“As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush, an article published in “The Atlantic” in 1945, essentially predicts the modern age of tablets/smartphones and other tiny devices. He starts off with the notion that it is already possible to record high volumes of information. Microfilm, records, etc, stenographs already existed for this very reason. However, how to easily access the information? It is one thing to say you can carry around some microfilm in your bag, it’s another to print out hundreds of pages of its information so you can actually read it and show it to others.
“Whenever logical processes of thought are employed—that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove—there is an opportunity for the machine.” But it goes beyond straight logic. Strict manners of thinking are great when working on a formula, but real life application of logical thought in non-mathematical terms requires the programing of more computations. Beyond this, it’s one thing to have all the knowledge of the world at your disposal but what good does it do you if you can not easily get to it or worse, if sorting through to find what you’re looking for is so time intensive and exhaustive that you don’t have the time to actually spend on the information you are trying to study.
He mentions how the human mind works by association. That’s often how today we deal with things on the web. There are many times that I think randomly of something and google it. Not because I need to know something so suddenly, but simply because I can. It can be simple, like a song lyric that was in my head in the morning, or thinking that someone on a television show looks familiar and so I hop on IMDB to find out where else I have seen her. “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” Of course, Bush here is imagining a giant computer of some sort, a piece of furniture and not a pocket sized kindle that can access the libraries of the world and this is pre-internet where you must imagine that all knowledge must be loaded directly on to the computer and no accessed across networks.
Bush wonders if someday it will be possible to make the introduction of the knowledge even easier – perhaps a direct connection from the brain to the machine. Maybe we think its far fetched today, but everything seemed far fetched at some point. Bush would not have been able to conceive of the smart phone or smart watch. These were things we saw even later on in the Jetsons as being something from a future far far away. But in a relatively short time, its here. Who is to say what technology will bring us tomorrow. Skynet? we will see.
In “Modernist Painting” by Clement Greenberg, the idea that stood out to me was that Modernism is about pushing the boundaries of art in its current state. You must look at your limitations and push against them or knowingly incorporate them into your work. Over time, Modernist work has become more “flat” and less sculptural. Greenberg posits that Modern Art is closer to science than ever before because it draws from a consistent methodology. It works within its own form without borrowing from others. Like the scientific method, it follows the trajectory of its own hypothesis. Modern Art, he says is self critical and the best art is personal. Yet, like all art before it, it is not always aware of itself in the moment.
I think it’s interesting how ties to the webolution can be drawn. Digital and web art cannot be haphazard. Choices should be made with a reason just as an artist makes a deliberate choice to paint flat vs sculptural. It’s not just simply doing something different for the sake of being different, but it’s an ongoing evolution. And what is emerging media. It’s name itself is telling you its an evolution. Just like what Greenberg says of Modern Art, emerging media tests theories about how we experience art and makes us question what we enjoy about art and how it makes us feel.
“Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee is a concise breakdown of the history of the web as it pertains to the end user -us and why it should be important to us that certain rights are protected. I was in college in the 1990s and I remember asking one of my computer engineering friends what the internet was. He told me that every time I sent an email I was using the internet. When I was on a group chat or used cross university messaging, I was using the internet. The thing I didn’t use so much at the time was the world wide web and that was primarily because it was ridiculously slow and loading a page on to my Mac Classic II. My little Mac was a workhorse however. At the time, I thought it was fast. It did everything I needed it to do and with 80MB of memory I had plenty of space for all my world processing documents!
It’s astonishing looking back now how fast it all changed and how the web has become such an integral part of my life and the world. It’s such a slippery slope dealing with all the issues of the web. We are getting to the point in our existence to lack of access to the internet is a potential detriment as governments seek to control their peoples. The web is great because its open, because there is so much. Some of us are too connected and some may not be enough, but with everything in a free society, it is a choice. With so much information on the web and some institutions (including libraries) closing or shrinking we need to provide more people with access to the internet.
Alina Learns to Code 