The first reading for class was Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" (click here for the full text), an essay published in Atlantic Monthly in 1945, in which Bush predicts the rise of the Information Age, even before the technological breakthroughs (such as binary circuits) that heralded the birth of the era of computers. We discussed Bush's ideas and innovations: was he a visionary? Was his vision or the scope of his vision limited?
Next we read "The Curse of Xanadu" by Gary Wolf (Click here for the full text), an article about the Xanadu hypertext project led by Ted Nelson. We discussed similarities and differences between Nelson's Xanadu and Bush's "memex," two different designs for storing, sorting, and retrieving enormous amounts of information.
Next we read a chapter from Tim Berners-Lee's book Weaving the Web, in which Berners-Lee outlines some of his visions for the World Wide Web. He wishes to see it as a forum for creation and discussion instead of only a library of information. He speaks at some length about XML, a developing markup language for the creation of more versatile web pages. XML differs from HTML in that people using it can create their own tags instead of using a set of standard tags, thereby gaining more freedom in the creation of their webpages.
Finally, we read the preface and chapters 1 and 2 from Steven
Johnson's book Interface Culture. Johnson writes about the
graphic interface of computers as one of the greatest developments in
technology of media in modern times. According to Johnson, the
graphic interface is where art and technology encounter one another;
also, the interface serves as a sort of guide to our modern culture,
helping people navigate the complexities of the information age.
Even if they still fail to provide a completely satisfactory
definition, these ideas certainly bring us closer to an answer to our
original unanswered question: what is cyberspace?