Spelogging

1. Entrance

On the day of your birth she split herself in half to fetch you.

Her body, firmly rooted in the ground, summoned you loudly, steadily, pausing after each cry to give her voice time to reach you.

Her spirit floated to the sacred edges of your world to meet you. Instinctively, you both knew that you were destined to make the crossing together, even if you weren’t sure which direction it would take.

Neither of you spoke.

Remember how the hospital room seemed so quiet from the space you occupied? Dusky and hazy? And how your father, the midwife, and the doctor looked like watchful apparitions, defined by amorphous boundaries, every now and then blending together and separating?

Your parents’ friend was capturing the event on video. She marked every passing hour with the changing of a tape. Out with the full, in with the empty. Ten times. When the top of your head made its first appearance, her last tape reached its end.

Your entrance was claimed by the spirits.

2. Journey through data space

You were surrounded by a world of thoughts and images that you captured and molded with your imagination.

You embodied a world of thoughts and images that were captured and molded by the imagination of others.

Every day images of war, through the media, try to penetrate our reality. These images freeze before touching our reality, leaving a wretched ghost of pain to haunt us. It is this haunted look […] that I have tried to catch with the dolls’ eyes. This look hosts different feelings like fear or revolt, despair or denial, compassion or immunity. The beauty of the dolls and the violence reflected in their eyes capture the invisible wall which separates the co-existence of these two worlds.

                                              Multimedia artist Lydia Venieri on her 2009 exhibition of digital photographs titled “See No Evil.”

The boundary between you and the world felt uncomfortably porous.

You were strengthened. Weakened. Augmented. Diminished.

3. Montage

You sat on the airplane next to a good friend. You were telling her about your childhood. She was more attentive than you were used to, looking straight into your eyes. When you mentioned your trauma, you turned your gaze out the window, over the amorphous clouds that blended together and separated. The conversation stopped.

What would have happened if you hadn’t cut away, made this edit?

4. Exit

You chose to review your life on video. You didn’t erase anything or anyone. You slow-motioned the segments that had gone by too fast. You examined them carefully. You zoomed in on people you had held in the periphery of your consciousness. The more time you took to study their faces, the more connections you saw between them and you. Everyone began to blend together. Everything began to blend together. Into a coherent whole.

An empty space that’s always full.

[Inspired by Viola, B. 1995. Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space? In N. Wardrip-Fruin and N. Montfort, eds., 2003. The New Media Reader, pp. 463-470. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.]

Athens, Greece, 1974.

First grade.

We’re learning the alphabet.

My classmates and I are sitting in orderly rows, quietly facing Ms. Anna, awaiting her next command.

Her eyes turn to me. She requests I write a lambda on the blackboard.

I’m glad she picked me. I practiced hard last night. I’m ready.

I get out of my chair, walk to the front of the class, step on the raised platform that allows me to reach the chalk, stand on my tiptoes, raise my arm high so that everyone can see, and proceed to get lost in my letter. My hand movement is precise. Steady. Careful. I have a clear picture of the shape I’m going to make. I am excited. I watch my writing tool deposit its white dust exactly where I tell it to, following loyally my hand’s commands, leaving behind a shape I love. I am mesmerized.

I complete the last curl and stop. I am finished.

I turn around.

Ms. Anna’s eyes are squinting. Her smile doesn’t look right. “What did you do?” she snickers. “Take your lambda to the beauty parlor?!”

The hearty laughter that bursts out of the 35 bellies in front of me pierces straight through my ears and makes me dizzy. Head down, I stumble back to my seat.

I never get lost in my lambdas again.

New York City, 1990s.

Puerto Ricans in East Harlem, Lower East Side, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx take over vacant, littered, and rat-infested lots. They have a clear picture of how they want to transform them. Drawing on their local traditions back home, they plant gardens that yield rich crops of fruits, vegetables, flowers, medicinal and culinary herbs. They also build traditional casitas, one- or two-room wooden structures that “enable them to take control of their immediate environment and, in the process, to rediscover and reconnect with their cultural heritage.” Photographer Ejlat Feuer and landscape architect Daniel Winterbottom document the process. They name their exhibit “Casitas: Gardens of Reclamation.”

The Puerto Rican “curls” on the faceless lots don’t last long. Most of the properties are city-owned. They are repossessed for development.

In their 1977 paper “Personal Dynamic Media,” computer scientists and then-researchers at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg describe a design idea that embodied their dreams. They call it a “metamedium.” What they have in mind is a radical departure from conventional media like paper, TV, and movies. The latter, they argue, tends to deliver static messages to passive learners and are unable to absorb or transform from learner responses. The metamedium is different. It is a device as small as a notebook that stores information in multiple forms (e.g., text, photographs, drawings, music, animation) and invites learners into a two-way “conversation.” Individuals interacting with the metamedium are able to not only insert in it new information, but also to manipulate what’s already there. Knowledge can be edited, embellished, linked in innovative ways, colored with different aesthetics and moods, and even transformed into new media (e.g., new programs to highlight historical interrelationships or to make math come to life) that are “limited only by [the learner’s] imagination and ingenuity.”

Thirty-four years after the publication of “Personal Dynamic Media,” when the use of metamedia is widespread and taken for granted, we have confirmed the enormous value of Kay’s and Goldberg’s work. The interactivity between user and personal computer (PC) has led to the creation of an infinite number of programs that make our lives easier, as well as more efficient, manageable, creative, and exciting. It has also made possible realities that didn’t exist before, which has expanded vastly the universe of ideas now considered “practical.” All this has, no doubt, helped to augment the human imagination.

What intrigues me most, however, about Kay’s and Goldberg’s prescient vision is the effects that the “conversation” between learner and device may have on our relationship to learning.

If we can touch, embellish, and transform information, can’t we also inject ourselves into the knowledge we are expected to learn? Aren’t we, under these circumstances, empowered to take more “control” of the often static and unadorned messages delivered to us in school, at work, elsewhere, and in the process to “discover” and “reconnect” with the richness of our own intellect? Aren’t we, as a result, able to make “official” and “vacant” knowledge our own, and thus experience the excitement, pride, accomplishment, caring, protectiveness, and love that characterize the relationship between creator and creation? What’s the effect on learners when the knowledge they are expected to learn reflects their very own minds? Their very own imaginations? Interests? Curiosities? Concerns? Innovations?

Did Kay and Goldberg in 1977 realize that their personal matamedium contained all the tools necessary for a learner’s reclamation of unadorned lots of knowledge, by turning them into fertile gardens of the mind, filled with luscious fruit trees, ripe vegetables, fragrant herbs, and beautiful casitas? Oh! And with curly lambdas too?

1.

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.

2.

The second and third days came the medicine men. They invented the white coat. They invented the black briefcase. They invented the supercilious look. They even invented new language. Yes, new language, believe it or not, because the existing one didn’t quite fit their thoughts. “Rubeola” stood for measles. Well, not the simple meaning of the term, not the one you and I know. A more complicated meaning. “Pruritus” stood for itching. Uh-huh. “PRu-Ri-tus.” I think they rolled the “r.” Yes, complicated concept I tell you, I can’t say more about it because I don’t understand it myself, to be honest, but a grander meaning anyway, you know, much bigger than what you and I could understand.

They knew a lot…, these medicine men…

They say they were born with the Gift. Yes. The Gift to Know.

They knew they were different from the rest of us. You could say “superior.” Everyone knew they were superior. People paid them barrels of gold for a home visit. I think they healed just about everyone they touched. Except maybe for those few who were on the brink of death anyway. What could the medicine men do in those cases, you know? I think they pretty much healed everyone. I’m quite sure about that… I think… I don’t know… Anyhow.

The medicine men were treated well, no doubt about it, but soon enough they realized that they had to separate themselves from the commoners. Understandably. We were mostly a distraction, you know, buzzing meaninglessly around them. So they boarded a tall ship and went far off to a land they named “Know.” They say it was quiet there. Beautiful. It was a land of plenty for the mind. The medicine men were finally able to think in peace. They spent hours exchanging ideas. Inventing new things. Oh sure they still visited the sick, but only when their schedule allowed.

How much people looked up to them… Oh gosh. People were in awe of them. Everyone wanted to be like them. Everyone wanted to move to Know and become a medicine man. But it wasn’t that easy of course. The question was:

Would you be allowed in Know? Did you have the Gift?

So the medicine men did something really smart. I crack up just thinking about it! They said, “Ok, you commoners, you are free to come! Try it! Come join us in the land of Know. But first you have to pass a test.” And they set up this elaborate process to see if you had the Gift. People arrived to ports in droves. They paid years’ worth of earnings for a ticket. And then they packed themselves, like sardines, on ships to cross the ocean. It was an arduous journey. Two to six weeks they say. There was no food on board, except for one bowl of soup per passenger the first day, and that was that. You had to make due, you know? No bathrooms either. Some got so sick. Some even died. I mean, these poor people…, think about it. Their determination. They were just desperate for the opportunity to feed the mind. The most ambitious ones — you could call them “greedy,” I guess — were going for the jackpot. “Riches for the human intellect,” they’d say. “That’s what we’re after!”

So get this. When the ships arrived to Know, they were not actually allowed in the port. They had to dock at a small island off the Land’s main coast. That’s where the medicine men did the testing. Highly-trained officials checked each and every newcomer for signs of the Gift. With the help of a buttonhook, they looked straight through your eyes to the center of your soul. If they saw a quivering vapor inside, it was a clear indication that you had the Gift. Black stillness meant that you didn’t. I’m telling you! These guys knew what they were doing!

Gift? They let you in. No Gift? They accompanied you straight back to the ship for your return trip home. Can you believe it?!

Most people tested negative. Black stillness in their soul.

Don’t know why…

3.

The fourth day came the lawyers. They invented all sorts of important rules. And new language too! “Fuero,” and “Argumentum e contrario,” and “Ex demissione,” and…, gosh, the list was endless. Obviously, they had the Gift too. So they moved to Know. I mean, we surely were a bother to them. Can you imagine a lawyer having to put up with folks like you and me every single day? They really didn’t have a choice, you see?

How much people looked up to them… Oh gosh. People were in awe of them. Everyone wanted to be like them. Everyone wanted to move to Know and become a lawyer. But it wasn’t that easy of course. The question was:

Would you be allowed in Know? Did you have the Gift?

At the island, highly-trained officials checked each and every newcomer. They gave you 16 cards with passages in different languages and told you to translate them into English.

Most people couldn’t.

Don’t know why…

4.

The fifth day came the scientists. “Archaea,” “Transcriptome,” “Joule”… Highly-trained officials checked each and every newcomer. They gave you pen and paper and told you to draw a perfect diamond.

Most people couldn’t.

Don’t know why…

5.

The sixth day came the computer people. “Memex,” and “Hypertext,” and “Cybernetics”… And just as they boarded the ship to leave for Know, they heard this loud voice from the dock:It was a man named Ted Nelson. They say he was a sociologist and philosopher and pioneer in new technologies, but I don’t completely believe that. If he had the Gift, why didn’t he board the ship with the others, you see? 

Nelson was furious. He ordered the computer people to get off the ship at once. They did. Frightened, they gathered around him. And he stood on a box and yelled:

Down with the computer priesthood! Down with intellectual intimidation! Computers are for everyone! The elderly and kids too! I declare a new era of “Computer Lib“! You must all go home right now and figure out for yourselves the promise and beauty of computers. You may not consider yourselves “experts” until you can explain how computers can augment the mind — everyone’s mind! — and enrich the daily lives of all the people on this planet. You must then go door-to-door to teach computers. NOW!

Isn’t it kind of crazy, what Nelson did? The computer people obliged. They are still teaching commoners about computers. The wild thing is that commoners are teaching commoners too. And in fact most people have come to consider themselves “computer people.”

I’m not one of them. I don’t think I have the Gift. I shall resist Nelson. There’s a place for Knowers in this world. One has to respect that.

6.

The seventh day was a day of rest.

Now I’m going to ask you for a really dumb favor. Don’t tell anyone, ok? Since we are sitting around doing nothing, do you mind taking a good look inside my eyes? I know it’s going to sound weird, but somewhere deep in my head, I think I’m feeling a quivering vapor.

***

[Inspired by:

Wardrip-Fruin, N. and N. Montfort, eds., 2003. The New Media Reader, pp. 301-338. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press

The breathtaking Starr, P. 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry, p. 34. New York: Basic Books.

Just one excerpt for the sharing (there are so many…):

The guides to domestic medicine usually emphasized an intention to simplify the language of medicine. They argued that medicine was filled with unnecessary obscurity and complexity, and should be made intelligible and practicable. John C. Gunn’s Domestic Medicine, which appeared in 1830 and by mid-century replaced Buchan’s work as the popular favorite, was described on the title page as written “In Plain Language, Free from Doctor’s Terms…Intended Expressly for the Benefit of Families…Arranged on a New Simple Plan, by Which the Practice of Medicine is Reduced to Principles of Common Sense.” Gunn maintained that Latin names for common medicines and diseases were “originally made use of to astonish the people” and aid the learned in deception and fraud. “The more nearly we can place men on a level in point of knowledge, the happier we would become in society with each other, and the less danger there would be of tyranny…”]

[Photographs: Buttonhooks (Ellis Island); Eye examination for “Trachoma” (i.e., pink eye) (Ellis Island); Literacy test (Ellis Island); Now that you’re off the boat, sick and scared and depleted, “Can you draw a diamond?” test (Ellis Island)]

***

Dear reader,

I am closing this entry with a postscript, a practice I saw on the beautiful blog of one of my students and decided to steal.

I hope that my liberal appropriation of Ellis Island didn’t offend you. Please do not rely on my story for facts about what actually happened on Ellis Island between the 1890s and the 1950s. My story is fictional. It diverges significantly from the historical record (e.g., the vast majority of immigrants were, in fact, accepted in the US in a matter of hours; the literacy test required individuals 16 years of age and older to read one passage in their native language, etc.). My story is not about immigration. It borrows (and crudely transforms) elements from the Ellis Island story to grapple with issues concerning professionalization and the cultural construction of knowledge, education, and power.

My family visited Ellis Island for the first time last weekend, at the urging of my daughter who begged for the trip in celebration of her 10th birthday. As someone who (strongly) dislikes long lines, security checkpoints, and crowds, I obliged with apprehension. Turns out it was the most profound “museum” experience of my life. It raised many questions for me about knowledge, expertise, power, authority, liberty, and freedom to dream and grow. It was disturbing. I couldn’t help but make connections to Ted Nelson. It clearly touched my daughter too who, for the first time in an educational setting like this, asked me for pen and paper and began taking notes. Why she focused on the chalk markings that were placed on immigrants’ clothing after a six-second examination, I am not sure. What I do know is that she understood that these markings were counted against you and could lead to your deportation from the United States. I think that shocked her, especially when she saw “pregnancy” (“Pg”) on the list, a condition she hadn’t before considered a liability.

It’s all about the lenses we wear, isn’t it?

I dedicate this blog entry to her.            

Dear Mr. Engelbart,

Yesterday I knew nothing about you. Today I learned that you invented key features of the mouse, the window, the word processor, the hyperlink, and the Internet, among other priceless technological staples without which I could barely function today. Now I’m not a techie myself, Mr. Engelbart, and although I will thank you for your revolutionary inventions, I’ll confess that there’s something else about you that has left an even bigger impression on me. Your spirit.

I don’t mean to pry, Mr. Engelbart, but can you tell me more about you? Below are my questions. They are just three. Goes without saying that if there’s any you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to, of course.

1.

In your early 20s, while working as an electrical engineer in California, you devoted your free time “to searching for professional goals; for some reason [you] wanted to invest the rest of [your] heretofore aimless career toward making the most difference in improving the lot of the human race. […] Within weeks [you] had committed [your] career to ‘augmenting the human intellect'” in order to help “boost mankind’s ability to deal with complex, urgent problems.” In fact, you determined that this latter goal “would be an attractive candidate as an arena in which a young person might try to ‘make the most difference.'”

Mr. Engelbart, how many, would you say, fully employed electrical engineers in the 1940s found their careers “aimless” and took time to contemplate how to make the most difference in bettering the human condition? More importantly, how many young folks in their 20s, would you say, felt empowered enough to sit back and imagine how they, themselves, were going to, um, just elevate humanity to a level never seen before, by transforming it into an effective solver of urgent and complex scientific and social problems? Mr. Engelbart, what gave you at the time that restlessness? The confidence? The inspiration? What enabled you to see yourself so big and capable? What fed your determination to change not humanity’s surroundings, but humanity itself?

I want to know because I think that our world today needs more, many more, augmented imaginations, augmented determinations, augmented visions, and augmented beliefs in the capacity of oneself to make the fantastical real. If you let me take a quick peak at your spirit, I might be able to pass a tiny bit of your bigness to others. Will you?

2.

If I understand it correctly, your conceptual framework for “augmenting human intellect” involves:

“increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble.”

Mr. Engelbart, I think I have a sense for what you imagined. I just gave a short lecture to a class of engineers and scientists about the “ethic of care.” As part of my preparation, I sat in front of my computer and, with the click of a mouse, was able to pull up oceans of information relevant to my topic, including the works of folks who have thought long and hard about how the ethic of care can help engineers and scientists specifically serve humanity better. I even found a wonderful video presentation about Carol Gilligan, one of the founders of the ethic of care, that deepened my understanding of the subject. Of course, the multilayered knowledge I gathered in a few hours did not help solve any complex, urgent, or insoluble world problems. But the human-machine system that I used — or, more accurately, that I became a part of — could just as easily be used toward grand goals in the very same manner that it helped me prepare my talk.

In 1962, you wrote that the types of complex and insoluble problems that you envisioned finally being resolved by an augmented human intellect were problems of scientists, academics, and various other professionals: diplomats, lawyers, designers, etc. I am curious: What kinds of problems, specifically, did you have in mind? In what ways was the complexity and urgency of these problems growing at an increasing rate back in the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s? What made you concerned about these problems?

I’m asking because I find that the augmentation of the human intellect, via the augmentation of human interaction with artifacts-language-methodology, is helping not only professionals but also many ordinary people to finally address (and sometimes even resolve) complex and seemingly insoluble problems. These problems, like for example community exposures to toxic chemicals, or flawed and misleading scientific studies, or misguided and unjust laws, or abusive government policies and practices, are sometimes created by the professionals you envisioned benefiting the most from your Framework.

When you were dreaming big about “improving the lot of the human race,” were you thinking about giving voice to people who often go unheard? Or is this type of empowerment that we see today an unintended consequence of your dream? Were you thinking things like democracy, public participation, justice?

3.

It is said that you consider your “Framework” (does this term refer to the augmentation of the human intellect through the proper harnessing of new technologies?) as your most significant contribution to the field of new media. In 1988, you wrote:

Metaphorically, I see the augmented organization or institution of the future as changing, not as an organism merely to be a bigger and faster snail, but to achieve such new levels of sensory capability, speed, power, and coordination as to become a new species–a cat.

New levels of sensory capability, speed, power, and coordination? Mutating from snail to cat? Mr. Engelbart, do you think we humans, previously parts of snail, have the wisdom it takes to handle ourselves with dignity and greatness as parts of cat? Do you think we have it in us to maneuver adroitly and with caution toward a better world? Or are we more likely to lose ourselves in our newly acquired claws?

Thank you so much for considering my questions.

I so look forward to hearing from you.

With great respect,

Yanna

[Inspired by Wardrip-Fruin, N. and N. Montfort, eds., 2003. The New Media Reader, pp. 93-108. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.]

Bedtime story?! It’s too late my sweetie. You must go to sleep.

Ok then…

A quick one. From my childhood or made up?

Both?!

Hey you! Give me a minute to think.

Ok.

Are you warm enough?

Are you ready?

One day, when I was in 4th grade just like you, my friend Alexandra — remember Alexandra? — well, she came running down the street to tell me the strangest thing of all: that deep in the woods adjacent to our houses lived a veeeery old man, who had just invited us all, I mean everyone in town, to a feast. His name was Norbert Wiener. Mr. Nor — as we quickly started calling him — was a mathematician. And a chemist. And a biologist! And zoologist! Wild, huh? But most of all he loved reading philosophy. He spent his days in this beauuuutiful log cabin thinking about people. He was so very interested in understanding how we organize in groups. Like in families, or in clubs, or in countries, or in religions, you know, all the different ways we team up and interact. Well, Mr. Nor was fascinated by these connections. He wanted to know how we relate to each other, to the things around us, to the environment, to the world.

He wanted to know how we make each other happy. How we make each other sad. How we make our lives better. And sometimes worse. So, listen to this: He decided that if he really wanted to understand people, he needed to understand their tools! Know why? What do tools help us do?

Right! Change the world we live in! Make it more like the world we want.

So Mr. Nor began to study how we make our tools work. And how we could create even better tools. And how we use our tools. And what our tools do when we use them. And then all of a sudden he was struck by this very unsettling question: Is there any possibility our tools ever use us?

Mr. Nor began losing sleep. He tossed and turned aaaaaall night, eeeeeevery night, thinking about this question. One Wednesday morning, smack in the middle of the work week, he decided to take a break to go on a long walk. He wanted time away from everything. Time to just be. He slipped into his boots, put on his hat, grabbed his walking stick, and took off. He walked and walked, up and down hills, through winding leafy paths, into dark pockets of tall trees, out into sunny clearings, feeling the cool breeze fill up his lungs, wondering if the boundary between his self and the world around him was ever real. Was he — are we — autonomous beings, he wondered, separable from the tools we make to interact with the world? Or are we in relationship with these tools, capable of becoming their master, but vulnerable to being gobbled up by them as well?

The answer came to Mr. Nor like a heavy weight on his soul. Our capacity to interact with the world and change it, opens ourselves to change, he thought. Changes can be cherished or dreaded, but the most dangerous changes of all are the ones we don’t even notice. Mr. Nor knew from personal experience. His greatest contribution to the world, the tool that gave him so much pride, was made possible by his participation in the vast people-machine that gave birth to the atomic bomb. He was part of this machine, at first without even realizing it. But when the war was finally over and he had seen the destruction that all these seemingly great tools had caused, he stepped off the machine. He called for a new breed of scientist who cared about the people their tools may affect and who would work painstakingly to prevent harm. Disapproving government secrecy that could lead people like him astray, Mr. Nor said:

We shall have to realize that while we may make the machines our gods and sacrifice men to machines, we do not have to do so. If we do so, we deserve the punishment of idolators. It is going to be a difficult time. If we can live through it and keep our heads, and if we are not annihilated by war itself and our other problems, there is a great chance of turning the machine to human advantage, but the machine itself has no particular favor for humanity.

On his way back to his cabin, Mr. Nor became convinced that what makes scientists strong against the devouring power of their tools is their humanity. And the way to feed one’s humanity is by taking time to rest, to engage with others, to notice and participate in the world that surrounds us. Slowly, Mr. Nor took off his hat, turned it upside-down into a small sack, and began filling it with mushrooms, potatoes, pine nuts, spinach, squash, walnuts, rhubarb, and so many other delicious foods that he found on his path.

What? Yes. And green beans. How could I forget!

He then called everyone in town to invite them to a biiiiiig feast that he promised to host every Wednesday night — smack in the middle of the work week! — for the rest of his life, for leisure and merriment and the nurturing of the human connections that he thought matter the most. Alexandra’s mom was one of the first people he called.

We all went.

The feast was like magic. Mr. Nor had made more food than I had ever seen in my life, spread on this loooong kitchen table with eight legs. Gosh was it delicious. Then he sat in a small, wooden chair and told us stories. At the end of the gathering, many hours later, with this warm smile on his face, he announced that he had never felt more content in his life. His hat, he said, the one that had helped him collect the nuts and the vegetables, had become his favorite tool.

Are you still awake?

No… You won’t get to meet him unfortunately. But I could take you to his log cabin some day. His hat is still sitting upside-down on the kitchen table.

…

[Inspired by Wiener, N. 1954. Men, Machines, and the World About. In N. Wardrip-Fruin and N. Montfort, 2003. eds., The New Media Reader, pp. 67-72. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.]