vannevar

/van'@var/ , n. A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering
concept, esp. 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 ICs that was in fact less than
the routine densities of 5 years later.

