Post #3

When first reading Vannevar Bush's article, I was confused.  The devices he was talking about seemed familiar  but he spoke about them in an unfamiliar fashion.  I did not even finish the first page before I went and researched the article.  That's when I found my answer.  Written in 1945, Bush was ahead of his time.

Considering the different methods of information including Claude Shannon's simplification and symbols, Joyce's repetition, and Bush's idea of combining the two complexities for ease of use; I believe that Bush had the right idea.  Predicting, even, our future use of technology.

Bush's idea are already infiltrating into classrooms that I think we could take his ideas one step further to a ubiquitous computing classroom, or Smart Classroom.

"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." - Bush, July 1945, Atlantic.

How incredible would it be to sit in a classroom and create connections to the material you were learning with information you already knew and information you could access at your finger tips?  Computing is infiltrating our daily lives, and not just the tech savvy, but the entire spectrum including the elderly. (Reference: http://ubiquitouscomputingdtc375.blogspot.com/2012/03/ubiquitous-computing-and-elderly-sara.html )  Now medicine bottles can do the thinking, leaving the patient free to remember other key facts instead of worrying about whether they took their medication or not.  A Walgreens commercial now touts an app where you can take a picture of your medicine bottle to request a refill.

I believe that Bush accurately describes an idea of a future classroom where, "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."

Even more so, "when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly."  Making the information digestible in varying speeds helps students who could be struggling with the material.  One way to increase Bush's ideas would be to deliver the material in multiple formats.  There are those who take in information easily through reading, but others who needs hands on, or discussion.  These could all be met in a Smart Classroom environment.