The idea of a hypertext where you make your own ending, that’s the farthest away from what I want. I want the writer to put me in the palm of his hand and take me way.
Daniel Rosenberg: Intellectual History of Hypertext
Daniel Rosenberg is an intellectual historian specializing in questions of historical representation. His research focuses on eighteenth-century France and Britain and ranges broadly in areas including the history of language, philosophy, and art.
Intertwingled: Morning Session # 2
Within bodies of writing, everywhere, there are linkages we tend not to see. The individual document, at hand, is what we deal with; we do not see the total linked collection of them all at once. But thy are there, the documents not present as well as those that are, and the grand cat’s cradle amoung them all. -Ted Nelson, Literary Machines (5:30)
This resonates with the Enlightenment thinkers. The Encyclopedias they produces were intertwingled.
.. In real life, that is to say, On paper. (13:24)
Literature Debugged
Silicon Valley road to riches: Don’t worry, be crappy. Get users locked in and spread. The result is privatization. Companies like Google have to reconstruct backlinks. This leads to great fortunes and inequality. -Jaron
Context-free openness (copy without context) leads to the decline of the middle class. We’re concentrating wealth in people that can process the information, and not those who created it.
1970s: two types of computer types: hippies and military men. The “draft” created a desire for anonymity. CB Radio wanted to avoid cops because they wanted to drive faster than 55mph. We had to preserve provenence and we have a social contract that rewards the people the data is about.
All simulation is political – the politics are in the rules and the data
We all know that being “apolitical” is supporting the status quo.
Doug Englebart: Doug’s Story
The economics professor wanted to know what kind of research he was planning to get started. What kind of research he’d do would be important for his career etc. Doug told him about computers and augmentation – there came a point when he didn’t look very interested. He looked at Doug and said: Do you know how promotions are done at university? Doug remembers the moment well: My jaw dropped, guess I don’t. It’s about peer review: If you don’t get papers published you won’t get advanced. Papers get published by peer review.Talk like this and they won’t get reviews. So much for blindly looking for an academic career!
.. So he said would you notice if everything and everyone here increased by 10 in each dimension? What would happen?
Many said they wouldn’t notice a thing as the angles would be the same; looking at someone bigger would look the same if you yourself was bigger. But what about weight? And strength?
.. Then Bill English came to work with Doug at the beginning of 1964. He had gotten his M.S. at Stanford in 1962, in engineering. A very energetic and competent engineer. Very bright, very active. He complemented Doug and provided things Doug wasn’t good at. Doug had his right hand man, his doer.
.. His work was to be developing a means to augment the human intellect. These “means” can include many things–all of which appear to be but extensions of means developed and used in the past to help man apply his native sensory, mental, and motor capabilities– and we consider the whole system of a human and his augmentation means as a proper field of research for practical possibilities.