Brenda Laurel’s “Six Elements” hearkens to Aristotle’s Poetics as its touchstone. This is nothing particularly new. Aristotle is a cultural monolith, and academics refer to his work ad nauseum and, it seems, ad infinitum. For Laurel, the use of Aristotle makes her … Continue reading →
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Ted Nelson, Libraries, and Openness
It seems appropriate that we read in this seminar excerpts from Ted Nelson’s Computer Lib / Dream Machines, since next week is Open Access Week at Virginia Tech Libraries. I don’t believe I’m far off in saying that Ted Nelson’s … Continue reading →
Imagination, Sirius, and a Federation of Planets
The third section of Douglas Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect is another entry in a long history of science fiction’s contemporary relevance. Enlightenment thinker Voltaire used his 1752 story “Micromegas” to provoke Western ideas that had been accepted carte blanche. Not an uncommon motif during the French Enlightenment, visitors from outer space (for Voltaire, the visitor […]
Joining the Mobile Digital Age
Tonight is the last night before I have a smartphone. Tomorrow, I will be getting not only my first smartphone, but my first touchscreen mobile device. I’ve resisted thus far, but the difference between basic phones and smartphones is financially negligible, as far as I’ve found. And I worried about my ability to learn to […]
Where does Humanity Begin?
This is a hackneyed question, but one that bears more investigation: Where do humans end and machines begin? Norbert Wiener engages this question directly, concerning the human control in antiaircraft guns. J.C.R. Licklider, too, confronts this idea, with the very notion of “symbiosis” in computers and humans. But this concern reaches even further, when we […]
New Media and Experience
I first encountered Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” in a library context, where the focus was on the ways libraries can connect information to each other. Our discussions focused on the memex device, as a preconception of what Wikipedia would become. Hyperlinks upon hyperlinks would allow humans to travel from information to more information, expanding […]