hypertext: as we may write fdm 20c introduction to digital media lecture 12.01.2005 warren sack / film & digital media department / university of california, santa cruz

last time waiting list course objectives syllabus and course requirements can we take your picture? two key points for the course when technologies connect or separate people, they become media. technologies embody social, political, cultural, economic and philosophical ideas and relationships. discussion: what are the politics of technology? activities: social networks & (human) boolean circuits some questions about the reading, bush’s essay “as we may think”

outline what are digital media? two more key points for the course tristan tzara, william burroughs, david bowie and the method of “cut-ups” + overview of mini-project one revisiting vannevar bush and his essay “as we may think” who is douglas engelbart? a reading of “augmenting human intellect” douglas engelbart’s famous demo who is ted nelson? hypertext as a new form of reading and writing

principles of ordering waiting list principles of ordering transfers have preference over non-transfers majors have preference over non-majors juniors have preference over sophomores sophomores have preference over frosh those who came the first day of class have preference over those who did not within categories, people have been randomly assigned a position important!!! if you are going to miss section, notify your ta. if you miss section, you risk losing your place in the course.

waiting list (currently space for top twenty) Michael Jacobs Andy Hamilton Diana Tsuchida Idil Tabanca Katie Bethune Krystle de Mesa Harish Pobbathi Catherine Gutierrez Mark (Marek) Belshki Sebastian Burke Craig Marlwaki Tyler Keeley

waiting list (currently place for top twenty) 13. Markos Moreno 14. Ronit Moreh 15. Colin Pitta 16. Aaron Scholl 17. Kristen McCurley 18. Pavan Chopra 19. Lamek Mehzum 20. Takis Kyriakopoulos 21. Mary Lieth 22. Michael Green 23. Cara Hipskind 24. Stacy Jung 25. Eugene Leonov 26. Ashley Lindquist 27. Andrew Peth 28. John Remigio 29. Timothy Huang

two key points When technologies connect or separate people, they become media. Technologies embody social, political, cultural, economic and philosophical ideas and relationships.

what does “digital media” mean?

When a medium is new, it is often used to simulate old media. keypoints When a medium is new, it is often used to simulate old media. New media do not replace old media, they displace them. both of these points are paraphrases of ideas from Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media.

today’s focus Hypertext: One way that digital media has been understood is as new forms of writing, reading and thinking.

Tristan Tzara's recipe for composing a poem To make a dadaist poem: Take a newspaper. Take a pair of scissors. Choose an article as long as you are planning to make your poem. Cut out the article. Then cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them in a bag. Shake it gently. Then take out the scraps one after the other in the order in which they left the bag. Copy conscientiously.

David Bowie, e.g., “The Jean Genie” (or not?) example “cut-ups” William Burroughs, excerpt from Naked Lunch http://www.epc.buffalo.edu/sound/mp3/sp/dial_a_poem_poets/big_ego/12-burroughs.mp3 William Burroughs,“Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups” (3:43) http://www.ubu.com/sound/burroughs.html William Burroughs, longer lecture by Burroughs. An example of cutting together newspaper stories starts at 7 minutes 20 seconds (1:16:13): note that Burrough’s doesn’t start his talk until the 4 minute mark (thanks for finding this Abram!) http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php? collection=naropa&collectionid=naropa_william_s_burroughs2 David Bowie, e.g., “The Jean Genie” (or not?) Sawad Brooks, Global City http://www.whitney.org/artport/commissions/codedoc/brooks.shtml

mini-project one write a short, narrative, preferably autobiographical hypertext as a series of webpages using the cut-up method of burroughs et al. more information: http://dmedia.ucsc.edu/FDM20c/Winter2005/mini-project1.html

engelbart: cv education employment ph.d. electrical engineering, uc berkeley b.eng., electrical engineering, uc berkeley b.s., electrical engineering, oregon state university employment director of the bootstrap institute director of the bootstrap project (stanford) senior scientist, mcdonnell douglas senior scientist, tymshare, inc. director, augmentation research center, sri researcher, stanford research institute (now sri international) assistant professor, electrical engineering, uc berkeley electrical engineer, naca ames laboratory (now nasa) electronic/radar technician, us navy

engelbart: cv (continued) “firsts” of the augmentation research center the mouse 2d display editing hypermedia & hypermedia email outline processing multiple window displays document version control shared-screen teleconferencing computer-aided meetings distributed client-server architecture virtual terminal protocols remote procedure call protocols more information www.bootstrap.org; and, sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite

common technologies of the 1960s computing of the 1960s common technologies of the 1960s standard computer i/o of the 1960s was hollerith cards and paper printouts standard computer-human interaction of the 1960s was batch processing research prototypes included... Ivan Sutherland’s MIT Dissertation, the Sketchpad system (1963) MIT Project MAC’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (1961) and later the Multiplexed Information and Computing Service (1969)

engelbart’s 1968 nls demo demo given to 1000 at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco with computers and support staff in Menlo Park

questions: augmenting human intellect what is the stated motivation of the research? what problem does this research address? who funded this research? what is the economics of the work (i.e., who will buy it?, sell it?, use it?) what is the stated genealogy of the technology? who are the “dramatis personae” of the article? what narrative strategies are employed in the article? othering: who are “we”? who are “they”? or, more specifically, how is a machine un/like a person? what is “thinking”? what is “reading”? what is “writing”?

engelbart: motivation “Man’s population and gross product are increasing at a considerable rate, but the complexity of his problems grows still faster, and the urgency with which solutions must be found becomes steadily greater… Augmenting man’s intellect, …, would warrant full pursuit by an enlightened society…” [p. 95]

engelbart: stated problem “augmenting human intellect” = better & faster comprehension + better & faster & more solutions to problems [see p. 95]

stanford research institute air force office of scientific research engelbart: funding stanford research institute air force office of scientific research arpa projects see j.c.r. licklider see also arpa contractors meeting letter from ivan sutherland (7-8 april 1966) sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/EngelbartPapers/Contents.html

engelbart: economics short term long term uses of the system could be envisioned with engelbart’s framework, but the multidisciplinary nature of the framework also made the uses of the system difficult to understand long term engelbart >> xerox parc >> apple engelbart >> personal computer industry and the products and companies involved in computer-supported cooperative work

engelbart: genealogy bush’s memex [p. 98] engelbart’s note and file system [p. 99-102]; cf., hollerith cards general references to psychology, computer programming, “physical technology,” “display technology,” industrial engineering, management science, systems analysis, information retrieval [p. 104]; and, “dozens of disciplines in engineering, mathematics, and the social life, and physical sciences” [p.95] but note how -- except for bush’s work -- all of the prior work is only vaguely referenced

englebart: dramatis personae “man” humans diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers [p. 95] architect (a man) and “his clerk” [pp. 96-97] vannevar bush [pp. 98-99] douglas engelbart (in a first person narrative) [pp. 99-102] “professional problem solvers” [p. 102] “you” and “joe” (in a hypothetical narrative) [pp. 102-

engelbart: narrative strategies “graphic vision”/science fiction narrated in the second person reporting style personal reflection speculative voice demo: don’t forget the demo, the strongest rhetoric in new media

engelbart: othering: the man/machine dichotomy H-LAM/T system: human using language, artifacts, methodology, in which he is trained “There are two separate domins of activity within the H-LAM/T system: that represented by the system, in which all explcit-human processes occur; and that represented by the artifacts, in which all explicit-artifact processes occur. ... Exchange across this [man-artifact] interface occurs when an explicit-human process is coupled to an explicit-artifact process. [p. 96] see diagram on page 96.

engelbart: what is thinking? thinking as symbolic processing [see pp. 98-99; i.e., his comments on the Memex] cf., Herbert Simon and Allen Newell’s understanding of humans and computers as symbolic processors thinking as writing: see p. 104 of his fictional narrative: “You are quite elated by this freedom to juggle the record of your thoughts, and by the way this freedom allows you to work them into shape. You reflected on this cut and try process really did appear to match the way you seemed to develop your thoughts. Golly, you could be writing math expressions, ad copy, or a poem, with the same type of benefit. You were ready to tell Joe that now you saw what he had been trying to tell you about matching symbol structuring to concept structuring...” [p. 104]

engelbart: what is reading? reading as rendering and restructuring: “...after a few passes through a reference, we very rarely go back to it in its original form. It sits in the archive like an orange rind with most of the real juice squeezed out.” [p. 108]

engelbart: what is writing? writing as thought/symbol (re)structuring: see, for instance, p. 101: “It became apparent that the final issuance from my work, the memo itself, would represent but one facet of a complex symbol structure that would grow as the work progressed

ted nelson: cv education inventor of hypertext b.a., philosophy, swarthmore m.a., sociology, harvard ph.d., media and governance, keio university inventor of hypertext

conclusion for today Hypertext: One way that digital media has been understood is as new forms of writing, reading and thinking.

next time tim berners-lee the world-wide web web artists including lisa jevbratt, the rsg collective, mark napier