Post number 2

These were a lot of thick readings. They made sense in the end, but were pretty rough getting started.

 

I bet VANNEVAR BUSH would have truly enjoyed the Internet and I wonder if he would still argue that there needs to be better ways to document and record knowledge. Englebart… I agree? This was a thick article. From the words I recognized and could form into sentences I mostly understood, I gathered that Engelbart’s work was building upon the ideas of Bush. Intellectual augmentation sounds like a term a scientist in the 60s would come up with… a mad scientist.

I definitely agree with Engelbart’s “bootstrapping” stance of users being “continually involved in the ongoing definition and construction of the tools that they as a community will use”

 

Dear Marshall McLuhan,

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for beginning your book with the phrase, “After three thousand years of explosion”.

Your newest fan,

Chris 

 

Aside from the medium being the message, I liked his discussion of hot and cold media. I wonder how McLuhan would describe the convergence of media we see today? Would his bi-polar hot and cold approach still fit?

Williams’ work poses a “will history repeat itself?” question when read in conjunction with Rogers’ statements about diffusion. I believe that it took a few years for the current new media to diffuse to the general populace, but now that it is (and with a lot of the new media being software and mostly free with Internet access) I think we might be/become a society that is defined and directed by the media.

 

Mr. Jobs, can we expect an iMemex soon?