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21. Computer Lib

/Dream Machines

1974

This is the flip side of Computer Lib.

(Feel free to begin here. The other side is just if you want

to know more about computers, which are changeable

devices for twiddling symbols. Otherwise skip it.)

(But if you change your mind it might be fun to browse.)

In a sense, the other side has been a come-on for this side.

But it’s an honest come-on: I figure the more you know, the

readier you’ll be for what I’m saying here. Not necessarily to

agree or to be “sold,” but to think about it in the non-simple

terms that are going to be necessary.

The material here has been chosen largely for its

exhilarating and inspirational character. No matter what

your background or technical knowledge, you’ll be able to

understand some of this, and not be able to understand

some of the rest. That’s partly from the hasty preparation of

this book, and partly from the variety of interests I’m trying

to comprise here. I want to present various dreams and their

resulting dream machines, all legitimate.

If the computer is a projective system, or Rorschach

inkblot, as alleged on the other side, the 

real projective

systems—the ones with projectors in them—are all the

more so. The things people try to do with movies, TV and

the more glamorous uses of the computer, whereby it makes

pictures on screens—are strange inversions and foldovers of

the rest of the mind and heart. That’s the peculiar origami of

the self.

Very well. This book—this side, Dream Machines—is

meant to let you see the choice of dreams. Noting that every

company and university

seems to insist that its

system is the wave of the

future, I think it is more

important than ever to

have the alternatives

spread out clearly.

But the “experts” are

not going to be much

help; they are part of the

problem. On both sides,

the academic and the

industrial, they are being

painfully pontifical and

bombastic in the jarring

new jargons. Little clarity is spread by this. Few things are

funnier than the pretensions of those who profess to dignity,

sobriety and professionalism of their expert predictions—

especially when they, too, are pouring out their own personal

views under the guise of technicality. Most people don’t

dream of what’s going to hit the fan. And the computer and

electronics people are like generals preparing for the last war.

Frankly, I think it’s an outrage making it look as if there’s

any kind of scientific basis to these things; there is an

underlevel of technicality, but like the foundations of a

cathedral, it serves only to support what rises from it. THE

TECHNICALITIES MATTER A LOT, BUT THE UNIFYING

VISION MATTERS MORE.

This book has several simultaneous intentions: to orient

the beginner in fields more complex and tied together than

almost anybody realizes; nevertheless, to partially debunk

several realms of expertise which I think deserve slightly less

305

;

“Computers are catching hell from growing multitudes who

see them uniformly as the tools of the regulation and

suffocation of all things warm, moist, and human. The

charges, of course, are not totally unfounded, but in their

most sweeping form they are ineffective and therefore

actually an acquiescence to the dehumanization which they

decry. We clearly need a much more discerning evaluation in

order to clarify the ethics of various roles of machines in

human affairs.”

Ken Knowlton in “Collaborations with Artists—a

Programmer’s Reflections,” in Nake & Rosenfeld, eds.,

Graphic Languages (North-Holland Pub. Co.), p. 399.

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the

NEWMEDIA

READER

attention than they get; and to chart the right way, which I

think uniquely continues the Western traditions of literature,

scholarship and freedom. In this respect the book is much

more old-fashioned than it may seem at the gee-whiz, very-

now level.

The main ideas of this book I present not as my own, but

as a curious species of revealed truth. It has all been obvious

to me for some time, and I believe it should be obvious as

well to anyone who has not been blinded by education. If you

understand the problems of creative thinking and organizing

ideas, if you have seen the bad things school so often does to

people, if you understand the sociology of the intellectual

world, and have ever loved a machine, then this book says

nothing you do not know already.

For every dream, many details and intricacies have to be

whittled and interlocked. Their joint ramifications must be

deeply understood by the person who is trying to create

whatever-it-is. Each confabulation of possibilities turns out

to have the most intricate and exactly detailed results. (This

is why I am so irritated by those who think “electronic media”

are all alike.)

And each possible combination you choose has different

precise structures implicit in it, arrangements and units

which flow from these ramified details. Implicit in Radio lurk

the Time Slot and the Program. But many of these

possibilities remain unnoticed or unseen, for a variety of

social or economic reasons.

Why does it matter?

It matters because we live in media, as fish live in water.

(Many people are prisoners of the media, many are

manipulators, and many want to use them to communicate

artistic visions.)

But today, at this moment, we can and must design the

media, design the molecules of our new water, and I believe

the details of this design matter very deeply. They will be

with us for a very long time, perhaps as long as man has left;

perhaps if they are as good as they can be, man may even buy

more time—or the open-ended future most suppose

remains. 

So in these pages I hope to orient you somewhat to

various of the proposed dreams. This is meant also to record

the efforts of a few Brewster McClouds, each tinkering

toward some new flight of fancy in his own sensoarium.

But bear in mind that hard-edged fantasy is the corner of

tomorrow. The great American dream often becomes the

great American novelty. After which it’s a choice of style, size

and financing plan.

The most exciting things here are those that involve

computers: notably, because computers will be embraced in

every presentational medium and thoughtful medium very

soon.

That’s why this side is wedded to the other: if you want to

understand computers, you can take the first step by turning

the book over. I figure that the more you know about

computers—especially about minicomputers and the way

on-line systems can respond to our slightest acts—the better

your imagination can flow between the technicalities, can

slide the parts together, can discern the shapes of what you

would have these things do. The computer is not a limitless

partner, but it is deeply versatile; to work with it we must

understand what it can do, the options and the costs.

My special concern, all too tightly framed here, is the use

of computers to help people write, think and show. But I

think presentation by computer is a branch of show biz and

writing, not of psychology, engineering or pedagogy. This

would be idle disputation if it did not have far-reaching

consequences for the designs of the systems we are all going

to have to live with. At worst, I fear these may lock us in; at

best, I hope they can further the individualistic traditions of

literature, film and scholarship. But we must create our brave

new worlds with art, zest, intelligence, and the highest

possible ideals.

I have not mentioned the emotions. Movies and books,

music and even architecture have for all of us been part of

important emotional moments. The same is going to happen

with the new media. To work at a highly responsive

computer display screen, for instance, can be deeply exciting,

like flying an airplane through a canyon, or talking to

somebody brilliant. This is as it should be. (“The reason is,

and by rights ought to be, slave to the emotions.”—Bertrand

Russell.)

In the design of our future media and systems, we should

not shrink from this emotional aspect as a legitimate part of

our fantic (see p. 317) design. The substratum of

technicalities and the mind-bending, gut-slamming effects

they produce, are two sides of the same coin; and to

understand the one is not necessarily to be alienated from

the other.

Thus it is for the Wholiness of the human spirit, that we

must design.

21. Computer Lib

/Dream Machines

306

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