Week 2: Interface & Database
The editor of The New Media Reader states: "The memex has been envisioned as a means of turning an information explosion into a knowledge explosion. This remains one of the defining dreams of new media" (35). This suggests that if we are to be knowledge-workers in an age of information, then the key is to turn information into knowledge. We do not need more information, but rather more and better ways of extracting knowledge from the information we already have (I think I need to know more about the metaphysical differences between information and knowledge).
To turn information into knowledge, we need databases and interfaces. Whether we are brainstorming, free writing, mind-mapping, outlining, or memexing, we need ways to organize our thoughts and then interact with them. Each of these techniques helps to uncover the associative trails of our thoughts, to reveal to us the hidden knowledge within the information we have. As both Bush and Engelbart stress, the capacities and abilities of our mental powers are no longer adequate to compress and comprehend the vast amount of information. In other words, we have raw data but not the necessary conceptual framework or algorithm to process it. Thus, we need to "augment human intellect" with technologies that will allow us to do so--i.e., Bush?s memex and Engelbart?s computer-based card system.
By creating, maintaining, and especially consulting a database, we may augment our intellect by breaking down complex problems into smaller units of information. Little thoughts eventually lead to big thoughts. I think, it is in this way, that the database may become, as Manovich claims, "the center of the creative process in the computer age" (200). A new age, a new kind of trailblazer.
Both Bush and Engelbart suggest that with a memex record a student can learn directly the thoughts of the master. I wonder, however, if the student would actively learn anything from studying a master?s memex. Is something lost in the transcoding from brain to computer? Even something as simple as a mind-map becomes personalized and idiosyncratic to the point where it can be hard to tell why or how things are associated in the mind-mapper?s mind. It seems it would be better to talk to the person rather than merely looking at a web of thoughts.
The logical, at least potential, conclusion of both Bush and Engelbart is that the machine/computer could become implanted in the brain. As David suggests in his post, and I might agree, "human knowledge could be advanced if the computer becomes a co-operator of the human brain." Nevertheless, I would also argue (as the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which I posted to the Wiki) that yielding more of our intellectual technologies to computers threatens to stifle our own intelligence. This is the same worry that Socrates had about writing, so maybe it is nothing to worry about. A simple example: Now that most people have cell phones, have we lost any intelligence or brain power by not having to memorize phone numbers? Or, have we freed our minds? But if Google is making us stupid, then we are no longer imprisoned by just the screen (as Manovich clearly limns), but by all technology.
Manovich proposes the database as the creative center of the computer age, but I wonder if the interface offers the most creative possibilities. The database stores information, but the interface allows us to turn it into an experience, artwork, and knowledge. Through interfaces that are more intuitive any neat boundary between database and brain could become increasingly fuzzy. Through the evolving design of the interfaces, we shape our databases, and they shape us; thus, there is an inevitable feedback loop to our knowledge.
We are now more than ever accustomed to thinking with a mouse and keyboard within the metaphor of the screen as desktop. Has this metaphor, this interface with its hierarchical folder interface and database limited our capacity for associative trails and leaps of thought? If the computer-human interface had been designed as rooms within a house, would our modern thought processes have evolved differently? Similarly, we have been limited to one contact point on the screen, the mouse pointer. What happens when multitouch screens become more common, more interactive, immersive, pervasive? Computers and computing will become more tactile and collaborative, perhaps shifting our mental structures. If we can combine multitouch screens with memex-like database collecting, perhaps we can move closer to Baudrillard's desire for instantaneous response, because we could see, and feel, another's thoughts on screen.
It seems that for a while many viewed the Internet as anonymous, impersonal automated interface, where every click of the mouse took us farther away from human contact. However, with the social networks (a new kind of interface and database), the web has become more personal than ever. The computer interface is already or will become an inter-face?an interaction of human faces, real or virtual?it may not matter. That is, maybe our faces and online personality become just another data set.
Manovich claims that "the printed word was linked to the art of rhetoric" (86). Now, with HCI and hyperlinks he suggests that rhetoric is reduced to a single rhetorical figure, metonymy. Manovich seems to forget that rhetoric began as an oral practice and art. As Lanham suggests in The Electronic Word, electronic text allows us to return to classic rhetoric in ways that we could not with print. So, who is right Manovich or Lanham? I tend to lean towards Lanham?s re-centering of rhetoric in the digital age. We may not need a new rhetoric of digital or new media, but we may have to re-purpose that which we already have.
~Jason K