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Memex has been an inspiration for the past 50 years. In 1945,
Vannevar Bush wrote an article called “As
We May Think,” in which he posited Memex: “a device in which an
individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which
is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and
flexibility.” Memex was to have virtually unlimited memory. It would
support annotations and what we would now call hyperlinks. Hypertext
researchers from the 1960s onwards flocked to its banner. In
What Next? A Dozen Information-Technology Research Goals, Jim Gray proposed a dozen research goals, one of which
was “Personal Memex: Record everything a person sees and hears, and
quickly retrieve any item on request.”
As digital storage capacity has blossomed in recent years, so has
research aimed at personal storage. Examples include
Haystack,
LifeStreams, and the
Remembrance Agent. At Microsoft Research,
Stuff I’ve Seen,
Sapphire, and
MyLifeBits have tackled the problem. Building on Vannevar Bush’s
Memex vision, the Microsoft Research Digital Memories (Memex) initiative
focuses on research around storing all of an individual’s lifetime
information, novel capture methods (for example, Bush’s head-worn stereo
camera), linking of information, and use of meta-data. Other research
topics may include capture and sensor devices (for example, scanning,
wearable, embedded, robotic assistance); data storage, management,
organization, and retrieval methods; user interface solutions, such as
visualization, authoring, story-telling, and annotation; and security,
privacy, and legal issues.
This initiative is managed by John Nordlinger. |
