I Believe…’s post on the parallels of Vannevar Bush’s futuristic descriptions  — of what we now recognize as today’s database, search engines and links, along with Doug Englebart’s “fledgling” computer — point out the correspondences crisply and directly. The deceptively simple arrangement of those correspondences reveals a deep understanding of technological history, and the brief but impassioned narrative make it all meaningful.

Bush’s memex, however, has materialized in more ways even than Englebart’s computer, or today’s PC. We see it in every device that stores, searches and links. So a TIVO or DVR that stores films or television episodes and connects to a repository of movies via pay per view is a kind of memex. The smartphone, which stores downloaded ringtones and phone numbers and links to the Web and syncs with other electronic devices is a kind of memex. The iPod, too, and the Kindle.

AT&T’s U-Verse network of phone, Internet and TV is another manifestation of the computer network Englebart proudly demo’d 31 years ago.

The speed and flexibility of operation of these devices help make them “an enlarged, intimate supplement to memory” that Bush describes, and this makes for the “living information” constantly in use today that J.C.R. Licklider envisioned in 1968.

Now, John Battelle and his posters are blogging about the possibility of a “decision search engine,” one that would somehow know, or intuit, or figure out and act on behalf of the needs of the user. The example he uses is wanting a search engine that would not just provide data to help him buy a classic Camaro but would recommend the best choices on his behalf. One poster to Battelle’s blog claims that this is in development. In fact we already have the “remembered” recordings of our TIVO, or its “recommendations” based on our usage.

Clearly, the “memex” Bush wrote of is most completely embodied in the Englebart computer and modern PCs. And these other devices could not have existed without them first. But the “memex” is in some ways more powerful than the human brain, though still not a replacement for it. Its capacity is theoretically (like the Internet?) limitless.

The workings of the mind are mysterious, yet we have mechanized some of its functions, like storing and retrieving information. More “Memexes” are continuing to evolve. It’s an exciting time to be alive and learning.