rachel syme (Twitter)what is a longform magazine story from before, let's say, 2010, that you still go back and look at for inspiration
— rachel syme (@rachsyme) April 2, 2021
This is just what Vannevar Bush suggests in his famous article As We May Think in the July 1945 issue of The Atlantic. Here he posits the Memex, and opens up the idea of networked information.
#HeyPresstoConf20
The internet itself could be though of as a massive living and ever-growing commonplace book which can be digitally queried to provide the answers to nearly every conceivable question.
(Some may forget that Bush was the thesis advisor of Claude Shannon, the father of the modern digital age.)