Thoughts on Who Knows What

This day was another HIST day, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I find it fascinating. We talked a lot about Vannevar Bush’s idea of a memex. A desk that can only be explained as the same concept as the internet— minus the online wifi part. The memex was a way of forging one’s own path in researching. You’d be able to access all your information in one place as well as notes you made, and it all fit very well in your traditional desk. Now, Bush’s really complex idea just couldn’t quite be achieved with how far along technology was in his day. While Bush never managed to see his memex come to fruition, he did pave the way for communicative and research development.

He predicted so many things— and I mean so many; kindles, the internet, cellphones, VR headsets, GoPros, the lot and so much more. What I found most interesting were his visions for them. When I say Bush predicted the aforementioned technology, he predicted the concepts, ideas and functionalities of them, not their actual form or what they looked like. Bush’s technology, I can only imagine, would have looked incredibly steampunk…. I think that’s awesome. I love steam punk style so I’m gonna add pictures in case anyone doesn’t know what “steampunk” is and just because I like it, this is my blog and I can.

What I imagine the memex would look like

Bush’s GoPro

(of course you can’t have steam punk without the hat or goggles)

Steampunk is basically fusing technology with industrial era clothing or life, it’s a subculture of people I think fits perfectly for Bush’s ideas. The main thing I took away from our lesson was, however, the way Bush looked at the future. It left me wanting to take time and think about advancements and technology I can imagine in the future. All inventions and all ideas are derived from what we already know or have available to us. We as a species are incapable of seeing into the future. If we could, everything would have been discovered or invented already. What Bush did was take what he know about knowledge, information and research and reshape it into a more effective process. I reflected on what we know/have now and Bush’s idea for his memex. I think the modern era version of a memex is what we see in books and movies. Below are my notes from class, they describe it better since it was in the moment:

• We talked about how research is done and that the internet is the solution… I was thinking it can go further – like the desks used in Ender’s Game that’s what they would look like. And this “dex” to use Bush’s work would be touch screen. Each addition to the thread of thought is like a little hexagonal blurb. You draw lines and connect them, you make more hexagons with writing, these hexagons could have anything (articles, links, photos, videos, poems, whatever is useful to your research. That would be the ultimate “dex”
  • In the future someone might see my idea and think of a better way to make a dex using technology they have and forces that we presently are unable to.

The fact that the authors like Orson Scott Card, and others who write dystopian novels, have already come up with this idea means it isn’t an original though. It’s funny to me how authors would write about these “dex”s that would undermine their being. It’s like Professor O’Malley mentioned in class, Bush (also Berners-Lee who we hadn’t talked about yet) practically made books extinct. Why read someone else’s train of thought, their biases, when you can research and compile you own? This memex would have been the first thing on a long road to their demise. That being said, I think books will never die. That’s because they’re more then just research and information, they’re also stories; and there’s no other solid source of stories.

Today’s class was the first I’d actually felt “HIST” was accurate to, it was cool to get a reminder on the wars and what went down. It’s something I haven’t studied in a while. I laughed though because today I had more than one class talk about history. My Global Horror Film class is definitely an interesting one, and currently we’re learning about expressionism and why it came about. In doing so, in class we went over WWI and it’s effects on the film industry in Germany so that made two classes in which we discussed war and the wars. When the Nazis gained power in Germany, they proceeded to disallow foreign films from reaching a German audience. This made sense to them given that many foreign powers could see what was going on in Germany, and the Nazis wanted to remain in control of the propaganda and the thoughts being had by their subservients. This in turn resulted in a boom in German cinema concurrently with the mass inflation going on. This included an influx of better and more efficient equipment for fiming The film industry was one of the few safe and actually productive ones in Germany at the time. I drew a comparison after today’s HIST 390 class that peeked my interest, Prof. O’Malley mentioned how WWI lead to the boom of the computer era in the US. It seems that in both the US and Germany, war lead to technological advancement, the fact that the each had it’s own set of technology is intriguing. The former was particularly military based (the original computers anyways) whereas the later was artistic. I don’t know how to interpret that or even if I should, I just find it interesting. I find that we’e often quick to associate and apply the same thoughts and beliefs to opposite sides even if they it isn’t realistic or applicable even as in the case of WWI. History is recited and recorded biasedly all the time, for and against the truth. How can we ever know the whole truth? Perhaps that’s why the past seems so glamorous.

Apparently I’m a realist, it’s nice to finally know that. I guess to an extent I’ve always considered myself to be but was never able to explain why. I’m not the slightest bit religious, I honestly have a hard time understanding why so many people are able to be. That being said I can appreciate what religion has done for people, that is, turn them toward idealism. I think a lot of people end up lost in life, for whatever reason. It could be something as severe as the death of a child or alcoholism to something more common like feeling out of place. Religion can give something to hope for, and aim for, that is idealistic. It also helps people who may be not as good at deciphering good from bad something to base their actions on. They can ask is this the was to reach the ideal. In practicality, idealism makes a lot of sense, it gives us as humans a goal in life, hope that there’s a better thing or place (I use italics because I personally believe that such words in this context are more like ideas than their actual definitions). For me though, I don’t think it’s worth trying to achieve some perfect whatever when there’s so much here – physically or conceivably – that we can appreciate. Idealists, I feel, can get caught up in perfection and fail to appreciate the stuff that isn’t. If you only look for some perfect something you miss out on the beauty of imperfection. I know that sounds pretentious – gee Alyssa, maybe back up your claim instead of trying to sound intellectual. As a realist, this is how I perceive the world.

There is no ideal. That’s the beauty of realism. Perfection is an abstract noun that can never truly be obtained. It is, in its self, a Catch-22. Instead I admire contrast, similar and different, and where they meet in between. When I look at a stranger, I see how we are exactly similar and exactly different. We are the same in that we are both human. We breath oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, we both use the restroom and need to sleep. Our similarities don’t end in biological factors either. On more than one occasion I’ve looked at my friends and realized [*cough cough* *cue valley girl voice*] “wow we are literally the same person, we’re like so similar. It’s crazy, we’re both into the same things and hold the same beliefs. I’m so glad I met you.” [*cough cough* and we’re back] The people who are important in our lives tend to have very similar mannerisms. My best friend is my best friend because way back in 7th grade we bonded over our shared love of books and shows. Now, even though we’re coasts away (her at home in MA and me down here in VA), we’ve still remained best friends. The similarities we have with people are part of what attracts us to each other.

Now, here’s the counter. We as humans and realists are also attracted to differences. Each person in entirely unique, to each their own. While our functioning as humans remains biologically the same, each person looks different. I have brown hair and my best friend is a blonde, my roommate is from Hong Kong and Asian, I am from the north and super pasty (I glow in the dark, just kidding but still). Humans are both exactly similar and incredibly different. Going back to my best friend, we don’t agree on everything. While we both have the same interest in books and reading, we used to debate each other as to what the best series was (her argument was always the Eragon series by Christopher Paolin while mine was the Maximum Ride series by James Patterson), though there was a sort of conflict it was always fun and entertaining, never ill intended. If it weren’t for that friendly discord and differing opinion we would probably never have become friends. Our similarities and differences are what make humans unique and interesting, we’re drawn to those things. The same goes for people you don’t like, perhaps the reason people don’t get along is because there isn’t enough in common. At the same time maybe that’s also why people don’t click or leave a conversation disinterested in one another. If the similarities or differences aren’t significant enough we fail to expend our energy to further our inquiries in one another.

Ok so that being said I had a couple other thoughts on what we went over. I am someone who loves psychology and my favorite thing (for lack of a better word) in the study is the Myers–Briggs personality test. Before you go crazy screaming (as I imagine anyone who points this out to be), “BUT ALYSSA!!!! IT’S NOT REAL! How can a multiple choice test determine exactly who you are?! There’s no way every person is only one of sixteen personalities! You literally said eveone is so unique”, I’ll stop you and say; I know. You’re not entirely wrong, but you’re also super wrong. First, while people are unique they’re also exactly thee same, as you’ll recall, depending on how you look at things. So yes and no to your point on individuality. Then, I recognize that the test is not an exact science, of course not everyone is going to ascribe exactly to one personality. That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t a personality one person ascribes to most. All personalities are base on a foundation and diversity comes thereafter. The Myers–Briggs test is a way of defining those base tendencies each person has. It’s also the case that some types are less likely to be able to accurately be assessed by the test simply because it’s not their personality. There are types for that too. When taking the test people should go with their first instinctive answer, that’s how to take it accurately. So why am I going on such a long tangent about Myers–Briggs? During our idealism vs realism discussion the thought occurred to me; how does personality type fit into your perspective of the ideal? It came to me when thinking about my own beliefs and how it played into typology. I am an INFJ, I’m not going to go into depth on what that means if only because this paragraph and is too long, but I’ll say learning that was my type seriously helped me out of a dark time. Myers-Briggs is a great way give definition to the parts of your personality or who you are that can be confusing (as a side note to my tangent, I really recommend everyone take the test. This is a link to the the best site I’ve found, it’s free and pretty quick. The site is also great at explaining everything.) The Advocate (INFJ) personality types are known to be dreamers, they’re also idealistic. At the same time, Advocates are really good at people. I like to think I take a realist stance on life and it stems from my ability to understand and appreciate people. I know quite a bit about other types but I was thinking it would be incredibly interesting to do a study on how each type and their stances on idealism vs realism. Personality types also had me wondering if other INFJs are different.

 My final thought comes from a similar perspective. In class Professor O’Malley made a point of telling us we couldn’t be both idealistic and realistic. Even though I know where I stand I still felt the strong urge to try and counter his point. So I’m gonna make the bold claim and say, INCORRECT! You can be both idealistic and realistic. Argument one, not everything is philosophical. This was a point I wanted to make as soon as he brought up the sunset. I understand why Professor O’Malley pushed us to answer why we thought it was beautiful, I’m glad he did because it was an interesting idea I hadn’t really considered before.However, I do think it’s a fair point to say, a sunset is beautiful just because it is. Not because, we as humans look for a reason, but because the colors look nice. Orange appeals to the eye and when complimented and contrasted with purple, it is gorgeous. Yes, maybe this is some perfect natural law. Yes, maybe this is a glimpse at the eternally out of reach ideal. These are hypotheticals. It’s digging for a meaning when maybe the point of a sunset is just to see the colors.

There isn’t much else I can say than, yesterday’s class BLEW MY MIND.

I realize the irony that I rented an audiobook version of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr from the Fairfax Library, but I couldn’t bare the thought of spending money on a book I knew I was going to hate. And, let me just say, hate it I do. I have never read a more torturous book. His every word grinds my gears and drives me CRAZY! Not only is this book tedious and repetitive, which it most certainly is, it’s written with such bias and grandeur that it serves to become pointless. I, as a reader in the modern age, realize what the internet is and what it can do; there was no need to spend such a generous chink of chapter 5 explaining it to me. It feels as if he’s talking down on the modern person when in fact it is him who is stuck in the past and unable to appreciate that times change. It’s not that in all my fury I’m unable to admit he may be correct, it is in fact that he is incorrect and I have ample proof that comes from simply living and observing in the modern technological age. There is no statistical way to prove that the internet is causing us to lose our attention. Correlation DOES NOT EQUAL causation! He may be able to pass off simple stats as fact, but he cannot pass them off as proof of his ridiculous claim. If you take a second to look at the average student he would realize there no group that is capable of focusing more. Daily, students spend hours on end slogging through textbooks and articles, taking notes and posing questions. Another thing he fails to realize that the while the numbers may show a trend, the trend is not representative of individuals. I for one love reading books, actual physical printed books! AND when there is a story I’m particularly drawn to, I WILL spend hours reading. I’m currently invested in one of those books! (It’s The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller I absolutely recommend people check it out it’s incredible. Ok tangent over, I thought the book deserved a plug) This doesn’t just apply to me either, there are so many people I could point out in my life; friends, acquaintances, family and even enemies for lack of a better term that thoroughly enjoy reading. Ask most reading enthusiasts how they like to enjoy their books and I would bet that a significant portion would agree that physical printed copies are the best. This even stands true in the case of textbooks. I hypothesize that if you were to poll random students from colleges all over the country and even the world that the majority would chose printed textbooks. No matter how Carr tries to spin his so called evidence, the printed medium is not at risk and the internet is not at fault for loss of attention spans.