66 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2024
    1. When you withdraw cash from an ATM, scan groceries at the store, or use a calculator, you're using a type of computer.

      These things listed are types of computers because they are an operating machine using a software with a screen.

  2. Jul 2024
  3. Mar 2024
    1. From behind me, Bret said: ‘Watch this,’ and pointed a small green laser at one of the books. The spine – the physical spine – lit up and above the bookshelf the book itself exploded onto an empty swath of wall. The entirety of its contents, laid out page by page by some hidden projector. The laser tracked by some hidden constellation of cameras. In his hand, Bret held an iPad, and as he pointed the laser at various projected pages they appeared on his device. As he slid from page to page on the iPad, the corresponding pages on the wall enlarged. It was a way to view both the macro and micro of a book – the overarching structure of the whole and the minutiae of the paragraph. The margins, it must be said, were gorgeous.布雷特在我身後說:“看這個”,然後用一個小型綠色雷射指著其中一本書。書脊——實體書脊——亮了起來,書架上方的書本身爆炸到了一大片空牆上。它的全部內容,由一些隱藏的投影機一頁一頁地展示出來。雷射由一些隱藏的攝影機群追蹤。 Bret 手裡拿著一台 iPad,當他將雷射指向各個投影頁面時,它們就出現在他的裝置上。當他在 iPad 上從一頁滑到另一頁時,牆上相應的頁面就會放大。這是一種從宏觀和微觀角度看待一本書的方式——整體的整體結構和段落的細節。必須說,邊緣非常華麗。

      如果不只是書籍,任何實體的物品都有類似上述雷射出的概念?那可不可以更接近數位互動的概念?架設我在一家咖啡廳,桌上會顯示出這杯咖啡的出生,烘焙日期112/11/08、哥倫比亞百香颶風(Purplr Caturra)、百香水洗等等等等甚至假設又顯示出幾個客人的風味描述,就像 hypothesis 一樣,可以與看到註釋的人互動

  4. Feb 2024
    1. lors du débat de 1850 il y a en particulier un éclat extraordinaire 00:04:59 c'est victor hugo lui n'est pas du tout religieux il croit en dieu mais il n'est pas favorable à une mainmise du clergé sur l'instruction et donc ils attaquent en des termes est extraordinaire ce 00:05:11 qu'il appelle le parti clérical et il termine par ces mots extraordinaire et évidemment c'est une gifle un pur pour la majorité liberté d'enseigner liberté d'enseignement ce que vous réclamez en 00:05:23 réalité c'est la liberté de ne pas enseigner c'est à dire que victor hugo accuse le parti clérical les conservateurs et bien de vouloir entretenir l'ignorance est l'erreur dit il plutôt que de faire progresser les 00:05:38 lumières
  5. Oct 2023
  6. Apr 2023
    1. Seeking to keep Mr. Jory entertained, he idly tossed off a stunt in which he recalled the location of all 52 cards in a shuffled deck.

      Harry Lorayne, having run out of card tricks to entertain actor Victor Jory one evening, invented a trick in which he recalled the location of all the cards in a deck of playing cards. The feat so impressed Jory that Lorayne made it part of his magic act in the Catskills.

  7. Mar 2023
    1. Traditional visual environments visualize the code. They visualize static structure. But that's not what we need to understand. We need to understand what the code is doing.Visualize data, not code. Dynamic behavior, not static structure.”http://worrydream.com/#!/LearnableProgramming

      El asunto es que debido al homomorfismo, el código puede ser visto como datos y viceversa. Las mismas técnicas empleadas en visualizar el uno pueden ser usadas en los otros, como de hecho ya hemos experimentado varias veces en la comunidad de Grafoscopio a través de las narrativas de datos.

    2. Before you can manipulate anything you have to define a set of affordances. If you have no affordances you have... nothing.A lot of programming is really about manually creating affordances that can be applied to specific domains. The traditional medium for this is text, with dataflow diagrams a distant second.People often forget that this is still symbolic programming. You could replace all the keywords in a language with emojis, different photos of Seattle, or hex colour codes, but we use text because it's mnemonic in a way that more abstract representations aren't.Dataflow diagrams are good as far as they go, but it doesn't take much for a visual representation to become too complex to understand. With text you can at least take it in small chunks, and abstraction/encapsulation make it relatively easy to move between different chunk levels.

      Creo que más que manipulación directa, Victor habla de manipulación multimodal y computación con todo el cuerpo.

    3. With computer interfaces, you hardly ever interact with something in an immediate way. I want a comment to appear on this site but instead I am writing this text in a white box and not where the comment would appear. All the computer interactions are mediated by these in-between steps. (An example for unmediated interaction would be cooking. What you chop is what you get
    4. To me, the the most interesting part of Bret Victors ideas lie in the re-embodiment of disembodied interactions. The computers choreograph us anyhow, but often in a very poor and limited way – only our fingertips and our eyes move a bit. Why not make the choreography of interaction richer? Why not create a computer-aided full-body choreography of interaction?
    1. Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens. (Sektion 1.2 Die Kartei) Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.

      annotation target: urn:x-pdf:00126394ba28043d68444144cd504562

      (Unknown translation from German into English. v1 TK)

      The overall title of the work (in English: Technique of Scientific Work) calls immediately to mind the tradition of note taking growing out of the scientific historical methods work of Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos and even more specifically the description of note taking by Beatrice Webb (1926) who explicitly used the phrase "recipe for scientific note-taking".

      see: https://hypothes.is/a/BFWG2Ae1Ee2W1HM7oNTlYg

      first reading: 2022-08-23 second reading: 2022-09-22

      I suspect that this translation may be from Clemens in German to Scheper and thus potentially from the 1951 edition?

      Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende. 8., Umgearb. Aufl. 1931. Reprint, Berlin: R. Kiepert, 1951.

  8. Feb 2023
    1. NOW I SAY, "OKAY, THIS IS DONE." I READ IT. IT FEELS LIKE A MOVIE. AND I'M GONNA PUT IT IN THE BOX. AND I'M GONNA PUT IT IN THE BOX IN THIS ORDER, AND THIS IS THE ORDER THAT I'M GONNA WRITE IT IN IN MY FIRST DRAFT. OVER THE NEXT NUMBER OF WEEKS, I START WRITING. WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING, I'VE BEEN SEEING THE SCENES IN MY HEAD FOR SO LONG AT THIS POINT THAT IT'S ALMOST LIKE JUST REGURGITATION. LIKE, I'M JUST GETTING OUT. AND I CALL IT MY VOMIT DRAFT. #

      Dustin Lance Black's "vomit draft" is similar to Mozart's peeing his music out like a cow. His method is also similar to Victor Margolin who's gone over the material several times by the time he's finally writing out his draft.

  9. Jan 2023
    1. I couldn’t have written this book without the aid of laying out all of thedifferent sections on my desk. I created a hub of cards that had collectivecardlinks on them. Each card was organized by topic and contained subtopicsthat pointed me to various card addresses in my Antinet. I then moved themaround a large table to create the perfect logical layout for this book. Here’sa picture of it:

      Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.


      compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w

      also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene

  10. Dec 2022
    1. https://edward-slingerland.medium.com/there-is-only-one-way-to-write-a-book-637535ef5bde

      Example of someone's research, note taking, and writing process using index cards.

      Broadly, this is very similar to the process used by Ryan Holiday, Robert Green, and Victor Margolin.

      While he can't recall the name of the teacher, he credits his 7th grade English teacher (1980-1981) for teaching him the method.


      Edward Slingerland is represented by Brockman Inc.

  11. Nov 2022
    1. Post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/z5haa9/victor_margolins_zettelkasten_process_for_writing/

      It's not as refined or as compartmentalized as Luhmann's process, but art Historian Victor Margolin broadly outlines his note taking and writing process in reasonable detail in this excellent three minute video. (This may be one of the shortest and best produced encapsulations of these reading/note taking/writing methods I've ever seen.)

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

      Though he indicates it was a "process [he] developed", it is broadly similar to that of the influential "historical method" laid out by Ernst Bernheim and later Seignobos/Langlois in the late 1800s.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Intrigue</span> in intrigue (<time class='dt-published'>08/29/2022 15:00:52</time>)</cite></small>

    2. Victor Margolin's note taking and writing process

      • Collecting materials and bibliographies in files based on categories (for chapters)
      • Reads material, excerpts/note making on 5 x 7" note cards
        • Generally with a title (based on visual in video)
        • excerpts have page number references (much like literature notes, the refinement linking and outlining happens separately later in his mapping and writing processes)
        • filed in a box with tabbed index cards by chapter number with name
        • video indicates that he does write on both sides of cards breaking the usual rule to write only on one side
      • Uses large pad of newsprint (roughly 18" x 24" based on visualization) to map out each chapter in visual form using his cards in a non-linear way. Out of the diagrams and clusters he creates a linear narrative form.
      • Tapes diagrams to wall
      • Writes in text editor on computer as he references the index cards and the visual map.

      "I've developed a way of working to make this huge project of a world history of design manageable."<br /> —Victor Margolin

      Notice here that Victor Margolin doesn't indicate that it was a process that he was taught, but rather "I've developed". Of course he was likely taught or influenced on the method, particularly as a historian, and that what he really means to communicate is that this is how he's evolved that process.

      "I begin with a large amount of information." <br /> —Victor Margolin

      "As I begin to write a story begins to emerge because, in fact, I've already rehearsed this story in several different ways by getting the information for the cards, mapping it out and of course the writing is then the third way of telling the story the one that will ultimately result in the finished chapters."<br /> —Victor Margolin

  12. Oct 2022
    1. If a passage is interesting from several different points of view, then it should be copied out several times on different slips.

      I don't recall Langlois and Seignobos suggesting copying things several times over. Double check this point, particularly with respect to the transference to Luhmann.

    1. Deutsch wrote often of history’s ‘scientific’ nature and inductive approach, leading toan almost positivistic method. ‘From individual facts’, he wrote, ‘one ascends to prin-ciples’, continuing: ‘Facts have to be arranged in a systematic manner . . . First we mustknow, and afterward we may reason’. This ‘systematic’ arrangement, he believed, sepa-rated the historian from the mere annalist or chronicler (Deutsch, 1900b: 166).

      This scientific viewpoint of history was not unique to the time and can be seen ensconced in popular books on historical method of the time, including Bernheim and Langlois/Seignobos.

    1. Adams H. B. (1886) Methods of Historical Study. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

      Where does this fit with respect to the zettelkasten tradition and Bernheim, Langlois/Seignobos?

    2. It may seem a curious relic of positivistic history, but closer examination allows us to interrogate the materiality of scholarly labor.

      Given the time period (1859-1921), what was the potential influence, if any, on Deutsch and his methods by historical methods writers and the evolution of the science of history by Ernst Bernheim or Seignobos/Langlois from that same period?

    1. In "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" (1952), C. Wright Mills talks about his methods for note taking, thinking, and analysis in what he calls "sociological imagination". This is a sociologists' framing of their own research and analysis practice and thus bears a sociological related name. While he talks more about the thinking, outlining, and writing process rather than the mechanical portion of how he takes notes or what he uses, he's extending significantly on the ideas and methods that Sönke Ahrens describes in How to Take Smart Notes (2017), though obviously he's doing it 65 years earlier. It would seem obvious that the specific methods (using either files, note cards, notebooks, etc.) were a bit more commonplace for his time and context, so he spent more of his time on the finer and tougher portions of the note making and thinking processes which are often the more difficult parts once one is past the "easy" mechanics.

      While Mills doesn't delineate the steps or materials of his method of note taking the way Beatrice Webb, Langlois & Seignobos, Johannes Erich Heyde, Antonin Sertillanges, or many others have done before or Umberto Eco, Robert Greene/Ryan Holiday, Sönke Ahrens, or Dan Allosso since, he does focus more on the softer portions of his thinking methods and their desired outcomes and provides personal examples of how it works and what his expected outcomes are. Much like Niklas Luhmann describes in Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen (VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981), Mills is focusing on the thinking processes and outcomes, but in a more accessible way and with some additional depth.

      Because the paper is rather short, but specific in its ideas and methods, those who finish the broad strokes of Ahrens' book and methods and find themselves somewhat confused will more than profit from the discussion here in Mills. Those looking for a stronger "crash course" might find that the first seven chapters of Allosso along with this discussion in Mills is a straighter and shorter path.

      While Mills doesn't delineate his specific method in terms of physical tools, he does broadly refer to "files" which can be thought of as a zettelkasten (slip box) or card index traditions. Scant evidence in the piece indicates that he's talking about physical file folders and sheets of paper rather than slips or index cards, but this is generally irrelevant to the broader process of thinking or writing. Once can easily replace the instances of the English word "file" with the German concept of zettelkasten and not be confused.

      One will note that this paper was written as a manuscript in April 1952 and was later distributed for classroom use in 1955, meaning that some of these methods were being distributed from professor to students. The piece was later revised and included as an appendix to Mill's text The Sociological Imagination which was first published in 1959.

      Because there aren't specifics about Mills' note structure indicated here, we can't determine if his system was like that of Niklas Luhmann, but given the historical record one could suppose that it was closer to the commonplace tradition using slips or sheets. One thing becomes more clear however that between the popularity of Webb's work and this (which was reprinted in 2000 with a 40th anniversary edition), these methods were widespread in the mid-twentieth century and specifically in the field of sociology.

      Above and beyond most of these sorts of treatises on note taking method, Mills does spend more time on the thinking portions of the practice and delineates eleven different practices that one can focus on as they actively read/think and take notes as well as afterwards for creating content or writing.


      My full notes on the article can be found at https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0138200b4bfcde2757a137d61cd65cb8

  13. Sep 2022
    1. The idea that analysis must precede synthesis is old, of course. Galileo Galilei and René Descartes already thought it was necessary to distinguish between an analytic and a synthetic step in dealing with any problem.

      Langlois/Seignobos talk about this in their text Introduction aux études historiques (1879) as well, focusing especially on the analysis portion to have a solid base of historical information from which to build and create a synthesis.

  14. Aug 2022
    1. By the earlytwentieth century advice manuals on research methods recommended takingnotes on index cards.141

      Here Blair quotes Chavigny and Heyde, but crucially leaves out Bernheim, Langlois & Seignobos, and Beatrice Webb.

      Check the others, specifically for index card references, but Webb uses slips or sheets (and often larger ones).

  15. Jul 2022
    1. Langlois, Charles-Victor / Seignobos, Charles (1898): Introduction to the Study of History. London

      Niklas Luhmann cites Langlois and Seignobos' Introduction to the Study of History (1898) at least once, so there's evidence that he read at least a portion of the book which outlines some portions of note taking practice that resemble portions of his zettelkasten method.

  16. May 2022
    1. One of the masters of the school, Hugh (d. 1140 or 1141), wrote a text, the Didascalicon, on whatshould be learned and why. The emphasis differs significantly from that of William of Conches. It isdependent on the classical trivium and quadrivium and pedagogical traditions dating back to St.Augustine and Imperial Rome.

      Hugh of St. Victor wrote Didascalicon, a text about what topics should be learned and why. In it, he outlined seven mechanical arts (or technologies) in analogy with the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium) as ways to repair the weaknesses inherit in humanity.

      These seven mechanical arts he defines are: - fabric making - armament - commerce - agriculture - hunting - medicine - theatrics


      Hugh of St. Victor's description of the mechanical art of commerce here is fascinating. He says "reconciles nations, calms wars, strengthens peace, and turns the private good of individuals into a benefit for all" (doublcheck the original quotation, context, and source). This sounds eerily familiar to the common statement in the United States about trade and commerce.

      Link this to the quote from Albie Duncan in The West Wing (season 5?) about trade.

      Other places where this sentiment occurs?

      Is Hugh of St. Victor the first in history to state this sentiment?

  17. Apr 2022
    1. In his manuscript, Harrison spoke of machina with respect to his filing cabinet and named his invention ‘Ark of Studies’. In rhetorical culture, ‘ark’ had been a metaphor that, among many others, denoted the virtual store-house that orators stocked with vivid images of memorable topics (res) and words (verba). In Harrison’s manuscript, ‘ark’ instead became a synonym for ‘mechanical’ memory. In turn, in the distinction between natural and artificial memory, consciousness was compelled to leave its place and to shift to the op-posing side.

      Thomas Harrison used the word machina to describe his 'Ark of Studies', a filing cabinet for notes and excerpts from other works. This represents part of a discrete and very specific change on the continuum of movement from the ars memoria (artificial memory) to the ars excerptendi (note taking). Within the rhetorical tradition relying on creating memorable images for topics (res) and words (verba) the idea of an ark was often used as a memory palace as seen in Hugh of St. Victor's De arca Noe mystica, or ‘‘The Ark of Noah According to the Spiritual Method of Reading" (1125–30). It starts the movement from natural and artificial memory to a form of external and mechanical memory represented by his physical filing cabinet.

      Reference Yates and Carruthers for Hugh of St. Victor.

  18. Jan 2022
    1. The effect was beautifully suggested by Victor Hugo in a familiar passage in Notre-Dame de Paris (183 1) when the scholar holding his first printed book turns away from his manuscripts, looks a t the cathedral, and says "This will kill that" (Ceci tuera cela). Print also destroyed "the invisible cathedrals of memory." For the printed book made it less nec- essary to shape ideas and things into vivid images and then store them in Memory-places.

      In Notre-Dame de Paris (1831) Victor Hugo depicts a scholar holding his first printed book. He turns away from his manuscripts to look at the cathedral and says "This will kill that" (Ceci tuera cela). Similarly the printed book made it far less necessary to store one's knowledge into cathedrals of memory.

  19. Oct 2021
    1. Victor Papanek’s Design Problem, 1975.

      The Design Problem

      Three diagrams will explain the lack of social engagement in design. If (in Figure 1) we equate the triangle with a design problem, we readily see that industry and its designers are concerned only with the tiny top portion, without addressing themselves to real needs.

      Figure 1: The Design Problem

      (Design for the Real World, 2019. Page 57.)

      The other two figures merely change the caption for the figure.

      • Figure 1: The Design Problem
      • Figure 2: A Country
      • Figure 3: The World
    1. In ecology, edge effects are changes in population or community structures that occur at the boundary of two or more habitats.[1] Areas with small habitat fragments exhibit especially pronounced edge effects that may extend throughout the range. As the edge effects increase, the boundary habitat allows for greater biodiversity.

      Edge Effects

      It was in the Design Science Studio that I learned about edge effects.

      Yesterday, I was thinking about how my life embodies the concept of edge effects. That same day, a book was delivered to our door, Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek.

      Today, I was reading these words:

      Design for the Real World

      Design for Survival and Survival through Design: A Summation

      Integrated, comprehensive, anticipatory design is the act of planning and shaping carried on across the various disciplines, an act continuously carried on at interfaces between them.

      Victor Papanek goes on to say:

      It is at the border of different techniques or disciplines that most new discoveries are made and most action is inaugurated. It is when two differing areas of knowledge are brought into contact with one another that… a new science may come into being.

      (Page 323)


      Exiles and Emigrés

      The Bauhaus spread its ideas because it existed at the boundaries, the avant-garde, the edges of what was thought to be possible, especially as a socialist utopian idea found its way to a capitalist industrial-military complex, where the concept of modernism was co-opted and colonized by globalizing economic forces beyond the control of the individual. Design was the virus that propagated around the world through the vehicle of corporate globalization.

      That same design ethic is infecting corporations with a conscience, with empathy, with a process that begins with listening to people. Design is the virus that can spread the values of unconditional love throughout the body of neoliberal capitalism.

    1. Design for the Real World

      You have to make up your mind either to make sense or to make money, if you want to be a designer.

      — R. Buckminster Fuller

      (Page 86)

    2. Design for the Real World

      Victor Papanek’s book includes an introduction written by R. Buckminster Fuller, Carbondale, Illinois. (Sadly, the Thames & Hudson 2019 Third Edition does not include this introduction. Monoskop has preserved the following text as a PDF file of images. I have transcribed a portion below.)

      Buckminster Fuller on Design

      In this book, Victor Papanek speaks about everything as design. I agree with that and will elaborate on it in my own way.

      To me the word “design” can mean either a weightless, metaphysical conception or a physical pattern. I tend to differentiate between design as a subjective experience, i.e., designs which affect me and produce involuntary and often subconscious reactions, in contradistinction to the designs that I undertake objectively in response to stimuli. What I elect to do consciously is objective design. When we say there is a design, it indicates that an intellect has organized events into discrete and conceptual inter-patternings. Snowflakes are design, crystals are design, music is design, and the electromagnetic spectrum of which the rainbow colors are but one millionth of its range is design; planets, stars, galaxies, and their contained behaviours such as the periodical regularities of the chemical elements are all design-accomplishments. If a DNA-RNA genetic code programs the design of roses, elephants, and bees, we will have to ask what intellect designed the DNA-RNA code as well as the atoms and molecules which implement the coded programs.

      The opposite of design is chaos. Design is intelligent or intelligible. Most of the design subjectively experienced by humans is a priori the design of sea waves, winds, birds, animals, grasses, flowers, rocks, mosquitoes, spiders, salmon, crabs, and flying fish. Humans are confronted with an a priori, comprehensive, designing intellect which for instance has designed the sustenance of life on the planet we call earth through the primary impoundment of Sun energy on Earth by the photosynthetic functioning of vegetation, during which process all the by-product gases given off by the vegetation are designed to be the specific chemical gases essential to sustaining all mammalian life on Earth, and when these gases are consumed by the mammals, they in turn are transformed again by chemical combining and disassociations, to product the by-product gases essential to the regeneration of the vegetation, thus completing a totally regenerative ecological design cycle.

      If one realizes that the universe is sum-totally an evolutionary design integrity, then one may be prone to acknowledge that an a priori intellect of infinitely vast considerateness and competence is everywhere and everywhere overwhelmingly manifest.

      In view of a number of discoveries such as the ecological regeneration manifest in the mammalian-vegetation interexchange of gases, we can comprehend why responsibly thinking humans have time and again throughout the ages come to acknowledge a supra-human omniscience and omnipotence.

      The self-regenerative scenario universe is an a prior design integrity. The universe is everywhere, and continually, manifesting an intellectual integrity which inherently comprehends all macro-micro event patterning and how to employ that information objectively with omni-consideration of all inter-effects and reactions. The universe manifests an extraordinary aggregate of generalized principles, none of which contradict one another and all of which are inter-accommodative, with some of the inter-accommodations exhibiting high exponential levels of synergetic surprise. Some of them involve fourth-power geometrical levels of energy interactions.

    3. Design for the Real World

      by Victor Papanek

      Papanek on the Bauhaus

      Many of the “sane design” or “design reform” movements of the time, such as those engendered by the writings and teachings of William Morris in England and Elbert Hubbard in the United States, were rooted in a sort of Luddite antimachine philosophy. By contrast Frank Llloyd Wright said as early as 1894 that “the machine is here to stay” and that the designer should “use this normal tool of civilization to best advantage instead of prostituting it as he has hitherto done in reproducing with murderous ubiquity forms born of other times and other conditions which it can only serve to destroy.” Yet designers of the last century were either perpetrators of voluptuous Victorian-Baroque or members of an artsy-craftsy clique who were dismayed by machine technology. The work of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Austria and the German Werkbund anticipated things to come, but it was not until Walter Gropius founded the German Bauhaus in 1919 that an uneasy marriage between art and machine was achieved.

      No design school in history had greater influence in shaping taste and design than the Bauhaus. It was the first school to consider design a vital part of the production process rather than “applied art” or “industrial arts.” It became the first international forum on design because it drew its faculty and students from all over the world, and its influence traveled as these people later founded design offices and schools in many countries. Almost every major design school in the United States today still uses the basic foundation course developed by the Bauhaus. It made good sense in 1919 to let a German 19-year-old experiment with drill press and circular saw, welding torch and lathe, so that he might “experience the interaction between tool and material.” Today the same method is an anachronism, for an American teenager has spent much of his life in a machine-dominated society (and cumulatively probably a great deal of time lying under various automobiles, souping them up). For a student whose American design school slavishly imitates teaching patterns developed by the Bauhaus, computer sciences and electronics and plastics technology and cybernetics and bionics simply do not exist. The courses the Bauhaus developed were excellent for their time and place (telesis), but American schools following this pattern in the eighties are perpetuating design infantilism.

      The Bauhaus was in a sense a nonadaptive mutation in design, for the genes contributing to its convergence characteristics were badly chosen. In boldface type, it announced its manifesto: “Architects, sculptors, painters, we must all turn to the crafts.… Let us create a new guild of craftsmen!” The heavy emphasis on interaction between crafts, art, and design turned out to be a blind alley. The inherent nihilism of the pictorial arts of the post-World War I period had little to contribute that would be useful to the average, or even to the discriminating, consumer. The paintings of Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger, et al., on the other hand, had no connection whatsoever with the anemic elegance some designers imposed on products.

      (Pages 30-31)

    1. Victor Papanek’s book includes an introduction written by R. Buckminster Fuller, Carbondale, Illinois. (Sadly, the Thames & Hudson 2019 Third Edition does not include this introduction. Monoskop has preserved this text as a PDF file of images. I have transcribed a portion here.)

  20. Sep 2021
    1. Design for the Real World

      Mike Monteiro references Victor Papanek’s book, Design for the Real World, in his article, Design’s Lost Generation.

      The Anti UX UX Club will be discussing Mike Monteiro’s article on Clubhouse.

  21. Jun 2021
    1. Willis is more concerned with the construction of a perfectly orderedmental place system than with imagery.

      How similar or dissimilar is this over description in Mnemonica by John Willis to the palace built using Noah's Ark by Hugh of St. Victor?

  22. Feb 2021
    1. Bret Victor is trying to: Share the magic of computers and dynamic media with everyone Help people; do engineering for a cause, for a higher purpose Build creative tools for human expression Empower people; help everyone see and understand through insightful representations and humane interfaces Provide direct manipulation tools and immediate feedback Liberate us from the constraints imposed by poor tools and stale ways of thinking Encourage active reading and informed discourse Reinvent the way we represent thought Build a career around a guiding principle

      布雷特·维克多(Bret Victor)试图:

      • 与每个人分享计算机和动态媒体的魔力
      • 帮助人们;为事业、为更高的目标做工程
      • 为人类的表达创造创造性的工具
      • 赋能于人;通过深刻的表示和人性化的界面帮助每个人看到和理解
      • 提供直接的操作工具和即时反馈
      • 把我们从落后的工具和陈旧的思维方式中解放出来
      • 鼓励积极的阅读和有见地的讨论
      • 重塑我们表达思想的方式
      • 围绕指导原则建立职业生涯
    2. Victor points out that the Internet age was built on a non-commercial research culture that incubated the underlying technologies for decades. The personal computing and Internet industry exploited this culture, generating massive global wealth, but then failed to meaningfully contribute back. The dominant players today are "not planting seeds for a humane future". And so, we find ourselves at crossroads: now is the time do decide what the future of computing will look like. Will Victor have more success than Engelbart in winning funding to fully realise his vision? Will we curl ever deeper inward into our shiny rectangles, or are we witnessing the dawn of a new era in social, humane computing?

      维克多指出,互联网时代是建立在一种非商业性的研究文化之上的,这种文化孕育了数十年的基础技术。个人计算和互联网产业利用了这种文化,创造了巨大的全球财富,但随后却没有做出有意义的贡献。今天的主导者 "没有为人道的未来播种"。

      因此,我们发现自己正处在十字路口:现在是时候做决定计算的未来会是什么样子。维克多是否会比恩格尔巴特更成功地赢得资金以充分实现他的愿景?我们是会更深地蜷缩在我们闪闪发光的长方体中,还是会见证一个社会化、人性化的计算新时代的到来?

    3. Operationally Dynamicland, Victor's research lab, follows the spirit of Douglas Engelbart and Xerox PARC, who decades ago invented the technologies and principles that became the foundation of the computer revolution and the information age. This first DL instance in Oakland is being realised by a small non-profit research group with a long-term orientation, something Victor is highly passionate about.

      在操作上,Victor的研究实验室Dynamicland遵循Douglas Engelbart和Xerox PARC的精神,他们在几十年前发明的技术和原理成为了计算机革命和信息时代的基础。这个在奥克兰的第一个DL实例是由一个小型的非营利性研究小组实现的,他们的研究方向是长期的,这也是Victor非常热衷的事情。

    4. "I just have this feeling that instead of making toys for rich kids, or devising ways to make computers go 5% faster, I could somehow somehow somehow be using my skills to save lives. Or significantly improve the global quality of life. Or something big and noble and hopelessly idealistic like that."

      "我只是有这样一种感觉,与其为有钱的孩子们制造玩具,或者想方设法让电脑速度快5%,不如用我的技术去拯救生活,或者大大改善全球的生活质量。或者显著提高全球的生活质量。或者是那种宏伟高尚又无可救药的理想主义。"

    5. In my view, Victor is part of a transitional tech generation, who were both a little late to experience both sides of the personal computing revolution, and a little too early to truly belong in the saturated social media culture we live in today. Victor certainly thinks about the future of technology by drawing on the thinkers of past generations for insight and inspiration. Victor is early Web, but more Xanadu at heart.

      在我看来,Victor属于过渡时期的技术一代,他们体验个人电脑革命的两面有点晚了,要真正融入我们今天所处的饱和的社交媒体文化也有点早。Victor当然会从过去几代人的思想家那里获得洞察力和灵感,从而思考科技的未来。Victor是早期的Web,但内心更多的是Xanadu。

    1. Bret’s magic bookshelf reminded me of a quote by Alan Kay. Explaining his Dynabook concept to a group of children in 1968, he said: ‘I want to be able to do all the things you can do with a book, but be dynamic.’ There was something about the playful quality of the magic bookshelf that felt like it had achieved spiritual lockstep with Kay’s goals. The bridging of the digital and physical seemed oddly and unexpectedly fresh, prescient, like a rich vein worthy of continued mining.

      布雷特的神奇的书架让我想起了艾伦·凯的一句话。1968年,他在向一群孩子解释他设计的Dynabook的概念时说:“我想做到你用一本书所能做的所有事情,但必须是以动态的形式。”神奇书架所具有的趣味性让人觉得它在精神上已经与艾伦·凯的目标达成了一致。数字书和纸质书之间架起的神奇的桥梁让人感觉奇妙的同时也感觉非常新鲜,而且还具有出乎意料的预见性,就像一条丰富的矿脉,值得继续挖掘。

    2. The next step, Bret said, was to get all of the books properly scanned and indexed. Soon enough, you’d be able to type in any search term, and the related physical volumes would glow, their collected relevant pages appearing above. But this was possible only by performing your own scans, owning your own data, placing it in an open, malleable format. A supple data source, it seemed, was the only way to hold forth these investigations.

      下一步,布雷特说,他将要把所有的书全部扫描,然后给它们编好索引。很快,你就可以往电脑里输入任何搜索词,而相关的实体书籍就会亮起来,然后它们已被扫描过的相关书页就会投影出现在上方的那面墙上。但是这一切必须在你自己扫描好页面,拥有这些数据,而且将其放进一个开放且可塑的格式之中才可能得以实现。看起来,一个灵活的数据源似乎就是推进这类试验的唯一途径。

    3. From behind me, Bret said: ‘Watch this,’ and pointed a small green laser at one of the books. The spine – the physical spine – lit up and above the bookshelf the book itself exploded onto an empty swath of wall. The entirety of its contents, laid out page by page by some hidden projector. The laser tracked by some hidden constellation of cameras. In his hand, Bret held an iPad, and as he pointed the laser at various projected pages they appeared on his device. As he slid from page to page on the iPad, the corresponding pages on the wall enlarged. It was a way to view both the macro and micro of a book – the overarching structure of the whole and the minutiae of the paragraph. The margins, it must be said, were gorgeous.

      布雷特站在我的身后,说:“请看。”他将一小束绿色的激光射向了其中的一本书,那本书的书脊(纸质书的书脊)马上被照亮了,而且那本书也被投影到了书架上方的一大片狭长的空白墙壁上。随后,那本书的全部内容就被某台隐藏着的投影仪一页一页地呈现在了白色的墙上。一群隐形的摄像镜头追踪着激光光束的所到之处。布雷特拿着一个iPad,当他用激光指向墙壁上被投影出来的不同页面时,这些页面全都分别出现在他手中设备的屏幕上。当他在iPad上一页页地滑动时,墙上投影出来的相应页面也会随即放大。这种方法可以让人同时从宏观和微观两种角度去读同一本书:既能看到整本书最重要的整体结构,又能读到书中某个段落的详细细节。必须说的是,那些书页的页边距确实留得漂亮。

    4. In early August I visited Bret Victor’s Communications Design Group research laboratory in San Francisco. Against the far wall of the lab’s library stood a 10-foot wooden bookshelf. It was stuffed with manuals on the history of computers and programming and interfaces, novels and countless non-fiction books.

      去年8月初,我参观了布雷特·维克多(Bret Victor)位于旧金山的通信设计集团研究实验室。实验室图书馆远处的一面墙边立着一排10英尺高的木制书架,书架上塞满了各种关于计算机历史、编程和界面的手册,还有为数众多的小说以及各种非小说类书籍。

  23. Sep 2020
    1. yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth, of her tears and endless sorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from her, tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my eyes,

      It's interesting to me that Victor only cries when thinking of how upset Elizabeth is going to be when he's the one who's going to die. He fits the whole "man be rational and women emotional" cultural phenomenon of the time to a tee. He's stone faced going into losing battle, but Elizabeth will be just soooooooooo sad and sooooooooo sorrowful. While I'm on the topic, the characterization of Elizabeth TOTALLY fits in while the "passive wife who's in charge of the emotional side of family," to a point where Mary Shelley is a satirist. Also the use of barbarous to describe the Creature is just textbook Othering in the way that demotes the Creature to a irrational and animalistic creature.

  24. Dec 2019
    1. altered her since I last beheld her; it had endowed her with loveliness surpassing the beauty of her childish years. There was the same candour, the same vivacity, but it was allied to an expression more full of sensibility and intellect.

      This revision to 1831 emphasizes Elizabeth's "sensibility" and "intellect" as a full grown woman and her "slight and graceful" figure.

    2. My tale was not one to announce publicly; its astounding horror would be looked upon as madness by the vulgar. Did any one indeed exist, except I, the creator, who would believe, unless his senses convinced him, in the existence of the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world?

      In this 1831 addition, Victor rationalizes his decision to withhold his knowledge of the creature in relation to Justine's trial by reflecting that no one would believe him, or more likely, would think him mad.

    3. Such were the professor’s words—rather let me say such the words of fate, enounced to destroy me. As he went on, I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein,—more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation. I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight’s thoughts were as a dream. There only 35remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies, and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day, I paid M. Waldman a visit.

      In this lengthy addition to 1831, Victor experiences an early flash of ruinous ambition during the chemistry lecture by M. Waldman. The new picture of Waldman as an evil force belongs to a pattern of provoking suspicion about scientific education in the 1831 edition that did not appear in the 1818.

    4. pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child, I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth, and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged the discoveries of recent enquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchymists.

      Shelley adds this 1831 passage in which she traces Victor's fascination with alchemy and outmoded scientific ideas to an impetuous childhood, while the 1818 edition shows Victor reading the ancient sciences as an adult.

    5. of my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities, and the principal residents in my new abode.

      In this addition to 1831, Shelley emphasizes the importance of Ingolstadt as Victor's university-town environment during his medical training.

    6. the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime. Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of my purpose alone sustained me: my labours would soon end, and I believed that exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease;

      in this revision to 1831 Victor's physical deterioration, as a result of his obsessive work and research, is more clearly linked to a deteriorating mental state as well.

    7. This was strange and unexpected intelligence; what could it mean? Had my eyes deceived me? and was I really as mad as the whole world would believe me to be, if I disclosed the object of my suspicions? I hastened to return home, and

      In this change to the 1831, the certainty with which Justine is convicted causes Victor to question his own convictions about the creature's involvement.

    8. And on the morrow Justine died. Elizabeth’s heart-rending eloquence failed to move the judges from their settled conviction in the criminality of the saintly sufferer. My passionate and indignant appeals were lost upon them. And when I received their cold answers, and heard the harsh unfeeling reasoning of these men, my purposed avowal died away on my lips. Thus I might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim. She perished on the scaffold as a murderess! From the tortures of my own heart, I turned to contemplate the deep and voiceless grief of my Elizabeth. This also was my doing! And my father’s woe, and the desolation of that late so smiling home—all was the work of my thrice-accursed hands! Ye weep, unhappy ones; but these are not your last tears! Again shall you raise 74the funeral wail, and the sound of your lamentations shall again and again be heard! Frankenstein, your son, your kinsman, your early, much-loved friend; he who would spend each vital drop of blood for your sakes—who has no thought nor sense of joy, except as it is mirrored also in your dear countenances—who would fill the air with blessings, and spend his life in serving you—he bids you weep—to shed countless tears; happy beyond his hopes, if thus inexorable fate be satisfied, and if the destruction pause before the peace of the grave have succeeded to your sad torments! Thus spoke my prophetic soul, as, torn by remorse, horror, and despair, I beheld those I loved spend vain sorrow upon the graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts.

      In this lengthy addition to the 1831 edition, Victor and Elizabeth attempt to save Justine from the scaffold by appealing to the judges but are unsuccessful in staying her execution.

      This is followed by an extended description of the anguish and torment of Victor's "prophetic soul" that accentuates the extreme feelings of guilt and horror that he feels for the deaths of both William and Justine.

    9. I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labours. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.

      This revision to 1831 emphasizes the great pains Victor takes with his manners when seeking guidance from M. Waldman.

    1. claim the gratitude of his child so completely

      Rather than entertain the negative consequences of his creation, Victor imagines creating a race that will worship him.

    2. renew life

      Victor implies that life can be renewed from death, a theme present in biblical scripture. See Gen. 3:19, 18:27; Job 30:19; Eccl. 3:20) and in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (Burial Rite 1:485, 2:501).

  25. Mar 2017
    1. Not all cards are created equal, even if you can get one – and not everyone can.

      Insightful, the company with the most market share would be the most readily available...