Bringing Technology to the People

First, and most important it was necessary for computers to have a language beyond mathematics. The vision of Grace Hopper made it possible to communicate with computers using English. At Remington Rand her idea was not accepted for 3 years. In the meantime, she published her first paper on the subject, compilers, in 1952. "I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL, a computer language for data processors."

Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013), whose vision of collaboration using computer technology to help solve the urgent and complex problems of all of humanity, died on July 2, 2013. His comrades believed that his ideas were never fully realized due to his ideals and generosity of spirit. For example, he resisted patenting the "mouse" he'd invented and it eventually fell into the public domain. The robotic rigidity of institutions is also to blame -- most powerful technology companies in American relegated him to R&D. Ted Nelson, professor and inventor of the first hypertext project, delivered Engelbart's eulogy on December 9, 2013. In his tearful delivery, he said the "...real ashes to be mourned are the ashes of Doug’s great dreams and vision, that we dance around in the costume party of fonts that swept aside his ideas of structure and collaboration...Perhaps his notion of accelerating collaboration and cooperation was a pipe dream in this dirty world of organizational politics, jockeying and backstabbing and euphemizing evil." Engelbart articulated his ideas for collaboration publicly in what is known as The Mother of all Demos delivered on December 9, 1968, over a half a century ago. Some of what he described is still in the process of being realized in commercial forms such as Skype, Google Docs, and more.

 Ted Nelson inserts a bit of attitude into this history. He detests the evils of limitations and compromise. He questions corporate control. His technical ideas may have not have had as widespread impact as others here, but his spirit, and that of his ilk, is what helped made computing a tool available to most rather than a select few.

Steve Wozniak believed that computers could be beautiful machines. Not just utilitarian devices with some industrial design on the outside, but beautiful from the inside out. Art objects. The idea was radical, and has changed our lives. We are now willfully living with computing technology all of the time.

Roland Barthes' From Work to Text

How does a 'Text' relate to a 'Work'...

1) Methodology: "the Text is experienced only in an act of production" Text is active, the Work is fixed and passive.
2) Classification: The Work can be classified, the text defies this..."the Text is always paradoxical"
3) Signification: the Work..."is moderately symbolic" "the Text is radically symbolic" The Work is a sign, but the text is a fluid tapestry of signs.
4) Plurality: the Text is "an irreducible plural" There is no single definitive Text to a specific Work.
5) Filiation: The Work is linked to its author. The Text is a wild child that may at best only have visitation obligations.
6) Consumption: The Work is to be consumed, but the Text tempts us to play with our food. Pure consumption is boring. "to be bored means one cannot produce the text, open it out, set it going."
7) Pleasure: "the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe" ...even the relationship of a reader to a book creates social space. The active reader is constantly interacting with, and essentially rewriting, the work.

These ideas are commonly only applied to written works, but a larger scope is implied here by Barthes in his reference to "the modern ('unreadable') text, the avant-garde film or painting." Would Rothko have been seemingly impenetrable to Barthes in the 1960s, when this was written? Is it that this idea of a Work/Text relationship is best seen in historic, traditional media? Do instagram posts possess these attributes?

 

Mark Rothko Untitled (1969)

• MOMA collection

Medium

Synthetic polymer paint and ink on paper

Dimensions

40 1/2 x 26 1/2" (102.2 x 67.4 cm)

Credit

Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc.

Object number

460.1986

Copyright

© 2019 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Department

Drawings and Prints

How to Cite an Instagram Post

http://www.easybib.com/guides/how-to-cite-an-instagram-post/

Chance creation

The Death of the Author

wikipedia is the ultimate author.

Related Ideas:

collapse of meaning; Multiplicities of meaning via varied human ecologies.

impossibility of originality; The scope of influence, conscious and unconscious.

multiple discovery; The evolution of scientific thinking as a social development.

the death of God; Nietzsche’s idea of the obsolescence of the 'God' concept.

Jean Michel Basquiat Documentary ***** The Radiant Child

Photography's False Impression of Objectivity

Panzani Advertisement from Barthes’s Rhetoric of the Image.

Stuff to think about via Barthes’s Rhetoric of the Image:

  Linguistic message within image;

    Denoted; What text is there?
    Connoted; What symbolism is there?

  Accompanied linguistic messages;

    Anchor; What am I looking at?
    Relay; What should I think when I see this?

  Literal messages;

    Representations of specific things.

  Symbolic messages;

    Cultural implications of specific objects represented.
    Cultural implications of juxtapositions. (symbolic color, cuisine, actions)
    Cultural implications of image classifications. (still life)

 Denoted message;

    Does the photograph exist as a trace of, or an equivalent of truth?
    Is the photograph always a lie?
    Can both of these ideas co-exist?

Connoted message;

    (We want to eat this)


Disclaimer; This is a mash-up of my notes from this essay and may not reflect the author's intent.