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"Bootstrapping" analyzes the genesis of personal computing from
both technological and social perspectives, through a close study
of the pathbreaking work of one researcher, Douglas Engelbart. In
his lab at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, Engelbart,
along with a small team of researchers, developed some of the
cornerstones of personal computing as we know it, including the
mouse, the windowed user interface, and hypertext. Today, all these
technologies are well known, even taken for granted, but the
assumptions and motivations behind their invention are not.
"Bootstrapping" establishes Douglas Engelbart's contribution
through a detailed history of both the material and the symbolic
constitution of his system's human-computer interface in the
context of the computer research community in the United States in
the 1960s and 1970s.
Engelbart felt that the complexity of many of the world's problems
was becoming overwhelming, and the time for solving these problems
was becoming shorter and shorter. What was needed, he determined,
was a system that would augment human intelligence, co-transforming
or co-evolving both humans and the machines they use. He sought a
systematic way to think and organize this coevolution in an effort
to discover a path on which a radical technological improvement
could lead to a radical improvement in how to make people work
effectively. What was involved in Engelbart's project was not just
the invention of a computerized system that would enable humans,
acting together, to manage complexity, but the invention of a new
kind of human, "the user." What he ultimately envisioned was a
"bootstrapping" process by which those who actually invented the
hardware and software of this new system would simultaneously
reinvent the human in a new form.
The book also offers a careful narrative of the collapse of
Engelbart's laboratory at Stanford Research Institute, and the
further translation of Engelbart's vision. It shows that
Engelbart's ultimate goal of coevolution came to be translated in
terms of technological progress and human adaptation to supposedly
user-friendly technologies. At a time of the massive diffusion of
the World Wide Web, "Bootstrapping" recalls the early experiments
and original ideals that led to today's "information revolution."
"Bootstrapping" analyzes the genesis of personal computing from
both technological and social perspectives, through a close study
of the pathbreaking work of one researcher, Douglas Engelbart. In
his lab at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, Engelbart,
along with a small team of researchers, developed some of the
cornerstones of personal computing as we know it, including the
mouse, the windowed user interface, and hypertext. Today, all these
technologies are well known, even taken for granted, but the
assumptions and motivations behind their invention are not.
"Bootstrapping" establishes Douglas Engelbart's contribution
through a detailed history of both the material and the symbolic
constitution of his system's human-computer interface in the
context of the computer research community in the United States in
the 1960s and 1970s.
Engelbart felt that the complexity of many of the world's problems
was becoming overwhelming, and the time for solving these problems
was becoming shorter and shorter. What was needed, he determined,
was a system that would augment human intelligence, co-transforming
or co-evolving both humans and the machines they use. He sought a
systematic way to think and organize this coevolution in an effort
to discover a path on which a radical technological improvement
could lead to a radical improvement in how to make people work
effectively. What was involved in Engelbart's project was not just
the invention of a computerized system that would enable humans,
acting together, to manage complexity, but the invention of a new
kind of human, "the user." What he ultimately envisioned was a
"bootstrapping" process by which those who actually invented the
hardware and software of this new system would simultaneously
reinvent the human in a new form.
The book also offers a careful narrative of the collapse of
Engelbart's laboratory at Stanford Research Institute, and the
further translation of Engelbart's vision. It shows that
Engelbart's ultimate goal of coevolution came to be translated in
terms of technological progress and human adaptation to supposedly
user-friendly technologies. At a time of the massive diffusion of
the World Wide Web, "Bootstrapping" recalls the early experiments
and original ideals that led to today's "information revolution."
Part philosophical anthology and part science fiction, this
illustrated volume tackles the mind-boggling phenomenon of
post-humanism. "Journey to the End of the Species" offers various
proposals to actually create successors to the human race,
establishing a set of resources--literary, artistic and
political--to initiate thinking about a previously inconceivable
future beyond humanity as we know it.
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an
array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication
networks, he explores the idea that most of culture and nature,
including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always
potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as "junk."
Bardini unravels the presence of junk at the interface between
science fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular
biology and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the
same culture-cyberculture-which is essentially a culture of junk.
He draws on a wide variety of sources, including the writings of
Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, interviews with scientists
as well as "crackpots," and work in genetics, cybernetics, and
physics to support his contention that junk DNA represents a blind
spot in our understanding of life.
At the same time, "Junkware" examines the cultural history that
led to the encoding and decoding of life itself and the
contemporary turning of these codes into a commodity. But he also
contends that, beyond good and evil, the essential "junkiness" of
this new subject is both the symptom and the potential cure.
Are we made of junk? Thierry Bardini believes we are. Examining an
array of cybernetic structures from genetic codes to communication
networks, he explores the idea that most of culture and nature,
including humans, is composed primarily of useless, but always
potentially recyclable, material otherwise known as "junk." Bardini
unravels the presence of junk at the interface between science
fictions and fictions of science, showing that molecular biology
and popular culture since the early 1960s belong to the same
culture-cyberculture-which is essentially a culture of junk. He
draws on a wide variety of sources, including the writings of
Philip K. Dick and William S. Burroughs, interviews with scientists
as well as "crackpots," and work in genetics, cybernetics, and
physics to support his contention that junk DNA represents a blind
spot in our understanding of life. At the same time, Junkware
examines the cultural history that led to the encoding and decoding
of life itself and the contemporary turning of these codes into a
commodity. But he also contends that, beyond good and evil, the
essential "junkiness" of this new subject is both the symptom and
the potential cure.
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