Re: The Superhighway Steamroller
nicka@mccmedia.com (Nick Arnett)
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Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 09:04:51 +0200
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From: nicka@mccmedia.com (Nick Arnett)
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
Subject: Re: The Superhighway Steamroller
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If these articles hadn't come from Prof. Hart, I'd ignore them, but his
project is so interesting that I can't. I'm also interested because I've
decided to focus on digital libraries and I'm involved in building one or
at least the infrastructure to create it.
Idea rejecting html like rejecting article & punctuation maybe even grammar
save bandwidth Sure you can but why go backwards New media call for new
grammar style punctuation cover pages etc like for gutenberg (Just thought
I'd take us back in time to when things were more "efficient.")
Yeah, plain vanilla ASCII will transfer from computer to computer faster,
but will it transfer from human to human faster? Access to information
doesn't equate to communication, much less to education.
Many assumptions in this article are disturbing, but I'm most bothered by
the either-or assumptions; that texts must be created either for network
distribution or for floppy distribution, but not both; either for 16 MB
machines or for 1 MB, but not both. The reality is that companies such as
Passage Systems are making great progress on building end-to-end publishing
systems that accomodate multiple media. I can understand choosing plain
ASCII as a base for Project Gutenberg; I can't understand its
glorification.
There seems to be an implication that the invention of the printing press
directly led to a spread of literacy. That's a common fallacy. There was
an explosion of books following the convergence of printing technology and
the Italian paper mills' production of cheap paper. But those books didn't
reach the masses, which remain illiterate until the Industrial Revolution
directly created and spread wealth (or more cynically, created demand for
educated workers). The arrival of books in early medieval Europe widened
the gap between the wealthy and the poor, just as computer and network
technologies are doing today. We can certainly hope that today's progress
in technology will lead to some sort of new wealth that will pay for the
spread of literacy, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that access to
information will.
Although I spend a great deal of my time with a group that uses technology
for education in poor communities, I don't have any illusion that we're
making broad changes. If everyone did the same, perhaps broad changes
would result, but I don't have any illusions about that happening, either.
Proposing that distribution of ASCII texts will change the literacy rate is
self-aggrandizing. The obstacle for marginalized people isn't the
difference in cost between expensive, "inefficient" GUI systems and
inexpensive, "efficient" ASCII systems; it's that there's any cost at all.
Even if the computers were free, with Shakespeare, etc., computers still
don't teach.
Nick
COPYRIGHT (C) 1994, MULTIMEDIA COMPUTING CORP. BUT I WOULDN'T GO AND POST
IT TO AN OPEN NET MAILING LIST OR A NEWSGROUP IF IT WEREN'T OKAY FOR ANYONE
TO COPY AND REDISTRIBUTE IT. AFTER ALL, THAT'S HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS, SO
PERMISSION TO COPY IS IMPLICIT. STUFF THAT I DON'T WANT COPIED AND
REDISTRIBUTED GOES ON MY INEFFICIENT WEB SERVER, MARKED UP IN INEFFICIENT
HTML.
P.S.
>When they first get on the Internet, some say:
>
>"We are faced with an insurmountable opportunity."
Hmm. This sounds familiar. I did not realize that Pogo said it in the
context of having just gotten on the Internet. I thought he was on his
boat, having just said "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Multimedia Computing Corp.
Campbell, California
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"We are surrounded by insurmountable opportunity." -- Pogo