As We May Think: New Notes
Notes from James Fallows and others on The Way We Read Now and related topics in the wake of Vannevar Bush’s classic popular science article from The Atlantic, “As We May Think,” which lots of people consider the origin of hypertext. (I think it all starts with Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which explained what Engelbart’s AUGMENT was trying to do and what Bush’s imagined machine could actually accomplish, and that Bush only became important in the Reagan years when Computer Lib seemed too far left. But I’ve been arguing this for years and have, it seems, convinced no one. See also Murray Leinster’s “A Logic Named Joe,” published a few months after Bush’s piece, which foresees such problems of the Web as kids reading about sex and angry people getting technical advice they’d be better off without.
I’ve not yet read Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, incidentally, but I can heartily recommend Meg Rosof’s wonderful How I Live Now. There’s a lot to read.