So I was using the GeoURL database (see previous post) to see what sort of blogs my neighbors are running, and one of these belong to Trevor Smith who in addition to having a cool .name domain has a link to MemexSim: The Memex Simulator project on sourceforge.
The Memex is a device imagined and proposed by Dr. Vannevar Bush in 1945 in a very famous paper (among computer scientists) entilted "As We May Think" published in The Atlantic Monthly. Dr. Bush's call for the use of computer power (as embodied in the Memex) to augment the abilities of scientists and the general population seems quite prescient today, and when I reread the paper a couple of months ago I was struck by how well it fits in with what my company is doing in the realm of chemical informatics. You should give the paper a read, and remember to keep in the back of your mind that he wrote this in 1945!
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