99% Invisible on the History of Search
The Podcast 99% Invisible recently looked at the history of search with Adam Rogers, a senior tech correspondent at Insider.
From the 99% PI feature:
Ever since humans started writing stuff down, the struggle has been organizing it all so that its contents wouldn’t be lost in the stacks. Search has always been an attempt to fix that problem.
After sharing a beautiful story about his librarian grandmother, Adam talks about our need to outsource information and memories to digital media and how challenging that can be. If you’ve ever tried to search for something and just can’t find it despite knowing that it’s there somewhere, then you know the frustration, angst, and potential fear that Adam is talking about.
The episode looks at the history of search. It also looks at how we find what we need online, basically Google and the Google+Reddit trick that has gained popularity.
The Memex
The highlight was learning about the inventor, engineer, scientist, and generally busy guy, Vannevar Bush. In the late 1930s, Bush created the Memex, an early conceptual analog computer meant to “link” microfilm through a bookmarking system.
Reading deeper and broader, the imagined Memex and a book called As We May Think (link to collected works), which Bush published in 1945 to explore more of the associated ideas, inspired a lot of those who went on to develop our modern ideas for what computing and the Internet have become.
99% PI is a podcast I’ve been listening to on and off for years. Roman Mars and his team produce a program that defies categorization for me. I listen to it when I want something unexpected and exceptional, and recommend it for anyone looking for something similar.
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