Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
Date and Time
Location
"Memex Takes Manhattan: Vannevar Bush's Other History of the Future"
Speaker:
Michael Aaron Dennis, Assistant Professor, Strategy and Policy, Naval War College.
Lunch is provided if you RSVP via our online form by Wednesday of the week before the event.
Contact:
Shana Rabinowich
shana_rabinowich@hks.harvard.edu
Chair:
Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School.
Abstract:
As we may think,” Vannevar Bush’s summer of 1945 think piece from the Atlantic and the subsequent, illustrated version from Life are probably among Bush’s most read and discussed works. Memex, the device envisioned in each of those articles is among the most famous unbuilt machines in the history of computing, much like Babbage’s Analytical Engine. Bush’s technological prognostication and his other visions of the future, such as his report, Science—The Endless Frontier or his plans for the international control of nuclear weapons, are seldom read together or as different aspects of a common vision. This talk wrenches Memex from the world of the imagination into the frenzied and complex world of Washington, DC in the summer and fall of 1945 when the future was very much up for grabs.
Biography:
Michael Aaron Dennis is an assistant professor in the Strategy and Policy at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. Before that he worked as an adjunct at Georgetown and George Mason Universities; even earlier he was an assistant professor in Cornell University’s Department of Science & Technology Studies. His book, A Change of State: Political Culture, Technical Practice and the Making of Cold War America, remains overdue at the press.