Processing Post #3 (Tabula of Relationships, Orders of Things)
“The scientist, however, is not the only person who manipulates data and examines the world about him by the use of logical processes, although he sometimes preserves this appearance by adopting into the fold anyone who becomes logical, much in the manner in which a British labor leader is elevated to knighthood.” -Vannevar Bush
I had to laugh a little bit when I read pre-internet technological pioneer Vannevar Bush describing this notion of more collective oriented model for making information accessible. At one time or another everyone of us has probably wished that internet contained more threshold guardians elevating the logical among us to the “Knighthood” of being able to manipulate the data. I certainly feel this way when I kill 20 minutes reading long comment threads on predictably controversial Facebook posts.
The readings from this week put contempt information technology in the historical context showing the gradual path early development that brought the database into existence. Reading about Paul Otlet’s “réseau,” which was dreamed up and built in Belgium before the technology existed to make such a network function in practical way, I’m reminded of the viscous essay by Heidegger where he describes the essence of technology as being not technological but about “revealing.” This notion the written knowledge needed to be read seems the center of Bush’s argument that there is an highly uneven ratio of the time spent creating knowledge (scholarly writings) and the amount of that they are being read.
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun also see the the phenomenon of “new” media as a being a continuation of past ideas that will some day be old. She dispels an idea the misconception (help by most people outside of this class) that preservation and digital accessibility are odds with each other. Smart underachiever in every high school like to quote Einstein on not memorizing what you can easily look up. Wendy Hui Kyong Chun would note that this notion has been taken to a new extreme and the impermanent digital technologies know function as extensions of the memory.
Case and point: These readings on early databases reminded me of the clueless grey-haired politician who described the internet as “a series of tubes.” But I’ll admit that I had to look it up to remember that it was Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
Thanks, Sam. This is coming in late, so I don’t have much time to comment. I do want to note, though, that your reference to *knighthood* also resonates a bit with Otlet’s vision: he and his staff pulled apart books and extracted what *they* regarded as the important “grains” of information, then recorded those tidbits on index cards. In other words, an elite class decided what was most important, most useful. The knights of the database era.