vannevar

jargon /van'*-var/ A bogus technological prediction or a

foredoomed engineering concept, especially one that fails by

implicitly assuming that technologies develop linearly,

incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in fact

the learning curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions

are common, and competition is the rule. The prototype was

Vannevar Bush's prediction of "electronic brains" the size of

the Empire State Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent

cooling system for their tubes and relays, a prediction made

at a time when the semiconductor effect had already been

demonstrated. Other famous vannevars have included

magnetic-bubble memory, LISP machines, videotex, and a

paper from the late 1970s that computed a purported ultimate

limit on areal density for integrated circuits that was in

fact less than the routine densities of 5 years later.

[Jargon File]

(2000-02-29)