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want to read it in paper form and yet save it in digital form for later searching. (Reading
lengthy texts on screens is still not as comfortable for many people as reading paper,
while searching is of course much easier on the computer.)
On the other hand, the iPod is also an example of one way of resolving the issues
of intellectual property rights, payment mechanisms, and format accommodation (or
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control). Given the apparent success of the iPod/iTunes arrangement, and similar online
music distributors, some commentators have suggested that such arrangements will
become the predominant way recorded music is sold to consumers. Would that kind of
arrangement be appropriate for the majority of printed material?
Vannevar Bush acknowledged in his 1945 article that “means as yet unknown …
may come any day” that could change things just as dramatically as the vacuum tube did.
On that point, he was absolutely right. He also still seems to be right in his assumption of
the desirability of a supplement to one’s own memory. We do not have to make
exaggerated claims for visions that were not in the article to find something that is still a
goal today. It would be nice to have a personal device – an iPod-like information pod –
that we can use to easily collect all the things we have read and seen that we would like
to save, with an easy way to quickly find and view things within that collection.
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