New Media Reader chapters 26 - 30

Chapter 26.
Timeline:

• 1977: Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg write essay Personal Dynamic Media about use of PC/notebooks

Summary:

• Ideas about notebook computing developed in group directed by Alan Kay at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
• Predicted the versatility of Dynabook - a notebook computer. Previously, notebooks were seen as only tools for engineers or businesspeople
• Dynabook vision led to the development of Star which supported graphical user interface for PCs and helped make Ethernet, the mouse, and laser printer
• Kay and Goldberg emphasized the creative uses of the computer and the usability for children

Chapter 27

Timeline:

• 1980: Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari write A Thousand Plateaus

Summary:

• Rhizomatic writing - used to describe hypertext or the properties of a hypertext system
• Delueze and Guattari challenge dualisms in the piece
• Delueze and Guattari previously wrote Anti-Oedipus together
• "the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states.

Chapter 28

Timeline:

• 1967: Papert begins developing LOGO a computer programming language for children
• 1980: Seymour Papert publishes Mindstorms

Summary:

• 1980's - populist ideas enter mainstream of home computer era
• Seymour Papert worked in the 1980s on encouraging children to learn via the process of programming
• Papert argues that programming supports a learning which is self-directed and self-motivated

Chapter 29

Timeline:

• July 1980: Richard A. Bolt publishes "Put-That-There" Voice and Gesture at the Graphics Interface

Summary:

• multimodal interfaces - combine speech and gesture input were inspired by Bolts essay
• today, data is represented spatially on graphic computers
• The New Media Room - described in Bolt's essay was developed by Nicholas Negroponte at MIT's Architecture Machine Group. Used 2-D screens to provide a simulated 3-D space.
• multimodal interface allows a person to communicate with a computer by using speech, gesture, gaze and facial expression

Chapter 30

Timeline:

• 1981: Theodor H. Nelson publishes Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive

Summary:

• Xanadu = Ted Nelson's idea for a hypermedia network that relies on hyperconnectivity
• Xanadu = ultimate media archive
• Problem with Xanadu - security, morality, privacy, content control
• Xanadu - like an interactive electric library