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Summary Analysing Digital Culture
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Summary of the lectures, texts and additional notes taken during seminars.
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1. Visions of the WebVisions of the web and the technologies associated with it had to be developed. What technologies
were going to be developed and how and why they were developed was not predetermined. Even
though the visions of the web were utopian, they were productive and had to be taken seriously.
Three visions of the web:
1. Information universe
● Vannevar Bush, ‘As We May Think’ (1945)
Bush noticed that there was a growing mountain of information and scientific research, which were
difficult to navigate. According to Bush, libraries were not efficient enough in organizing
information.
“Here is a growing mountain of research. But there is increased evidence that we are being
bogged down today as specialization extends. The investigator is staggered by the findings and
conclusions of thousands of other workers — conclusions which he cannot find time to grasp,
much less to remember, as they appear. Yet specialization becomes increasingly necessary
for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial.
Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are
generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose.”
→ Bush created the Memex: “the form of a desk that can instantly bring files and material on
any subject to the operator’s fingertips. Slanting translucent viewing screens magnify supermicro
film filed by code numbers. At left is a mechanism which automatically photographs longhand
notes, pictures and letters, then files them in the desk for future reference.”
- The memex is a form of memory augmentations involving microfilm. An individual can store
all their books, records and communications. The core of this idea is that all these different
documents can be associated with each other by linking them. This emulates the brain.
At first information was placed in storage: “When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are
filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from
subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have
rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item,
moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path. The human mind
does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps
instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with
some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain.”
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,As a solution came associative indexing: “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a
sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex”
will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and
communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and
flexibility. [...] It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea
of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and
automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items
together is the important thing.”
● Ted Nelson, ‘Hypertext’ (1963)
“A body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could
not conveniently be presented or represented on paper. It may contain summaries, or maps of
its contents and their interrelations; it may contain annotations, additions and footnotes from
scholars who have examined it. Let me suggest that such an object and system, properly designed
and administered, could have great potential for education, increasing the student’s range of
choices, his sense of freedom, his motivation, and his intellectual grasp. Such a system
could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world’s written knowledge.”
→ Project Xanadu (1960)
The first hypertext project. The www is a derivative version of Nelson’s imagine. He envisioned a
system in which the links would not break in the way they break today. In his vision the links would
always continue to work, if the link was removed so was the document. Nowadays you can link
something to anything you like. In his system copyright would also be respected, which is not the
case today. In all other features Project Xanadu resembles the www.
The first computers were used to make (mostly scientific and military) calculations. Hyperlinks
helped change computers to function as they function today.
● Doug Engelbart, The NLS or ‘On-Line System’ (1962)
This was a system parallel to Nelson’s, only Engelbert wasn’t aware of Nelson’s development at
first. It was a revolutionary computer collaboration system. The key features completed in 1968
were; to modify structures, reorganize them and make connections in the way you would like to
make connection and than store information under them. Engelbart created the mother of all
demos.
● The ARPA institute, ARPAnet-internet (1969)
Starting at the ARPA institute, computers at major institutes were connected together.
- internet = a network of interconnected computers that allow for associative indexing. The
internet is a way to effectively share and organize information and create information that is
robust.
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, Three different networks:
a. centralized system
b. decentralized system
c. distributed system
- the internet was developed as a distributed network.
Packages could make a variety of different routes.
● Tim Berners-Lee, The World Wide Web (1989)
The web is not the same as the internet.
- Web = an application that sits on top of the internet.
The www is an hypertext system that Berners-Lee imagined to be an effective way to organize
information. You can link things associatively like the way our brain works; fast and in a way we
can link all the information we know. There are three basis technologies of the web:
1. url: for locating specific documents with existing domains.
2. http: a set of conventions that standardizes how one computer downloads a document from
another.
3. html: devines how documents look on a computer in a web environment (browser)
2. Virtual Community
● 1960s: The Hippies Counterculture Movement
Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters were important in the early phases of this movement. The
effort was to build an alternative community, a community away from the mainstream, corporate
institutionalised society of the time. They wanted to pursue psychic wholeness, to be one with the
universe and with each other.
- Stewart Brand, who was part of The Merry Pranksters, was important for connecting the
internet with this vision of community. Late in the 1970s he also had an important part in the
development of personal computers.
Back To The Land Movement: groups of people were withdrawing from society and creating their
own communities.
● Stewart Brand, ‘Whole Earth Catalog’ (1968-1971)
This was an attempt to enable the alternative community, to build to community and to give ideas
and tools for building the community. The ideal was self sufficiency, ecological awareness and it
was also about DIY (the slogan of the internet).
● Stewart Brand, The WELL (1985)
This early form of internet was build with the idea of translating the visions of community, that was
formed in the 1960s, to an online environment (the internet). With the emergence of The WELL
came a virtual community.
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