System Mimicry

WebSE – System 7.0 – Test Drive a Macintosh… is a site that has a Flash (?) simulation of the Apple Macintosh System 7.0 on an SE. I think we will see more of these as ways of preserving the culture of computing. This project should be expanded to a MAME type project for old operating systems. We build on SWF a simulation engine with which to create interactive simulations of old environments.

(Added on May 27, 2004) Thanks to St?©fan Sinclair, here is another simulation of an old Mac. P.dro Classic emulates not just the screen, but has a mouse that moves on a pad and post-it notes. An interesting idea that isn’t executed completely. I could be wrong, but some parts of the emulation are wrong. It is also marred by an unnecessary folder of low-rez porn. This appears to be more of an exercise in nostalgia than a serious attempt to capture the experience of an early Mac.
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Hackers and Painters

Embracing the Art of Hacking is a review of a book coming out from O’Reilly called Hackers & Painters. (Thanks to Matt Patey for this reference.)
The similarities and differences between art and programming are hopefully worked out beyond the platitude that “programming is an art.” Art is much more than an “art” in the sense of something that can’t be reduced to rules. Just about everything is a small-a art from cooking to dishwashing. To argue that programming is an Art one would have to look at the practices of training, production and consumption. While I doubt the cultures are that similar at the moment, I expect that programming jobs in North America are going to be increasingly in the entertainment area (from games to special effects) and thus programming as a practice will expand our configurations of the arts.

Kings of Infinite Space

kings.jpg Kings of Infinite Space by James Hynes (St. Martins Press, 2004) is a brilliant book that reminds me of that other Texas surreal, Vernon God Little.
Kings takes place in Lamar Texas (Austin?) where Paul, a failed academic, has ended up as a temp in the TxDoGS (Texas Department of General Services) writing an never-ending RFP. The novel is part academic fiction and part science fiction as TxDoGS turns out to be haunted by homeless men downsized over the years who will do work in return for sacrificial offerings. “Are we not men?” is the call of the pale men in frayed shirts with pens in their pockets.
While computers and technology doesn’t feature prominently in the book, one read of it is that it is about the side effects of technology – the outsourcing, the downsizing of services, and the cruel neocon dystopia that wastes lives.
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Web Writing and Patterns

Resources at† Hot Text — Web Writing that Works is a project by “The Communication Cirle” (which looks like a writing and consulting company) that has some good stuff on writing for the web. I am intrigued by how they present genres as the writing equivalent to patterns. (See their section on Patterns.) Could it be that genre theory could be applied to the discussion in computer science on patterns?
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Method and Technology

One way to ask about the place of computing in the humanities is to ask about method. I am reading Plato and the Good by my old prof Rosemary Desjardins. The second chapter nicely teases out Platonic dialectic from the Philebus in a way that can fits what I am going to call neon-baroque theories of folded interruption. Dialectic involves division of the stuff of the continuum into threads (analysis or digitization) and then the weaving of these threads into a fabric (synthesis or processing.) The problem with dialectic that Rosemary teases out is the problem I have with Deleuze’s interruption of the flow – how do you get a flow to divide in the first place?

To the weaver, therefore, we now put our question: what must be the case in order that she be able first to pick out the appropriate fleece, secondly to measure off the divisions that will yield the the threads of warp and woof, and then finally to interweave those threads so as to produce the web of the finished fabric? (p. 42)

Method is not just analysis and synthesis of a continuum, just as humanities computing is not just digitizing and processing the analog. Method, from meta (above, after) + hodos (way, path) involves a capacity to forsee the form you want to generate in the confusion. This is a looking back (after the way) so as to look forward (above the path.) You need to have an idea of what you want to weave before you start dividing (pro-video) and that comes from a recollection of what has been done. Thus Rosemary connects dialectic to Socratic recollection. Method in the humanities is circular – it involves a re-searching – a looking back to look forward. To analyze the flow into discrete digits you need to pull a flow out of chaos – you need to create a particular continuum for sampling, whether it be a flow of of sound or colour.
How does this help us with computing in the humanites? Well … lets go slow here and leave that to later.
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Giving up Empire, Cold Turkey

Vika blogged an essay by Vonnegut, Cold Turkey that rails against our addiction to oil and suggests that what is happening now is an empire desperately securing a last fix of petrochemicals before it has to go cold turkey.
What stands out for me is the anger of Vonnegut’s essay, an anger I find in myself. Such anger is a warning, but not rightious. This anger mirrors the fury Republican’s felt about Clinton – an anger that was more than partisan pretense – it included a deep sense of insult accompanied by an intolerance of the other intolerant.
As James Hynes describes Lamar, Texas in Kings of Infinite Space, there are three parts to disfunctional America (and this includes Canada):

There are the musicians, slackers, aging hippies, computer entrepreneurs, and academics in the arboreal old city north of the river; the Republican, Texas two-stepping, cowboy boot-wearing, SUV-driving Baptist middle managers in the sun-blasted suburban prairies south of the river; and the Hispanic and African-American gardeners, nurses, fast-food workers, and day laborers crowded into the crumbling streets east of the interstate, among the taquerieas and truck depots and tank farms. (p. 37)

Lets call them the Whigs, Tories, and Immigrants. These three ghettoes are closing on each other – the signs are that each have their story to tell of the other enclaves, each have their cultivated anger, each are erecting their own types of gates (ironic or ironware) and each have reason to avoid really engaging the other. Vonnegut voices the apocalyptic discourse of Whigs afraid of an empire managed by Tories.
The virtue of Hynes’ book is his refusal to let the Whigs off the hook, or for that matter, the Tories (I don’t know yet how he will deal with the third and disempowered class). He damns us both, and our intolerance of the other, to a Texas hell where, as in The Island of Dr. Moreau, we are asked again and again “Are we not Men?” by those we forgot.