Part 34 (1/2)
The roots of al involved in current practical experiences are no longer effectively anchored in tradition, but in the memory of facts and actions extracted froner's concept of decoration, beautifully crafted editions fill the necessary bookcase Hurounded in nature and tradition This condition takes some of the wind out of the sails of memetics Practical experiences of human self-constitution extended the human phenotype beyond that of any other known species But this extension is not the suenetic and cultural evolution It is of a different quality that neither genetic nor ests, let alone explains Our obsession is to surpass the limitations of the past, cultural as well as natural That enerated in the attempt to reach levels of efficiency which neither nature nor tradition can support The hydroponic toital book, and the hu of the civilization of illiteracy have more in common than one thinks at the ood or bad, useful or destructive, entertaining or boring, is the life of those who read them Free to constitute ourselves in a framework of human experiences opened tonew territories of hu levels of significance Individual performance in the civilization of literacy could not reach such levels But this fors the question ”Why don't we?” (accomplish all these potentialities) We are so many, we are so talented, we are so well informed The civilization of illiteracy is not a promised land Interactive education centers, distributed tasks, cooperative efforts, and cultivation and use of all senses do not just happen
Understanding new necessities, in particular the relation between the new scale of humankind and the levels of efficiency to be reached in order to effectively address higher expectations of well being, does not co, or political speeches It results from the experience of self-constitution itself, in the sense that each experience becomes a locus of interactions, which transcends the individual
The realization of potential is probably less direct than the realization of dangers and risks We are still singing the sirens' song instead of articulating goals appropriate to our new condition One area in which goals have been articulated and are being pursued is the transfer of the contents of books froe of information, more access to it, and creative interaction The library, perceived as a form of trans-human memory, a space of topos uranikos filled with eternal information, was the collection of ideas and foruidance Robert de Sorbon gave his books to the University of Paris alesture would mean to the few scholars who had access to this collection By 1302 (only 25 years after his donation), one of the readers would jot down the observation that he would need ten years to read the just under 1,000 books in the library One hundred years later, Pee of Oxford obtained their libraries The Charles University in Prague, the universities in Krakow (Poland), Coine (the future Geren (Denrew into national cultural reithin theht Today, billions of books are housed in libraries all over the world Books are in our homes, in town and city libraries, in research institutions, in religious centers, in national and international organizations
Under the guise of literacy, we are happy to be able to access, regardless of the conditions (as borrowers or subscribers), this enore The library represented the permatic framework of human self-constitution moved beyond the characteristics embodied by both library and book
Therefore, a new library, representative ofon multimedia, and e had to come about This library, to which we shall return, now resides in a distributed world, accessible from many directions and in many ways, continuously open, and freed froht catch fire or turn into dust True, the ie of the world limited almost exclusively to reference books does not speak in favor of the enor the new routes opened by non-linear means of access to information, rich sensorial content, and interactivity
Still, inhis dictionary-a reference for America as the Larousse is for France and the Duden for Germany-can be retraced in the ence of the virtual library
In 1945, Vannevar Bush wrote his prophetic article in the Atlantic Monthly He announced, ”Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-h them” He went on to illustrate how the laill have ”at his touch the associated opinions and decision of his whole experience” The patent attorney could call ”the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest” The physician, the chemist, the historian will use Bush's modestly named Memex to retrieve information The conclusion, in a well subdued tone, was ”Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shoddy past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems”
Written immediately after World War II, Bush's article was concerned with applying the benefits of scientific research for warfare in the new context of peace What he suggested as a rather independent application is now the reality of on-line co each other's work The benefits of electronicpower are not what interest us here
Ted Nelson, whose naed the benefits deriving from Bush's vision, but he isNelson learned from literacy that one can link text to a footnote (the juinal note (the correlink, as he calls it) He designed his project as a distributed library of ever new texts and ihts, for linking to others, for altering texts and ies Multiplicity of interpretations, open to everyone else, ensures efficiency at the global level, and integrity at the individual level He called his concept a thinker-toy, an environ away the fun Generalized beyond his initial sche theraes animated Visualization increases expressivity Participation of es the library while si others to see only what they want to see Privacy can beto one's wishes; interaction is under the control of each individual In this generalized es froether The rule is si make a two-sided coin” In translation: If so, ie, to use a resource created by someone else, the connection becoht be relevant
Relinquishi+ng the right to control links, established in the first place because one needed the library, without walls and bookshelves, called the World Wide Web
Roads paved with good intentions are notorious for leading where we don't want to wind up For everyone who has searched for knowledge in the Web's virtual library, it becoine and no intelligent agent can effectively distinguish between the trivial and the ful
We have co-evolved with the results of our practical experiences Selection neither increases the chances of the fittest, nor eliically unfit Cultural artifacts, books included, or for that ital texts of all kinds and all contents, illustrate the thesis no less than the increasing number of people kept alive who, under Darwin's laould have died These individuals are able to constitute their practical experiences throughwhich books and libraries do not present themselves as alternatives Global networks are not a habitat for the human mind, but they are an effective medium for mind interactions of individuals who are physically far froe available in the virtual library is the main characteristic, more so than the wealth of data types and retrieval procedures
The question posed at the beginning of this section, ”Why don't we?” referring to the creative use of new means, finds one answer here As more and more people, within their realms of needs and interests, become linked to what is pertinent to their existence and experience, they also enter an agree part of the distributed space of hureement is part of the dyna a book implied an eventual return of ht also have affected the reader in ways difficult to evaluate: Soood books e, expression, and infore the relation Froet”-to that of literacy-”Let e, still evident today, took place
The next-”Involve ht continues: Involven
To design means to literally involve oneself in a practical experience with signs To design s, and intentions pertinent to human communication, as well as to project oneself in artifacts appropriate to hue of direct practical experiences, there was no design The practice of signs entails the possibility to transcend the present In nature, future nation: putting into sign, ie, design In its broadest definition, design is the self-constitution of the hue covers the environ, rituals, religious cerees, interpretive contexts, interactions, and more recently, new materials and virtual realities Shakespeare, ould have enjoyed the intense fervor of our age, gave a beautiful description of design: ”is unknown”
(Midsu fron is essentially a non-verbal hurounded in the visual, but extend to sound, texture, odor, taste, and co rhyth involved in practical experiences of self-constitution, the realiven In counter-distinction and in retrospect, hun is an act of selection: so is picked up froned an a-natural function through implementation: mark territory, aid an activity, support a structure or the huainst attack, color skin or clothing In other cases, selection is followed by so, such as the frame of the ritual around a tote, and celebrations of fecundity and victory Selection and fra are related to efficiency expectations They eness to pursue goals that support the individual, family, and community Between the present of any experience and the future, the experience of design bridges in the forh tools, artifacts, es), recurrences, and extensions of consequences of human activity froy into an experience of long-lasting consequences i, no matter how rudimentary, and expectations of outcome It also leads to new human relations in family-based interactions, education, shared values, and patterns of reciprocal responsibility Random sexual encounters that reflect natural drives are not designs
Awareness of reciprocal attraction, shared feelings, and co well beyond the physical encounter can be identified as a design con co and the design of offspring by selection of a partner, by selection of genetic traits catalogued in se and mutation, and by all that is yet to come upon us, there is a difference that reflects the altered humatic condition
Of real interest here is how the future is captured in design
Moreover, ant to kno it unfolds in practical experiences of design by which hus extend their reality frouage, design gives the hu another experience of time and space This experience is for the e But it can also n work aware of aspects of tiether or s and eventually co to the experiences of volume, texture, and motion The anticipated tin liberates the hue
Within the convention of design, signs are endoith a life of their own, supported by the energy of the persons entering the convention This is how human symbolism, of confirmed vitality and efficiency, is factually established Syiven the life of the experience The entire heritage of rituals testifies to this Today the word ritual is used indiscri to watching TV to after-gans centered around episodes of life and death Theirin connected interactions acquired an aesthetic quality fron
From the earliest known experiences, the i element of the experience This aesthetic component extends perceived formal qualities found in nature to the aesthetics of objects and activities in the realn expresses awareness of these formal characteristics Practical experiences display a repetitive pattern: the optimal choice (of shapes, colors, rhythh which pleasure is experienced is not reducible to the elements involved, but it is impossible without theuided by formatic fraeneric background One of the recurrent patterns of the practical experience of design is to appropriate the for in nature and to integrate it in the opti of the future This is how the aesthetic dimension of human practical experiences resulted within such experiences
Notation systes on stone or on the ground, or hieroglyphics) that eventually becan, not lastly in view of their aesthetic coherence Only when rules and expectations defined by verbal language take over notation does writing separate froe We can now understand why changes in verbal language, as it constituted a framework for time and spatial experiences, were not necessarily reflected in changes in design By the ti structure that led to it was ee This is not true, to the san It is at this juncture that design is ascertained as a profession, ie, as a practical doineering design ean with building pyraurats, and temples, and culn of e is that everything is a e, stoves, the contraptions used in literate education, schools, colleges, institutions, art studios, even nature
Froeneous field of practical experiences within industrial society, design evolved, in the civilization of illiteracy, as an overriding concern that extended toand interior design (architecture), jewelry design, apparel design, textile design, product design, graphic design, and to the n), interactive , new n (applied to politics and various coies, froes made possible complexities for which the intuitive use of visual expression is not the n-oriented practical experiences changed
Design now affords her levels of synaesthesia, as well as experiences involving variable designs-that is, designs that grow together with the hu self-constituted in practical interactions with the designed world
In the pragn replaced literacy more than any other practical experience has The results of design are different in nature from those of literacy As optimistic as one can become about a future not bound to the constraints of literacy, it takes n at a tiress is paralleled by revolutionary change
Drawing the future