class no. 6 - Digital Culture Course 2013-2014

1. -
–
23/3/2014

2. Books - from Containers to Interconnected Media

3. MARGARET ATWOOD: Do new technologies change
what plot devices are available for writers of fiction?
The answer is, of course. So it has always been.
How to move a character from here to there? (Horse. Boat.
Coach. Dogcart, as in Sherlock Holmes. Train. Streetcar.
Automobile. Plane.)

4. MARGARET ATWOOD: Do new technologies change
what plot devices are available for writers of fiction?
How to eliminate a character in a violent or murderous fashion?
(Rock. Club. Knife. Sword. Own petard. Gun. Fooling with their
GPS so they drive into the sea.)
How to have them communicate? (Smoke signals. Drums.
Cuneiform. Scroll. Postal Service. Telegram. Phone. Hole in a
tree, if a John le Carré spy. E-mail. Writing on your hand so the
mini-drones can’t see or hear it.)

5. Paul Otlet
The Televised Book - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSyfZkVgasI
Alex Wright: The web that wasn’t -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72nfrhXroo8

6. H. G. Wells World Brain (1938)
"In a universal organization and clarification of
knowledge and ideas... in the evocation, that is, of
what I have here called a World Brain... in that and in
that alone, it is maintained, is there any clear hope of
a really Competent Receiver for world affairs... We do
not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic
parties or class rule, we want a widespread world
intelligence conscious of itself."

7. H. G. Wells World Brain (1938)?
“There is no practical obstacle whatever now to the
creation of an efficient index to all human
knowledge, ideas and achievements, to the
creation, that is, of a complete planetary memory for
all mankind. And not simply an index; the direct
reproduction of the thing itself can be summoned to
any properly prepared spot”

8. Google and the World Brain (2012)
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http://www.worldbrainthefilm.com/

9. The Art of Google Books
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theartofgooglebooks.tumblr.com

10. Turing's Cathedral - George Dyson
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11. Turing's Cathedral - George Dyson (2012)
We are not scanning all those books to be read by
people," explained one of my hosts after my talk.
"We are scanning them to be read by an AI."

12. Turing's Cathedral George Dyson (2012)
Google is building a new, content-addressable layer
overlying the von Neumann matrix underneath. The
details are mysterious but the principle is simple: it's
a map. And, as Dutch (and other) merchants learned
in the sixteenth century, great wealth can be
amassed by Keepers of the Map.

13. Turing's Cathedral George Dyson (2012)
“We call this a "search engine" — a content-
addressable layer that makes it easier for us to find
things, share ideas, and retrace our steps.”
However, once the digital universe is thoroughly
mapped, and initialized by us searching for
meaningful things and following meaningful paths, it
will inevitably be colonized by codes that will
start doing things with the results

14. Turing's Cathedral George Dyson (2012)
Computers have been getting better and better at
providing answers — but only to questions that
programmers are able to ask.

15. Bjork – Bachlorette
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJNOOBOyn2

16. Frederic Kaplan: How I Built an Information Time
Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Ev4rU27HY

17. “The Li(ve)brary”
On the future of the library as an institution; speculative
thoughts regarding its architecture, furnishings, mission and
appliances; bridging the digital/analog divide in library
design today
http://metalab.harvard.edu/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmYHx9a5EHU