As we may think - small task

Vannevar Bush's ideas about the camera of the future are interesting to compare with modern cameras. Many of his ideas may still be in the future (a walnut-sized camera worn on the forehead) but he was unable to imagine a camera that does not require film. My first camera, as a teenager, was an Instamatic. The film was contained in a cartridge inserted into the back and when it was finished you had to wait about a week to get your photos back. Then in the 1980's we moved to an SLR camera and many places offered overnight processing. In 2005 we bought a digital camera and can now publish pictures on the Internet minutes after taking them.
He also envisages microfilm copies of encyclopedias and other books. Whilst microfilm is used today (we have a number of historical records on microfilm for people interested in genealogy) today's encyclopedias are often on CD-ROM or online. The cost of these is not as low as Bush envisaged with his microfilm copies but they do offer advantages of cross referencing and searching not offered by microfilm.
Bush's device for translating spoken language to written has its modern parallel in the voice recognition software available on many computers. however his picture of future scientists moving about their laboratories, photographing and commenting to produce a record is still not a reality.
Bush seems to envisage lots of different machines for different purposes - machines for mathematical calculation, machines for manipulating premises, machines for charging and inventory control in department stores, however, the reality is that these tasks, and many more, are all done by computers. The personal computer is equivalent to Bush's 'memex'. We have the translucent screens, the incredible storage capacity, the keyboard and the ability to scan items in and to search. On the other hand, a PC is smaller than the 'desk' envisioned by Bush and doesn't use microfilm.
I didn't really encounter computers until I went to university in the late 1970's. Some of my friends were taking computer science papers and programmed the computer (which took up a whole room) by punching holes in cards. In return, they got pages and pages of printout to look though to determine whether or not their programme had worked. We got our first PC when we were in Britain in 1984. We obviously made the wrong choice of brands because our Einstein Personal Computer was a bit of a dead duck with very little programming written for it. By 1990 we had an IBM-compatible PC (no mouse however) and our ducks lived in an obsolete desk-style computer my husband had brought home from work. As the years went by, back-up was onto discs, then floppy discs, then zip discs. Today I have a laptop with an external drive (and still seem to run out of room), DVD reader/writer, colour printer, black and white laser printer, scanner (that also copies and faxes) and a PDA that allows me to carry important information with me when I'm away from my laptop. All of this was unimaginable when I was growing up.