Saturday 25 January 2014

Information overload, 1945 stylee

"Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential."

This statement is as true today as when it was written in 1945, before the cliche 'information overload' had been coined. 
A recent article by Maria Popova http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/11/as-we-may-think-1945/ draws on the essay by Vannevar Bush. This includes a description of an ingenious forerunner of the computer hard drive.

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