User:Tancre/Special Issue 8/Computers for Cynics

Computers for cynics | Ted Nelson

The myth of technology

computer world > imaginary arbitrary made-up stuff made by someone, usually imitation of the past, based on ancient traditions, modern oversemplifications.
Ted invented the back button and had to fight for it > ideas and fights behind technology

usually what people say is technology, actually is not:

• I don't understand technology (I don't understand the interface of this camera)
• You can't argue with technology (of course you can)
• Packaging and conventions are not technology (Iphone, Windows) underneath there are the real technologies (TCP/IP, DNS, encryption, audio compression...)

myth of determinism
technology is determinate, objective, inevitable, the nature of computers is given. If you can't do something (as marginal notes on PDFs or Word or Web pages) is not because computer don't allows but actually if because the people who designed it didn't allowed it. If you give the same problem to 100 software desinger you'll get 75 different methods. Politics of ideasThere are thousands of different computers religion which pushes to their ideas and wanted you to trust they are the wave of the future but there are no objective criterias. Who gets to decide? Who gets to design? No objectivity just fight to control and direct. Interactive software as movies, events on the screen that affect the heart and mind of the viewer with consequences. Software are not technology.
(short evolution of ASCII, history of compromises. no technology but culture politics and about capture for many or a religion, designed to trap and entangle (capture worlds))

computer world is composed by:

• techies - see possibilities
• schemers - build and combine often not knowing the possibilities
• sheep - just choose one from what they see

The nightmare of files and hierarchical directories

It is teached that the basic fundamental structure of computer systems are files in hierarchical directories, folders. (but are the same thing). Lies! They pretend to describe the world as it has to be, but in reality they describe only as it is, because is a convention. It can be in different ways. but everything is hierarchical.. NO! this is metaphisics not science. also everything is cross-connected, interpenetrating and overlapping but this is not only metaphisics because peoples life,projects,concearns is like that. >> We should rapresent this.

from punch cards to lump file with a name. World is assumed to be made of data lumps.. but what about metadata? Metadata is what is not in the lump, but is part of the same structure. The metadata is putted as second-class datas. backslash /.file / you can't read from windows to mac/unix doesn't allow spaces in file names >>problem with files from win or mac

directories > a file with a list of the name of all the other file. It make sense if oyu have a lot of projects but...directory system became crystallized with multics and unix.
- file names could have any length (lie) - file directories could be stacked to any depth (lie).....Only conceptually is true but not readable.
They became a standard but different file system (NTFS - windows / HFS+ - mac) but doesn't allow to communicate each other. Prisons for users crammed into one system. The file system works with a couple of talbles (inode - list of position and ength occupied by files / overlay table of paths name applied over the inodes...2 functionn copy and delete, sva and read the files) on the drive and a matching program inside the computer. It makes sense only in the hierarchical file system, in unix the philosophy was that everything is a file.
Technical issues:

• you can run out of inodes because you can't put a little file on it, the inode table is exhausted.
• running out of space in the directory names or depth. The path can become too long and the file lost.
• DCIM (digital camera images) misterious name and places.

nightmare for several users, no possibility of annotation, characters not allowed, difficulty to change directories because maybe they refer to somewhere else (hard links and soft links from unix), difficulty to remember the position. Backups become black holes of strange arrangements of the past, data archeology.

To try ry to organize your work is a problem >> starting over and controlling our work and understanding but starting from scratch is super difficult

It All Went Wrong at Xerox PARC

People from Xerox PARC are treated as gods. From bad old geeky computer with keyboard commands and bad text editign programs, to: mouse pointing / multiple windows / pull down menues / applications working in separate windows / word processing with fancy fonts (desktop publishing)/ GUI

Other graphical interfaces are possible but... prehistory >> the park user interface(PUI), Bob Taylor, Alan Kay
1972 Altos computer > WYSIWYG, 1979 Jobs > 1984 Macintosh than Microsoft how tech systems got out of parc? there are two important tech systems developed at parc:

• editing program with all the fonts > Cahrles Simone - Bravo, then he went to Microsoft > Microsoft Word than Office
• program to make printers work with all the fonts > John Warnock -Inter press, then went to Microsoft > PostScript language than PDF format

Downside the social aspect, there were a lot of friction between Parc and the rest of computer world:

• They broke the team of Douglas Engelbart (Bob Taylor was his former sponsor and betray him)
• Unpleasant and aggressive atmosphere
• icon and windows as feague leaf on the conventional OS, no change in the OS just hidden / directories becomes folders but no real change
• safe operations (move,copy..)are easier VS unix (one character wrong could destroy everything), but they change the system in a noway whatever
• closed, you can't change the PUI / no undo / no transpointing windows / no zoom, locked screen, fixed size (ideas have not fixed size)
• They took away the right to program. UNIX shell scripts invented by Frenchman Louie, encouraged casual program and led to the C language
• They created the application but it is an enclosed file / you can't mix or match what they do / you can't change the interface of applications (as the OS) / you can't script movement of content or pieces / you and your data are prisoner of each application and constricted to move from one to another
• They dump down electronic documents replacing structure with fonts VS Doug Engelbart's first text system with overlayed connections / one file = one document / simulation of paper but under glass(you can't write on it) / you can't rearrenge the text freely but only side to side tab setting / feague leaf on the OS and file structure
• you can't protect part of the document, only all of it (extention of the conventional file model of UNIX)
• lock size of 72 dpi matched to your WYSIWYG printer

>> paper simulator, computer for secretaries but not high-level secretaries(typist), not type but just put the changes and standard operations, cut-and-paste. Craft of writing consists mainly of rewriting, and rewriting of rearrangement..This is the cut-and-paste. They made an abominable editing mechanism, propagandistically hidden behind the former terminology. Fonts VS visible structure.