Synopsis and Response to V. Bush's "As We May Think"

“The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.” – V. Bush

Essentially, Vannevar Bush has accumulated his understanding of information technologies of the post-war years and extrapolates what could become of them. His notions of photocells, microphones and punch-card computation effectively predict the modern scanner/fax machine, the personal computer and the internet itself. It is impressive and imaginative for his time. "As We May Think" is prophetic and hopeful; a refreshing (though sometimes textually dense) look at how far we have come since the mid-20th century.
In reading this, I come to realize the similarities and drastic differences between the perspectives of Vannevar Bush and R. Buckminster Fuller. The two men find themselves at the technological boom of the post-war period; jaws dropped at the nascent possibilities of rapidly changing communication and information technologies. Bush, on one hand, talks of specialization as being “necessary for progress”. Fuller, on the other, sees the facility of the modern human to be comprehensive in their approach to problems; the places where disciplines overlap being fruitful in their yield of new ideas.
The truly interesting part is in what actually took place. We became so specialized in our endeavors that we were forced to look between the categorical distinctions in our wealth of information to find new directions. In our postmodern age, we compare and contrast every aspect of every discipline, sometimes finding useful new ideas, sometimes stumbling into cross-comparative oblivion. This is how we know that we are on the cusp of new things: we are being forced to step back from our efforts and decide how to move forward from our meta-scholarship. Otherwise, we could just get lost in our own reflection.