lain.and.landow >> The Vannevar Bush Connection >> 1-2-3

It is not unusual, considering Bush’s position in computer technology history, that this real person be included in a fictional anime. In Landow’s Hypertext 2.0, Bush is credited with inventing the concept of "hypertext." In 1945, he "called for mechanically linked information-retrieval machines to help scholars and decision makers faced with what was already becoming an explosion of information" (Landow, 7). Bush knew the need for retrieving vast amounts of information in a short amount of time would be essential for functioning in the modern world. Not only must that information be accessed methodically, but it must also be stored. This led to Bush’s idea of the Memex machine, "a more efficient, more human, mode of manipulating fact and imagination" (Landow, 8). Bush envisioned information stored on microfilm that could be searched through on a desktop. Before the dawn of the Internet, Bush had already created an outline of what the Internet would develop into. The irony is that Bush felt that this new method of information retrieval emulated the ways in which the human mind operated, thus creating a more human-based machine. In Lain, it would seem that this concept of humanity situated in the computer world is at risk, as humans are lost in the Wired.
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