago, I’m sure it was hard to catch all your mistakes and type it over who knows how many times.
My blogs relationship to Bush’s memex is how it links relates text and it can show illustrations. Just like the memex, my information that I put on the blog is stored on my page and is there for later reference or use. You can do things on the blog such as post photographs links or anything that you would like. With Hawthorne’s Fire-Worship it was harder for me to find the relationship between the wood stove and my blog. At the end of the Fire-Worship he clams to fight for you stove and I related that to my blog. On a blog you are free to write whatever is on your mind, and you have a right to fight for your freedom on there. It’s a way to express your feelings and some may say it’s a way of reaching out to others. Therefore I believe that the internet and blogging seem to be a realization of Bush's dream of the memex. It is not a threat to social and domestic life like Hawthorne sees in his new-fangled wood stove.



Bush, Vannever, “As We May Think” The Atlantic Monthly. July 1945. http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier/pub/vbush/vbush-all.shtml. Simon Fraser University, August 1995

1st Computer Experiences

My first experience with any type of computer was from my brother. We got a computer when I was around nine years old. He taught me how to play Wheel of Fortune, Oregon Trail, Pinball, Solitaire, Hearts, and all his boyish games. We always had fun competing with each other on Oregon Trial to see who could get the longest along in the game. Also I used the note pad and paint art. Paint art was my favorite because you could use all kinds of different tools to paint different shape, sizes, and figures. I loved listening to CD’s too. When we didn’t have iTunes to listen to, we just put in a CD.
We used computers all though out school but, I would have to say I had experience with the Internet around the time I was entering fifth grade and that was probably my first real experiences with the Internet. Since we live out in the country the Internet wouldn’t run out our road so we never had it until recently. We had to make do with what we had. When entering middle school I always went to the county library to do all my work. I believe the computer they had at the library was Gateway, but I wouldn’t quote me on that. When I made new friends in middle school I would go over to there house, we would play on the computer for hours and get on chats and talk to everyone we could. It was almost like, let us see how many people we can talk to on here. AOL instant messaging was hot stuff back in the day. Instead of calling people we would talk to them online and we thought that was amazing. For a while we only had dial-up so we knew better than to call one another, we would just get on line and talk. We always wondered how that actually worked; we were so amazed that you could talk to someone like that.
Instead of using USB drive we all had that really big floppy disk before internet was even invented. It wasn’t until maybe ninth grade or even high school years when they came out with “CD ROM”. It’s amazing how they keep making things smaller and smaller. When they came out with the colored smaller floppy disk I thought I had to have some, that they were the coolest. Now that make disk any way you want them, just about.
It was so upsetting and nerve racking when your computer would crash right before you were about to save your work or during any moment, and it still is. Sometimes I remember getting so frustrated that I wanted to throw the computer through the window, it still happens. I’m pretty sure that happens to everyone at some point. I never really got into downloading music, until recently I’ll download a song every now and again to put on my ipod. That about my entire computer experience that I have so far. I hope to expand and grow in my computer knowledge and skills