What we really need, Dr. Bush said in 1945, is a machine that mimics and thus facilitates human thought. Our thought is not sequential (or linear, like an index) but ASSOCIATIVE (or non-linear).

Such a machine, which he called a MEMEX, would help us follow a “web of trails” through related items.

It was the first working definition of what has become something we all use daily: a personal, multi-tasking, networked computer.