A few slides for a lecture for DIKULT104 at UiB on the history of hypertext and information organization.

1. Informasjonsorganisering
og hypertext
DIKULT104 (våren 2011)

2. Major shifts in
communication
• Writing (early writing existed 2-3000 years B.C.; writing was still
controversial to Plato)
• Printing press (China, 11 th century, Gutenberg, c. 1439)
• Broadcast media (20 th century)
• Internet (late 20 th century)

3. Writing will destroy
memory
Plato: Phaedrus

4. Plato: Written texts are unresponsive
SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that
writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of
the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask
them a question they preserve a solemn silence. And
the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine
that they had intelligence, but if you want to know
anything and put a question to one of them, the
speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And
when they have been once written down they are
tumbled about anywhere among those who may or
may not understand them, and know not to whom
they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are
maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect
them; and they cannot protect or defend
themselves.
PHAEDRUS: That again is most true.
Plato: Phaedrus

5. 1450s: The printing press
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461532797/Early_Printing_Press.html

6. Qualities of print that led to
cultural change:
1. Dissemination
2. Standardisation
3. Reorganisation
4. Data collection
5. Preservation
6. Amplification and Reinforcement

7. The “Wicked Bible” of 1631
Typo: printers forgot the word “not”
“Thou shalt commit adultery.”
(= Du skal bryte ekteskapet.)
(standardization)

8. Ortelius: Theatrum orbis mundum
(1570-1598)
Collaboration, revisions, data collection.

9. Qualities of print that led to
cultural change:
1. Dissemination
2. Standardisation
3. Reorganisation
4. Data collection
5. Preservation
6. Amplification and Reinforcement

10. “Freedom of the press is guaranteed
only to those who own one.”
Abbott Joseph Liebling, 1960

11. Technological determinism
Technology causes our behaviour, our society
and our culture to change.
Cultural determinism
Culture causes us to develop certain
technologies.
Co-construction
Technology and culture develop together – they
are mutually dependent.

13. There is a new profession of trail
blazers, those who find delight in the
task of establishing useful trails through
the enormous mass of the common
record. The inheritance from the master
becomes, not only his additions to the
world's record, but for his disciples the
entire scaffolding by which they were
erected.
Vannevar Bush, ”As We May Think”

15. Hypertext
”Well, by
”hypertext” I
mean non-
sequential
writing – text
that branches
and allows
choices to the
reader, best
read at an
interactive
screen.”

16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_2T7KH6RA
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