memex

English

Etymology

Blend of memory +‎ index, coined by Vannevar Bush in his article As We May Think (1945) in The Atlantic Monthly.

Noun

memex (plural memexes)

1. A proposed computer system, implemented with electromechanical controls and microfilm equipment, that would permit a researcher to follow and annotate topics of interest, analogous to later hypertext technologies.
   • 2007 February 11, Matt Weiland, “Web of Spies”, in New York Times‎^[1]:

     Surely when Vannevar Bush imagined his hyperlinked memex or Jorge Luis Borges his Library of Babel or Tim Berners-Lee his World Wide Web, what excited them wasn’t the possibility of reading the boldfaced words “nympho starlets” in a printed novel, racing to the nearest computer to type a U.R.L. into a browser and watching a YouTube clip of James Blunt singing “You’re Beautiful” over scenes of Sharon Tate in “The Fearless Vampire Killers.”

Translations

proposed computer system