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

2. 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”

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

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

8. what does “digital media” mean?

9. 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.

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

11. 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.

12. David Bowie, e.g., “The Jean Genie” (or not?)
example “cut-ups”
William Burroughs, excerpt from Naked Lunch
William Burroughs,“Origin and Theory of the Tape Cut-Ups” (3:43)
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!)
collection=naropa&collectionid=naropa_william_s_burroughs2
David Bowie, e.g., “The Jean Genie” (or not?)
Sawad Brooks, Global City

13. 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:

14. 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

15. engelbart: cv (continued)
“firsts” of the augmentation research center
the mouse
2d display editing
hypermedia & hypermedia
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
and,
sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite

16. 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)

17. 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

18. 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”?

19. 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]

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

21. 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

22. 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

23. engelbart: genealogy
bush’s memex [p. 98]
engelbart’s note and file system [p ]; 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

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

25. 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

26. 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.

27. engelbart: what is thinking?
thinking as symbolic processing [see pp ; 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]

28. 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]

29. 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

30. 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

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

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