New Media Reader - Chapters 9 - 12

Chapter 9 is on Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System by Ivan Sutherland in 1963
Chapter 10 is on The Construction of Change by Roy Ascott in 1964
Chapter 11 is on A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate by Theodor Nelson in 1965
Chapter 12 is on Six Selections by the Oulipo

Click below to read the summaries.

Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System
This section is by Ivan E. Sutherland as he is the one who created the Sketchpad program. What Sketchpad is, is the ability to take a light pen and draw things on a computer. There are many things that open up as a result of this. People can use the computer to do extremely repetitive drawings very easily, they can use the computer for engineering purposes say for designing bridges and testing how they would work, as well as creating circuits to see how well they would work. Beyond these great things Sketchpad is the first program to come up with the idea of objects and using the screen as more then just a piece of paper. This led to the creation of object oriented programming and graphic user interfaces. Sutherland also stresses that at the point in time of it's creation, it wasn't the best for everything and stressed that people should learn when to use Sketchpad and when to simply do things by hand.

The Construction of Change
This is a very short chapter where Roy Ascott mentions how art and cybernetics can work together well. He goes on to discuss how to discuss many workshops for art and a flexible system so that individuals can find themselves. He does mention a few things that caught my eye: such as referring to culture (not his own quote) as "the sum of all the learned behaviors that exits in a given locality." He also goes on to discuss the far reaching effects of cybernetics in society (how machines are changing everything). It's difficult to get a main image out of this essay because he jumps all over the place.

A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate by Theodor H. Nelson (1965)
Ted Nelson coined the word "hypertext" which is fundamental to modern computer (ex: html = hypertext markup language). Although the modern hypertext is only one vision of Nelsons. Nelsons paper goes on to discuss his complex file system that could be used for anything, as well as being extremely simple. He details how Vannevar Bush discussed a similar system that after twenty years is still not in place even though systems have dome down in cost and can accomplish such tasks. Nelson discusses how his idea utilizes an information structure (zippered lists), a file structure (ELF, Evolutionary List File) and a file language (PRIDE). I don't know if I don't understand entirely his idea or whether I just don't see the need for it with what we have today on the internet. I think that we have some great database solutions that make things a lot easier, although I certainly think there is room to advance as well (Most of the problem here is getting things out of legacy systems and into the 21st century).

Six Selections by the Oulipo
This section covers Oulipo which is a method to create literature by constraining writing techniques. The section itself is rather confusing as it is covered with mathematical formulas and such. I had to go to Wikipedia to grasp the section better. Basically the idea is that one uses math along with computers to allow writers to be free to do what they do best. I'd write more about this section but I don't entirely grasp the concepts.