Hypertext Vannevar and the Memex

Vannevar (1945) describes the memex as a potential 'invention' to increase access to knowledge that men of science should build rather than weapons of mass destruction. The memex would extend the power of a man's mind through the creation and saving of information through human association patterns of thought. While Vannevar was describing an invention, his idea is echoed in the 1960's by Marshall McLuhan and his 4 laws of media.
"1. EXTEND
An individual's or organisation's use of technology in a new way extends the reach of body and mind."
http://www.provenmodels.com/18
These technologies change how humans think, feel and act, even the individual's perception and information processing. New technologies have had psychological, physical and social effects.
Media is an extension of a person's thoughts and capabilities just as the memex is an extension of how an individual thinks and associates knowledge stored in an easily accessible technology that can retrace our thought processes or associations.
Vannevar envisioned an invention in 1945 that was capable of retrieving data from a large storage system that selected information by association or 'relevance' to a human question. An example of this in use today would be in Google where retrieval of hypertext nodes are based on relevance to the question, or in the U of A databases that sorts and retrieves information based on the words and/or author entered into the search box. McLuhan took this one step further theorizing that "technologies change how humans think, feel and act, even the individual's perception and information processing. New technologies have had psychological, physical and social effects." http://www.provenmodels.com/18. This is recognized today and being studied in many formats such as network theory, transliteracy, knowledge management in organizations, digital communication, economic globalization and even in privacy legislation as a few examples.

Further to data retrieval Vannevar envisioned an invention that was able to store an individuals thoughts, communications in text , picture, or however the individual anted or visualized it stored and then the ability to make associations between all of the stored data. PDA's, PC's are certainly examples of this ability today. What Vannevar didn't envision or describe was the ability to create, co-create digitalized media in any format, publish and communicate this instantly across the WWW to those with access to this technology. This has enabled enormous probabilities for people of associations of thought and ideas.
What I do see as well that echoes McLuhans ideas of technology change how we think and act, is that the WWW and hypertext has also assisted in developing the increased pace of the world today and expectations of 'immediacy' in the form of immediate access to information, data, people, responses to others, media.