https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_collective_guilt

Kollektivschuld

Guilt pride is something of a modern construction. Unlike Walsers, who experienced his guilt (because he served in WW2 under the Nazis), most Germans haven't experienced WW2. Guilt pride is thus an attempt to build a new collective identity for Germany, devoid of any authenticity (instead hinges more on profilicity).

masc milt legitimises military violence

race, also men in violent groups not just formal military

for - adjacency - polycrisis - war - israel-Iran war - Russia-Ukraine war - planetary adaptive cycle - planetary phase shift - release-to-reorganization stage

Jamaica became independent in 1962

Reggae came to be during a time of subjugation to Britain?

NBC News - Muhammad Ali on not going to war

When was this published on NBC News?

Muhammad Ali Gives His Stance On The Vietnam War | The Dick Cavett Show

16:08 During the war, the USA moved 50% of the nations production to WAR. It woudl take a simple political decison to move 50% of the nations production to peace if peace is as profitable as war

14:22 The government spends money into existence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

Ukraine enacts new law on 8/24/24 giving government power to ban religious organizations deemed to have links to the Russian Orthodox Church,

Class 1, Why Does the Civil War and Reconstruction Have a Hold on American Historical Imagination? by David Blight for [[YaleCourses]]

for - nonduality - not acting against violence in such a case (as Ukraine war) is an egoic response - acting out of cowardice - Rupert Spira

comment - One can act egoically both to take action AND to not take action.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/16/biden-inflation-reduction-act-tax-benefit-wealthy

Claude Shannon Ultimate Machine

Could this be the end result of artificial intelligence?

cross reference: - Niklas Luhmann's jokerzettel - War Games (1983) and "Joshua" (WOPR)

from - Jake Broe - Russia Ukraine war analysis - https://hyp.is/6kSnPh5PEe-eKw9uZp-QOQ/docdrop.org/video/AYvyNr4ZMSs/

from - Times Radio analysis of Russian's unsustainable attrition rate - https://hyp.is/avvydB5QEe-aheM72r6J4Q/docdrop.org/video/A-9kLZ19OAE/

for - polycrisis - Russia Ukraine war - game analysis

summary - A simplified but interesting economic game analysis of the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine war. - Drones have become a critical technology in this war and especially their mobile and cost advantage over much heavier, more expensive and slow-moving Russian equipment. - Drones conserve Ukrainian soldiers and minimize risk substantially. The 3 million drones being manufactured this year will likely accelerate the destruction of the Russian economy, bringing the war closer to ending. - Russia is critically dependent on its oil and gas industry and with the major destruction of its refineries, it will no longer be able to finance the war.

for - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine War - Russia's unsustainable attrition rate

to - economic game analysis of Russia Ukraine War - https://hyp.is/avvydB5QEe-aheM72r6J4Q/docdrop.org/video/A-9kLZ19OAE/

for - adjacency - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine war - oil and gas industry destruction leading to economic collapse

adjacency - between - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine War - Oil & Gas industry - Economic collapse - drone attacks on oil refineries - adjacency relationship - Konstantin' insider news is that the economic collapse is beginning due to the significant damage that the oil & gas refinery infrastructure has been damaged by effective Ukrainian drone attacks and the Western sanctions

for - geopolitics - Russia war economy strategy

geopolitics - Russia's war economy strategy - Putin is moving the country in this direction - following Trotsky to turn the entire economy into a war economy and following Lenin to use brute force to coerce the population to join the cause - However, looking at this basic economic game analysis of the Russia Ukraine war, it does not look feasible -

for - interview - Russian war commentator Konstantin Samoilov

summary - Kostantin often talks about the rapidly deteriorating state of the Russian economy. - Having worked in building energy plants for many years in Russia, he is aware of how unique the unprecedented deterioration of the Soviet-style central district heating plant failures sprouting up everywhere are going to impact the Russian people. - The rapid destruction of the vulnerable Russian oil refining plants is having a devastating impact on the economy as well - Konstatin has his own Youtube channel reporting on the growing domestic problems caused by the war, something he uniquely reports on

for - adjacency - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine War - How Ukraine wins - Russian economic collapse

adjacency - between - geopolitics - Russia - Ukraine War - polycrisis - How Ukraine wins - Russian economic collapse - adjacency statement - Since Putin is psychopathic and has no regards for how many Russian soldiers are sent to their death, he will continue to force Russian men to their death in large numbers - Russian commentator Konstantin Samoilov best summarizes it by saying: - https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FA-9kLZ19OAE%2F&group=world

for - suggestion - Russia Ukraine war - shipping blockade of illegal oil tankers

for - adjacency - colonialism - polycrisis - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine War

adjacency - between - colonialism - Russia - Putin - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine war - adjacency relationship - Putin violated the US rule of keeping bloodshed and abuse in your own country by attacking the Ukraine in the manner that it did - Putin is acting as a colonialist to try to rebuild the borders of the Soviet Union

for - Russia Ukraine war - Russia's unsustainable attrition rate - economic game analysis

reference - economic game analysis video of unsustainable Russian war attrition rate - https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FA-9kLZ19OAE%2F&group=world

for - Russian economy - domestic problems

reference - see interview with Russian war domestic economy commentator Kostantin Samoilov - https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FXX3zU5QNvCw%2F&group=world

for - geopolitics - Russia Ukraine war - polycrisis - russia war - metacrisis - russia war - Jake Broe - Russia Ukraine war analysis

summary - An intelligent analysis of the complexity of the Russia- Ukraine war. - Key points: - Russia's successful misinformation campaign has - created the MAGA disinformed political party and has - delayed the US Aid package - enabled the rapid rise of extreme right wing politics

Abduction of Helen—wife of Menelaus—by Paris, as cause of Trojan war.

for - wicked problems - synthentic opiods coming to EU faster due to successful Taliban war on poppy industry

summary - the new synthetic opiod "Nitazene" is being manufactured in China and replaces the banned fentanyl. It is 300x stronger than heroin. - Due to the Taliban's successful war on drugs that has stamped out 95% of the poppy production, EU drug addicts are turning to the far more deadly nitazine

from - youtube - BBC - Inside the Taliban's war on Drugs - https://hyp.is/hKPiKBYbEe-2ZCPwUTz0Lg/docdrop.org/video/W-gMRFEZOGY/

for - question - how will the Taliban's successful destruction of the poppy industry affect drug supplies in Europe?

to - youtube - Vice - The new fentanyl killing drug users in Europe - https://hyp.is/MDez0BYcEe-rq0sJ-I6FRg/docdrop.org/video/JqqfI-bIvnI/

for - complexity - wicked problem - polycrisis - afghanistan Taliban drug war

wicked problem - Taliban drug war - Afghanistan produced 80% of the world's opium for heroin and now it has lauched an aggressive and successful campaign to eradicate opium production - The farmers grow opium because it is a lucrative crop and they can feed their family - It is now illegal to grow opium and the Taliban enforce by monitoring and destroying poppy fields - This is one of the ironies that poor families grow poppy to try to survive, yet are disconnected from the chaos their product causes in other parts of the world

Said in the context of his pending crucifixion, with respect to a woman who had poured expensive ointment on Jesus.

This is an interesting proposition in this passage with respect to lots of what he'd said about the poor in the past. See also the Beatitudes

relationship to the idea of "Waging war on poverty, but not on the poor"?

Will the escalation of protests and reaction by Columbia University’s President, Minouche Shafik cause an ultimate shift in American sentiment because she reacted in the wrong way to quell protests in Spring 2024? Will things escalate as they did in 1968 and spill over into actual change in society and culture?

Shows his reason being guided fully by physical emotion and anger, that even causes a seizure. He is not like Iago, as Iago has free will with the absence of emotion. Only reason, and that is why he is isolated from the rest, different. Juxtaposition between Othello (human) and Iago (reason, devil) and Desdemona (love, emotion) like tug of war

Description of James Edward Oglethorpe

Why does it seem so apropos that Thanksgiving, a quintessential American holiday, is the product of corporate marketing?

Examples of this to collect in the future, including:

• Civil War monuments
• Pilgrim monument ( National Monument to the Forefathers) 1898 by Hammatt Billings (mentioned in White Trash)
• others...

for - polycrisis - Russian aggression - polycrisis - Russia - war - polycrisis - Peter Zeihan

summary - A good geopoliticial analysis of contemporary Russian aggression

Silent weapons for quiet wars<br /> Operations Research Technical Manual<br /> TW-SW7905.1

Welcome Aboard

This publication marks the 25th anniversary of the Third World War, called the "Quiet War", being conducted using subjective biological warfare, fought with "silent weapons".<br /> This book contains an introductory description of this war, its strategies, and its weaponry.<br /> May 1979 #74-1120

Security

It is patently impossible to discuss social engineering or the automation of a society, i.e., the engineering of social automation systems (silent weapons) on a national or worldwide scale without implying extensive objectives of social control and destruction of human life, i.e., slavery and genocide.<br /> This manual is in itself an analog declaration of intent. Such a writing must be secured from public scrutiny. Otherwise, it might be recognized as a technically formal declaration of domestic war. Furthermore, whenever any person or group of persons in a position of great power and without full knowledge and consent of the public, uses such knowledge and methodologies for economic conquest - it must be understood that a state of domestic warfare exists between said person or group of persons and the public.<br /> The solution of today's problems requires an approach which is ruthlessly candid, with no agonizing over religious, moral or cultural values.<br /> You have qualified for this project because of your ability to look at human society with cold objectivity, and yet analyze and discuss your observations and conclusions with others of similar intellectual capacity without the loss of discretion or humility. Such virtues are exercised in your own best interest. Do not deviate from them.

https://ia802300.us.archive.org/10/items/silent-weapons-for-quiet-wars_202110/Silent%20Weapons%20for%20Quiet%20Wars.pdf

yeah. but the actual problem is pacifism and overpopulation.<br /> all other problems, including world wars, are only symptoms of pacifism and overpopulation.<br /> this is just another intelligence test, and again, most people fail, most people are idiots

12:00 assassinations of many african leaders. Muammar Gaddafi, patrice lumumba of congo, sir abubakar tafawa balewa of nigeria, thomas sankara... history is repeating itself, only the actors are changing. -- 50 years ago, the empire called this "war on communism", nowadays the empire calls this "war on terror" or "war on nationalism" or "fighting for democracy" or "fighting for freedom"... and the empire will ALWAYS find useful idiots to fight for these lies, because human stupidity is the most stable resource of all, human stupidity is infinite.

The great Alexander's empire collapsed,<br /> the empire of the ancient Romans<br /> and the empire of Napoleon fell into ruins,<br /> they were built on the power of weapons.

But the Empire of New Rome<br /> has existed for almost 1500 years<br /> and will last for who knows how long,<br /> because it rests on the most solid foundation:<br /> the stupidity of humans.

-- Otto von Corvin

Spartacus was Thracian

Etruscans submitted in 338 BC and were completely taken over in 211 (Second Punic wars)

Shred-mulch, or is it mulch shreds, multi-colored confetti fluttering to the ground. Spreading a blanket to feed, to enrich the soil that feeds us.

Ouch! A rigid bit of plastic, ripping a gash in the foot of the conqueror treading the ground.

I fear much less the war of massaging words on the page than the war to eradicate the “forever” toxins we, Homo Sapiens, have inflicted upon Mother Earth.

our slave owners want to stay in control, because they are control freaks, real fascists.<br /> i guess "the event" will be a blackout, plus civil war vs migrants, so they can declare martial law

for - history - King Philip II - El Escorial - polycrisis - religion - history - adjacency - polycrisis - war - religion - epoche - CHD

Adjacency - between - polycrisis - war - religion - epoche - CHD - history - adjacency statement - King Philip II is an interesting historical figure who left behind this enormous physical artefact of El Escorial. - So much of history has revolved around the religious beliefs of leaders, and how those beliefs are entangled and enacted in wars, enslavement, politics and power. - Phillip's fervent Catholicism drove him to expand his empire, fight wars with the Ottoman empire and Protestants and build the sprawling El Escorial complex. - The building was designed to express his Catholic beliefs - from the monastery to the Basilica, secret relic room, to library and mausoleum. His beliefs were responsible for driving his behaviour, which influenced much of humanity during his rule. - religion's power have influenced many powerful people of history, resulting in mass influence on society, including perpetuating inequality, extractionism, colonialism and violence - all in the name of a concept of apprehending the great mystery of life. - The desire to understand the great mystery of life and death has been hijacked to perpetuate great harm instead. What is needed now is a wisdom commons for the entire species that can help elevate, deepen and interconnect all the legacy belief systems before it. For in spite of the great variety of belief systems, they are fundamentally united through a common humans denominator - they all require human beings. - It is a deficiency in any existing systems that can justify offering and violence against other belief systems and claim the throne of THE one and only, true belief system. Indeed, the claim of "the truth" is itself already a poison since it is never achievable. An epoche for the common person is necessary to penetrate the weak link of the argument itself, the linguistic social conditioning which enables storytelling itself. - the inability to collectively grasp the symbolosphere, the noosphere compells us towards beliefs, out of which self- righteousness, self- reification and othering blossom.

Very interested to know what Kennedy's instructions were, and what thet CIA was doing, exactly. I wish I could read the actual documents.

• for climate change - wartime mobilization, interview - Seth Klein - A Good War, polycrisis - conflict, climate crisis - conflict, Naomi Klein - brother

• summary

  • An interview with activist Seth Klein on his book: A Good War. Klein studied how WWI and WWII stimulated a rapid mobilization of Canada with an eye to translating the same methods to combating climate change.

• for: stories - consequences of good and bad stories, inisight - war and genocide - when people violently disagree on stories,

• insight

  • disagreement of stories
    • not just wars, but climate change skeptics believe a different story than environmentalists
    • hyperobjects and evolution play a role as well in what we believe

• for: Book: A Good War, Seth Klein, Climate Emergency - mobilizing Canada

• title: A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency

• author: Seth Klein
• date: 2020

• reference
  • A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency
    • https://www.sethklein.ca/book

• for: definition - permanent security, examples - permanent security

• definition: permanent security

  • Extreme responses by states to security threats, enacted in the name of present and future self defence.
  • Permanent security actions target entire civilian populations under the logic of ensuring that terrorists and insurgents can never again represent a threat. It is a project, in other words, that seeks to avert future threats by anticipating them today.

• example: permanent security

  • Russian-Ukraine war
    • Vladimir Putin reasons that Ukraine must be forcibly returned to Russia so that it cannot serve as a launching site for NATO missiles into Russia decades from now.
  • Myanmar-Rohingya conflict
    • The Myanmarese military sought to squash separatism by expelling and killing the Rohingya minority in 2017
  • China-Uyghur conflict
    • China sought to pacify and reeducate Muslim Uyghurs by mass incarceration to forestall their striving for independence forever
  • Israel-Palestine conflict
    • Israel seeks to eliminate Hamas as a security threat once and for all after the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel
  • US-Iraq-Afghanistan
    • The US sought to eliminate Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities and to eliminate Osama Bin Laden for his bombing of the World Trade center.

women = sex

link to Whitworth

Environmental Impact of WW1 by NHC Education Programs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lucJElPVYOk

shapes what people learn about China- imperial, exotic

Eurocentric perspective of global capitalism as China had its own capitalist system trading with other countries in the East before

colonialisation

Han vs Manchu

trade relations gave extra privileges, start of colonisation

• for: Hamas Israel war 2023, son of Hamas leader

source: 1900, Moltkes Militärische Werke: II. Die Thätigkeit als Chef des Generalstabes der Armee im Frieden. (Moltke’s Military Works: II. Activity as Chief of the Army General Staff in Peacetime) Zweiter Theil (Second Part), Aufsatz vom Jahre 1871 Ueber Strategie (Article from 1871 on strategy), Start Page 287, Quote Page 291, Publisher: Ernst Siegfried Mittler und Sohn, Berlin, Germany. (Google Books Full View) link

compare with: https://hypothes.is/a/GWE5OG2EEe6kL6Ni1VcN9g

blurry idea of consent means that transition from state of war/nature to good society is not so clear after all?

isnt that just cont the state of nature/war as fear

realism anarchy

this is interesting cos not only does he include the personal into the political which seems a bit contradictory, but also in his awful state of nature i would argue that women still occupy similar roles so what does this have to do with his perfect society?

right to nature

but how does this sovereign come about then?

having a state, a sovereign gives meaning to things, without it there is nothing meaningful so anything (bad) can happen

no one to lead

• for: Samara - one war to another, polycrisis - multiple wars

• comment

  • as the polycrisis deepens, we will jump from the frying pan into the fire

• for: non-polarization, transcending differences during war

• for: Belfast moment, Hama's Israel war 2023

• comment

  • 10,000 cities for peace, SRG to peace via a Belfast moment
  • Thought leaders and citizens from both sides, each speaking to their own side

• for: Gabor Mate, Hamas Israel war 2023 - Gabor Mate

• for: Yuval Noah Harari, Hamas Israel war 2023, global liberal order, abused-abuser cycle, And not Or

• summary

  • In this interview, Yuval Noah Harari offers insights on the trap that Hamas's brutality has set for the Israeli army and reflections on the abused-abuser cycle.
  • If Israeli government falls into that trap and inflicts unprecedented collateral damage, it will scupper the chance for peace for generations to come, and Hamas will have succeeded in its goal.
  • Harari identifies a key insight that could help create better empathy between warring parties, to recognize the abused-abuser cycle and how we can be both abused AND abuser at the same time
  • Harari reflects on the breakdown of the global liberal order, offering a simple yet insightful anthropological definition of the global liberal order showing how in spite of its many flaws, fundamentally is biologically humanistic at the core. What is needed is a way to decouple the harmful features the current form of it possesses

• for: victim AND perpetrator, situatedness, perspectival knowing, AND, not OR, abused-abuser cycle, individual /collective gestalt, Hamas Israel war 2023

• quote

  • It's hard for people to understand that you can be victim and perpetrator at the same time
  • It's a very simple fact impossible to accept for most people
• author: Yuval Noah Harari
• date: Sept 2023

The threat of physical violence is silencing those in power even on the right. We're already at war except for the bullets.

Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Translated by Susan Massotty. 1947. Reprint, New York: Bantam, 1997.

How are they defining "multiplicity" here? There seems to be a tacit definition with respect to being in opposition to "unity" (of a work), but not an explicit one. It also seems to be a shaded meaning with respect to the more common one.

unity: essence, core, coherence, oneness

They use the word "multiplicity" in the usual sense of large number or multitude on p55: "The multiplicity of the rules indicates the complexity of the one habit to be formed, not a plurality of distinct habits."

They also revisit it in the upcoming section: "Mastering the Multiplicity: The Art of Outlining a Book" on p88

Perhaps its just me but there's a linguistic "softness" of the uses of unity and multiplicity here with respect to 2023. Though these two opposites fit the dictionary definitions of their words, is it possible that this softness is the result of a sort of historical linguistic shift I'm feeling in these words? I can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps it's the relationship of unity to religion? Neither seem to be frequently used these days.

The Ngram Viewer shows peaks for the use of unity in 1660 and 1960 of almost 75% higher usage compared to a broader historical average. It is generally waning since. Multiplicity has about 1/4 the use of unity and has remained flat over time. What caused the peaks in the use of "unity" during these periods? This 1972 use was on the downslope of the 1960s peak. Was it used in the 1940 version?

The 20th century increase in the use of unity begins around 1914 and may have been related to political shades of meaning going into WWI with another marked rise in the lead up to WW2.

37:00 going to war with self

• see zk notes on self-discovery & finding meaning in darkness

Based on Hobbes' definition of war, the left and the right in America are currently either at war or on the brink, because we are slowly coming to the point at which our differences can't or won't be decided by our recourse to law, which is actively moving against the will of the larger majority of Americans.

As We May Think

From The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945: 101-108. Reprinted with permission. (c)1945, V. Bush.

As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush has coördinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge. For many years inventions have extended man's physical powers rather than the powers of his mind. Trip hammers that multiply the fists, microscopes that sharpen the eye, and engines of destruction and detection are new results, but the end results, of modern science. Now, says Dr. Bush, instruments are at hand which, if properly developed, will give man access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages. The perfection of these pacific instruments should be the first objective of our scientists as they emerge from their war work. Like Emerson's famous address of 1837 on "The American Scholar," this paper by Dr. Bush calls for a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge. - The Editor

This has not been a scientist's war; it has been a war in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. It has been exhilarating to work in effective partnership. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching an end. What are the scientists to do next?

For the biologists, and particularly for the medical scientists, there can be little indecision, for their war work has hardly required them to leave the old paths. Many indeed have been able to carry on their war research in their familiar peacetime laboratories. Their objectives remain much the same.

It is the physicists who have been thrown most violently off stride, who have left academic pursuits for the making of strange destructive gadgets, who have had to devise new methods for their unanticipated assignments. They have done their part on the devices that made it possible to turn back the enemy. They have worked in combined effort with the physicists of our allies. They have felt within themselves the stir of achievement. They have been part of a great team. Now, as peace approaches, one asks where they will find objectives worthy of their best.

I

Of what lasting benefit has been man's use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual.

There 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. If the aggregate time spent in writing scholarly works and in reading them could be evaluated, the ratio between these amounts of time might well be startling. Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month's efforts could be produced on call. Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.

The difficulty seems to be, not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.

But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Photocells capable of seeing things in a physical sense, advanced photography which can record what is seen or even what is not, thermionic tubes capable of controlling potent forces under the guidance of less power than a mosquito uses to vibrate his wings, cathode ray tubes rendering visible an occurrence so brief that by comparison a microsecond is a long time, relay combinations which will carry out involved sequences of movements more reliably than any human operator and thousands of times as fast-- there are plenty of mechanical aids with which to effect a transformation in scientific records.

Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. In spite of much complexity, they perform reliably. Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile. Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood. Note the automatic telephone exchange, which has hundreds of thousands of such contacts, and yet is reliable. A spider web of metal, sealed in a thin glass container, a wire heated to brilliant glow, in short, the thermionic tube of radio sets, is made by the hundred million, tossed about in packages, plugged into sockets--and it works! Its gossamer parts, the precise location and alignment involved in its construction, would have occupied a master craftsman of the guild for months; now it is built for thirty cents. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

II

A record, if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted. Today we make the record conventionally by writing and photography, followed by printing; but we also record on film, on wax disks, and on magnetic wires. Even if utterly new recording procedures do not appear, these present ones are certainly in the process of modification and extension.

Certainly progress in photography is not going to stop. Faster material and lenses, more automatic cameras, finer-grained sensitive compounds to allow an extension of the minicamera idea, are all imminent. Let us project this trend ahead to a logical, if not inevitable, outcome. The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures 3 millimeters square, later to be projected or enlarged, which after all involves only a factor of 10 beyond present practice. The lens is of universal focus, down to any distance accommodated by the unaided eye, simply because it is of short focal length. There is a built-in photocell on the walnut such as we now have on at least one camera, which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. There is film in the walnut for a hundred exposure, and the spring for operating its shutter and shifting its film is wound once for all when the film clip is inserted. It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with spaced glass eyes, for striking improvements in stereoscopic technique are just around the corner.

The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its j picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.

Will there be dry photography? It is already here in two forms. When Brady made his Civil War pictures, the plate had to be wet at the time of exposure. Now it has to be wet during development instead. In the future perhaps it need not be wetted at all. There have long been films impregnated with diazo dyes which form a picture without development, so that it is already there as soon as the camera has been operated. An exposure to ammonia gas destroys the unexposed dye, and the picture can then be taken out into the light and examined. The process is now slow, but someone may speed it up, and it has no grain difficulties such as now keep photographic researchers busy. Often it would be advantageous to be able to snap the camera and to look at the picture immediately.

Another process now in use is also slow, and more or less clumsy. For fifty years impregnated papers have been used which turn dark at every point where an electrical contact touches them, by reason of the chemical change thus produced in an iodine compound included in the paper. They have been used to make records, for a pointer moving across them can leave a trail behind. If the electrical potential on the pointer is varied as it moves, the line becomes light or dark in accordance with the potential.

This scheme is now used in facsimile transmission. The pointer draws a set of closely spaced lines across the paper one after another. As it moves, its potential is varied in accordance with a varying current received over wires from a distant station, where these variations are produced by a photocell which is similarly scanning a picture. At every instant the darkness of the line being drawn is made equal to the darkness of the point on the picture being observed by the photocell. Thus, when the whole picture has been covered, a replica appears at the receiving end.

A scene itself can be just as well looked over line by line by the photocell in this way as can a photograph of the scene. This whole apparatus constitutes a camera, with the added feature, which can be dispensed with if desired, of making its picture at a distance. It is slow, and the picture is poor in detail. Still, it does give another process of dry photography, in which the picture is finished as soon as it is taken.

It would be a brave man who would predict that such a process will always remain clumsy, slow, and faulty in detail. Television equipment today transmits sixteen reasonably good pictures a second, and it involves only two essential differences from the process described above. For one, the record is made by a moving beam of electrons rather than a moving pointer, for the reason that an electron beam can sweep across the picture very rapidly indeed. The other difference involves merely the use of a screen which glows momentarily when the electrons hit, rather than a chemically treated paper or film which is permanently altered. This speed is necessary in television, for motion pictures rather than stills are the object.

Use chemically treated film in place of the glowing screen, allow the apparatus to transmit one picture only rather than a succession, and a rapid camera for dry photography results. The treated film needs to be far faster in action than present examples, but it probably could be. More serious is the objection that this scheme would involve putting the film inside a vacuum chamber, for electron beams behave normally only in such a rarefied environment. This difficulty could be avoided by allowing the electron beam to play on one side of a partition, and by pressing the film against the other side, if this partition were such as to allow the electrons to go through perpendicular to its surface, and to prevent them from spreading out sideways. Such partitions, in crude form, could certainly be constructed, and they will hardly hold up the general development.

Like dry photography, microphotography still has a long way to go. The basic scheme of reducing the size of the record, and examining it by projection rather than directly, has possibilities too great to be ignored. The combination of optical projection and photographic reduction is already producing some results in microfilm for scholarly purposes, and the potentialities are highly suggestive. Today, with microfilm, reductions by a linear factor of 20 can be employed and still produce full clarity when the material is re-enlarged for examination. The limits are set by the graininess of the film, the excellence of the optical system, and the efficiency of the light sources employed. All of these are rapidly improving .

Assume a linear ratio of 100 for future use. Consider film of the same thickness as paper, although thinner film will certainly be usable. Even under these conditions there would be a total factor of 10,000 between the bulk of the ordinary record on books, and its microfilm replica. The Encyclopedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled at by a few.

Compression is important, however, when it comes to costs. The material for the microfilm Britannica would cost a nickel, and it could be mailed anywhere for a cent. What would it cost to print a million copies? To print a sheet of newspaper, in a large edition, costs a small fraction of a cent. The entire material of the Britannica in reduced microfilm form would go on a sheet eight and one-half by eleven inches. Once it is available, with the photographic reproduction methods of the future, duplicates in large quantities could probably be turned out for a cent apiece beyond the cost of materials. The preparation of the original copy? That introduces the next aspect of the subject.

III

To make the record, we now push a pencil or tap a typewriter. Then comes the process of digestion and correction, followed by an intricate process of typesetting, printing, and distribution. To consider the first stage of the procedure, will the author of the future cease writing by hand or typewriter and talk directly to the record? He does so indirectly, by talking to a stenographer or a wax cylinder; but the elements are all present if he wishes to have his talk directly produce a typed record. All he needs to do is to take advantage of existing mechanisms and to alter his language .

At a recent World Fair a machine called a Voder was shown. A girl stroked its keys and it emitted recognizable speech. No human vocal chords entered into the procedure at any point; the keys simply combined some electrically produced vibrations and passed these on to a loudspeaker. In the Bell Laboratories there is the converse of this machine, called a Vocoder. The loud-speaker is replaced by a microphone, which picks up sound. Speak to it, and the corresponding keys move. This may be one element of the postulated system.

The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to.

Our present languages are not especially adapted to this sort of mechanization, it is true. It is strange that the inventors of universal languages have not seized upon the idea of producing one which better fitted the technique for transmitting and recording speech. Mechanization may yet force the issue, especially in the scientific field; whereupon scientific jargon would become still less intelligible to the layman.

One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination.

Much needs to occur, however, between the collection of data and observations, the extraction of parallel material from the existing record, and the final insertion of new material into the general body of the common record. For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids.

Adding a column of figures is a repetitive thought process, and it was long ago properly relegated to the machine. True, the machine is sometimes controlled by a keyboard, and thought of a sort enters in reading the figures and poking the corresponding keys, but even this is avoidable. Machines have been made which will read typed figures by photocells and then depress the corresponding keys; these are combinations of photocells for scanning the type, electric circuits for sorting the consequent variations, and relay circuits for interpreting the result into the action of solenoids to pull the keys down.

All this complication is needed because of the clumsy way in which we have learned to write figures. If we recorded them positionally, simply by the configuration of a set of dots on a card, the automatic reading mechanism would become comparatively simple. In fact, if the dots are holes, we have the punched-card machine long ago produced by Hollorith for the purposes of the census, and now used throughout business. Some types of complex businesses could hardly operate without these machines.

Adding is only one operation. To perform arithmetical computation involves also subtraction, multiplication, and division, and in addition some method for temporary storage of results, removal from storage for further manipulation, and recording of final results by printing. Machines for these purposes are now of two types: keyboard machines for accounting and the like, manually controlled for the insertion of data, and usually automatically controlled as far as the sequence of operations is concerned; and punched-card machines in which separate operations are usually delegated to a series of machines, and the cards then transferred bodily from one to another. Both forms are very useful; but as far as complex computations are concerned, both are still in embryo.

Rapid electrical counting appeared soon after the physicists found it desirable to count cosmic rays. For their own purposes the physicists promptly constructed thermionic-tube equipment capable of counting electrical impulses at the rate of 100,000 a second. The advanced arithmetical machines of the future will be electrical in nature, and they will perform at 100 times present speeds, or more.

Moreover, they will be far more versatile than present commercial machines, so that they may readily be adapted for a wide variety of operations. They will be controlled by a control card or film, they will select their own data and manipulate it in accordance with the instructions thus inserted, they will perform complex arithmetical computations at exceedingly high speeds, and they will record results in such form as to be readily available for distribution or for later further manipulation. Such machines will have enormous appetites. One of them will take instructions and data from a whole roomful of girls armed with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes. There will always be plenty of things to compute in the detailed affairs of millions of people doing complicated things.

IV

The repetitive processes of thought are not confined, however, to matters of arithmetic and statistics. In fact, every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed, and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machines. Not so much has been done along these lines, beyond the bounds of arithmetic, as might be done, primarily because of the economics of the situation. The needs of business, and the extensive market obviously waiting, assured the advent of mass-produced arithmetical machines just as soon as production methods were sufficiently advanced.

With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population. There are, however, machines for solving differential equations--and functional and integral equations, for that matter. There are many special machines, such as the harmonic synthesizer which predicts the tides. There will be many more, appearing certainly first in the hands of the scientist and in small numbers.

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool--so useful that it still exists.

It is a far cry from the abacus to the modern keyboard accounting machine. It will be an equal step to the arithmetical machine of the future. But even this new machine will not take the scientist where he needs to go. Relief must be secured from laborious detailed manipulation of higher mathematics as well, if the users of it are to free their brains for something more than repetitive detailed transformations in accordance with established rules. A mathematician is not a man who can readily manipulate figures; often he cannot. He is not even a man who can readily perform the transformations of equations by the use of calculus. He is primarily an individual who is skilled in the use of symbolic logic on a high plane, and especially he is a man of intuitive judgment in the choice of the manipulative processes he employs.

All else he should be able to turn over to his mechanism, just as confidently as he turns over the propelling of his car to the intricate mechanism under the hood. Only then will mathematics be practically effective in bringing the growing knowledge of atomistics to the useful solution of the advanced problems of chemistry, metallurgy, and biology. For this reason there will come more machines to handle advanced mathematics for the scientist. Some of them will be sufficiently bizarre to suit the most fastidious connoisseur of the present artifacts of civilization.

V

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. Whenever logical processes of thought are employed--that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove--there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.

Logic can become enormously difficult, and it would undoubtedly be well to produce more assurance in its use. The machines for higher analysis have usually been equation solvers. Ideas are beginning to appear for equation transformers, which will rearrange the relationship expressed by an equation in accordance with strict and rather advanced logic. Progress is inhibited by the exceedingly crude way in which mathematicians express their relationships. They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency; a strange fact in that most logical field.

A new symbolism, probably positional, must apparently precede the reduction of mathematical transformations to machine processes. Then, on beyond the strict logic of the mathematician, lies the application of logic in everyday affairs. We may some day click off arguments on a machine with the same assurance that we now enter sales on a cash register. But the machine of logic will not look like a cash register, even of the streamlined model.

So much for the manipulation of ideas and their insertion into the record. Thus far we seem to be worse off than before--for we can enormously extend the record; yet even in its present bulk we can hardly consult it. This is a much larger matter than merely the extraction of data for the purposes of scientific research; it involves the entire process by which man profits by his inheritance of acquired knowledge. The prime action of use is selection, and here we are halting indeed. There may be millions of fine thoughts, and the account of the experience on which they are based, all encased within stone walls of acceptable architectural form; but if the scholar can get at only one a week by diligent search, his syntheses are not likely to keep up with the current scene.

Selection, in this broad sense, is a stone adze in the hands of a cabinetmaker. Yet, in a narrow sense and in other areas, something has already been done mechanically on selection. The personnel officer of a factory drops a stack of a few thousand employee cards into a selecting machine, sets a code in accordance with an established convention, and produces in a short time a list of all employees who live in Trenton and know Spanish. Even such devices are much too slow when it comes, for example, to matching a set of fingerprints with one of five million on file. Selection devices of this sort will soon be speeded up from their present rate of reviewing data at a few hundred a minute. By the use of photocells and microfilm they will survey items at the rate of a thousand a second, and will print out duplicates of those selected.

This process, however, is simple selection: it proceeds by examining in turn every one of a large set of items, and by picking out those which have certain specified characteristics. There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station. It requires a few seconds to make the selection, although the process could be speeded up if increased speed were economically warranted. If necessary, it could be made extremely fast by substituting thermionic-tube switching for mechanical switching, so that the full selection could be made in one one-hundredth of a second. No one would wish to spend the money necessary to make this change in the telephone system, but the general idea is applicable elsewhere.

Take the prosaic problem of the great department store. Every time a charge sale is made, there are a number of things to be done. The inventory needs to be revised, the salesman needs to be given credit for the sale, the general accounts need an entry, and, most important, the customer needs to be charged. A central records device has been developed in which much of this work is done conveniently. The salesman places on a stand the customer's identification card, his own card, and the card taken from the article sold--all punched cards. When he pulls a lever, contacts are made through the holes, machinery at a central point makes the necessary computations and entries, and the proper receipt is printed for the salesman to pass to the customer.

But there may be ten thousand charge customers doing business with the store, and before the full operation can be completed someone has to select the right card and insert it at the central office. Now rapid selection can slide just the proper card into position in an instant or two, and return it afterward. Another difficulty occurs, however. Someone must read a total on the card, so that the machine can add its computed item to it. Conceivably the cards might be of the dry photography type I have described. Existing totals could then be read by photocell, and the new total entered by an electron beam.

The cards may be in miniature, so that they occupy little space. They must move quickly. They need not be transferred far, but merely into position so that the photocell and recorder can operate on them. Positional dots can enter the data. At the end of the month a machine can readily be made to read these and to print an ordinary bill. With tube selection, in which no mechanical parts are involved in the switches, little time need be occupied in bringing the correct card into use--a second should suffice for the entire operation. The whole record on the card may be made by magnetic dots on a steel sheet if desired, instead of dots to be observed optically, following the scheme by which Poulsen long ago put speech on a magnetic wire. This method has the advantage of simplicity and ease of erasure. By using photography, however, one can arrange to project the record in enlarged form, and at a distance by using the process common in television equipment.

One can consider rapid selection of this form, and distant projection for other purposes. To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

VI

The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. 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. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than by indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

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 is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section ~_ the memex film, dry photography being employed

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers. On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

VII

All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. 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.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it ~out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.

VIII

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses--the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

By bone conduction we already introduce sounds into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form? With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?

In the outside world, all forms of intelligence, whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs.

Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

He seams marveled by the fact that these technologies work

What a foresight to say when Bush urges scientists, once the war ends, to focus on development of tools which can make accumulated knowledge more accessible, thereby extending the power of the human mind. It show's how he thought of the work he was doing

It was not just one journalist that made this claim, nor was a claim of Russian Pravda - it has been noted by many journalist around the world that the, undisputed so far (Sep 2023), claim that it was Boris Johnson who broke the peace negotiations was made by the Ukranian Pravda.

This line seems to reference genocide as a way to cleanse "the world." They believed war is something to be celebrated, as it will bring change and "freedom." This line also mentions disdain for women.

for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - Elon Musk, progress trap - Elon Musk - comment - the US military, Ukraine military have to deal with the unintended consequence of a vital communication system that can be turned off without notice or warning - what if Putin calls up Musk and says to him: - If you don't turn the Starlink off when Ukraine tries to mount major attack on Crimea, I will launch my nukes - What will Musk do then?

• for: progress trap, unintended consequence, playing God, Elon Musk - Starlink - Ukraine, Elon Musk- Crimea, Elon Musk - nuclear war, quote, quote - Elon Musk - nuclear war - starlink - crimea
• quote
  • How am I in this war?
  • Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars.
  • It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.
• author: Elon Musk
• comment
  • the Tech genius could not predict the progress trap of starlink being used by the Ukrainian army to send submarine drones to blow up Russian ships
  • so he was forced into a position of playing God

• for: progress trap, unintended consequences, nuclear war, Elon Musk - Ukraine, playing God

• comment

  • Here, Elon Musk demonstrates how the most powerful technological leaders are themselves unable to predict the unintended consequences of progress.
  • This story exposes the power that no tech titan is immune to
    • making one dimensional decisions based on high dimensional information whose salient relationships can not be predicted ahead of time.
  • The dilemma of power - it is opaque and puts the fate of humanity in the decision of a few God-like individuals
  • Do 8 billion people really trust one man to decide the fate of civilization?
  • And yet, this is the kind of world that those in power continue to reify by consolidating their positions
  • The myth of dictators wanting to hold onto power at all costs goes beyond the sphere of politics

Writing in 1951, Hutchins is writing too close to the time period of post World War II to have a better view of this topic. He's fashioned far too simple a story as a result.

There was a lack of critical thinking and over-reliance on top down approval which was harmful in the Japanese story of this time period though.

• for: evolution, evolution - war, descendants - war
• paraphrase
  • Genetic analyses of human Y chromosomes (which are passed directly from fathers to sons) reveal that
    • groups of men who succeeded on the battlefield replaced the losing groups of men in the gene pool.
  • In other words, the coalitions of men who were successful in warfare not only survived
    • but reproduced with local women and passed on their genes.
  • Success on the battlefield was thus highly consequential.
  • Humans today are the descendants of those men who managed to dominate their opponents in war. -comment
  • wow!

• for: stats, quote, stats - homophobia - war, quote - homophobia - war, evolution - homophobia, homophobia - war
• quote
• stats
  • estimates indicate that nearly 20-30% of our male ancestors died in intergroup conflicts
• comment
  • wow!

• for: evolution - homophobia - war
• title
  • Ancient Warriors and Modern Footballers: An Evolutionary Explanation for Homophobia
• source
  • https://areomagazine.com/2023/05/19/ancient-warriors-and-modern-footballers-an-evolutionary-explanation-for-homophobia/

https://archive.org/details/pentagonpapersde00beac/page/n1/mode/2up

Daniel Ellsberg's personal copy of the Pentagon Papers with handwritten annotations.

Full Daniel Ellsberg collection of scanned documents from his home: https://archive.org/details/danielellsberg?tab=collection

William Howard Russell was one of the first foreign war correspondents. He was particularly known for his coverage of the 1850's Crimean War; his descriptions of the wounded there urged the arrival of Florence Nightingale.

Part of literature is the Great Conversation, which often turns on the ability for writers to be understood and appreciated, often in translation. Gary Saul Morson takes P&V to task for their Russian translations which often focus on the incredibly specific nuances of direct translation, but which simultaneously lose the beauty and sense of literature. He says, "[...] readers typically turn to translations not to hear about culinary ephemera but to read literature."

Air raid sirens were a common occurrence in Monowitz from the summer of 1944. Air raids gave prisoners a chance to escape, to meet and speak to fellow prisoners, to steal food, to gain some respite from their labours and the torment of the Kapos. Some prisoners welcomed the air raids as a sign that the Third Reich was obviously nearing its end. The air raids also frightened their tormentors, the SS guards.

There were large scale air attacks by the US Air Force against the I. G. Farben synthetic oil plant in Monowitz on 20 August, 3 September, 18 December and 26 December 1944, and on 19 January 1945, the day after the beginning of the evacuation of the camp. During the raid of 20 August, seventy-five prisoners were killed and a hundred and fifty injured; on 3 September, three hundred people, including SS and prisoners, were killed or injured. The high number of prisoner casualties was in part due to I. G. Farben employees forbidding prisoners to take cover in makeshift shelters.

CM

Subcamps of Auschwitz project

The system of rationing reached its extreme in the Nazi Lager. Nonetheless, Levi and many of his companions had already experienced the dilemmas of provisioning in the context of war and the violent repression enacted by the Salò Republic. This situation of scarcity and black market profiteering proved acute in the Valle d’Aosta to which Levi and his family had fled, along with many draft evaders and foreign Jews from the Balkans. When Levi joined his partisan comrades in the Col de Joux, they likewise experienced the challenges all partisans faced: how to safely secure supplies without alienating the local population or risking capture.

PB

While referring principally to the hero of the Homeric epic, ‘Ulisse’ also represents the kind of moniker that could serve Italian partisans as a nom de guerre. In his 1981 poem Partigia, Primo Levi enquires into the fate of his companions in the Resistance: ‘Dove siete, partigia di tutte le valli, | Tarzan, Riccio, Sparviero, Saetta, Ulisse?’ Historian Sergio Luzzatto reports that Levi’s 1946 application for recognition as a partisan listed his own code name as 'Ferrero' (Luzzatto 2016, 165-66).

PB

In geographic terms, of course, the sea that Ulysses traverses is the broader Mediterranean and, at moments, its inner seas (e.g. the Ionian, Aegean, or Adriatic). As in Homer’s epic, however, ‘mare’ possesses a polyvocality in Levi’s text that far exceeds its cartographic meanings. The Fascist regime famously instrumentalised and misused Italy’s classical heritage. As early as 1918, Mussolini had linked ‘romanità’ with the sea, declaring in a speech at Pavia, ‘Now the mission of Italians is in the Mediterranean’ ('Ora la missione degli Italiani è nel Mediterraneo'). Yet even as the Duce confidently proclaimed that Italy would rule over a revived Mare Nostrum, the sea itself retained a historically ambivalent – at points, even marginal – status within the modern Italian state (Fogu 2020).

In a 1985 Paris Review interview (only published in 1994), Levi spoke of the revelation of reading Melville during the time of Fascism. According to Levi, the fascist censors allowed Cesare Pavese to translate the book as ‘it had no political implications’, a judgement that ignored the work’s entanglements with American narratives of imperialism and race politics. In Levi’s estimation, Pavese’s translation ‘distorted it [Moby Dick], fitted it into the Italian language’ – and thus into an ambivalent Italian imaginary of the sea. Like many Italians, ‘[h]e wasn’t a seaman – Pavese – he hated the sea’, commented Levi.

Such ambivalence towards the sea resonates in Levi’s biography, as well. Like many 20th-century Italians and Europeans more generally, Levi was familiar with the seaside as a place for recreation and tourism. Indeed, in ‘Il canto di Ulisse’, Levi claimed that Rudi, the Blockführer in Auschwitz, liked Italy and wanted to learn Italian; this desire dated back to a month-long holiday in Liguria before the war, a vacation presumably spent along the shore. In the chapter, Levi likewise refers to ‘una qualche spiaggia estiva della mia infanzia’. Yet in his youth Levi embraced mountain climbing, with one biographer, Ian Thomson, claiming that on the eve of World War II Levi did not even know how to swim. For Levi, the sublimity of the peaks, rather than the sea’s vastness, symbolised freedom. In this, Levi was not alone. The classic terrain of both the Resistance and the civil war was resolutely a landscape (karst, forest, field, mountain) rather than a seascape.

In an indirect way, the project of Mare Nostrum threatened to shipwreck Levi’s own university hopes. In 1937, as Levi prepared for his ‘maturità’ exams, he received a demand to report to the Turin seaplane base. There he was accused of ignoring a draft summons for the Royal Navy. Levi’s sister, Anna Maria Levi, insisted, ‘Maybe my brother’s name was on a Fascist National Service list, but he never received an Italian Royal Navy summons’ (Thomson 2003, 66). A compromise was struck, with Levi expected to enrol in the university branch of the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (MVSN). Thus, unlike Ulysses, Levi was not destined to set forth on the open sea (in the latter’s case with the Navy). In the end, Levi never served in any branch of the Italian military or fascist militia. Rather, his brief three month career as a partisan played out in the mountain passes of the Valle d’Aosta, after Levi moved out of the Hotel Ristoro where he had initially sought refuge.

During those few months when Levi took up arms against the Fascists, there occurred an incident that profoundly demoralised Levi and his comrades: the execution at Frumy of two partisan brothers-in-arms, Fulvio Oppezzo and Luciano Zabaldano on December 9, 1943. In the estimation of historian Sergio Luzzatto, this episode would continue to haunt not only Levi’s conscience but also his writings (non-fiction, his novel, and poetry) (Luzzatto 2016). The ‘ugly secret’ Levi harboured was that these partisans - long celebrated as the first partisans killed in the Valle d’Aosta - did not fall at the hands of the Fascists but of their comrades, who appear to have punished Oppezzo and Zabaldano for indiscretion and greed. Perhaps it was only fitting that Zabaldono’s nom de guerre was ‘Mare’, given that this partisan’s life – and death – embodied the ambiguity and fluidity of what Levi would later conceptualise as the ‘grey zone’.

PB

Food is a fundamental aspect of war and captivity narratives. Cabbage and turnips become emblems of misery in Günter Grass’s Der Butt (The Flounder), Ernst Jünger’s In Stahlgewittern (In Storms of Steel), and Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). In Levi, these vegetables symbolise the bleak reality of the Lager that makes any daydreaming futile.

GC

Food is a fundamental aspect of war and captivity narratives. Cabbage and turnips become emblems of misery in Günter Grass’s Der Butt (The Flounder), Ernst Jünger’s In Stahlgewittern (In Storms of Steel), and Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen Nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front). In Levi, these vegetables symbolise the bleak reality of the Lager that makes any daydreaming futile.