A Technocratic Machine: The Memex as Rhetorical Invention

Rhetoric & Public Affairs Sep 2020

A Technocratic Machine: The Memex as Rhetorical Invention

Katie P. Bruner

Abstract

Abstract The Memex is an icon in the history of computer technology. It was first presented to the public in a 1945 Life Magazine article as “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.” The Memex itself was never built, but the image of what machines like it could do captured the imagination of a generation of computer engineers. The Memex was designed by an engineer and science administrator named Vannevar Bush, but he had actually designed the Memex to address inter-war America: the Memex article was written during the tumult of the late 1930s and largely untouched during World War II. This article examines the Memex within this interwar context, paying particular attention to how Bush used the design of a technological prototype to imagine how machines could help humans navigate the modern world. I argue that this effort was an act of rhetorical invention and show that the design of the Memex was a vehicle for Bush to endorse technocratic authority over American life.

Journal: Rhetoric & Public Affairs
Published: 2020-09-01
DOI: 10.14321/rhetpublaffa.23.3.0495
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (1)

Davis (2008)

Identification: Burke and Freud on Who You Are

Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Also cites 10 works outside this index ↓

5. Erkki Huhtamo, “Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study,” in Media Archaeology: App…

↗
6. Ned O'Gorman, "Aristotle's Phantasia in the Rhetoric: Lexis, Appearance, and the Epideictic Function of Di…

↗
Debra Hawhee, "Looking into Aristotle's Eyes: Toward a Theory of Rhetorical Vision," Advances in the History …

↗
Michael K. Buckland, "Emanuel Goldbert, Electronic Document Retrieval, and Vannevar Bush's Memex," Journal of…

↗
16. Paul N. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Chicago, …

↗
17. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, The New Media Reader (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003); Linda C. Smi…

↗
20. Richard Yeo, “Before Memex: Robert Hooke, John Locke, and Vannevar Bush on External Memory,” Science in C…

↗
37. Dewey, The Public and Its Problems, 109. Quoted in Cara Finnegan and Jiyeon Kang, “‘Sighting’ the Public …

↗
56. Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psyched…

↗
60. Rosemary Simpson, Allen Renear, Elli Mylonas, and Andries van Dam, “50 Years After ‘As We May Think’: The…

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →