Intro to Computational Media W eek 2: Properties of the Medium

1
Ted Nelson Computer Lib / Dream Machines

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media

2
What are computers for?

• Controlled systems
• Impersonal tools for functionality
• Machines to perform work
• Centrally controlled

A personal device A medium for
expression Vessels for experience Independent
and Interconnected
vs.

3
Computation as a Medium(echoes of McLuhan)

• Continues the tradition of literature,
  scholarship, and freedom
• We live in media, as fish live in water
• But
• All electronic media are not alike (p. 306)
• Computers will be embraced everywhere
• Emotional expression

4
Computation as a Medium

• big pictures can be conveyed in more powerful
  ways than they know. The reason they dont know
  it is that they see the content in the media, and
  not how the content is being gotten across to
  them

5
Computation as a Medium

• The use of computers to help people write, think
  and show. But I think presentation by computer is
  a branch of show biz and writing, not of
  psychology, engineering, or pedagogy

6
The Personal Computer

• Before the first personal computer kit, Nelson
  predicts the importance of the PC in the future
  of computation as an expressive medium.
• Previously, the mainframe and client-server model
  dominated computation.
• Individual expression over centralized control

7
Computers can change our understanding of the
world

• Critique of formal education
• Items, sequences, dialog
• Teaching means anticipating and structure
  responses to common misunderstandings
• Teaching means maintaining the order of the
  educational system

8
Computers can change our understanding of the
world

• Computers offer the first real chance to let the
  human mind grow to its full potential
• Give the student control over knowledge
• Teach orientation and self-discovery
• Involvement over validation
• Optimism or naïveté?

9
Fantics

• The artful design of control systems is a
  deeply misunderstood area, in no way deconfused
  by calling it human factors the problem is
  having it be a comprehensible whole.

10
Fantics

• The art and science of getting ideas across
• The importance of PRESENTATION
• The artful design of control systems
• Computers should be subservient to human needs,
  not structure them
• Prefigures HCI

11
Nelson the Visionary

• Hypermedia - responsive computer-based materials
• Hypertext - writing that branches or performs on
  request
• Stretchtext - zooming in or out in detail in text
• Thinkertoys - using simulations for learning
  modeling
• Xanadu - an open publishing system