[1] From: TOM DILLINGHAM <tomdill@wc.stephens.edu> (4)
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
[2] From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@mulberrytech.com> (54)
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
[3] From: Geoffrey Rockwell <grockwel@mcmaster.ca> (47)
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
[4] From: Joe Raben <JQRQC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> (4)
Subject: Book on history of telescope
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 08:29:48 -0500
From: TOM DILLINGHAM <tomdill@wc.stephens.edu>
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
This is probably a bit of a stretch, but Alexander Marshack's
_The Roots of Civilization_ clearly presents the earliest retrieval/storage
technologies as mental prostheses. Whether his work has support in
the scientific community is a question I can't answer.
Tom Dillingham
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 07 Oct 1998 11:32:16 +0100
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@mulberrytech.com>
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
Willard--
This doesn't fit your criteria exactly, but Christopher Alexander's work
on architecture (see *The Timeless Way of Building*) makes a very strong
implicit argument for seeing technology as a "natural" extension of the
organic. And the work is absolutely seminal in the area of computer
programming, where object-oriented programmers now write using explicit
"patterns," an idea derived from Alexander -- so in that set, at least,
this will be an Authority (at least for Those Who Know). (The second
book in the series is called *A Pattern Language* and is also worth a
look -- in part because it declares its own document model, albeit in
English, not code.)
Regards, Wendell
======================================================================
Wendell Piez mailto:wapiez@mulberrytech.com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street, Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1998 14:37:12 -0500
From: Geoffrey Rockwell <grockwel@mcmaster.ca>
Subject: Re: 12.0247 instrumentation as prosthesis?
Dear Willard,
While this is not a scientific reference you might start with Plato's
discussion of the invention of writing as a intellectual (memory) aide. It
is in the _Phaedrus_ when Socrates tell the story of Thamus and Theuth
inorder to explain why he does not thinking writing (technology) will make
people wiser.
Moving forward to this century you could look at Douglas Engelbart's
article "A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man't Intellect"
(found in _Vistas in Information Handling_ v. 1, Spartan Books, Washington,
1963).
Yours,
Geoffrey Rockwell
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 08 Oct 98 15:29:12 EDT
From: Joe Raben <JQRQC@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject: Book on history of telescope
Today's NY Times reviews enthusiastically Richard Panek, _Seeing and Believ-
ing: How the Telescope Opened Our Eyes and Minds to the Heavens_ (New York:
Viking), which it quotes as follows: "The relationship between the tele-
scope and our understanding of the dimensions of the universe is in many ways
the story of modernity."
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