Thursday, October 19, 2006

web writing assignment 2 - memex vs woodstove

In their earlier stages, new concepts and technological innovations are typically on the receiving end of a wide variety of feelings. Many people simply adjust, some totally embrace, and quite a few always complain because they do not like or are not prepared for the changes brought on by the technology in question. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his 1846 article "Fire-Worship," shows himself to be one of the complainers, at least in the case of a new device which was around during his day and revolutionizing the way people heated their homes.

The insidious heater Hawthorne rants about is none other than the friendly wood stove.


Doesn't look so bad here, does it?

Closed, dark, and very antisocial according to Hawthorne, this iron contraption robbed him of the pleasure of sitting by an open fire while writing or socializing. What he fails to take into account, however, are the many benefits of the stove. Many of us today remember sitting by them in the houses of various (often much older) friends and relatives growing up, and surely most anyone can think of at least a few buildings still heated by them a century and a half after Hawthorne predicted their virtual destruction of society. My personal memories hold quite a positive view of the stove. It has the ability to pretty much bake anyone and anything within a three-foot radius and do much damage to any object unlucky enough to touch its surface, but when handled correctly and regarded with respect it gives off happy popping noises and warms everyone in the room to the bone very nicely. It can also dry clothes and other items placed near it and, depending on the design, may be able to boil water and cook food. Today we have heat powered mostly by petroleum or electricity (or a combination of the two) that lacks many of these features. However, I'm not about to start complaining that furnaces and space heaters are killing my old friend and destroying my world.

If Hawthorne's article represents a reactionary view of technology, Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" lies all the way on the opposite end of the spectrum. In this article, written roughly a century after Hawthorne's, Bush speaks to scientists who have been involved in WWII research and says they should turn their energy toward advancing humanity and using new technology to create devices to help us organize our vast collection of knowledge in a way that we can easily store and access any information we need. Many of the ideas he presents in this writing, though they may seem sort of far-fetched at first look, bear striking resemblance (in concept at least) to things we use today. These things he speculates about which we now have include photography devices, personal computers and the Internet, and even voice recognition and optical character recognition. The fact that he could not actually bring these devices into existence does little or nothing to damage the power of the ideas. The most intriguing idea in the article is the Memex, a mechanical computer designed to use a system of photography, projection, and microfilm in conjunction with buttons and levers to act as a powerful research station.


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. -Vannevar Bush, As We May Think

The Internet, though it is hugely successful and growing rapidly, is still a relatively new concept and is therefore subject to these extremes of thought. In only about ten years it has undeniably changed the way we as humans do many things, from communication to research to even routine tasks like ordering food and paying bills, with some of these changes being very positive and others understandably hurting us. Some have had strong negative reactions, of course. Others have totally immersed themselves to an unhealthy degree. Some have raised interesting, though strange, questions. Many have adapted and realized the Net's potential to act as an enrichment to our "real" lives rather than a soul-sucking void, and among these there are many who understand its potential for both good and bad and work to keep it aligned as closely as possible with the former. Here is an example.

Personally, I feel like I identify most with the last group I described and with Bush's article. I feel that the dawn of the Internet has brought his Memex idea to life and even surpassed it in scope. Services such as Wikipedia, The Linux Documentation Project, Erowid, and many more have sought to collect as much knowledge as possible in one place. Some deal with certain subjects and cater to certain types of people; others are universal and can be extremely helpful to everyone able to use them. The goal of each is education and research. Though technically not all stored in the same place like the information on Bush's machines, they are all available to anyone with a computer and access to the Net from any location. On a wider scale, many sites on the Web as a whole, some related and some not, are linked to each other for various reasons. One can start browsing with one subject from one site and end up with something totally different from a very different place by simply following links.

When weblogs are brought into the equation the whole concept resembles the Memex even more. Bush writes, "When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard...Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space...It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails." He also mentions the ability to insert one's own thoughts and link them to the other information. In my opinion Wikis and, to a greater extent, blogs, are very real incarnations of this idea. My first blog experience that really sold me on the idea was when a friend sent me a link to Shannon Larratt's Zentastic. (Warning: This blog sometimes contains graphic content.) I thought it was really cool how he could just post whatever he wanted and insert links to anything at any point in the writing. Thoughts on life, things that happen to him, information on events and services his friends and acquaintances might be interested in, even pictures of anything at all. Associative indexing at its finest, this was what totally set it off. I still read Zentastic on a somewhat regular basis and learn a lot through the different articles and sites to which it directs me.

I thought it would be really nice to have this same power and for years wanted a blog of my own, even if for no other reason than to give friends insight into my strange world and vent some of the many thoughts that are constantly flying through my head. Its primary use is not research, as Bush would have it, but then again I'm not exactly a scientist. Hawthorne's reactionary conservative viewpoint would have me depressed and wasting away inside from a lack of direct face-to-face communication caused by sitting in front of an electronic box with a screen, but I choose to see it in a more positive light. I realize there is a potential for harm, but I respect what computers, the Net, and blogs have done for global society and I look forward to the crazy new innovation the future surely holds.

The REAL evil of the Internet...and the force behind it...haha.

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