COM257: Media History and Theory

In the article "Mobile Telephone History" by Tom Farley he first begins by explaining that a mobile telephone is a wireless device which connects to the public by a common carrier or public utility.  In 1945 the first mobile phones were discussed to the public and that following year AT&T and Southwestern Bell began operating the first mobile telephone service.  The competetion between the different companies competed to make bettre parts and technology for mobile phones.  According to Farley mobile telephones would continue to advance but it would take a longer time to grow outside of the US.  In 1979 Japan, launched the first commercial cellular service in the world.  In the 1980s satellites were used to transmit signals from one phone to another.

The author states that after WWII, the U.S pushed for the development of mobile technology because of consumer demand, the existence of research facilities and manufacturing capability.  The Bahrain telephone company began operating the first commercial cellular telephone system in May 1978.  According to the Author in 1979 INMARSAT was invented by an international group that fostered and coordinated satellite telephony.  The beginning of analog cellular systems in May was the start of mobile telephones.

Motorola created the first prototype phones in 1973 which was also the first handheld cellular phone.  During the late 1970s, mobile phone development and outcomes began to increase.  The first commercial cellular radio service was Bell system and the system was implemented on a train called the metroliner.  For example, the train allowed riders to make calls from pay phones which was managed by a computer system.  Farley discusses how Motorola introduced the first all-transister mobile set which hinted at the need for the vacuum tube.

This artice on mobile telephone history has taught me more on the invention of the telephone.  It started off as just a way to send frequences and now it has developed into a calculater, video carmera, internet, and navagational system including many more everyday uses.  After almost a decade the mobile phone has changed up so much that it can fit just about anywere. Cell phones has help to create new media because it has advanced our lives in so many differnt ways.

Donnell Williams

In the article, "Introduction" by Jull Jesper he discusses the world of video games.  The author explains how the video games are two different things at the same time.  For example, video games are considered to be real because the players have to follow real rules.  A video game has real rules according to Jull, but it is played in a fictional world.  A variety of on screen displays provide the player with information so the can complete the mission of the game.  For example, an arrow can indicate different meanings which helps the player to progress in the game.  According to the author video games deviate from traditional non-electronic games that are mainly abstract, and this is what made video games progress.  The author states that a video game is a rule based formal system with variable and quantifiable outcomes where the player exerts efforts in order to influence the outcome and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable. 

Being able to interact whenever your playing a video game helps the player on choosing between imagination of the game and seeing the representation about the different rules of the game.  According to the author we can examine the rules as they are found mechanically in the game program or in the manual of a board game, or we can examine the rules as something that players negotiate and learn when they gradually improve their skill (Jull pg 3).  For example, fixed signs in the game help the player to imagine and also helps to cue the player into the ficitional world. 

Video games have a brief history as well as a long one.  The first video game according to the author was spacewar which came out during the 1960s.  Video games are considered to be a new cultural form which is linked to computers, cinemas, television and literature. Rules of a game provide players with certain objectives that you cant overcome.  Ultimately video games helps you to improve your skills which makes it an learning experience.

This article help me to realize how video games can almost be addictive. I play video games more than i should and its because i feel like i have to complete every stage in a short time spand. All devices such as cell phones, computers, electronics have games that you can play and they all have different meanings and objectives.  Games are new media because they help to improve your skills and your ability to think.

Donnell Williams

In this week article by O'Reilly, "What is Web 2.0" he discusses the concept of "web 2.0" and how it began with a conference brainstorming session between him and his friend Dale Dougherty who was a web pioneer.  O'Reilly was excited about the new applications and sites popping up reguarly.  In a year and a half, the term "web 2.0" has clearly taken hold, with more than 9.5 million citations in Google.  On September 2005; 135 million citations had post but it was still a big disagreement about what web 2.0 meant.  According to O'Reilly, web 2.0 dosent have a boundary but instead, a gravitational core.  Web 2.0 is considered principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demostrate some or all of those principles at a varying distance from the core. 

The first principle was the web as a plat form which did not progress after a heated battle with microsoft.  Both web browsers and web servers turned out to be commodities and value moved up to services delivered overr the web platform (O'Reilly pg 21).  According to the author, google began its life as a native web application, never sold or packaged, but delivered as a service with customers paying directly or indirectly, for the use of the service Netscape and Google.  Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia based on the unlikely notion that an entry can be added by any web user, and edited by any other, is a radical experiment in trust, applying eric Raymond's dictum that "with enough eyeballs.  Wikipedia is already in the top 100 web sites and many think it will be in the top ten soon (O'Reilly pg 23).

Web 2.0 is a faster and more convient application for internet users.  This application allows you to have access that speeds up the downloading process on the computer.  This application is not only used for the computer, but also cell phones and other devices.

Donnell Williams

 In Janet Abbate's article, "Popularizing the Internet," she explains how the internet was viewed and used in the 1980's and 1990's.  When the internet began in the 1980's it was a small network with links to defense and research operations.  During the next ten years the internet's popularity would increase and become a lot more accessible to the general public.Initially the internet was contolled by certain military groups.  Later the focus began to shif toward academic research.  Civilian access for academic research was initiated in part by computer scientists within communities.  When civilian access grew, other organzations outside of the ARPANET started to become envious.  People in groups withing the ARPANET had access to professional communication, collaboration and even specialized computers. So schools without ARPA contracts felt as if they were at a competitive disadvantage.   This is baiscally how the author explains the early growth of the internet's demand. 

 In the 1985 only 2000 computers had access to the internet but it grew to 159,000 by October of 1989.  This huge growth was not because of the popularity of the ARPANET but because of the success of the networks attached to it.  The author of the article poses the question "Where did the snetworks come from?"  She says it was sparked by a computing revolution at the end of the 1970's and start of the 1980's.  When the internet grew even more because of the computer boom, the "Domain System" was created to prevent chaos.  Computers that hosted the internet would no longer have to have tables listing hundreds of different names and addresses.  Each site would have a domain name. The author writes, "Domains would theoretically represent any subset of the internet, such as an organization, type of organization, or even  a random select of hosts"  For example, the military had the "mil" domain name and universities used "edu".  The NSF (National Science Foundation) was a big internet player and helped institutions link up and share valuable resources pertaining to the internet.  This somehow let to privatization which aided in the emergence of socialist and recreation groups in the internet game.  Privatizing was easy at first but the ongoing coordination and planning for the system was in question.  The Internet grew so much that the NSF could no longer provide the central coordination for the entire system.  Therefore each internet service provider had to take care of its own operations.  The Author explains that with a vast amount of networks and lack of centralization, the internet needed a uniform and comprehensive system of different hosts names and addresses. Abbate explains how the internet has spread to a global level in a gradual system of networking and growth.  Canada and France were one of the first countries to connect to the internet after the us had established the NSFNET system and other European countries were soon to do the same.

In the future the internet will have to balance many challenges, socially and technically. If the internet is to continue its success, it must retain its legacy of adaptability and openness to creativity.  Its must continue to be easily influenced by design and public popularity.  Promoters thrived through civilian popularity and will continue to through decentralized participation. The introduction to packet switching and other techniques help establish a unique tradition to the internet.

The internet has become an everyday tool that we use to chat, send e mail, and shop.  This is an invention that makes the world a faster and easier place to access and gain information.  In this article "Popularizing the Intetnet" Abbate discusses how much of change the internet would bring.

   In the article, "Nonlinearity and Literary Theory", by Aarseth, first discusses nonlinearity and how it has no effect on physical science but it does have one on mathematics.  According to Aarseth inorder to present nonlinear textuality as a phenomenon relevant to textual theory, one must rethink the concept of texuality to comprise linear as well as nonlinear texts.  For example, a text is what you read, the word and phrases that you see before your eyes and the meaning they produce in your head.  Aarseth states that in a dualism of the text as he proposes that a text includes "a practice, structure, or ritual of use.  For example, dualism explains the texts ability to be a representation of ideologies as well as a medium for social change.  All texts is composed of certain, basic units, graphemes, letters, lexemes, and syntagms.  A texton is the part of the text that can be linked, unlinked, and relinked to form new meanings.  For example, stories and ideas within the text itself which allows for a text to be nonlinear.

   Three important compenets in a set of "metaphysics are reading, writing, and stability".  According to the author "reading iss what we read and what we infer from our reading, "writing is the author's intentions and the messages that are woven into an author's work.  For example, his or her style that workers genere and their culture which then promotes an ideology, and stability is a text that has a beginning, middle, and end. 

   Cyber text is defined as a self-changing text where the cybermetic agent controls the scriptons and traversal functions.  Cyber text are labled in two groups, those that can be predicted and the ones that cannot.  To clarify the fundamental mechanism of texts we should study texts as information.  This simple and perhaps anticlimactic injunction does not leave the external questions of rhetoric and poetics in the hands of the information, but it might give us a more stable object to work with in a time when our paper-based paradigms seem to disperse on the winds of the rhetoric of new technology (Aarseth pg 777).

   This article provided more details on certain words that have different meanings according to Aarseth.  For example, reading and interpreting what you read in a different way can help you look at the situation different. 

 Donnell Williams

   In the second section of this article by Briggs and Burke, he discusses how the sound broadcasting was well established by the mid-1930s by proprietors, managers, presenters or performers.  According to the author when the decade ended the war television was on public display at the New York world fair in 1939 which also held the television hall of fame.  For example, when the United States entered the war, NBC and CBS began to limit scheduled television broadcasting in New York (Briggs & Burke pg 188).  The television networks had too many financial problems to be effective.  The author discusses how the second World War ended and people still was excited about television in radio and film.  The television production rose from 178,000 to nearly 15 million between 1947 and 1952, which lead to the price of stocks to rise.  The number of cinemas started to decreased to 17,575 in 1948 because the age of television started to increase rapidly.  For example, it was cheaper and more comfortable to stay at home and watch television instead of going to the movies.  This also had an impact on some film companies to invest into getting television licences.  According to the author there was also room at the early stage in american television history for local differences in the content and stlye for programming.

   By the 1960s there was more programme traffic across frontiers than there was in radio and even film (Briggs & Burke pg 197).  Some american television programmers were sterotype.  For example, game shows, quizzes, and soap operas.  competition in British television worked to the financial advantage of television particular in sports because of the competition inside the BBC television team.  The difference between Britain and the United States, where the networks remained strong.  For example, in 1955 there were 36 million television sets in use in the United States and only 4.8 million in europe and 4.5 million in Britain (Briggs & Burke pg 199).  In France and Germany, television development was influenced by the post-war history of radio Broadcasting in both countries. 

   In the  article by Briggs & Burke he discuss how the age of television played an major role during the early 1900s.  Television and radio was used to transfer information to a vast majority of the public which is how new media began.  We use some form of television and radio in our every day life which has influenced our ability to communicate faster and easier.  The television age made it possible to learn because the shows was also considered to be entertainment.  

   In this section of the article, "Briggs and Burke introduces and discusses the impact of entertainment, information, and education which help to develop the age of broadcasting.  Information had usually been described in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as intelligence, education as instruction's, and entertainment as recreation.  According to Briggs and Burke both education and entertainment had long histories streching back to the ancient world.  For example, the settings of academies, libraries, games, theatres (Briggs and Burke pg 151). 

   There were more changes than continuities in education and entertainment during the 19th and 20th centuries provided technology involving people and products as well as patents.  According to Briggs and Burke technology both requires and produces social and organizational change.  In the late 20th century the word 'work' began to be applied also to leisure, travel and sports.  For example, sports illustrates trends that become global and amateur at first.  Proffesional football players are high paid celebrities that depend on agents as well as musicians and actors.  According to Briggs and Burke the dividing lines between information and entertainment became increasingly blurred during the 1950s and 1960s, in newspapers and in the electronic media.

   The radio was a form of entertainment that transferred information to a vast number of people at once.  Radio broadcasting is studided frequently and has an influence in other inventions and technologies.  BBC was controlled by the government and in 1927 the Federal Radio commission was set up in the United States which help to broadcast.

   In this article broadcasting is used to communicate with a large number of people at a time.  This is a way to influence your viewer and help them to make decisions on the information that is being broadcasted over the air. Radio plays a major part in communicating with people on a daily basis by helping them gather information.

By Donnell Williams

In the article, "Printing and the Rupture of classification", by Micheal Hobart and Zachary Schiffman, he discusses the impact that Micheal de Montaigne had on the printed works and the abundance of knowledge they possess.  The author explains how the amount of printed works increased in large way.  For example, printing gave individuals access to a previously unimaginable number of books, overloading them with diverse and contradictory information.  The printing invention was described as an epoch making invention because it changed the intellectual landscape.  The author also explains the "codex" format which was facilitated by the substitution of parchment from papyrus, allowing for less expensive reproductions in the middle ages which allowed the ability to create more books for the public.  "Gloss" is explained by the author as using it for incorporating "contraditory" information.  For example, an idea that had been repressed through out earlier history when text was disseminated only to a certain few. 

    The printing press was invented in the mid-fifteenth century in addition to the invention of cursive script and gloss, "the summa, or summary which unlike the gloss aimed at cutting through the diversity of interpretations to establish a core of truth (Hobart & Schiffman, p.23).  According to Hobart and Schiffman, glosses were used in order to distinguish between text and commentary during lectures.  For example, glosses were used to study the bible and the roman and cannon law which was due to the importance.  The gloss manuscripts reflect the medieval practice of dictating text and commentary during university lectures according to Hobart and Schiffman.

     In the article, "Printing and the Rupture of Classification," explains how the printing press was invented and how it played an impact on our society.  It created more books which is used in public schools and universities across the country.  The printing press allows us to read information online and even do online work. 

In the article "The Condition of Virtuality", by N. Katherine Hayles, she discusses the virtuality as the cultural perception and defines it.  Hayles states that virtuality is the cultural perception that material objects are interpenetrated by information patterns (Hayles pg.69).  In this article she explains how virtuality can be shown in artistic ways and the concept of information theory on how the realization that messages dont get sent, signals are.  Hayles state that "the efficacy of information depends on a highly articulated material base.  For example, an actual message isn't sent across a telephone wire, but instead a signal understandable by the medium is sent, that can be uncoded upon reception.  According to Hayles information has no connection to meaning and it was simplified into codes and signals.  For example, genes pass a serious of information to one another which allows the body to function.

In this article she discusses how virtual space allow branching paths or multiple dimensions to move through.  In the 1940s and 1950s the discrete concept of information and materality enforced the need to emerge existent technologies into new scientific technology for more reliable quantification.  She explains how noise is information that was unintended to be captured or sent.  According to Hayles the development of technological infrastructures has made rapid message transmission possible and a commodity important to military success such as guns and infrantry.

In the artice "The Condition of Virtuality" relates to video games because they allow information to travel.  We use virtuality in our class which is also considerd to be new media.  For example, the computers allow us to process and access information faster which is why the virtual world is changing the way we interact and live our everyday lives.

     In the article, "The Poetics of augmented space, "by Lev Manoich, he discusses how people experience spatial forms when the wireless multimedia is accessed.  Manovich explains how augmented space:  the physical space overlaid with dynamically changing information, mutimedia in form and localized for each user (Manovich p 219).  Manovich also discusses the general dynamic between spatial form and information and how it may function differently in todays computer culture.  Augmentation is reconceptualized as an idea, a culture, and aesthetic practice.  In this article he explains the general dynamic between spatial form and information is used in the comptuer culture of today.

     In the middle of the decade ,graphical browers for the world wide web made cyberspace a reality for millions of users.  According to Manovich during the second part of the 1980s, dot coms were prominent only to crash in the real-world laws of economics.  By the end of the decade, the daily use of cyberspace became much of the norm.  For example, using the internet to make plane reservations, checking e-mail using a hotmail account, and downloading mp3 files.  At the beginning of the 21st century, the research agendas, media attention, and practical applications have come to focus which is physical space filled with electronic and visual information.  For example, cell phones, bluetooth communicationg, rador, and enviromental sensors (Manovich pg 224)

     Manovich disscuses how communication is always accompained by noise, and therefore a recieved signal always has some noise mixed in which means that any information delivered to or extracted from augmented space always occupies some position on the ontinuous dimension whose poles form a perfect signal and complete noise (Manovich pg 225).  According to Manovich agumented space research gives us new terms in which to think about previous spatial practices.  In contrast, GPS, wireless location services, survelliance technologies, and other augmented space technologies all define dataspace, if not in practice with theory.

     We us augmented space everytime we are walking through tunnels, in elevators, and in the class room.  This allows us to access wirless internet which is common in our country.  Without agumented space we couldnt communicate as much because we would not be able to pick up a signl.

Donnell Williams 

     In this chapter Kellerman discusses media for personal mobilities, and notable technologies.  Kellerman focus on the changing relationships among space-transcoding technologies self operated by individual users, and their spatial aspects.  Virtual spatial mobility transcending technologies were the telephone, followed by the internet and wireless communications technologies.  According to Kellerman the other side of the coin of space-trancoding technologies is the simultaneously emerging technology transcended space.  Space-transcoding technologies, such as automobiles and telecommunications, reorganize time as a means to overcome space.  Transportation technologies, such as electricity, trains and automobiles, and the internet was called general personal technologies.  The telephone has permitted the virtual mobility of humans through interactive real-time vocie communications.  The emergence of contemporary virtual mobility in the second half of the twentieth has consisted of two major phases.  In the first phase, information technologies were developed, which allowed the conversation of information of all types into electronic bits, stored and moved electronically.  Kellerman discusses how these developments were followed by the more recent introduction of sophisticated mobile information machines such as labtops PCs, mobile telephones and palm computers (Kellerman pg 74). 

     In the development section of this chapter Kellerman discusses the structure and operation of automobiles.  The standardization procedures for both transportation and communication systems have permitted flexible self-operations by users and facilitated their mass adoption.  According to Kellerman standardization has further contributed to efficient and fast movements of information, merchandise and people.  The telephone, e-mailing and mobile phone, constitute personal communications means extending the reach of the self through personal or personalized information and television is considered public media (Kellerman pg 76).  For example, the Web falls into both categories, which is public expousere and personal information through self-extending websites.  The differences in the paces of commercialization and adoption between the car and the internet is related.  For example, the car is machine based on technologies originally developed for its operation. 

     Kellerman disscues the three layers in communicaton system which are the physical infrastructure layer, the logical infrastructure layer and the content layer.  The physical infrastructure includes roads, terminals, cables, and wires.  Communications systems do not require physical channels for transmissions.  For example, radio, television, satellites, mobile telephone, and wirless.  According to kellerman the logic of a transportation or communications system constitutes the code of its operation and behaviour.  The formal logic of a road system consists of laws and regulations for the management and control of its use. 

     Technology plays an major role in my everyday life.  For example, driving to school using the telephone, and the internet.  In this chapter Kellerman explains how walking is technology which i never thought of and as a kid growing up me and my sister use to walk everyday to school.

  In "The Forms:  The Database" by Manovich he introduces the Razorfish projects which range from screen savers to online trading websites.  He begins by discussing the design of the space functions as a metaphor for computers culture key themes:  interactivity, lack of hierarchy modularity.  Manovich points out that the workers are scattered around in open space regardless of their job titles.  He discusses how the workers are spreaded around from a programmer  next to a interface designer next to a web designer.  Manovich explains that the reception area composed of a desk and two semi-circular sofas mimics the image (Manovich pg. 190).  For example, the orginial 1970s paradigm of Graphical user interface emulated familiar physical interfaces: a file cabinet, a desk, a trash can, and a control panel.  Manovich explains how the same trajectory can be traced in relation to other conventions, or forms, of computer media.  An example is a collection of documents and a navigable space. He discusses how these traditional methods are used to organize both data and human experience of the world itself.  The two of these forms which today can be found in most areas of new media, the first form is a database used to store any kind of data from financial records to digital movie clips; the second form is a virtual interactive 3D space which is used in computer games, motion rides, computer animation, and human computer interfaces.  A computer database is quite different from a traditional collection of documents; it allows quick access, sort and reorganize millions of records.  For example, it can contain different media types, and it assumes multiple indexing of data since each record besides the data itself contains a number of fields with user-defined values (Manovich pg. 223). While reading this chapter he explains that a computer database becomes a new metaphor which we use to conceptualize individual and collective cultural memory.  From one perspective all new media design can be reduced to these approaches.  For example, creating works in new media can be understood as either constructing the right interface to a multimedia database or as defining navigation methods throug spatialized representations (Manovich pg. 225).  The first approach is typically used in self-contained hypermedia and web sites, the second approach is used in most computer games and virtual worlds.

     While reading this chapter he also explains how computer science database is defined as a structured collection of data.  The data stored in a database is organized for fast search and retrieval by a computer and is anything but a few collection of items.  Manovich explains the different types of databases such as hierarchical, network, relational and object oriented use different models to organize data.  For example, the records in object databases stor complex data structures called objects, and hierarchial databases are organized in a treelike way.  Manovich states that new media objects may or may not employ these highly structured database models; however, from the point of view of user's experience a large proportion of them are databases in a more basic sense (Manovich pg.126). 

     In this chapter of the book it reflects on CD-ROMs, as well as web sites, and search engines.  For example, myspace and facebook is a way to communicate and use different databases which is a  way to explore.  The radio is another form of database which is often used to communicate with people in differnt areas.  I never thought of things such as video games, radio stations, and websites as databases.  This chapter gives an understanding how the forms and databases are used in our everyday life to look up people and communicate as well.

Donnell Williams      

      In the reading "The Interface" by Lev Manovich he introduces the director of Blade Runner by Ridley Scott who was also hired to create a commercial which introduced Apple Computers new Macintosh.  Blade Runner (1982) and Macintosh computer (1984) defined the two aesthetics which rule our culture.  In perspective  to the vision of Blade Runner, graphical user interface (GUI), popularized by Macintosh, remained true to the modernist values of clarity and fuctionality.(Manovich pg 75).  The computer communicated with the user via rectangular boxes containing clean black type rendered background andthe user's screen was ruled bt strait lines and rectangular windows which contained smaller rectangles of individual files arranged in a grid.  The version of GUI added colors and made possible for users to customize the appearance of many interface element's (Manovich pg 76).  For example, small LCD display's are used in celluar phones, palm pilots, car navigation systems and other electronic products.  Blade Runner is similar to GUI because their vision influenced many areas of different culture's.  Manovich states that "in the 1990's, as the internet progressively grew in popularity, the role of a digital computer shifted from being a particular technology (a calculater, symbol processor, an image manipulator, etc.) to being a filter to all culture.  According to Manovich the interface shapes how the computer user concieves the computer itself.  For example, the interface provides distinct models of the world.  The term human-computer interface (HCI) describes the ways in which the user interacts with a computer.  HCI includes physical input and output devices such as a monitor, keyboard, and a mouse (Manovich pg 89).  In "The Language of Cultural Interface" the term "cultural interfaces" means hypermedia, websites, computer games and other cultural objects distrubuted via a computer.  The Macintosh interface introduced by Apple in 1984 uses the metaphor of files and folders arranged on a desktop.  Examples of cultural interfaces are Web sites, CD-ROM and DVD titles, multimedia encyclopedias, online museums and magazines, computer games and other new media cultural objects.  Another example of a prototypical culture interface of the 1990s, you may load the most well-known CD-ROM of the 1990s, Myst (Broderbund, 1993).  Myst is also a computer application in which the computer screen shows a book open in the middle, wating for your mouse click.

    Manovich discusses the three cultural forms of the interface in this section which are cinema, the printed word, and a general purpose human computer interface.  The interface de-virtualizes cinema, by placing the records of cinematic vision back into their historical and material context.  These shapes, which the authors call "film objects" correspond to documentary footage recorded at the corresponding points in the city (Manovich pg. 84).  Manovich explains how to create each shape, the original footage is digitized and the frames are stacked one after another in depth, with the orginal camera parameters determining the exact shape.  For example, the user can view the footage by clicking on the first frame.  The development of human-computer interface, until recently, had little to do with distribution of cultural objects.  Manovich states that some of the main applications from the 1940s until the early 1980s, when the current generation of GUI was developed and reached the mass market together with the rise of a PC (personal computer).  Manovich uses examples from the reading, cultural interfaces predictably use elements of a general purpose HCI such as scrollable windows containing text and other data types, hierarchial menus, dialogue boxes, and command line input (Manovich pg.93).

     In the reading "The Interface" by Manovich i found similarities that are used in everyday society and my daily activities.  For example, when ever i take road trips i use my parents navagational system to guide me to my locaton which he talks about in the reading.  I use my telephone to communicate across the world which is a interface that Manovich talks about which can also be used as another source of the interface.  For example, the iphone can be used as an gps system, a computer, and the internet.  The interface makes it easier to communicate and also gives our society the advantage to create new technologies that are compatibale such as cell phones, ipods, video games, etc.  While the interface continues to grow and develop into new technologies our culture will also continue to adapt and use the interface for ever.

By Hubert Williams