: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.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
