Vannevar Bush的MEMEX：预见信息时代的奠基之石

文章背景介绍

《As We May Think》是由Vannevar Bush于1945年发表的文章，正值第二次世界大战即将结束之际。那时，各国正在逐渐从战争的巨大影响中恢复过来，而战争也使美国人普遍意识到基础科学研究的巨大实用价值。在这种背景下，1944年11月，罗斯福总统致信Bush，要求他提出关于如何将战时经验和教训运用到和平时期的建议。

作为回应，Vannevar Bush全面研究了如何将军事研究成果转化为民用、如何利用科学来对抗疾病、如何组织和支持公共和私人机构的研究活动、如何选拔和培养年轻的科学人才等具体问题，并于1945年7月5日提交了研究报告。该报告充分强调和肯定了基础科学研究在科学进步中的作用，并明确指出科学是政府应当关注的事务。布什指出：“科学已经站在舞台的边缘上，它应该被推到舞台的中心，因为科学是我们未来许多希望的源泉。”同时，由于当时各学科研究取得了丰硕成果，大规模的出版产生了大量信息，这种所谓的“信息爆炸”也成为科学家们面临的一个重大问题。

基于这些背景，作为科学研究与发展办公室(OSRD)的主任，Vannevar Bush于1945年7月撰写了《As We May Think》一文，首次发表在《The Atlantic》杂志上，并于1945年9月发表了删节版¹。这篇文章试图回答一个摆在各国科学家面前亟待解决的问题：“战后科学应该朝着什么方向发展，以及如何处理和利用战后科学发展所带来的信息数量激增”。

布什对科学努力朝着毁灭而非理解的方向表示了担忧，并表达了对一种集体记忆机器的渴望，他称之为“MEMEX”。这篇文章发表于当时信息技术迅速发展的时期，为后来的信息科学和计算机领域奠定了基础。

文章内容

Bush认为，信息爆炸的时代需要一种新的工具来帮助人们处理和组织海量的信息，以便更高效地利用这些信息。于是他提出了MEMEX概念。

MEMEX是一种可以存储和检索各种文档、文章、图片和音频等信息的机械设备。它包括一套微缩相机和屏幕，可以将书籍、文件和其他信息源转换为微缩图片，并将其存储在可交互的文件系统中。MEMEX还具备索引和链接功能，使用户能够快速查找和导航信息。

分章节内容简介：

• 第 1 节：科学知识有了长足的发展，但我们管理知识的方式几个世纪以来一直保持不变。我们已经无法在信息洪流中跟上并找到相关的信息。莱布尼茨的计算机和查尔斯巴贝奇的计算机都失败了，因为他们那个时代的技术无法廉价而精确地生产它们，但现在我们拥有足够的技术。

• 第 2 节：科学不仅应该是知识的巨大宝库，还应该经常查阅和增强。有两种技术可以提供帮助：缩微胶片上的模拟信息和由电信号编码的数字信息。

• 第 3 节：不仅传输和复制数字材料便宜，将印刷材料转换成数字形式也便宜。语言可以与数字信号相互转换

• 第4节：现有的计算机大多是制表机、算术机。有些更先进，比如潮汐预测机，以及求解微分和积分方程的机器。未来的科学家会将更高级的常规数学任务委托给机器进行处理，就像将汽车的操作委托给它的引擎一样。通过这种方式，科学家们可以进行具有创造性的、现实性的工作。

• 第 5 节：科学家和其他知识工作者操纵数据并进行逻辑推理。任何常规逻辑过程和重复性的工作都可以编程到机器中。

• 第 6 节：传统的信息系统，例如图书馆分类系统，是树状结构的，顶部是最大的类，每个类都有一级一级的子类。每个项目都唯一地属于信息树上的一个叶子。这种组织方式非常麻烦，而且人的思维形式不是按照树状结构运作的，而是通过联想运作的。

• 第7节：MEMEX的本质是关联索引：用户可以将任何条目与其他条目相关联起来。

• 第 8 节：Bush 设想了一个 MEMEX机器无处不在的未来。

文章影响

首先，它预见了信息时代的到来。Bush认识到信息量的爆炸性增长和信息处理的重要性，提出了一种先进的信息管理工具。这为后来的计算机和互联网技术的发展提供了启示，成为信息科学和信息技术领域的重要奠基之石。

其次，MEMEX的概念启发了超文本和万维网的发展。MEMEX中的链接概念直接影响了后来蒂姆·伯纳斯-李的超文本系统和万维网的设计。超文本系统通过链接不同文档和资源，使用户能够跳转和导航到相关内容。这种链接思想成为了现代互联网的核心，改变了人们获取和共享信息的方式。

此外，MEMEX的概念还预见了个性化信息过滤和推荐系统的发展。Bush提出了根据用户的兴趣和需求，自动过滤和推荐相关信息的想法。这种个性化的信息服务模式在今天的搜索引擎、社交媒体和推荐系统中得到了广泛应用。

中英对照版

序言

This has not been a scientist’s war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?

这并不是科学家的战争；这是人人有份儿的战争。科学家们为人类共同的事业而暂时放下先前的职业竞争，来充分地共享和学习知识。曾几何时，人们为能在高效的伙伴关系中工作而感到振奋。但现在，对大多数人来说，它要结束了。科学家们下一步该做些什么呢？

For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war work has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same.

对生物学家、特别是对医学学专家而言，没有什么左右为难的，他们的战时工作并不需要离开原来的道路。现在，他们中的许多人已经和平时期的实验室里继续自己的工作了。他们的目标基本上保待不变。

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy. They have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

对于物理学家们却被拖离了自己的轨道，他们远离了学术目的而去研究奇怪的爆炸装置，不得不为非己所愿的分配下来的任务而思考新思路，离开自己的成就主干，与盟友的物理学家们一起工作，并在反击敌人方面作出了努力。他们发自内心地感受到成就的巨大鼓舞。他们是一个伟大团队的一份子。现在，当和平来临时，有人要问，他们该从哪里寻找最有价值的目标呢？

1

Of what lasting benefit has been man’s use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

人们通过利用科学和研究产生的工具得到了哪些持续性的好处呢？人们增强了对物质环境的控制能力，改善了衣食住等各方面的条件，增强了自身的安全性并将自己部分地从纯粹存在的束缚中解脱出来；人们对自身生理过程的认识不断加深，生病少了而寿命则延长了。人们促进了生理与心理的相互作用，同时也促进了精神上的健康。

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

科学使得个人之间的交流非常快捷，并且提供了记录思想的手段，使人们能操作并利用这些思想，因此知识就不再限于个人的一生，而属于人类的整个生命了。

There is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and conclusions of thousands of other workers—conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp, much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.

我们面前有一座正在增高的科学之山，但是随着专业越来越细化，更多的证据表明我们正在深陷泥潭。对他人的发现与结论而言，研究人员们没有时间去了解，更不用说记住了，他们就在这种情况下蹒跚前进。情况就是如此。然而，专业化对于进步变得日益必要，而学科间的桥梁尝试却显得浅薄。

Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month’s efforts could be produced on call. Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

准确地说，我们传播和概括研究结论的方法陈旧了，无法完全满足我们现今的需要。如果用于写作学术论文和阅读的时间可以计算出来的话，他们与时间的总量之间的比率绝对可以让人跳起来。那些不遗余力试图获取当前最新思想成果的人，即使他们针对一些范围狭窄的领域进行密切关注、持续阅读，仍难以说清他们在数月以前努力阅读的所得。孟德尔遗传定律²淹没在当时那个时代，是因为在当时几乎没有人能够掌握这一理论并加以推广；而这样的灾难无疑在我们身边重复着，因为真正具有重要意义的成就在大量无效信息中被淹没。

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of squareigged ships.

我们所面临的困境并不在于根据当下广泛而多样的兴趣发表过多的著作，而是出版物已经远远超出了我们目前能够真正能够使用它们的能力。人类的经验正以惊人的速度增长，而我们用于在这片纷繁复杂的迷宫中寻找重要信息的方法，仍然停留在过去造方形帆船时代使用的方式一样。

But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense, advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not, thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousands of times as fast—there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a transformation in scientific records.

但是情况有所改观——新型而高效的工具已经开始使用了。光电管³使人们能够从物理角度观察事物；能够记录所见甚至未见事物的先进摄影技术，热电子管⁴可以用极小的能量来控制很大的力，比蚊子震动翅膀耗费的能量还小，阴极射线管⁵将瞬息万变的事件可视化，以至于相比而言，1微秒都显得漫长；能够比任何人类操作员更可靠地、快上千倍地执行复杂动作序列的继电器组合——有许多机械辅助工具可以实现对科学记录的转变。

Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

两个世纪前，莱布尼茨发明了一台计算器，其中包含了最近键盘设备的大部分关键特性，但在当时，它没被投入使用。这是基于经济原因：在大规模生产之前，构建这台计算机所需的劳动力超过了使用它所能节省的劳动力，因为它所能完成的一切都可以通过足够多的纸和铅笔来完成。此外，它很容易发生故障，无法可靠地运行；因为那个时代以及很长一段时间以后，复杂性和不可靠性是同义词。

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

即使巴贝奇⁶在他所处的时代得到了极为慷慨的支持，但仍然没能制造出伟大的算术机。他的想法十分完美，但制造和维护成本同样也很高。就像我们给一个法老一份详细而明确的汽车设计图，他也完全理解了它，并且向全国征集所有资源来为这一辆汽车制造成千上万个零件，这辆汽车还是可能在第一次开往Giza⁷时就半路抛锚。

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile. Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages, plugged into sockets—and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

人们现在已经可以高效率地制造出可互换的零件。不管有多复杂，它们总是能工作得很好，看一下打印机或电影摄影机，或汽车就可以明白这一点。一旦完全理解，电触点就不会再粘连。请注意那些拥有数十万个接触点的自动电话交换机，它们依然可靠运行。一个金属网被密封在一层薄薄的玻璃容器中，给一根电线通电，就会得到明亮的光芒，简单地说，这就是无线电装置上的热电子管。人们已经制造了上亿只这种管子，把它拧入管座，插上插头——它亮了！它里面细丝的位置及其精确，如果让过去行会中最出色的工匠来调整，起码也得干上几个月，而现在它只值三十美分。这个世界已经进入了一个高可靠性、廉价的复杂设备时代，我们一定会从中获得一些新的成果。

2

A record if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.

如果一份记录对科学有所用处，它必然会不断扩展和存储，而最重要的是必须能够被检索到。现在按照惯例，我们通常是将记录以书面和摄影的方式存储下来，其次可通过印刷方式；我们也使用胶片、蜡质盘⁸和磁性线⁹等设备来存储记录，即使没有新的记录工具出现，这些现有的工具显然也在不断地改善和发展之中。

Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposures, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with two spaced glass eyes, for striking improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.

毫无疑问，摄影技术将不断推陈出新。更快速的感光材料和镜头，更自动化的相机，颗粒更精细的胶片，使得微型相机的构思有望迅速实现。让我们将这一趋势引向未来，探索其逻辑上的结果（尽管不一定必然）。未来的摄影爱好者们将佩戴一种略大于核桃大小的装置于前额。该装置能够拍摄仅占三平方毫米的照片，而后可通过制作或放大进行后续处理，与我们目前的技术相比，其仅具有十分之一的曝光系数。镜头是固定焦距，可调至任何距离以适应肉眼的观测，仅仅因为它是短焦距成像。在这个设备中有一个内置的光电元件，就像我们现在至少在一台照相机中装置的那样，它可以自动调整曝光时间以适应大范围的照明。该装置内配备了可进行100次曝光的胶卷，而将胶片夹入装置时，快门操作和更换胶卷的弹簧仅弯曲一次。此外，它能够拍摄全彩色影像。由于使用分离镜头拍摄，其画面具有出色的立体效果，因为立体摄影技术的飞速进步即将到来。

The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man’s sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.

操作快门的方法简单易学。只需迅速按下快门，照片即刻完成。在普通镜片上接近边缘的地方划上一个细线的方框，它外面就是拍摄范围之外，而出现在方框中的图像就是可以拍下来的。未来科学家在实验室或工作现场走来走去，一旦看到值得记录的事物时，按下快门就能将其拍摄下来，连咔嚓声都没有。这些是不是很神奇？而这个想法最神奇的地方是需要多少图片就可以拍多少。

Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

会出现干式摄影技术吗？现在已经有两种形式：湿法照相和电化学照相。当布雷迪（Brady）拍摄美国南北战争（Civil War）照片时，曝光时必须使底片保持湿润，而现在，底片只需在显影过程中需要湿润。也许在未来，底片根本不需要湿润。早就有使用重氮染料浸渍的胶片，可以在曝光后立即形成图片，无需经过显影定影程序。将胶片置于氨气中就可以去掉未曝光的材料，然后可以将照片拿到光线下进行检查了。这个过程目前还比较慢，但会有人加速这一过程的速度，并且现在困扰研究人员的颗粒问题也会一并得到解决。往往能够拍摄后立即查看图片将是有利的。如果在按动相机后即刻便能看到图像，对我们来说将是极为便利的。

Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.

目前使用的另外一种工艺同样也很慢，甚至还多少有点笨拙。半世纪以来人们一直在使用浸碘纸，当电触点接触纸张时会变黑，这是由于纸中的碘化物发生电化学反应的结果。人们利用这种纸张进行记录：因为指针在纸张上移动时会留下一条轨迹。如果随着指针移动而改变电势，线条的明暗程度就会根据电势的大小而变化。

This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.

现在这种方法已被应用于传真传输中。指针依次在纸上绘制一组紧密排列的线条。在指针移动时，它上面的电势会根据电线上传来的信号而有所变化，而这个信号是由远端扫描图片的光电管产生的。每时每刻，纸上画出线的深浅都同光电管所扫描图片上的那一点一致。因此，当整幅图片都扫描完成时，接收端也就有了一个副本。

A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.

用这种方法，图像可以一行一行的由光电管进行扫描，就像照相一样。这一整套设备，也就是一台照相机，如果辅以附加特性，还可以在远处照相。这种机器很慢，并且图像质量很差，但它仍是一种干式照相的方法，并且一但照下，图像也就出来了。

It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today transmits sixteen reasonably good pictures a second, and it involves only two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer, for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.

如果谁敢预言说这种工艺永远都是这样笨拙缓慢并且质量很差的话，那他可真算是勇敢了。今天的电视设备在一秒钟的时间内可以传输16幅相当不错的图像，而它实际上与上面提到的工艺。已经有两点根本区别，一个是电视用移动的电子数进行绘图，而不是用移动的探针，因为电子束扫描图片可以十分快捷。另一个点就是使用了屏幕，电子束照上去时会发光，而不是用金化学处理的纸或是胶片。因此用不着更换。由于电视是用于处理活动图像而非静止图像的，所以这个速度是必要的。

Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the apparatus to transmit one picture only rather than a succession, and a rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be. More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.

用经化学处理的胶片代替荧光屏。这种设备就能传送衣服图片，而不是一系列图片。这样，一台快速的干式照相机就要出现了。经过处理的胶片将在比今天远的多的地方工作，这应该能够做到。更困难的是，这个方案可能需要胶胶片放在一个真空腔中，因为电子束只有在这种比较纯净的环境中才能正常工作。这个问题可以用以下方法加以解决，找一块可以让电子束通过而又不会扩散到四周去的隔板。然后让电子束照在它的一个边上，在另一个边压制胶片。隔板的原型是可以制作出来的，并且也可以进行试用化开发。

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving.

正如干式照相一样，微缩照相也有很长的路要走。其基本的设想是将记录的尺寸缩小，并通过投影进行观察，这种可能性完全不能忽视。结合使用光学投影和缩微照相两种技术，人们已经制作了许多用于学习目的的缩微照片，其发展潜力。还很大，今天二十倍线性缩微的平片已经在使用，并且在投影放大之后，其清晰度也完全不会损失。这项技术限制在于胶片颗粒的大小光学系统的质量以及光源的效能，所有这些都正在飞速发展。

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.

假设将来能使用一百倍的缩微比例，而胶片的厚度就和纸张一样，甚至更薄。在这样的条件下，普通资料的体积和缩微胶片相比将会大上一万倍。大不列颠百科全书可以装到一个火柴盒中，一个拥有上百万册图书的图。不管可以压缩到桌面上来。如果把从人们发明移动介质的时候起，所有的记录都压缩起来，包括杂志报纸书籍文书广告海报信件等，共计约十亿册书也可以装到一辆货车上去，只是压缩当然是不够的。人们不只要存储，还必须能进行检索。这方面的发展比较迟缓，即使在最现代化的图书馆中，也得用普通方法进行检索，新的方法很少有人用过。

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.

然而说到成本压缩就显得非常重要了。缩微的大不列颠百科全书价值一个硬币，并且用几分钱就可以把它寄往任何地方，那么用它是做出一百万份拷贝，该值多少钱呢？另一张大版面的报纸。这些费用不到一分钱，而整个缩微不列颠百科也只是一张8.5乘以11英寸的纸大小，一旦得到它，再利用将来的照相复制方法就能大量复制，可以一分钱出手。准备最初的材料要多少钱？这就是下一节要讲的问题。

3

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language.

进行记录时，我们要用铅笔或打字机，然后写摘要并进行修改。最后是复杂的排版印刷和发行。来看一下这个过程的第一步，将来的作家是否可以既不写又不打字，而是直接对着机器讲述呢？他可以间接地这样做，它可以对速记员或是唱片灌制机¹⁰讲述。但如果他想将自己的讲述的东西直接变成打印记录，所有必要的元素都是已存在。他只需要利用现有的机制并转换自己的语言即可实现这一点。

At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal chords entered into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loud-speaker. In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loudspeaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system.

在最近的世界博览会上展示了一台名为“Voder”的机器。一个女孩轻触它的键，它就能发出可以辨认的声音。在整个过程中没有人类的声带参与；这些键仅仅是将一些由电器产生的振动组合起来，并将其传递给扬声器。而在贝尔实验室，存在着与之相反的一种机器，名为“Vocoder”。扬声器被麦克风取代，麦克风捕捉声音。对它说话，相应的键就会移动。这可能是所设想系统的一个元件。

The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to.

还有一个元件就是速记机¹¹，就是那些在某些公开会议上可以见到的令人厌烦的设别。一个姑娘懒散地按着它的键，同时不安地注意着屋里的发言人，机器上会伸出一条纸带，上面记录有发言人刚说过的话的简化语言，之后，这条纸带会被重新打印成普通语言，因为在其初级形式中，只有经过培训的人才能理解。将这两个元素结合起来，让"Vocoder"操作速记器，结果就是一个在说话时会打印文字的机器。

Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman.

我们目前的语言并不是专门适用于这种机器的，这是事实。通用语言的发明者们没有注意到发明一种更适用于传送和记录的语言的重要性。这倒很奇怪，奇怪，但机器将强迫这种过程的实现，特别是在科学领域内，因为科学术语对门外汉来说还是很难懂。

One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.

人们可以设想一下未来实验室里的研究人员，他们的手是自由的，人也可以自由走动。当他到处走动并进行观察时，可以拍下照片并且加以评论，时间被自动记录下来将前后两条记录衔接起来。如果他到外边去，则还可以将无线电和记录器连接起来。晚上，当他重新思考自己的评论时，还可以再次将它们记录下来。他的打印记录和照片同样是缩微的，因此他可以将其投影出来以便阅读。

Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.

然而，在收集数据与观察过程之间还要做很多事情，对现有记录中相同资料进行提取，将新资料最终插入共同记录集合中。对于审慎思考来说，不存在机械替代品。但是创造性思维和基本的重复性思维是非常不同的。对于后者，存在着强大的机械辅助工具

Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.

添加一栏数字就是一个反复思考的过程，很长时间以前它就交由机器进行处理了。机器实际上是由键盘控制的，以读取数字键入相应的按键的方式输入一种思想，甚至这一步也可以省略。机器通过光电管读出打印的数字，然后按下相应的键。其原理是光电管扫描打印字符电流，对一系列电流变化进行排序，后续电流将结果解释为线圈的动作，并将键按下。

All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact if the dots are holes, we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.

由于我们记录符号的方法过于复杂笨拙，所以要采用这些复杂的手段。如果我们仅仅借助卡片上一组小圆点的排列在位置上记录他们，自动读取器将变得相当地简单。实际上，如果将点变成孔就成了很早以前由Hollorith¹²发明的打孔卡片制表机。当时这种机器只用于人口普查，而现在几乎所有的商业活动都在使用了某些复杂任务，没有它的参与，简直就不能运转。

Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still in embryo.

加法只是其中一种运算。进行算术运算还涉及减法、乘法和除法，并且需要一种用于临时存储结果、从存储中取出进行进一步操作以及通过打印记录最终结果的方法。目前有两种用于这些目的的机器：键盘操作的和手工控制插入数据的。但通常在操作顺序方面是自动控制的；先是打孔卡片机，然后又将工作移交给一系列机器，卡片就会从一台机器转移到另一台机器。这两种形式都非常有用，但就复杂计算而言，二者仍处于萌芽阶段。

Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.

物理学家们在认识到宇宙射线计数的重要性后，很快出现了快速的电子计数器。为了自己的目的，物理学家们迅速构建了能够以每秒100,000次的热离子管设备来记录电脉冲。未来的先进算术机器将采用电子方式，它们会比今天的机器快100倍，甚至更快。

Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple key board punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

此外，它们将比现有的商用机器更加灵活多样，可以轻松适应各种操作。它们将由卡片或胶片进行控制，能够自主选择数据并根据插入的指令进行操作，以极高的速度执行复杂的算术计算，并以便于分发或进一步处理的形式记录结果。这样的机器将具有巨大的计算能力。其中一台机器可以处理一屋子打孔员的工作成果，并每隔几分钟就能输出计算结果。在上百万人进行复杂工作的大企业中，会有它的用武之地。

4

The repetitive processes of thought are not confined however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machine. Not so much has been done along these lines,beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.

然而，重复性的思维过程并不仅限于算术和统计事务。实际上，每当我们根据已有的逻辑程序来组织和记录事实的过程中，思维中的创造性方面仅涉及数据的选择和所采用的过程，随后的操作具有重复性质，因此非常适合交由机器完成。在算术范畴之外，这方面的工作还没有得到充分开展，主要是由于经济条件的限制。商业和广阔的市场需求明显等待着大规模生产的算术机的问世，这一切在生产方法足够先进的时候就得以实现。

With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations—and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.

在高级分析的机器方面并不存在这样的情况，因为过去和现在这种机器的市场都不大，使用高级方法进行数据操作的用户总是少数。用于解决微分方程、函数方程和积分方程等问题的机器是存在的，还有许多特殊的机器，比如用于预测趋势的谐波合成器会首先出现在科学家等少数群体手中。

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool—so useful that it still exists.

如果科学分析仅限于算术和逻辑过程，那么我们对世界的理解就会很有限。但我们还有使用概率方法来赢得扑克牌的需求。算盘，就是把珠子穿在并排线上的工具，它使阿拉伯人比世界上其他地方都要早上几个世纪发明了数字以及零的概念，它这是一种有用的工具，以至于今天也仍然有用

It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.

算盘到键盘计算器之间有一个巨大的飞跃。而未来的算数机也有同样的步骤。但即使是这种新的机器也不能帮助科学家达到他们需要去的地方。如果使用者希望将大脑从繁琐的高等数学操作中解放出来，就必须找到一种减轻负担的方法。数学家并不是玩弄数字的，通常他也不会，他也不适用多种算法来做方程变化的。数学家主要是熟练运用符号逻辑的人，尤其擅长直觉判断，在选择所使用的操作过程时具有敏锐的判断力。

All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there still come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.

所有其他的工作都应该交给机器去做，就像把汽车的运转交给引擎盖下复杂的运转机制一样。只有这样，数学才能在将原子学的日益增长的知识实际有效地应用于化学、冶金和生物学等问题当中，并提供有效解决方法。出于这个原因，还会有更多的机器用于处理科学家的高级数学问题。其中一些机器将足够奇特，以迎合顶级鉴赏家对现代文明工艺品的口味。

5

The scientist, however, is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood. Whenever logical processes of thought are employed—that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove—there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students’ souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

然而，这并不仅限于科学家。其他人也可以通过运用逻辑思维来处理数据和观察世界，尽管科学家有时会让人误以为他们是唯一这样做的人，就像英国劳工领袖被封为骑士一样。每当运用逻辑思维的过程时，也就是说，一旦思维沿着一条被认可的道路前行时，机器就有机会发挥作用。严格的逻辑曾经是教师手中的一种锐利工具，用来训练学生头脑的可靠手段。而现在人们可以通过巧妙地使用继电器电路制造一台能够根据逻辑处理条件的机器。将一系列条件输入到这样的设备中，然后转动曲柄，它将按照逻辑法则轻松地输出一个又一个结论，而且出错的几率与键盘加法器一样毫无差错。

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.

逻辑可以变得非常复杂，并且在使用中仍能保证它的确定性。用于高级分析的机器通常是方程求解器。思想先被送入方程转换器在，那里根据严格、复杂的逻辑重新安排方程所代表的关系。如果用数学来表达他们的关系，那么就会由于方法粗略而抑制前进的脚步。他们使用的符号体系像Topsy¹³一样随意发展，并且缺乏一致性，这是在大多数逻辑领域中的一个奇特现象。

A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even of the streamlined model.

一种基于位置的新的符号系统将能显著的减少用于机器处理上的数学变换。然后在数学家的严格逻辑基础之上，逻辑的应用延伸到日常事务中。也许有一天，我们能拥有一台机器，并拥有像在收银机上进行买卖一样的确定性。但逻辑机器并不会像收银机那样，即使是流线型的也不像。

So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record. Thus far we seem to be worse off than before—for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.

这样做只是对想法的处理并将其记录下来。这比以前大有进步，我们能极大地扩展记录，然而，即使在现有的庞大记录中，我们几乎无法进行查阅我们需要的记录。同为了科研检索数据相比，这是一个更大的问题，它涉及到人类通过继承所获得的知识而获益的整个过程。其中最主要的行为是选择，而在这方面，我们确实没有进步。记录中有成千上万的奇思妙想，以及产生这些思想的大量经历，这些经历全部装箱封存在石头房子里。但如果研究学者只能通过艰苦的检索每周获取一条记录，那么他们的综合能力可能无法跟上当前的学科发展。

Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

一般地讲，选择就是修壁橱的人手中的一把石斧。而具体到其他领域，某些事情已经被机器完成了，工厂人事部门的官员会拿出一堆几千张的雇员卡片交给一台选择机，根据惯例设定代码，很快就能找出谁住在Trenton¹⁴ 并会说西班牙语。即使是这样的设备在某些情况下也太慢。举个例子来说，比如将一组指纹与五百万个文件中的一个进行匹配，这种选择机器每分钟查找几百次的数据查找速率很快就会得到改进。通过使用光电管和缩微胶片，他们将能以每秒数千次的速度浏览数据，并能打印出选中的条目的复印件。

This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted. If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.

这个过程被称为简单选择：它通过逐个检查大量项目并选择具有特定指定特征的项目。然而，还有一种形式选择，可以很好地由自动电话交换机来说明。你拨了一个号码，机器会选择并连接一百万个可能站点中的一个。它不会遍历所有站点，而是只关注由第一个数字确定的一类，然后只关注由第二个数字确定的这一类的子类，依此类推；因此，它能够快速且几乎无误地选择到目标站点。整个过程只需要几秒钟的时间，如果增加速度在经济上是合理的，则可以更快。如有必要，采用热电子管开关代替机械开关，也许只需要100分之1秒就可以完成整个选择过程。当然，没有人愿意出钱来对电话系统进行改进，但这个想法在别处是可行的。

Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer’s identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold—all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.

试想一个大型百货商场的日常问题。随时都会有交易发生，随时都有许多事情要做。存货清单需要更新，售货员要给出收据，一般的账目要记录，并且更重要的是，顾客必须交费。人们开发了一种中心记账系统，可以方便地完成这些工作。售货员把顾客的身份识别卡、自己的卡片以及所买东西的卡都放在一个平台上，这些都是穿孔卡片。当他拉动一个把手时，通过孔洞建立联系，然后中央处理机就会做出必要的计算和账目，并打印出符合要求的收据供销售员交给顾客

But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.

但是可能会有一万名顾客同时与商场发生了交易，而在所有的操作完成之前，必须有人选取正确的卡片在中央处理办公室中将其插入。而现在就有了更快的方法，只需将卡片刷一下然后退出即可。但还有一个困难，必须有人读取卡片上的总数，以便机器可以将其计算的项目添加到总数中。可以设想，卡片可能是我前面所描述的干式照相法类型的卡片，现有的总数可以通过光电管读取，新的总数则可以由电子束输入。

The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be occupied in bringing the correct card into use—a second should suffice for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease of erasure. By using photography, however one can arrange to project the record in enlarged form and at a distance by using the process common in television equipment.

卡片可以是缩微形式的，这样占用空间就比较少。他们移动很快，不需要移动很远，只需放置在光电管和记录器的操作位置上即可。卡片上各个位置的点就代表着数据。月末时，一台机器可以方便地读出这些数据，并打印出普通的账单。如果使用真空管，则调用卡片的时间就会更短。整个操作也许不到一秒钟就完成了。如果需要，可以通过在钢板上使用磁点而不是通过光学观察来记录整个卡片上的数据。这是早期Poulsen¹⁵用磁性线将语音记录下来的方案。这种方法具有简单和易于擦除的优点。然而，通过使用摄影技术，可以通过使用电视设备中常见的处理过程以放大的形式和距离来投影记录。

One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

这种形式的快速选择和远程投影可以用于其他目的。能够在一两秒钟内从一百万张卡片中选出一张提供给操作者，同时在上面还可以添加注释，这在许多方面都是有启发性的。它甚至可能在图书馆中有用，但那是另外一个故事了。无论如何，现在有一些有趣的组合可能性。例如，可以像在与语音控制打字机相关的描述中那样，对着麦克风说话，从而进行选择。这肯定比普通的档案员要高效。

6

The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

然而，选择问题的关键原因要比图书馆落后的机械装置、缺乏为其使用而开发的设备等问题跟深一层。我们在检索资料方面的无能主要是由索引系统的人为性引起的。当任何类型的数据被存储时，它们会按字母或数字进行分类，获取信息（如果有）的过程就是从一级一级地往下查找。如果没有备份，那么他就只存在一个地方；我们必须学会找到路径的规则，而这些规则很繁琐。此外，找到一个条目后，就必须退出系统，再重新进入新的路径。

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

人的思维并不是按照这种方式工作的。它是通过联想进行操作的。一旦大脑理解了一项信息，它会立即根据思维的联想关系迅速转向下一个被联想暗示的内容，这是通过大脑细胞中承载的一种复杂的思维路径网络实现的。当然，人的思维还具有其他特点：不经常遵循的思维路径容易逐渐淡忘，记忆并不完全持久，它是瞬息即逝的。然而，思维行动的速度、联结路径的复杂性和心理图像的细节远超自然界的其他生物，这一点真是令人敬畏。

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

人类不能奢望完全复制大脑的处理方法，但我们应该能从其中学到点东西。在某些小的方法上甚至有所改进。因为记录相对来讲是永久性的。然而，从这个类比中得出的第一个想法与选择有关，通过联想而非索引进行选择，这是一种方法。人类无法希望在速度和灵活性上与思维相提并论，但它应该可以在条目的持久性和从存储器中取出时的清晰性上同大脑相媲美。

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “MEMEX” will do. A MEMEX is 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. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

考虑一下未来个人使用的设备，它将是一个机械化的个人图书馆，它需要一个名字提醒人们注意MEMEX就可以。MEMEX是以这样一个机械化设备：人们可以在其中存储它所有的书、记录和信件。同时可以以很高的速度和极强的灵活性完成检索。作为辅助设备，它是人脑的无限扩大。

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

它由一张桌子构成，大概可以远程操作。桌子上有一个倾斜的半透明的屏幕，资料可以投影到上面进行便利的阅读。还有一个键盘，一系列按钮和把手。除此之外，它看起来就是一张普通的桌子。

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the MEMEX is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

它的一端是存储的材料。通过改进的微缩胶片，容量问题已经得到了很好的解决。MEMEX内部只有很少一部分用于存储，其他的部分都是机械，即使用户每天塞进去五千页材料，也需要几百年才能把它的存储空间填满，因此它可以慷慨自由地录入材料。

Most of the MEMEX contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the MEMEX is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the MEMEX film, dry photography being employed.

MEMEX的大部分内容都是直接买来的，可以直接插入。各种书籍、图片，期刊、报纸都可以这样获取并插入其中进行阅读。商业信函也可以用同样的方法，并且还配有直接输入的设备。桌子上有一个透明的平板。可以较长期地存放注释、注解、照片、备忘录等各种各样的材料。把材料放在上面，按下一个按钮，就可以对它进行照相，并存到MEMEX的胶片库中下一个空白的位置，这里就要用到干式照相。

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

当然，MEMEX中也有按照常规索引的方式来查询记录的功能。如果用户想要查阅某本书，他在键盘上输入其代码，该书的封面页会迅速显示在他面前，投射到他的一个观看位置上。常用的代码是易于记忆的，所以他很少需要查阅代码手册；但是当他确实需要时，只需按下一个键，代码手册就会被投射出来供他使用。此外，他还可以使用额外的操作杠。将其中一个操作杠向右偏移，他可以逐页翻阅当前的书籍，每一页都以适度的速度被投射出来，以便进行快速浏览。如果他将操作杠进一步向右偏移，他可以以每次10页的速度翻阅书籍；进一步向右偏移，可以以每次100页的速度翻阅。将操作杠向左偏移则可以以同样的方式向后控制浏览。

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

在MEMEX中有一个特殊按钮可以让用户直接回到索引的第一页。这样他的图书馆中的任何一本书都可以被快速地调取和查询，比从书架上取下一本书要方便得多。由于他有多个投影位置，他可以将一本书放在一个位置上，同时调取另一本书。利用干式摄影技术的优势，他可以在书边添加边注和评论，当然也可以重新设计，比如现在铁路候车室中使用的数位板，他可以在投影面板上直接使用类似于钢笔的工具来进行操作和输入，就像他面前有真实纸张一样，

7

All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the MEMEX. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

所有这些都很常规，只是投影超出了目前的机械配件的水平。如果在检索时有一种更直接的方法能进行关联索引，就会方便得多。其基本的概念是提供一种备用件，使得任何条目都可以随意地选出来，并且可以快速的找到相关的另一个，这就是MEMEX的基本概念：对两个条件联系在一起的过程是最重要的事情。

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.

当用户创建一个轨迹时，他必须对其命名，然后将该命名放入到他的代码本中，并且可以在键盘上将其调出。在他面前是要连接的两个项目，投影到相邻的视图位置上。在每个项目的底部有一些空白代码空间，并设置一个指针来指示其中一个空间。用户敲击一个键，这两个项目就永久地连接在一起。在每个代码空间中出现了代码词。每一个代码区中都显示相联系的代码。在视图之外，但也在代码空间中，插入了一组用于光电探测器观测的点；而在每个项目上，这些点的位置在代码空间中充当索引号的表示方式，从而建立了项目之间的关联关系。

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

在此之后的任何时候，当其中一个项目处于视图中时，只需点击对应的代码空间下方的按钮，就可以立即调取另一个项目。此外，当多个项目通过这种方式连接在一起形成一个路径时，可以通过偏转一个类似翻书页的杠杆，以快速或慢速的方式逐个回顾它们。就像从广泛分散的来源中聚集起来并绑定在一起形成一本新书一样。不仅如此，任何项目都可以加入多个路径中。

The owner of the MEMEX, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his MEMEX. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

如果MEMEX的用户对弓箭的来历和特性感有兴趣，特别是当他在研究十字军东征的战斗中，为什么土耳其短弓要明显强于英国长弓的时候就相当有用了。他的MEMEX中有许多可能相关的书籍和文章。首先，他浏览百科全书，找到一篇有趣但内容简略的文章，并将其投影到屏幕。然后在一本历史书中，他又找到了一些有关的条目，然后把这两者联系起来。他这样继续前进，逐渐建立了一个由许多项目组成的路径。偶尔，他会插入自己的评论，将其链接到主路径中或通过一个旁道与特定项目连接起来。当明显的是可用材料的弹性特性与弓的性能有很大关系时，他会从旁道上分出来，查阅有关弹性学和物理常数表的书籍。他还会插入自己的手写分析页。通过这样的方式，他在可用材料的迷宫中建立起了一条符合自己兴趣的路径。

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own MEMEX, there to be linked into the more general trail.

他的轨迹并不会消失。多年后，在与朋友们的交谈中也许转到了关于拒绝创新或其他特别话题的时候，他就有一个例子证明实际上受辱的欧洲人仍然没有采用土耳其短弓。他有这样一个轨迹：按一下键就可以弹出代码区，再按几下键就可以将这条轨迹的头部掉出来。所以随意拉动某个把手，就可以停在某个有趣的条目上，同时还可以离题聊一会儿。这是一个有趣的轨迹，与论题也有关。于是他可以把这条轨迹复制一份，送给他的朋友插入到他自己的MEMEX中去，在那里他还可能被联其入其他的轨迹。

8

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the MEMEX and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client’s interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient’s reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

将出现全新的百科全书形式，带有一系列关联路径，可以直接嵌入MEMEX中并进行扩展。律师可以轻松获得与他全部经验、朋友和权威人士的经验中的东西。专利律师可以随时查看数百万份已颁发的专利，还可以从常用的轨迹中找出客户的兴趣所在。外科医生也许在面对他的患者的反应感到困惑，就可以追溯之前研究过的类似病例的路径，并快速浏览类似病例的历史，同时参考经典文献以获取相关的解剖学和组织学知识。化学家在合成有机化合物时，可以在实验室中获得所有化学文献，并按照化合物的类比进行路径追踪，并参考它们的物理和化学行为的旁支路径。

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

历史学家也许拥有大量的个人年表，可以将它并行地与一个跳跃的轨迹相连，而这个轨迹则在比较显著的题目上才停下来。他可以随时查看现在的轨迹，也可以查询所有文明历程中的一个特殊时期的轨迹。将会有一种新的职业出现，这就是轨迹制作者，他们会从大量的普通材料中构造有用的轨迹，并从中感受乐趣。大师们的遗产将不只是他个人加到世界宝库中的东西，而将成为他的信徒们共享的整体的知识框架。

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

科学可以实现人类创造、存储和查询记录的方式。也许更引人注目的是大胆勾勒出未来的工具，而不仅仅固守当前已知且正在快速发展的方法和元素，就像在这里所做的那样。当然，各种技术困难都被忽略了，但还忽略了目前未知的可能出现的手段，这些手段可能会像热电子管的出现一样，以极大的力量加速技术进步。为了使这个图景不至于因为坚守现有的模式而显得平庸，可能有必要提及一种可能性，这并不是预言，这是一个建议，因为基于已经存在情况进行的预言更具现实性，而基于未知的预言则只是猜测。

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses—the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

当我们触碰按键时，我们创造和收纳记录中信息资料的步骤是通过一种感官执行的——触觉，我们讲话或倾听时依靠听觉，我们阅读时依靠视觉，难道我们没有可能在有朝一日建立一种直接获取信息的途径吗？

We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.

我们知道，当眼睛看到东西时，所有随之而来的信息通过视神经通道中的电振动传输到大脑。这与电视机电缆中发生的电振动完全类似：它们将图像从感光元件传输到广播发射器，从而进行广播。我们进一步了解，如果我们能用适当的仪器接近那根电缆，我们不需要触摸它；我们可以通过电感应捕捉到这些振动，从而发现和重现被传输的场景，就像电话线可以被窃听其信息一样。

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

打字员的手臂神经中的脉冲将翻译过的信息传送到他的指尖，同时也到达他的眼睛和耳朵。这样指头就可以按下正确的按键。这些电流是否可以被截取，无论是以原始形式传达到大脑的信息，还是以经过奇妙变形的形式传递到手部？

By bone conduction we already introduce sounds: into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?

通过骨传导，我们已经成功地将声音引入聋人的神经通道，以使他们能够听到声音。我们是否有可能学会在不经过将电振动转换为机械振动的繁琐过程的情况下引入声音？因为人体机制很快又将它们转换成电形式，如果在头盖骨上装上一对电极，就可以用笔绘出其轨迹，显示出电在大脑中运行的情况。诚然，这个记录是难以理解的，除非它指出了大脑机制的某些明显的功能失调；但是，谁能够限定这样的技术将引领我们走向何方呢？

In the outside world, all forms of intelligence whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.

在外部世界中，所有形式的智能，无论是声音还是视觉，都已经转化为电路中变化的电流形式，以便进行传输。在人的身体中也发生着同样的事情。难道我们必须把一种电信号转换成机械运动才能处理它的另一种形式吗？这是一个引人深思的想法，但是它还很不现实，难以做出什么预测。

Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His 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, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

想必，只要人能够更好地回顾自己曾经的阴暗过去，并更完整、客观地分析当前的问题，他的精神就会得到提升。人类已经建立了一个如此复杂的文明，以至于必须把知识机械化才能从中得到符合逻辑的结论而不至于因为记忆耗尽而陷入困境。如果他再次拥有忘掉他不需要立即知道的事情，而又在他变得重要的时候。能够立即得到他的特权，那么他的人生旅程将充满欢乐。

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

科学的应用为人类建造了一个物资丰富的家园，并教会了人类在其中健康地生活。它也使人类能够制造出残忍的武器，将大量人群投入战争。它也可能还会帮助人类真正理解历史记录，并在种族经验中成长。在人类学会真正利用这些历史记录之前，人类可能会在相互冲突中毁灭。然而，在将科学应用于人类的需求和欲望时，这似乎是一个非常不幸的阶段，终止这个过程或对结果失去希望。

总结

Vannevar Bush的MEMEX概念是一项开创性的科技设想，通过提出一种能够扩展人类记忆和知识获取能力的设备，为信息科学和技术领域的发展奠定了基础。他的文章预见了信息时代的到来，并对后来的技术发展产生了深远的影响，如超文本和万维网的发展，以及个性化信息过滤和推荐系统的应用。

Vannevar Bush的贡献将永远被铭记，他的思想和理念在当今数字时代仍然发挥着重要的作用。

参考文献

• As We May Think. 维基百科
• 新媒介与创新思维. 熊澄宇编选，齐良培译（2001），清华大学出版社
• 王知津,李明珍.情报学的不朽篇章——纪念《诚如所思》发表60周年[J].情报理论与实践,2005(01):1-5.10.16353
• As We May think–中文翻译版（上），李博阳译，2008

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think ↩︎

2. 孟德尔遗传定律或孟德尔规律，是指奥地利植物学家格里高利·约翰·孟德尔（Gregor Johann Mendel）在19世纪中期通过对豌豆植物进行的一系列实验所总结出的一组关于遗传传递的基本规律。孟德尔的工作在他的时代并没有得到广泛认可，但在20世纪初被重新发现并获得了应有的荣誉 ↩︎

3. 光电池（Photocells），是一种用于光电转换的电子器件。它能够将光能转化为电能，实现光信号的检测和测量。 ↩︎

4. 热电子管（Thermionic Tubes），也被称为真空管或电子管，是一种基于热发射电子的电子设备。它是早期电子技术中最重要的元件之一，在无线通信、放大器、计算机和音频等领域发挥了关键作用。 ↩︎

5. 阴极射线管（Cathode Ray Tubes，简称CRT）是一种广泛使用的显示设备，主要用于电视机、计算机显示器和示波器等设备中。 ↩︎

6. Charles Babbage（查尔斯·巴贝奇），他是19世纪英国的一位数学家、发明家和计算机先驱。巴贝奇被广泛认为是计算机科学和计算机工程的奠基人之一。 ↩︎

7. Giza（吉萨）是埃及的一个著名地点，位于开罗以西约20公里处。它以其壮观的金字塔和狮身人面像而闻名于世，是埃及古文明最具象征性和重要的遗址之一。 ↩︎

8. 蜡质盘是19世纪末至20世纪初使用的一种音频记录和播放媒介。它是由蜡质制成的圆柱形物体，用于保存声音和音乐。 ↩︎

9. 磁性线是一种具有磁性特性的导线，在电子和电磁设备中发挥重要作用。它用于电感器、变压器、电机和发电机等设备中，实现电能和磁能的转换。此外，磁性线还在磁记录和存储设备中用于数据存储和读取。 ↩︎

10. 唱片灌制机是一种用于制作唱片的设备。它通过将音频信号转换为蜡质唱片上的物理凹槽来制作唱片。这些凹槽随后被复制到乙烯基唱片上，以便大量生产。 ↩︎

11. 速记机是一种用于以速记方式复制文字的键盘机器，可以帮助人们快速记录演讲或会议内容，以便日后查阅。 ↩︎

12. Herman Hollerith（1860年2月29日-1929年11月17日）是一位德裔美国统计学家、发明家和商人，他发明了一种用于打孔卡片的电动制表机，以帮助总结信息，后来用于会计。他的打孔卡片制表机的发明，于1884年获得专利，标志着机械化二进制代码和半自动数据处理系统时代的开始 ↩︎

13. 这个比喻源自Harriet Beecher Stowe的小说《汤姆叔叔的小屋》中Topsy这个角色。当被问及她的家庭和起源时，Topsy回答说她没有；她对自己的出生没有任何了解，只是“长大了”。因此，这个比喻用来描述一种无序、自发的增长，就像Topsy一样。 ↩︎

14. Trenton是美国新泽西州的首府 ↩︎

15. 瓦尔特·J·波尔森（Valter J. Poulsen）是一位丹麦电工和发明家，他在20世纪早期做出了重要的贡献。他最著名的发明是弧放大器（Arc Amplifier），也被称为波尔森放大器（Poulsen Arc）。这项发明对于电信和广播行业的发展具有重大影响。 ↩︎