Memex & Facebook: Similar tools. Similar goals. Divergent paths.

Gabriel Schaffzin DMI Design Seminar I 3 Nov 2010

Vannevar Bush and Mark Zuckerberg share a lofty goal: the betterment of mankind. One innovator, having just finished developing the atomic bomb, felt that the emerging technology available at the time could usher in a level of enlightenment, one that would hopefully encourage humans to grow in the wisdom of experience rather than digress and kill. The other, with his penchant for tinkering with the latest software and networking tools, believes that a society with liberal policies on sharing personal information will encourage connections between neighbors and international strangers alike. In conceptualizing and building his respective tool, each of these innovators used similar building blocks Zuckerberg's Facebook having the luxury of nearly 60 years of technological developments on Bush's mythical Memex. As academics, politicians, and social commentators alike all evaluate Facebook's effect on society (and, as such, evaluating the reality of Zuckerberg's vision of "one world"), it becomes clear that these two paths taken to a similar goal converge and stray, but never fully separate. As Bush emerged from his work on the Manhattan Project, he sought out ways to utilize the era's rapidly developing technological advances for more academic, rather than military, objectives. His concern was mostly focused on research techniques, fueled by his belief that man was not equipped with the proper

tools to collect, consult and share one's findings. As he wrote in The Atlantic Monthly, "Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems" (47). This review and analysis began with recording data. Bush fantasized about the day when photographic equipment could be worn and voice could be transcribed automatically, allowing a researcher to continue his work with fewer interruptions. He noted that, "a record, if it is to be useful to science, must be stored, and above all it must be consulted." He went on to describe systems of micro-film miniaturization that would allow large (at least in 1945 terms) amounts of data to be stored in very little space, retrievable and reviewable in very little time (38-41). Bush was mainly concerned with using technology to replicate or at least supplement processes of the human brain. As such, the collective value of the individual technologies was fully illustrated once they came together in his vision of the Memex, a desk-enclosed mechanized system for collection, retrieval, review, and consultation of research. Central to the Memex concept were trails of data: associative, rather than alphabetical or otherwise indexed content. Much like the human thought association process, individual pieces of research were

collected from disparate sources, transferred to and from a storage medium (microfilm), and tagged with unique identifying "addresses." These records of trails, of course, could also be shared or duplicated so that peers and colleagues would have the ability to view and annotate one's research (44-46). While never fully realized as a physical product, many features of Bush's Memex have been implemented in today's dynamic media driven world. Voice recognition software, camera and lens miniaturization, and Tim Berners-Lee's Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) can all be tied back to proposals Bush makes in "As We May Think." Perhaps one of the most encompassing examples of modern day's take on the Memex, however, is the popular social networking site Facebook. A Facebook user's ability to upload notes, photographs and videos mimics Bush's vision of a multi-media recording tool for researchers. The site's ever prevalent "Like" buttons allow users to quickly mark any content from the Internet and place a reference to it on a Facebook profile page. This "Like" button, along with comment threads, also act as consultation tools, allowing one's friends to declare if they share the same opinions on, or approve of a piece of content. Finally, users are encouraged to share content via the Facebook platform, either to the

general public (via the "News Feed") or to a specific "friend" via a Facebook "message" (See Appendix A). The Facebook platform (encompassing Facebook.com, mobile applications, and any technology utilizing its application programming interface) uses all of the data it has access to and creates its own version of Bush's Memex trails. If Berners-Lee's World Wide Web is an implementation of "a sea of interactive shared knowledge" inspired by Bush's Memex (1995 Vannevar Bush Symposium), then Facebook's intelligent recommendation and filtering engine is a Memex trail, created on the fly. For instance, when a user joins Facebook, she is presented with a number of other users and "pages" in which the system believes she may be interested. This associative engine works to make recommendations based on relevant content (See Appendix B). Additionally, every time a user returns to Facebook, she is presented with her "Top News" or "Most Recent" updates from her friends. Instead of presenting every bit of data that has flowed through her network, however, the Facebook engine "intelligently" (albeit secretly) picks and chooses which content to present (Weber). From a mechanics standpoint, both Facebook and the Memex provide the technical ability to collect, consult, and share records of data. But what of higher level objectives? Vannevar

Bush felt that man's "excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand" improving mankind by making recorded data more accessible. His hope was that enhancing the scientific process "may yet allow [mankind] truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience" (47). Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, also believes that increasing accessibility will improve man's experience. However this experience, in his opinion, is not one of reflection. Instead, he claims that he is trying to make the world a more open place" (Vargas). The site itself declares that "We are building Facebook to make the world more open and transparent, which we believe will create greater understanding and connection." Zuckerberg and his team believe they can achieve this by encouraging the use of its technology to promote "Social Value", "Common Welfare", and "One World" among other principles ("Facebook Principles"). That the world is using Facebook's platform in general is not up to much debate; the social networking site and others like it were being accessed on a daily basis by 38% of adult Internet users in May 2010 (Online Activities). The question being discussed by technologists and sociologists alike is whether

"trying to make the world a more open place" is helping or hurting us as individuals and as a society. In 1985 the General Social Survey collected data on Americans and their sense of isolation. The survey included data points on how many "confidants" one has in her life. They re-ran the study in 2004 and found that the number of confidants had, on average, been reduced by one third from three to two. They felt that these changes in the "core discussion networks" was caused by the fact that so much communication had become digital (McPherson 353). On the other hand, a study sponsored by the Pew Internet & American Life Project in November 2009 claimed that the GSS data was not necessarily accurate. Instead, the authors of this study found that, "only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be 'especially significant' in their life," and "many internet technologies are used as much for local contact as they are for distant communication" (Hampton 3). From a societal point of view, the Pew study found that participation in social media leads to "having discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds" (Hampton 3). Though when it comes to true activism in the "real world", Malcom Gladwell recently argued (in a much

debated piece in the New Yorker) that social activism via online networks such as Facebook have not inspired. He points out that "the Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece" (Gladwell. For reaction to Gladwell, see Raymond; McDermid.). There is the distinct possibility that researchers are not ready to make the determination of whether Facebook and the like are improving or hurting society. With the site still younger than 10 years old, there is much more to be observed before Facebook can be declared the Memex's successor. Perhaps Bush would be proud, however, as the Facebook platform itself becomes a tool for academic research. Called a "petri dish for the social sciences" by the New York Times in 2007 (Rosenbloom), Facebook is increasingly the focus of large-scale network survey work. In fact, a 2010 study titled "Real and Perceived Attitude Agreements in Social Networks" used the Facebook API to build a game, giving researchers access to "a readymade 'social graph'" which helped them "reach thousands, or even millions, of respondents at very little cost and in a short period of time" (Goel, et al.). As a meta-tool (one that enables the collection, consultation, and sharing while also being seen as a large social experiment of its own) Facebook is proving valuable to researchers

 which would certainly encourage Vannevar Bush. In fact, Zuckerberg's platform has inspired others to create niche versions such as ResearchGATE, a network using the Facebook model to connect academics and researchers around the world. True, after two years, the population of that site 300,000 ("ResearchGATE") pales in comparison to the number of individuals logging on to post pictures of their new niece or rant about the latest politico. But with the average Facebook user only reaching out to fewer than 6% of his "friends" on a regular basis (The Economist), perhaps scale is not a goal. There are countless issues to be explored when it comes to Facebook's influence on society and humanity. The recent rash of "cyber-bullying" certainly paints the network's emphasis on openness in a bad light (Schwartz). In the past few years, there have been reports that the platform is being cited in a large proportion (20%) of petitions for divorce (Telegraph). When Bush declared that "there will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things," (41), he was describing an introspective process one that helps those millions make sure they have access to their own detailed affairs later on. Facebook, and its ever changing privacy settings, is making sure that another large set of individuals an "extended network" set have ac-

cess to the detailed affairs of the individual user. This fundamental difference is where Facebook and the Memex's shared continuum of mechanics (collect, consult, share) to philosophical goals (make the world a better place) branches: Bush gets to the goal via indexed and shared work, Zuckerberg via indexed and shared "goings on." But Vannevar Bush was never able to realize his vision for Memex as he laid it out in The Atlantic Monthly 65 years ago. There was no opportunity to evaluate whether it would make researchers feel more or less isolated, whether it would encourage social action or social setback. The multitude of technological hurdles that had to be leapt in order to build one never provided him the chance to consider if scale (a Memex in every lab, or even home) was something for which he should strive. He and Zuckerberg both look to the same horizon, however. They both start with the same basic building blocks. And so Bush's mechanical and philosophical goals can be seen echoed in those of the contemporary and perhaps over-populated version of the Memex: Facebook.

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Appendix A Facebook Interface Elements

Uploading/posting content to Facebook.

The "Like" button on Facebook.com and comment threads.

Facebook messages.

Appendix B Facebook Recommendations & News Feed

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