The World Has Arrived At An Age

Consider A Future Device For Individual Use, Which Is A Sort Of Mechanized Private File And Library. It Needs A Name, And, To Coin One At Random, "memex" Will Do. 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.

The Difficulty Seems To Be, Not So Much That We Publish Unduly In View Of The Extent And Variety Of Present Day Interests, But Rather That Publication Has Been Extended Far Beyond Our Present Ability To Make Real Use Of The Record.

Wholly New Forms Of Encyclopedias Will Appear, Ready Made With A Mesh Of Associative Trails Running Through Them, Ready To Be Dropped Into The Memex And There Amplified.

Science Has A Simple Faith, Which Transcends Utility... It Is The Faith That It Is The Privilege Of Man To Learn To Understand, And That This Is His Mission.

The Common Idea That Scientists Reject A Theory As Soon As It Leads To A Contradiction Is Just Not So. When They Get Something That Works At All They Plunge Ahead With It And Ignore Its Weak Spots... Scientists Are Just As Bad As The Rest Of The Public In Following Fads And Being Influenced By Mass Enthusiasm.