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Lecture Notes for Tuesday, September 21,
2004:
The "Information Age"
Announcements
- Software Evaluation due tonight by 11:59 p.m.
- "Presenting Data and Information " One-Day Course
- UT EID changes
Paradigms, Revolutions, and Historical Determinism
- Hegelian Dialectic
Hegelian Dialectic
(from Steinhart, Eric (1998). Dialectic. Retrieved February
10, 2004, from http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/courses/hegel/DIALECTX.HTM)
- Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
- Technological Determinism
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G.W.F.Hegel
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The Enlightenment as a Nexus of Paradigm
Shift and Revolutionary Change
- Computer History Timeline (from http://www.cyberstreet.com/hcs/museum/chron.htm)
- 1622: William Oughtred develops the slide rule in England.
- 1624: Wilhelm Schickard builds first four-function calculator-clock
at the University of Heidelberg.
- 1642: Blaise Pascal builds the first numerical calculating
machine in Paris.
- 1673: Gottfried Leibniz builds a mechanical calculating
machine that multiplies, divides, adds and subtracts.
- 1780: American Benjamin Franklin discovers electricity.
- 1805: Joseph-Marie Jacquard invents perforated card for
use on his loom.
- 1822: In England Charles Babbage designs a Difference Engine
to calculate logarithms, but the machine is never built.
- 1833: Charles Babbage designs the Analytical Machine that
follows instructions from punched-cards. It is the first general
purpose computer.
- 1842: Lady Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace and daughter
of Lord Byron, the poet, documents Babbage's work and writes
programs for Babbage.
- 1854: Irishman George Boole publishes The Mathematical Analysis
of Logic using the binary system now known as Boolean algebra.
- 1855: George and Edvard Scheutz of Stockholm build the first
practical mechanical computer based on Babbage's work.
- Computing Machines
- Internet History
- Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command Line...
- "In retrospect, this was telling me two things about
people's relationship to technology. One was that romance
and image go a long way toward shaping their opinions. ...
The other, somewhat subtler point, was that interface is very
important" (pp. 4-5)
- "So an OS is a stack of metaphors and abstractions
that stands between you and the telegrams..." (p. 18)
- "But it is the fate of operating systems to become
free" (p. 37)
- Interface culture
- "The OS has (therefore) become a sort of intellectual
labor-saving device that tries to translate humans' vaguely
expressed intentions into bits" (p. 62)
- Morlocks vs. Eloi
- "Linux per se is not a specific set of ones and
zeroes, but a self-organizing Net subculture" (p.
93)
Information Wants to be Free (Or Not!)
- Lessig, "The
Laws of Cyberspace"
- Behavior is regulated by four constraints:
- Law - "regulates by sanctions imposed ex post"
- Social norms - "understandings or expectations
about how I ought to behave"
- Market - "regulates by price"
- Nature/architecture/code - "the constraint of the
world as I find it"
- Code: "the software and hardware that constitutes
cyberspace as it is -- the set of protocols, the set of rules,
implemented or codified, in the software of cyberspace itself,
which determines how people interact, or exist, in this space."
- "in a fundamental sense, the code of cyberspace is
its constitution. It sets the terms upon which people get
access; it sets the rules, it controls their behavior. In
this sense, it is its own sovereignity; an alternative sovereignity,
competing with real space sovereigns, in the regulation of
behavior by real space citizens."
- Raymond, "The
Cathedral and the Bazaar"
- "The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing
good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better."
- "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers."
- "To solve an interesting problem, start by finding
a problem that is interesting to you"
- Free Software
Foundation - Richard Stallman
- Creative
Commons
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