I came across Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" in a serendipity search, looking for references to hyperreality on the web. Being written in 1945, Bush's piece makes no reference to this philosophy itself, it just happened to be on a page of links that included an essay called "Hyperreality and the Writer" (an essay which has apparently since disappeared). But I'd heard of Bush's work, and so checked out his article instead, and after reading it was convinced that it tied in, although I still haven't been able to articulate exactly how. The essay clearly predicates the world wide web, long before the microchip was even conceived. It became clear to me that the web is a natural outflow from our desire to explore information outside our brains the way we explore the information inside our brains:
"The human mind . . . 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." [1]





[1] As We May Think.

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