User:Joak/mediaobject

the mouse and the interrupt

In 1970 the editor of German magazine "Kunst" announced in PAGE #9 (the bulletin of the computer arts society), that they will publish there next edition under the cover-motif "computer art". In a questionary for computer artist the sixth question asked is "Do you interrupt the program-process for alteration?". To understand this question it's necessary to keep in mind the technological circumstances. At this time computer where execiting programs from the beginning to the end. Once the machine was running a program the only possibility to stop it was to switch of the power.

Comparing those old computers with this slick almost invisible machines on our desks nowadays, .... ---

• description of the computer nowadays as assemblage - yull referring to latour[2]
• The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology [3]

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• On of those actors - let's use Latourian notion - is something called the interrupt.
• interrupt

The mouse is commonly known as an interface for computers. It is used by the users hand, thereby the object 'mouse' got its shape by the negativ form of the users hand. In generic designs there are two buttons attached under the forefinger and the middle finger of the user. The hands motion is translates by the device into electronic signals and normally represented on the monitor by a small pointer. The invention mouse is connected to the name Douglas Engelbart who applied in 1967 for patent called "X-y position indicator for a display system"[4]. Before Engelbart a similar system called "trackball" was used for military purpose, but on a wide scale the mouse was introduced in 1972 with the "Xero Alto" one of the first personal computers and the first computer that used the concept of the desktop metaphor[5].

• -> example interrupt xero alto
• -> explaine mouse and the interrupt

<references> ==== see ====:

• [1] PAGE #9
• [2] Interrupt by Simon Yull, Originally published in Matthew Fuller (ed.), Software Studies: A Lexicon,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The MIT Press, 2008. ./interrupt.pdf

• [3]The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (1987)
• [4] patent engelbart
• [5]manuel xero alto