This U the flip Bide of Computer Lib.
(Peel free to beg-in here. The oiher aide la Just If you want to know more about computers, which are changeable devices for twiddling sym
bols.
Otherwise skip It.)
(But if you change your mind It might be fun to browse.)
In • 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 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 wsnt 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
uni
versity 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” arc 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 (see “Babels in Toyland,’1
p.
Lf ). 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 foundation of a cathedral, it serves only to support what rises from it. THE TECHNICALITIES MATTER A LOT, BUT THE UNIFYING VISION MATTERS MORE.
Technology fs an expression of man’s dreams. If man did not Indulge Ms fantasies, his thoughts alone would inhibit the development of technology Itself. Ancient visionaries spoke of distant times and places, where men flew around and about, and some could see each other at great distance. The technological realities of today are already obsolete and the future of technology is bound only by the limits of our dreams. Modern communications media and in particular electronic media are outgrowths and extensions of those senses which have become dominant 1n our social development. Hon Vachaprcea, HHyper~Fa, (t) Auditaa Ltd. IV}}.
lity.
mclt&a^M
Ladies and gentlemen, the age of pmtidif italrre presentation and publishing U about to
begin.
Palpitating presentation*, screenncribbled. will dance to your
desire,
making
mani
fest the many mysteries o( winding wisdom But
if
we are to rehumanize an increasingly brutal and disagreeable world, we must step up our efforts. And we must hurry. Hurry. Step right up.
rneodbr”
H. Helaon, “Bornum-TronicB.” Suarthmore ‘allega
“When you’re doling with media you’re in ibow rtuiincu. yoo
know,
whether you like
it
or not.” “Show brnincn.’ he
takl.
“Absolutely. We’ve foMa he in ihnw bimnen We’ve gotta put together a team that will crt us there.” I made n mental note to me the *how bnslnrn metaphor
aq.itn.
anil onlinuid. “IMM’i real
MIMI’VC
tal-nit pri.lultlv IM in other sirrsw
..
.”
Alumni Bulletin, Deo 19?0,
12-15.
Ileywood
Gould,
Corporation Freak (Tower), 23.
The Great Robert
Crumb.
I From Za£ ComKx
»t).
)
IS
HOT
cunm*/
This book has several simultaneous Inten
tions:
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 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-fashoned than it may seem at the gee-whlz, 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 intri cacies 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, at 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 mudt 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 ss 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. (See “Endgame,”
p.
WT •)
So In these pages I hope to orient you some what 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 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
sys
tems can respond to our slightest acts– the better your imagination can flow between the technicali
ties,
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, 1 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 lo be, slave to the emotions.” — Bertrand Russell.)
In the design of our future media and
sys
tems,
we should not shrink from this emotional aspect as a legitimate part of our fan tic (see p. Dr\4? ) 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.
fad’ Li
£W*f*tf~
Lit
AUTHOR’S COUNTERCULTURE CREDENTIALS
Writer, showman, generalist. Gemini, moon in Libra, Gemini rising. One’ime seventh-grade dropout. I have relatively little interest in improving the educational system within the existing framework. Author of what may have been world’s first rock musical, “Anything * Everything.” Swarthmore College. November 1957 (with Richard L.
Caplan).
Photographer for a year at Dr. Lilly’s dolphin lab (Communication Research Institute. Miami.
Florida).
Attendee of the Great Woodstock Festival (like many
others),
and it changed my life (as others have
reported).
What we are all looking for is not where we thought it was Lifelong media nut. Magazine collector; hung around TV studios as a child. Compulsive explainer. Gimmicist by disposition, computer-man by accidestlny.
w
To
w
THIKJ)
rumm,
Gee »hiz, folk., here »e .re at another prin ting .nd already the big clock on the .all
tell,
us that anotber year ha. gone by.
Thi.
supplement 1. mainly tiling, that had to be mentioned, but it kind of a.eume. you’ve read a» book lteelf or are generally familiar with computer.. BOOKSTORE BROWSERS: avoid theae four
page..
NEW OWNER OF THE BOOK: Check that the
page,
are right, “”^> SORRY THE TYPE STILL ISN’T BIGGER, but that .ill require thousands of bucks in new negatives-meaning a lot more have to be .old as ia.
A lot of copies of this book have not been put together correctly. We hope that’s ell over now, but if this book belongs to you please check it. Incorrectly-made books will be exchanged. within two weeks of purchase (address on p. 2). Otherwise you have a Collector’s ALL YOU NEED DO IS CHECK THE NUMBERS ON THE ‘COMPUTER LIB’ SIDE. They run straight through from cover to cover, even thouqh the contents flip capriciously. If the letters “DM” appear anywhere amongst these plain numbers, you got a lemon.
The redoubtable PCC is now six issues and six dollars a year. People’s Computer Company, P.O.Box 310, Menlo Park CA 94025. BYTE Magazine, SlO/year if you hurry, $12 later, from Green Publishing Co., Peterborough, NH.
Editorial:
Carl Helmers, Box 378, Belmont HA 02178. Hardware-oriented. Creative Computing: The Magazine of Recreational and Educational Computing. Xdeametrics, P.O. Box 789-M, Morristown, NJ )7960. Weird variety of subscription rates: student $6,
“individual”
$8, “institutional” $15. The Computer Hobbyist, $6/year. Box 295, Cary NC
27511.
Hardware-oriented. Computer Notes (for Altair users; from
MITS).
Mlcro-8 Newsletter, for people really into the
Intel.
Hal Singer, Cabrillo High School, 4350 Constellation, Lompoc CA 93436. and aleo Simulation and Gaming News, Box 3039 University Station, Moscow, Idaho 83843. Electronotes is the magazine for music synthesizer
freaks.
Bernle Hutchlns, 60 Sheraton Drive, Ithaca NY 14850. and something else entirely. Privacy Journal, a monthly newsletter on problems of privacy, many or most of which Involve computers. P.O. Box 8844, Washington, D.C.
20003;
$15 a year.
(Note:
it is of interest that a bill on computer privacy in this year’s House of Representatives Just happened to be HR 1984.)
One individual I know, who relishes his counterculture image, told me with angry and shaking voice that he doesn’t believe in copyright and that anything that gets near his computer belongs to him.
Well,
don’t leave your manuscripts near such a person. (Why is it always the guys with cushy and secure jobs who tell you tweedle de dee, ideas should be
free,
and patents and copyrights are selfish?) Actually, for the individual, one of the strongest forms of protection available is copyright. Far from obsolete, the copyright makes publishing, and the better computer software, possible. (It is not generally known that copyright violation is a felony.) (And ripping off a program you’re supposed to pay for is not a brave guerrilla affirmation, like hitting Harold Geneen with a pie, but grand larceny.) Now that Altairs and LSI-lls have got a lot of you guys dreaming about selling soft
ware,
an important question is how to protect your work.
Well,
you have a champion. Calvin Mooers (see pp. 18-21) is not only a genuine Computer Pioneer From The Forties,
but,
along with Herb Grosch, pioneered the Computer Counterculture. Grosch flaunted a beard in front of old man Watson, Mooers strove to make computers easy to use— back when that was unheard of. One of his current interests is in ways that small independent underground-type programmers can protect their developments. He and some associates are exploring the
possi
ble formation of a group for the legal protection of small software producers and owners. Incidentally, when you think something you’ve written belongs to you— a computer program, poem or whatever— slap the following at the beginning, under the title:
(<=) 1975 frving Snerd
substituting, of course, your own name. And the year currently in effect. If computer printing is used, (C), using parentheses, is
consi
dered an acceptable substitute for c-in-a-circle This not only gives notice to potential Borrowers, but it has certain strong magical properties as a legal incantation. See your lawyer for details, but don't hesitate to apply it liberally to your own work; you may be glad
All the DM numbers are supposed to be on this side only. They poop out at number 59, and were intended merely for cross-reference.
.pmi
p^^^
p^^i
It began with a bang last Christmas: the cover of Popular Electronics showed 'a computer you dan build yourself for only $400'. It was
real.
A young firm in Albuquerque called Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry
Sys
tems,
or MITS, had finally done it: a computer for well under $1000. In a box not much bigger than a typewriter, a machine comparable to the Univac I. They called It the Altair 8800. Of course, in a way this was an obvious
step.
The MITS computer was simply the packaging, as a computer, of a specific integrated circuit chip that had been on the market for some months. This chip, the Intel 8080, is a microprocessor, or two-level computer (see p.
44),
generally employed for fixed purposes In cash registers, pinball machines, and the like. However, to make it a "general" computer— with the engineering, hookups and accessories that entailed— would be no small catter if taken seriously.
O
r-*
M
Ul
D*
H \ C W
Next in computer hobbyiem will obviously be the Computer Van. Already vans come with swivel thrones, four-track stereo, color TV; so this next etep is obvious. But most important, recreational vehicles can be purchased on very long
time-
plans, sometimes seven
yeare.
{HITS has a demo van with Al
tair,
floppy
disk,
lineprinter. It drives around showing off. But they'll sell you one like it for a trifling $28,000.) Now for mobile operation we redo the power
supply...
•Wf
1975 may be thouyht of as the year in which the computer underground suddenly appeared in full force. The Altair was probably the big crystallizing event. Not that there wasn't a counterculture be
fore.
There were the games-players at every
uni
versity, the prank programmers (see p.
4B-9),
and, wherever computers are the center of things, a shared experience of misch^ief and breakthrough. There was Computer People for Peace, a cliquey and unapproachable group with booths at the conferences (at least, their backs were always turned when you wanted to ask
questions).
There was the hobby fringe. But now it's gone different. Instead of pretentious company names meant to appeal to obtuse businessmen, like Performance Measurement Systems Consultants Group and Bottom-Line-Tronics, the new companies have rock-group names like General Turtle, Inc., The Sphere and Loving Grace Cybernetics. In this new computer counterculture, the main computer companies are not IBM and Honeywell and Univac, but DEC and MITS and General Turtle; the standard computer is not the 370, but the 11 (or possibly the Altair or the 8). The standard language is not Fortran or Algol or
PL/I,
but BASIC. Instead of the big color TV that middle America wants, the underground compu-ternik dreams of his own graphic setup forever running The Game of Life in color (see pp. 48-9 and pic p.
DM26).
(Of course that'll also require the color TV; see "Bit Maps," p. Z.) In such a world, computers are not a tool but a way of life. Tte computer is toy, pet, checkerboard, music box and TV. Computers are for making music, computers are for getting people together via community memory, computers are for letter-writing, computers are for art and moviemaking and the animated decoration of the home. Computers are for games; a vast number of interactive game-programs are published and swapped around. Almost all are in the BASIC language. (Bob Albrecht's WHAT TO DO AFTER YOU HIT RETURN is said to be definitive— S7.50 from People's Computer Company, 1919 Menalto Ave., Menlo Park CA 94025. See also their magazine
PCC,
as well as Simulation and Gaming News.) PLATO games, a somewhat different subspecies, are discussed on p. DM27. The underground computer magazines have be come a blizzard (see box). Albrecht's sprightly and successful PCC, originally oriented toward high and grade schools, has now branched into hobbyism as
well.
On the hardware side there is The Computer Hobbyist, and now a slick new hobby magazine. Byte, with a first printing of 50,000. On the educational side there is a swell new magazine called Creative Computing. Then there is the Community Memory movement. The basic idea of Community Memory is to have a computer resource of information and ideas, commonly available. In its more glorified and
mys
tical form, the idea seems to be to have a place, inside the computer, where information can be shared by The People, free of institutional obstruction or the profit motive. This vision is perhaps unclear to others besides the author, but it attracts a variety of people interested in some form of grass roots revitalization of our society. Some of these are disillusioned sixties radicals who look to "community organization" as a building block for a new society; others are interested in more nuts-and-bolts applications, such as trying to make barter a viable economic form again, in an urban society with many nonstandard leftovers, skills and wants. (Presumably this would work by having the computer find pairs of people with matching wants and tradables; or even search out potential trades around multi-person rings.) The first of these systems was Resource One, in San Francisco; I saw another Community Memory in Vancouver, which seemed to be in practice a sort of animated classified-ad system. A user Bitting at the terminal can put in ads of his own, and can search through the entire file for keywords of interest. As there is no censorship, some rather surprising things get in there, for which I wish we had room. (A newsletter of such projects. Community Communications, is being started by Lee Felsen-stein. Loving Grace Cybernetics, 1807 Delaware St., Berkeley CA 94703.) Even for those coming anew into the field the radio hams and amateur telescope makers who've laid their Master Charge cards on the line for the Altair— computers represent a new social life. Amateur computer clubs have drawn startling num
bers:
for instance, the Los Angeles and San Francisco groups are currently pulling 100 members to their weekly meetings. (In San Francisco, contact Fred Moore, 55B Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park CA 94025.) This book and its surprise success probably rate mention of some sort in the world of underground computerdom, '74-75; although my under-ground status may be in jeopardy. I had intended to bypass the computer establishment, and cer tainly not expected to become assimilated therein; so the dozens of university class adoptions have come as a considerable shock, as have the acceptance and legitimation I had long since given up
on.
My heartfelt thanks for this response, and I'll try to live up to it. (How is discussed on
p.
Z, last column.) But folks, this all is the merest beginning. As it says on diametrically the other side, p. 3,
COMPUTERS BELONG TO ALL MANKIND.
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PIBAXAB
U>
UJ ABwap
x
11
on
p.
“•
HITS’
new
computi
-otorol*
6800. •no’
—
MM
Mt ~lri « » «»
altair
• Ur-
based or, th. Intel
BOW, and
customers already Into that ..chin* ”
^ in ,ny way 1**
they
uy.
A computer
hit
based
on tha
Motorola 6000.
-id.
2«
bytes
of
cor,, cassstte recorder
and
TV dlipUy
<»
<="""•
16 Un"' 1"
ott"mA
for H74S
by THE
SPKTO.
96
East
SO0
South,
Bountiful,
Utah B4010. TVC computer
ki
.nd enothsr
• "ova
lookallka, Bill Codbout Electronica,
Box
3355 Oakland
Mrport,
Oakland
CA
94614.
Ha
•
!•»
pl*h*
»" U
lookallka. Oi
you
might
oat an
LSI-11.
An
LSI-11 buying pool
la
being formed
by Hal
Lashley, Southern
Cal
Co-putar Society,
P.O. Box 987,
•;. Faeaden*
CA
91030.
Processor Technology, 2465
4th
St.,
Baikal
ay
94710,
Bakes
a
text diaplay
kit for tha
Altair for SI to
(you
aupply
tha IV
Bon
i
tor
and
avldantly tha
keyboard).
64
character
par Una, 16
linaa.
Bootstrap Enterprises,
Ann
Arbor,
are
alao working
on •
similar
unit,
cal
lad
"Tha
Dumb Ter
minal,"
with
a
color option. MITS
ii ccaaa.ittad now to
building
a
vidao
tarmlnal,
the
CT-B096, that will provide both text
and
graphic*. Following specs
are not
final.
fBtf
« T» 8*
ficeo.
It will have
a
keyboard
and
video monitor, plug straight into
tha
Altair,
and
refresh fron Altair memory
aodul**—
which
nay
double
as
regular aemory,
if you
don't Bind garbage
on the
It will have
34
lines
of
upper-case charac
ters,
SxB
dots
to the
character,
SO
characters to
the
line
on a
built-in nonitor.
In
addition lt will offer graphics from
bit
nape
(see p. Z>,
either 130×130
or
340×340.
(Tha
resolution will be switch-selectable,
if you
have enough buffer memory;
a
screen
of
text takes
2K, so
does
a
130×120 picture,
and
240×240 takea
a
whole
4K.)
Buffer nemory will also
be
divldabla Into separate
*pagea”
of
text
or
graphics;
and two
pagea will
be
super impoaable, interlacing alternate video fields
(see
pp.
CM6-7).
Hota that refreshment
Is
from randon-acce**, rather than serial, memory,
so
that sultlple fields cannot
be
overlaid.
While none
haa
been announced
as
yet,
a
anisic iynthesiier that plugs into
the
Altair will alaoat certainly
be
available
in 1976.
(Mote that
thi*
could provide
an
entirely
new
form
of
interactive terminal
if
used with
the
tfachspres*
equipment;
see
nearby.) )
tha
Altair
ia in the
DEC’s
own
floppy dlak,
for the B and 11,
finally came out. Price
for
II
i
S3000
for one
drive,
S4000
for
double.
LHJctape,
which
la
virtually
the
sane
as
DECtape
but
unpatented,
has
just come
out at
S2000
for one
drive, Including controller
and
interface
to 11 or
Hova (interrupt-driven). Mote that
the
unit
is
compact
and
rugged,
and nay
be sore suitable than disk
or
cassette
for
those of
us
concerned about portable rigs
and van-
nounting. Computer Operations,
Inc.,
10774 Tucker St., Beltsville
MD
20705.
(The bad
news:
software costs S300
for the
driver, plus S750
>
DEC if – operating syst n FT-11.) Cambridge Memories, Inc., cleverly sells main nemory banks
for the 11
which
can
attach
t<
to
two
PDP-iia
at
once— thus connecting
the
two machines without using DEC's expensive Unibus coupler. Also
for lls^
Formation, Inc., sells
a
curious programmer's console that traps
and
dis
plays
the
last sixteen Unibus addresses referenced;
and
Pabrl-Tek offers
a
cache aeaory
for
the PDP-11/45.
s
'*
haa
announcod
•
laaer
1800
K i '
P*lnt.r,
tha
pedal It
. .
Prating aachin.a,
if,
good.
•t
1.
ta.ic.ll,
an
.KMUtl,
Ire
copi.'.
out.
[Evan Toahibafax
now
aak.a
one I
.
•JT"'';
•»«=«""»«
°-« -M«.
with ,mV^™
°"
*"
'ItUMt-tlc drv.,.
But
IT.T„
'°™"'
"* ~y
"°"»"
"»
P™"«-
°
pSLiV
**•"~
•ur"c,!
1»"-a •>< )u-t TIT,
l1^;.1""'"
—«
ti.
a;„u'h_'"°«':t=i
cm put
bu.i„.„
»»
IZ^Z-T,'Jl°
"T'
Mk.
-
„tr« ch«ta...
AIM
)
o«v7~,
i ^ 9,t the
°ug.
out of ,
.iisij
• S110.0DO.
31 • 5 Si
as s 5
a
|||
°
sei
•
One of
t
Ing up at AJH 617/261-1100. Naaorn,
for
soae unfathonabl* raaaon, built in
tha
early
70s a
conputer Intended
to be
upw«rd-cosfiatlbla
fro- the
360/20.
But lt waa not a 360.
Why
did
they
do
thla?
The
hind
of
people
who
ahop around would
not buy
360/20a,
and tha
kind
of
people
who buy
J60/20a would scarcely leave IBM's skirts
at
upgrade tlaa. Thua
the
Fvrnorex
40
has, quite understandably, been discontinued.
And ell the
ones thay
had
left •re waiting
for you
brand
new up at
American Used Cosjputar
for
•jh4' heart-stopping price
of
icludes
48k
byte! Now
for the bad
news.
It cones bare-bones, with
no
software,
and no
hardware support.
Vou get the
wiring dlag/raa with
it,
and a
liat
of
other owners,
and
you're
on
your
own.
AUC
does have spare parts, however.
And
peripherals,
ax>stly Bore expensive.
Mr.
Ma no son
of AUC
told
na on tha
phone that it
had 156
instructions, including 64-bit floating
point,
32-bit binary.
On
studying
the
literature, however,
it
appears
to Be
that
the
instruction-set he described
is
Blcroprograsaaed, with
the
micro-coda Intended
to be
read
in at
startup tine. (There
are 65
microinstructions.) Maybe
you can
gat
the
microcode
for
those
158
instructions
and
Baybe
you
can’t.
Maybe
you
don’t care,
If
you’re well enough fixed
to
handle
one of
theae. It cones
in
basic blsck, 2x5x4
feet,
fits
in
a van,
and
supposedly does
not
need aircondltlon-
ing.
Supposedly plug-compatible with
370
peri-
phexala!
It’s
really
a
sixteen-blt nachlne,
and
it
haa
sight sets
of
eight registers, having been designed
to
perform
up to
eight functions
sinul-
tanaoualy.
So.
64
Bain registers,
4K
dynamic Microstore, 48K
of
memory,
for
about
the
prlc*
of a
used
PDP-
11/10 with
tr.
smelling aalts, anyone?
“Diobolo”
uas a
game
of the
tuenties that
in
volved poking
a
spinning object.
Oddly,
that’s uhat today’s Diablo involves. Redoubtable
Max
Palevsky,
who
brought
you
Scientific Data Syatems (which Xerox bought
and
recently shut
down).
Rolling Stone
and the
movie
“Harjoe”–
has
another winner, which
he’s
also sold
to
xarox. This
is the
Diablo company, which first made disks
and now
makes
a
sensational printing
aachine•
It has a
whirling plastic “daisy
wheel”
of
type, interchangeable,
and can
type 30 characters
per
second
in
either direction,
as
as well
as
draw pictures—
of a
sort.
Tha basic difference between these prin ters
and
conventional typewriters, like
the
Sel
ectric,
1*
their
use of
servos rather than
rat
chets.
This neans their characters
can be
posi
tioned
in
nany intermediate positions, unlike the fixed position* available
on an
ordinary typewriter,
for
instance,
the
Diablo
can
posi
tion
the
type
to 1/60 of an
inch horizontally and
1/48 of an
inch vertically. (Nice
for
justi
fied typesetting.) There
are new a
number
of
machines
of
this kind. First came
the
Diablo printer, officially the HyTypa
1;
then
the
engineers
who
built that went
off and
created
a
competitive printer called the pUME
(pron.’kyoom’);
now
there’s
an
improved Diablo HyTypa
II;
Interdata makes
a
competitive
unit,
the
Carousel printer, with
a
little print cup)
and to
Bake things totally confused, there’s a special model Diablo called
the
800, which can’t
be
connected
to
computers
but is
sold
for
office
use as a
“word processor.” A nuBber
of
companies stake terminals
in the
SS000 ballpark embracing
on* or the
other
of
these printers. Gen-Corn systems makes
one
around the Diablo; Anderson-Jacobson makes
one
around tha gUME. Xerox makes
Its own
computer terminal, the 3010, around
tha
Diablo
I—
which,
it
should be noted,
can be
rented
for as
little
a*
three
months,
at
S190/month. Tha
one
everybody wants
for
their computers 1* called
the
Xerox
BOO, but so far
thst
is not
available
a* a
computer terminal.
It
goes faster than
the
other Diablos
and
offers typefaces that look beautiful
for
typesetting; mucfi nicer,
it
seems,
than
the
type* currently available
for the
other Diablos. For those Interested
in
just hooking
up the
printer mechanism,
for
substantially less money than
a
whole terminal, interfaces
for
hooking the Diablo
or
QUME printers
to
PDP-8
or
PDP-11 are available fron Data Systems Design,
Inc.,
1122 University Avenue, Berkeley
CA
94702. SUGGESTIONS
TO
XEROX
COttCBRSIllG
DIABLO
PRINTERS.
No
charge.
1.
Sell
the 800 as a
terminal,
for
goodness
sake.
2.
Failing
that,
make those pretty typefaces available
for the
othsre.
3.
Already
you
offer black
and red
ribbons;
a
blue
and
yellov ribbon Mould permit printing PICTURES
IS
FULL
COLOR,
a
development
of
great interest
to the
many aomputer graphics freaks.
4.
However,
that uould require somewhat finer positioning
of the
platen;
say, 1/120 in
both directions.
£. …
failing uhiah,
you
could
put out a
“graphic daisy uheel” vith intermediate
dot
positions equivalent
to dot
positions between those now available.
6.
Could
the
Diablo somehow
be
made
to
sound leas like
a
dentist’s drill?
7. How
about
a
portable?
Dan Hillis
and
Radio Parlaan,
of tha
LOGO group
at
MIT,
are
working
on a
special “preliter-
•te”
terminal
to
allow non-reader* (possibly
in
cluding chimps
and
gorillas)
to
program
in
LOGO, especially
on tha
General Turtle 2500
(see “Min-
sky’s Computer,”
nearby).
Plastic credit cards will have symbola
for ths
various picture
and
music-box functions.
To
write
a
program,
or
create
a
movie
on the
scope,
th*
ueer will Insert function cards
in
slot*.
Color coding will
be
used
for
program transfer,
a red
card means “Jump to
tha red
aubroutln*.” Sine*
thi*
1*
MIT,
the
full recursive power
of tha
ay at am will
of
course be available.
(My
hope
is
that chinpanieea
and
other little .alotnlka
can be
taught recursive program definition. Than will
th*
public wake
up
to computer* being aaay?)
MARVIN
owyfoTtr^,
The graal Marvin Hineky
ia
renowned
on
five continents. Dean
of the
amorphous field
of “ar
tificial intelligence,”
and
referred
to
without ambiguity
as
“Marvin” throughout computer
land,
he
is a
theoretician’e theoretioian. But
at the
heart
of
every theoretician,
I
think,
burns
the
dream that
he
will eamaday prove the outright, worldly iimyortanae
of his
thoughts. Like Dee try,
at
last
he
will
go to hie
euitaaee and
get out hie
guns,
and the
audience will
cheer.
General Turtle, Incorporated,
Is a toy
company that
the
teem
of
Minsky
and
Papert
put
together
to
aarket their educational computer
Y
(Set
p.
57.)
i
few.
rut
the
Impact
has
been wrber
of the
project puts
it,
“Me wanted
to get our
ideas
for
education
out to
the world.” So they decided
to
build
a
terminal.
But
lt grew,
as
terminal designs
will.
It is now
the
CTI
2500. Remember
the
tortoise
and th*
hare?
Thi*
is
the
hairlast tortoise
on
four wheels. Plrst deliveries this
fall.
And her< rand dollai • what
v
;
for
1HC tttLtH CH^NIAVJ
—
a 16-bit computer like none
you
ever
saw.
8 working registers,
in
addition
to PC.
32 scratchpad registers
(70
nanosecond).
250-nanosecond
1/0.
4K
of
main memory,
250
nanosecond. (Expand able
,
of t i.)
pa.o6«Aa>
yaucovi*.
IHMS^CTaJtl-PiT^ Cassette memory,
1
drive. Alphabetical display, standard video, with 6*16-dot character generator,
64
char
acters,
DYNAMICALLY ALTERABLE. Also expandable. Vectoring graphic display with
2D
rotation
(“turtle
geometry”— line*
are
speci
fied
not by
endpoints
but by
angles
and
length).
512×512 resolution,
1
Billion endpolnts/sec refresh. Keyboard.
I asked
Dan
Hillis,
a
member
of the
group, about the possibility
of
Installing
th*
2500
in a van.
“Think
of it as a
recreational vehicle with
th*
van optional,”
he
said.
What makes possible
the
computer
c
culture
and
everything else
is, of
course,
the
spectacular development
of
electronic chip technology,
the
techniques
of
shrinking great electronic circuits
to
almost
no
site. Electronic rigs that were ahoebox-size
ten
years
ago are
typically
now
etched
on
chips
the
size
of
your thumbnail
and
sold
for a few
dollars,
no
matter what they contain. A
few
years ago,
the
chips only contained building block*, such
as
registers— units
for
holding information temporarily.
But now in
the mid-seventies they have come
to
contain whole computera,
or
large sections
of
them. (The distinction between microprocessors
and
computers
is
taken
up on p. 44.)
The first biggies were from
Intel:
the
BO08 and then
the
8080,
a
chip that
has
become
the
heart
of the
Altair
(see p.
X),
as
well
as
rival computer*. New computer chips keep coming
out:
people keep telling
me to
mention specific
ones,
but I
can’t keep track
of
them.
The
Motorola 6800 seem* popular;
it
will soon
be the
heart
of new
computer* from MITS
and
SPHERE
(see p.W and Y).
(An augmented
and
faster copy
of the
6800
i* re
putedly being sold
by HOS
Technology
for S30.)
Another interesting computer chip
is the
PACE microprocessor from National Semiconductor, with four working registers
and a
ten-word stack; with
16K
memory
it
costs $500.
(The
PACE
is
hidden
in an
automatic drink mixer
and
boot*
inventory controller from Electro Units Corp., San Jose, Calif. Adjusts prices
to
hours
and
can even water
the
drinks precisely. Claimed to make absentee ownership
of
bar* practical.) Because
of
chips,
the
price
of
computer main memory
is
collapsing apace. Something like
a
dollar
a
word
in the
sixties,
it is
something like like
a
dime
a
word now.
But
Intel
now
offers
a
•torago chip holding
16K
bit*
for
SSS, which
is
3C
a
bit,
and a
friend
of
nine estimate* that memory chips will cost
1/10 of a
cent
per
word
in
1976.
These cost collapses cause many
to
predict the
end of
disk
and
tape.
But
that’s premature. While these Eappier chips hold
a lot for a
little, their contents disappear whan
the
lights
go out.
Until laser-punched tape comes along, disk
and
magnetic tape will
be
very much with
us as
long-term
and
oackup storage devices. Because
of the
action
in
chip technology, a potential Important movement
in
computer design may have been passed over:
the
“macromodulas”
de
veloped
at
Washington University
in
St. Louis
by
. (father
of the
original
DEC
modules).
and
B
>clat
Th*
basic idea
of the
mscromodula approach was
to
have conputer subsection* that ware completely interpluggable. With them
you can
build •ny computer,
to
your
own
design,
in a
couple
of
days.
The
syatem exists
now and it
work* just
fine:
counters, registers, memoriae
can ba at
tached quickly
by
cable. Unfortunately,
the
cost
1*
high
and
they haven’t found
a
manufacturer. With chip prices falling,
and
chip know-how widespread,
it’s
hard to justify charging
ten or so
time*
as
much
for
component*
juat because they
can ba
plugged
to
gether faster. (Juat
as
unfortunately, everything
in the
aacronodule system
is
built
on
lec
tions
of
twelve bits.)
For
this reason
the St.
Louis folk
are
having trouble getting commercial sponsorship. However, perhaps Soms bright hungry chip company, reading
this,
would like
to
get into
the
aacronodule game.
And
presumably whittle
the
module down
to th*
now-universal
8
EGlUlftW
tOO.,
,11 to o.
Op™17«llL’w™h.l”o„.l.
opr.
nu.,:
th. Cr.Mfcl.tt et-puo.,.
.ir**,’.
oo-pot.,.
U»
«-Uhl -chin., th.
«.»
ccput.r.
Th.
tad.hl ccnput.r
or
Sy,t«i 470,
a
ct-pufr
ol th. 160
.„!..
b,
on.
o, th.
d..lgned th«« orlclr-lly—
… p 41__ ,/nov
»v.il«t,l.
fro.
tadahi Corpor.tlon,
12S0 Cat
*rqu.a Av.nua, Sunnyval.
CA
940B6. (rtw, ar.
no*
aav.rtl.ln,
(or ,y.t_
Wl.
«h„ *m a» in_
aid.,
of
OS/HVT,
VS.
.to.).
Th.
flr.t
.70 1. „„
and runnin,
at
NASA’a In.tltuta
for
Spac.
studl..
T, T.:
r^jT”.;”
•*”«•”-
~
of thair faaoua knockout” machines
to do it in
(Datamation, July 75,
9t5
.)
Of courit you’ve thought that hardwired •etups were
for
sloppy analog type*
of
thing. But hare
now wa
have
THE
CHESS MACHINE, under straightfaced construction
at the MIT AI Lab,
which will provide HARDWIRED THREAT ANALYSIS.
Yes,
its
advanced perceptron architecture will supposedly
be
capable
of
analysing threats
to
*ny given position
in a
GRAND PARALLEL FLASH. Tha Impact
of
this astonishing development
on
the world
of
Electronic Chess,
or
anything else, for that matter.
Is
totally impossible
to
predict.
Over
a
very nice lunch at Foditys
in
Chicago,
Prof.
Minsky^
and I
dis
cussed possible styling for
his
computer.
Be
particularly liked
the
arrangement suggested in this sketch;
a
fold-
down keyboard
and the
displays sort
of on
poles so they could
be
seen easily through
a
crowd of bystanders.
The
han
dle would only
work,
of
course,
with
the
scopes
removed.
We’ll
see
later what
it
finally looks
like.
Unsatisfied with
the
structure
of
normal computer*, they
are
building
at
MIT’s
AI Lab a
computer whose native language
1*
LISP.
It
will have
32
bit*
with virtual memory,
and
execute LISP like
a bat out of
bell.
In
a
refreshing reversal
of
trends,
it
will be
for one
user
at a
tlBe. “Time-sharing
is an
Idea whose time
has
gone,” chuckles
one
parti
cipant.
(Project MAC, where tine-sharing grew
up,
waa
there.)
1H€
Cm
CP^tvTClL Seymour Cray, master computer builder, crea ted
the
6600 system
for
Control Data. Indeed,
he
had
the
audacity
to
require
CDC to
build
the
computer factory
on the
property adjoining
his own
estate
in
Chippewa Falls, Minnesota,
How
that ha’s broken
off to
start
hi* own
company (with money from CDC, among
others),
the new
computer factory adjoins
his
estate
on the
other side.
Tha
Cray-1,
another supercomputer,
i*
nearlng completion there.
Patent #3,875,932
has now
been issued
for
How Wachspress’ electronic
sex
machine
or
what
ever
it is (you saw lt
first
on p.
DM9)
–
In the
Illustration
wa see it
tickling
a
shmoo. After
you
send Wachspress
his
fifty-buck royalty,
you can
either
buy the kit or a pre-
built
model.
Concave
or
convex,
as the
poet
says.
(Etchings
are
antediluvian
and
waterbed* are commonplace;
as an
invitation, what mora
in
cisive comeuppance could
ba
proffered?)
Speaking
of
Machspres*.
it
aearns that
the
unusual
1/0
equipment offered
by the
Federal Screw Works (Troy, Mich.)
is
only
a
voice output Surprisingly,
a
voice input device
is now
coemterclally available from Threahold Technology,
Inc.,
Cinnaminaon,
NJ. For
$10,500
you get a
device that will recognisa
33
spoken words,
and
aicrophones.
(Each user
ha* to
train
it on his
12 words,
but
separata vocabularies
may ba
stored
on the
computer
for
different users
or
purposes.
This
ia
still some
way
from
tha
fabled “talking computer”–
see
pp.
DM 13-14 for
problama
and
objections–
but it’s
undeniably
a
teful
mmcsm
The halftone systfea of IfUMRRO, rumored on
p.
DM38, Is
reel.
Clever indeed: it divides the half-tone problem into tvo parts, one the original picturing of the scene, the other its presentation in the terminal. That means that their system permits one central Image generator to send out pictures to as many terminals as desired. Unlike the Watkins Box (see p.
DM37),
whose half-milllon-dollar opulence can be poured only on a single user at once, in this system the central resource can be distributed among various users, with each one’s picture changed Intermittently, or poured on a single user for full animation. Currently it runs in Portran, transmitting encoded pictures to the unusual terminals required (built around Trinitrons). But a special central processor is foreseen. The system is called CHARGE, and Ron Swallow, its developer, la Indeed a hard charger. (Soft
ware:
Bill Underbill and Roger Gunwaldsen.) Swallow’s game isn’t movies or engineering gra
phics;
he wants CHARGE to compete head-to-head with PLATO (see pp.
DH26-7).
And at the prices he> talking about— 55000 por terminal and $150,000 for tho central
proc-“-;-‘•-•I.’J
l-r.ows?
Millions of people ssw computer graphics for the first time on the PBS “Ascent of Man” series, where a screen drawing of Early Man’s skull was seen to rotate and gradually change In its fea
tures.
This waa startling even if you know about computer graphics, since it seemed to be proceeding from complex data concerning the entire skulls and their changes. Not so. Actually what you saw was a series of skull drawings by Peter Foldes, a Parisian
artist,
with the computer generating transitional drawings between them. (Indeed, though you saw Prof. Bronovskl next to the screen, you did not see him next to the screen at the same time the drawings were changing— because that had to be filmed very slowly.) The system was created by Nestor Burtnyk and Marcelli Wein, of the National Research Council of Canada. It currently runs only on »n SEL 840A. (It was also used by the National Film Board of Canada for creating Foldes” splendid film “Hunger.”) They can preview by rolling through
bit
map video on a moving-head disk. (See Burtnyk and Wein, “Computer Generated Key-Frame Anima
tion,”
J- SHPTE, March 71, 149-53.)
What about the animated figure that talks to Joe Gariagioln before baseball games? Haha, That’s a rubber puppet matted in from a black box; the guy who does the voice works the mouth.
Hany unlikely individuals have stormed that heartbreak town of
Hollywood,
leaving sadder but
wiser—
but loan
Sutherland,
dean of aomputer graphiae? Hell, having found that the moviemakers are not ready for image synthesis— the areammitho
unprepared,
as it.
were,
for the Total Forge— he ie sojourning at the Rand Corporation.
A fella named Charles McCarthy, of suburban
Chicago,
bought the “Computer Eye” from Spatial Data Systems, and will do mail-order picture con
versions.
He’ll convert your favorite snapshot to a printout of the same subject made of light and dark letters. If you’re interested in having the actual grey-scale data for processing in your own computer, inquire. The Kobius Group, Inc., P.O. Box 306, Win- field IL 60190.
UBEEAL
ESTATE:
for rcUua’.ion, Ron uorKB or. the “dream house” he keeps inside the ay8ten.
Want a computer-controlled videocaasette recorder? The model to ask for is the Sony 2850, costing (gasp) some six thousand bucks. An interface to the PDP-11 is made by CMX Systems. 635 Vaqueroa, Ave., Sunnyvale CA 94086. Incidentally, scaled-down CMX editing setups are beginning to get around. For instance, they have a small setup in the pleasant offices of DJM rilm £ Tape, 4 East 46, NYC: three of the above Sonys and the CMX Model 50 control setup, using a PDP-11 and keyscope. Though prices are by the
job,
the basic charge is $75/hour. (Note that the big CMX setup, with a disk, is the model 300.)
Since the forties, there have been continual announcements that video disks— movies you play on your TV off a record— were right around the
corner.
Earlier this year they were supposedly going to be available before Christmas. Now they Bight be on sale, “on a limited basis,” in 1976. (TV Guide, 16 Aug 75, p. 7.) Because of the grave difficulties of engineering— inaccuracies in punching the center hole mean the track can’t help being off center, for instance— some of us are
skeptical.
Two systems have been confidently announced.
Philips,
the firm that gave us the audio cassette, has a system that will follow the spiral track on the disk from underneath with a laser. The disk turns at 30 revolutions per second, or one turn per TV frame, so it can supposedly freeze on one frame when desired. The other system is from RCA, which has a long history of Be-too announcements, but st least two of them made it big (the 45 record and the color TV system now used in the USA), so RCA should not be dismissed out of hand. Their disk system will supposedly go at 450 rpm (7.5 revolutions/second) , but they still mean to track it with a needle. The man from TV Guide says he’s seen it and it works perfectly, but I -«tould personally look for hidden wires. (MCA, an entertainment conglomerate, has hitched up with Philips and printed a catalog of all the movies they will supposedly make available on disk for the “MCA-Philips” try a tew— such as Dee-try Rides Again for around ten bucks. This is probably just a bluff: with the price of audio records what they are, no way is a movie going to cost ten bucks. But it makes RCA look weaker, which is probably the purpose.)
The prospect surprised them, but MAGI (see
p.
DM36) allows as how they might let you make movies on their over-the-phone movie-making setup (sketched on p,
DM36).
Price to capable out-
ders,
if the software meshed, would be about $50 an hour. (six hours makes one minute of film, not counting the phone
bill.
Cheap if you know movie economics.)
Meanwhile,
John Lowry, at Digital Video Lab oratories in Toronto, has been developing high-quality video suitable for transfer to theatrical film. He and they have developed a 655-line color system— with heavy digital enhancement (see “Picture Processing,” p.
DM10).
I scarcely believe my notes, but I saw it, and wrote down that it was comparable to 3Sam studio color. The day of “electronic cameras”– that ie, film-quality video— may be upon us soon.
About 1972, there was announced an electron ically-controlled color filter that could change to any hue in nanoseconds. That would be Just **hat we all need for color movies from COMs— but what happened to it?
railed At the high end of things, , Three Rivers Company has come in with a 3D vec boring system (competitors discussed p.
DM30).
Supposedly they can pack a lot m the The price of the GT40 display (see p.
DM21),
which all in all is one of the best displays on the market, has just dropped to S6500. To
dis
guise this pride drop, DEC gives you the smaller tube and no keyboard. And at the low end, a firm called Megatek in San Diego offers line-drawing CRT controllers for $1000 to $3000. All permit animation. You have to supply the oscilloscope. Their equipment plugs into the PDP-11 or the Nova, or in one case connects in tandem to an ASCII time-sharing terminal (!). The 11 and Nova models work directly from BASIC; your program in Basic puts line lists in the device’s buffer memory. The time-sharing model converts incoming line lists from ASCII to binary and stores them internally. 256 lines with 6-bit resolution cost $1900, $110°and S1600 for 11, Nova and t-s respectively; 1024 lines with 10-bit resolution cost S2800, S2000 and S2500 respectively. (Nova and 11 models can be completely updated in two refresh cycles,
yiel
ding as much animation as anyone can decently expect for the price. Software is supplied to provide display output from Nova, PDP-11 or timesharing BASIC; also t-s Fortran.)
Meanwhile,
for the hands-on electronics guy. Optical Electronics, Inc. makes all kinds of rotation modules. You can build your own 3D rotation setup out of their modules for a couple of thousand; but, of course, the fancy digital I/O for high-speed refreshment is not available. An interesting capability of the OEI equipment, though, is that you can build 4D- or even SD-rotation systems out of their modules. Hmmni.
Excellent manuals on the PLATO system and TUTOR language are now available from CERL,
Uni
versity of Illinois, Urbana. The next generation of PLATO terminals is coming down the line. The microfiche projector is withering away, as was easily foreseeable;
meantime,
steps ore being taken toward a more high-performance terminal, by putting a computer in it. This is being done both by Jack Stifle, who has done it with the Intel chip, and Roger Johnson, who haa the panel interfaced to an 11. (11 fans please note the implication: it is
pos
sible that the interface may be marketed.)
Meanwhile,
PLATO-like terminals (the model AG-60) are about $5000 from Applications Group,
Inc.,
P.O. Box 444B, Kaunas, Ohio 43537. Note that these have standard non-PLATO interfaces and standard keyboards, but the Owens-Illinois plasma panel (erroneously called Corning elsewhere in the book) blazes in all its glory.
TIT
W$ rh» nnin ‘jRvelopnent in computer graphics in the last year has been tha sudden upsurge of the bit-map approach to computer display- While the approach, and equipment for lt— like the Data Disk system– have been around for some time, the falling price of electronics, especially in the
,
have made lt abruptly the cheapest
–
type of computer dls-
iries of dot positions, ie form of fast memory i conventional scanned >-7)
.
The one bits
and thus th* « play for graphid A “bit map” is a or bite, recorded in i and read out in sync to i video system (see pp. DM( stand for dots or little squares, the zeroes for nothing, and the video system brightens the corresponding zones on the screen. This method haa certain disadvantages— parts of pictures cannot be automatically distinguished or separately animated, as with subroutining display (see “The Mind’s Eye,” asp. p.
DM23)—
but for the money it’s great. Sizes given refer to the number of squares in the rectangle of the picture.
BLACK-AND-WHITE An off-the-shelf bit-map system for the PDP-11 or the Nova is available from Intermedia
Systems,
20430 Town Center Lane, Cupertino CA 95014 (S2750 or $2500 respectively). May be ganged for grey-scale or color. It’s 256×256. For the Altair, tha forthcoming 8096 display (see p. Y) will have 120×120 or Z40x240 bit-map
graphics,
for prices starting around $1000,
COLOR Extra bit maps, plus electronics, can get you
color;
if you double the number of bits you can double the number of available colors on your
dis
play,
ad infinitum. On the small side, 64×64 color wll shortly be available for the Altair from the Digital Group,
Denver.
A 128×128 color bit-map system for the 11 has just been announced by DEC (for “nuclear
medi
cine”
of all things— but they will part with it to anybody for 8 or 10 thousand (not yet
fixed)),
ihey stress that this will be the first of a modular series of bit-map displays, with plugins for different degrees of resolution and different character generators. Ramtek and Comtal both make 256×256 bit-map
systems,
priced in the $16,000 area. Above this resolution special TV systems tend to be necessary. Both Ramtek and Comtal make very expensive systems for the purpose, using solid-state and disk respectively. You may or may not have heard of the Advent TV projector, the most glorious TV thing there is. It costs $3500 and projects a four-foot picture in the best TV color you can find. A lot of guys are bit-mapping to it. At MIT they’ve got bit-map color on the Ad vent at better than 400×500 resolution. (An option planned for the Flying Turtle (see p. Y) will allow its core memory to be used with the Advent as a bit-map display refresher.) At Comtal they’re going for 1000×1000 on the Advent, rejiggering the electronics fron scratch. The most spectacular demonstration of bit-map color so far has no doubt been the film done by Dick Shoup et al. at Xerox PARC (see p. X), showing the super animation that’s possible when big-computer resources are given over to bit-map
ani
mation. Their system is 600×800.
All those scoreboards and wisecracking light-
grids,
now that they are computer-controlled, raise all kindB of possibilities for non-frame animation. The big ones cost in the millions; a snail one for shopping centers costs a hundred grand (Millenium Info Systems, Santa Clara CA). Within a year or so, though, you ought to be able to get a nice animated display-panel of
.
for the side of your i you’ve got the computer inside.
.
assuming
the But A surprise something-or-other from DEC,
VT55,
represents a breakthrough of some sort what were they thinking of? “Graphic capability” has been added to an ordinary upper-case keyscope. Specifically, the ability to make two graphs, i.e., two wiggly line; (no more) somewhere between the left and right sides of the screen. You can also shade in under them, and add coordinate grids. It’s $2500, and obviously great if you’re bonkers for 2D graphs.
IBM, which did not take part in its develop
ment,
is sponsoring a $100,000 CHARGE installation at the University of Waterloo, in Canada.
•-*lbor Day, 1975 MORE THANKS In banging together this volume originally, I omitted thanking Hash Wiener, brazan ( brash young old-fashioned new editor of Computer Decisions, who has changed that publication from stolid X peppery. Thanks also to my good friend Robert w. Fiddler, Esq., patent attorney and still an ex-philosophy professor st
heart,
for many delightful and witty conversations on problems of patent, copyright snd the vagaries of intellectual prop
erty.
Any harebrained ideas on these topics expressed here, however, are almost assuredly ay own. For much of the informa tion In this supplement I am grateful to Bob Albrecht of
PCC,
mentioned here and there. Finally, special thanks to Commander Hugo McCauley, better known to you as Hugo’s Book service, for his yeoman performance in shipping out the books— not to mention carrying them up and down stairs, typing the mailing labels, checking for bad ones, and sending out all those notes of apology when we were out of books again and again and again. And to long-suffering Lois and Megan McCauley, my especial
gratitude.
WHATEVER The sea-to-shining-sea Nelson Empire now consists of a lot of unsold books, a 1K Altair and a second pair of shoes. My scheme for taking on Apprentice Generalists may have to wait awhile. So may Computer
Lib,
the film. But just wait. Speaking of which, what about this book, hey, now? Eventually there will be a new edition. Yes, the type is horrendously small, and that will have to be fixed. But that involves new negatives for every page, an expenditure of thousands of dollars, and some reconsideration of how this should all be set up. There have been several interesting plans. One was to split the contents of this book into three books, add material, enlarge the type and have them each this size and price. Tentative titles were Computer Lib /Dream Machines, Computers Arise./Computers Arouse!, and Guerrilla Computing/Electronlc Monkeyshim for Guerrilla Computing: ring Kong climbing the front panel of a 370 holding Patty Hearst. (I also daydreamed about
put
ting out a 10-volume encyclopedia in the same format, embracing psychology/sociology, biology/evolutionary strategy, history (as
strategy)
/more
his
tory (as mood and
feeling),
revolution versus continuity (a two-sided position
paper)…
the Gem-Maniacal Encyclopedia’™. But reason has prevailed, and such forays have been postponed indefinitely. The present plan is for Computer Lib to be rewritten and reset in bigger type, at least 256 pages, with at least 9 color pages and color cover. (We’re talking about fall ’76 or later.) Price will have to be S15. If you think that’s a rlpoff you can still get this
one.
(A number of people have complained to me about the $_7 price tag of this volume. Have they ever bought other books?) Later I would like to put out an anthology of my favorite articles in the field, using the Computers Arise’./Computers Arouse
1
title and format, and with some good 3D if possible. In any case, I want to stay in the publishing game; I haven’t had so much fun in years- other projected volumes include The Inner Beyond, by Sheila
McKenrle;
Dirty Driving and the Strategy of Traffic by “Driver
Edj”
and The Nelson Computer Glossary. Soon I hope to be able to typeset from my own computer, and possibly to share this facility. This has been a most in teresting year. I have bean pleased to meet, and otherwise enjoy, the variety of clever, charming and/or lubricous persons who have sought me out since the book first appeared; as well aa all the speaking en
gagements,
soirees and whatnot. I am delighted to receive relevant material and communications of any kind, although problems of time, disorganisation and mood often preclude a Personal Type Reply. It haa been a real lift for my morale to share some of these Ideas and enthusiasms with a wider public at last. It is
you,
finally, who have to carep and I am very glad you do. As to the most important
matters,
there is a news blackout for tha indefinite future. Please stand by. Next year in Xanadu.
in3
i Kai (both .Id..) i. baa.d In P«rt on my talk, at ot before Society, tha American Docu«*n
t
a
t
ion Institute, .„r …nrl.Uon. tha Associated Press, tha A*.o- elLlftenee Agency, th.
th*
Printing and a Society for Infor- . and Television Engineer , (th* Auburn
lecture.).
at ton for Computing Machinery, the Central
latitut*
of Electrical and Electronic* Enfln ibliahln. Aaaoclatlon, the Rsnd Corporation. Ition Diaplay, the Socl.ty of Motion <•<".." ME Incorporated, Union Theological rox Palo Alto Re.aarch C*nt*r, and Iver.itlae and Joint Computer Confe
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Everybody at Chicago Circle Campus has been very sporting about this project. I am grateful not only for the encouragement and assistance of various individusls (especially Joseph I. Upson, David C. Miller and Samuel
Schrage),
but for the atmosphere of support which has made this
possible.
My thanks to the Department of Art and the Office of Instructional Resources Development for freeing me from teaching duties, to the Computer Center snd the Department of Chenistry for
let
ting me use pictures of their equipment, and everybody for their encouragement. I would like to thank the Walt Disney organization for their permission to depict their wonderful characters, and everyone else who furnished materials and permissions for the things herein. Thanks also to those who looked over some of the material, especially Herbert Grosch of Cowputerworld, Dan McGurk of the Computer Industry Association, and William Rodgers.
In 1 important sense this ia not no.
eful the I am particularly grati many who have explained computers to ne over the years, especially Dave Denniston, Robert Fenichel, Andrew J, Sinner, John R. Levine. My thanks to Tom Barnard for some of the early typing, and for the Porta-Xan. I am grateful to Computer Decisions magazine for their good
will,
and help in researching computer imago synthesis. My roommate Tom DeFanti, mentioned elsewhere in this book, has been considerate beyond the call of duty in giving over all the first-floor rooms of our house to this project for six months. My thanks finally to the many others whose good will has kept me going, in particular my former wife and eternal friend, Deborah Stone Nelson. Special greetings to ny friend and neighbor, Mrs. John R.
Neill:
I hope you enjoy the uses which your husband's illustrations of Tik-Tok the Machine Man have found here. Lastly, for her contributions to morale (and for not footprinting the
pasteups},
let's have a warn hand for Pooky the Wonder Dog.
The machines, and
toys,
and involvement* we buy Into, are in but a small proportion of cases owned simply as scores, for their eo.t a* consumption symbols. Rather, we buy things lhat REPRESENT
IDEALS.
hoping ourselves lo partake of *ome abstraction or image-- the Playboy man, the Smart Businessman, the Clever Homemaker. Each product tries lo tell us it is the key stone of a way of life, and then, at least at that moment of purchase, we step into, wc embrace that Way of life, covering ourselves with the feeling, the aura, the magic we saw in the com
mercial.
Thl*
ia not materialism. It Is wishful grasping at miasma. (Following sentence optional.) It is communion, with the object seised simply the Objective Correlative of a hoped-for tranasubstantistion. (Sorry.) It's a seeking, not to possess,4 lo belong.
D.W. GRIFFITH-- took the movie-box and created [he photoplay. no longer n twisted stage production. WALT DISNEY-- created a hypnotic pantheon of kindly and innocent semi-animals,
senti
mentally universal, generally acceptable.
JOHN W. CAMPBELL-- as author and then editor •f Astounding, turned American science-fiction from the Buck Rogers space opera to the human story, built around thought-out premises and structures.
IVAN SUTHERLAND— programmed and systematized a computer setup for helping people think and work with dec ply-structured pictorial information. (See p.ihl)-) DOUG ENGELBART— foresaw the use of computer screens as a way of expanding the mind, and over the last decade and a half has brought about just
that.
And more, and on.
The occasional Oz ill us [rations are ail by John R.
Neill.
from various out-of-copyright Oz books by L. Frank Baum, especially Ozma of Oz and Tik-Tok of Oz. Tik-Tok. the Machine Man, is the figure to whom occasional allegorical significance is attached here by Juxtaposition.
i this sDresd ia from
ANOTHER QUICKIE
Compare Alice, when she gets lo Wonderland
("Deary
me! Curioser and curioser!") with Dorothy Gale, transported to Oz ("How do I_ get back to Kansas?!!!") Fantasy ties in with everything, including American git-out-n-do-it. Thought you might wonder.
OUT THE DOOR IH '74
I have wanted to
writ*
an introduction to computers, and a aeparate book on Fantic* for y But the Idea of binding them b*ck-to-back in a Whole Earth format, with lota of mlachlevou* Enr
material,
didn't hit me till Jan 73. I have tried to add all the stimulating and exhllara at ion*
,
as on the other side; computer* are deeply per showing-systems. I regret having to throw so many of i lat some readers will sense the seriousness below. stuff I could find, especially pe
machines,
contrary to legend, end , concern* into comic relief, but 1 1
*tr.ilht,„™ , ?
tIOR
,f0t thi"
b°°k
C'"'
tTOn
thing called the Domebook, that
tell,
you HHAf ! £K , I h°Z " m"k*
Ceode"lc
D°«'- °( c°"tse I'm blatantly imitating, in a way, th. wonderful Whole E±rth Catalog of Sts-art Brand. As I think back, though, the tone also come, in part II rn rh! it!?*' "
wonde5ful
b-nJ°
b°°k.
•"<> To. HcCahill’. automobile review. In Mechanlx Illustrate precedent
l”«”mlmm’
– ?’l ^Vlli^l’ll 11 ‘?”!.?
>•«<»•
«-.. .«M«. try how he thought we should win World War II. sky's Victory Through Ait Poi
Thl*
project, .inple in principle •ary because no publisher could have c Hendereoo. (ad.)'« The Publish-It-Your* •T
10701.
ha* been infinitely bothersome. Self-pub 1ica11 on was neces-mprehended the concept of
thl*
book; I he*rtily recommend Bill Of Handbook. SI from The Pushcart Book Press. Box 845, lookers
t the book I had meant to write. Host 1* firat-draft; how the sen . I do not like underlining thing*— a firat-draft expedient.) Fai d to be largely abandoned. Batter planning could have increased
Ipt,
and the glossary, had to be kicked aside; Including i alnlng simulators, augmented stage productions of tl 11
thst.
Half
i-madia,"
mlerofil •news
what.
Sorry f WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM Mt FRIENDS
-y
-lle,lnr-ir-tfrl.nd.nsrj1h":*vb"n
""P1"-"
-ithout th. dedicated and extraordinary effort, of
The aad thing about it all It
ayat**
(of which only a couple ex I feel
d.*ply
for everyone who ha, decent systems were available. t as yet) would have obviated all tha f1ndlng-and-retyplog proble trouble writing by conventional means, and who wouldn't If only
1 already said on the other aide that the computer is a Rorschach, and you make of it some wild reflection of what you are yourself. There is more to it than
that.
America la the land where the machine is an intimate part of our fantasy life.
Germans are too literal, they can get off on well-oiled
cogs.
The French are too vague. (I've noticed thai German science-fiction magazines had covers of machines nnd planets; French science-fiction magazines, of dragons and people with wings. Our science-fiction covers show people with machines. Intimately, emotionally.) German fantasy Is icy and impersonal, French fantasy too personal, and American fantasy is splat In the middle, uniting both: man and
machine,
means and
ends,
emotion and details.
Men always longed to fly. but it was here that they first did. This is the land of the MOVIE, a fantasy fabricated with endless
diffi
culty using various kinds of equipment.
i fabled character
This is the land of the kandy kolor hot
rod,
the Hell's Angel chopper, the drive-in
movie.
And the wild hotrod, in
fact,
is Just the flip side of the deep-carpeted Cadillac: each is a fantasy, an extension of its owner's image of himself in the world. Thus it was not an historical accident, but utterly predetermined, that in the hands of Americana the computer would become a way of realizing every conceivable wild fantasy that was dear to them.
This is perfectly all right. This is as it should be. This ia the best pert of our culture. Not "Let a hundred flowers bloom," but "Let a hundred gizmos clank." This has sped immeasurably the imaginative development of many different things we might
want.
I try here fairly to explain a few differences among them.
There la just one problem with all
this.
Now that all these things exist, or come nearer to existing, which ones will other people want? What will it be possible for everyone to have? And how can we tie all these things together?
(Hotel this thesis is being advanced only half-seriously. There have been a number of exactly-dreamful Frenchmen, and for this three-nationality split to be really true, they would all have to have come from Alsace, next to Germany: Jule.->
Vorne,
Oaguorrc, the brothers HontgoIfi the others Lumiere,
.
few.)
of
Z DREAM MACHINES 4 APPARATUSES OF APPARITION 6 VIDEO 6 LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE: THE CATHODE-RAY TUBE 8 HOLOGRAPIIY 8 Sandin’s Image Processor 9 30DY ELECTRON’! CS 10 PICTURE PROCESSING 11 AUDIO u COMPUTERS 12 THREE COMPUTER DREAMS: 1Z AI (artificial intelligence) IS IR (information retrieval) 15 CAI (computer-assisted instruction) 16 “No More Teachers’ Dirty Looks.” 20 THE MIND’S EYE (computer display) 24 COMPUTER MOVIES 26 PLATO 28 “Laws of the Universe
Hyper-Comics”
30 THE MIND’S EYE MORE: 3D LINE SYSTEMS 31 DeFanti’s Coup de GRASS 32 HALFTONE IMAGE SYNTHESIS 1. Polygon Systems 34 2. Shades of Reality (nicer greys) 37 3. Hardening of the Artistries (special hardware) 39 4. Computer Image Corp. 40 THE MIND’S EYE MORE: n Dimensions 41 The Circle.Graphics Habitat 42 The Tissue of Thought 42 How to Learn Anything 43 On Writing 43 The Heritage 44 HYPERMEDIA, HYPERTEXTS 46 Engelbart 48 FANTICS S2 THINKERTOYS S6 XANADU 58 WHAT NELSON IS REALLY SAYING 59 FLIP OUT
me
tfGWt>
of Wree-fx*^ In the fantasies of their
MibjecU,
which ihey ted are the precursors ol new artistic images lhat
will
in turn aclualue theimelve* as another form ol
bring,
Matters and HouMon tee . new hero
figure
constantly
recurring.
Thi*
new hero ii not ihe old “hero of a thouiand face*,” the individualist who
tuflVr*,
din. and U reborn, tl.ughtering and conquering along the
way.
In
stead,
he
ii
Protean,
c.pable of infinite change* in appear.nee and
slyle,
•
magician,
a Ballke-ur bringing giflL He rupture* categories and confutes the
senses,
and in doing to he holds oul ihe promise of fusion on a higher
level.
If
such . hero were to became I he model lor [he approarhing
age,
he would probably nol be the founder of • mau movement or I he god ol . new
rrliginn.
He would be more
elusive,
more changeful ihtn his
predecessors.
He would be • sorcerer who Ireala the eilemsl world and the interna! world on equal
terms,
giving spirit to the former and
flesh
to the lat
let.
He would be • matter of par idol and a player of
g.nwm,
speaking • new
language.
Hi* one prayer might be the tinea of Blake: Way CaJ w
kttp
From tuuU villa* AmJ
fftartea’j
tUmp.
— Kenneth
Cavander,
“Voyage of the Peyohenaute.’ Harper’a, Jon 74, p. 74,
cloved1 ^anttiather,
eacW
Holm.
•Tit
or
AfPiJitmeNJ
It aeema different companies are all the time introducing wonderful new devices that will revolutionize, uh. whatever it is we do with, uh, information and stuff. Thing’s you’ll attach to your TV to get highbrow programs or dirty movies. Microfilm devices that will shrink the contents of the Vatican Library to a dot on your glasses. Goggles that show you holographic color movies. A pince-nez that lets you see the future. And so on.
Reading Popular Mechanics or the Saturday review of patents in the New York Times, you get the idea of Something Big, New and Wonderful About to Happen, so we’ll all have access to anything, anytime, anywhere.
But it’s been that way for decades, and with certain exceptions hasn’t happened yet.
Here are some things that have caught on, and are mostly familiar to ua all.
Book. Newspaper. Magazine. Radio (AM). Phonograph record (78). Tape recorder. Black-and-white television. Radio (FM). Phonograph record (33). Phonograph record (45). Color television. Tape cartridge (i”). Tape cassette (Philips, ca.
1/8″).
Stereo records and tapes. Oh yeah, and movies: 35mm, 16mm, 8mm. Super 8mm. Carousel projectors. View-master stereo viewers.
Here are some things In the process of catching on (and not assured of
success):
Quadrophonic sound. Dolby. Chromium, dioxide tape emulsion. Super 16 movie format.
But for everything that did catch on, dozens
didn’t.
Some examples: 12-inch 45 rpm records. 11.5 millimeter movies. RCA’s ,-inch tape
cart
ridge,
which became a model for the much smaller
Philips.
Wire recorders.
Then there are the things that caught on for awhile and went nway. Stereopticons (and their beautiful descendant, the Tru-Vue, which I loved as a kid). Cylindrical recordings. Piano rolls. And so on.
Then there are the video recording
sys
tems.
CBS’ EVR died before it got anywhere. RCA’s SelectaVision isn’t out yet.
2-inch
quad is standard in the studios, |-inch Porta-Pak is standard among the Video Freaks, and it looks like Sony’s 3/4″ cartridge will win as the main sales and storage medium. (The Philips system here looks as though it won’t make it, and
1-inch
is dubious.) But what’s this we hear about video disks (twenty-five years after they announced Phonevision. Ah, well.)?
The thing is, so many of these things seem to sound alike. They ell mention “information
retrieval,”
education, technology, possibly “the information explosion” and “the knowledge industry.” Press releases or effusive newspaper articles may use phrases like “space-age,” “futuristic,” “McLuhanesque” or even “Orwellian” (though few people who use that word seem to know what Orwell stood for; see p ).
And the intimidating company names! Outfits with names like General Learning, Inc., or Synergistic Cybernetics, Inc., or even Communications | Research (Machines, Inc. Surely such people must know what they are doing, to use such scientific-sounding phrases as these!
Then there are the business magazines. In the late sixties they were talking about “The Knowledge Industry” (a fiction, it turned out. of an economist’s lumping a lot of things together
oddly).
Now they talk about the Cable TV
out
fits and the Video Cartridge outfits as though they’re the cat’B pajamas.
Emblem of 2d International Animation Film Festival in HM York, J« 74. ©Malt Disney Productions.
You Can’t Tell the Experts Without They Program You
(Cf.
“Calling n Spade a Spade, p. J > )
Bf
Setl5 IM
Tomb
Guy_’s_
Background Television: 1. Video freaks 2. Network People
3. Cable Operators
Math/Engineering
Display Engineering
Programmed Instruction, Computer-Assisted Instruction
Publishing Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing
Artificial Intelligence
McLuhanatic
Toll-Tale Phraaes fc Jargumentation “Media” (meaning
television);
“Software”
(meaning
videotapes).
“Programming” (meaning competitive
scheduling);
“Software”
(meaning fixed-length TV
shows).
Head end, upstream a downstream, back-channel, “interactive TV” (meaning any form of interactive computer system they can get in on). Information theory, channel capacity, bandwidth, feedback, anything complex and irrelevant. Full duplex, echoplex, aspect ratio, scroll, cursor; “information transfer” (meaning telling or
teaching);
“data delivery” (act
thereof).
“Software”
(meaning sequential or branching
tell-i-
test
materials);
“Programming” (creating
these);
reinforcement schedules (meaning presentational
order);
“inputs”
(meaning ideas and
information);
“feedback” (meaning
replies);
“simulations” (meaning pictures or events a user can
influence).
“Software”
(meaning
books).
“Demographics” (meaning
factions);
campaign olralegy (meaning how you hit a
market);
“penetration” (meaning extent to which your stuff catches on); “Programming” (moaning anything
whatever).
Anything mathematical; theorems, discriminators, neural
nets:
“programming” (meaning setting up anything very complicated and incomprehensible). Global Village, mosaic, surround; “Programming” (meaning psychological indoctrination): anybody else’s terms, dynamically infused with new senses. Medium (meaning stabilized presentational
context);
Writing and Creation (meaning thoughtful production of something presentable, whether sequential or not, in a
medium);
“Programming” (meaning giving exact instructions to a
computer);
media integrity, inventions 1 conventions: hypertext, thinkertoy, fantics.
Having Bpent some considerable time around and among these areas, I have developed considerable cynicism and a bad case of the giggles. Originally it all seemed to fit together and to be leading somewhere, but talking to people at all
levels,
and either giving advice or trying to interpret the advice of others, I am convinced that what we have here in this whole audiovisual-presentational whizbang field is nothing less than a very high order of collective insanity. The strange way companies adopt and drop various product lines, and verbalize what they think they are doing, seem to me a combination of lemmingism and a willingness to follow any Authority in an expensive
suit.
I have talked to enough vice-presidents and presidents of computer companies, publishing companies, networks, media outfits and so on, to be totally certain that they have no special knowledge or unusual basis of information; yet these people’s remarks, as amplified through the business reporters, send the whole nation a-dithering. There are times I think everybody in Media is either deluded, misguided, lying or crazy.
THREE CRUCIAL POINTS.
1. SYSTEMS “IN THE HOME.”
The emphasis has changed from trying to sell snazzy systems to the schools (which don’t have the money) to the home. This in turn has convinced most people that the new systems have to be very limited, like jimmied-up TV
sets.
(We easily lose track of the fact that you can have anything “in the home” if you want to pay for it; and an economy in which Marantzes and snowmobiles have caught on big indicates that some people are going to be willing to pay for really hot stuff.)
2. CATCHING ON.
The key question is not how good a system is in the abstract, but whether it will catch on. (Obviously if we’re public-spirited we want the best systems to catch on, of course.)
This matter of Catching On is a fickle and crucial business.
According to one anecdote, Mr. Bell couldn’t interest snyone in his invention, which he was showing at some trade fair. Then who should come by but the Emperor of Brazil (!), who was about to leave with his retinue of ad
visers.
“What is that?” asked the Emperor of
Brazil.
“Nothing to bother with,” they said, and tried to rush him by, but he stopped and loved
it,
and ordered the first pair of telephones sold. This made the headlines, and the sale of telephones began.
Another anecdote. It is legendary that inventors overvalue their own work. Yet after Thomas Edison had invented the kinematograph, or “moving picture,” a device you looked into turning a crank, he declined to build a projector for it, saying that the novelty would wear off. Obviously he did’t quite see what “catching on” would mean here.
Wonderful Systems That Were Gonna Be
I once reud a mind-blowing review article in Films in Review, early sixties I think, on schemes to make three-dimensional movies before 1930. There were dozens.
Then there was that multiscreen film Napoleon — a legend– done in the nineteen-twenties. (That one really existed.)
Phonevision, about 1947 or so, was going to store a half-hour movie on a 12-inch disk. Did they get the idea from the LP? Did they really think they could do it?
The German photo-gizmo, around 1950: a special camera that supposedly created a sculpture of what it was pointed at. (But how did it know what was behind things?)
A weird lens around 1950— I think it was depic ted as having a blue center and a red
peri
phery, like a fifties hoodlum tail-light— that was somehow going to find “residual
traces”
of color in black-and-white pictures, and make ’em into color, zowie, just by copying them.
Then there was the Panacolor Cartridge. During the Days of Madness– 1968, I think it was — a rather good little movie gadget was being pushed by a firm called Panacolor. It had ten parallel movie and audio tracks, 1 believe, on a 70mm strip. The prototypes were built by Zeiss.
Their idea was that this was a com pact movie projector. 1 kept trying to persuade the company’s president lhat they had inadvertently designed a splendid device for branching movies (see “Hyperfilms,”
p.°*77).
Exercise for the reader: map out prop erties of the branching and expository structures implicit in such a device. (It’s
one-directional.
Gotta rewind when you get to the end. But you can jump between tracks when it seems appropriate.)
Anyway, it’s gone now.
The Great Robert Crumb. (vr0m Zoe_ Comix HO.)
fieri
.1 k’W11;
—
r^»^er«v
Rujnkfc
»wver*.
*
Iz.V«tia.
Pr*.v*l.
HARDWARE, SOFTWARE AND WHATNOT (reprise)
Among the many odd things that have resulted from the collision of computer people with educators, publishers and others has been the respectful imitation of computer ways by those who didn’t quite understand them. Again, the cargo cult.*
The most dismal of these practices has been the adoption of the term “software” for any intellectual or artistic property This wholly loses the distinction, made on the other side of the book, between:
hardware (programmable equipment)
software (programs, detailed plans of operation that the hardware carries out)
contents or data (material which is worked on by, moved in or presented by the hardware under control of the software)
In other words, hardware and software together make an environment; data or contents move and appear in that environment.
The publishing-end-picture folk have missed this distinction entirely. Not realizing that their productions are the contents (material, matter, data, stuff, message…) that come and go in the prefabricated hardware-software entironments, they have mushed this together into a state of self-feeding confusion.
(The matter has not been helped by the computer-assisted instruction people— see p. fyft
\
c — whose branching productions seemed to them enough ljke computer programs to be called “software.”)
‘ Primitives exposed to “civilized” man imitaU his ways ridiculously -in religious rituals, hoping for the shipments of canned goods,
etc.
that his behavior seems to bring down from parts unknown.
OKI
***”Mere corroborative detail, to enhance an otherwise uninteresting narrative…”
Pooh-Bah, Lord High Everything Else
3. STANDARDIZATION
In order for something to Catch On, it has to be standardized. Unfortunately, there ia motivation for different companies to make their own little changes in order to restrict users to Its own products. The best example of how to avoid this: Philips patented its audio cartridge to the teeth, but then granted everybody free use of the patent provided they adhered to the exact standardization. The result has been the system’s spectacular success, and Philips, rather than dominating a small market, has a share of a far larger market, and hence makes more money. That’s a virtue-rewarded kind of story.
The other problem with standardization, though, is that we tend to standardize too soon. We standardized on AM radio, even though FM would probably have been better. (One Major Armstrong, a great figure in the development of radio, committed suicide when nobody would accept FM. If he could only have heard our FM of today, he might have said “Oh, nuts,” and lived.)
Another example. When they designed the Touch-Tone phone pad, the Bell people evidently saw no reason to have it match the adding machine panel, so they put “1” in the upper left rather than the lower left. Now there are lots of people who use both arrangements, every day, and at least one of them curses the designers’ lack of consideration.
Another interesting example of Catching
On:
during the early sixties, it was fun being at places where they were just getting Xerox copiers for the first time. Everyone would argue that nobody needed a copier. Then, grudgingly, one would be ordered. The first month’s use invariably would exceed the estimate for the first year, and go up and up from there.
The worst aspect of the confusion among the corporations is that certain deficiencies and crudities of vision slip into the mix. Unless our new media and their exact ramifications and concomitants are planned with the greatest care, everybody stands to lose. We must understand the detailed properties of media. (The first question to ask, when somebody is showing you the Latest and Greatest, is: “What are the properties and qualities of the medium?” The followup questions come easily with experience: How often do you have to change it. what are the branching options, what part could somebody
acci
dentally put in backwards, are there distracting complications? etc. }
I am unpersueded by McLuhan. His in sights are remarkable, yet suspicious: he_ supposes that electronic media are all the same. How can this be? Here we may now decide what electronic media we want in the future— and this decision, I would say, is one of the most important we have to face.
The engineers seem to be quite the oppo site of McLuhan: somehow to them it’s always a multiple-choice, multi-engineering problem, different every time; “this technique is good for A, that technique is good for B.” But the net effect is the same: “electronic media are generally the same.” I would claim that the’re all differ
ent,
all ten million of them (TV being only one electronic medium out of the lot), and the differences matter very very much, and only a few can catch on. So it matters very much which. Some are great, some are lousy, some are subtly bad, having a locked-in information structure, built deep-down into the system. (Example: the fixed “query modes” built into some systems.)
One last point. Everybody only has a 24-hour day. Most people, if they increase consumption of one medium (like magazines or books) will cut down on another (like TV). This drastically reduces the sorts of growth some people have been expecting. Except, now, if we can begin to replace some of the inane paper-shuffling and paper-losing of the business world, and replace the creepy activities of the school (as now generally constituted) with a more golden use of time and mind. Read on.
“The Emperor has no clothes on!1
Small Boy (name withheld)
A self-employed repairman of mobile homes named Donald Veils has invented a solar-powered tombstone chat can show movies and still pictures of the departed, along with appropriate organ music and any last words or eulogies selected by the deceased.
The device 1B activated by a remote control device carried by a visitor to the gravesite. The movies would be shown on a twelve-inch screen mounted next to the epitaph.
“You could also have pictures of Christ as cending to heaven or Christ on the cross, whatever you want,” says Wells. “It adds a whole new dimension to going to the cemetery.,..”
Last year I actually heard a phone company lecturer say that in the future we will have “Instant Access to Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.”
What they’re pushing is Picturephone, which it seems to me is unnecessary, wasteful and generally unfeasible.
(See:
Robert J. Robinson, “Picturephone— Who Needs It?”, Datamation 15 Nov 71, 152.)
In any medium– written, visual, filaic or whatever– you generate instantaneously an atmosphere, a patina, a miasma of style, involvement, personality (perhaps implicit) , outlook, portent. Consider—
The complacency of the Sulzberger*’ Mew York Times– The cynicism and mischief of Kraasner’s.
Realist—
The perkiness and sense of freedom of “Sesame Street”— The personalized, focussed foreboding of Orson Welles films; as distinct from the Impersonal!zed, focussed foreboding of Hitchcock—
Next to this matter of mood, all else pales; the actual constraints and structures of media, the expositions and complications of particular cognitive works and presentations within media, are as nothing.
«K\€J>Mf IK) THE ClrrfffcOPrvJ
Time after time, the educational establishment has thought some great revolution would come through getting new kinds of equipment into the classroom.
First it was movies. More recently it’s been “audio
visual”
stuff, teaching machines, film loops and computer-assisted instruction.
In no cases have the enthusiasts for these systems seen how the equipment would fit into conventional education— or, more likely, screw the teacher up. Teachers are embarrassed and flustered when they have to monkey with equipment in addition to everything else, and fitting the available canned materials into their lesson plans doesn’t work out
well,
either.
The only real possibilities for change lie in systems that will change the instructor’s position from a manager to a helper. Many teachers will like this, many will not.
when somebody shows you on electronic or other presentational system, device or whatever.
A certain kind of slight-of-hand goes on. It’s very easy to get fooled. They may show you one thing and persuade you you’ve seen another.
And if you’re canny enough to ask about 1 feature you haven’t seen they’ll always say.
“WE’RE WORKING ON IT.’
It’s only dishonest if they say, “It’ll be ready next month.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer (Quoted in National Lampoon True
Paote,
May 74, 10.)
Patent 3,767,901 is for the Disney Audi o-Animatronics system, which now basically consists of the manipulation of rubber puppets
pWalt Dianey Productions.
DM 6 “ALTERNATE” TELEVISION, < : VIDEO FREAKS
witter
"T
h.,,.v, there wan television broadcasting Would you believe rjieie '-"^ "* ' over the airwave* in the nineteen-twenties? The thing is, it used bizarre spinning equipment because there were no CRTs fee -Lightning in a Bottle," nearby.) Only with STdevlop-nt ot radar in Vorld War " «" ^EJ.. come a practicable Cathode Ray Tube, making home televis ion feasible. But the big companies were at first very conservative ,„ their marketing, figuring television would be a luxury Item only It took a man named Madman Hunt*, who caricatured him.elf in a Napoleon hat. to see that million* would buy television if the price w.a right. So he came
Hunt*
TV in the late forties. A» I recall, the Hunt* TV cost $100 and hsd one tuning knob. (This wa. less intimidating than the row of knoba on more expensive seta.) I L't know how Hunt, came out on it .11. but "is opening of the
mas*
market made the bigger corporation, realize it was
there.
(This same thing may yet happen again in newer media.) Originally all there was w.a Kr.zy Kat and Farmer Brovn cartoons. But behold, sooner than you could s.y "vertical hold," there were Sid Caesar and Inogene Coca cm the Admiral Show, and we were off. A quarter of « century later, the best of televiaion is no better and the bulk of television is about as bad a* It ever was. We "understand" television. That is. we know what a TV ahow la, how it fitB together and so on.
ICECUBES But what people don't realize about TV is that the governing feature Is the time-slot. In any medium with time-slots, whether TV, radio or classroom education, the time-slot rules behavior. Whatever can happen is as constrained as icecubes in a tray.
This is the limiting factor when optimists try to use TV for teaching. If it's coming over a cable, everything has to be scheduled around It, and the contents are clipped and constrained to fit the time-slot. It may be better with videotape. CABLES In the last dozen years. Cable TV, or CATV, has become big business. A Video Cable Is a high-capacity electrical carrier that runs through a given neighborhood or region. Business and individuals may "sub
scribe"
and get their own sets hooked onto the cable.
What this does first of all is improve reception. The fouled-up video picture caused by such extraneous objects as the World Trade Center in New York can be corrected by hooking into the video cable: you get a
nice,
sharp picture.
In addition, though, the cable offers extra channels.
Now, the businessmen who have been throwing togeth er these video cable outfits are aiming for something. They have been thinking that these extra channels would net them a lot of money: by showing things on them that can't be offered on the air— highbrow drama, or perhaps X-rated stuff— they could get extra revenue. (You'd pay extra to watch it by buying an unscrambler, or whatever.)
This is turning into somewhat i i disappointment.
The cable people had foreseen, evidently, that people would stay home in droves to see the new offerings on the
cable.
In Show Business it's easy to forget, though, that everybody haa only twentyfour hours in a day, and far less than 24 hours to dispose of freely; so every leisure occupation is competing with every other leisure occupation. Moreover, the residual leisure occupation, when there's nothing else to do, is TV. It would seem that few people would watch more television if it were better, but many would watch less if they could afford to go out.
EXTRA CHANNELS
In recent years, a number of extra channels have been made available by law. These are the UHF, or Ultra High Frequency channels. These, like cablea, represent a consumer breakthrough but will have only negligible impact.
THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIZATION
Whatever else you may say about them, the networks and TV stations are at least organized as going concerns within the institutional structures of the country. Ideas of "community television" and other such schemes which call for some new form of social organization to spring forth are about as plausible aa "community control" of schools and police— or at best likely to be as influential as "community social centers." INTERACTIVE TV?
Some people, I won't say who, have gotten a lot of money for something they call "Interactive television." What this turns out to mean is any form of computer timesharing that will use home TV terminals and video cables. The questions are why use home TV terminals and video cablea, insofar as they would seem to promise only comparatively low-grade performance; and whether these people have thought out anything about the potential characteria-tics of the various media they propose with such abandon. Nothing I have seen or heard about this is reassuring.
In recent years, many young folk* have taken to video AB a way of life. In the most extreme caeea they say things like "the written word is dead," prompted perhaps by McLuhan. I have found it rather difficult to talk to video freak.. (It may be that some of them are against spoken words as
well.;
I really Just don't know what they're about.
In some cases, "alternative television" simply means docu mentaries outside the normal framework of ownership and reporting. In one example cited by Shamberg (see bibliography), video freaks did excellent coverage of the 1968 Republican conven tion. People were allowed to speak for themselves, unlike "nor
mal"
TV journalism where "commentators" tell you what they see.
Now, this is hardly revolutionary] it is just good documen tary-making that shucks dumb traditions artistically, much like the Pennebaker films. However, video enthusiasts claim it i. somehow different, and indeed claim that video is different In principle from films. I have been unable to get a satisfactory clarification of this idea. Video is being used in other ways, harder to understand, by artists (best defined as persons called "artists" within the art world
today).
Very odd "video pieces" have been shown at art
shows,
where the object seems to be to confuse the viewer— or knock him into a condition of Enlarged Perspective, shall we say. And a variety of non-objective videotapes are now being created. (A gallery show in 1969 was called "Video as a Creative Medium" — implying sarcastically that it had not been before, on the airwaves.) Some video freaks think of video as intrinsically radical or Revolutionary. In this respect they differ Interestingly from,
say,
the editors of the National Lampoon• The editors of the National Lampoon appear to be political radicals, but do not suggest that the very media of cartoon and joke-piece are themselves revolutionary. Some video freaks appear to be persuaded that the medium of television itself is inherently a vehicle for change.
I can understand one interesting sense in which this may be
true:
Shamberg talks about video as a method of self-discovery. Seeing yourself on TV does, of course, confer certain insights. But Shamberg suggests it may expand people's consciousness in larger ways— allowing people to see the bleakness of certain pursuits (he uses the example of
Shopping),
for instance. But if this does hit home to people, it doesn't seem to me to be the medium that's doing it but the selected content— as in all previous media. Haybe I've missed the point in some way.
These developments are all very interesting. It can be hoped that those trying to develop new forms of communication will make an effort to communicate better with those who, like the author, often cannot comprehend what they are doing.
" But decentralized transmission of information should be dominant, not
fugi
tive.
Each citizen of Media-America should guaranteed as a birthright access to the means of distribution of information." (Shamberg, p. 67)
"
Well,
we went down there with our Porta-Pak and tried to take it inside. A guard came over and said we couldn't and even threw one of us out of the booth while the other was inside. A guard telling you what to do in a cybernetic environment?"
(Shamberg, p. 53)
("Cybernetic"
is evidently a code word here for what they think is good, true, beautiful and
inevi
table,
cf. p. D/l
About the only generalization to be made is that community video will be subversive to any group, bureaucracy, or individual which feels threatened by a coalescing of grassroots consciousness. Because not only does decentralized TV serve as an early warning system, it puts people in touch with one another about common grievances."
(Shamberg, p. 57) BIBLIOGRAPHY
Michael Shamberg and Raindance Corporation, Guerrilla Television. (Holt, 54.) TUBE, an underground TV magazine. $8/yr. TUBE, 1B26 Spaight St., Madison, WI 53704. Cable Report, S7/yr. 192 N. Clark St., Room 607, Chicago, Samples SI. "SCANDAL IS RAMPANT in the cable television industry. Only Cable Report follows cable TV developments from the citizen's perspective and tells you what's happening and what's going wrong." Ad in Chicago READER. Nicholas Johnson, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set. Bantam, 95c
LI6HWIII
•’1
•ft*
M-
You can usually see the lines clearly on a black-and-white set. The picture consists of the changing pattern of brightness of this beam, which comes in over the airwaves as the television signal.
DM 7
RADAR DISPLAY uses a CRT to show reflec ted images around where the radar antenna is standing. This uses a scanning raster of a star shape, brightening the beam when reflected images are received.
COMPUTER CRT GRAPHICS generally use the CRT in still another way: the beam is moved around the screen in straight lines from point to point. (Between different parts of the picture the beam is darkened, turned very low so you don’t see it.)
Because the image on a normal CRT fades quickly, the computer must ordinarily draw the picture again and again and again. (Methods for this are discussed on p. pf
SPECIAL KINDS OF CATHODE-RAY TUBES
The CRT is not merely a single invention, but an entire family of inventions. The ordinary
CRT,
which we have discussed, is viewed at one end by a human being, has an image which fades quickly, and can have its flying spot driven in any kind of raster or pattern.
Here are some other kinds of CRT:
The picture transmitter, which has different versions and names: Vidicon, Image Orthicon, Plumbicon, etc. THIS IS THE MAGICAL DEVICE THAT MAKES THE TELEVISION CAMERA WORK, AND YET, BY GOSH, IT’S JUST ANOTHER CRT. Except instead of the picture coining into it as an electrical signal and out of it as an optical
image,
the picture comes into it as an optical image and goes out of it as an electrical signal.
How can this be?
The tube sits inside the television camera, which is an ordinary camera, like, with a lens projecting a picture through a dark chamber onto a sensitive surface. But instead of the surface being a film, the surface is the faceplate of a CRT with some kind of a special pickup phosphor:
TV
(WKV
The electron beam, which is just like any other electron beam, is made to zigzag across the faceplate in a standard television raster. And the special phosphor of the tube measures the brightness of the picture at the spot the beam is hitting. I have no idea how this hap
pens,
but it’s chemical and electronical and
mys
terious,
and is baaed on the way the phosphor interacts with the light from one side and the electrons from the other side at the same time. Anyhow, a measurement signal comes out of the faceplate, indicating how bright the projected picture is in the very spot the electron beam ia now hitting.
As the beam criss-crosses the faceplate in the zig-zag television raster, then, a continuously changing output signal from the faceplate shows the brightnesses all across the successive lines of the scan.
And that is the television signal. Together with synchronizing information, it’s what goes out over the airwaves, down your antenna and into your set. Your set, obeying the synchronizing information, brightens and darkens its own beam in proportion to the brightness of the individual teeny regions of the faceplate in the television camera. And this produces the scintillating surface WP call television.
The color tube is a weird beast indeed. There are several types, but we’ll only talk about the simplest (and many think the
best),
Sony’s Trinitron(TM) tube.
This is an ordinary CRT which has, in stead of a uniform coating on the faceplate, tiny vertical stripes of three primary colors— red, blue and green. (You thought the primary
col
ors were red, blue and yellow, didn’t you. If you’re mixing pigments that happens to be true. For some ungodly reason, however, if you’re mixing lights. the colors that yield all others turn out to be red, green and blue; it turns out that yellow light can be made out of red and green. If you don’t believe me go to a chintzy hardware store, get a red and a green bulb, turn ’em on and see what happens in a white-walled room.)
At any rate, color television uses
addi
tional color signals, and in the Trinitron these control the response of the faceplate. If the color signal says “green” as the electron dot crosses a certain part of the screen, the color signal tells the green stripes that they’re free to light up when hit. If it’s Yellow Time, the signal tells both the red stripes and the green, and so side by side they light up red and green, as the beam crosses them, but the total effect from more than a few inches is Yellow.
Most American color TV sets, however, at least up till this year, used something very dif
ferent,
something entirely weird called the Shadow Mask Tube. I’ll spare you the picture, but there were several different electron beams — often referred to jokingly as the “red electron beam,” “blue electron beam” and “green electron beam,” though of course they were identical in character. These hit a perforated sieve, up near the screen, called the shadow mask, and the color signal tweaked the unwanted beams so they did not hit different-colored phosphor dots that were intricately arranged on the screen. I’m sorry I started to explain this.
Multigun tubes have more than one electron gun and more than one electron beam. They can be used in different ways (aside from the old shadow-mask TV tube, mentioned
above).
For instance, one gun can be driven in a video raster, to show television, while another gun can be used as a computer display, drawing individual lines with no regard to the TV pattern.
The storage CRT cornea in two flavors: viewable and non-viewable. But what it does is very neat: it holds the picture on the screen. The mechanisms for this are of various types, and it’s all weird and electronic, but the idea is that once something is put on the screen by the electron beam, it stays and stays. Up to several minutes, usually. The main manufacturers are Tektronix, Princeton Electronic Pro
ducts,
and Hughes Aircraft; each of these three has a product that worka by a different method.
Note:
Tektronix’ tube is built into a num ber of different computer displays, and ia recognizable by its Kelly green surface. They themselves make complete computer terminals around thiB scope for $4000 and up, but lots of other people put it in their products also. It showB whatever has already been put on the screen, and the electron beam does not have to repeat the action. However, it usually only stays lit for about a minute.
Princeton Electronic Products (guess where) is a much smaller outfit, so perhaps it is appropriate that they make a much smaller storage
tube.
It is about one inch square at its storage end, and you don’t look at it directly. Instead, an image can be stored on it either wth a TV raster or by computer-driven line drawing. After the image is stored on it, though, it functions as a TV camera: the picture stored on the plate can be read out with a scanning raster, exactly as if it were a picture transmitter in a television camera. The Princeton folks have built a quite expensive, but quite splendid, complete terminal around this device: it can hold both video and computer-drawn pictures, superimposed or combined, and sends them back out in standard black-and-white TV. $12000.
CRTS which bring in a picture one way (such as a video raster) and send it back out another way (such as by letting a computer search out individual points) are called scan converters.
A word about this last method. It is often desired by computer people to turn a picture into some form of data (see
p.^fj)-
Scan conver
ters,
usually by the three manufacturers named
above,
can be hooked up to let the computer program poke around in the picture and measure the brightness of the picture in arbitrary places. A device which examines the brightness of something in arbitrary places is called a flying spot scanner.) Here are some different kinds of flying-spot scanners:
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i^t-j-ls
„f iprt ,K “U*
1 have heard it said that it might be
pos
sible to build a CRT with a changeable mirror surface: that is, the screen becomes mirrored temporarily where it is being hit with the electron beam. Interesting. This would mean that you couid make computer displays (and TV) bright and projectable to any degree, say. by pouring a super-intensity laser beam on it. “Be great for writing ‘Coca-Cola’ on the moon,” says a friend of mine. If you believe in astral projection . BIBLIOGRAPHY: Color TV Training Manual, Sa»s i Co./ Bobbs-Kerrill ($7), is s well-Illustrated and intelligent introduction to the TV use of CRTs.
ZZI
SLUM’S
Don Amain, professor of Art at V. of Illinois, Chicago
Circle,
says very wise things (having been a phyeiciat1, and He were going to have a whole section on
that,
but as you can see. there wasn’t room. Daniel J. Sandin (pronounced san-DEEN) haa •pent the last several yeara putting together a device he currently calls the IP (Image Proces
sor).
It’s a aystem of circuits for changing and colorizing TV. What follows Is the first published description of it. I regret that the following is probably one of the most difficult sections of this book. (If you know nothing about video, read Hir..li|i|»’g- -st.) oti f>- 7 The Idea is basically to create a complete ly generalised system for altering the color and brightness of video Images.
(I.e.,
the system does not move them on the screen. Thus It differs from the Computer Image line of video-twisting graphics systems, which alter positions of objects; see p. DM $\ . Note also that rather similar facilities exist as part of, e.g., the Scanimate system, j. DM 31 •>
This means that basically Sandln’s system plays with the part of the TV signal called z, or brightness (as distinct from x or y, the signals for horizontal and vertical movement of the
dot.
)-
Now, as a physicist snd field-theoretician, Sandin approached thia aa a problem in generality; and Indeed, the style of generalization should be appreciated. Sandin repeatedly chose flexibility and power rather than obviousness in the parts he created. The resulting system is both parsimonious and productive.
His first important decision was that all parts of the system should be compatible and Idiot-proof, so that any user could frivolously plug It together any way at all without burning out the
circuits.
Indeed, Sandin decided to build It like a music synthesizer: by making all systems electrically compatible (aa they are on the Moog and its
progeny),
any signal can be used to alter or influence any other signal. This is a very profound decision, whose far-flung results have not yet been fully explored even among
Sandin’B
rather fanatical stud
ents.
Basically, the incoming video image is “strip
ped”
of lta synchronizing information, so that all signals turning up in the guts of the machine may be freely modified. Only at the final output atage are the Jots and tittles of the video signal put back
Thus the first and last blocks of the Image Processor act like bookends, between which the other modules have their fun. The first block makes the incoming signal into “naked” video, the last block dresses It up respectably again. inrur »ioc^
r «Ufevev-~l |
7^— cCKfie rr v
For the sake of clarity we will refer to the outputs as pictures, or aa black, white or grey, which they would be If they went straight out to a screen; but they may be turned back Into the system and function as Inputs as
well.
“White” means +.5
volts,
“black” means -.5 volts.
Let us consider, then, Sandln’s modules and what they do individually to the brightness signal z_. Combinations are beyond the scope of this article What Dan’s processor can do to televieion ie not to be
believed.
Savage colors or delicate
Qff*vhiteB,
eolarisations and pictures on top of pictures. Then thr • “video
feedback”
(pointing a TV
aar.^r.
at a TV screen), the eystem can genera, throbbing animated
cobweb*
and spirals of its own. Shown.
1. ADDER-MULTIPLIER. Thl. coabln.s two Input
ch.nnele,
either directly or a, specified by • third.
Hvt-nrue*
WHCJf r|IT tw€ F’LK OCI6I1MLY &- t! Now eeeo^fTRueT^P.
Diagram of hou hologram ia
mode,
p. DM Zo.
;«rutr 1 (,J…-I
«0 woo is fk«
p’ClOr-?
‘ 4*4 >p,
Holography that we really <
Influential,
and of uncl< of chose Modern Miracles get into. It is mind-blowing, importance. The channel A Inputs are added together and-mul tiplied by C; the channel B Inputs are added together and multiplied by the reverse of C; both results are added to make the output. (NOTE: this unit Is used among other things, for fades and keying.)
2. COMPARATOR. Thla is like Kodalith film,mak- Ing an Image Into stark black and white. Its output is pure black or white. One input signal (the video) Is compared with another input signal (reference
level,
other video,
whatever).
While one is greater the output goes all black, and while the other la greater it goes all white. 3. VALUE SCRAMBLER. This is a single module dividing the picture into eight levels. It may be thought of as eight of the above comparators, dividing the brightness spectrum by quantum jumps. The floor and celling of the aignal to be divided are specified by the two control channels, but the dividing lines between them are then automatically determined. Each corresponding output level may be controlled by a knob.
Theoretically predicted by Dennis Cabor, the hologram (Creek "whole picture") was finally made to work in the late fifties by Lelth and Upatnleks. Since then dozens of other types of holograms have been experimented with, including color holograms, movie holograms, video holograms, audio holograms and gracious know
what.
Basically a hologram Is an all-around picture. It doesn't look like a picture, but looks like a smudged fingerprint or other mistake of some kind. It is
UNCl tCT 0© 0
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Thus from a range of Input values, we get an output atep-function each of whose brightnesses is individually adjustable.
Note that these devices may be arranged in
parallel,
thus dividing the brightness spectrum into as many levels as desired.
U. OSCILLATOR MODULE (very
unusual).
Sandln's oscillators are voltage controlled, just like the ones in music ayntheslzers. However, if given any kind of a eync signal, they lock into the nearest multiple (or submultiple) within the specified range. (But then the control signal,If any, tweaks it higher or lower.) Standardized output comes in sine, square and
A basic hologram (— actually it should be called a laser hologram or Lelth-Upatnleks hologram, but we've no time for auch distinctions—) is one of these smudgy pictures which, when viewed under a proper laser aetup,shows you a three-dimensional picture. Worse than
that:
as you move your head, the picture changes correspondingly. It looks, not like the flat surface it Is, but like
a
lit-up box with a model in It.
What does the hologram do? Actually it re
creates,
not a single view, but the entire tangle of light rays that are reflected from the real ob
ject.
Even down to bright reflections, which scintillate In the usual way, as from chromium.
The only problem: ordinarily they have to be. used with laser light, which is spookily one-colored .
Notes from all over; art stylist Salvador Dali presided at an unveiling of "the world's first 360° hologram" at a New York gallery not long ago. The subject was song stylist Alice Cooper. The Haunted House at Disney World in Florida will ride you through a building full of holograms. That's one way to move through ghosts, all right,
There is a New York School of Holography.
.th.
6. FUNCTION GENERATOR. This device is hardest to explain. Let's do It in terms of that first module, the Adder-Multiplier. Know how the Adder-Multiplier puts out either a positive or a negative picture, depending on which input you select?
The two planned uses were A) with a sync, to generate fixed patterns, and B) without a sync, to generate movable patterns. If both inputs are used, it becomes a stubborn lock-on voltage-controlled oscillator, which tends to grab at passing submultiples.
5. DIFFERENTIATOR. Basically this sees edges in the picture, or any other part of a scan-line whose color is changing. Its output is proportional to change occurring in the brightness of a scan-line, As the input goes from black to white its output la
light;
aa the input goes from white to black its
out
put Is dark. (The input hole selected determines the amount of multiplication.)
Well,
the Function Generator divides the Input bright nesses Into three ranges, and multiplies each range
posi
tive or negative, in proportion to lta own knob setting. Thus the combined setting of the three knobs generat es a "function," or curve, from the slopes of the individual settings. See graph. What in photography ia called "solariration" represents Just one of these combined
set
tings.
The others are nameless.
e*c*i
tun
scope of-
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_t weren’t a problem, there Is the ed question of who in the existing e such techniques. It turns out, they would be added to what Is d the Correctional System, or even ailed the Justice System. All could possibly want work there, ome very nice guys– but experi-nstrated horrifically that decent into “guards” even for a short time, rns of brutality we have known from .)
o5»J>Y E,iscwtixc£
“I eing the I l electric…” — Walt Whitman
There are various people who want to at tach electronics to people’s bodies and brains.
There are basically two starting points for this ambition. One is authoritarian, the other is altruistic. I am not sure both schools are not equally dangerous, however.
Let’s consider first the authoritarians. Prof. Delgado of Yale has demonstrated that any creature’s behavior can be controlled by jolts • to the brain. Delgado has dealt especially with the negative circuits of the brain, that is, places where an electrical impulse causes pain (or “negative reinforcement”). In Dclgado’s most stunning demonstration, he stopped a charging bull with just a teeny radio signal. Enthusiastically Delgado tells us how fine this sort of thing would be for controlling Undesirable Human Behavior, too.
Now, let’s consider just what we’re talking
about.
In these experiments, needles are implanted in the creature’s brain. This can involve removing a section of the skull, or it can be done merely by hammering a long hollow needle straight into the skull and thus the brain.
The researcher, or whatever we want to call him, had better know what he is doing. But due to the remarkable mass action of the brain, the destruction caused by such needles will have not observable effects if done properly.
The hollow needle, once in place, becomes a tube for shielded electrical wires, whose bare metallic tips may then be used to carry little electrical jolts, to whatever brain tissue is reached by the tip of the needle, whenever tiny signals are applied.
Now there are regions of the brain, distri buted irregularly through its mysterious contents, which are loosely called the “pleasure” and “pain” systems. They are called that because of what the organism does when you jolt it in those
places’.
(We do not know whether jolts to these areas really cause pleasure or pain, because these things haven’t been done to human beings.
Yet.
The creatures it has been done to can’t tell us just how it feels; thus “pleasure” and “pain” are in quotation marks. For now.)
Anyway, what happens is this. If you stim ulate a creature in the “pain” system it tends to stop what it is doing– this is called negative reinforcement– and if you stimulate it in the pleasure system, it tends to do more of what it was doing. Positive reinforcement.
Now, to some people this suggests wonderful possibilities.
Delgado, for instance, believes that this technology gives us everything we need for the control of Anti-Social Tendencies. Criminals, psychopaths and Bad Guys in general– all can be effectively “cured” (i.e., put on their best behavior) by these techniques. All we have to do, heh heh, is get into their heads, heh heh, habits of proper behavior. And with these new techniques of reinforcement, we can really teach ’em.
Unfortunately Delgado is probably right.
In principle this is just a drastic form of behavior control on the B.F. Skinner model (depicted also in Nineteen Eighty-Four and A Clockwork Orange) • The new system is more stark” and start-lingT>ecause of its violation of the individual’s body interior, but not in principle different.
Skinner has the same naive, simpleminded
sol
utions for everything. All “we” have to dousing “we” to mean society, the good guys good guys acting on behalf of society, etc.– is control the behavior of the bad guys, and everything will be better, and “we” can accomplish anything
“we”
desire.
The reader may see several problems with this.
In the first place (and the
last),
there is the obvious question of who we are, and if we are going to control other people, who is goine-^ control us_.
At a time when our “highest” leaders show . themselves preoccupied with low retaliations and lower initiatives, we can wonder indeed if it is not more important to prevent anyone from ever getting this kind of control over humans than to facilitate it.
Even if th more simplemind’ system would us of course, that laughably calle more laughably the sadists you (And no doubt s ments have demo
people,
turned adopt the patte time immemorial
So,
like truncheons and electric shock ther apy and solitary confinement and everything else, these techniques– if they are used– will enter the realm of Available Punishments, not to be used with clinical precision but with gratuitously brutalizing intent, new tools for punitivity and sadism. The “correctional” system would have to be magically corrected itself before such tools could be employed without simply making things
worse.
And the prospect is not good.
Such schemes grow, of course, from a carica ture of the malefactor– thinking him to be some sort of miswired circuit, rather than a human being caught up in anger, pain, humiliation and unem
ployment.
(There are also a lot of canards about Free
Will,
but these do nothing for either side in this controversy.)
NEW FACULTIES
Starting from an entirely different outlook, various designers and bio-engineers are trying to add things to the human body and nervous
sys
tem, for the voluntary benefit of the recipient.
A number of research and development efforts are aimed at helping those with sensory impairments , and electronics obviously is going to involved. An example: a firm called Listening, Inc. in Boston, founded by Wayne Batteau (whom John W. Campbell considered one of the Great Men of Our
Time),
devised a system for helping the totally deaf to hear. Supposedly this could transmit the actual sensation of hearing into the nervous
sys
tem by some scarcely-understood form of electrical induction. The machine was sold off; whether it ever got a safety rating I don’t know.
This is the sort of thing people would like to do for the blind, as
well.
Now, in principle, it might be possible to transmit an image in some way to the actual
vis
ual area of the cerebral cortex. (This might or might not involve opening the skul1.) Somebody’s working on it.
In a related trend, numerous design groups are attempting to extend the capabilities of the human body, by means of things variously called
possums,
waldoes and telefactors.
“Possums”
(from Latin “I can”) are devices to aid the handicapped in moving, grasping and controlling. Whatever motions the person can make are electronically transposed to whatever realm of control is needed, such as typewri ting or guiding a wheelchair.
(“Waldo”
is Heinlein’s term for a possum that can be operated at a
dis
tance.)
In the space program, though, they call them telefactors. A telefactor is a device which con-verts or adapts body movements by magnification or remote mimicking. Unlike possums, they are meant to be operated by people with normal facul
ties,
but to provide, for example, superhuman strength: cradled in a larger telefactor body, a man can pick up immense loads, as the movements of his arms are converted to the movements of the greater robot arms.
Telefactors can also work from far, far away. Thus a man sitting in a booth can control, with the movements of his own arms, the artificial arms of a robot vehicle on another planet.
(This whole realm of sensory and motor mechan ics and transposition is an important aspect of what I call “Fantics,” discussed on pf.
J^ya-ft).
Then there are those who, like How Wachspress (see
nearby),
want to expand man’s senses beyond the ordinary, into new sensory realms, by hooking him to various electronics.
THOUGHTS
There are two problems in all of this. The first and worst, of course, is who controls and what w.,: hold them back from the most evil doings. Recent history, both at home and abroad, suggests the answers are discouraging.
The second problem, wispish and theoretical next to that other, is whether in turning toward bizarre new pleasures and involvements, we will not lose track of all that is human. (Of course this is a question that is asked by somebody whenever anything at all changes. But that doesn’t mean it is always inappropriate.)
In the face both of potential evil and dehum- aniration, though, we can wish there were some boundary, some good and conspicuous stopping place at which to say: no further, like the three-mile limit in international law of old. I personally think it should be the human skin. Perhaps that’s old-fashioned, being long breached by the Pacemaker. But what other lines can we draw?
The prospects are horrorshow, me droogies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
T.D. Sterling, E.A. Bering, Jr., S.V. Pollack and H. Vaughan, Jr., Visual Prosthesis. The Interdisciplinary Dialog. ACM Monograph. $21.
BVC^O-ftCOOSTlt J>lLj)0H.CS I originally hadn’t intended to include any thing like this in the book, wanting it to be a family-ntyle access catalog and all that, but this particular item seems fairly important.
Remember how we laughed at the Organmo- tron In Woody Allen’s Sleeper?
Well,
it turns out not to be a Joke.
An individual named How (not Howard) Wachspress, electronickcr-in-resldence at a San Francisco radio station, has been developing just
that,
except that he has more elevated purposes in mind. The secret was broken to the world in Qui magazine earlier this year; but Hefner, the publisher, evidently held back the more startling photographs of a model in electronically-induced ecstasy.
Wachspress* devices transpose sound (as audio signals) into feelings; you touch your body with an open-ended tube or other soft fixture attached to his device— which in turn is attached to a
hi-fi.
The sensations, it is claimed, are pro found and moving. You may take them anywhere on your body; the effect is deeply relaxing and emotionally engrossing. Wachspress thinks he has reached an entire neurological system that wasn’t known before, much like OldB’ discovery of the “pleasure center” in the brain; he sees it as a new modality of experience and a generalization of music and touch. That is the main
point.
“Hyper-reality” is where he says it gets you: a point curiously congruent with the author’s own notions of hypertext and hypermedia as extensions of the mental life.
This said, we can consider the prurient aspects of Wachspress’ Auditac and Teletac
devi
ces (which he intends to market in a couple of years as hi-fi accessories,
b’gosh).
When played with the right audio, in the right places, and a good operator at the controls, they provide a sexual experience said to be of a high order.
Wachspress’ work ties in interestingly with today’s “awareness” movement, of which Esalen is the spiritual center, which holds that we have gotten out of touch with our bodies, our feelings, our native perceptions. As such, the Wachspress machines may be an unfolding-mechanism for the unfeeling tightness of Modern Man– as weU as a less profound treatment for “marital difficulties” and Why-Can’t-Johnny-Come-Lately.
Inscrutable San Francisco! Wachspress gave a number of demonstrations of his devices in Bay Area churches, until he became disturbed at immodest uses of the probe by female communicants who had stood in line to try the machine.
(Auditac, Ltd., Dept. CLB, 1940 Washington St.. San Francisco CA 94109.)
Harry Mendell, a good friend of mine, rigged an interesting experiment while he was still in high school.
He used a little Hewlett-Packard minicomputer, which the manufacturer had generously loaned to his Knights of Columbus Computer Club of Haddonfield, N.J.
Harry hooked the Hewlett-Packard up to a CRT display (see pp. imi,’7,bHtty • At toP of **** CRT’ £°llowin9. his program, the computer continuously displayed the
let
ters of the alphabet. A little marker (called a cursor) would skip along underneath the letters, acting as a marker for each of them in turn. Harry rigged one more external device: a set of elec
trodes.
These would be strapped, harmlessly, to the head of a subject. Harry’s computer program used these electrodes to measure alpha rhythm, one of the mysterious pulses in the brain that come and go. Every time the subject flashed alpha, Harry’s program would copy the letter above the cursor to the bottom of
Sitting in this rig, subjects were able to learn, rather quickly, TO TYPE WORDS AND SENTENCES. Just by flashing alpha rhythm when the cursor was under the right
letters.
Jubilant,
Harry showed this setup to an eminent neuro- physiologist from a great university nearby, a man specializing in electrode hookups. Harry was a highschool student and did not understand about Professionalism.
“What’B so great about that?” sniffed the eminent professional. “I can type faster.” So Harry dropped that and went on to other stuff.
DM
10
“Picture proceeding”
ie an
important technology, largely separate from
the
rest
of
computer graphics. It means taking
an
incoming picture, usually
a
photo- ;nd doing something
to It.
(Some
now
call this mputer pictorlcs.
)
wis™.
graph area
‘
First
of all,
there
is
Image enhancement. This means taking pictures, dividing them into points whose brightness
is
separately measured,
and
then using special techniques
for
making
the
picture better-
To
people familiar with photography, this
may
seem
Im
possible;
to
photographers
It Is a
maxim that photographs always lose quality
at
each step. Nevertheless, various mathematical techniques such
as
Fourier Analysis (mentioned elsewhere)
do
just, that, producing
a new
data structure improving
on the
original data. Surfaces
ap
pear smoother, edges sharper.
(These techniques have been extensively used
to
clean
up
photographs sent back from
our
unmanned space vehicles— both those used exploring other planets
and
those spying
on our
own—
see
Secret Sentries
in
Space, Bibliography.)
Then there
are
recognizers— programs that look
at
the data structure from
an
Input picture,
and try to
discern
the
lines, corners
and
other features
of the
picture. (While your
eye
instantly sees these things, computers
do not, and
must look
at the
dots
of a
picture one-by-one.
How to
analyze pictures
In
such tedious
se
quences
Is no
simple matter.)
For recognizing more complex objects
in
pictures—
boxes,
spheres, faces
or
whatever— more complex structure-analyzing programs
are
necessary.
As the
possibilities
of
what might
be in a
picture Increase, these
in
creasingly become guessing programs. (This becomes
a
branch
of
artificial Intelligence,
a
misleading term
for
a curious field, dtscuaseT^np^Z-/’/.)
Numerous computer people think
it Is
important
to
match
up our
computer graphic display systems (described Variously
on
this side
of the
book)
to
image Input
sys
tems.
This
ia a
matter
of
taste.
These
are all
basically techniques
for
making
a
data structure.
Any
data stored
in
computers must have, of course,
a
data structure— which basically means
any
arrangement
of
information
you
choose.
(see
p.26″f-)
These various techniques
are
intended
to
create
re
duced data structures, recording only
the
“most impor
tant”
data
of the
picture— from which
new and
varying pictures
may be
created, reflecting
the
“true” structures originally shown
in the
initial picture.
How
much
it’s
going
to be
possible
to
create these data structures from input pictures remains
to be
seen; some
of us
think it’s
not
going
to be
generally worthwhile.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Azriel Rosenfeld, “Progress
In
Picture Processing
1969-71.”
ACM
Computing Surveys June
73,
81-108.
Ken KnowIton
and
Leon Harmon, “Computer-Produced Grey Scales.” Computer Graphics
and
Image Processing. April
72, 1-20.
Philip
J.
Klass, Secret Sentries
In
Space. Random,
1971,
SB.
Interesting general book
on
geopolitical strategy
and
orbital photoreconnals-
sance.
“Now-it-can—be-toId” approach.
SATfclUTS PICT0H€5
or
YoOR
0UH
H0K<
CPOHTij
OR.
iWeVER.
You
can get
pictures
of
any area
you
want from ERTS (Earth Resources Observation Systems) satellites, from EROS Data Center
(no, not a
dating service,
see p. (o'j ),
Sioux Falls
SD
57198,
or
call 605/594-6511
bet. 7 AM & PM
central time.
i..11.-i
Knowlton
and
Leon Harmon have done
a
lot
of
experiments with picture
con
version
(eee
bibliography). Here
ie
a phone made into teeny patterns (shown around). (<[)Knowlton
S
Harmon.
LIZZIE
OF THE
LINEPRINTER
A famous converted picture.
The
painting was divided into 100,000 brightness-measured spots by
H.
Philip Peterson
of
Control Data Corporation; then each
dot was
made into
a
square
of
overprinted letters
on the
printing device.
The
program allowed
100
levels
of
grey. Above: Control Data's version, reprinted
by
permission. Below:
a
cut-down version that often turns
up.
(From original flat 2D artwork
by Len
DaVinci
of
Medici Associates.)
NOTE: this
is not a
"computer picture." There is
no
such thing.
It's a
quantization
put out on
a lineprinter.
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Kenneth Knowlton
is a
Bell Labs lifer.
Tall,
patrician
and
gracious,
his
work, like Sutherland’s, shows
the
inner light
of
unifying intelligence.
He
works
in Max
Mathews1 section of Bell Labs
at
Murray
Hill,
where they
do all
that interesting stuff with music
and
perceptual psychology
and so on.
During
the
last decade. Knowlton
has
turned
out
vast quantities
of
art
icles,
processed pictures, movies,
and
actual computer languages; while
any
ordinary
man
would
be
satisfied
to be so
productive, apparently
he
does
a lot of
other things
in his
work that
he
doesn’t talk about.
Some
of
Knowlton’s best-known work has been
in
picture processing, where
he has
converted photographs into mosaics
of
tiny patterns– which nevertheless show
the
original.
His first widely-known language
was
BEFLIX
(BE11
Labs movie-making
system);
this was programmed
for the
7094
in the
early sixties. BEFLIX allowed
the
user
to
create motion pictures by
a
clever mosaic process that used
the
out
put camera more efficiently
.
(Actually
,
the
lens was thrown
out of
focus manually
and the
entire frame created
as a
mosaic
of
alphabetical charac
ters;
this
did the
whole thing much more quickly and inexpensively.)
(Some
of the
clever data-handling tech niques
of
BEFLIX Knowlton then turned around and used
in L*S, a
language which made these techniques available
to
other computer people. This
may
sound like only
a
computer technicality, but
it’s the
sort
of
thing that’s widely appreciated. (L6 stands
for
“belL Labs’ Lower-Level List Language.”))
Wanting
to get
outside artists interested in BEFLIX
and
related media,
he
worked
for a
time with film-maker Stan Vanderbeek; from this Knowlton
saw
that artists’ needs were more intricate than
he had
anticipated. Augmenting BEFLIX with some
of the
things Vanderbeek asked
for,
Knowlton came
up
with
a new
language called TARPS (Two-Dimensional Alpha-Numeric Raster Picture
System).
This
in
turn led
to
EXPLOR (EXJMicit(ly provided
2D
Patterns.) Local (neighborhood) Operations,
and
Random-‘
ness).
EXPLOR
is
fascinating because
of its
originality
and
generality–
not
only does
it
modify pictures
and
serve
as an
artist’s
tool,
but
it has
fascinating properties
as a
computer language
and may
even have applications
in
complex simulations
for
technical purposes.
Since Vanderbeek, Knowlton
has
entered into
a
long
and
fruitful collaboration with Lillian Schwartz,
a
talented artist. Their many films have been clever, startling
and
powerful.
I
must
say
that they grow
on you: I
liked them
at
first,
but
when
I saw
five
or six in a row
this January,
I
found them just incredible. Because they
are
abstract,
and
full
of
fast-changing patterns
and
reversals, they take some adjusting
to;
but
they’re worth seeing over
and
over.
EXPLOR
may be
thought
of as a
highly generalized version
of
Conway’s game
of
Life (see
p. )• You
start with two-dimensional patterns
as
your data structure; these
can be
abstractions
or
even converted photographs,
as
in
a
recent Knowlton-Schwartz film showing Muybridge’s Running
Man. In
your EXPLOR program,
you may
then cause
the
pattern
to
change
by
degrees, each cell
of the
pattern reacting
to the
cells around
it or to
random events
as
specified
by the
programmer.
EXPLOR, running without external data, comes
up
with some extraordinary snakeskin
and
Jack Frost patterns.
But its
uses
in
traffic simulation
and
various other studies
of
populations
in
space could
be
very interesting.
EXPLOR
has
obvious artistic applications. Lillian Schwartz
is
using
it
extensively
in
filmmaking.
It’s now
running
on a
minicomputer feeding
to a
modified Sony Trinitron color
TV.
(This color setup
was
created
by
Mike Noll and
is
described
in a
recent issue
of the
CACM, though only
for
black-and-white
TV; the
color is more recent.
It
stores
the
color picture
as
a list
of
sequential colors represented
in the
computer’s core memory, each
dot
being repre- Cf. “Boyell’s Torrarium,” p.flf\3&
.)
Knowlton
has
used EXPLOR
for
teaching computer
art at the
University
of
California; the language
is
available programmed
in
“medium
size”
Fortran from Harry Huskey, Dept.
of
Information
and
Computer Science,
U. of Cal.
at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California.
DM 11
This ie a non-simple picture conversion. The original photograph was converted into measured points; but these were in turn made into
grow-
together patterns by a program in the EXPLOR language. f£) Knowlton i Harmon.
SPEECH BY COMPUTER
You may have heard about various kinds of “talking computer.” Thla deserves some explanation.
Computers may be made to “talk” by various
means.
One Is through an output device that simply stores recordings of separate words or syllables, which the computer selects with appropriate timing. (Machines of this type have been sold by both IBM and Cognitronics for a long time.)
A deeper approach is to have the computer synthe size speech from phonemes, or actually make the tones and noises of which speech is composed. These are very tricky matters. Bell Labs, and others, have been working on many of these approaches.
The real problem, of course, is how to decide what to say. (This was discussed under Artificial Intelligence, p. fft’ll/.)
AUDIO ANALYSIS AND ENHANCEMENT
The problem of analyzing audio is very like the problem of analyzing pictures (see
p.jthlO),
and indeed some of the same techniques are used. The audio goes into the computer as a stream of measurements, and the selfsame technique of Fourier Analysis is employed. This reduces the audio to a series of frequency measurements over time— but, paradoxically, loses little of the fidelity.
Wish there were room to talk about plain regular audio here— matters like “binaural” recording, and Why don’t they make hi-fi systems based on a Grand Bus (see pM2 )? But there’s no room here.
AUDIO AND COMPUTERS
People are occasionally still Btartled to hear that computers can make sound and music. They can indeed.
First of all, note that an Incoming sound is a fluctuating voltage and can thus be turned into a data structure. I.e., a string of measurements.
(Wloyt’
– conveys!©*^
To make sound by computer is the obverse. If the computer can be set up to send out_ a string of measurements, these can be turned back into a fluctuating voltage, and thus make sounds.
In the easiest case, the computer can just send back out the voltages it originally got In. This is rather ridiculous— using the computer just as a recording device— but it’s a clear and simple example.
The question after that is what next: how to make interesting streams”output ., sounds and tones. ” have the compute; measurements,
There are numerous methods we can’t go into. Max Mathews, at Bell Labs, has for years been doing music by computer; his current system is called GROOVE. Heinz von Foerster, at the University of Illinois
(Urbana),
has been doing the same. Another lab at MIT has just gotten a PDP-11/45 (see
p.
for the same purpose.
(The problem is: can the computer keep up with the output rate needed to make music in real time? maybe the 11/45 can.)
Another approach is to relieve the computer itself from making the tones, and use other de
vices—
music synthesizers— for this, controlled by the computer. This is essentially the approach taken with General Turtle’s Music Box (see p. )> and at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Cen
ter,
where their RCA Mark II music synthesizer— an immense one-of-a-kind jobbie— is under more general computer control.
/ J Kelt?.
Once audio is reduced to Fourier patterns, it can be reconstituted in various ways: changed in timing and pitch independently, or enhanced by polishing techniques like those used in image enhancement (see p-9f\i0 ).
This has been done with great success by Tom Stock- ham at the University of Utah, who has reprocessed old Caruso records into Improved fidelity. In the picture we see him with equipment of some sort and an old record.
1» *K >tv*CtV
MUSICAL NOTATION
Note that the computer handling of musical
notes,
as symbols, Is another rask entirely, closely resembling computer text handling (mentioned variously in the
book).
A high-power structured-text system or Thinkertoy (se« p.flHftfl is flne tor staring and presenting written music.
And, of course, such stored musical notation data structure) can obviously be played by
University of Utah
(Stockham has been in the news lately, as one of the panel puzzling over the notorious 18-Minute Gap.)
(The author has proposed the name Kitchensynctra for a system to synchronize motion pictures with “wild” sound recording by these means.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thomas G. Stockham, Jr., “Restoration of Old Acoustic ^ Recordings by Means of Digital Signal Processing.” Audio Engineering Society preprint no. 831
(D-4),
presented at Audio Engineering Society 1971 convention .
Prentiss H. Knowlton, “Capture and Display of Keyboard
Music.”
Datamation May ’72, 56-60. Describes a setup he built at U. of Utah that allows pianists to play music on an ordinary keyboard, and conve-the input to symbolic representation in the computer. It uses an organ, a PDP-8 and a couple o CRT displays.
Heinz von Foerster ana J Wiley, 1969.
Joes
Beauchamp, Music by Computer* HAS RECORDS IN BACK.
(a
Some of the early Bell Labs work may be heard on an excellent Decca LP with the misleading title “MUSIC from MATHEMATICS.” (Decca DL ?91°3>• mathematical myth is discussed on p.
3-*}.)
the hookups mentioned.
811
4
frIHW?
Cf».tVTZZJ)teh1\S
•for dioi
These are three topics of great importance; of Importance, unfortunately, less for what they have actually accomplished than for the degree to which they have confused and intimidated people who want to understand what’s going on. Merely lo mention them can be one-upmanship. All three titles mean so much, so many different specific things, as to mean almost nothing when lumped together as a whole. All three have developed a web of intricate technical facts (and sometimes
theorems),
but the applicability of these elegant findings is in all three cases a matter open to considerable scrutiny.
Since each of these fields has developed a considerable body of technical doctrine, the reader might well ask: why aren’t they on the other side of the book, the computer side? The answer is that they are computerman’s dreams, dreams of considerable intricacy and persuas
iveness,
and wc are not considering the technicalities here anyway. As on the other side, the problem is to help you distinguish apples from oranges and which way is up. For more go elsewhere, but 1 hope this orientation will make sorting things out quicker for you.
These three terms— “artificial intelligence,” “information retrieval.” “computer-assisted instruction”– have a number of things in common. First, the names are so portentous and formidable. Second, if you read or hear anything in these fields, chances are it will have an air of unfathomable technicality. Both strange technicalism and deep mathematics may combine to give you a sense that you can’t understand any of it. This is wrong. The fact that there are obscure and Deep Teachings in each has no bearing on the general comprehensibiliry of what they are about. More importantly, the question of how applicable all the things these people have been doing is going to be is a question of considerable importance, especially when some of these people want to take something over. Don’t get snowed.
Each of these fascinating terms is actually a roof over a veritable 200 of different researchers, often of the most eccentric and interesting sort, each generally with his own dream of how his own research will be the breakthrough for humanity, or for something. It would take a Lemuel Gulliver to to show you the colorfulness and fascination of these fields; again, we just scratch the surface here.
Another interesting thing these three fields nave in common: the frequent use of a classical computerman’s putdown on anybody who dares question whether their super-ultimate goals can ever be achieved.
The line is, “WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO THAT YET.”
ir somebody pulls it on you, the reply is \/ simply, “How do you know you ever will?”
illustrating also certain problems of Artificial Intelligence.
A very large artificial-intelligence system (goes the story) had been built for the military to help in long-range policy planning; financed by ARPA, with people from M.I.T., Stanford and so on.
“The system is now ready to answer ques
tions,”
said the spokesman for the project.
A four-star general bit off the end of a cigar, looked whimsically at his comrades and said—
“Ask the machine this: Will it be Peace or War?”
The clerk-typist (Sp4) translated this into the query language and typed it in.
The machine replied:
YES
“Yes what?” bellowed the general.
The operator typed in the query.
Came the answer:
Yes SIR
“Artificial Intelligence” Is at once the aexiest and most ominous term In the world. It chills and Im-presses at the same time. In principle It means the simulation of processes of mind, by any means at all; but it generally turns out to be some form or another of computer simulation (see “Simulation,” p.
tell,
except by a lot of experimenting, what the principles are Inside a particular talking program; so that trying to adjust to it Is a strain and an Irritation. (Compsre: talking to s stranger who may or may not turn out to be your new boss.) Now, some programmers keep saying that eventually they 11 ^ have it acting just as smart aa a real person, so we needn I
adjuat;
but that’s rldlculoua. We always adjust to real
people.
In other words, the human discomfort and Irritation of psyching the ayst’ eliminated.
Furthermore, on today’s sequential equipment snd with feasible budgets, I personally think tha likelihood of making programs that are really general talkers Is a foolish
goal.
There are many simpler ways of telling computer systems what you want to tell them— light pen
choice,
for example. Moreover, having to type in whole English phrases can be irritating. (We can’t even get into the problem of having the computer pick apart the audio if you talk it In.) This is not to say understandably restricted talking systems are bad. If you know and understand the sorts of response the system makes to what kinds of thing, then an English-like response is really a clear message. For in
stance,
the JOSS system (the first Quickie language-see p. IS) had an eloquent message: eh? which actually meant, What you have Just typed in does not fit the rules of acceptable input for this ayatea. But It was short, it was quick, it was simple, and it was almost
polite.
Similarly, talking systems that use an exact vocabu lary, whose limits and abilities are known to the person, are okay. (Wlnograd, see Bibliography, has a nice example of telling a computer to stack blocks, where the system knows words like between, on, above and so on.) Where this is understood by the human, it can be a genuine convenience rather than a spurious one.
(The problem of rudeness in computer dialogue haa not been nuch discussed. This is partly because many programmers are not fully aware of It, or, indeed, some are so skilled In certain aubtle forma of rudeness they wouldn’t even know they weren’t acceptable. The result is that certain types of putdown, poke, peremptorlness and importunacy can find their way into computer dialogue all too easily.
Or,
to put It another way: nobody like to be talked back to.
Cf.
Those stupid green THANK YOU lights on automatic toll booths.)
Now, this la not to say that research in these areas is wrong, or even that researchers’ hopes of aome breakthrough In talking-systems is misguided. I am saying, basically, that talking systems cannot be taken for granted as the proper goal in computers to be used by people; that the problems of rudeness, and irritating the human
uaer,
are far greater than many of these researchers sup
pose;
and that there may be alternatives to thla potentially eternal leprechaun-chaalng.
If like the author you are bemused by the great difficulty of getting along with human beings, then the creation of extraneous belnga of Impenetrable character with vaguely human qualities can only alarm you, and the prospect of these additional crypto-entltles which Bust be fended and placated, clawing at ue from their niches at every turn, la both distasteful and alarming.
Artificial Intelligence enthusiasts unfortunately tend to have a magician’s outlook! to make clear how their things work would spoil the show.
Thus,
for a rather peculiar axt show held at New York’s Jewish Museum in 1970, a group from MIT built a large device that stacked blocks under control of a minicomputer (Inter data
brand).
Now, the fact that it could stack and re-stack blocks with just a minicomputer wa* really quite an accomplishment, but this waa not explained. instead, the block-stacking mechanism was enclosed in a large glass pen, in which numerous gerblla— hoppy little rodents— were free to wander about. When a ger-bil saw that a block was about to be stacked on him, he would sensibly move.
Now, it is fairly humorous, and not cruel, to put gerbils into a block-stacking machine. But this was offered to the public as a device partaking of a far more global mission, the experimental interaction of living creatures and a dynamic self-improving environment, blah blah blah.
Faasersby were awed, -why ore those animals in there?” one would say, and the more informed one would usually say, “It’s some kind of scientific experiment.”
Mall,
this is • twilight area, between science and whimsical hokum, but one cannot help wishing simple and humorous things could be presented with their simplicity and humor laid bare. I remember watching one gerbll who stood motionless on hie little kangaroo match*tick legs, watching the Great Greppier rearranging hi* world. Gerbils are somewhat inscrutable, but 1 had a sense that he was worshiping it. He did not move until tha block started coming down on top of
him.
^
And tha answer is yei
can a aet of procedures i what tha computer pro-•et of procedures. , fairly
well.
•thing you Jot Now, a chess program ia not i down on the back of an envelope one afternoon. It’s usually an isnense, convoluted thing that people have worked on for years. (Although I vaguely recell that second place In the 1670 lnter-computer chess contest was won by a program that occupied only 2000 locations In a 16-blt Minicomputer— in other words, a compact and tricky aneaker.) Now, simple games (like tlc-tac-toe and Him and even Cubic) can be worked out all the way: all alternatives can be examined by the program and the beat one found. Not so with chess. Chess basically involves, becauae of It* very many possibilities, a “combinatorial explosion” of alternatives (see p. 4) ); that Is, to look at “all” the possibilities of a midgame would take forever (perhaps literally— the Turing
problem),
and thua means must be found for discarding some possibilities. The structure of branching possibilities is a tree (see p. ); so that methods of “pruning” the tree turn out to be crucial. Basically there are two approaches to the design of chess programa. In one approach, the programmers look for specific threats and opportunities in the date structure representing the board, and try to find good strategies for selecting good moves on the basis of then. This is the approach taken in COK0, the “Cooper-Kor”chess program. The programmers selectively cope with individual problems and strategies as they turn out to be necessary. (This means that It la likely to have specific Achilles’ heels; which, of
course,
the authors of the program keep trying to repair by adding specific corrections.)
A different approach Is taken by the Creenblatt chess program. This la basically a big Heuristic prog-ran. It “learns” best strategies in chess by “watching” the game. That is, your pour historical chess matches through it, end it tries out strategies— making various tentative rules about what kinds of moves ate good, then scoring these moves according to the results of making them— as seen in positional advantages that resulted In actually championship play.
Obviously this is a field In Itself, You won’t get grants for it, but to those who really care about both chess and computers. It’s the only thing to be doing.
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS CYBERCRUD Fred Brooks, the keynote speaker at the IEEE com puter conference In Fall 74, seems to have said that HAL 9000 (the unctuous, traitorous Presence in the movie 2001) was the way computers should be. (Computer Decisions, Apr 74, 4.) I find it hard to believe that anybody could think
that.
Nevertheless, there are those artificial-Intelligence freaks whose view it Is that the purpose of all this is eventually (a) to create servants that will read our minds and do our bidding, (b) servants who will take things over and will Implement human morality, regardless of our bidding (though we humans are tec frail to do so— as in Aslmov’s 1,
Robot);
or even (c) create masters who will take everything over and run everything according to their own principles and the hell with us. (I met a man in a bar, after an ACM meeting, who claimed to believe thla was the purpose of it all: to create the master race that would replace us.)
According to Arthur C. Clarke’s retroactive novel
2001:
A Space Odyssey (Signet, 1968, 95t), the HAL 9000 computer series began as follows: “In the 1980s, Minsky and Good had shown how neural networks could be Generated automatically– self-replicated– in accordance witii any arbitrary learning pattern. Artificial brains could be grown by a process strikingly analogous to the development of the human brain.” (P. 96.) I don’t know who Good is, but these are among the lines Minsky has been working along for years, so I hope he’s encouraged by the news of what he’s going to accomplish. Anyhow, so okay they grow the UAL 9000 in a tank. Then how come in the Death-of-Hal scene we see Keir Dullea bobbing around loosening circuit cards, just as if it were a plain old 1978 computer?
Possible answer »2. HAL’s tanks of neural glop are controlled by PDP-lls, one to a card, (Of course, if you take the letters after H, A and L in the alphabet, you get I, B and M. So maybe those are 1130s.)
THE THREE LAWS OF ROBOTICS
1– A robot may not injure a human being-, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
1– A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3 – A robot must protect its own existence as long as auch protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
— Handbook of Robotic*. 56th Edition, 205B A.D., quoted in I. Asimov, I, Robot.
ELIZA
WILL
see you
Moui
PLEASE TELL HE YOUR PROBLEM. I am feeling depressed. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN FEELING DEPRESSED? Ever since my mother left. TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY. My father is very strict. PLEASE GO ON. Last night I dreamt he spanked me. WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO YOU IF HE SPANKED YOU? Didn’t you” ever get spanked? WE WERE DISCUSSING YOU, NOT MB. You’re just a dumb machine anyway. DO COMPUTERS FRIGHTEN YOU? (quoted in Wlnograd, 74-5) The fascinating thing about the ELIZA program is that it seems so like a real person— that is, a psychoanalyst of the nondirectlve, Carl Rogers school. But all it is is a bag of tricks.
Then it spots certain types of sentences and turns them around. If the person types a sentence beginning with “I am…”, the ELIZA program turns it around with HOW LONG HAVE YOUR BEEN… ? And it looks for specific words which indicate a sen tence can be turned around for a convincing result. For in
stance,
if the person uses the word “everyone,” the program aimply replies, WHO IN PARTICULAR CAN YOU THINK OF? And certain highly-charged words are signals to throw in a zinger, regardless of what the user may have said. Por in
stance,
if the person uses the word “mother,” the machine
replies:
TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FAMILY.
Now, do not be fooled. There ia no Ghost in the Machine. The program does not “understand” the uaer. THE PROGRAM IS MERELY ACTING OUT THE BAG OF TRICKS THAT JOE WEIZENBAUH THOUGHT UP. Credit where credit i* duel not to The Computer’s Omniscience, but to Weizenbaum’s
The thing is, many people refuse to believe that it’s a program. Even when the program’s tricks are explained. And even some who understand ELIZA like to call it up from their terminals for companionship, now and then. BIBLIOGRAPHY Terry Wlnograd, “When Will Computers Understand People?” Psychology Today May 74, 73-^. (Weizenbaum’i full article on ELIZA appeared in the Communications of the ACM sometime in the mid or late sixties; a flowchart revealed its major tricks,
I have strong hunches about the inner work ings of men who get millions of dollars from the Department of Defense and then soy in private that really they’re going to use it to create a machine so intelligent it can play with their
chil
dren. (Not to name names or anything.) An obvious question is, do they play with their children? No, they play with computers.
But the point here is not to hassle the
dreamers,
just to sort out the dreams and put them on hangers so you can try them on, and maybe choose an ensemble for yourself.
I take this , i allegory.
DEUS EX MACHIN A Obviously such beliefs are outside the realm of jelence or engineering. They belong to pure speculation; and while various mechanisms have in fact been programmed to croak, stagger, stack blocks, compose sentences and ao
on,
to suppose that we are In any reel sense anywhere near mimicking human Intelligence, let alone surpassing and superseding it, la either to be totally fooled or to hanker after aome curious dream from inside yourself. As we said on the other side of the book, everybody In computers has deeper motivations and interior twists that form his own special ties to these machines; and when It cooes to our choices of fantasy machines, obviously an even deeper level of psychic imprint la projecting Itself Into the world. …EX MENSA
People who fantasize about wondroua creatures and deities they want to make out of the computer obviously have something interesting in their own heads from which that cornea. Perhaps It comes from a desire for imaginary playmates, or an
ambi
valence toward authority, or goodness knows what; there are so •any odd people at different ends of Artificial Intelligence that there may be a lot of different psychological systems at work. Or maybe artificial intelligence 1. Just where the most brilliant, determined and eccentric dreamers I can only ask the (u*ation, not give the answer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY stand People?” Terry Winogrsd, “When Will Computers Psychology Today May 74, 73-79. Particularly readable article. Nicholas Negroponte, The Architecture Machine. MIT Presa. Takes the view that computers should be made Into magical servants which not only handle bothersome minds [•11.
Anyway,
more or less read < Leonard Uhr, Pattern Recognition, Learning and Thoughti Computer-Programmed Model* ot. Higher Mental Pro-esses
.
PrentIce-Hall. Arthur W. Holt. "Algorithm for a Low Cost Hand Print Reader." Computer Design Feb 74, 85-89. Edward A. Felgenbaum and Julian Feldmaa
(eda.),
Computers and Thought. McCraw-Hlll. Old but still good for orientation. A journal: Artificial Intelligence (North-Holland Publishing Co., Journal Division; P.O. Box 211, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Wsa $26.50 a year In IS Thla'll show you what they're thinking about now. Roger Liod, "The Robots Are Coming, The Robots Are Coming." Oul_, Feb 1974. Typical layman's hype. You don't get second page that a typical industrial huge mechanism with one grappling arm. Edward W. Kordrowlckl and Dennis W. Cooper, "COKO III the Cooper-Ko* Ches* Program." CACM July 73, 41 Creenblatt, R.D., Eaatlake, D.E., and Crocker. S.D.. "Tha Creenblatt Che** Program." Proc FJCC 67, 801-810. R.C. Gammlll, "An Examination of Tic-Tac-Toa-lika Cornea."
Proc.
NCC 74, 349-355.
11 the
•427.
j>*ur
“Infonutlon Retrieval” ia one of thoae terms that laymen throv around aa If It were a manhole cover. It aounda aa though It means BO much, so very” much. And ao you actually hear people say thlnga like) “But that would mean… (pregnant pouae) … Information Retrieval:.’:” Similarly, some of the hokey new copyright notlcee you aee In booka from Wlth-It publiah-era intone that eold books may not be “place* in any information retrieval ayatem…” I take thla to mean that the publiahera are forbidding you to put the book on a bookshelf, because “Information retrieval” simply means any way at all of getting beck Information from anything. A bookshelf, since it allows you to read the •pines of the books, ia Indeed an Information Retrieval System.
It happens, incidentally, that the phrase “informa tion retrieval” was coined In the forties by Calvin Mooers, inventor of TRAC*” language (see pp.
18-21).
(If Wiener had coined it he might have called it Getbsck. If Diebold had coined It It might have been Thoughtomation.) Anyhow, numerous entirely different things go 1 field, all under the name of Information Retrieval. in
non-computer j
itrleval.
(See Becker and Hayes Automatic Infon ition Retrieval-) These things are kind of old-fashioned fun— cards with holes punched along the
edge,
for Instance,that you sort with knitting needles, or the more recent systems with holes drilled in plastic
cards.
Trouble is, of course, that computers are becoming much more convenient and even less expensive than these, counting your own time as being worth something.
2. Document Retries This basically is an apprc that glorifies the old library card file, except now the •tuff la stored In computers rather than on csrds. But what’s stored is still the name of the document, who wrote
It,
where It was published and so on. Obviously helpful to librarians, but scarcely exciting.
3. Automatic document Indexing. Some organizations find it helpful to have a computer try to figure out what a book la about, rather than have a person look at it and check. (I don’t see why this eaves anything, but there you are.) Anyway, the text of the document (or selected parts) are poured through a computer program that selects, for in
stance,
keywords, that is, the most Important words in it, or rather words the program thinks are most important. Then these keywords can go on the headings of library file cards, or whatever.
There are various related systems by which people study, for instance, the citations between articles, but we won’t get into that. 4. Content retrieval. How we’re getting to the sexy stuff. A system for content retrieval ia one that somehow stores information in a computer and lets you get it back
The trick c both ( i is of
i
Well,
as we said on the other Bide of the book, any information stored in a computer has a data structure, which simply means whatever arrangement of alphabetical characters, numbers and special codes the computer happens to be saving.
In a content-retrieval system. Information on some subject is somehow jammed into a data structure— possibly even by human coders— and then set up so people can get It back out again in some way. Lot of possibilities here, get It?
In the most startling of these systems, the QAS, or “Question-Answering System,” some aort of dialogue program (see “Artificial Intelligence,” nearby) tries to give you i about the data structure. But this means there i whole lot of programs: have 1
Like Artificial Intelligence and Information
Ret
rieval,
Computer-Assisted Instruction sounds like something exact and impressive but Is In fact a scattering of techniques tied together only nominally by a general Idee. The real name Teaching. That wot computer teaching i to ask that.
:r It should be Automated Dialogue 1 Immediately allow you to aak, should s dialogues? But they don’t went you
In the claaalc formulation of the early sixties, there were going to be three levels of CAI: “drill-and-practlce”
systems,
much like teaching machines, that almply helped atudents practice various skills; s middle level (often itself called, confusingly, “computer-assisted Instruction”)’ and a third level, the Socratlc system, which would supposedly be Ideal. Students studying on Socratlc systems would be eloquently and thoughtfully Instructed and corrected by a perfect being in the machine. “We don’t know how to do that
yet,”
the people keep saying. Yet. Indeed.
(My personal view on this (
f
ol low lng) Is that Computer ways extends the worst featur into the new realm of present
subject,
expressed in an article -Assisted Instruction in many ;s of education aa we now know it
it
ion by computer.)
Then there Is the matter of consistency. The really interesting subjects are the ones where different authors claim opposing facts to support opposite conclusions. In other words, there is inconsistency within the content of the field. In this case such systems are going to have a problem. (See “Rasho-Mon Principle” under “Tissue of
Thought,”
ff-jPS ‘*-<7
Another fundamental point is this. It may be easy enough to program a system to answer the question,
WHAT TIME DOES THE NEXT PLANE LEAVE FOR LACUARDIA7 but it is a lot simpler to^dlsplay schedules your eye can run down, or allow you to go look at some kind of graphic display.
Speaking personally, I don't like talking to machines and I don't like their talking back to me. I'm not saying you have to agree, I'm just telling you you're allowed to feel that way.
These systems can be quite startling in the way they •eem to understand you (see Licklider book; also Wlnograd piece under Artificial Intelligence). But they don_t understand you. They are just poor dumb programa.
Many people (Including Licklider) seem to see in .QuestIon-Answering-Systems the wave of the future
Others,
like this author, are skeptical. It', one thing to have a system that can deduce that Green's House la West of Red's House from . bunch of Input sentences on the subject, but the question of how much these can be Improved 1. in some doubt. A system that can answer the question. "What did Hegel aay about determinism?" is jome ways away, to put it mildly.
J)OtS
THC
NftlAC
PA.V10V
This Is a true story. (The details are approx imate.) It may provide certain insights. An Assistant Conmissioner of Education was being shown a CAI system by representatives of a large and well-known computer company.
One one side of the Commissioner stood a sales man, who wanted him to be impressed. On the other side stood one Dr. S., who knew how the system worked. The terminal, demonstrating a history program that had hurriedly been put together, typed: WHO CAPTURED FORT TIC0NDER0GA?
"Sure,"
said the salesman, ignoring the frantic head-shaking of Dr. S.
The Assistant Commissi! typed: Gypsy Rose
The machine replied:
5. sumnarlei ie systems let you sit at a computer display screen and read summaries of various
things,
as well as run through them with various programs to look for keywords. (The New York Times now offers such a system, costing over a thousand dollars a month to subscribers.)
HE CAPTURED QUEBEC A
The Assistant Commissioner evidently enlivened many a luncheon with that one, and Computer-Assisted Instruction was effectively dead for the rest of the admin Istrat ion. that 6. "Full-text systems." These are systems one way or another allow you to read all the texi something from a computer display screen. There those of us who see theae as the wave of the fun but many others are perfectly outraged at the the (Hypertext systems, now, are setups that allow you to read interconnected texts from computer display screens.
X.
"full-
“Aa We Will Think.” Proc. Online Brunei U. Uxbridge, England. 72
BIBLIOGRAPHY Vannevar Bush, July 1945, Theodor H. Nels Conference G. Salton, “Recent Studies In Automatic Text Analysl: and Document Retrieval.” JACM, Apr 73, 258-278. Donald E. Walker
(ed.),
Interactive Bibliographic Search The User/Computer Interface. AFIPS Press, $15. Theodor H. Nelson, “Getting It Out of Our System.” In Schechter
(ed.).
Critique of Information Retrieval (Thompson Books,
19*7).
J.C.R. Licklider, Libraries of the Future. MIT Press,
1965.
Clear and readable summary of the rest of thi field; then he goes on to advocate “procognltive
systems,”
systems that will digest what’s known in any field and talk back to you, using techniques of artificial intelligence. Whatever its other merits, this book Is great for shaking people up, especially librarians. It seems so official. Richard M. Laska, “All the News That’s Fit to Retrieve.” Computer Decisions. Aug 72, pp. 18-22.
/’lu^ere.aj frjfert
A
“hypergram” is a picture
that
can branch or per
form
on request. In this particular example, we see on the
screen
a line-drawing
with
protruding labels. When the student points at a label, it
becomes
a sliding descriptive ribbon, explaining the
thing
labelled. Or asterisks in an
illustration
may signal jumps lo detailed diagrams and explanations, as in discrete hypertexts.
Dissection on the
screen
The student of anatomy may use his light-pen as a scalpel for a
deceased
creature on the
screen.
As he cuts, the tissue parts. He could
also
turn
the light-pen
into
hemostal or
forceps,
and
fully
dissect
the creature —or put it
back
together again. (This
need
not be a
complex
simulation. Many key relationships can be shown by
means
of
fairly
simple schematic pictures, needing a data structure not prohibitively complicated.)
Hyper-comics arc tun Hyper-comics arc perhaps the simplest and most
straightforward
hyper-medium. Ihe
screen
holds a
comic
strip,
but one which branches on the student’s request. For instance, different characters could be
used
to explain things in different ways,
with
the student able to
choose
which type of explanation he wanted at a
spec
flic lime.
\ AKO t^ OA /( K
*Tvcliniciililv’
is nol
necessary
Proponents of
CAI
want us to believe
that
scientific teaching requires a certain setup and format, incomprehensible to the layman and to be left to experts.
This
is simply not
true.
“Technicality” is a
myth.
The problem is not one of technical Tightness, but what
should
be. The
suggestions
lhat
have
been
given are things
that
should be; they
will
be brought about. •
It
was
explained
on
the
other side that computers have
no
fixed purpose
or
style
of
operation,
but can
be
set in
motion
on
detailed and repetitive tasks
in
any
realm
of
human
in
terest–
as
long
as
those tasks
are
exactly specifiable
in
certain humdrum ways.
Now,
if you had
a
machine like that burning
a
hole
in
the
comer
of
your office, what would
you
really want
to
do
with
it?
You can’t drive
it
on
the
road.
Vou can’t make love
to
it, (But
see
p.**.)
You can’t cook
in
it,
or
get the
news on
it.
To
get it to
control elaborate events
in
the real world requires
a
lot
of
expensive equipment
and
interfaces,
so
cross that
out.
Yet suppose
you
have
an
inquiring imag ination– which
is not
unlikely, considering that
you are
reading this sentence.
And
we
are
also supposing (from
an
ear lier paragraph) that
you
have
a
computer.
What sorts
of
thing would
you
do
with
it?
Things that
are
imaginative
and
don’t require
too
much else.
t
am
hinting
at
something.
a*«|
cK»Mt
MU>t~’j~ito<K/SHMIH&-
pvr> ireoc.Tun.c
(<"**
rr
*
tot
1t<
"lU.f.vt'1
•rinw^C,
- 3;
-1)
Jt.|(i'
«•
l^v'H-)
Some computer displays have
to be
deeply attached
to •
computer
and
some don't. These latter
we
call display terminals• A display terminal
is
like
an
ordinary computer terminal
(see p
If):
that
is,
fundamentally
a
device
by
which
a
computer
and a
person
can
type
at
each other. However,
dis
play torminals have screens. Now, some display terminals only show
text,
just like ordinary printing terminals
("described
on the
other
side).
But
manufacturers
are
free
to add any
other features,
and
so different manufacturers make
it
possible
to
do various kinds
of
picture-making with their particular display terminals,
i_f
appropriate programs
are
running
in the
computer that controls them. Some devices
are
sold
as
display terminals but actually,
to
further confuse
the
issue, contain complete minicomputers.
(The
fact that
the
manufacturer
may not
stress this
is
simply
a
marketing angle
he has
chosen.)
Simi
larly, certain terminals contain microprocessors (see
p. iH
),
which means they
can be
programmed to behave like various other terminals,
but
ordi
narily they cannot
be
programmed
to do
much else by themselves. Without getting into
it
deeply, there
are two
main types
of
display terminal: those that
are
refreshed
and
those that
are
not.
A
refreshed display
is one
whose viewing surface fades
and
must
be
continually re-filled; a non-refreshed display somehow stores
the
presentation in
the
viewing surface itself. Non-refreshed displays simply take
the
symbols from
the
computer, blam them onto
the
screen,
and
that's it until
the
screen
is
erased
(by
cither
the
computer
or
the
user).
Thia honey
ie the
GT-40 from
DEC
($12,000,
in
cluding
computer—
the
thing with teeth, below). It's
a
eubroutining display
(see p. DM 23).
Ltng eoreen action wxth lightpen. Computer eimulatee real moon
lande:
Reversed uhite-to-black
for
readability
here.
m
wonder*
If
you
have
not
seen interactive computer display,
you
have
not
lived.
Except
for a few
people
who can
imagine
it--
and
I ra
trying
to help you
with that
as
hard
as I
can-- most people just don't
get it till
they
see
it.
They can't imagine what
it's
like
to
manipu-iate
a
picture.
To
have
a
diagram
respond to you.
T°~change
one
part
of a
picture, ano^wtTcTT
tnVTFst
a^afit- These
are
some
of the
things
thTt~can
hap-
of cour^te«aC^Ve
coniPuter
display-
all
depending, oi course,
on the
program.
„„~w
ForLsome
reason there
are a lot of
people
who
pooh-pooh computer display: they
say it's "not
iu
Most refreshed displays
use an
actual television screen– that
is, a CRT (see
p.b^t-7) whose entire area is repeatedly re-painted
by the
elctron beam.
Since computers send text
out to
terminals
as in
dividual alphabetic
and
punctuation codes, each terminal must contain circuitry
to
change
the
character code
to a
visible alphabetical character
on the
screen. Such
a
piece
of
circuitry
is
called
a
character generator. Ther>
Display terminals generally have
a
little marker,
or
cursor, that
the
user
or the
computer
can
move around
the
screen.
The
computer
can
sense what
the
user
is
pointing at
by the
motion codes
it
gets, telling where
the
user
has
moved
the
cursor.
I
had
intended here
to
print
a
little directory
of
display terminal manufacturers,
but
there simply
is not
time.
See
section
on
terminals, other side. Note that
the
term video terminal
is
often used,
in
correctly,
for any
display terminal.
The
term “video” should only
be
used when
the
screen
is
refreshed
by an
actual video raster.
(See
“Lightning
in a
Dottle,” p.J>»,£-f.) Text terminals (also called alphabetic terminals, character terminals
or
keyscopes) simply show written text, put
in
either
by the
computer
or the
user. (Some terminals, called transaction terminals,
can be
divided
up
into specific areas that
the
user
may and may not
type into–
for
banking and stuff. However, whether that form
of
terminal
is
necessary
may
also
be a
matter
of
taste
in the
program design.)
Text terminals range
in
price from,
say,
51500
on up
to $6500. (This last
is the
price
of a
remarkable color text terminal demonstrated
by
Tec, Inc.,
at the 1974
National Computer Conference. Each alphabetic position could contain
a
letter and/or
a
bright color; altogether
the
screen could hold
big
colorful pictures made
up of
these bright
spaces.
Ostensibly just
a
text terminal, actually
the de
vice could
be
regarded
as an
Instant Movie Generator
for
television animation.
But it may
take
Tec,
Inc.
awhile
to
realize what they have created.)
Graphic terminals offer some kind
of
pictures
on
their screens. These come
in a
great variety: line-drawing, some without, some with levels
of
grey.
Of
interest
to the be
ginner
are:
“The Tektronix.” (Also called
“the
greenie,”
or
“the green screen.”) Tektronix,
Inc.,
makes
a
display based
on a
pale green storage tube they
make.
(So
does Computer Displays,
Inc.)
Such displays allow
you to put
more
and
more text
and
pictures
on a
screen, crowding
it all up– but
you can’t take
the
lines
or
words
off
individually. “The
PEP.”
Excellent
(but
very expensive) display that comes
out to a
video screen from
a
high-resolution storage tube. Permits grey scales
and
selective erase. Princeton Electronic Products. The IDIgraf (Information Displays,
Inc.,
Mount Kisco,
NY).
Allows line pictures with animation; interesting unit; somewhat less than $10,000. A PLATO-like terminal
(see
PLATO terminal, nearby,
and
pp?M4-27)
is now
available
for use
with STANDARD computer interfaces
and
software. “Less than J5000” from Applications Group,
Inc.,
P.O. Box
444A, Maumee, Ohio 43537.
REFRESHED HIGH-RESOLUTION COLOR SYSTEMS.
A
number
of
companies manufacture computer displays allowing complex grey-scale pictures, including color. They
are
expensive
but
very very nice. Indeed,
if you buy
them in clusters, these fancy-picture scopes
can
cost
as
little
as
text terminals. Some manufacturers
are:
Data Disk. (Disk refresh.) Note:
I
once recommended them
to a
consulting client
of
mine,
who
eu tnem
to a
consulting client
or
mine,
w
later expressed complete satisfaction
wit
their equipment. Ramtek. (S«-,.c.-W ft-^ej
Adage,
Inc.
Their model
200 is a
video
s
freshed from semiconductor storage.
Comtal.
(Disk.) Ipatial Data Systems• (Disk.) Extremely high resolutio Spatial Data
S
Dlcomed. (Disk.
Mtically milled
by
machines),
and
never mind
on\ll
Ma
leslthe user-
“y. to
control entire °ii refineries
by the
flick
of a
lightpen.
,.,„^s
far as I’m
concerned, these matters wnrLT
V6!:y
lmP°rtant compared
to
changing
the
•”id. making education
an
excitement, rather
writi*
pri*on-
giving scholars total access
to
Deoni28t/n?
notes-
in n*w
complex form; allowing Sindt
\lUy
aginatively,
and
raising human
“onTa™-^VK1?11*1*15
they 5hc,uld have
“ached level IhA,
*
helpins people think
at the
deepest
inS
confront
^ «d
“mplex alternatives- n COI»front
us
more ominously today than ever.
Student programmer Alan McNeil, an
art
major,
pondere aome thing or
other.
It may be the
program for
the
Nova apace-game
he and
Pete Bowell
are
building.
Alan also made
a
film showing what may have been
the
motions
of the
continents, shooting etraight
off
the PLATO screen. Some PLATO purists point
out
that this
is not
exactly what PLATO was originally intended
for. So?
PLATO panel dl.pl.y
(,ee DM 26-7
m
\T
tot;
That such systems should
(and
will)
be
fun goes without saying. That they wtll also be
•
place
to
work
may be
less obvious from Ihe tone
of
thia publication,
so 1
want
to
stress It here.
Making pictures with
the GS
halftone system
(see pp. DM
32-9).
The thing about display screens– especial ly
the
high-performance, subroutining kind–is that
the
screen
can
become
a
place from which
to
control events
in the
outside world.
Example:
I
believe
a (own in
N.Y.
State haa
Its
electrical system hooked
up to an
ID1IOM subroutining display (made
by
Information
Dis
plays,
Inc.,
and
coupled
to a
Varian
620
mini
computer).
Instead
of
having
a
wall with
a big
painted
map
having switches
set
into it. like many such control centers,
the
switches
are
linked directly
to the
minicomputer,
and a
program
in the
minicomputer connects these circuits to
the
pictures
on the
screen. Thus
to
throw a switch
in the
real world,
the
operator points with
his
lightpen
at the
picture
of the
a witch, and
the
minicomputer throws
the
switch.
There
are oil
refineries that work
the
same
way.
The
operator
can
control flows among pipes
and
tanks
by
pointing
at
their pictures.
or at
symbols connected with them, and bingo,
it
happens
Out
There.
In another caae,
a
person designing some thing
at a
screen
can
look across
the
room
and
see
a
machine producing what
he
just finished designing
a few
minutes ago.
I
wish
I
could say more about that particular setup.
The true problem lhat
I
think
is
emerging, though,
is the
problem
of
system response
and
style.
Okay,
so
you’re controlling widget assembly,
or
traffic light grids,
at the CRT
screen.
The
real question
is,
how
does
the
screen behave
and
respond? This
is
not, darn
it,
a
technical issue.
It’s
psychological
and
then some.
The
design
of
screen activities which
wiU
enjoyably focus
the
user’s mind
on
his proper concerns–
no
matter
how
personal these
may
be–
is the new
frontier
of
design, of art,
and of
architecture.
But
more
of
that later.
Now,
the
Xerox Corporation
has
said that they intend
to
replace paper
(or.
the way I
heard it, “Somebody
is
going
to
replace paper with screens,
and it
will
be
either
IBM or us,
so let’s have
it be
us.”J
Well
and
good. Save
the
trees
and
stem the grey menace.
But the
question
is:
what will
the
systems
be
like?
How
should they perform? What forms will information take? What conventions, structures, diagrams, animations, ways
to
sign things, ways
to
view things
…
HOW SHALL
IT BE?
I
am
afraid that
as
long
as
people
are be
fuddled with technicalities,
or
confused
by
those who profess that these considerations
are
their specialty
by
right,
we
will never
get
straight. Lacking time
for the
full discussion,
I
give
you
a motto:
IF
THE
BUTTON
IS NOT
SHAPED LIKE
THE
THOUGHT, THE THOUGHT WILL
END UP
SHAPED LIKE
THE
BUTTON.
SAVING ENERGY WITH COMPUTER DISPLAY A timely criticism
of
computer display
is
that
it
needs electricity.
But (as
mentioned elsewhere)
it
saves paper,
and,
importantly,
it
bodes
to
save energy
as
well.
IF
WE
SWITCH
TO
COMPUTER SCREENS FROM PAPER, PEOPLE WON’T HAVE
TO
TRAVEL
AS
MUCH. Instead
of
commuting
to
offices
in the
center of town, people
can set up
their offices
in
the suburbs,
and
share
the
documentary structure
of the
work situation through
the
screens. This view
has
been propounded, indeed,
by
Peter Goldmark, former director
of
“””^J^
CBS Labs,
the man who
brought
you the LP
record.
YOUR BASIC TYPES
OF
COMPUTER DISPLAY
(Note:
the
term “display”
is
also used in this field
to
refer
to
numbers
and
letters that
can be
made
to
light
up in
fixed positions, like
on
your pocket calculators. Those will not
be
discussed here.
If
you’re interested see
an
article
on the
subject
by
Alan Sobel, Scientific American, early
1973
sometime.)
THE FORKED LIGHTNING
1. EARLIEST SYSTEM:
A
LITTLE PROGRAM TO MAKE DOTS
The earliest setup connected
a CRT to a
computer
by the
simplest possible means,
and
made
its
pictures with dots
on the
screen—
a
sort
of
tattooing process.
It
was
simple because
all the
computer did
was
furnish
to the
connecting circuitry
(or
interface) symbols specifying
how far up, and
how
far
across
the
screen,
the
next
dot
should
be.
These symbols were actually coded numbers, and
the
interface turned them into voltages which then moved
the
beam correspondingly. (This process
of
making
a
measured voltage
out of a
coded numerical symbol
is
called digital-to-analog conversion
•
since
(as
explained
on the
other side) the main meaning
of
“analog” these deyB
is “in
a measured voltage.”)
Now, this
has
several drawbacks.
One is
that
the
lines
are
dotty; nobody likes that.
A
more important annoyance, though,
is
that
the
computer scarcely
has
time
for
anything else. Here
is a
flowchart
of
what
the
computer
has to
do
in its
program. (Even
if you
didn’t look
at
the other side
of the
book, flowcharts
are
nothing scary. They’re just maps
of
what happens.)
2. LINE-DRAWING HARDWARE
The next atep
in
design
is to get the
com puter program
out of the
business
of
drawing
lineB
by a
succession
of
dots.
So we
build
a
piece
of
hardware that
the
computer program
may
simply instruct
to
draw
a
line.
As an
interface, it looks
to the
computer like four separate
devices:
registers that tell where
on the
screen the line must start
(“first
X” and
“first
Y”) and
registers that tell
it
where
to
stop
(“end X” and
“end Y”),
” Because their words have forked
no
lightning they Do
not go
gentle into that good night.” — Dylan Thomas
The most basic,
and yet
eventually
the
most versatile, computer display
is
that
of the
CRT.
or
bottled lightning
(as I
like
to
call
it).
It
is, you
know:
a
beam
of
electrons, just like lightning
in a
storm,
but
from
the
neck
of a
very empty bottle
to its
flat bottom, whose chemically coated surface
we
watch.
As
manipulated
by the
computer,
the CRT
stabs
its
beam to
all
corners
of the
faceplate: forked lightning.
Computer display began
in the
late forties. Computers themselves were completely
new,
and
so was Mr.
Dumont’s magical Cathode
Ray
Tube
or CRT (see
p.’%).
developed
on a
crash basis during
the war so we
could have radar,
and as
long
as it was
around after
the
war,
we got
television.
But
the
lightning bottle,
or CRT, can be
used
in a
variety
of
ways.
Its
control plates, which move
the ray of
electrons around
on the
screen,
can be
given various different electronic signals, causing
the
beam
to
move around in different patterns.
In
normal video,
the
signals move
the
beam
in a
zigzag pattern, where
the
zigs
are
very close together
and the
zags
are
invisible;
the
carpet
of
zigs covers the screen over
and
over
in a
repetitive pattern, and
the
beam’s changing intensity paints
the
picture.
But
we can
drive
the CRT
differently, by using different control signals.
For
instance: we
can
apply
a
measured voltage
to the
height or
“Y”
plates
of the CRT,
moving
the
beam to
a
given vertical position,
and
another measured voltage
to the
sideways
or “X”
plates, controlling
its
horizontal position.
C%
cor
p|or«oo3
We
i*.Hj/£
%t
»vuycj
,
~v
F’itfT
OoT
Furthermore,
and
here
was the
indignity of it, this system took
far too
long.
To
draw a line with thirty dots
in it
took thirty times around
the
loop
in the
flowchart,
and
since each box
in the
flowchart takes
at
least
one of the
machine’s rock-bottom instructions– usually
more–
then
the
main loop
of
this display routine takes four separate operations
per dot, or 120
operations
for a
stupid 30-dot line. Plainly there
has to be a
better
way to use an
expensive computer.
Actually
it
wasn’t just
the
ignominy
of it,
but
the
fact that
it
took
so
long, that made this a poor method.
The
amount
of
stuff
the
computer could draw
in
l/40th
of a
second—
and
this turns
out to be how
fast
the
whole picture
has
to
be
made–
was too
little. After
l/40th
of a
second
the
human
eye can see the
lines
on the
CRT start
to
fade,
and so the
picture
has to be
redrawn
to
make
it
bright again before that
happens.
If
your
eye
sees
the
picture fading, then when
the
computer draws
the
picture again you will
see it get
suddenly bright again–
and
it will start
to
flicker. This
is
distracting,
un
healthy,
and
disagreeable.
Note that
the
most important computer
in
the hi^tgry
of
computer display used this tech
nique1^
This
was the TX-2 at
Lincoln Labora
tories,
a
highly-guarded installation outside
Bos
ton which
is
formally part
of MIT. The TX-2
was
one of the
first transistorized computers–perhaps
the
first;
and on it
were programmed
a
number
of
milestone systems, including Sutherland’s Sketchpad, Johnson’s Sketchpad
IV, and
Baecker’s GENESYS animation system (discussed
somewhere).
This speeds things
up
considerably,
and
allows
the
computer program
to
display
on the
CRT simply
by
telling
the
device what lines
it
wants drawn. Moreover,
the
program
is
free to
do
other things while each line
is
being drawn, though this involves
the
problem
of how
the program
is to
know when
it’s
time
to
send out another line–
and we
needn’t
go
into that
here.
(Incidentally,
it is a
puzzling fact that such
a
device
is
available nowhere, although lots
of
people
end up
building
one for
themselves. There
was
such
a
thing
on the
market
a
couple of years
ago–
line-drawing hardware with
no
interface
and no
CRT—
but it was
withdrawn because
of
reliability problems.
A
just price, if anybody wants
to go
into that, would
be
five hundred
to a
thousand dolars— this year.)
3. EVOLUTION FROM THIS:
TWO
OPTIONS
There
are
basically
two
ways
to go
from this basic starting point. Either
we can
keep the display device intimately
and
integrally connected
to the
computer,
or we can say the
hell with
it and cut the
display device loose
as a
separate entity.
Ivan Sutherland
has
cannily noted that there
is a
certain trap involved
in
these designs: as
we
build additional “independent” structures to take
the
burden
of
display away from
the
computer,
we are
tempted
to
keep adding features which make
the
“independent” structure
a
computer
in its own
right. This paradoxical temptation Sutherland calls
“the
great wheel
of
Karma”
of
computer display architecture.
It
is
tempting
to cut the
display loose from the computer.
It
means
the
computer
can be
fully occupied with other matters than refreshing the screen— preparing
the
next displays, per
haps.
Many computer people believe this
is the
right
way to do it, and it is
certainly
one
valid approach.
But
unfortunately
it
also drastically reduces
the
immediacy
of the
system’s reaction, making interaction with
the
system less intimate and wonderful.
Approaches which
put
display refreshment and maintenance
in a
separate device
are
less interesting
to me, and so
that discussion continues separately nearby
.
(“btfiv^^*”**^* f-
J*12l).
4. THE SECOND PROGRAM FOLLOWER
On the other Bide of the book. 1 explained that a computer ia basically a sippy device, never mind how constructed, which follows a program somehow stored symbolically In a core memory. Such a device we call here a program follower. While programs may be in many computer languages– all of them contrived systems for expressing the user’s wishes, in different styles and with different general intent– underneath they all translate to an inner language of binary patterns, which may Just be thought of as patterns of X and 0. or light bulbs on and off. The innermost program follower of the computer goes down lists of binary patterns stored in the core memory, and carries them out as specific instructions. It also changes its sequences of operations under conditions that the programmer has told it to watch for.
The most powerful and responsive com puter displays are those which build a second program follower which goes down lists of picture-drawing instructions also stored in the same core memory,
FOLLOWER.
rc.fVej-.cj scntei^-
**)m*-pc
-pit
j\srw.
We may call this also a “list-of-lines” system, since the commands recognized by the display program follower are typically patterns that tell it what lines to draw.
Typically also it has its own way of jump ing around in a program, and may jump to a specific list of lines, or subpicture, from numerous other parts of its program, always returning each time to the point from which it had jumped. This -allows the same subpicture to appear in numerous places on the screen at the same time. (A program that can be jumped to by other programs which then resume operation is called a subroutine; thus the
real,
or most prestigious, name for such a device is a subroutining display.)
This design has some extraordinary advan
tages.
One is that since the computer’s program follower and the display’s program foUower both share the same core memory, they can work together most intimately. When the user demands something new– by typing, say, or pointing with a light-pen– the computer can step in and take various actions. Its program can compose a new picture for the user, get something from a disk or tape memory, or switch the display’s program follower over to a new picture it has already prepared.
Most importantly, the computer can move images on the screen, allowing interactive~anTr nation on the screen under the user’s control. Each time the display is about to show the same picture again, the computer simply supplies it with a new atartinfl point. Since the list of lines is typically in the form of sequences of lines relative to one another, the picture is drawn in a new place each time– and thus seen to move on the screen.
This design haa some extraordinary advan
tages.
One is that since the computer’s program follower and the display’s program follower both share the same core memory
•
they can work together moat intimately. When the user demands something new– by typing, say, or pointing with a light-pen– the computer can step in and take various actions. Its program can compose a new picture for the user, get something from a disk or tape memory, or switch the display’s program follower over to a new picture it has already prepared.
Most importantly, the computer can move images on the scren. allowing interactive
ani
mation on the screen under the user’s control. Each time the display starts to show the same picture egain, the computer simply supplies it with a new starting point. Since the list of lines is typically in the form of sequences of lines relative to one another, the picture is drawn in a new place each time– and thus seen to move on the
Finally, the computer itself is free moat of Ihe time– free, that is, to do other things, which typically is always desirable. Just how much the computer can or should do in such a partnership is n matter of dispute. (Ordinarily such devices arc spliced onto minicomputers; and minicomputer fans, such as the author, see no reason not to perform all services for the
dis
play there in the minicomputer– and a pox on the big machines. Others, for various reasons. Bee the subroutining display and its host mini as needing the tender ministratious of a4 big-computer via some sort of communications line. There are various reasons for holding this entirely legitimate view. People who are devoted to the high number-crunching capacity of big computers, or to languages which require great big computers to run in. have a right to their opinion. Moreover, it is currently feasible lo store large bodies of data only on big computers — not because big disk and tape memories can’t be easily attached to the small ones, for they can, but they usually aren’t; and other ways to tie minicomputers to big stores of data aren’t available yet.)
Subroutining displays often hove commands allowing them to display text as well as lines and dots. In the display of text they can use the some technique of “moving the picture” by starting its display at successively creeping
points;
this will cause, say. whole paragraphs to slide on the screen. The importance of this feature in the displaying of text cannot be iphasized. As more and more people have experience with displays of different kinds, they are beginning to realize how confusing and
dis
orienting it is for a screen to clear and be filled with something new to read. You don’t know where you are. On subroutining displays, moving the text con give the reader the same sense of orientation he gets from turning pages — an important thing to replace.
It must be stressed here that, just as com puters themselves have no fixed mode or style of operation, neither do computer displays; and so the purpose of such devices is simply
HELPING PEOPLE SEE AND MANIPULATE PICTURES AND TEXT IN ANY STYLE, AND FOR ANY PURPOSE.
Since pictures can be of anything, and text can be about anything, this effectively comprehends the entire mental and working life of mankind.
Many readers will scoff, supposing that computer display systems will always cost tons of money. This is not Ihe case. You can already get a beauty, with its minicomputer, for as little as $13,000; and this price should fall to three or four thousand within a few years–as soon as the minicomputer manufacturers realize that the market frontier is not in the office or factory, but in the home. But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. TYPES OF SUBROUTINING DISPLAY
Some early subroutining displays used a screen-dotting technique, but took the burden of it off the computer itself; it would extract from core memory the instructions telling it to draw individual lines and show text. (1 refer here to the DEC model 338, introduced about 1965; this attached to a PDP-8 computer (see p.’jT) and cost about $50,000 including the computer.) Others drew lines as straight zips of light across the screen; an example is the IBM 2250 diaplay, introduced about 1966. (The model 1 of thia device buckled directly to the 360, and cost, 1 believe, something like $75,000; its successor, the model 4, buckled to their 1130 minicomputer, the package costing some $150,000, and then you were supposed to attach it to an IBM 360.) The 2250 was a good machine, but in performance suffers greatly from the restrictions of the 360 computer itself (see p.4j ).
These earlier machines are being replaced by new versions with better-designed instructions (see “Computer Architecture,” p.
“$2..
tor a sense of what well-designed instructions are). An especially fine unit is DEC’s OT40, which buckles on the exceptionally fine PDP-11 minicomputer (see
p.*tt-).
The GT40 is illustrated nearby. (?%) It goes for aome $12,000 including the computer. (That’s today, we repeat. Consider noi the price at this instant, but how fast it’s going down.)
The units mentioned above are of the moat basic type: “two-dimensional,” whose pictures at any given instant correspond to flat drawings — but, of course, derive their excitement and magnificence from their capacity to interact, change and animate whut you are looking at.
JrW twUf’S V** d.k]:»»«i #K f. i^o.
Seld cm has an event in a new field had as much power and Influence aa what dour Ivan Sutherland did as a young man V the period 1960-64. ~ The SKETCHPAD system,which was basically hla theale work at
HIT,
waa at once Inventive, profound, overwhelmingly Impressive to laymen, snd deeply elegant. Simply for the universal influence It has had In the computer field. It deserves our close attention. Sutherland was one of the first people to understand the use of the computer in helping people visualize things that weren’t fully clear
yet—
the opposite, of course, of the conventional notion of computers. While computers had been made to do animations as early as the forties, and computer graphics had been put to workaday duties in the old 5ACE system (defending us against bombers in the fifties— remember the good old
days?),
Sutherland turned computer display from an expensive curiosity into a true dream machine.
SKETCHPAD ran on the 36-bltTX-2, a one-of-a-kind experimental machine at Lincoln Laboratories (a military research place nominally a part of MIT). It had a diaplay screen, light pen and lots of handy
switches.
SKETCHPAD was basically a drawing system. But rather than simulating paper (as some people might have
done),
it found splendid ways to take advantage of the computer’s special capabilities. In the Sketchpad system, Sutherland looked for ways that a responding computer display screen could help people design things. He pioneered methods of drawing on screens, with such techniques as the “rubber-band line” (a straight line on the screen, one end of which follows your lightpen while the other remains
fixed),
and the “Instance”— a subpicture stored In core memory which could appear numerous times and ways in a larger
picture).
This picture vaguely eimulatee the “instance” facility of
Sketchpad,
by uKicn an overall picture may be created out of repetitions of a c ingle master pattern.
..ilated with GRASS ‘.-.Kjuage (see
p.32).
The mind-blowing thing about Sketchpad was the way you could move and manipulate the picture on the screen, with all Its parts. One overall picture could be constructed out of a hundred copies of a basic picture; then a change In the basic picture would Immediately be shown in all hundred places. Or you could expand your picture until it was effectively the size of a football field (with you looking at a tiny view In the handkerchief-sized
screen).
Or you could draw meshing gears on the screen, and with the light-pen (and through the “constraint” facility) make one gear turn by turning the other!
the constraint,does not seem to have onstraint” was a restriction placed ill stored picture complex. The user various parts of the picture on the screet matralnts could only move in certain dl- dragglng other
This elegant technlqi been imitated even now. i on some part of the overa. could move or manipulai but the parts that had
rections,
or according to certain fonnuL parts along, etc., as specified. This was a profound Idea, because It meant that any rules for the manipulation of particular objects on the screen could be added to Sketchpad as particulars within the larger program, rather than having to be programmed in from scratch. (One extremely interesting aspect of Sutherland’s thesis, which most people aeem to have missed, dealt with displaying a structure of constraints: that is, showing what elements depended on what other elements, in a highly abstracted diagram that the system could show you. This form of display has remarkable possibilities.
After his brilliant SKETCHPAD work, Sutherland waa made head of ARPA’s computer branch (see “Military.” p. 33 ). There he wea involved In many of the computer funding decisions of the late
sixties,
which contributed to the impetus of computer display. (His predecessor, Licklider, had been a pioneer In time-sharing, end much of the forward movement In the computer field In recent years may just have had to do with the strategic position of those two men when they were at ARPA/IPT.) Sketchpad went on as a continuing research tradition at Lin coln Labs. Timothy Johnson, for instance, made a version of it that allowed the drawing of three-dimensional objects; thla became the forerunner of the various three-dimensional line systems described hereabouts• From ARPA. Sutherland went on to the University of Utah, whence he slipped off with the Computer Science department chairman to found the Evens and Sutherland Computer Company, makers
°*
the top-of-the-llne computer display systems (see p.JM* P
system <
land's work has shown an elegance and Inventiveness itandlng In the field. (For instance, I believe one issue of Lena of the ACM had two unusual articles by him: one de-
I
eccentric "Chinese auction" system worked out for -omputer, which benefited uaers more than any and the infamous "Great Wheel of Karma" article.
Suthei Communl scribing .... scheduling use previous method Kthod; ud th. lnfernoo. "Greet Wheel ol "™ t :o>pered th. design of gr.phlc.l oo«puter. to th. Hindu r.lnc.rnetlon– il yoo k«.p adding de.ireble fe.ture.
th.
oeelgo, .oon yoo heve another ptogiui follower .nd .noth.r coa puter in the sue box— over «nd over.)
DM 24
How do computers make movies?
Well,
first of all, computers do not make movies unless thoroughly provoked.
In fact, only people make movies. But computers, if sufficiently provoked, will do a lot of it: enact the movie and photograph it, frame by frame.
There is no single method.
All forms of computer display and computer graphics may be used to make computer movies.
“Computer animation” is any method of mak ing movies in which a computer successively draws or paints the successive individual frames, which may be done by any of the methods mentioned in this book. Now, since there are numerous methods of making pictures by computer, then any method of making different individual pictures, in a succession of changing frames, is computer animation. So a “computer movie” is any film made by, or with the picture-making aid of, computers.
In other words– it’s no one thing.
Now, there already exist hundreds, if not thousands, of computer movies. So far most of them have been on technical topics– the mechanics of satellite orbit stabilization, the mechanics of explosions and so on.
Here are a few stills from some other movies, more humanis tic.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Newman G Sproull, Interactive Computer
Graphics.
McGraw, $15.
This is the textbook. Anyone interested in computer display should get this immediately.
An expensive journal, Computer Graphics and Image Processing, comes from Academic Press.
Sherwood Anderson,v’Computer Animation: A Survey. Journal of Micrographics, Sep 71, 13-20. Lists nineteen computer-animation languages of that time.
I-
JoHK]
Ken Knowlton, “Computer-Made Films,” Fill Newsletter Dec 70, 14-20.
Instructions
for the
desired
movie enter the computer as a
deck
of punched
cards.
lakers
Vintage Knowlton, using
BEFLIX.
(This language used the -COM quite efficiently: dots were actually out-of-fooue letters. )
VanderbL- , • • which showc uc
BEFLIX,
which •^g influence of •t grows from).
Lillian Schwartz
A talented artist with a feel for tech nology, Ms. Schwartz has been working for several years with Knowlton and others at Bell Labs. Her films with Knowlton, mentioned elsewhere, are marvelous. She now works at a more permanent setup, a minicomputer that runs successive images on a color TV screen, employing a modified form of Knowl-ton’s EXPLOR language. The work is immediately viewable. This allows rapid film construction,- not previously possible when the work had to go through a slow animation camera before she could see the result.
For Knowlton-&-Schwartz films contact: Martin Duffy, AT&T, 195 Broadway, NY NY.
Schwartz & Knowlton. Using the
EXPLOR.
language, they make pictures and patterns scintillate and grow
together.
(EXPLOR in some ways generalizes Conway’s Game of
Life;
see p.^andp. DM~^_S)
JOHN WHITNEY
John Whitney is the ancestor of us all probably the first computer movie-maker. He is also a gripping speaker.
In the forties, he built a special anima tion stand– using analog computers.
Deeply concerned with music, -Whitney has in his images emphasized rhythmic and contrapuntal movement of shapes and lines.
Whitney films available from: Pyramid
Films,
Box 1048, Santa Monica CA 90406.
John Whitney
J
§
J
8
>
O
t.
8
> o *. 8
> o +• 8
X
>
X
>
X
V
>
X
>
X
John Whitney
Lillian Schwartz (with Henry Magnuaki; see p.
DM 25
By now there are dozens of computer anima tion languages— perhaps hundreds. Each one employs the techniques of animation which itB developer wanted to use, tied together in the ways that seemed appropriate to him. (See “Computer Languages,” p. 15, and note Knowlton’s various animation languages, described nearby.)
One of the more influential animation systems has been Ron Baecker’s GENESYS, a 2-dLmensional animation system programmed in the late sixties at MIT’s high-security Lincoln Laboratory. (It used the TX-2 computer, mentioned elsewhere in this book.)
Baecker, a cheery and genial fellow, expressed interest as a student in using the TX-2 for animation, and was allowed to. The system he produced has a number of lessons for us all.
GENESYS is a “Good-Guy” system,as discussed on p. I Heaning, in this case, that it is easy to learn and simple to use. As argued elsewhere in this book, making computer systems clear and simple is often hard for the programmer (and may go against his
grain),
but is essential.
PICTURES AND MOTIONS
GENESYS makes the following simplifications of your movie: all images are made up of dots. They do not change as you watch; animation consists of the images either moving or being replaced .
To create an image, you draw it onto the screen with a lightpen or a tablet. (As in the SKETCHPAD system; see p.^O Parts of. the image may be changed until you’re satisfied.
>
A
^ /
Lynn Smith is a young Boston artist who has worked extensively with Baecker’s GENESYS (see
nearby).
One result has been a movie which should be an example to us
all:
“The Wedding Movie for Bob and Judy ” (Her Friends Bob and Judy were getting married, so she made this movie, a few minutes long and quite clever, to celebrate
it.
)
This is my favorite example of how computers should be used in the human world; it says more on the subject than any dozen articles.
(One question that remains unanswered is how a system like GENESYS could have been used for such a purpose, seeing that most people in the field believe GENESYS only rum on the heavily-guarded TX-2 computer. Regretfully, I can shed no light on this here.)
Now, to create the animation, you do the same thing. Each image can be made to move on the screen; and the path of the motion may be drawn on the screen, through the picture area. Not only that, but the timing of the motion is controlled through the same diagram, by the spacing of the dots. (Baecker calls his control diagrams p-curves•)
Lastly, sections of picture may be re placed by means of the control diagram (a7 indicated in picture
above).
Having created such an animated sequence, which is stored in symbolic form in the computer (
digitally”),
you can vleu lt on tlu, screen, decide what you do and don’t like about it, and change any part of lt.
The basic elegance of the system is this: Baecker made everything work the same way, through control by screen diagrams. He simplified the animation problem i„ a clear and simple
Ron now teaches In Canada and is into work ing with PDP-lls. The results should be fun.
^ Computer Output Microfilm
are what you use to make computer movies. Basically they consist of a CRT and a movie camera in a box.
Mostly they are used to put text on microfilm by computer, so generally they are not connected to a computer but run off magnetic tape.
This turns out to be very annoying if you want to hook up the computer directly to the COM, and make movies that fill the frames spot-by-spot. For that you really need your own movie camera and a minicompu
ter.
(Movie cameras that can be made to start and stop by computer are called “pulse
cameras”
or “instrumentation cameras.”) The society for people who make Movies by Computer is called UAIDE – (Users of Automatic Information Display Equipment— an obsolete
title).
It used to be a club just for companies that owned COMs made by Stromberg Datagraphix, but evidently it has now cut itself loose and become a subsidiary of the National Microfilm Association, 8728 Colesville Road, Silver Spring MD 20910.
(NOTE: for them as want to make color
movies,
the two alternatives have been either to have separate primary negatives combined at a lab— the “old Technicolor” processor to add a complicated color-filter box to a COM or other CRT setup. Such things are available commercially now, from Dicomed— a whole Color COM.)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Computer Output Microfilm. $10 from National Microfilm Assn., above. Lists available COMs and service centers.
POT
am
or
PLATO
•yat
(Above:
l-LATO
LlVcZ’.
Anyway,
the word iteelf goes through changes in the
Oanie
of Life (see P- fV, as programed for the PLATO system by
Daivty
2 lea tor, and
photo-
•jrap’:r,;
jrm j
p^,;:-}
:he world’s sre.it
nipt Ion
Some 500 user., at terminal* around the world >ut mostly In
Illinois),
simultaneously tic up to big computer in Urban*, Illinois and savor lnstan-incous pictorial and cent deliver les on their bright :na. Diagrams, explsnatlons, teats and on of a aort, flow almost without inter-he bright orange screens all over. The syatem ia extremely responsive: depending on what the uaer Is up to. Its various programs can respond to each pressing of a key, usually within a fraction of
While literature on PLATO is copious, it Is hard to read and slightly sales-oriented, but a f w
minutes’
intercourse with a PLATO terminal cik^s anyone an enthuaiast for the system. PLATO Is the brainchild of Don Ritzcr. a I. at Illlnoia engineer who haa devoted over a decade to ita creation. Michael Scrii haa called Bltzer “one of tt Bltsar is also certainly on. he’lll™ * CC*u”cut’ “”SSJ-bear great terminal along, you uy be informed thai ling dog and pony show,
i
‘ill..
If you have a PLATO terminal— you’ presumably being a achool or other favored Institution— you can In principle log onto PLATO from anywhere in the world, though most terminals stay in one place. There ia one aaln network, conaiatlng of a big Control Data computer in Urbana (the model 6800; see p. 4l ) with tendrils extending out into the phone system and the educational TV cable of the state of Illinois. When 1« “finished’* and fully loaded, it
irld d When y ilgn
I
foi will have 1 The PLATO terminal 1 manufactured (all tt (Ins a terrific plai plum* panel was invented by H much of PLATO was publicly fun rich from lt. We said he was
In terms of high performance for lota of users. Various systems (described hereabouts) offer more
paver,
but at huge aoet.
:irst taste of interaction cal couputer systeu, PLATO irniing nind-ojiener– es-> people w,lu think touputers
COT
• Inulti
KTO la a complete stand-alone system, [or program or “operating system” (si in the CDC 6800 computer all by ltael run on any other manufacturer’s coajf tously with any othar big programs, munlcatas only with PLATO terminate, no othai PLATO terminals, because of their unusual del ual design and pertly because of Its unlqua ! interface. (See diagram of PLATO terminal, t A PLATO terminal colli about J*000 and seams to be going up; $5000 In the next few ) a popular estimate. But you can’t ]uat buy t have to get on the waiting list, and who ara
t really un.l r Princeton. > Evaluation itlonal Teatl
funds) ready and so many mi tlon and the making of mi to believe PLATO could d
my
l
1 put together: at Lowry Air Force Baae (Colo-1 Florida State University. That means there
OR changed all that. It haa both ects of being original. Apparently termen’s controversies end dogma, language of great power and spaed; it , and is In aome respects quite It looks very simple to the user— but deceptively simple techniques, lt has
I
in considerable detail to do anything (See box, “Mr !**>
fa
T-tT”, .«t r-v) This zer and Tenczar did noi leedera In s seething i people working like bli
simplified.
Bit
ty of dozens of smart . the project, it has taken some fifteen years of Bitter’s effort, and tena of millions of dollars, to get the system where lt la now— Ready snd Working. Project PLATO now extends far beyond lta original domain. Originally a fairly tight nucleus at the Computer-Based Education Research Laboratory
(“CERL”)
at the U. of Illinois In Urbana, the cosssunlty of PLATO now sprawla out through its lines to a larger constituency, the PLATO community of users. (Indeed, this extended Republic of PLATO— tha systems people (see p. in Urbana, the author! and locsls-ln-charge throughout the network— constitute one of the maddest rookeries of computer freaks In the world. Where else would you find a 14-year-old system* programmer who’s had his job for two years? Where else would you see people fall In love over the Talkamatlc (a PLATO program which allows you to have writteo conversations with people at other terminals, wherever they may be) only to clash when at last they meet in person? Where else csn you play so many different games with faraway strangers? (See Box.) Where else can students anywhere In the network sign Into hundreds of different lessons in different subjects (moat of tbem
Incomplete)!
Where else are people working on various different programs for :ary i all to be offered c
f of the wonder
the •
i
«ya-
Hike
O’Brien,
a Tolkien
fancier,
has put the tntin Elvish alphabet onto PLATO as a special aharaater~eet. Here ths system gives a famous warning to turn
book,
both in English and Elvish. Hike says it intimidates snoopers poking around his material.
Unfortunately, there so few PLATO terminals, thi now be fairly strictly com at the University of Illlnt which most of these plcturi
ju.
oiled. (Ths eight term! a at Chicago Circle, at were taken, generally »
rabble is howling a
if your achool has PLATO terminals, and IF It will pay for the communications linaa, THEN the service* of the central computer are “fraa”— the National Science Foundation Is bankrolling Its operation for a couple of year* more. Then, bango. PLATO central service becomes something that haa to be paid for too. Juat to give you an Idea, the communication costs to Urbana for Circle Campus’* eight terminal* end at c/er $10 ,000 a year. But the** coat* ahould ba coming down sharply; lt ia the price of tooling up (or whatever th* PLATO future le going to be. Anyway, the general coat of the aystarn comae out to ebout $1.50 an hour, the aaaw as general time-sharing on a PDP-10 (sea p. ). But that’s without paying for the centrel computer— another coat which we expect
Thle ia all a far cry. of couraa, from Bitaar’a claim a decade ago that PLATO terminal* would cost only 8*00. But considering tha system’s success, wm
i people’a love foi la thla: with • • stay Platonic’
then
a
qui ok kill
of the
unknown
adversary.
And
cur
doughty
<•
Big Board
for
more challengers. Kids love PLATO games.
when
(he
Author gets tired
of
Authoring,
or th*
Student
of
Slewing, Just around
the
corner,
• few
keystroke* away,
ere
diversion*
and
game*
to
boogie the ImaoJnelion. You
can go to a
prooraa
("lesson
rote")
and
look
at
"the great rose*"-- elaborate curlicue*
gen-
er*(ed
by
mathematical pattern*
(hat
appealed
to the
author*
of (hat
program;
or
find, a I*o tucked
In
rose, Conway'* Game
of
Life (see write-up, p.
T£ . and
pier ture serie*.
nearby).
Then there
are
game*
you can
play against
the
System, like racetrack
and
blackjack. (The** game* let
you win
astronomical *ums
of
money-- play money, forgotten when
you
*
i
gn off.) Remember,
o'
course, that you're
not
really playing against
a
computer
but
against
a
specific program, with
Its
quirks
and
shortcut*
and
blind spots. Then there
are
game*
you
play
by
yoursel
f —
aceually responding resources (*ee
fp.
>*,
rt-nJ
,
_wh’ch entice
you
Into trying things out. Tenciar himself ha* created
(wo
elegant, gem-like lessons,
man and
plcto, which teach
you
computer programming without ever saying so. These
two
programs present
the
u*er
•
of i the i show
hia h
made
to pi
the student
may
have
his
he’s learning
to
program (Though
it Is a
quite
rei
belli
the little
man may be
moved around
and
up pictures
of
balls. From there
cm
tay have
his
way—
and is
never told that computer language.
iio.
Another called candy
I
th*
animation’
chine*
are set
lhip
t. I
don’t know
by
whoa, t
too the
utir
amy
conti -a
by
what
he
type*-
Hi
:ure candy,
box It and
i
you c
t
who
1
Some game*
arc
played between people together before
a
single PLATO terminal, or(en
w
(caching Intent. Such game* Include
the hop caw
where Bunny (you)
and
Frog (your friend)
add the
way along
a
board with numbered squares. Older t
Wa*
(1*2)X
),
which
‘-
grouping ahead
of I
the number! other
i
‘BIC BOARD” GAMES
has neny
l
.al*
:
by
chance
to try to get
i
is
combination
of
anonymity
and
ln(imacy between user*
(–
much like
the
curious Nonexistent Phone Numbers of Paris;
in the
French phone system, people calling the same nonexistent phone number
can
talk
to
each other; strange blindfolded encounter* occur
at (he
Number
of The
Day, spread
by
word-of-mouth; sometimes these result
In
people really getting
together…)…
Anyway,
the Big
Board games
of
PLATO have exac tly that:
a
shared list,
or “Big
Board,” showing
who
Is playing
the
specific game.
society
of
shadows,
you
pick your – fighting name.
Thl*
ha* num-
i most obvious
il
that
st you I ra
in shed
the
identity
In
which
you
erous advantage*: prove
at
play,
yc
have been himilii The main game* with
Big
Board*
are
standby, spacewar (rocketshlps wheeling at each other
and
sliding around
on (he
dogfight (biplanes wheeling
and
firing
i
and sliding around
on (he
screen),
moony
View from your Wove spaa* ship
in
cludes perspective view
of
Where you
are
among billions
of
stare;
and your various controls.
The navigation part
of
already workit^.
To get
around you need instruction; here
we
are
at the
Training
Center.
that
old
ind firing
icreen};
; each other •r (shooting
Bunny
‘a
turn. Screen you personally:
‘
9″Y by
spei ‘*)
.
In
addl <-*) what rnusi
>me*
anywhen
KMngoni,
e
ifled angles
»\ rou
*tand (Ion, PLATO offers (not durln be
two of the
most baroque (eight race*
(the
il the gal-mi Mio)
lystems,
all of
which
a
People
who
only play PLATO games occasionally have
to
*lgn on.by typing their names into
the big
board. (They often
get
slaughtered
by the
regulars) The regular*– hah. When they’re signed Into
the
system, they have merely
to
jump
to a
specific game for their fightln’ names
to be
posted
on the big
board.
A
mighty rolleal
1
they make, too— such grei warriors
as yon
Dave, rot, fright pilot,
AL 3000,
simpson, doc-,
THE RED
BARON,
The Red
Sweater,
The
Giant Pud, Fodzilla. tigress, enema salad, Conan, Slddhertha, wonder pig:!!::,
and
EXORCIST. (As those insiders
who
have automatic sign-on to
Big
Boards write programs
to do the
sign-on,
the
arrival
in a Big
Board game
Is
often
an
animated sign-on.
The
cutest trick
Is THE RED
BARON’*:
it I,
THE
RED
BARON
4f
*^~(tL*
«,„
wocks like
thi*.
For
dogfight,
the
idy
has
stored
In its
temporary memo irp
acters,”
thi
going
to bu;
foilows
his
acter.) around
the
•
ry,
a*
“char-
ne*
that
arc
he Baron Just he code
for
that special char-
One last point.
No
longer
can you
sign
on
with an obscenity:
a
little obscenity-checking program looks
for the
usual expletives,
in
case visitor*
or
other priggish folk might
be
looking.
But of
course
thl*
i*
easy
to
circumvent
by
putting periods between the letters
of
your nasty word,
or
something similarly deceptive
to the
poor program,.
The PLATO
keyboard.
What looks
odd and
arbitrary
t
to
be
divinely
ordained.’
you
is
believed
by
devout Platoniatt
PLATO
IV- STANDARD KEYBOARD
••aataHSHHBHcnj
TO MOVE BETWEEN
LESSONS,
the
basic action
is to
hold down SHIFT
and
press
STOP.
(For further complications
see
Ins-And-Oute diagram.) TO HOVE VTTBIN
A
LESSON,
basic actions
are
NEXT
(to go
forward
or
tell
the
eystem
it’s its
turn;
BACK,
which sometimes returns
you to
earlier points
in the
sequence
of
your lesson;
and six
step-out-of-li’ options,
by
uhich
the
author
may
permit
the
user
to
sidestep
to ex
planations, enrichment material,
or
things
out of
sequence.
The original idea
was
evidently that there would
be a
basic sequence
in
uhich NEXT
and
BACK would
be the
forward
and
back controls,
and
the other
tu
would represent Mslp
for the
Confused,
a
“Lab”
allowing expervssnts,
and
additional Data
the
student decides
he
needs.
The
three with Shifts simply provided
a
second option
of
each
type.
Now
the
author might
use
these,
however,
was his own
affair.
TEW evidently
was for
when students wanted thinge Looked
Up: bu
pressing TERM
and
typing
the
unknown
word,
the
student uoula
get a
definition.
‘•ASS”
suggested that
it
might also
be
used when
the
student
was
allowed
the
option
of
being told
the
answer.
Nats
the
arrows over
Q,U,E.A,D,Z,X,C.
They allow
the
student
to
move
13P,t0r£’
Tf’
point dir’otion*’ Unfortunate confusion ensues •”P
ZVJf 7™
°*
th* far USt’ in
Proo*”«>ing
(as in APL;
BUSE allows
the
student
to
correct
his
input; COPT helps edit
and
ohcmge things.
SUP and SUB
allow superscripts
and
subscripts-fOm MICRO
is
like
a
special
shiftTy,
golg into vhatsver .’pedal I°nt t. currently stored
on the
terminal.
I
have
no
inkling
of
what w« little square means.
IS
irBemi^TD
TOOT?
“A tutor
uho
tooted
the
flute Tried
to
tutor
two
tutors
to
toot. But
he
asked through
his
snoot: is
it
better
to
toot Or
to
tutor
two
tutors
to
toot?”
Folk thing The TUTOR language grew
out of
drill-arid- proctlce,
for
which
lt haa a
command specifying where
a
student’s answer
Is to
appear
on the
screen. This
is the
“arrow” ccaaund.
The
language
has a
strange scanning structure built around thia “arrow* command, auch
as the
TRAC Language
(see
pp. 18-21)
has a
scanning structure built around parentheses
and
coeamas.
Be
ginners don’t need
to
understand
the
scan
and
the arrow command,
but
journeymen
do.
TENCZAR’S CONCEPT
OF A
CONCEPT Much
has
been
n
for “analyzing
the c
type in. Actually, does
not
“understand (see “Artificial
Int
but rathei offer
of TUTOR’S facility
int”
of
what student*
:ourse,
the
computer lat
the
student says
) prepare preset
alter- s powerful techniqui
Basically, TUTOR’S “concept” facility reduces every input word
to a
60-bit code. The technique
of
reduction (called
a
“hashing function”) supposedly substitutes
for any
word
of any
language
a
code
of 60
bits
(see
“Binary Patterns,”
p.
33), which means
the
program
in
TUTOR
can
rapidly test
s
student’s input
for
numerous different possible things. (The power
of
this technique will
be
readily recognized
by
computer people; unfortunately there
is no
room
to
explain
it
further here.) Thus
a
TUTOR program
may
contain “concept
searches”
that test whether
a
student types either
a
desired response
or
numeri
native*.
While
lt nay be
strange
i
thi*
a
“concept,”
‘
Paul Tenczax’a TUTOR language,
the
pro gramming language inside PLATO,
is
like
any
other programming language (see pp. 15-31}) intricate,
and
unlike
its
results. That
is,
a program bears
no
more resemblance
to
what it doe* than
the
word “cow” looks like
a
COM.
PLATO
Is a
system
for
canned presentation* that respond
to the
student. Student* need not know TUTOR. Anyone
out to
prepare such presentations must leaxn it, howevert
and the
attempt
has
discouraged many. Tenczar
is a
former biologist,
and had no
preconceptions from computer orthodoxy
to
bind him
in the
design
of
TUTOR. Thus
the
language
is
very original. There
is
only room to raise
the
following points: To learn
the
first step*
in
TUTOR—
how
to
set up
drill-ond-practice lesions,
for in
stance—
is
unusually easy. To
do
anything complex, however, require* you
to
learn
the
bulk
of the
TUTOR language. Thus when people
say
TUTOR
ia
“easy,” thay
TUTOR
i
Language
Isi
language with
new
compound function*
of hi*
own making. Steps
are
being taken
to
correct
this;
meanwhile,
lt ia
said that
the
Urban* people
can be
persuaded
to put in new
oussaauds others want for, e.g., chocolate chip cookie*.
7¥tr ar^’Kei/Y’i’zY r£%*”utL.
–
fLTTO
TiKT ufFp
OF
PIATO.
HftMO
CM
TV,C
wart*-. U*\Z
h
Picture*-
You
can
read
the
standard-size lettering
off
the screen
at SIX
FEET— even though
it’s
NO BIGGER THAN PICA TYPE. Fantastic. The internal circuitry that draws
on the
screen 1* highly capable. Receiving
a
20-blt
code, the terminal Itself deciphers
it
as
— A LINE
ON THE
SCREEN,
or
TWO STANDARD CHARACTERS
ON THE
SCREEN from
its
FIXED character memory,
or
TWO SPECIAL CHARACTERS
ON THE
SCREEN from
its
CHANGEABLE character memory (which
can be
loaded with Russian, Armenian, katakana, Cherokee
or
what
ever—
even little pictures—
at the
start
of the
lesson),
or
A COMMAND
TO THE
MICROFICHE PROJECTOR,
or
A COMMAND
TO THE
AUDIO PLAYER,
or
A COMMAND
TO
WHATEVER’S
IN THE
GENERAL JACK. Note that
all
lines
and
characters
for the
plana screen
can be
turned
on
(orange
on
black)
or
off (black
on
orange).
PLATO’S HANOI KEYBOARD
is on .
flexible
cable,
can be
worn in your
lap.
AUTHOR’*
ttATO-SHCfi
W)
*ij
But wait. Evans and Sutherland has now dropped the LDS-1 and given us– no, not LDS-2, but something called The Picture System— also built onto the
PDP-11,
but this one works symbolically (digitally) and in full perspective. The price starts at eighty grand.
Since the Picture System works out of the PDP-11 core memory, the commands it follows are 16 bits long, since that’s the size of a slot in PDP-11 core. But wait. They’ve designed the thing to convert to 36 bits, so that coordinates are moved to a private store or buffer between the program follower and the display. This means the display can zoom and zip around in the scene without bothering the computer.
rpp-11,
Another important feature of The Picture System: it will do, not just ordinary perspective, out such weird view calculations as wideangle barrel distortion, pincushion distortion and similar stuff.
ia
Ida from their fun and exc lta-
•ant—
allow people to understand and work with complex 3D structures without having to build thn physically.
Th*
understanding, however, cornea fro* being able to turn and manipulate the structure on tha screen. If you can’t turn it you can’t really perceive the 3D structure, because the arrangement of line* could ba anything.
However, system ,n1
devices allow you to turn things on the screen as easily a* If they were on turntable* behind a pane of gla*s. That’s how you see, you see. Thla Interaction Is what make* computer
dis
play augur a new era for mankind. If we’re lucky. (It’s also why we use the term computer display in this book, rather than “computer graphics,” since people who make computers draw with pens are also doing “computer graphics”— a related activity, but not one to change the world.)
UNFORTUNATELY, just to get through the basics there is only room to discuss stick-figure graphic display here. But curved surfaces may also be depicted, though usually not inte actively. See below, and pp.
i>*\3(-}.
Drawing by Ruth WeisB1 BE VISION program done at Bell Laboratories, mid-sixties. (© Ua’t Disney Productions.) This program represented truly curved surfaces In its data structure, as “quadric surfaces”— that is, involving powers of two in the math— and calculated the visible lines tangent to the edges from the viewpoint, thus drawing the edges. Removing the hidden parts of the curves is of course one of the greatest problems. (From Ruth A.
Weiss,
“BE VISION.” JACK Apr 66, 194-
204,
p.
201.41
V*
Courtesy V. of Utah
The rules of perspective have been under stood since the Renaissance. In olden computer times (up till about 1965) people used to do three-dimensional view calculation by angles relative to a three-dimensional data structure. Then Larry Roberts at MIT noted that there was a more appropriate mathematical method, long moldering in obscure texts. The idea is this: if you add an extra dimension to the data, it’s easier to program. It’s easier because it becomes a simple matrix multiplication, which has no common sense explanation but is important to mathematicians.
SO that means that to calculate views of three-dimensional objects, the most usual way is now to add that extra dimension. Instead of having a point in space whose position is 36-24-36 (in some set of three-dimensional coordinates), another arbitrary number is added to make it,
say.
36-24-36-1.
It seems that in the mathematics of multiple dimensions, it comes out simpler that way. Indeed, from a mathematical point of view the new improved dimension is just like the other three. For this reason, such an augmented system of coordinates is celled homogeneous coordinates. Like homogenized milk, Ihe additional coordinate is just stirred in with the rest, and out comes your desired view calculation. (The formulas are to be found in Newman and Sproull. Principles of Interactive Computer O rap hies
,
McGraw,
$15,
your basic text on the subject.)
At any rate the additional coordinate is often referred to, incorrectly, as the “homogeneous coordinate.” They’re all homogeneous, which is why it works.
M31
Myftfrp*!*
GRASS
impudent and plucky Tom DeFanti was an assist ant professor at 24. This in part because he has created one of the world’s hottest 3D graphics lang
uages,
which he calls CRASS, (He says it stands for CRAphics Symbiosis System— also, he says, it Turns You On.) Tow’s GRASS language is an excellent beginner’s computer language for two reasons: first, it is
easi
ly taught to beginners, and second, lt is about things of interest to beginners, i.e., pictures and graphical manipulation on screens. (But compare the three be
ginners’
languages presented briefly on pp. 16-25.) A prototype for the system was developed at Ohio
State,
on a project directed by artist Charles
Csuri.
Tom had a free hand, though, and the language design is his; but much of the specific coding was done by Gerry Moersdorf, and the graphics algorithms and rotation were programmed by Manfred Knemeyer. Inspiration was furnished by Mnynard E. Sensenbrenner. GRASS runs on the
PDP-11,
a splendid minicomputer (Tom’s is shown on p. 36) and is specifically designed for the control of three-dimensional stick-figure
dis
plays on the Vector General display system (see p. DM \ci ). But a lot of people have wrestled with theae matters and not done as
well.
Let’s consider:
-in
H. The language ia extensible, meaning that the user may create new commands in the language as_ programs. These commands, however, may be used in later programs as if they were built into the language itself. I. The system is completely general-purpose. Many graphics languages are not, being restricted only to their original purpose. This is more difficult, but oh, so much more worthwhile.
3. ITS DEEP GENERALITY. Things should be versatile, and able to be tied together in many different ways. This is what we mean by “generality;” and this kind of generality can make a system very powerful. (The term in mathematics is “elegance.”) As is said on the other side of the book, com-pllcatedness is not generality or goodness or power, but a sign of the designer’s shallowness. Anyway, GRASS haa this kind of generality. It has a great number of facilities, growing weekly, and they all tie together in clear and predictable ways, without exceptions. Rather than create special functions which cannot be tied together. Young Doctor DeFanti has chosen instead to make the separate desirable functions part of a simple and clear lan
guage.
(A note to you elegant typos: GRASS is fully recursive As a nice example, Dan Sandin (see p.On.&) wrote a program to display Peano lines that was under forty GRASS instructions long. It is also astonishingly reversible: you can watch it uncreate the Peano line, straightening itself backward.)
In the more usual sense,
DeFanti’a
language is not the ‘most advanced’; there are more powerful 3D systems than the Vector General (the
LDS-1,
see p.iiMJo, offers true
perspective),
more elegant user-level languages (see TRAC Language and APL, other
side),
true halftone (the Watkins Box); yet his achievement on close examination is extraordinary. Never mind his age, the more esoteric features of his system (full recursiveness, etc.) or the fact that he does not seem to have made one
mis
take,
which is infuriating. Consider only this: TOM DEFANTI ‘S ‘GRASS’ LANGUAGE IS PERHAPS THE ONLY SYSTEM THAT CAN BE TAUGHT IN A FEW HOURS TO COMPUTER-NAIVE BEGINNERS THAT PERMITS FULL THREE-DIMENSIONAL ANIMATED INTERACTIVE GRAPHICS WITH TREE-STRUCTURED DATA.
1. ITS CLEAR SIMPLICITY. Tom believes computers are for everybody; he is not a high priest bent on making things obscure (see “Cybercrud,” p. 8). Thus he made his language as sensible, clear and easy to learn as possible. Tom likes to stress the concept of “habit-ability” (a term of
W.C.Watt),
meaning the coziness of a system.
2. ITS GENERALITY. Refining and condensing the baBic ideas of a system is the hardest part of the design. DeFanti made several interesting decisions.
A. The internal form of the language is ASCII code (see p. ). In other words, you f»n read programs in their final GRASS form.
B.
For a three-dimensional system such as the Vector General, the main form of data structure is the three-dimensional object— a list of points and lines in space. This is the form of data GRASS uses for most purposes.
C. In the design of such a system you want larger 3D objects to be buildable out of smaller ones. This itmplies arranging data in tree structures (see p. }
.
You also want to be able to make things do compound motions on the screen— for example, showing an airplane flying around on the screen with its propellor spinning; this too implies a Wee struc
ture.
There are some programmers who would use different tree structures for both objects group-
D. Objects shown on Tom’s system can also appear to move on complicated paths through three-dimensional space. In Tom’s system, such a path is merely another object. It seems obvious when you say it, yet this kind of simple generality is exactly what many programmers seem to avoid. (Note: this facility is a generalization of Baecker’s p-
curve;
see
p.5« 5).
E. Input devices are completely arbitrary and programmable. What happens on the screen can be controlled by anything— any variable (see p. jfc ) in the programming language. In other words, DeFanti has decoupled the screen from any particular form of
control,
allowing user programs to make the connection between controls and consequences. This means
that,
using Tom’s language, it is comparatively easy to build complex custom controls for any function. (This is discussed under “Fantics,”* p-^)j-5j.)
F. The language has string functions that allow text handling. Since the language may also use conversational terminals, it is eminently suited for “good-guy” interactive systems for naive users, as described on pp. 12-13.
G. Tom’s language is interpretive, like TRAC Language (see p. 30). That means it is “slow” in terms of the number of machine cycles required for it to do each operation. However, DeFanti has added a “com
pile”
feature to the language, so that for long macros (sections of program) that have to run repetitively, mo; efficient compiled versions of the macros may be generated.
I coined the term fantics, for the art and technology of showing things, long before I ever heard of Tom DeFanti, and I am not about to change it just because he is now my friend and roommate.
Tom DeFanti. Shows part of hemoglobin molecule. Data structure from Richard J. Feldmann,
NItf.
Much of today’s impetus for 3D computer display is coming from the field of chemistry. University chemistry departments are buying equipment like the Evans & Sutherland
LDS-1,
the Adage and the Vector General.
Why?
Because chemistry is increasingly
invol
ved with complex three-dimensional structures.
Crystals,
long folding chain molecules, minuscule forces acting on structures whose shape determines the outcome. Organic molecules that involve thousands of atoms, and whose complex folded structure exposes only certain key features. And so on.
The Vector General display illustrated here and there on these pages belongs to the Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.
Boukniyht £ Kelleu (ste p.t>^\*j)
The best feature of all: it’s currently available. PDP-11 owners– even without Vector General displays— may inquire of: Tom DeFanti, Doctor of Arta Program, UICC Chicago It 6O6B0.
You may wonder how a young bronking buck like DeFanti haa managed to do such an excellent job, so elegantly, where so many have atumbled and failed?
Cheerily.
:
learn from other people’s mistakes,1
of. DeFanti the eye
tern.
MISCELLANY:
Coupling his system with that of Dan Sandin (p. t has created the “Circle Graphics Habitat,” described i
(DeFanti’s GRASS is an ideal language for something like the 3D Thtnkertoy, described on
p.wS5
. However, it doesn’t have any provision for the storage of large complex data structures, so the hard part would actually be working out an adequate storage data structure and storage macros within GRASS’S use of the DEC file system.)
SCREEN CONTROLS
The great thing about CRT displays is that they can be used to control things by_ manipulation of plcturet Instead of moving buttons or levers, you can seize parts of the
pic
ture with the light-pen and move some part of the picture. The computer, sensing the choice or adjustment you have made, can then perform whatever operations you have directed.
jnple.
T«€t*\o;rAr
VUtfe
COVT«;OI_
lot>%
i one of the frontiers of The design of screen contro] simple controls for everything— computer graphics. (See “Fantict DIMENSIONAL FLIP 3D scopes are about the best we’ve
got—
so what do we do about multidimensional phenomena? One very good solution is to show a selection of thre* dimensions at a time, and provide for easy “flip” from one dimension to another— so that instead of looking at something on demensions A, B and C you are looking at it on dimensions A, B and X. For example, suppose you’re a sociologist looking at measurements of various traits among a group of people. It’s a cloud of dots in three dimensions— whatever three dimensions you’re looking at. Some could be: age, height,
weight,
sex, ethnic background, premarital experience, education. .. etc.
You view this cloud of dots, weight and ethnic background. Tr. around and see how many people in
say,
according to age, it means you can rotate it the group are what.
Using dimensional flip, however, you can change the view as follows: rotate the box-frame till it becomes a square to your eye. Then you hit the control that makes the unseen dimension “flip” to another dimension that interests you. The cloud still looks the same— until you rotate it, and the third dimension is now “premarital experience.” So you can quickly get a view of how populations are really divided up. (Note to sociologists: this same operation, with stretching and clipping, provides a visual technique for “partialing” operations of the Lazarsfeld type.}
THE TWISTED SMILE You can make a character change expression on a : scope by making his mouth a twisted wire that can be rotated between “frown” and “smile” positions. The trick Is the shape of the wire.
NOW GUESS WHAT: DeFanti’s GRASS language is the best language I know sf for doing all the above things.
SERVICES.
A Series of Review Articles for Computer Decisions Magazine.
WHERE TO GET IT.
f r Computer 3D halftone systems are now available to moviemake, a variety of sources. It tends to cost a lot of money, but compared with normal Hollywood production expenses, it turn. out not to be so SALES OF MACHINES Computer Ima
er,
offe
Ev
ge Corporation, De
IUI
B.le. See p. DM 39. and Sutherland Computer Corporation. Salt Lake City, offers the Watkins Box, a real-time disP1 ay deyice using the Watkins Method (see next page) and offering also Goursud pseudo-curved shadln It costs about $500,000 and attac large computer; see p. 40) .
(s
General Electric, Syracuse, offers three-dimensional scene synthesis like that at the bottom of this page. Every job is custom. It’s done on videotape through programs running on a smallish computer. Production costs, after your data structures are all in, could run as little as hundreds of dollars per minute (rather than
*
thousands).
Contact:
Charles P. Venus, General Electric Co., Building 3. Syracuse NY
13201,
315/456-3552. (Given In detail because harder to reach than these others.) Computer Visuals, Inc., ElmBford, NY. Offer more detail than CH system, and go straight to film without video. More expensive: probable costs run In the thousands of dollars per minute. Again, every job is custom.
Contact:
Nat C. Myers, president. Dolphin Productions, NYC, has several Computer Image machines, but their president, Allen Stanley, is interested in everything. Computer Image Corp., Denver and Hollywood, also offers eervlc on their machines. On occasion they have been willing to back film-makers, reportedly on a 50-50 basis. Their president, Lee Harrison III, is a swell fella.
Author’s note. These articles were written for Computer Decisions magazine, and reflect the results of a lot of phone calls they paid for. The first of these articles waa published in 1971. The others have not been previously published, as the editors and I were never able to get together on quite whst they wanted.
This is, to my knowledge, the only existing collection and summary of computer half-tone systems to date, and in some cases the articles reveal more about the systems than has been published anywhere. Surprisingly, even two years later they do not seem out of date.
However, due to the editorial style of Computer Decisions, and my own, this has all come out extremely condensed, and phrased in breezy and humorous ways not ordinarily considered acceptable for serious technical
reviews.
The hope is that they will supply orientation to the browser, deeper insights to the technically-minded, and further directions for them as wants to pursue.
FIRST ARTICLE
General idea of 3-D halftone.
Polygon Systems.
halftone image
synthesis
These systems have
To mosi people in the computer field, “computer
graphics”
means line drawing—systems snd programs for mapmaking, pipe layout, automobile and aircraft design, or any other activity where a diagram may
help.
Using line-drawing programs and equipment, designers may create line drawings on fast-respondmil graphic screens, reworking their ideas until satisfied; the system then disgorges polished drawings and
speci
fications for the designer’s real intent, something else thai is to be made or done. Bui it is possible for a picture itself—instructjve, interesting or pretty—to be the
goal,
fn that case wc will often want pictures that look like things instead of
wires.
A picture that is not all black and white we call “halftone.” With much secrecy and a slow start, computer halftone systems are now being buill all over. The methods arc extremely different from one another; only the outputs arc similar. Some exist in software, some have already been built into special hardware.
lal uses for visualiza-of photography, in and TV: for visual-^uipment yet unbuilt. izing worlds lost and imagined, equ the responsiveness of aircraft. It may not he long until moviemakers can bus different brands of picture synthesizer, just as musicians choose today among Moug, Buchla and
ARP
music synthesi/crs Bul none is in production
yet.
This is an attempt to review the coming apparatuses of apparition. Not only is ihe field of halftone one of the most exciting in computing: it is also one of the nuttiest and most secretive. For instance, at one time a firm that was supposedly marketing its halftone system declared the present author persona iron
grata
and noi to be communicated with in any way, though information was
frccl;
available to others. “I don’t think it’s necessarily paranoia.” says Rod Rougelot of General Electric. “A lot of guys started about the same time, and proceeded in a heads-down manner.” It took a special kind of initiative lo head off in that direction with no external provocation. “All those heavy cats
Computer graphics the ordinary way The
computer,
as penman, draws line from a list stored in core memory. In three-dimensional system, the basic list of 3D coordinates is converted to a list representing a particular view: the result looks like a wire frame.
My thanks to the publishers of Computer Decisions and its editor, Robert C. Haavind, for their encouragement, phone money and permission to reprint
thiB.
There
are
more ways than
one
to produce shaded pictures with computer/. Here
are the
methods I
of the
‘polygon school.’
from
AKPA
and
MIT
were saying in the sixties I could never do a Mickey Mouse,” says Lcc Harrison in of Computer Image. “‘But I’m not that kind of researcher. I talk to (he Lord.” The systems’ stories are as different as the systems themselves. General Elcctric’s system grew out of cockpit displays for blind flying. The system of Pennsylvania Research Associates began wilh terrain and radar modelling. The system of
MAGI
(Mathematical Applications Group, Inc.) began with the study of radiation hazards in battlefield machinery. Two system
families,
that of Computer Image Inc. and my own Fantasm, were designed from the beginning for moviemaking, especially “special effects” and puppe tee ring. The most poignant talc may be that of Lee Harrison, whose struggling family was warmed through cold winters by ihe tubes of their analog computer Halftones in two dimensions Two-dimensional computer halftone is not new. Halftone pictures convened from photographs have often been printed out on line printers, either for fun
(nudes often turn up at big
installations),
or in connection with some scientific problem, such as analyzing chromosomes. Kenneth C. Knowlton, at Bell Labora
tories,
has executed some well-known photo conversions making pictures into huge grids of tiny whimsical symbols having differeni grey-values. Various other systems have allowed users to create their own original 2-D
pictures.
Bul the natural temptation is lo want the computer really to make pictures. Why not have the computer produce a photographic picture directly from the 3-D representation of objects? Computers don’t do this by nature, any more than they do anything else by nature, so how it may be done by computer is very interesting. The problem is also interesting because of its intuitive nature. Visions of scenes in space are around us constantly, and we intuitively understand the geometry of outlines and
light.
As 3-D work progresses large problems are being overcome. The famed “hidden line problem,” for en-
ample,
was mislead in gly couched, since the problem is not finding what lines arc hidden, but whai surfaces
3-D halftone system Today’s new procedures can use the same data to make a realistic shaded or halftone
picture.
The visible parts Of the objects are ascertained by programs or special hardware, using the same 3-D coordinates as in the ordinary
systems.
These visible parts are then shaded according to the appropriate color information. The series of shading-points makas the picture on an output device.
COMPUTER DECISIONS
Wc mum draw on I Mi understanding of tec no In L figure oul how to mike met urn. for there is no mathematically elegant or preferable approach Scenes •re •eomelrically nch. and low many diffcreni tech
nique*
may be u*cd lo extract pictures from them Then* technique* may look at planar
structures,
spatial interconnection*, relative edge* of intersection* or anything else you can define and process I prefer lo think at computer halftone as like trick photography ol the kind done in Hollywood: a variety of tech
nique*
can be combined in various ways As in trick photography. the number of touches and enhancement that you add generally determines how good it will look, regardlesi of what system you begin with The simplest systems are those that depict objects made of polygons—that
is,
planes wilh straight cdj^s. We will discuss such systems in the present installment.
The »iW poljfosi wader Al least two companies are building image systems that will behave and respond like onrushing realiiy. Such a system, hooked to cockpit-like controls, can
she*
a trainee pilot the delicate and precipitous results of what he does Realistic action, rather lhan surface
detail,
is crucial. The techniques of action polygon halftone were origmallv developed by General Electric, of Syracuse, N
Y..
and are now also under development al Link Division of Singer Company (makers of the beloved pilot trainer and its
progeny).
Basically such systems operate upon ihe scan-lines thai crisscross a television screen, switching the color of the running scan as it crosses from polygon to polygon. The action polygon school—GE and link—takes a curious but effective approach to halftone TV: their “environments” arc composed entirely of convex objects made entirely of convex polygons To use only convex objects (no dents) means thai one objeel may be in front of another or vice versa, but never both. (An object with apparent indentations, such as an airplane, has to be made out of a group of convex objects flying together) To use only convex polygons (notchlcss) makes it easy for the system to decide, at a given
instant,
whether ihe scan is crossing the polygon or not.
Instantaneous enactment, halftone animation gives a sense of really being
there.
(Hod Rougelot. General Electric)
This work evolved in pan from GE’s work in the fifties with a “ground plane simulator,” a system that would show a correct representation ol the ground’s position, dipping and rotating, lo the pilot of an aircraft in fog or night In 1963 the General Electric group, under Rod
Rougelol.
worked oul for
NASA
Ihe design of an “environment simulator”—a device that would simulate the appearance and performance of any equipment. This is now called the “old
NASA
sys
tem.
‘
It permitted the user—seated before a color TV screen—to work controls for an imaginary aircraft or spacecraft, and sec roughly what the pilot of the craft would see. flying in real lime through a breathtaking color scene. Rims made on (his. machine have been stunning Imaginary cities, roller coasters and aerial dogfights arc among the visions that can be presented. General Electrics old
NASA
method is fairly weird if not mischievous. The earlier “ground plane simulator” had shown an edge (ihe horizon) digitally
dis
played on a crt: the system was extended to many
edges,
and the logical analysis of areas between them.
The edge-box reports summed into the facet boxes, each of which was set to respond lo a particular combination of left-right, above-below reports. Al the instant all the facet’s edge boxes replied in ‘he proper preset combination, the facet box signalled that its own Tacet was being crossed by the scan-line When more than one lacet-box responded, the one nearest ihe viewpoint had it* color gated to the *crccn. Now Rougelol’s group is replacing the old
NASA
system by a new
NASA
system, which works on entirely different principles, bul keeps the vector calculator The old one could show scenes with up lo 240 edges: ihe new
NASA
system will al least double
that.
GE’s new method is already operational on smaller research fa
cilities.
They don’t tell what it
is,
bul basically il involves sorting by
distance.
Supposedly the sort method is good enough to make the old edge boxes obsolete The Link group claims competitive performance for their system, which will go lo black-and-white thousand-line TV. They say their system
is
different,
better.
Campus of Fooled U. (GE)
WyUe-Romney: shoot ihe works The Wylie-Romncy method, disclosed in 1967, was the Tint generally publicized procedure for making halftone pictures. Indeed, the 1967 publication signalled the explosion of the University of Utah into the forefront of computing research. The Wylie-Romney method was actually the joint work of Chris
Wylie,
Gordon Romney. David C. Evans and Alan Erdahl; hut much of the impetus for its development came from Evans, chairman of computer sciences al Utah, who had long suspected the possibility of 3-D halftone synthesis.
Halftone lor art’s sake now the artist can create worlds and photograph them. (Gordon Romney, Utah)
(Note:
more output by various Utah systems appear on following pages.)
5*
eady to compete. (Gary
Watkins.
Utah)
The method of Gary Walkin* is Ihe result of a profound search at the University of Utah for the method—a polygon technique fast enough for
real
time
enactment,
but cheaper than the GE-type systems and not subject to ihe convexity
restriction*.
They seem to have found it. Each video scan of the scene results in a “slice” through surfaces in the
scene.
The two nearest surfaces arc continuously compared to see which is closer, as if by two
rulers.
The instant a new surface becomes the nearer one, the system makes it the visible one. TV nearest surface always shows, down to the precise instant two surfaces cross.
Watkins method: A new nearest surface is instantly tensed through continuous comparison ol the closes! two
HOW
AVAILABLE!
Machine running Vatkn technique, the Watkins Box, allot you to view imaginary objects in color and manipulate them in real time See top of preceding
page.
The scene was represented by a collection of edge
boxes,
physically jumpered into a collection of facet
boxes.
Each edge box and facet box was loaded with certain numerical and logic
values,
representing edges and facets in ihe scene, which could change between frames as required by the action. In the prcprocess for each frame the old
NASA
sys
tem used a specially built digital computer, the
“vec
tor calculator.” This performed at great speed the three-pan vector calculations necessary lo determine all scene positions, including the positions and slants of all edges. Each individual edge generator, loaded with its own edge
position,
constantly reported whether the running scan of the picture was to Ihe left or right of its own edge. It dutifully guarded this edge from border lo border of the picture.
“Old NASA” method: Each edge box constantly reports which side of its edge the scan is on. each facet bo> sums the edge report* to sense whan the scan is crossing it
The Wylie-Romncy method is
this:
for each picture-point desired in the final picture, shoot a searching ray through the scene at a corresponding angle. Find where this searching ray hits every surface in its way. Since the locations in space of these hit-points are easily
calculated,
figure their distances from the vantage
point.
The nearest of the intersections is the visible
one.
Look up the color of that surface and shade the output point accordingly. This may sound inefficient, but it is comparatively easy to ascertain all the piercing-points, since the surfaces to be hit in a given scanning row can be largely predicted from the previous row. John Wurnock’s method, also from Utah, is unrelated to the other methods, but has qualities mathematicians
like,
as well as a certain whimsy. Consider a square in the picture area. (Al the start consider the whole picture area.) Sow
then.
Test whether the present square is entirely filled wilh one color. If
so,
output a corresponding square all of that color. If the present square is not all one
color,
divide it into four smaller squares. Take another square and go back to Now
then.
End the process when each of the squares in the broken-down picture has been completely filled with one color—or the unsatisfied squares arc too small to care about
Warnock’x dicing method: What can
t
be made all one color is redivuled till its pieces can ba.
Shading: Last of the great lodge-1 unctions Suppose that wc have some data structure representing a three-dimensional object, and a halftone method to search out its visible surfaces. How do wc shade the output pouits? What do wc take into account: how combine the basic greys or colors, how blend them with computations of surface angle, distances from the vantage point, or anything else we can think of? The answer: any way at
all.
The combining function is an aesthetic choice. There are not many areas left where you can make up a mathematical hodge-podge and get pleasing or interesting
results.
Computer halftone is a felicitous exception: you can augment by adding or
multiplying,
diminish by subtracting or divid
ing,
and yet always come up with an image resembling something. Anyone who has worked in a darkroom will recognize lhat this is like enlarging: playing with parameters won’t obliterate the picture. There arc purists who insist that halftone coloration should exactly follow the formulas that simulate the behavior of real light. For some purposes, like pilot
training,
this may often
be/true.
But insisting on mathematical accuracy as a general principle is like insisting on ultra-high fidelity—an aesthcuc judgment couched as a mechanical imperative. Until now the output hardware was not really ready for halftone. Five years ago a computer could usually create halftone pictures only on a line primer or a 4020 microfilm
plotter.
Today there are many different photographic printers, going to all sizes of film and paper; one even uses a
laser.
There arc various display terminals permitting grey-scale and color halftone on TV screens. The age of computer image synthesis has begun. Polygon systems are fast and simple, and will come to be used in our daily lives for such diverse purposes as molecule study, the memorization of delivery routes, and visualization of every kind of layout and design. They will be fundamental to our new world of computer display. D
COMPUTER DECISIONS
%
SECOND ARTICLE.
Surface patterns.
Curvature.
Shadow.
THE PLOT SO FAR.
Various computer methods now make it possible to create artificial photographs of three-dimensional objects or ccenes represented in the computer’s storage. This is done by coloring or shading points in an output picture like the points in the scene that can be sighted through them from the vantage point. What the methods really boil down to, though, are searching processes in the data representation of the three-dimensional scene.
In an earlier article we have considered some of the techniques being used to depict simple scenes— those made up of polygons. Now we turn to more elaborate scenes which add
shadows,
surface patterns and curvature.
One of the most interesting things about this branch of computer graphics— already seen in the polygon methods discussed earlier— is the variety of techniques that can be employed. Moreover, these methods, for all their sophistication, can usually be intuitively understood as thought they were operations performed on objects in space. The same continues to be true for the more complex systems.
VARIOUS NEW TECHNIQUES PERMIT US TO ADD CURVES, SHADOWS AND SURFACE PATTERNS TO COMPUTER-GENERATED HALFTONE PICTURES
ENHANCED POLYGON SYSTEMS
In the methods discussed so far, we looked at several computer techniques for photographically depicting scenes and objects made up of
polygons–
planar facets– in a represented three-dimensional scene. Imaginary houses of
cards,
cardboard airplanes and triangular scenery take on a compelling vividness when depicted by the computer. And for visualizing such things as architectural arrangements, such systems promise to be of increasing practical
value.
Those of us interested in the artistic aspects of computer halftone images want more. This article looks at some ways to add the appearance of curvature and surface pattern to computer-synthesized images.
MAGtlUSKI’S CONSTRUCTIONS OF REPEATED PATTERNS
(different perspective calculations)
Basic triangle pattern..
MAGNUSKI’S PATTERNED CONSTRUCTIONS
A number of contributions have been made by individuals working alone. For instance, Henry Magnuski, at M.I.T., created a program that repeatedly positions patterned facets in space to make large constructions.
This program did not calculate “true” shadow, basing its shading partly on angle of
surfaces.
Neither does it show true curves. Yet it shows the impressive degree to which such effects may be approximated. The resulting beach ball picture is reminiscent of Moorish architecture.
is stitched together in adjacent positions at appropriate angles.
BOUKNIGHT AND KELLEY: PICKING THROUGH A CAT’S CRADLE
The method of Bouknight and Kelley. at the University of Illinois, permits the addition of shadow to polygon pictures. Their method uses an intricate system of scanning sweeps across the scene, analyzing the successive edge-crossings. For each output line, a list of the edges in the scene is ordered according to which will be next encountered. To make a specific output line of shaded points, we step through successive positions of the scan-line, until an an edge is crossed. With each edge we cross, we enter or leave at least one facet. Of all the current facets we are in after a given edge-crossing, the system finds out the nearest one, the visible one, by comparing distances. The coloration of this facet is then fed out to the picture, until the next edge-crossing.
Bouknight and Kelley expand their method to show shadows by an additional step. They create a new list of edges to be encountered, this one relative to scans from the light source. Then, during the regular output picture scan, they look to this latter data to see about shadow. As soon as they know two consecutive edges of a visible object in the picture, they are able to search the shadow-edge list to see if any shadow-edges impinge between them. The final list of edges– visible facet edges and shadow
edges–
goes to the picture output device.
BOUKNIGHT-KELLEY METHOD
/Is)
–
Consider the series of edges whose projections cross the current scan-line. Each time the scan-line crosses an edge, find out what facets are currently pierce by a sight-line from the viewpoint. The nearest of these facets is the visible on
To add shadow, use an extra list of the scene’ s edges relative to the light rather than the camera. Between viewed
edges,
check for shadow-edges as
well.
r
DON LEE FILLS IN THE GAPS
Don Lee, at the University of Illinois, produced his finc-toned pictures of spheres in 1966 simply because someone bet him a quarter he couldn’t program the method he’d suggested in twenty-four hours. He almost made it. He made his pictures of spheres and polygons by calculating the boundaries, then checking for overlap and filling in with greys according to viewing angle. His program works only in special cases, but is interesting for its historical position; it was one of the earliest half-tone curvature systems.
HAVE A BALL WITH DON LEE.
SIMPLEX CURVATURE SYSTEMS: MAHL & MAGI
A fundamental type of system we may call the “simplex” system was exemplified in the previous article by the Wylie-Romney program. A simplex technique simply projects simulated rays toward the scene from the vantage point till they hit the represented objects, and fills corresponding positions on the output picture with the colors encountered on the front surfaces of objects in the scene.
The same principle extends naturally to scenes with curved and otherwise embellished
objects.
Robert
Mahl,
at the University of Utah, has recently reported his results with simplex methods using quadric surfaces— those curved surfaces generated by mathematical powers of
two.
His pictures— like the cup and saucer shown here— have a pleasing 1920s Bauhaus-like quality.
Then fills in curvaceous shading.
One problem with this method is that computational complexity increases rapidly as the scenes grow more complex; the more surfaces and piercing-points, the more time-consuming (and expensive) it becomes to make the picture.
His program first works out the general outlines.
MAUL’S SIMPLEX METHOD
Calculate all Intersections of sighting ray with objects in scene; calculate which Is nearer; shade lt according to angle.
I
cjL»r»*=^ sorfioi, piecuis^
Co/tv-
• JIM*^-, A,
ass.j.,
colors 1. tw
It seems, however, that Mahl’s work may only be a rediscovery of what one organization worked out earlier and is being secretive about. A firm delightfully called MAGI (Mathematical Applications Group. Inc.) of Elmsford, N.Y., has extended the same idea more elaborately. They happened into the halftone game through a military contract. MAGI’s system, now thoroughly developed under Robert Goldstein, began in 1965 in a study of radiation hazards in battlefield equipment. They wrote a program to simulate paths of radiation, say, that might reach a tank driver under varous disagreeable circumstances. Having written a program that would ascertain the
sus
ceptibility to radiation of battlefield machinery, . they noted that the same program could be adapted to making photographs. The progam simulated radiation; light is radiation; ipso facto, pictures. Substantially the same program would make photograph-like images, by treating the objects as opaque, and reflecting different shades according to color and angle of view.
The resulting system makes nice pictures of objects composed of planes and quadric sur
faces;
and includes, as will be seen from the racing car and chair, colored surface designs, shadows and spectral reflections. Not only does MAGI’s software for this process produce
deli
cately shaded pictures; if the virtual picture-plane is moved until it intersects the subject, it produces a cross-section.
MAGI runs this program remotely in Fortran on a big computer– but they have their own minicomputer setup for photographing the results as color movies. They now offer use of this system commercially for making movies or
stills.
MAG1 program waa originally developed for study of radiation hazards inside military armor; the pseudo-photographic techniques were a aide effect of the approach chosen. Who know: , these tanks may be the ones studied.
HAGI techniques were used to study alternative ways of lighting nines.
SYNTHEVISION SETUP uses remote time-sharing computer running big secret Fortran program and containing entire data structure of three-dimensional scenes. Minicomputer photographic setup Is on premises at Computer Visuals, Inc., HAG1 subsidiary marketing the Synthevision service.
Local setup uses Uova minicomputer controlling both CRT display and camera. Informed guess would suggest that time-sharing system does not send all successive points of output line, but difference and transition values; Nova program would then interpolate gradations in relatively quiet sections of the scan-line.
MAGI’
s precise system is secret. However, the only real questions boll down to: forms of surface representation; sys terns of scene sorting; and method of scene scanning to produce output scan.
Note that one of the most impressive things about HAGI work, at least for sophisticates, is the degree of artistic control chat seems to have been realized in their input and revision systems. It seems they offer excellent control over motion and color, and, of course, revision of the action in a scene till the aaker is satisfied.
Enlargement from MAGI film. I hope the reproduction shows the concentric
rings,
called Mach bands, that divide areas of shading; Knowlton and Harmon (citation p. DM 10) advise on pseudorandom techniques for correcting this.
ROUNDUP
These have been some of the highlights of the halftone game to date. The methods
des
cribed so far are mainly software-oriented, and for the most part work most efficiently as pro
grams.
In the next article we will look at some outlandish new forms of equipment, under construction or proposed, for dedicated production of 3-D halftone pictures.
2t Popular 5cle think it had Synthevision in fall of 73.
THIRD ARTICLE. Specialized hardware systems.
SPECIAL EQUIPMENT IS NOW BEING BUILT FOR MAKING “REALISTIC” HALFTONE PICTURES BY COMPUTER. THIS ARTICLE COVERS SOME OF THE MORE UNUSUAL HALFTONE HARDWARE SYSTEMS NOW IN EXISTENCE OR BEING PLANNED.
Results of Gouraud’s swell smoothing technique. Mme. Gouraud posed for the dafa structure on the left, a system of interconnected .flat polygons. The Gouraud process (see box below) created the smooth-looking face from it by an extremely simple process. (Note that the power of the technique is in the use of a simple polygon data structure, rather than the more difficult truly-curved surfaces used, e.g., by MAGI.) (Note also that the edges remain jagged.)
In two previous articles we have summar ized some of the important basic techniques in computer halftone– the artificial construction by computer of photographic pictures of 3-D scenes, scenes which are represented within the computer as colored or shaded surfaces placed in a coordinate system of three dimensions.
The techniques we have looked at were all intuitively “spatial” in character, having to do with the analysis of sight-lines and relative edge positions, and suited to implementation in computer software. Now we turn to some more advanced and peculiar techniques and equipment intended to make 3-D computer halftone faster to use, or more realistic, or easier to work with, or cheaper. These systems represent a coming generation df’halftone hardware.
I suggested this cover for this article. The folks at Computer Decisions reacted with puzzlement if not dismay. “This cover doesn’t have practical applications for the ave ra^e user,” I think someone said.
THE WATKINS BOX
The University of Utah is now building what wil be for some time the world’s most spectacular interactive computer display, the Watkins Box. This device, interfacing between a computer and a television screen, will carry out the Watkins algorithm (described in the first article of this series) in real time; ripping through a predigested list of facet information, the Watkins Box will create on the screen an image of an opaque object which the user can rotate or see manipulated by program.
The Watkins Box can operate in two modes: normal mode, in which the object appears faceted, and Gouraud mode, in which it appears to be curved over (see masks,
nearby).
The Gouraud algorithm, developed by a gruduate student of that name, is a ridiculously simple technique which marries perfectly to the Watkins method. Instead of shading the facets uniformly, this technique calculates a shade of gray for each point. In effect the method interpolates the shade of the point from those around
it,
across facet boundaries. In actual proced
ure,
the Gouraud method shades a point by linear interpolation between two edge-colors: the color of the last edge and the next edge to be encountered on the present scan-line. (These shades are in turn found by linear interpolation between their endpoints.)
It will be noted that Gouraud’s method does not curve the edges. But considering its simplicity as a small addition to the Watkins box, that’s no great sacrifice.
Naturally, the Watkins Box will not reach the private home for several years; current likely price is in six figures. But that’s now.
GOURAUD’S TWIST adds the appearance of curvature to a faceted object shown opaquely by the Watkins method (described in first
article).
Instead of shading each point within a facet with the same color, interpolate between the vertex-colors according to how far down the edges you’ve gotten. Note that the jagged edges are retained.
u
PRA’S WOBLDVIEW Roger Boyell,
of
Pennsylvania Research Aasocistes. Philadelphia, likes
io
refer
to the
company’s main interest
as
“modelling
the
physical world.” Thus
he and hia
aaaociatea have developed systems
for
cartography, landscape modelling, pipe design,
and
eimulalion
of
complex radar systems. A radar simulator they
are
putting
to
gether
Tor the
Navy will show
the
results
of any
possible radar system moving over
any
possible terrain.
A
pilot
or
navigator trainee,
in a sim-
mulsted cockpit, will
aee the
miaelon’s changing radar picture
as he
changea
the
piano’s course or
the
radar’s tuning.
The
radar picture,
ap
pearing
on a
screen
and
changing
In
real time, wilt look just
the way the
radar would look
on
a real mission– flying
in
perspective among : valleys, high
or low. at any
bear- uid speed,
and
vi.-w.-d ihroutfh
any
type
of
Doyen’s approach
is to
treat each compo nent
of the
pictorial/radar simulation
as a
separate problem,
to be
handled
in
different
ways,
and
blended
in a
final buffer,
a
core memory which
ia
read
out to
lelevision. Separate mechanisms supply components
of
shadow, specular reflection, coloration
and
randomizing
effects.
The
core buffer continuously refreshes the scanned
CRT
display. Boyell
has put the
same techniques
to
work making simulated halftone pictures
of the
moon
(aee
cut). Both
the
radar
and
moon
sys
tems
use the
same type
of
halftone image synthe
sis,
even though superficially they seem quite different.
But
radar
is
radiation, Just like light, and Boyell’s techniquea
of
three-dimensional modelling
and
search apply equally well
to de
piction
by
reflected visible light–
i.e.,
halftone images.
r
<
tly ke
the
Knowlton-Schwartz DM24,
top
Schwartz dividual frntur.-s
i>m’-
nnRinr. view.
An outfit called liUMRRO,
in
W.nhinn they have
a
real-time interactiv, that will knock several people ballpark— especially
the CC har.;
the Evans
and
Sutherland Watkins
i; .
The HUMRRO
ays ten la
Intended
to go out
color screens (modified Sony Trinitrons) ih shaded
pol
ygon halftone, offering •udo-curved ahadlng like Gouraud’s
(see
Her).
The techniquea were worked
out by Ron
Swallow,
and
they’re
not
telling about
how
they work.
It la
claimed, however, that their with 16.000 edges
/and
that this will cost S150.000
and
service
16 (or was it 64)
user terminals simultaneously. It
nay
have been
a bad
phone connectio or this
may be
what they’re really claiming Obviously it’ll
he
really great
if lt
turns
Evidently they have
in
mind
the use of
such high-performance scopes
for
teaching,
al
lowing students
to
explore intricate three-dimensional scenes
or
objects. Terrific.
(Note:
compare
the
claim
of
16,000 edges on
a
$150,000 syatem with
the
2000
(?)
edges allowed
by the old
tlASA system built
by CE,
or
the
Watkins
Box– I
don’t know
how
many
cdpes–
at
S500.000 fro™ Hvans
and
Sutherland.
THE SHAPE
OF
THINGS
TO
COME If these systems sound
far
fetched,
or
only for theoretical tnveattgtatlon. conalder this:
the
Air Force
is now
letting contracts
for an ad
vanced flight training simulator that
la a
small boy’s dream.
To be
situated
In Dry
Lake. Arizona,
the
simulator will hava
the
moat
real-
iatic cockpit* ever built:
tha
entire mock up will turn
and
tilt
in
response
to Ihe
user,
and the
seats will even swell
and
deflate.
to
simulate acceleration
and
weightlessness.
The
cockpits
alone,
without
the
visual diaplay screens, will cost
ten
million dollars each.
But
the
viaual systems
– ah. The
pilot- user will look
out
into
an
artificial world, among whose mountains
and
meadows
and
clouds
he
will
fly in
real time.
Six
CRTs. arranged
aa
parts
of a
dodecahedron
in an
entire viaual surround, will show
him the
changing terrain and flying environment. F.ach
of
theae CRTs will
be
driven
by a
real-time perspective halftone simulator, with
all
displays spliced
to
gether
and
driven
by a
master simulator
res
ponding
to his
actions.
Who
will build them
ia
not
yet
decided; they could
be
Warnock
or GE
The sheer
joy of
such
a
system will
be
hard
to
beat.
But no
doubt others will
be on
the
way–
perhaps
at the
amusement pork level.
The
new
pilot trainer
wil
and
dip in
response
to th’
six Riant CRTs, with
optl.
focus
the eye on
Infinity at
the
seams,
the
pilot
w
ponding perspective simul, world
he is
flying through, plan dogflghtlnR with,
and who
knowe-Superaan?
In
fr
of
®
f\ tor OF
Boscff?
I don’t expect
you to
believe this, because not even
my
patent attorney does,
but the
system I call Fantasm
is
intended
to
make pictures that pass
the
Turing-test:
you
won’t
be
able
to
tell them from real photographs. Fantasm
is
intended
to
allow
the
user
to
make realistic, Hierony mus Bosch-like photographs
and
movies, with real-looking people
(and
scenery, imaginary characters, monsters,
etc.) in
scenes
of
arbi
trary complexity.
It is
expected that
1975
economics will make
its
construction feasible.
Fantasm
I
originally conceived
as a
method of making realistic photographs
and
movies,
not
knowing
at the
time that thia
was
impossible, but feeling
it
could
be
done somehow
if the
problem were broken down sufficiently.
At
times
it was not
clear which
of us
would
be
broken down first,
1 or it.
It occurred
to me
sometime
in
1S60-1 that computer-interpolated, Disney-type cartooning methods would
be
feasible. After some thought 1 realized that pseudo- photography would
be
possible,
and
dropped
the
cartooning idea.
The
atrange behavior
of
people whom
I
told about this
led me to
increasing secrecy.
The general goal
was to
make
a
system thai could
do
realistic movies without scenery or actors,
and
make pictures indistinguishable from real photograph*
of
real scenery
and
actors.
(“What do you
mean, indistinguishable from photographs?” people keep asking. What do they mean what
do I
mean?)
The
surfacea are
to be put in by
“sculplora.” animated
by
“puppeieera,”
and
photographed
by a
“director.” The objective
is for
moviemaking
lo be
under the utter imaginative control
of the
creative uaer.
I
am
indebted
to Prof. Che
for
the
formalization
of »
function.
1
A scene
of
arbitrary curvature
and
topology
Is
represented in
a
ayatem
of
holding registers;
the
surface
Is
presented (through D-to-A converters
and an
array parallel function generator)
to
interrogating circuitry which steers
an
inquiring algnal around
the
represented surfacaa. Operation
is
empirical. Array has partition logic allowing almultaneoua queries
of
varloua sub
surfaces.
Feedback steering circuitry allows multiple loopa through array. Steering signal
and
returnatf surface parameter are analog
and
continuous. List techniquea manage ahadow
and
visibility ‘umbrellas’ (surfaces
of
occulted volumes
or
umbras).
The Fantasm Scene Machine®1,
tha
representation
and
aaarch array,
Is one
chip repeated
In a
carpet. Large-scale Integration permits
the
required digital atorage
of
about
500
bits
per
surface section plus analog circuitry
and
switching logic. Patent work underway. SUMMARY: outline* handled
by
Perimeter Parameter Occultatlon Chasing, flll-ln
by
Bullet Search, animation continuity management by list-processing technique..
The syatem could come
in a
number
of
dif ferent versions.
One of
these involves
a
large array
of LSI
computing modules
(the
checkerboard Scene Machine)
to be
guided
by
special hardware under
an
unusual monitor running
on a
general-purpose computer.
The
checkerboard Scene Machine holds
a
great spread
of
surface data. It
is a
logical curiosity,
an
array that replies
as
a unit, ignoring cell boundaries,
to
electrical explorations
of the
shapes represented
in it.
The resulting trace makes varioua 3-space
ex
plorations
on ihe
faces, mountains
or
automobiles spreadeagled
in
il. Think
of its
trace
as a
radio-controlled firefly skating over
a
bumpy checkerboard. Using this machine,
and
various cat’s-cradle list structures based
on the
geometry
of
light around
odd
volumes
of
occupation, the problem
of
halftone analysis
of
arbitrary shapes
is
solved
by
brute force rather than analytically.
A
variety
of
other processeB have also been defined
in Ihe
syatem
for
other types of graphic application.
As
far as I
have been able
to
learn. Fan tasm
is the
most baroque computer graphic system anyone
has
proposed.
It is noi
intended
to
operate
in
real time,
but
rather take
as
long
aa it
needs,
or as
long
as Ihe
uaer wants
to pay for.
(o fill
in
complex viaual details, shadow, reflec
tions,
curlicues, leaves, hair,
etc. It is
best suited
to the
production
in
Panavision
of
Busby Berkeley musicals,
or “The
Lord
of the
Rings” with realistic wraiths
and
interspecies battles. Bul
it may
well cost
too
much
lo use for
that. Indeed,
its
economics seem
to
improve
in low-
budget settings like videotape, although there its output bandwidth will flower unseen.
But
the Scene Machine should also
be
uaeful
for
more mundane applications, auch
aa
contour mapping, automobile design, advertising photography
and
medical illustration.
11
FOURTH ARTICLE. Systems of Computer Image Corporation.
SO FAR WE HAVE SUMMARIZED AND DISTINGUISHED AMONG THE MAJOR TECHNIQUES FOR COMPUTER SYNTHESIS OF IMAGES FROM DIGITALLY STORED REPRESENTATIONS OF SCENES. WE NOW TAKE THE WRAPS FROM A DIFFERENT BUT RELATED SET OF TECHNIQUES – THE SYSTEMS OF COMPUTER IMAGE CORPORATION. Lee Harrison III got the ides for what is now Computer Image Corporation In 1959. Already having an art degree, he went on for a degree In electrical engineering, snd through long lean years put together the technical basics around which Cl’a systems are now built. Computer Image Corporation Is now a going concern, and output from their systems. especially Scan-
imate,
ia now widely visible on television. Computer Image Corporation aecma to be the first firm to be commercially successful In the halftone field. Whether they should be Included with the others is arguable, however. Their systems are not widely understood, and the relation of theae syatems to the other ayslems and programs described in these articles is problematical. Among the few who understand their techniques, some argue thai they do not synthesize images at all. but rather twist preexisting pictures with a sort of Moog synthesizer, and lhat their analog techniques are really just compound oscillators rather than Irue computing. I think that this view is wrong, at least as regards their most ambitloua system, and that CI’s techniquea deserve review. All the world is not digital. CI aystoms do fill up areas with grey-scale (and other) pictures, and their
sys
tems involve three-dimensional coordinates, occultatlon and coloration; thus I think il appropriate lo discuss them here.
The following discussion is the first, I believe, to lift the veil of secrecy that has hitherto confounded observers of this company’s work. In the light of the extreme sophistication wilh which Ihey have pursued extremely strange techniques, they should benefit from the wider understanding. (Note that this material, which has been assembled from various sources and careful TV watching, ia partly conjectural.) Computer Image’s syatems represent an apparently unpromising approach brilliantly followed through. All of CI’s systems are a strange combin ation of closed-circuit TV and analog components out of a music synthesizer: oscillators, potentiometers, interconnection networks. The basic mechanisms are the same for all. but they ere carried to different logical extremes, with differing accoutrements, in the four systems. They all seem to be based on the extraordinary Animac II, not yet implemented; it would seem thai for business reasons the company decided to raise money promoting simpler systems, so its bread and butter now consists of two less ambitious systems, Scanimate snd Animac I; both of which might be puzzling if not recognized as parts of a more elegant whole. It would seem they were designed backwards as spinoffs from Animac II, as was CAESAR. their more recent 2-D system.
The extraordinary ramifications and varieties of this system, with sit its electronic add-on and composite methods, stagger the most jaded technical imagination.
At the heart of the CI systems is the prin ciple of filling areaa of a CRT screen with an oscillating trace. This is a principle common lo both Lissajoua figures and television; but Computer Image has elaborated il peculiarly. By variations they paint twisted television images, wiggle sections of superimposed drawings, create moving filigree effects, and hope to animate whole groups of opaque electronic puppets in 3-space.
Consider an oscillating trace on an oscillo
scope.
This is a two-dimensional oscillation, having two signals, x and y. But a three-dimensional oscillation is also possible; any third
signal,
z, can be interpreted as a third dimension, meaning that a “point of light” is whirling out some pattern in a three-dimensional space— an oacillotank. so to speak. Let us call this point moving in three dimensions a “space trace.”
Now lo view this trace we need to cut it down to two dimensions. By ignoring one of the traces we can view the oscillotank In certain fixed
ways;
but by creating a “view calculator,” a box performing certain perspective tranaTor-mationa on the three signals of the space trace, we may obtain a view of the oscillotank from a movable vantage point. This is an x-y view which we may put on an ordinary oscilloscope.
Let us now add one more signal, b (for
brightness).
This is the brightness signal familiar in tele via ion.
Brightness of the spot is thus independent of the movement of the apace trace. For example, the apace trace could describe a helical path, a sort of tornado motion, and we could time its apinning to phase with a TV signal. If we now brighten ihe apace trace only with the bright-neaa signal of a TV pickup, we now will see (in our view of the oscillotank) what would look like a TV picture curled around itself in space.
s built around
CAESAR Syatem. Characters are made to move jaws and Hps by Jointing technique similar to Anisic II
(below),
but in such
lanlpulatlon
window Into a peeulls rt of world: undulate nnj spin on invisible spindles
(Seanlaate),
or wlggU-BS separate bones (CAESAR. Tubelike shapes may be rotated and shaped in 3D
(Anlaic),
and puppets nay eventually be rolled like cigarettes (Animac II), which may then be painted from a TV pickup on the aide nearest the viewpoint. By using a storage tube and spinning the trace close together, like cotton candy, and cutting off the painting signal while the trace is within the area already filled, we get electronic masking: v/hlch blends animated drawings In 2D (CAESAR)
an.’
way eventually manage shadows and occultatlon masking among 3D puppets (Animac II).
Li33ajo_us and zigzag figures are rapidly spun in three dimension — that is, varying voltages x, y and z. The resulting “tubes” and spectlve calculation. The circuity permits these shapes to flex at
joints,
wave, and go through other
III SCANIMATE: zigzag and curling shapea define a moving scroll on which an Image is painted. IN CAESAR: curling shapes are treated 2-dimensiona11y, as blocking controls for artwork.
9) ^p£^XK
IsilptUtV-* OiWwr
WHAT ABOUT REAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL DISPLAY?
In science-fiction stories you hear about how objects are made to appear as if they’re standing in the middle of the room. For instance, I believe that in Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land they watched a “tank” in which things appeared.
Well,
a lot of people have thought about
this,
and it’s not so easy as you might think.
One interesting scheme used a sort of translucent propellor. spinning rather fast, on which computer-generated images were projected from below. It was done by the dotting method, so that a bright dot of light would appear high or low in space depending on whether it was projected on a relatively high or low point on the propellor.
fW
vW*r,
This was interesting but had numerous disadvantages– not the least of which was the danger of the thing flying apart. (Translucent materials tend not to be as strong as, say, metal.) Another basic problem, though, was the fact that any given point in the space could only be displayed at a given time, when the propellor’s height in that region was just right, and that meant that at that given instant you couldn’t display any of the other points that could only be displayed at that instant. A considerable disadvantage.
Probably the most astonishing 3D display is Sutherland’s Incredible Helmet. This consists Df a helmet with two dinky CRTs mounted on it, each being driven in real time by a perspective system (such as the LDS-1) and set up with prisms to the wearer’s eyes. Through the prisms the wearer can see the real world in front of him. Reflected in the prisms, however, and thus mixed into the view of the real world, is the glowing wire-frame being presented to him– in perspec
tive,
and with its separate views merging into an apparent object in front of him. But he need not stand still: as he moves, the helmet’s changing position is monitored by the program, and the display system changes the views accordingly meaning he can walk around and through a
dis
played object. The illusion, and the possibilities, are fantastic: imaginary architecture, explanations and diagrams of things in the room, poetry that changes as you walk through it, …
well,
you work on it. Not available commercially.
There was a lot to be said for tents. They could be made by tailors, rather than construction gangs; they could be transported and stored
flat.
Their surface-to-volume ratios couldn’t be
beat.
Noting this, an architect named Ron Resch said to himself: what about making large-scale foldable structures, likeunto geodesic domes, that cou Id be simply manufactured in sheet form and creased at the factory, then bolted and cabled and strutted in the field?
Resch has now for years been experi menting with complex folded structures.
There’s only one trouble. If you’ve messed with paper airplanes you know that folding is an inaccurate process, and so the prospect of discovering complex geometric structures by the hand-folding of paper is rather slim.
Recognizing this, Resch has contrived to work at a computer display. His work— the search for great folding structures– is one of the first practical uses of halftone polygon computer graphics. He is, naturally, at the University of Utah.
Lou Katz, of NYU, put old-fashioned stereop- ticons up to the CRT, and displayed two separate views to the two eyes. Works fine, even with isometric display.
Bob Spinrad of Xerox Data Systems has a patent on displaying 3D from a *omputer through an ordinary color TV. Assuming you’re using some standard way of refreshing the TV–
des
cribed elsewhere– the image for one eye is
dis
played in green. the other in red, and you look through red and fcreen glasses. The wonders of modern science. Spinrad chuckles over It himself.
Another scheme glued silver Mylar to the front of a loudspeaker, then played a soft hum through the loudspeaker to pulse the Mylar back and forth. Then you used that as a mirror to look at what was going on the CRT– which was showing a lot of points at odd places that would appear to be in space. Unfortunately this was hard to coordinate, and, like the propellor, often required you to put dots in several places at once, which don’t work.
For a while you could
get—
maybe you still can— a three-dimensional computer output
device.
Here’s what it did: it created objects showing data structures that had three variables. (It didn’t make wire-frame objects or the like.) Automatically ejecting wire through a styrofoam block, and snipping the done ones, it created little mountains showing three-dimensional data. Very cute. Since many people have problems with mountainous computer data, it probably should have caught on.
Then a lot of people mumble the word “holography,” as if that is going to settle something. While holograms are terrific and remark
able,
and have been produced on computers, making them is not a process that can be carried out decently on sequential machines— let alone making them in real time. So if a solution to interactive three-dimensional computer display is going to come through holography, it means a whole new batch of technology will have to be invented.
My friend Andrew J. Singer, who comes and goes in the computer field and is one of the five or six smartest people I ever met, says he knows how to build a display tank, and I believe him. He explained it quickly to me once and I asked him to tell it again, but he just said sadly, “What’s the use– there are so many great things that could be done…”
FOUR DIMENSIONS, EGAD
So much for three dimensions. Now, some readers are bound to ask, “What about four dimensions?” because they are science-fiction fans or troublemakers or mathematicians or something.
Just as we can make a two-dimensional picture of a three-dimensional object, it is
pos
sible,
dear reader, to make a two-dimensional picture of a four-dimensional object.
What is a four-dimensional object?
Why,
any object that has four dimensions, (thanks a lot, you say), or even four measurable qualities, such as height, weight, age and grade point average.
Well,
let’s not get into that, but it turns out that views of such multidimensional structures may be obtained by the same homogeneous matrix techniques already mentioned for regular perspective calculations. Rule of thumb: however many dimensions your data has originally, you add one more dimension, homogeneous with the rest, and there exist formulas (sorry, I don’t have them) for view calculation.
(Note,
of course, that while a two-dimen sional view is a picture, a three-dimensional view is a three-dimensional object– you’ll have to view it on an interactive 3D computer display of some kind.)
From videotape, “The Hydrogen Atom According
to
Quantum Mechanics” by
T.J.
O’Donnell & David Parrish.
It
is
usually hard
to
combine
things:
especially
complicated
technical
things.
Usually
it takes
infinite
reconsiderations,
finagling,
modification,
intertwingling.
The
Circle
Graphics Habitat,
however,
is
something
else again.
It
results
from two
intricate,
independent technological
developments,
each
an
intricate
system
care
fully
crafted
by an
exceptionally
talented
person,
coming
together
like
two
hands
clap-
ing.
Like
ham and
eggs,
like
man and
woman,
Sandin’s
Image
Processor
and
DeFanti’s
GRASS
language
conjoin
directly
and
interact
per
fectly
as
if
they
had
been
made
for
each
other,
which they
were
not.
Dan
Sandin’s
Image
Processor
(see p.J>M&)
is
a
system
of
circuit
boxes
that
allow video
images
to be
dynamically colored,
mat
ted,
dissolved
and
palpitated;
Tom
DeFanti’s
language
(see “Coup
de GRASS,
p.j)^’3l)
per
mits
the
rapid
creation,
viewing
and
manip
ulation
of
three-dimensional objects
on the
screen
of a
particular
computer
setup.
To
combine
them,
you
just
point
Dan’s
system
at
Tom’s
system.
Let’s
say
that
on
the
screen
of
Tom’s
system
we are
viewing
an
animated
bird,
flapping
its wings. Since it’s being
shown
on
a
three-dimensional refreshed
line
display (see
pp-iUZT-S.iAJ”)
,
it
appears
only
as
white
lines
on a
dark screen.
Dan
merely points
a TV
camera
at
Tom’s
screen,
and
runs
the
TV
signal
into
his
Im
age Processor.
Now, in
the
Image
Processor, he gives it
the
magic
of
color.
Different
colors,
interplaying
with
gradations
and
subtlety.
From
the
Image
Processor,
the
finished
signal
goes
out to
videotape recorders.
What
then
have
we
overall?
One of the
world’s
most
flexible
facilities
for
the
rapid
production
of
educational videotapes.
To
explain something,
you
create
a
three-dimensional
stick-figure
“model”
of
it,
using
DeFanti’s
GRASS
language.
Then
you
make
a
videotape
of
it,
showing
rotations
or
other
manipulations, using
the
Image
Proces
sor
to
give it
color.
DeFanti
and
Sandin
have
spent
much
of
the
academic
year
’73-4
getting
the
kinks
out
of
this
procedure.
(Many
of
the
difficulties
stem
from
the
unreliability
of
videotape
re
corders.)
Stills
from
some
of
the
first
work
are
shown
here.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thomas
A.
DeFanti, Daniel
J.
Sandin
and
Theodor
H.
Nelson,
“Computer
Graphics
as
a
Way of
Life.”
To be
presented
at U.
of
Colorado
computer
graphics conference,
July
1974;
to
appear
in
proceedings pur
portedly
to be
called
Computers
and
Graphics•
From videotape, “The Number Cruncher, by
TDF & DJS.
From videotape, “The Spiral Tape,’ by
DJS and TDF.
88
ivc
Yitfos or irjcwft
Uneducated people typically think of education as the learning of a lot of facts and skills. While facts and skills certainly have their merits, “higher education” is also largely concerned with tying ideas together, and especially alternative structures of such tying-together: with showing you the vast uncertainties of things.
A wonderful Japanese film of the fifties was called Rasho-Mon. It depicted a specific
event–
a rape– as told by five different
people.
As the audience watches the five separate stories, they must try to judge what really happened. The Rasho-Mon Principle: everything is like that. The complete truth about something is never known.
Nobody tells the complete truth, though some try. Nobody knows the complete truth. Nowhere may we find printed the complete truth. There are only different views, assertions, supposed facts that support one view or another but are disputed by disbelievers in the particular views; and so on. There are “agreed-on
facts,”
but their meaning is often in doubt.
The great compromise of the western world is that we go by the rule: assume that we never know the final truth about anything. There are continuing Issues, Mysteries, Continuing Dialogues . What about flying saucers, “why Rome
fell,”
was there a Passover Plot, and Did Roosevelt know Pearl Harbor would be attacked?
Outsiders find the intellectual world pom pous , vague in its undecided issues, stuffy in its quotes and citations. But in a way these are the sounds of battle. The clash of theories is what many find exhilarating about the intellectual world. The Scholarly Arena is simply a Circus Haximus in which these battles are scheduled.
Many people think “science” is free from all this. These are people who do not know much about science. More and more is scientifically known, true; but it is repeatedly discovered that some scientific “knowledge” is untrue, and this problem is built into the system. The important thing about science is not that everything will be known, or that everything unanimously believed by scientists is necessarily true, but that science contains a systern for seeking untruth and purging it.
This is the great tradition of western civilization. The Western World is, in an important sense, a continuing dialogue among people who have thought different things. “Scholarship” is the tradition of trying to improve, collate and resolve uncertainties. The fundamental ground rules are that no issue is ever closed, no interconnection is impossible. It all comes down to what is writ ten, because the thoughts and minds themselves, of course, do not last. (The apparatus of citation and footnote are simply a combination of hat-tipping, go-look-if-you-don’t-believe-me, and you-might-want-to-read-this-yourself.)
“Knowledge,” then– and indeed mos t of our civilization and what remains of those previous–is a vasty cross-tangle of ideas and evidential materials, not a pyramid of truth. So that preserving its structure, and improving its accessibility, is important to us all.
Which is one reason we need hypertexts and *hinkertoys.
kt1
3
Jr.
I
&OS I I MM
As Ear as I can
tell,
these are the techniques used by bright people who want to learn something other than by taking couraea in it. It’s the way Ph.D.’a pick up a second field; it’s the way journalists and “geniuses” operate) it brings the general understandings of a field that children of eminent people in that field get as a birthright! it’s the way anybody can learn anything, if he has the nerve.
1. DECIDE WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. But you can’t know exactly, because of course you don’t know exactly how any field is structured until you know all about it. 0*1
iT,
2. READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN * especially what you enjoy, since that way you can read more of it and faster. 3. GRAB FOR INSIGHTS. Regardless of points others are trying to make, when you recognize an insight that has meaning for you, make it your own. It may have to do with the shape of molecules, or the personality of a specific emperor, or the quirks of a Great Man in the Pield. Its importance is not how central it is, but how clear and interesting and memorable to you. REMEMBER IT. Then go for another.
4. TIE INSIGHTS TOGETHER. Soon you will have your own string of insights in a field, like the string of lights around a Christmas tree.
5. CONCENTRATE ON MAGAZINES, NOT BOOKS. Magazines have far more insights per inch of text, and can be read nuch faster. But when a book really speaks to you, lavish attention onft.
6. FIND YOUR OWN SPECIAL TOPICS, AND PURSUE THEM.
7. GO TO CONVENTIONS. For some reason, conventions are a splendid concentrated way to learn things; talking to people
helps.
Don’t think you have to be anybody special to go to a convention; just plunk down your money. But you have to have a handle. Calling yourself a Consultant is good; “Student” is perfectly honorable.
8. “FIND YOUR MAN.” Somewhere in the world is someone who will answer your questions extraordinarily
well.
If you find him, dog him. He may be a janitor or a teenage kid; no matter. Follow him with your begging-bowl, if that’s what he
wants,
or take him to expensive restaurants, or whatever.
9. KEEP IMPROVING YOUR QUESTIONS. Probably in your head there are questions that don’t seem to line up with what you’re hearing. Don’t assume that-you don’t understand; keep adjusting the questions till you can get an answer that relates to what you wanted.
10.
YOUR FIELD IS BOUNDED WHERE YOU WANT IT TO BE. Just because others group and stereotype things in conventional ways does not mean they are necessarily right. Intellectual subjects are connected every whichway; your field is what you think it is. (Again, this is one of the.things that will give you insights and keep you motivated; but it will get you into trouble if you try to go for degrees.)
There are limitations. This doesn’t give you lab ex perience, and you will continually have to be making up for
gaps.
But for alertness and the ability to use his mind, give me the man who’s learned this way, rather than been blinkered and cliched to death within the educational system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wilmar Shiras, Children of the Atom. Science-Fiction about what a school could be like where kids really used their minds. I’ve always been sure it was possible; the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S. (see p. made me surer.
#>o«l^e$ of f«i^
“ON
WW6-/1
3par^(^v
“jkt credit procetf being an examination of some very Complex Hatters which Nobody Seems to Understand; and whose Generality of Relevance may be Gradually Apprehended. (Eventually I hope to develop a somewhat more formal treatment of “ideas,” as distinct from propositions, sentence kernels, etc. But there is certainly no room for that here. (Logicians! show me the truth-table of “BUT.”)
The process of writing is poorly understood in most quarters. Many working writers despair of being “systematic,” getting things done as best they can. On the other hand, people who think they might be able to contribute– particularly the symbolic
logi
cians and transformational linguists— being immersed in their own formalisms, simply don’t see what’s going on— at least, when I’ve tried to talk to them.
Writing is not simple. As with vision or speech or riding a bicycle, an immensely complex process is being unconsciously pursued.
Some people think you make an outline and follow it, filling out the details of the outline until the piece is finished. This is absurd. (True, some people can do this, but that is simply a shortcutting of the real process.) Basically writing is
THE TRY-AND-TRY-AGAIN INTERPLAY of PARTS AND DETAILS against OVERALL AND UNIFYING IDEAS WHICH KEEP CHANGING.
In fact a number of things are happening, often simultaneously. We can separate them into three:
1. Provisional development of ideas and points: A) forming overall organizing ideas, B) selecting tentative points; C) inductively finding overall organization among them; D) finding relations of interest between
points.
2. Complex sifting and adjustment among collections of points, overall ideas.
3. Fine splicing within developed sequences. A) transition and juxtaposition managements, B) cross-citations, C) smoothing.
Regrettably, there’s no room or time to pursue this here. {The article I had intended to write would take a whole spread.) For people who really care about the matter, I will make some points in very abbreviated form.
The interesting structures in written material include:
“Points”—
pieces, sentences, phrases, examples, plot events, and expository “points.”
Organizing principles and structures (which we will call here
arches)—
final ironies, things to be led up to, themes,
plots,
concepts, principles, expository structures, -organizing titles, overconcepts. These may be either local or global, over the entire work. (Note: arches may not be heirarchical relative to one another.)
Now, we may think of points and arches as individual objects which have individual relations to one another. Between two points
there,
may be a good transition; a specific point may link well to a specific arch.
The problem in writing, then, is that overall structures you choose (systems of arches) may not link well to the points that have to be included among them; and that transitions between points don’t work out the way you want them to. Good transitions can’t be worked out for the sequence of points you want to make, or, alternatively, there are too many good transitions within a specific structure of points, and picking among them involves difficult
choices—
especially when you have to devise appropriate arches on the basis of the final sequence of points.
There are a number of other important structures in written
material.
They include accordances, juxtapositions, cross-citations, connotations, nuances and rhythms.
The only ones we will discuss here are accordances.
The term “accordance,” as I shall use it here, is simply a vaguely formal way of talking about whether things match or fit together. Two items are in accord if they match or fit
well,
or in discord if they match or fit badly. Thus a good transition between points (as mentioned early) represents an accord, and a good link between a point and an arch is also an accord.
unlcation– whether written or snoken < ... disassembly of the Tlnkertoy of thought into pieces, and placing It on a conveyor belt to its place eassembly.
^0
0
Now, it happens that a great deal of writing is concerned with notes to the reader about accordances in the material. In fact, quite a few words are exclusively concerned with subtly pointing out to the reader the accords and discords within the expository structure of what he is reading. We may call these accordance-connectives or accordance-notes.
Two of the i ; basic terms are Indeed and but.
The word indeed has an interesting function.
The word indeed (in its main use, at the beginning of a sentence) indicates an accord between what has just been said and what is to follow. In other words, it functions as a positive transition, impetus or gas pedal, indicating a continuation of the flow in the direction already indicated. So do the words thus, then, therefore, moreover, so and furthermore• These are infix accords, that is, notes of accord that go between two items. We also see prefix accords, such as
since.
Inasmuch as, insofar as; these have to be followed by two clauses, the second of which is in accord with the first.
The word but is exactly the opposite. It indicates a discord or contradistinction, a negative transition, "brakes" in the flow, other such infix discords include nevertheless, despite this, on the other hand, even so, and "Actually,.••" Similarly, there are prefix
dis
cords:
while, despite, though•.., notwithstanding•
I find this topic of inquiry very interesting. These sorts of terms have been used since time immemorial by writers adjusting their transitions for smooth flow (note such antiquey variants as haply,
howbeit,
withal, forasmuch and
howsomever),
but the importance and structure of this service has not, I think, been generally understood.
(Note also that there are more intricate accordance-connectives: I wish we could go here into the structure of h F*g|-..j st least, .. .if_
not...
, ... otherwise... , Anyway... , and Now....)
(Note:
the try-and-try-again revision and reconsideration process, tinkering with structural interconnections, is a universal component of the creative process in everything from movie editing to machine design. There ought to be a name for it. I can't think of a satisfactory one, although I would commend to your attention grandesignlng, piece-whole diddlework, grand fuddling, meta-mogrification, and that most exalted possibility, tagnebulopsis (the visualization of structure in clouds).)
The past is like the receding view out the back of an automobile: the most recent is more conspicuous, and everything seems eventually to be lost.
We know we chould save things, but what? Those with the job of saving things— the libraries and mu
seums—
save so many of the wrong things, the fashionable and expensive and high-toned things esteemed by a given
time,
and most of the rest slips past. Each generation seems to ridicule the things held in esteem by times be
fore,
but of course this can never be a guide to what should be saved. And there is so much to save: music, writing, sinking Venice, vanishing species.
But why should things be saved? Everything is deeply intertwingled. We save for knowledge and
nos
talgia, but what we thought was knowledge often turns to nostalgia, and nostalgia often brings us deeper insights that cut across our lives and very selves.*
Computers offer an interesting daydream: that we may be able to store things digitally instead of physically. In other words, turn the libraries to
digi
tal storage (see Hypertexts,
pVsH);
digitize paintings and photographs (see "Picture Processing, p.»*|0);even digitize the genetic codes of animals, so that species can be restored at future dates (see "The Hitiest Computer," p. to).
Digital storage possesses several special advantages. Digitally stored materials may be copied by automatic meanB; corrective measures are possible, to prevent errors from creeping In— i.e., "no deterioration" In principle; and they could be kept in various places, lessening mankind's dependence on its eggs being all in one basket (like the Library at Alexandria, whose burning during the occupation of Julius Caesar was one of the greatest losses in human
history).
But this would of course require far more compact and reliable forms of digital storage than exist right now.
Nevertheless, we better start thinking about it. ThoBe who fear a coming holocaust (see p. M ) had best think about pulling some part of mankind through, with some part of what he used to have.
T.H. Nelson, The Snunklng of the Heart: On the •ychology of Puns and Preterism in Carroll and OtherB.
180,
unless a decent writing system comes along. Pey 1980
?8
DM
44
In recent years
a
very basic
change
has
occurred
in
presentational
systems
of
all kinds.
We may
summarize
It
EnSer
the
name
branching,
si
though there
are
many
variants
unaer
ti.c _ , ms for
presenting
pictures,
texts
Essentially, today's systems for P- . ~ . and whaWot can bring you different things automatically depending on what you do
Selection
of
this
type
is
gencr- "TVvcalled branching.
(I
have
suggested
the
generic term
hynermedia
for
presentational
media
which perform
in
this
(and other) multidimensional
ways.)
A
number
of
branching
media
exist
or are
possible.
Branching
movies
or
hyperfilms
(see
nearby).
Branching
texts
or
hypertexts
(see
nearby).
Branching audio,
music,
etc.
Branching slide-shows.
Wish
we
could
get
into
some
of
that
stuff
here.
The idea of branching movies is quite exciting. The possibility of it is another thing entirely.
The only system I know of that worked was at the 1967 Montreal World's Fair (Expo 67). At the Czech Pavilion— you will recall that before the crackdown they had quite a yeasty culture going in Czechoslovakia— there were some terrific fantic systems going. One was a wall of cubes with slide projectors inside (that
roll
ed toward you and back as they changed their
pictures).
And then the Movie.
The Czechoslovak!an Branching Movie— I forget its real name— had the audience vote on what was to happen next at a number of different junctures. What should she do now, what will he do next, etc. And lo and behold! after they had voted, the lights went down, and that's what would happen next. People agreed that this gave the movie a special immediacy.
I never saw the movie— I waited in line several hours but the line was too long to get into the last showing. So instead 1 went backstage and talked to Radusz Cin-cera, who worked out the system. It turns out that it didn't work quite the way people supposed. A lot of people thought that "all the possibilities" had been filmed in ad
vance.
Actually, there were always only two possibilities, and no matter what the audience had chosen, somehow the film was plotted to come down to the same next choice anyway:
In the actual setup, they simply had two projectors running side by side, with Film A and Film B, and the projectionist would drop an opaque slide in front of whichever wasn't chosen. But Cincera said that audiences almost always chose the same alternatives anyway, so half the movie was hardly ever used
In the early sixties a movie was making the rounds in which audiences were supposedly allowed to vote on the ending— "Mr. Sardonicus," I believe it was called. From the ads it seemed that audiences would be polled as to which last reel to show. Whether the villain was to get his comeuppance, or whatever.
Then there was that Panacolor cartridge projector, mentioned elsewhere, which would have allowed choices by the user
More recently there's the CMX system, also mentioned elsewhere. This is a setup, being jointly marketed by CBS and Memorex, for computer-controlled movie editing. But actually it could also be used as a branching movie system. Essentially the movie itself is stored frame-by-frame (as video) on big disks, made by Memorex; and, under computer control, the output can be switched rapidly among the frames, effectively showing the stored movies. (To my knowledge, the video networks haven't yet recognized the possibilities of this.)
The only trouble is, it's extremely expensive (half a
million?),
it has an exact storage capacity limited by the number of disk tracks (presumably one track per frame) perhaps five minutes total one one big unit, but you can buy more— and it can only give its full performance to one viewer at a time.) (Or t» (Vt
.oU/t.
hiWk Iwe-)
It may be that the most practical branching movie system would be a cartridge movie viewer and a big stack of cartridges. When you make your choice, change the cart
ridge.
But of course that's not as much fun as having it happen automatically.
REALITY IS OBSOLETE
The idea that objective reality Is perceived by our senses, 1s an obsolete concept. Old truisms like "seeing 1s believing", become much less believable as we become more aware
that,
the biological machinery of life Itself, transforms images of the physical world before we are made conscious of them. These biological mechanisms share many similarities in principle and in application, to other mechanisms observed in the natural environment and those invented for our own use. Since we are becoming more aware of the nature of perception and those mechanisms involved, now is the time to gain control of ourselves and share more discretion 1n the operation-of our own biological machinery. He have entered the age of hyper-reality.
Oay-to-day living provides only a limited variety of physical stimulus, and little Incentive to manipulate the physiological and psychological processing involved, Han's historical preoccupation with the need to maintain constant images of the physical world, is a product of his extreme orientation toward physical survival in a hostile environment. The current evolving society of leisure orientations removes this need for constant images and thereby enhances the opportunities for a more complete use of the sensory apparatus and those related brain functions. Many have turned to drugs or meditation. More specifically it is proposed here, that modern communications technology be employed as a "vehicle of departure" from this need for constant images, to bring about a more complete use of the human technology itself. Hyper-reality is the employment of technology other than the biological machinery, when used to affect the performance of the biological machinery beyond its own limitations. This is almost like making adjustments on a television set, except you are what's plugged in, and the controls are outside your body, being part of whatever technology is interfaced to the body itself. As part of such a man-machine interface you could extend your own mental processes, or if you should choose, you could just diddle with the dials. Hyper-reality is an opportunity to enhance the various qualities of the human experience. Reality is obsolete.
A
— How Wachepreea (see p. DM 6)
COPYRIGHT 1973 AUDITAC, LTD.
Now, in our time, we are turning Gutenberg around. The technology of movable type created certain structures and practices around the written word. Now the technology of computer screen displays make possible almost any structures and practices you can imagine for the written word.
So now what?
For new forms of written communication am ong people who know each other, jump to "Engel-
bart"
piece., nearby.
To learn about new forms of multidimensional documents for computer screens, jump to "Hyper
texts."
Or just feel free to browse.
By "hypertext" I mean non-sequential writing.
Ordinary writing is sequential for two
reasons.
First, it grew out of speech and speech-making, which have to be sequential; and second, because books are not convenient to read except in a sequence.
But the structures of ideas are not se
quential.
They tie together every whichway. And when we write, we are always trying to tie things together in non-sequential ways (see
p.JIr^HL).
The footnote is a break from sequence; but it cannot really be extended (though some, like Will Cuppy, have toyed with the
technique).
I have run into perhaps a dozen people who understood this instantly when I talked to them about it. Most people, however, act more bemused, thinking I'm trying to tell them something technical or pointlessly philosoph
ical.
It's not pointless at all: the point is, writers do better if they don't have to write in sequence (but may create multiple struc
tures,
branches and alternatives), and readers do better if they don't have to read in seq
uence,
but may establish impressions, jump around, and try different pathways until they find the ones they want to study most closely.
(The astute reader, and anybody who's gotten to this point must be, will have noticed that this book is in ''magazine" layout, organized visually by ideas and meanings, for that precise reason. I will be interested to hear whether that has worked.)
And the pity of it is that (like the man in the French play who was surprised to learn that he had been "speaking prose all his life and never known it"), we've been speaking hypertext all our lives and never known it.
Now, many writers have tried to break away from sequence. I think of" Nabokov's Pale Fire, of Tristram Shandy and an odd novel of Lazaro Cortazar called Hopscotch, made up of sections ending with numbers telling you where you can branch to. There are many more; and large books generally use many tricks to get around the problem of indexing and reviewing what has and hasn't been said or done already .
However, in my view, a new day is dawning. Computer storage and screen display mean that we no longer have to have things in sequence; totally arbitrary structures are possible, and I think that after we've tried them enough people will see how desirable they are.
DM
45
TVPES OF HYPERTEXT Let's assume that you have a high-P""" display-- and storage displays won t do, be-„u« you have to see things move in order to understand where they come-from and what they mean. (Especially text.) So it has to be a refreshed CRT. Basic or chunk style hypertext offers choiHiTT"erther as TSoTHote-markers (like asterisks) or labels at the end of a chunk. Whatever you point at then comes to the screen.
Collateral hypertext means compound an- notations or parallel text (see p.
>,t\*7.)
Obviously, putting man’s entire heritage into a hypertext is going to take awhile. But it can and should be done.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theodor II. Nelson, “The Hypertext.” Proc. World Documentation Federation, 1965.
COULDN’T HAVE HYPERTEXT NOVELS, YOU SAY?
Consider
the hypertext character of— Tristram Shandy, by Sterne. Spoon River Anthology, by Masters. Hopscotch, by Cortazar. Pale Fire, by Nabokov. Remembrance of Things Past, hy Proust.
And, surprisingly, hypertext actually FIGURES IN Giles Goat-Boy, by Baxth.
t”vOTTrjHj6-
IS
MePLV
IMTOlvlUG^.
In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge^ since the
cross-
connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up
neatly.
Hypertext at last offers the possibility of representing and exploring it all without carving it up destructively.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book entitled The Lost Worlds of 2001 (Signet,
1972),
about the variants and alternatives of’ that story that did not find their way to the screen.
In a hypertext version, we could look at them all in context, in collateral
views,
and see the related variants–with annotations.
Mortimer J. Adler, the ..wn who reduced all of Western Culture to a few Great Books plus an index under his own categories, has now Addled the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Since 1965 he has been creating Bri tannica 3, the venturesome and innovative new version, now on sale for about half a thou.
Ci
EASIER
EMMP
fwer
The general thinking
in
this system seems
to be
that
the
student
may get an
overall organizing view
of
what
he is
supposed
to be
learning
(MAP);
information
on
what
he is
currently supposed
to be
about
(OBJ);
canned suggestions based
on
what
he’s
recently done
(ADVICE).
Mortver,
he can get the
system
to
present
a
rule about the subject
or
give
him
practice;
and for
either
of
these
he may
request easier rules
or
practice,
or
harder rules (i.e., more abstruse generalities)
or
harder prac
tice.
For
the
latter,
the
student
is
supposed
to hit
RULE
or
PRACT followed
by
HELP, HARDER
or
EASIER,
viz.:
Hap
ADWff
MAP /
i-
£XNMP
V
FK«CT
Now regardless
o£
whether this
is a
well-thought– way
to
divide
up a
subject—
I’ll be
interested
to se<
how
it
works
out—
these controls
do not
seem
to be wi
arranged
for
conceptual clarity.
It
seems
to be the <
rows-of-buttons approach. I have
no
doubt that
the
people working
on
this
i
Stem
are
certain this
is the
only possible layout.
Bi
consider that
the
student's options might
be
clearer
i
him,
for
instance,
if we set it up as
follows:
Genera
Affile kg;
HELP
What I aa trying to show here la that merely the arrangement of buttons creates different fsntic con
structs.
If you see this, you will recognize that considering all the other options we have, designing new media Is no small matter. The control structures merge mentally with the presentational structures. The temptation to settle on short-sighted designs having shallow unity is all too great.
FANTIC DESICN Fantic design Is basically the planning and selec tion of effects. (We could also call these "performance
values"—
cf. "production values" in movies.) Some of these intended effects are simply the com munication of information or cognitive structure— "information transfer," to use one of the more obtuse phrases current. Other desirable effects include orienting the user and often moving him emotionally, including sometimes overwhelming or entrancing him.
In the design of fantic systems involving automatic response, we have a vast choice among types of presentational techniques, tricks that are just now becoming understood. Not just screen techniques and functions, but also response techniques and functions.
(If "feelie" aystems are ever perfected, as in Huxley's Brave New World, it's still the same in prin
ciple.
See Wachspress, p. T>*\^.)
In both general areas, though— within media, and designing media— It seems to me that the creation of organizing constructs Is the most profound problem. In particular, the organizing constructs must not
dis
tract,
or tear up contents. An analogy: in writing, the inventions of the paragraph, chapter and footnote were inventions In writing technique that helped clarify what was being expressed. What we need in computer-based fantic design is inventions which do not artificially chop up, constrain, or interfere with the subject (see
box,
Procrustes,
nearby).
I do not feel these principles are everywhere suf ficiently appreciated. For instance, the built-in structures of PLATO (see “Fantic Space of PLATO,” p.
|)*\
7.7) disturbs me somewhat In Its arbitrariness— and the way its control keys are scattered around.
But there is always something artificial— that is, some form of artifice— in presentation. So the problem is to devise techniques which have elucidating value but do not cut connections or ties or other relationships you want to save. (For this reason I suggest the reader consider “Stretchtext,” p. -WV*] , collateral linkage
(P-
J)H 5^ )
>
and the various hypergrams
(p.J)P-j
l^). These structures, while somewhat arbitrary and artifi
cial,
nevertheless can be used to handle a subject gently.)
An Important kind of organizing construct is the map or overall orienting diagram. This, too, is often partly “exact” and partly “artifice:” certain aspects of the diagram may have unclear import but clear and helpful connotation. (For instance, consider the “picture
systems”
diagram on p. DM 2.0 — just what does the vertical dimension mean? Yes, but what does it really mean?)
Responding systems now make it possible for such orienting structures to be multidimensional and responding (cf. the orienting function of the “dimensional
flip”
control illustrated on p. DM J| ).
Fantic design, then, is the creation either of things to be shown (writing, movie-making, etc.) at the lower end, or media to show things in, or environments.
1. The design of things to be shown— whether writing, movie-making, or whatever— is nearly always a combination of some kind of explicit structure— an explanation or planned lesson, or plot of a novel— and a feeling that the author can control in varying degrees. The two are .deeply intertwined, however.
The author (designer, director, etc.) must think carefully about how to give organization to what is being presented. This, too, has both aspects, cognition and feelings.
At the cognitive end, the author must concern him self with detailed exposition or argument, or, in fiction,
Plot•
But simply putting appropriate parts together is not enough: the author must use organizing constructs to continually orient the reader’s (or viewer’s) mind. Repeated reference to main concepts, repeated shots (in a movie) of particular locations, serve this function; but each medium presents its own possible devices for this purpose.
The organization of the feelings of the work criss-crosses the cognitive; but we can’t get Into it here.
Selection of points and parts contributes to both
aspects.
If you are trying to keep the feeling of a thing from being ponderous, you can never Include everything you wanted, hut must select from among the explicit points and feeling-generators that you have thought of.
2. The design of media themselves, or of media subsystems, is not usually a matter of option. Books,
movies,
radio and TV are given. But on occasion, as for world’s fairs or very personal projects, we have a certain option. Which allows things like:
SmellavlBlon or whatever they called it: movies with a smell-track, which went out Into the theater through odor generators. Branching movies (see
p.^HH1^).
“Multi-media” (multiple audio tracks and simultaneous slide projections on different
screens).
Stereo movies.
And so on. The thing about the ones mentioned ia that they are not viable as continuing setups for repeated productions. They do not offer a permanent wide market; they are not stable; they do not catch on. Which is in a way, of course, too bad.
But the great change is Just about now. Current technicalities allow branching media— especially those associated with computer screens. And it Is up to us now to design them.
3. MENTAL ENVIRONMENTS are working places for struc tured activity. The same principles of showmanship apply to a working environment as to both the contents of media and the design of media. If media are environments into which packaged materials are brought, structured environments are basically environments where you use non-packaged material, or create things yourself. They might also be called “contentless media.” The principles of wholeness in structured environments are the same as for the
others,
and many of our examples refer to them.
The branching computer screen, together with the selfsame computer’s ability to turn anything else on and off as selected by the user, and to fetch up information, yields a realm of option in the design of media and environment that has never existed before. Media we design for
Bcreen-based
computer
syBterns
are going to catch on widely, so we must be far
more
attentive to the options that exist in
order
to commit— nationally, perhaps— to the best.
In tomorrow’s systems, properly unified controls can
give
us new flexibilities. If deeply well-designed, these promise magnificent new capabilities. For in
stance,
we could
allow
a musician to “conduct” the performance of his
work
by a computer-based music synthesis system (see “Audio,”
p.>>*\il),
perhaps controlling the many qualities of the performance on a screen as he goes, by means of such techniques as dimensional flip (see
p.*tt7l).
(The tradition of cumulative audio synthesis, as practiced in the fifties by Les Paul and Mary Ford, and more recently by Walter Carlos and Mike Oldfleld, will take on a new fillip as multidimensional control techniques become common.)
One of the intents of this book has been to orient you to some of the possibilities and some of the options, considered generally. There la not rooa, unfortunately, to discuss more than one or two overall possibilities in
detail.
The most successful such system so fsr has been PLATO (discussed pp.
DM18-19);
others
NEW MEDIA TO LAST
What’a worse, we are confronted not merely with the Job of using computers to present specific things. The greater task ia to design overall computer media that will last us Into a more Intelligent future. Adrift in • sea of Ignorance and confusion, it is nevertheless our duty to try to create a whole transportation system that everybody can climb aboard. For the long run, fantic syatems must be treated not as custom systems for explicit
purposes,
but as OVERALL GENERAL DESIGNS WHICH WILL HAVE TO TIE TOGETHER AND CATCH OH. otherwise collapse and perish.
FINAL CONSEQUENCES.
It seems to me certain that we are moving toward a generalized and universal Fantic system; people can and should demand it. Perhaps there will be several; but if so, being able to tie them together for smooth transmission is essential. (Think of what it would be like if there were two kinds of telephones?) This then Is a great search and crusade: to put together truly general media for^future, systems at which we can read,
write,
learn and visualize, year after year after year• The initiatives are not likely to come from the more conventional computer people; aome of them are part of the problem. (Be prepared for every possible form of aggressive defensiveness from programmers, especially: “Why would you want that?” The correct answer is BECAUSE, dammit^)
But this all means that Interior computer technical ities have to be SUBSERVIENT, and the programmers cannot be allowed to dictate how it is to behave on the basis of the underlevel structures that are convenient to them. Quite the contrary: from the fullest consideration of the richest upper-level structures we want, we the users-to-be must dictate what lower-level structures are to be prepared within.
But this means you, dear reader, must develop the fantic imagination. You must learn to visualize possible uses of computer screens, so you can get on down to the deeper level of how we are going to tie these things together.
The designer of responding computer systems is creating unified setups for viewing and manipulating
things—
and the feelings, impressions and sense of things that go with them. Our goal should be nothing less than REPRESENTING THE TRUE CONTENT AND STRUCTURE OF HUMAN THOUGHT. (Yes, Dream Machines Indeed.) But it should be something more: enabling the mind to weigh, pursue, synthesize and evaluate ideas for a better tomorrow. Or for any at all.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theodor H. Nelson, “A Conceptual Framework for Man-Machine Everything.” Proc. NCC 73.
“Computopia and Cybercrud.” In Levien
(ed.).
Computers in Instruction, The Rand Corporation,
fro* “A Mrwk1«« !• ** 0ors«1*T««H.u©il7£T.»kW
Here’s how simple it is to create and edit text with the JOT system. Since your typewriter is now a JOT machine, not every key does what it used to,
CREATING TEXT: just type it in.
fa ~fyft: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
if
/^f£f:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
REVIEWING A SENTENCE YOU JUST TYPED: the back-arrow takes ypu back, the space bar steps you ‘ through
H~Wf*:
Sp sp sp sp
7yr
The
pip is a
conventional iii^it-pen cursor.
Tne
“current shank”
is a
line vhose Implicit gradations control developnentc
In the
picture;
and the
choice of arrows
at too end of the
current shank determine
a
discrete choice between alternatives that
are to
transpire. The user, seizing
the pip
vith
the
lightpsn, moves
it
{through the usual light pin techniques) sldcvviye alone
the
current shank. Moving
it In
the “forward” direction cuuees progressive developments
in the
plctuiz, moving It “backvard” causes
a
reversal
of
anititir.Tic
and
other previous developments. When
the pip
roichsc
the
chol-je
j-oirit
in the
for.-j.-i direction, the user
may
drag
lt
(through
the
usual lightpen technique) along either
oi
the beckoning alternatives. This then causec further developments
in the
presentation consonant with
the
line selected. “Developments”
of the
picture here Include expansion, contraction sliding movements
and
fnurc-by-fnice animation. (Thece materials will have been,
of
course, explicitly input
by
authors
and
artists.) In
a
sample employment, consider
a
presentation
on the
subject of Volcanoes.
Let the
first shank
of the
control
net
control
the
“rise
of a
volcano from
the
sen”—
an
undulating ocean surface pierced first
by d
wisp
of
•moke,
then
a
growing peak, with rivulets
of
lava
Men to run
down
lt.
sides and darken
as
they contribute
to its
growth.
–
UL.
At
the end of the
first shank,
the u;sr
c^iy
bran:h
to two
drrovt labelled respectively WORD ORISIH
and
UITERIOR. Either option continues
1!*
presentation without
a
break, retaining much
of the
picture
on the
screen. Selection
of
WOTQ ORffilH cnunes
the
word VOLCAKO
to
change
to
VULCAII,
and a
picture
of the god
Vulcan
is
seen
to
seize a’ lightning bolt rising frcra
the
crater; text appears
to
explain this. Alternatively,
if the
user chooses IKTE3I0R,
the
tubes
and
ducts within
the
volcano appear,
and
explanatory text
Either
of
thece alternatives
may
continue with
its ovr.
development a
and
animation, under control
of its own
shank. Several features
of
thla control application
are of
special Interest.
One Is
that
the
presentation
may be
continuous
In
all
directions, aiding
In
continuous uter orientation. Another
is
that presentations
are
reversible
in
various vuyo,
an aid
both
In
ucer orientation
and
self-study. (Not only
is a
demonstration reversible within
a
given shank,
but the
user
may
back
the pip
through
an
intersection into
the
antecedent shank– which reappears
at the
Juncture
as the
llchtpen backs
up—
and the
user
cuy
.inuc
to
reverse
the
presentation through that preceding shank,
or to
re-onte the intersection
and
mike another choice,
“the
path
not
taken.”) These features allow
the
utter clearly
to
repent demonstrations
as
often
aa he
like, and
to
explore numerous alternatives. The displayed control
net is
thus
to be
understood
as a
large netvork
of
choices, mostly unseen, whose currently visible portion “walks” *iro< the screen
aa use
progresses. Within this system, then, numerous variants
are
possible.
For
instance,
the
currently visible portion
of the net may
Itself be whimsically incorporated
in a
picture,
viz.:
VlUJiJC
"3
..^
The Greeks told
of a
giant,
Procrustes [rhyme, with Rusty'.)
who was
very hospitable
to
passing travelers. He would invite, indeed compel them,
to
sleep
in hi.
bed. Unfortunately, because
it was a
very
odd
bed,
he
had
to cut
them
up
first... Procrustes
has
haunted conversations ever since
1
and
any time
we are
forced
to use
categories that don't properly
fit a
subject,
it
seems like
an
invitation
to the
Procrustean
bed.
Hypertext syatems
at
last offer total freedom from arbitrary categorizing
and
chopping!
but in
some system, for storing
and
presenting information,
I
can't help hearing
the
whisk
of
Procrustes' knife—
V
"Take
new
Tap-A-Toe Futuroidic Footless De-Clutching. Instead
of
old-fashioned
gas,
brake
and
clutch pedals that kept your feet busier than
a
dance marathon, Tap-A-Toe Futuroidic Footless De-Clutching offers
the
convenience
of
Single Pedal Power Control--combines
all
foot functions
in one
single pedal
I
"Think
of it: one tap-- you gi
off faster than
a
barfly after Repeal moving
ou change gears,
as
smooth mortgage foreclosure. you stop quicker than
the
"Three taps-
U.S.
economy. "And that's
all
there
is to it.
Tap-A- Toe Futuroidic Footless De-Clutching with Single Pedal Control
is as
easy
and
effortless
as the Jap
march
on
Manchuria!" Bruce McCall, "1934 Bulgemobile Brochure," National Lampoon,
May 74, 76-
SteiMVisioM
(The
p^th
unchosen fades from
the 1
A nice example
of a
unified presentational aysteHi would allow
you a
"feelie" glove along with your computer display—
the
sort
of
thing Mike Noll
has
been doing
at
Bell Labs. Now, suppose
you are
playing with
a
diagram of
a
star
on a
computer display screen.
It's all
very well
to sea its
layers, flowing arrows
re
presenting convection currents, promontories
and
so
on— but
same things
you
ought
to be
able
to
feel•
For
example,
the
mechanical resonance-properties
of
stars.
It
would
be
nice
to ba
able
to
reach
and
grasp
ths
star,
to
aqueese
it and
feel its pulsations
as it
regain*
lta
shape. This could
be
done
in the
glove—
at the
same time
the
image
of the
glove grasps
the
star
on the
screen, and
the
star
is
squished.
Of course,
to
build such
a
responding glove, particularly
one
that gave
you
subtle feelings back
in
your fingers, would probably
be
very
ex
pensive.
But it's the
kind
of
possibility people should start considaring-
s«o
tjt^s w
1
r
N0600VV?
iNTeUtCTReN'CJ?
[s-«H
THOO&HTOWVhcN,?
'FANTICS.*
ry
few
teractive computer s like
the
story
of the
First
of
all,
I
feei
tll
people understand what systems
are
abot blind
men and the
elephant-- each thinks
It'".
But
I
think
it's all
show business PENNY ARCADES
are the
model
for
Interactive computer systems,
not
classrooms
or
libraries or imaginary robot playmates.
And
computer graphics
is an
intricate branch
of
movie-mak ing.
Okay, ote manship so
I
wanted
a
terra that would
1
the
most general sense,
the
show- u
a, *j , * ,s and
feelings-- whether
or not
handled
by
machine,
I derive "fantics" from
the
Greek words "phainein" (show)
and its
derivative "phantas-tein" (present
to the eye or
mind).
You will
of
course recognize
its
cousins fantastic, fantasy, phantom.
("Phantom"
means what
is
shown;
in
medical illustration
it
refers to
an
opaque object drawn
as
transparent;
a
"phantom limb"
is an
amputee's temporary feeling that
the
severed limb
has
been restored.)
And a
fantast
is a
dreamer.
The word "fantics" would thus include the showing
of
anything
(and
thus writing and
theater),
which
is
more
or
less what
I
intended.
The
term
is
also intended
to
cover
the
tactics
of
conveying ideas
and
impressions, especially with showmanship and presentational techniques, organizing constructs,
and
fundamental structures underlying presentational systems. Thus Engelbart's data hierarchy
(P.s*%-T).
SKETCHPAD'S Constraints (p.J»»T>),
and
PLATO’s fantic spaces
(p.>M<-J5
are
fantic constructions that need
to be
understood
if we are to
understand these systens
and
their potential usages.
Livermore Labs, those hydrogen-bomb design people, will have
a
"Laboratory
for
Data Analysis."
sn
opulent facility
for ex
perimenting with multidimensional visualization.
One
of
your jolly ironies.
I
have seen pic tures
of
beautiful multlbutton control handles which were designed
for
project SMASH, would
you
believe Southeast [Asia] Nultisensory
I
Helicopters. Aargh.>
The best with
the
worst.
Everything
is
deeply intPrtwtngied.
Designing screen systems that focus the user’s thought
on his
work, with helpful visualizations
and no
distractions,
is
the great task
of
fantic design. In
a
system
I
designed
for CRT
motion- picture editing,
the
user could maipulate written descriptions
on the
screen (corresponding
to the
usual yellow-pad
notes).
To
see
the
consequences
of a
particular splice, for instance,
the
editor would only have
to
draw
a
line between
two
annotated lines
re
presenting shots. Trim variations could
be
seen
by
moving this cut-line (illustrated).
Not long after,
CBS and
Memorex
did in
troduce
a
system
for
movie-editing
by CRT–
but
I’ve
heard that
in
their system
the
user has
to
actually deal with numbers.
If so,
this
is
missing
the
whole point.
DM
5
2
Our greatest prooiems 11 visualization of complexity. olve thinking and the
By “Thinkertoy” I mean, first of all, a system to help people think.
(‘Toy’
means it should be easy and fun to UBe.) This is the same general ides for which Engelbart, for instance, uses the term “augmentation of intellect.”
But a Thinkertoy is something quite specific: I define it as a computer display system that helps you envision complex alternatives.
The process of envisioning complex alternatives is by no means the only important form of human
thought;
but it is essential to making decisions, designing, planning, writing, weighing alternate theor
ies,
considering alternate forms of legislation, doing scholarly research, and so on. it is also complicated enough that, in solving it, we may solve simpler problems as
well.
He will stress here some of the uses of these sy stems for handling text, partly because I think these are rather interesting, and partly because the complexity and subtlety of this problem has got to be better understood: the written word is nothing less than the tracks left by the mind, and so we are really talking about screen systems for handling ideas, in all their complexity.
Numerous types of complex things have to be inter- compared, and their relations inter-comprehended. Here are a few of the many types:
Alternative designs
Discrepancies among the testimony of witnesses.
Successive drafts of the same document.
A
Pairs of things which have some parts the
same,
some parts different (contracts, holy books, statutes of different states, draft versions of legislation…) i
Different theories and their ties to
parti
cular examples and evidences.
i
Under examination these different types of inter- comparison seem to be rather different. Now, one approach would be to create a different data structure and viewing technique for each different type of complex. There may be reasons for doing that in the future.
For the present, however, it makes sense to try to find the most general possible viewing technique: one that will allow complex intercomparisons of all the types mentioned, and any others we might run across.
One such technique is what I now call collatera- tion, or the linking of materials into collateral struc
tures,*
as will be explained. This is fairly straightforward if you think enough about the problem; Engelbart discovered it independently.
Let us call two structures collateral if there are links between them, connecting a selected part of one with a selected part of the other. The sequences of the connected parts may be different. For simplicity’s
sake,
suppose each one is a short piece of writing. (He will also assume that there is some convenient form of rapid viewing and following between one end of a link and another.) rt
Now, it will be noted
first
off that this is an ex tremely general method. By collateral structuring we can easily handle the equivalents of: tables of contents; indexes) comments and marginalia; explanations, exegesis, explication; labeling; headings; footnotes; notes by the writer to himself; comments and questions by the reader for later reference; and additional details
out
of sequence . Collateration, then, is the creation of such multiple and viewable
linkB
BETWEEN ANY TWO DATA STRUCTURES, in principle. It is general and powerful enough to handle a great variety of possible uses in human intellectual endeavor, and deserves consider–able attention from researchers of every stripe.**
The problem then, is how to handle this for rapid and convenient viewing and whatever other work the user wants to do— writing and splicing, inter-comparing, annotating and so on. Two solutions appear on this spread: The Parallel Textface^, designed as a seminal part of the Xanadu system (see
p.>\•>£.),
which I hope will be marketed with that system in the near future, and a more recent design which I’ve worked on at the University of Illinois, the 3D Thinkertoy or Th3.
CLARITY AND POWER
He stressed on the other side of the
book
that computer systems must be clear, simple and easy to use. Where things like business uses of computers are concerned, which are intrinsically so simple in principle, some of the complications that people have been forced to deal with in ill-designed computer systems verge on
the
criminal. (But some computer people want others to think that’s the way it has to be. “Your first duty is to keep your job, right?” one computer person said to me recently. “It
wouldn’t
do to set up systems so easy to use that the company wouldn’t need you any
more.”
See “Cybercrud,” p.8.)
But if it is desirable that computer systems for simple-minded purposes be easy to use, it is absolutely necessary that computer systems for complicated purposes be simple to use. If you art wrangling over complex alternatives— say, in chess, or in a political simulation game (see “Simulation,” p. S$ )
,
or in the throes of trying to write a novel, the last thing you will tolerate is for your computer screen to introduce complications of its own. If a system for thinking doesn’t make thinking simpler— allowing you to see farther and more deeply— it is uselss, to use only the polite terra.
But systems can be both powerful and simple at the same time. The myth that things have to be complicated to do anything for you is pernicious rubbish. Well-designed systems can make our mental tasks lighter and our achievements come faster.
tt is for thia reason that I consnend^the reader these two designs of mine: as examples of user-level control and viewing designs— fantic environments, If you will (see
p!^i*,)~
that are pruned and tuned to give the user great control over the viewing and crosjs-consideration of intricate alternatives, without oom-plicatlon. I like to believe that both of these, indeed, are ten-minute ayatews— that is, when w« get them running, the range of uses shown here can be taught to naive users in ten minutes or less.
It is because of my heartfelt belief in this kind of simplicity that I stress the creation of prefabricated environments, carefully tuned for easy use, rather than the creation of computer languages which must be learnt by the user, as do such people as Engelbart (see and DeFanti (see
p.^MO
.
Now, their approach bbviously has considerable merit for sophisticated users who want to tinker repeatedly with variant approaches. For people who want to work incessantly in an environ
ment,
and oil other things— say writers— and are absent-minded and clumsy and nervous and forgetful (like the present
author),
then the safe, prefabricated environment, with thoroughly fail-safe functions and utterly memorable structural and control interrelation
ships,
is the only approach.
*
In my 1965 paper (see bibliography) I called collateral structures zlppered lists.
A group at Brown University has reportedly worked along these lines since I worked with them, but due to certain personal animosities I have not kept up with their developments. It will be interesting to see what kind of response they can get out of the IBM systems they are using.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theodor H. NelBon, “A File Structure for the complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate.” Proc. ACM 65 84-100.
.
“Simplicity Versus Power in User Systems.” Unpublished.
DECISIOfl/CRJ’ATIVITY
SYSTEMS
Theodor H. Nelson
19
July 1970
WE OFTEN WANT TO SAVE ALTERNATIVES.
Ani
r/uilj
tt
my
[burtj
tbl
frilid,
[Ati
aik’d
ml
tcitb
bir
twimmmg
ijii
That
I
[uttU
]
rttbtr
fill
tbsn
m
‘i
6V
ebntt,]
i
[Sit]
tiU
her
Itvt
witb
mtiin
frtft;
J*i
tt
1
tut*
mj
GlKtvitvt,
Mj
[tritfi]
6>
Jtwi/j
Bridi.}
From Coleridge’s Poems: A Facsimile Reproduction of the Proofs and HSS. of some of the Poems. (Folcroft, 1972.)
U
e
might also
It has been recognized from the dawn of computer display that the grandest ar.d most important use of the computer display should be to aid decisions and creative thought. The work of Ivan Sutherland (SKETCHPAD) and Douglas Engelbart have really shown how we may use the display to visualize and effect our creative decisions swiftly and vividly.
For some reason, however, the most important aspect of such systems has been neglected, ‘.-.’e do not icake important decisions, we should not make delicate decisions, serially and irreversibly. Rather, the power of the computer display (and its computing and filing support) must be so crafted that we may develop alternatives, spin out their complications and interrelationships, and visualize these upon a screen.
No system could do this for us automatically. What design and programming can create, however, is a facility that will allow us to list, sketch, link and annotate the complexities we seek to under-t stand, then present “views” of the complexities in reany different forms. Studying those views, annotating and refining, we can reach the final designs and decisions witb much rore in mind than we could otherwise hold together in the imagination.
Some of the facilities that such systems must have include the followi ng:
Annotations to anything, to any remove.
Alternitives of decision, design, writing, theory.
Unlinked or irrerru]ar pieces, hanging as the user wishes.
Multicou-cling, or complex linkage, between alternatives, annota tions or whatever.
Historical filing of the user’s actions, including each addition and modification, and possibly the vieving actions that preceded them.
Frozen ironr-nts and versions, which the user may hold as memorable for his thinking.
Kvc.lutior.ary coupling, where the correspondences between evolving versions tire automatically maintained, and their differences or relations easily annotated.
In addition, designs for screen “views”, the motion, appearance and disappearance of elements, require considerable thought and
Imagi
nation.
The object ic not to burden the user, or make him aware of complex ities in which he has no interest. But almost everyone in intellectual and decision pursuits has at some time an implicit need for some of these facilities. If people knew they were possible, they would demand them. It is time for their creation.
A full-fledged decision/creativity system, embracing both text and graphics, is one of the ultimate design goals of Project XANADU.
This user-level system
is
intended
to aid in
all forms
of
writing
and
scholarship,
as
well
as
anywhere else that
we
need
to
understand
and
mani-
PARAU.EL TEXTFACE
C19 71)
It will also work with certain animated graphics.
The Parallel Textface,
as
described here, furnished
the
initial impetus
for the
development of
the
Xanadutnl system
(see p.
J)*”
5″fc)
• Xanadu
was
developed, indeed, originally
for the
purpose
of
implementing some
of
these functions,
but the two
split apart.
It
turned
out
that
the
Parallel Textface required
an
extremely unusual data struc-structure
and
program techniques; these then became the Xanadu system.
As
developed
in the
final Xanadu design, they turn
out to
handle some very unusual kinds
of
screen animation
and
file retrieval. But this grew
out of
structuring
a
system
to
handle the functions described here.
Thus
the
Parallel Textface basically requires a Xanadu system.
It
is
hoped that this system
can be
sold com plete (including minicomputer
or
microprocessor–no connection
to a
large computer
is
required)
for
a
few
thousand’ dollars
by 1976 or 1977. See p.
(Since “business people”
are
extremely skeptical as
to
whether anybody would want such
a
thing,
I
would
be
interested
in
hearing expressions
of in
terest,
if any.)
Real person sits
at
cardboard Xanadu mockup.
I
A-HMO*
•»kH>
141
—I
I
mmU
-IU
i.WI- «”•-(•
I
_(>
.-(.til Ul
I
••ii-wp :..
.Mil
i’»
.—I
Tjt,
.-t.„JU,
.41–.,,
«|i
WI.JI..
.-Ill,
Ul «•»!…,
I
TI.M,
..I.-JL
I
Z.JU41.,
..Ml,
LMI
w-k. ,
“Nice keyboard.
B
what happened
to
your typewriter?”
–
( I
<£)V)72- T-
NW*
As shown here,
the
screen presents
two
panels of text; more
are
allowed. Each contains
a
segment
of a
longer document.
("Page"
would
be an im-
SIvPhr
Z™' S^Ce the
boundary
of the
text viewed may
be
changed instantly.)
The other odds
and
ends
on the
screen
are
hid den keys
to
control elements which have been made to fade
(m
this illustration), just
to
lessen
the
distraction.
Panel boundaries
and
control graphics
may fa-
made
to
appear
by
touching then
w.tU tU
lijkff*^.
Two panels
are
about right
for a 10 x 10
screen.
lrJ,t*M
1'
Independent text pulls dependent text along. Painted streaks simulate motion,
not
icicles.
ROVING FUNCTIONS
Th.
iThe
teXtvmoves
on the
screen! (Essential.) The lower right hand corner
of
each
text
panel 3" ,nconsPi^ous control diagram.
The
n?ightThorl20nti'l."tension
is a
movable control Sin',,,,
^ j5"'
",t,h.his
U8ht
Pen' may ""ove the
SmLX
i "Up"
causes
the
text
to
move smoothly upward (forward
in the
material),
at a
rate proportional
to how far you
push
the pip-
no? ~/aU!|eS
11 "?
mOVe back-
but
to smooth screen motion, which
is
essential
in
a high-performance system.
If the
text does
not
move,
you
can’t tell where
it
came from.)
DERIVATIVE MOTION: when links
run
sequential
ly,
connecting one-after-the-other
on
both sides, the contents
of the
second panel
are
pulled along directly:
the
smooth motion
in one
panel
is
matched
in. the
other. This
may be
called derivative motion, between independent text (being handled directly with
the
lightpen)
and
dependent text (being pulled
along).
The
relationship
may be re
versed immediately, however, simply
by
moving
the
lightpen
to the
control
pip of the
other panel, whose contents then become
the
independent text.
Irregularities
in the
links will cause
the
independent text
to
move
at
varying speeds
or
jump, according
to an
average
of the
links’ connectivity.
If
no
links
are
shown,
the
dependent text just
©l<73
T.KWK
Collateral links between materials
in the
two panels
are
displayed
as
movable lines
bet
ween
the
panels. (Text omitted
in
this diagram; panel boundary
has
been made
to
appear.)
Some links
may not
have both their endpoints displayed
at
once.
In
this case
we
show
the in
complete link
as a
broken arrow, pointing
in the
direction
of the
link's completion.
The broken arrow serves
not
merely
as a vi
sual pointer,
but as a
jump-marker leading
to the
linked material.
By
zapping
the
broken arrow with the lightpen,
the
user summons
the
linked material--as shown
by the
completion
of the
link
to the
other
panel.
(Since there
has
been
a
jump
in the
second
panel,
we see
that
in
this case
the
other link
has
been broken.)
When such links lead
to
different places, both of these destinations
may
nevertheless
be
seen
at
once.
This
is
done
by
pointing
at
both broken links in succession;
the
system then allows both links
to
be completed, breaking
the
second panel between
the
two destinations
(as
shown
by
dotted line across
panel).
9L
DM 54
FAIL-SAFE AND HISTORICAL FEATURES. In systems for naive users, it is essential to safeguard the user from his own mistakes. Thus in text systems, commands given in error must be reversible. For instance, Carmody's system (see
p.
DM47) requires confirmation of deletions. Another highly desirable feature would allow the user to view previous versions, to see them
col
laterally with the corresponding parts of current
versions,
and even go back to the way particular things were and resume work from the previous version. In the Parallel Textface this is all com prised in the same extremely simple facility. (Extremely simple from the user's point of view, that
is.
Inside it is, of course, hairy.) In an egregious touch of narcissistic humor, we use the very trademark on the screen as a control device (expanded from the "X" shown in the first panel 1
Actually the X in "Xanadu1™," as it appears on the screen, is an hourglass, with a softly
fall
ing trickle of animated dots in the lower half, and Sands of Time seen as heaps above and below. These have a control, as well as a representative, func
tion.
TO UNDO SOMETHING, YOU MERELY STEP "BACKWARD IN TIME" by dagging the upper part of the hourglass with the lightpen. One poke, one editing operation
undone.
Two pokes, two operations. You may then continue to view and make changes as if the last two operations had never taken place. This effectively creates an alternative time-line.* iiowever, if you decide that a previously undone edit operation-Jhould be kept after all, you may step forward-- stepping onto the previous time-line--oy using the lower half of the hourglass.
©1171 V- iieL»U
We see this clarified in a master time diagram or Kevisic-n Tree which may be summoned to the screen never mind how. ln this example we see that three versions are still "current,"Various other starts and variations having been abandoned. (The shaggy fronds correspond to short-lived variations, relult-ing from operations which were then reversed. In other words "excised" time-lines, to use Gerrold's term-- see footnote.) «ciiUiu »
•"•was (
V
^2
•
Mt\t
(fli •
—
4
hj*
.p>u)
T.
MFU«M
Separate portions of the Edit Rose invoke various edit operations. (You must also point with the lightpen to the necessary points in the text: once for insert, twice for Delete, three or four times for Rearrange, three times for Conv I
_L GENERALITY. ” ‘
The system nay be used for comment, on things,
Materials may be copied between versions. (Note that in the copying operation of the Parallel Text-
face,
you actually see the moved text moved bodily
as-
a block.)
©mil.
T-HtLfeu
for organizing by multiple outlines or tables of contents;
GETTING AROUND
The user may have a number of standby layouts, with different numbers of panels, and jump among them by stabs of the lightpen.
Importantly, the panels of each can be
full,
each having whatever the contents were~~i?hen you last
©k72-
r-MCLIotj
The File Webtm is a map indicating what (labelled) files are present in the system, and which are collaterated.
©^7t T. Wiupy
and as a Thinkertoy, organizing complex alternatives. (The labels say: “Conflicting versions,” “New account of conflicts,” “Exposition of how different accounts deal with objections,” “Improved, synthesizing account. In other words, in this approach we annotate and label discrepancies, and verbally comment on differen
ce!
in separate files or documents. In ways this may seem somewhat obtuse. Yet above all i_t is orderly, and the complex of collateral files has a clarity that could be all-too-easily lost in systems which were programmed more specifically to each problem. ,„,.
The File Startm is a quick index into the con tents of a file. It expands as long as you hold the lightpen to the dot in the center, with various levels of headings appearing as it expands. Natur
ally,
you may jump to what you point at. <€)lt7Z
The user-- let's say he is a thoughtful writer- may define various Versions or Drafts, here marked on the Revision Tree.
©H1Z. T-Uojel
Hiff.He ?a/' indeed. define collateral linkages between different versions defined at various Times in the
©1172.
r.
WltOH
Rather than giving the user anything complicat ed to learn, the system is completely, visual. A11 edit controls are comprised in this diagram, the Edit
Rose"1.
Viz..:
The fundamental strength of collateration, seen here, is of course that any new structure collateral to another may be used as a table of contents or an outline, taking the user instantly to parts which are of interest in some new context.
*
Oddly, this has the same logical structure as time-travel in science-fiction. There are basically three alternate premises of of time-travel: I) that the past cannot be changed, all events having preceded the backstep; 2) that the past can be changed; and 3) that while time-travelers may be-a*eluded into thinking (2), that (1) is really the case-- leading to various appointment-in-Samarra
plots.
Only possibility (2) is of interest here, but there are various alternative logics of mutability and time-line stepping. One of the best I have seen is in The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold (Popular LTFrary ."ITTS) : logic expounded pp. 64-8. I am bemused by the parallel between Gerrold's time-controls and those, worked out independently.
r I 1 * \ «M
MVMlcy
(•) ' I t I
TCXT
SH STt«.
Inly
*nrl
This design, TfO (Thinkertoy In 3
dimensions),
ii one I have been working at while on the faculty of the University of Illinois. It is designed
spe
cifically for Implementation using DeFanti's CRASS language (see
p.,5*1
31). and the Vector Ceneral 3D display (see
p.'^O).
Whether It will ever be actually programed depends, of course, on numerous factors.
It is meant to be a very high- power thinkertoy, suitable for experimentation with creative processes, especially writing and three-dimensional design. (There Is no room to discuss the latter here.) It is suited(specially to the visualization of tentative structures in amorphous
clusters.
In some of its features lt goes considerably beyond the more "commercial" thinkertoy system, the Psrsllel Textface (elsewhere in this
spread).
Nevertheless, the same design criteria apply: a well-designed computer environment for any purpose should be learnable In ten
minutes;
otherwise the designer has not been doing his job. (I mean it would be learnable in ten minutes if you and I had it in front of us, working. This description will have to be weird and abstruse, I'm sorry to say.)
This system Is designed around a three- dimensional display screen (the Vector Ceneral display, as manlpulable by thq^RASS lan
guage).
Now, most people do not think of text as three-dimensional. Laymen think of it as
two-dimensional,
since it's usually printed on rectangular pages. Computer people ordinarily think of it as one-dimensional, as a long string of characters and spaces— essentially what you'd get If you printed things in one line on a long, long ribbon.
Well,
frankly, I don't think of text as three-dimensional either; but like anything
else,
it has numerous qualities or dimen
sions,
any three of which it's nice to be able to view at once (see "Dimensional Flip,")
p.«•&().
And that's essentially the idea: the three dimensions we'll look at at any one time will be a particular view of a larger
whole.
Now, the basic torn of storage will be one of those Nelson-structures that drives computer people batty. Specifically, the basic data structure will be clusters of
points.
Puns sometimes reflect a higher reality. Now it turns out that this structure in fact reflects a great Folk Truth: written discourse does in fact consist of "points" which you intend to get across• That we here intend to have them rotate as dots upon a screen reflects this structure.
Writing is, in
fact,
a projection from the Intended "points" to a finished exposition which embraces them. Now, this is very like the view of language held in modern linguistics, namely, that a finished sentence is a "surface structure" constructed out of basic sentence kernels chewed up by certain transformations•
Hell,
I am just pointing out here that writing Is a surface structure of "points" which have been embedded and spliced in a structure of
transitions,
accordance-notes and so forth (see
The general idea of the Th3 system, then, is that the user may view the "points" he wishes to make, variously upon the 3D viewing
surface.
Successive drafts, then, will all be
projections,
geometrically, from this interior structure of points.
Finally, the unifying ide; system simplicity is
this:
all faces of a cube. the
(FURTHER TECHNICALITIES OF THESE 'POINTS': Each point may have a value (numerical parameter) in any of a number of dimensions (which number may itself
change).
Such values may be
null,
as distinct from zero, showing that the point has no position on that particular scale. Associated with each point may be one or more pieces and scraps or written mater
ial.
Such scraps may be just phrases or single words. (Indeed, such scraps may be associated not just with a point, but with several specific values of a point.) Each (crap may also contain keywords — .elatlons between pol also be defined. There may be a va of types of relation, which either between two points of don't.) riety
The crucial point here la that It's unified to the user: every version appears on a aide of a box; and a typeset version Is simply a
magni
fied two-dimensional view in which the two dimensions are "position In oversll
text"
(vertical) and "position on line"
(horizontal).
Each side of a box may have a different view projected to it. This means that as many aa three views of s specific cluster may be seen at once. However, for consistency these must have appropriately comaon dimensions.
By rotation and zooming the user may focus on the original pieces, and work with them,
writ
ing and revising.
Moreover, by using a combination of zoom and hardware clipping (as available on thia
equipment),
the user may restrict hla work to a specific range of material on particular di-
GALAXY AND BOX There are basically two views of what you are working with: the Galaxy and the Box. They appear in various manifestations, allowing you to study discrete relations and structures in the material; various "dimensions" of Che material; alternate versions and drafts to be made from the material; and the complex col-lateration (see under "Thinkertoys") of different structures.
In what follows we will discuss the screen functions but not the control structures, which have not firmed up particularly.
1. GALAXY VIEWS.
The points are seen as a cloud of dots on the screen. If no view coordinates are supplied, the dots will be randomly positioned.
A. "Star Trek" effect. Under a user's zoom control, the dots fly apart as If he is hurtling through
space.
B.
MAGNIFICATION. The user may "magnify" the
dots,
making each show Its keywords, further
text,
and on up to the full
Piece.
C. ROTATION. The 3D structure of the dots in space may be seen by the user at any time through short rotations•
0. Any relations that exist among the
Points,
insofar as they have been logged into the system, may be displayed
E. The user may sort the points by moving them with a lightpen.
F. The user may write within the individ ual pieces and splice them together, combining lightpen and keyboard oper
ations.
2. BOX VIEWS
In the Galaxy Views, the individual Points simply swarm about with no definable position. 'Box Views" allow you to order the points on any dimensions that have meaning to you, in an arbitrary coordinate-space.
The box is more than a mere measurement-
frame.
On request the user may see the points projected on a specific face of the box (ortho-
graphically);
and on request he may also see projection lines between a box-face and its corresponding point in the point cluster.
"Magnifying^1 as before, will create a view of the
text:
but In the box mode of viewing, the text appears on the side of the box. That is, the inner view will project to the outside, yielding a draft. Naturally, this is the current assembly of your pieces; If certain coordinates are selected it is even a "typeset" version.
(Note:
Vector General hardware does not al low character rotation; only keyword and headline rotation Is possible, through software character generation. Thus text pieces on the side of a box show certain freaky movements If the side is not viewed square-on.)
^At the 1971 Spring Joint Computer Conference, I think lt was, I was heckled by a linguist who accused me of being "unimaginative,' insisting further that writing is merely an extension of speech and thus "merely" the application of further transformations; and he claimed further that what the uaer therefore needs is an input language to specify these transformations. This view, while Interesting, is wrong. A but/indeed control language might be intei
t*»ffvej
COLLATERAL GALAXIES AND BOXES.
Viewing of collateral structures works through the same mechanism. Galaxies and boxes may be collaterated:
COMPLICATED NOTE: The extension of these mechanisms to pictorial graphics in two and three dimensions Is straightforward, and to conceptual substructures (such as may exist) behind these graphics. The same goes for collateration and annotation of multidimensional cluster materials, e.g. in sociology: the system would allow, for
instance,
the viewing, annotation and
col
lateration of sociometrIc clusterings.)
BOX FISSION. (The Beauty Part.)
For paired views of projections from the same cluster which do not share a common coordinate, a marvelous trick Is
pos
sible:
BOX FISSION. Starting with one box containing a galaxy, we pull lt apart, making two boxes and two galaxies whose Points are linked.
Now both boxes can be rotated indepen dently, and any view considered; equivalence-linkages may now be viewed between any two
views.
(The eye
must,
however, turn two
however-operatlon, a postfix "but.
iting, however. [Appended by the See "Writing," p. DM*(3
.
]
(It Is interesting to note Lnat the links in Box Fission are handled automatically, to an
extent,
by the hardware.)
WELCOME TO THE FUTURE. HUH? This has summarized the development of some ideas for the viewing and manipulation of complex stuff. I offer this design, insofar as I have been able to present lt hejje, as an example of fantic design (see p. 50 )• There ls.no logical necessity to it; it corresponds to the traditional structure of no technical system; it arises from no intrinsic or traditional data structures used for computer representation of these things.
But none of these considerations is to the point. This design has a certain stark logical simplicity; it extends itself plausibly from its basic outlook (or starting
ideas,
if you can isolate them) into a tool for truly Intricate cross-consideration, without adding unnecessary and h«rd-to- ^ remember "technicalities." At least that s how I think of it. Obviously the aesthetics of lt are Im portant to the designer. But a more final criterion of its goodness— Its usefulness— may depend on the same parsimony and organizational clarity.
mm
KL'BLA KHAN : OK. A VISION IN A DREAM.
Mlml to a lonely farm h Eimoor confine*
»l
Himier tlii-ht
tndUpultlrtB,
sn ai>»
ft
rilAliUK.VT.
1TO7,
ihe
Author.
Own in
III
health,
had w between Porlock and Union, on th* •ml Uriuoihlre. lb contra timet of tt
.*
dad l«*n
prm-r
.
To
eliminate
the
absurd
distinction
between
“teacher”
and
“pupil.”
To
make you a
part
of a new
electronic
literature
and
art,
where
you can get
all
your
questions
answered
and
nobody
will
put you
down.
Originally
Xanadu
was
programmed
around
the
Parallel
Textface
(see p. . But as
the requirements
of the
Parallel
Textface
were
better
and
better understood,
Xanadu
became
a
more
general underlying
system
for all
forms
of
interactive
graphic environments. Its data
structure
has
Virtual
Blocklessness
and is
thus
well
related
to the
smooth
motions
needed
by screen users.
Thus
in
its
final
form,
now
being
debugged,
it
will
support
not
only
the
Parallel
Textface
(see p.^Z) )» the
Walking
Net
(see
p. W15|
) , Stretchtext
(seep.DMl9),
Zoom Maps (see p. 13) and so on, but
indeed
any
data
structure
that
needs
to
combine
complex
linkages
with
fast
access
and
rapid
changes.
Because
the
data
structure
is
recursively
extensible,
it
will
permit hypertext
(see
p.DrlTl)
of
any
depth
and
complexity,
and the
collateral
linkage
(see
p.j}|^2)
of any
objects
of
contemp
lation.
Xanadu
is
under
private
development
and
should
be
avail’able,
if
the
economy
holds,
in
1976. Regrettably,
first
prices
will
not be at
the
$3000
level
necessary
for the
true
Home
System.
Exact
equipment
for
the
production ver
sion
has not
been
selected.
A
number
of
microprocessors
(see p. ^ H ) are in
serious conten
tion,
notably
the
Lockheed
SUE, but
there’s
something
to be
said for
a
regular mini.
The
PDP-11
is of
interest
(see p.
H
2 ); (so
espe
cially
is
its
Cal
Data
lookalike–
unless
DEC
would
like
to
build
us a PDP-11X
with
seven
modes
of
indirect
display addressing.
Are you
reading
this,
Ken
Olsen?)
And
here’s
a
laugh:
a
com
pany
called
IBM may in
fact
make a
suitable
com
puter,
except
that
they
call
it
the
“3740
Work
Station.”
So
for those
customers
who
want
IBM
equipment,
maintenance
and
prices, with
Xanadu
software, it’s
a
definite
possibility.
So, fans,
that
about
wraps
it
up.
I’ll
be
interested
in
hearing from
people
who
want
this
system;
many
hardheaded
business
people
have
told
me
nobody
will.
Prove
‘era
wrong,
America!
Of course, if
hyper-media
aren’t
the
great
est
thing
since
the
printing
press,
this
whole
project
falls
flat
on
its face.
But
it
is
hard
for
me to
conceive
that
they
will
not be.
9>
p.
44). It le an operating system wiOi two pro-erasmi a highly generalised data management
sys
tem for handling extremely ccmpla* data In huge
files,
and a gsnarallsad diaplay system, awrltd (o th*
othii,
(or handling branching animation and retrieval and canned display program.. Thaaa ordain retrlevele by tha data system. Tha
Peral-
lal T*atfac* (see
p.
IfcCJ)
and tha Walking Wat
naarby, for :and-alone turnkay uaa (
LANCUAGgSi Xanadu programs oil abla In any higher languagea, proprietary character, but all
I
language. The eyetea haa lta own undar-level language, XAP (Xanadu Aaeembly
Program).
Wille two higher-level diaplay languages, DISJOTJ (Diaplay Lingo) and Xu” (tha ultimata?) are contemplated, theae “ill not ordinarily be accessible to the uaer. The purpose of Xanadu la to tumlah tha uaer vith unwaputerlsh good-guy system* for specific purposss, not a chance to do hie own programming. Important feature* of the data system t dreaaabillty (In tha trllliona of elem* tual Blocklateness. For advantages of
a
Nap,
•fil
th COMPATIBILITYi because of lta highly compacted and unconventional structure, lt la not compatible w” other operating system* (including
time-sharing).
Anyway, to put lt on a larger Machine la like hov-ino your Hasda driven around In a truck. Because lt uaea a line-drawing display (eee p. DM’!}) and therefore draws Individual arbitrary Ilnaa on the screen repeatedly, it la not compatible with television either— unless you point a TV camera at It, or the equivalent. Sorry. STANDARDIZATIOej. Taking a lesson from the integrated work of various people whose work haa been described in thla book, wa aee that If you want a thing done
right,
you have to do it youraelf- (eraat Ideaa of Western Man; one of a aeriea.) My good friend Calvin Nooara with hla TMC Language (aee pp. 18-21) haa die-covered that trademark is one way to nail thla ae a
right.
Several levels of standardization are important with Xanadu. One, all Xanadu ayataau must be abla to work with all Xanadu files (except for possible variations in screen performance and aixe of local
memory),
How. there are those who would not be concerned for this sort of universality, and who wight even try to make sure systems were incompatible, so that you had to buy acceaaorlaa and conversion kits up and down the line. That ia one of the things that must be avoided! “par
tial*
compatibility, subject to expensive options and conditions, a well-known technique In the field. By stabilising the “Xanadu” trademark, I hope to prevent such shenanigans. Thus every accredited Xanadu system will offer full compatibility with the data atructure. and either full performance or substitutes aa necessitated by the hardware. The “Xanadu” trademark can thus In principle be made available to manufacturers abiding by all design features of the system. Second, all Xanadu systems should be able to work with outside systems either through or off the net, lf_ they conform to the unusual data rules required by the unusual design of the system. This assures that Xanadu systems will be compatible with any other popular
net
works.
It also assures others who want to offer Xan-adu-claaa services to system owners (through, e.g., conventional time-sharing) that If thay adhere to tha rules (sea “Canon*.” p.»*t?f) they can play the game on a certified basis. AVAILABILITY. It is hoped that Xanadu will be
avail
able In 1975 for at least one machine (guess
which).
As s program It will be available only in absolute
AHEM. There is s lot to talk about, but a lot of time can be wasted talking. It is suggested that thoughtful computer firms, interested in aome form of participation, study this book carefully— at least enough so no one’s time need be wasted.
BIBLIOCKAFHT
k recent report by Arthur D. Little, a Boston fit that makes its money by aeealng to be omniac commented on the considerable market potent! for on-line data aupply system*. The report cost SkOd or SfcQOO, 1 forget which. Big-iU
>wl.
View from the snack balcony of a large Xanadu Installation, overlooking the internal
greenery.
Hexagonal architecture
parent*
physical expansion without interruption of services. (The mollusks have been telling ue something about expansion.)
Ctm/t
Porta-Xan. (Hookup by Tom Barnard.) Faceplate reflects CRT to user while he’s abroad in the
world.
One-hand typewriting and pointing device frees the
other.
Can be built with available ruggedised components.
%
SB,.„A|i., SB,.„A|i.,
3=
H,..^
U.W -A-
F~
jf
only
fi>r
the lake of the Oompa-LooinpaL Mind
you.
there
arc
iliouuiidi
of clever men who mylhing Tot the r hi tic
;,
IK.„
nt i piown-up per inn ;
mc;
ho
won’,
learn.
He v i not mmc. So I hive t illblc
luv,,,;’
child.
…ie t
nif tint ton of
[icrioii.
1
dnn’i
all.
A grownup won’t lntcii
1
try
to
do ilnngi
hit
own wiy hive a
child.
I wint a gixxl whom
I
CMI
tell all my …cm ii – while
I
am mil ihvv.” I and the Chocolate Factory.
I am sorry 1 have not been able U reply to all those, who have written to ma saying they wish they could work for The Nelson Organisation
So
c
1, my friend*, ao do 1.
How are Me going to sell the Hone Computer? Nell if you want to sell computers, let ne tell you i You’ve got to talk to the housewives, and the childrt No one wants to program, they want something they cat t’s got to offer fun, and it|s t’s got to give you something t’s got to be uplifting to the ou’ve got to have a vision; yo ou should maybe sing a jingle t’s got to have a tingle, in a
hat’ll lift you fn Lady from Duluth. i’ve got to have an
ingle;
t
jangle);
t tangle- So < iuing under our guidance inertial,
[I...
f_..i,]
XAN-A-DU, 00--
THE- TORLU-- OF
-
^OUVUij'/
Is Xanadu worth waiting for? That depends, doaan't it, on the value of the hand-bush differential bird utility ratio.
•a
what \m
IS
KEAUY
SrVflMG-
11 Knowledge, understanding
*nd
freedom
on
ill
be
advanced
by th*
promotion
end
deployment
ol
computer display consoles
""il"
right program* behind them
I
•I)
romptiter prcsenlatlorwl media, coming
soon,
will
not be
technically determined
but
rather will
be new
realm,
for human artistry This point „( view radically affect*
how we
design
man
machine system*
o( any
kind, especially
I1***
,or
'"formation
retrieval,
teaching,
and
general writing
and
reading Some practitioners nee such systems
an
narrowly
technical,
with the computer hoisling up little pieces
of
writing
on
some "scientific" basis
and
showing them to
you one
grunt at
a
lime
A
Metre-csl
banquet.
1
disagree.
The
system, should
be
opulent. 3)
The
problem
in
presentational systems
of any
kind
is lo
make thinp look
good,
fee)
right,
and come •cross
clearly.
The
thinp lhat
mai
ler
are the
feel
ol the
system,
the
user's
state
ot
mind,
his possible confusion, boredom
or
enthusiasm,
the
problems of communicating
concept*.
and
the
very nature
ol
concept*
and
their interconnection There will never
be a
•science"
of
presentation, except
as
it relate*
to
these thinp. 4)
Not the
nature
of
machines, but
the
nature
of
ideas,
U
what
mailers.
It U
incredibly hard
to de
velop,
organize
and
transmit idea*, and
il
always will
be But at
least in
Ihe
fulurc
wc
won't
be
booby-trapped
by the
nature
ol
paper
We
can design magic pa
pet
it
is
time
to
nart lining computers to hold
informal
ion
for the
mind much
as
books have held this in
for-
mat ion
in the
paal.
Now
information for
the
mind
is
very different from "information
for Ihe
computer"
a*
we have thought
of
it. hacked
up
and com pressed into block* Irwlend we
can
stretch
the
computer t
am
proposing
a
curious kind
of
subversion.
"Let us
design."
I soy.
and when people
«ec the
systems, everybody will want
one All I
want to
do is put
Renaissance humanism
in
a
multidimensional responsive con- trying
to
work
out
riting
of the
future.
sole.
And I •
the forms
of
Hypertexts. Hypertexts:
H
forms
ol
writing, appearing
on
computer
screens,
that will branch
or
perform
at
the
reader'H
command.
A
hypertext
is a non-
hequcntial piece
of
writing; only
the
computer display makes it practical Somewhere between
a
book,
a TV
show
and o
penny
arcade,
the
hyper-lent
can
lie
n
vast tapestry
of
in
tor-
ma
(ion.
all in
plain English
i
spiced with
n few
magic tricks
on the
screen
I,
which the reader
may
attack and play
for the
things
he
wants, branching
and
jumping on the screen, using simple controls
an il he
were driving
n
car.
There
can be
specialized subparts
lor
specialized
in
tercuts,
instant availability
ol
relevancies
in all
direction*, footnote* that
are
book* themselves. Hyper-texts will
be so
much belter than ordinary writing that
the
printed word will wither
away.
Rrat
uriling
by peoptt. make
no
mistake,
not
data
bank*,
robot summaries or other clank
A
person
U
writing
lo
other
people,
juiit
as
before,
but
on
magical paper
he can cut up and
tie
in
knots and
My
around
on.
I believe
in
calling
a
spade
a
spade --
not a
personalized earth-moving equipment module;
and a
multi-U imens iona1 spade, by
gum, a
hvperspade--
not a
personalized earth-moving equipment module with augmented dirt access, retrieval
and
display capability under individulaized control.
I want
a
world where
we can
rend the world's literature from screen* r.-ither than personally searching
out the
physical
books.
A
world without routine u,?er-
work,
because
all
copying operations take place automatically
and
formalized transaction! occur through formalized ceremonies
at
consoles.
A
world when-
wo can
learn,
study,
create,
and share our creations without having privately
to
schlepp
and
physically safeguard them. There
is
a
familiar,
all-embracing motto, the jingle
we
all
know from the day school
lets
out,
which
I
take quite
seriously:
"No
more pencils; •o more
books,
no
more
teacher*'
dirty looks
" The
Fantic
Ace.
My work
is
concerned principally with
the
theory
and
execution
of
systems useful
to the
mind and
the
creative imagination. This
has
polemical and practical aspects:
I
claim that
the
precepts
of
designing systems thai touch people's minds,
or
contents
to be
shown
in
them,
are
simple
and
uni
versal:
making things look good, feel right
and
come across clearly.
I
claim thai
to
design systems that involve both machines
and
people's minds
is
art first, technology second,
and in no way a
deri
vative specialty
off in
some branch
of
computer
science.
However, presentational systems will cer tainly involve computers from
now on.
Since hundreds
of
such systems
are now
being built, many
of
them
all
wrong,
we
must teach designers
(end
certain others)
the
basics of computers,
and
give them some good examples lo emulate (such
as
Sutherland's Sketchpad, Bilzer's PLATO,
and, I
hope, some
of my own
designs).
Further,
the
popular superstitions about computers must
be
fought--
the
myths that they are mechanistic, scientific, objective
or
independent
of
human intent
and
contemplative involve-
It
ts
essential
to
state these firmly
and
publicly, because
you are
going
to see a lot
of systems
in the
near future that purport
to
be
the
last-word cst's-pajama systems
to
bring you
"all Ihe
information
you
need, anytime,
anywhere."
Unless
you
have thought about
It
you
may be
snowed
by
systems which
are in
herently
and
deeply limiting. Here
are
some of
the
things which
I
think
we
will
all
want.
(The salesman
for the
other syatem will
say
they
are
impossible,
or "We
don't know
how
to
do
that
yet," the
standard puldown.
But
these things
arc
possible,
if wc
design them In from
the
bottom
up; and
there
are
many different valid approaches which could bring these things into
being3
These
arc
rules, derived from common sense
and
uncommon concern, about what people can
and
should have
in
gcnernl screen systems, systems
to
read from.
1. EASY
AND
ARBITRARY FRONT ErJDS.
The "front
end" of a
system-- lhat
Is,
the program that creates
the
presentations
for
the user
and
interacts with
him--
must
be
clear and simple
for
people
to use and
understand.
THE TEN-MINUTE RULE.
Any
system which cannot
be
well taught
to a
layman
in
ten minutes.
by a
tutor
in the
presence
of a
responding setup,
is too
complicated. This
may
sound
far too
stringent;
I
think
not.
Rich
and
powerful systems
may be
given front ends which arc nonetheless ridiculously clear: this
is a
design problem
of the
foremost importance.
TEXT MUST MOVE, that
is,
slide
on the
screen when
the
user steps forward
or
backward within
the
text
he is
reading.
The
alternative, to clear
the
screen
and lay out a new
presentation,
is
baffling
to the eye and
thoroughly
dis
orienting, even with practice.
Many computer people
do not yet
under stand
the
necessity
of
this.
The
problem
is
that if
the
screen
is
cleared,
and
something
new
then appears
on it,
there
is no
visual
way to
tell where
the new
thing came from: sequence and structure become baffling. Having
it
slide on
the
screen allows
you to
understand where you've been
and
where you're going:
a
feeling you also
get
from turning pages
of a
book. (Some close substitutes
may be
possible
on
some types
of
screen.)
On front ends supplied
for
normal users, there must
be no
explicit computer languages requiring input control strings,
no
visible esoteric symbols. Graphical control structures having clarity
and
safety,
or
very clear task-oriented keyboards,
are
among
the
prime alter
natives.
All operations must
be
fail-safe.
Arbitrary front ends must
be
attachable: since
we are
talking about reading from
text,
or text-and-picture complexes, stored
on a
large data system,
the
presentational front
end
must
be
separable from
Ihe
data services provided further down
in the
system,
so the
user may attach
his own
front-end system, having his
own
style
of
operation
and his own
private conveniences
for
roving, editing
and
other forms of work
or
play
at the
screen.
2. SMOOTH
AND
RAPID DATA ACCESS.
The system must
be
built
to
make possible fast
and
arbitrary access
to a
potentially huge data base, allowing extremely large files
(at
least into
the
billions
of
characters).
However, the system should
be
contrived
lo
allow
you to
read forward, back
or
across links without substantial hesitation. Such access must
be
impli
cit,
not
requiring knowledge
of
where things
are
physically stored
or
what
the
internal file names may.happen
to be.
File divisions must
be in
visible
to the
user
in all his
roving operations (FREEDOM
OF
ROVING):
boundaries must
be
invisible
in the
final presentations,
and the
user must
not
need
to
know about them.
3. RICH DATA FACILITIES.
Arbitrary linkages must
be
possible
be
tween portions
of
text,
or
lext
and
pictures; annotation
of
anything must
be
provided
for;
collateration
(see
p.
»g0)
should
be a
standard facility, between
any
pair
of
well-defined
ob
jects;
PLACEMARK facilities must
be
allowed" to drop anchor
at. or in,
anything. These features imply private annotations
to
publicly-accessible materials
as a
standard automatic service mode.
The
AI
people don't understand, the
IR
people don't understand, the
CAI
people don't understand, and
for
God's sake don't tell
IBM.
I believe that
an
introduction
to any
subject
can be
humorous, occasionally profound, exciting, vivid,
and
appealing even to experts
on
their-separate levels. Perhaps someday
I can
prove
it.
The user must
be
allowed multiple rovers (movable placemarks
at
points
of
current
activity);
making possible, especially, multiple windows (to
the
location
of
each rover) with displays
or
collateral links.
The system should also have provision for high-level mooting (yisv^
and the
automatic keeping
of
historical trails.
Then,
a
complex
of
certain very necessary and very powerful facilities based
on
these things,
viz.:
A. ANTHOLOGICAL FREEDOM:
the
user must be able
to
combine easily anything
he
finds into an "anthology,"
a
rovable collection
of
these materials having
the
structure
he
wants.
The
linkage information
for
such anthologies must
be
separately transportable
and
passable between
users.
B.
STEP-OUT WINDOWING: from
a
place in such
an
anthology,
the
user must
be
able to step
out of the
anthology
and
into
the
previous context
of the
material.
For
instance,
if he has
just read
a
quotation,
he
should
be
able
to
have the present anthological context dissolve around the quotation (while
it
stays
on the
screen),
and
the original context reappear around
it. The
need
of
this
in
scholarship should
be
obvious. C. D1SANTHOLOGICAL FREEDOM:
the
user must
be
able
to
step
out of an
anthology in such
a way and not
return
if he
chooses. (This
has
important implications
for
what muat really
be
happening
in the
file structure.)
Earlier versions
of
public documents must be retained,
as
users will have linked
to
them. However, where possible, linkages must also
be
able
to
survive revisions
of one or
both
objects.
The assumption must
be
made
at the
outset
of a
wicked
and
malevolent governmental authority.
If
such
a
situation does
not
develop, well
and
good;
if it
does,
the
system will have a
few
minimal safeguards built
in.
FREEDOM FROM BEING MONITORED.
The
use
of
pseudonyms
and
dummy accounts
by
indi
viduals,
as
well
as the
omission
of
certain recordkeeping
by the
system program,
are
necessary
here.
File retention under dummy accounts
is
also required.
Because
of the
danger
of
file sabotage,
and
the private at-home retention
by
individuals
of
files that also exist
on
public systems,
it is
necessary
to
have FIDUCIAL SYSTEMS
FOR
TELLING WHICH VERSION
IS
AUTHENTIC.
The
doctoring of on-line documents,
the
rewriting
of
history--
cf.
both Winston Smith's continuous revision
of
the encyclopedia
in
Nineteen Eighty-Four
and
H.L. Hunt's forging
of
historical telegrams
for
"The White House"--
is a
constant danger. Thus our systems must have
a
number
of
complex provisions
for
verification
of
falsification, especially
the
creation
of
multilevel fiducials (parity
systems),
and
their storage
in a
variety
of
places.
These fiducials must
be
local
izable
and
separate
to
small parts
of
files.
7. COPYRIGHT.
Copyright must
of
course
be
retained,
but
a universal flexible rule
has to be
worked
out,
permitting material
to be
transmitted
and
copied under specific circumstances
for the
payment
of
a royalty
fee,
surcharged
on top of
your other expenses
in
using
the
system.
For
any
Individual section
of
material, such royalty should have
a
maximum:
i.e., "by
now you've bought
it."
Varying royalty rates, however, should be
the
arbitrary choice
of the
copyright holder; except that royalties should
not
vary sharply locally within
a
tissue
of
material.
On
public
screens,
moving between areas
of
different royalty cost must
be
sharply marked.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Theodor
H. Nel
rud.
"Coaputopla
and
Cybe in Roger Levien
(ed.).
Computers in Instruction (Rand Corporation,
1971).
or
H.
Nelson,
"A
Conceptual Friaework for Man-Machine Every thing." Proc.
NCC 73.
%SCcl
9*1? Ilk
dmm, part thi «lt of nun to 117 what dream it
*>•:
nun n but an
••>,
If he e» about to «-poind
thi*
dream. Metliouiht 1 w
lonpiH’
I.,
ifflwitr.
nor
h..
heart to repett, >h.ln.r Jrr«o”».. Bottom tha Wtovw
Now you aee why I brought you here. This Gem-maniacal book has, obviously, been created as a crossroad of several cross pur
poses:
to furnish a needed, grabby layman’s introduction to two vast but rather inaccessible
realms;
to present a coherent, if contentious, point of view, and unroll a particular sort of apocalyptic vision after preparing the vocabulary for it; to make bright friends and informed supporters for my outlook and projects; to gel home to some of my friends the fact thai what I am doing is at boitom not technical; and finally, if nothing else, to set forth some principles about the way things should be, which others will have-to answer if they propose to do less.
Thus,
overall, this book is a message in a Klein
bottle,
waiting to see who’s thirsty.
1 suppose il all started in college. Swarth- more left me with an exaggerated notion of the extent to which ideas are valued in the academic world; il took two graduate schools to clear this
up.
After lhat, as far as I was concerned,
Ph.D.
stood for Poophead. But I still cared about ideas, and the deep necessity of finding their true structure and organization. From writing I knew the grueling difficulty of trying to make ideas get in order. I believed in the
pure,
white light of inspiration and the power of the naive but clever mind to figure out anything, if not obstructed but dumb dogmas and obtuse mental schemata fostered by the educational system.
When I finally got the idea of what compu ters were about, sometime in 1960, I took endless walks at night trying to hash these things out and see where they led. The text systems came clear to me, at least in their beginnings; in a few weeks; the realization that 3D halftone was possible came to me as a shock the following spring, I believe as 1 was walking across Radeliffe Common. Since then trying lo build these systems for creation and the true ordering of intricate thought has been my driving dream.
My own life among these dream machines has been a nightmare, thoroughly unpleasant, and if people are right in telling me that nobody wants systems like the ones I am designing, I’ll get the heck out of this and be a disk jockey or a toy salesman or something.
I first got into this as a writer; all I wanted was a decent writing system that would run on a computer. Little did I realize the immensity of what that entailed, or that for some reason my work and approach would engender indignation and anger wherever I went. There is a fiction that everybody in these fields is doing something fundamentally scientific and
technical,
and this fiction is usually upheld in carefully enacted mutual playlets. Trying to cut through that and say, “Let’s build a home for mankind that will at last be shaped to fit man’s mind,” does noi seem to-generate immediate warmth and welcome.
But I’m glad for the friends I’ve made in this field, and of course there have been a lot of laughs. (I’d really have hated to miss being in this field, just for the thrilling madness of it all.) All in all my adventures have been a sort of participatory journalism, which I’d like to write up properly some time. Some highlights;
The days of madness in ’68, trying to start an honest corporation to do all this stuff, and suffering endless lunches with Wall Street hangers-on who were looking for a vehicle to take public. They wanted another chicken-franchise type company, though, and certainly not ideas.
Being briefed by four different corporations.
moBt
of them major, on the fantastic powers their interactive-movie system was going to have. One of these briefings was in the board room of a famous skyscraper. And now, only one of those syatems is left– Kodak’s.
Then there was the courtly gentleman who was going to be my Noah Dietrich, my Colonel Parker. He assured me that through his business connections all was going to go marvelously, and then later intimated that as a special favor he was going to put me in touch with other universes and the flying saucer people. I just didn’t have lime for other universes.
Then there was the suppression of my first book (this is my
second).
You might say it waa a misunderstanding, at least on my part. My boss’s understanding was evidently that the advancement of my ideas would be detrimental to
his.
If it had been a question of free speech in Yugoslavia it might have been different.
Well,
it takes a long time to get a book together, but here we go again.
Then (here was the lime I was called In as a consultant on a vast federal system, never mind what. Numerous computer programs were to be coordinated by a hypertext system they had created and they wanted to know if they’d designed il right. It took months to find oul from the programmers exactly what the system
was,
so I ended up writing the manual; after which I explained what was wrong with the project and the whole hypertext system was scrapped. And my job with it. I never quite got the swing of consulting
Flying coast-lo-coast with the president of a large corporation, he and I planned the whole Xanadu budget for the following year at something like half a million dollars, Two years later, reduced in circumstances and driving a yellow cab In New York, the miserable vehicle breaks down in front of those same corporate headquarters. And the reason I had that bad taxi was thai I was out of favor with the taxi dispatcher, on account of having been absent the previous week– I had had to fly to California to give a banquet address at the Rand Corporation.
Then there were my adventures with the CIA.
I was sitting in my office at Vassar, sagely advising a studenl, when the phone rang und the caller identified himself as John W.
Kuipers,
head of computer research at the CIA, He told me I had been noticed as a new bright young man in the field, and would I like to work for them?
Now, there is something about being a cynic and a romantic. (They go together: the cynic deflates ideas, the romantic falls in love with them.) It is not impossible for the cynical romantic to surmise that because everything he has seen personally turned out to be so lousy, that the true hope may lie at Ihe heart of the vortex, just where everybody thinks is impossible. Also the Kennedy aftermath, when sophisticated people had learned to laugh at simple idealism as a facade for the real wheel-and-dealing, slap-and-tickle, may have had something to do with it; anyway, I was enchanted. Thus began the Kuipers Caper.
YES,
THERE IS A McLEAN, VIRGINIA
I was given a handler named Bob, a jolly fellow, who kept assuring me that much money was just around the corner. I was regaled with success stories of other people in the computer field who really, undercover Worked for Them. (They weren’t doing anything very exciting.) I got to show my slides in the CIA office building in Arlington, and to see there very fancy display equipment behind shielded (!) double-doors in a shielded (!!) computer room— shielded lo keep any planted bugs from transmitting out the contents of the computers’ working registers. I even got to visit the main CIA “campus” in McLean, Virginia, where the sign says Agricultural Research Station. It is an incredible feeling to walk across that big eagle in the terrazzo, and to be given the visitor’s badge that says “United States Government” all in wiggly lines.
They told me that they would be glad to set me up in business as a hypertext company, but 1 would have to have a corporation, because that was the way they always did things. And so it came to pass that The Nelson Organization, Inc. was founded at the express request of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. If life can’t be pleasant it can at least be surrealistic.
.
. .
BUT NO SANTA CLAUS
I was encouraged to write proposals for them, and write proposals I did. (I happened to finish typing the first one during a lightning storm, and lightning crashed just as I was signing the
page;
1 felt like Faust.) I explained how hypertext might have prevented the Bay of Pigs. After due consideration, I did not say what hypertexts might have done for the Warren Report. Numerous jolly phone calls assured me that my first $25,000 was just around the corper.
The break came when Bob called me and asked me to rewrite a proposal one more time. He had circulated it, he said, among various people “at the shop,” who he reminded me were holders of advanced degrees, and it had been remarked that they found my proposal meaning
less:
“Every place you say ‘hypertext’ you could just as well put ‘gobbledygook’ instead; you’ll have to clear that up a Utile.”
That did It. They couldn’t read either. Who turns out to be in charge of computer stuff in the heart of the CIA, the inner sanctum, the neat of vipers, but the same old poopy Ph.Ds. 1 decided to resuscitate my virtue.
As far as 1 know, there ia still not a Decent Writing System anywhere in the world, although several things now come close. It seems a shame that grown men and women have to rustle around in piles of paper, like squirrels looking for acorns, in search of the phrases and ideas they themselves have generated. The decent writing system, as I see it, will actually be much more: it will help us create better things in a fraction of the time, but also keep track of everything in better and more subtle ways than we ever could before. But nobody sees this– I suppose it’s only writers and editors that know they’re trying to “keep track of ideas”– and I have been unable to get thia across to anybody. (The professional
writers,
of course, won’t talk to me either.)
So here 1 am after fourteen years with exactly two systems to show for it: the main one, Xanadu, the text-and-animated-picture network system, and Fantasm (I shouldn’t have spent the time but it was a labor of
love),
the simulated-photography system. Actually, I don’t have either of them to show, it’s all just flow
charts,
but it turns out that if I work on either of them with university equipment, my work of fourteen years gets confiscated. So much for
that;
the outside expedients for debugging con
tinue.
And, to lighten the burden, I’ve finally given up on trying to reach professionals, who evidently need a thick gravy of technicalism to make the obvious palatable; with this bookity I am taking my case to The People. It is there, anyway, out in Consumerdom, that the real action is going to occur. So the important thing is for everybody to know what’s really possible, and what they could have. That is why 1 have shot off my big canons (and this
epistol).
To me, you see, this is really a holy crusade, whereas I know guys lo whom it’s just a living. It’s no less than a question of freedom in our time. The cases of Solzhenitsyn and Ellsberg remind us that freedom is still not what it should be, anywhere. Computer display and storage can bring us a whole new literature, the uniting and the apotheosis of the old and the new; but there are many who would not necessarily want to see this come about. Deep and widespread computer systems would be tempting to two dangerous parties, “organized ,
crime”
and the Executive branch of the Federal government (assuming there is still a difference between the two). If we are to have the freedoms of information we deserve as a free people, the safeguards have to be built in at the bottom, now. And the opulence which is possible must be made clear to everyone before we settle on an inferior system— as we did with television.
Some people have called my ideas and systems “Orwellian.” This is annoying in two
ways.
In the first place it suggests the nightmare of Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighly-Four, which obviously I want no part of. (But hey, do you remember what that world of 1964 was actually like? The cryptic wars against unseen enemies that kept shifting? The government spying? The use of language to twist and manipulate? To paraphrase Huey Long: “Of course we’ll have 1984 in America. Only we’ll call it 1972.”)
The second reason the term “Orwellian” is offensive is that it somehow reduces the life of Orwell, the man, to the world of “1984.” This is a shallow and shabby thing to do to a man who spent his life unmasking oppressiveness in human institutions everywhere.
In the larger sense, then– in homage to that simple, honest, angry man, who cared about nothing more than human freedom– I would be proud indeed if my systems could be called Orwellian.
That reminds me. Nowhere in the book have I defined Ihe phrase “computer lib.” By Computer Lib I mean simply: making people freer through computers. That’s all.
Fantically– or fanatically–Yours for a better world, Before we have to settle for Any–
1
tiVt
4
• •
•
”
ecr >
IT *^
Wfje^p
n :•;•],> II
M
••uili’tv
^
.
IVm.n I.
M.
may end with a bang (thermonuclear exchanges, or just desultory firings urtil we’re all poisoned or
sterile),
or a whimper (universal
sttrvniion).
or, I would anticipate, some spastic combination of the two. and all within the (possible) lifetime of the average reader.
Thi*
Is. at any rate, what 1 think most likely.
Except of course we won’t see it happen that way. We’ll watch the starvations on TV (as we did Biafra, Bangladesh, now West Africa, what next…
India?),
and tsk about the poor foreigners who can’t take cere of themselves. And as the problems increase and move toward oui heartland, it’ll be blamed on environmentalists and on the news media, till bang.
Just maybe.
But we’ve all got to get access lo Ihe Club of Home models, and look (or holes or strategies. If computer modelling system doing this kind of work are made widely enough available, perhaps some precocious grade-schooler or owlish hobbyist will find some way out that the others haven’t
We’ve got to think hard about everything.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Frederick Pohl and CM. Kombluth, The Space Merchants. Ballantine, paper. Thomas C. Schelling. The Strategy of Conflict. Paper. The Grent American Bomb Machine (citation not
handy).
Paperback. A book called Cold Dawn (citntion not handy; originally published in Ihe New Yorker) presents a most discouraging view of thia country’s actions ir the SALT talks. Ont Access Catalog, nol lo be named here, gives a recipe for an atonic bomb. Very funny, ha ha. “The U-235 we are using, (although Plutonium will work just as well) is a radioactive substance and deserves some care In handling. II is NOT radioactive enough lo kill with limited exposure, but don’t sleep with it or anything.” And so on. Thanks a lot. fellas. Ralph Lapp had a piece in Ihe Now York Times Magazine last year, pointing out thst plutonium is shipped In unguarded truck* and It’s only a matter of time before purks get their hands on il… A piece in a recent Esquire. “Did There Ever Come a Point in Time When There Were Forty-Three Different Theories *boul Watergate? Yea. to Ihe Best of Our Recollection.” is a very helpful general
source,
especially for those who suspect a connection between “Watergate” and the assasainations of the Kennedy*. Malcolm X. Martin Luther King. etc. Bul for a real chill see “Mae Brussell’s Conspiracy Newsletter” in the March (?) 1974
Realist,
aa well a* “Who Is Organized Crime and Why Are They Saying Such Awful Things About It.” same i»*ue.
Glen A. Love and Rhoda M. Love. Ecologicul
Crisis:
Readings for Survival. Harcourt. 14
(paper).
A quick way lo catch up on aome bad stuff. Pour bucka well spent.
For a dazzling, romantic and optimistic view of the ruture. see Dlmen*lons of Change by Don Fabun (Glencoe Pre**, 15 in
paper).
The Futuriat magazine goe” out l” members of the World Future Society. An Aaaociation for The Study of Alternative Futures, Post Office Box 10369, Betheada Branch, Washington, OC 70014. The magazine used lo be prstty aappy and optimistic, but acema lo be acquiring sophistication. j Id Ths Lifflboal Chicago 1 1V-5J ”
67
ailed
Would you believe thst the greatest avail able computer service ie for the kiddles?
For four bucks and a half, an outfit called Me-Books will send, to a child you designate, a story of which he is the hero, in which his friends and siblings appear, and whose action involves his address and birthday.
Kids adore it. Children who don’t like reading treasure the volumes; children who do like reading love them just as much.
[ can personally report, at least on the basis of the one I ordered (My Friendly Giraffe) that the story is beautifully thought out. warm, loving, and cleverly plotted. In other words, far from being a fast-buck scheme, this thing has been done right. It’s a splendid children’s story, fl won’t reveal the plot, but the Giraffe’s birthday, name and home address are related to those of the protagonist.)
Moreover, it has three-color illustrations, is on extra-heavy paper and is bound in hard
covers.
(In case you’re interested, any of the three programming languages expounded earlier in the book would be suitable for creating a Me-Book: depending on the language chosen, the holes left for the child’s own name would be alphabetic variables, segment gaps or null arrays
—
anyhow, you could do it.)
Astute readers of the Me-Book will note that while it’s not readily obvious, only the lines on which personalized information appear have been printed in the computer’s lineprinter. The others have all been pre-printed on a press. Indeed, the personalizations appear on only one side of each page, the whole book being one long web of paper that’s run through the line-printer just once before being cut and bound. But it’s so cleverly written and laid out that the story moves on beautifully even on the pages that don’t mention the child’s name.
As an experiment, the author tried sending for a copy of My_ Friendly Giraffe as told about a little boy named Tricky Dick Nixon, residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. The result was extremely gratifying, and well worth the $4.50. Herewith some excerpts.
a place cal little boy
•
‘3l”>ss3005
CAT’S al. : ‘”Co
20050
1
Once upon a ti.c, in
n.shlngton,
there »
na.ed Tricky Dick »i”>n-
….
Tricky .I” «»” ” 1Utle
b°’-
He
had adventures *”* •«« b0?S 5lCl°
just drea» of.
This is the story one ot hi-‘- adventures.
,„ of the da, that Tricky Dick «t
:ried.
It’s the sto
a 9irslle.
As the giraffe c«.„ closer and closer.
Tricky Dick started to wonder ho. in the
world he .as going to look hi. in the eye.
Irick, Dick kue. there .ere ao jungles in
Washington. Especially on Pennsylvania .»
But Tricky Dick wasn’t even a little hit -or
FlMt.
because he .as a very be… **•
second, because he knew that his friend, <
giraffe. •«« hl* ""UC* bld-
Iri«J Dick
„lloli
i„ iashingtc.
lth
3 story to tell Ms
f r •
Tricky Dick ,„u
back.
.
. lo"* "e a tero
There would be .any other exciting adventures
foe Tricky Dick and his friends.
And .ayne, just .aybe, if you're a very good
hoy. so.eday we'll tell you about those, too.
PERSONALIZED ME-BOOKS™ NOW AVAILABLE:
c7Mr
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Giraffe Your child and Ihe child's Inends
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People m me land ol candy and cake
lei) all
about your chiids exacl birthday (rom birlhslone lo lamous birthdays
Jungle
Holiday T he child ol your choice and Ihe giralle
visit
ihe animals in an amusement Dark Personal ized ihroughoui
Special
Christmas
As Santas
helper,
your child visils the Santas ol Ihe dilloreni counlnes and learns ihe hue meaning ol Christmas
For additional Mo-Books'" wnllen around a child ol your
choice,
comDlelt? an order lorm al your lavonie bookslore or write Me Books Publishing Co
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Norlh Hollywood Calil 01609 Enclose J3 95 plus 50C lor posiage and handling (Calif residenls add 2Qt lor sales lax ) Be sum lo stale which Me-Book" you desire and include the following information rtnOMHIIED ST0*> DA1I it Ituooi*
<«„IIQMISI
About
these fanny
numbers
cnycup checks.
You will note that all bank checka now have funny-looking numbers along their bottoms They go like this: O 12314 5 &?n'q 0 »• / The numbers are odd but recognizable. The last four thingies are punctuation marks, which presumably can mean anything the programmer wants them to. (In other words, frankly, I don't know their names or standard functions.)
The name of these numbers is MIGR which stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recor
ding.
They are printed in magnetic ink - not magnetic so's you could record on it, like magnetic tape, but chock-full of iron and vitamins so that as its blobs whiz past a special read head, they cause a specific sequence of pulseB in the parallel circuits of the read head that can be decoded as the specific number or mark.
The MICR system was designed in the late fifties, with the technology convenient at that time, and would certainly not be designed that way now. Nevertheless, these weird-looking symbols have inspired various
BIDOLQJS TVPE-fflCES,
which apparently look to the public like the latest hotcha whizbang zippity up-to-date futuristic stuff, even though to the knowledgeable person they bring back the late fifties. (In fact there are no letters in the MICR character-set.)
What,
then (you may ask) would symbols designed for computers look like if they had been designed more recently?
We were just getting to that. In fact, there are two such alphabets, called OCR (for Optical Character Recognition). They have been standardized so everybody can design equipment and/or programs to work with them. They are called the A and B optical fonts, or, for completeness, OCR(A) and
OCR(B).
They are very diaappointing.
OCR(A) is a little sexier. At least it looks like something. (Evidently it's slightly easier to deal wilh and design for.) But the other one,
OCR(B),
just looks like the alphabet next door. Here they are.
ABCDEFGHUKLJI NOPORSTUVUXYZ
Q123M5b75=i
., : ;
= + /s*"2
1234567890 ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVUXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvuxyz
**--/.,:;"•-
•>.
i o<>r.:%ssaA D£I|\l ¥
OCR. (6)
BOOK SHIPPED TO GHOHM-UP
66
THE
5SS
The national phone company (usually called affectionately,
“Ma
Bell”)
has
drastically changed
its
switching methods
in the
last
few
years.
They
are
replacing
the old
electromechanical switches,
or
“crossbars,” with
a new
device called
the ESS, or
Electronic Switching System.
If
there’s
one in
your area
you may
hear about
it in
their jolly news sheet that
you
ret with
the
bill.
In
the old
crossbar dsys,
a
phone con nection
was a
phone connection
and
that
was
that.
Now,
with
the ESS, all
sorts
of new
combinations
are
possible:
the ESS has
stored programs that determine
its
operation.
If you
dialled
a
non-working number,
it
jumps
to a
program
to
take care
of
that.
It
does
all
sorts of things
by
special program,
and new
programs can
be
created
for
special purposes.
Now the
phone company
is
trying
to
find
the
services that people will
pay for.
Having calls rerouted temporarily
to
other numbers? Linking
up
several people
in a
conference call? Storing your most-called numbers,
so you can
reach them with
a
single
or
double digit?
These particular services
are now
being offered experimentally.
The
way it
works
is
this: there
are a
number
of
programs stored
in a
core memory; the only “output device”
of the
system consists of
its
field
of
reed switches, arranged
to
close circuits
of the
telephone network.
Depending
on the
numbers that have been dialled,
and
whatnot,
the ESS
jumps
to a
specific program,
and
that tells
it to
connect
an
incoming call
to
particular other circuits,
or to
ring other
lines,
or
whatever.
It’s really neat.
There
are
only
a
couple
of
things
to
worry
about.
One
is
that
it
makes wiretapping,
not a
complex bother involving clipped wires
and men
hunched over
in
cramped spaces,
but a
simple program.
Another
is
that some people think that blue-boxers
(see
nearby)
may be
able
to
program
it,
from
the
comfort
of
their
own
homes. Meaning that
not
just court-authorized wiretaps,
but
Joe Schmoe wiretaps, would
be
possible. Let’s hope
not.
13
This
has
been around
for
decades,
and
has nothing
to do
with computers,
but
isn’t
it
You write with
a pen
attached
by
rods to
a
transmitter; somewhere else,
a pen
attached by rods
to a
receiver duplicates what
you
have written.
What
is
being transmitted consists
of the
measured sideways motion
(“change in x”)
,
the
measured up-and-down motion
(“change in y”),
and
the
condition
of the pen (“up” or
“down”).
What would these days
be
called “three analog
channels,
multiplexed
on a
single line.”
These only cost
a
couple
of
hundred dollars. Why
has
nobody been using them
for
computer input?
Minicomputers handle various control functions
in our
mighty i Aeroplanes
and
Ships
of
the Ocean.
B A R N A BY’S
Sugar Creek, Texas will have 3000 homes with
a
minicomputer-based alarm system. Evidently various automatic sensors around each house sniff for fires
and
burglars,
as
well
as
providing panic buttons
for
medical emergencies.
The system uses dual Novas
(one a
backup),
and prints
out the
news
to
fire
and
police dispatchers on
a
good
old
33ASR Teletype. (Digital Design. May
73,
16.)
It
was a
truly stellar group that reported
to
Judge Sirica
on 15 Jan 1974
that
the
18-minute Watergate tape buzz
had at
least five starts
and
stops.
The
six
panelists included:
Richard Bolt,
a
founder
of
Bolt,
Beranek
and
Newman,
Inc.
Franklin Cooper, head
of
Haskins Laboratories, tate-p^l
)
Thomas Stockham, audio resynthesizer extraordinary
(see p M)
The news, however, generally referred
to
them
as
“technicians.”
M
OF
TWO*
“Overpay your phone bill
by one
cent. It drives
the
computer crazy.”
Nope.
The
amount
of
payment gets punched
in and
goes through
the
gears quite normally.
If
you
want
to put
together your
own
computer-on-a-chip, or
any
other complex integrated circuit,
a
complete simulation-verification-layout-and-fabrication service
is
available from Motorola, Semiconductor Products
Div.
.
P.O. Box
20924, Phoenix, Arizona. Presumably
it
costs
a
mint,
but
after that
you can
roll out your circuits like cookies.
Your circuit
is
overlaid
on
their beehive-chip
of
logical subcircuits, called
a
Polycell.
You use
their MAGIC language (Motorola Automatically Generated Integrated
Circuits),
which then feeds
a
resulting circuit data structure
to a
program called SIMUL8
(yuk yuk) to try out the
circuit without building
it.
That
way you can
suppoaedly
be
aure before they make
the
final
masks.
I always figured that
the day of
Computer Hobbyism would arrive when
the
folks
at
Heathkit offered
a
build-it-yourself computer.
But you
know what they came
out
with instead last year? A general interface
for
hooking things
to the
PDP-8.
a swell video game
now in
bars, probably controls
the
four-player pingpong
on the
screen with
a
minicomputer
or
microprocessor.
Especially exciting
is the
social
possi
bility
of
horizontal screens
for
other
fun
interpersonal stuff.
As
well
as
collaborative work. (But
boy,
let’s hope
the
radiation shielding-
is
good.)
The Computer Diet
by
Vincent Antonetti (Evans
Pub.)
shows “thTauthor sitting
on the
deskplate
of a 360
console.
The inside consists principally
of
charts
he
recom mends
for
weight loss.
“The
power
of a
modern digital computer” interpolated
the
tables.
A
slide rule might have have been simpler.
The thing is,
he
presents
a
paper
on the
thermo dynamics
of
weight loss which
may be
important;
in
this
he
states
the
difference equations which
are the
heart
of his
diet.
And
these
may
indeed
be
perfectly valid.
So why not
call
it
what
it is, The
Thermodynamic Diet?
-V-
Kirk Brainerd.
of
L, A.,
is
using compu ters
for a
registry
of
people with something
to
teach.
He
hopes that
if
people
are
mutually
a-
vailable
to
each other
al a
deep enough level, people
can
begin
to act out of
altruism
in
general.
ASTROPLASH. etc.
There are various computerized astrology
services.
Given your date of birth, and hour if known, they’ll type out your signs, explan
ations,
etc. Presumably there is a text network which the system selects among according to “reinforcing tendencies,” etc., among the entities thought to be influential.
Conceivably this could do nine-tenths of what a talented human astrologer does, and with the same validity, whatever that may be. In any case It’s probably a lot cheaper.
This is an outrageous misnomer. The computer Is only carrying out, most speedily, what hardened politocoes have always done: FACTIONAL ANALYSIS, now possible with newfound precision on the basis of certain election
returns.
Is it too soon for a computer pornography contest?
(Is it too late7)
See p. t>^”3V’
This is based on the cynical, and fairly reliable, view that people vote according to what faction of the greater populace they belong
to–
middle-class white liberals, blue-collar non-union members, and so on. The factions change slowly over time, and people move among them, but the fact of factionalism remains unchanged.
Well.
By the close of a major election campaign, most factions can be pretty well predicted, especially as to presidential choice, or what proportion of that faction will go for a given candidate.
But some factions’ reactions are not cer tain up to the day of the ballot.
So.
“Computer predictions” of elections basically break the country into its factional divisions, state by state and district by district, and then tabulate who can be predicted to vote fof whom on a factional basis.
Then what’s the suspense?
The suspense comes from the uncertain
factions—
groups whose final reactions aren’t known as the election starts.
People think computers are rigid and invariant. This (as stated elsewhere In this book) is due to the systems which people have imposed, and then blamed, on the computer.
The fact is that computers are now being set up to give new flexibility to manufacturing processes. Computers, directly connected to milling machines, grind metal into any conceivable shape much faster than a human craftsman. To change the result, change the program–in a fraction of a second. Fabric
des
ign has been done on computer screens; the obvious next step is to have the computer control the loom or knitting machine and immediately produce what-ever’s been designed.
Custom clothing: soon we may look forward to tailoring services that store your measurements and can custom-tailor a suit for you to any new fashion, in
minutes.
(But will the price beat Hong Kong?) Customized printed matter is already here (see “Me-Books,” p. 6)-Wherever people want individual variations of a basic manufacturing process, computers can do it.
The Telephone Company (at least in Illinois and Indiana) offers a speaker on “The Shadowy World of Electronic Snooping” to interested groups.
Certain election districts are known to be chock full of the types of people whose reaction isn’t known.
The final “computer prediction” simply consists of checking out how those districts voted, concluding how those factions are going in the present election, and extending this proportion through the rest of the country.
It’s often painfully accurate— but, thank god. not always. When it isn’t don’t blame “the computer.” Thank human cantankerosity.
may or may not be a real computer– friends have told me it isn’t— but it’s certainly a good idea.
When you pull your late-model Volkswagen into a dealer’s service area, the guys can just roll out a cable and plug it into the corresponr ding socket in your vehicle. At the other end of the cable is some sort of device which tests a series of special circuits throughout the car for Good Condition. These circuits indicate that things are working properly– lights, plugs,
points,
brakes and so on.
This is the same technique used by NASA up to the final moment of COMMIT LAUNCH– a system of circuits monitors the conditions of whatever can be monitored, to make sure all’s functioning
well.
It’s more expensive to wire it up that way, but it makes checking out the
rocket–
or the car— that much easier.
Modern uiug«, she 29, interested in recursive relations and reverse Polish culture. Phone a Bust. Contact box RS-232 (t see p. J>n3^,
BETCHA DIDN’T KNOW…
thsl the IRS hasn’t been able to do instant matching of W-2 forms to tax returns. That’ll be fixed in fiscal ’74. and interest and dividend
payment*
In ’75. (TIME, 31 Dec 73, 17.)
SIC TRANSIT
Some of the sappier new Urban Transit Systems give you a ticket with a magnetic stripe on the back. Each time you ride you must push the card into an Entrance Machine, which presumably does something to the stripe, till Anally the ticket runs out and you have to pay more money.
Secrecy of the recording code is an impor tant aspect of the thing. Indeed, waggish gossip claims that aome such systems start with a blank magnetic stripe and just add stuff to lt, meaning the card can be washed clean with a magnet by larcenous commuters. But this seems unlikely.
YOUR AUTOMOBILE COMPUTER
Didja know, huh, we’re going to have computers in our cars? We refer here to two
things—
anti-skid controllers. which are really just special circuits– you know, “analog computers”— to compensate among skidding wheels. Turns out that this is apparently more
sensi
tive and reliable than even your good drivers who enjoy controlling skids. Already advertised for some imports.
grand bus electronics (see p. ). Since the electrical part of the automobile is getting so blamed complicated, the Detroit Ironmongers have decided to switch to a grand bus structure instead of having all those switches and things separate anymore. Should make the whole thing far easier to service and customize.
Presumably this will all be under the control of a microprocessor. (See p-^^j ) This means that the car can have things like a Cold-Weather Startup Sequence– a program that starts the car, turns on the heater, monitors the engine and cabin temperature, and bleats the horn, twice, politely when it’s all ready– all at a time preset by the dashboard clock.
Presumably Detroit is not yet planning to go this far. But because of the auto industry’s anomalously huge influence in America, some have expressed the fear that this move — toward the integrated-circuit. digitally-controlled grand bus-would effectively put Detroit in control of the entire electronics industry.
The ever-clever Japanese are computerizing faster, better and more deeply than we are.
They now have a prototype taxi operating under computer control. They’re calling it, at least for export, Computer-controlled Vehicle System
(CVS).
Basically it’s like an Elevated Railway– you climb up and wait– but when you gel in. you punch a button for your destination. According to Hideyuki Hayashi of the Ministry of Industry and International Trade, the system will be operational in Tokyo within the decade, and is the “cleanest, safest, quickest transport
sys
tem ever devised by man.” Think fast, Detroit.
(A nice point: one of the most important features of such a system ia that the vehicles don’t react to each other, as do vehicles in the existing Human-controlled Vehicle System
(HVS).
A whole line of the cars can be accelerated or slowed simultaneously, a crucial aspect of their flexibility and safety. Nothing can possibry go long.)
(Leo Clancy. “Now– Computer-Controlled, Driverless Cars,” National Enquirer 3 Mar 74, 24-5.)
THOSE THINGS ON THE RAILROAD CARS
As we lean on the fence a-chawin’ an’ a-watchin’ the trains go by. we note strange insignia on their sides, in highly reflective Scotch-Lite all begrimed by travel.
Basically it’s a stack of horizontal stripes in red, blue and other colors. This la ACI, for Automatic Car Idenliflcation. It may yet straighten out the railroads.
In this neolithic industry, it is not known at any given time where a railroad company’s cars are, and some peculiar etiquette governs their unrequested uBe by other firms in the industry. Yet the obvious solution may come
about:
a running inventory of where all the cars
are.
where each one is going, whet’s in it. and who thst belongs to. But. of course, that’s still in the works. Revolutionary ideas take time.
6f
Everywhere you go computers lurk. Yet they wear so many faces it’s impossible to figure what’s going on.
Guidelines are hard to lay down here, but if you look for examples of things you’ve alresdy run into in this book, it may help some.
Terminals you can presumably recognize.
Microprocessors are harder, because you don’t see them. Good rule-of-thumb: any device which acts with complexity or apparent discretion presumably incorporates a terminal, minicomputer or microprocessor.
Two other things to watch for: transaction systems and data base systems.
A transaction system is any syatem that takes note of, and perhaps requires verification
of,
transactions. Example: the new point-of-sale systems (POS)
.
This is what’s about to replace the cash register.
In the supermarket of the future, every package will have a bar code on a sticker, or printed on the wrapper. Instead of the checkout clerk looking at the label and punching the a-mount of the sale into the cash register— an error-prone and cheat-prone technique which requires considerable training— your New Improved Checkout Clerk will wave a wand over the bar code. The bar code will be sensed by the wand, and transmitted to a control computer, which will ring it up by amount and category (for tax
purposes),
and even keep track of inventory. noting each object as it is removed from stock.
Here is what your bar code will look like. (A circular code, which was already turning up on some TV dinners, has been eliminated by the bar code. This is unfortunate, since the scanner necessary to read the bar code is electronically more complicated, but there we are.)
I
(Incidentally, while this does arrest the classic cashier’s cheat– ringing up excessive purchases on the customers, then having a confederate walk through equivalent amounts— the consumer is still entirely prone to cheating by the store in the computer program. Remember, it’s 1974. So you still may have to check your
tapes,
folks.)
Data base systems are any systems which keep track of a whole lot of stuff, often with complex pointer techniques (see “Data Structures,” P- Z£>). A cute example is the message service now offered by Stuckey’s snack/souvenir stands all over the country. You may leave messages for your friends or loved ones on the road; they can stop at any Stuckey’s and ask for their
messages,
just as if it was a telephone answering service. (You’re listed by your phone number-is this to avoid pranks? And what about people with no phones?) It’s free and a neat idea. (Obviously, the messages are stored on the disk of a big central computer, and queried from terminals at the individual stands.)
Now, moat of the big systems you run into tend to be a combination of transaction and data-base system. For instance, suppose you make an airline reservation. The airline has a large data base to keep track of: the inventory of all those armchairs it’s flying around the country, and the list of who so far have announced plans to sit in them, and in some cases what they intend to eat. When you buy your ticket that transaction then gets you put In the listing. Same for car rentals and so on.
The potential dangers of transaction systems are fairly obvious from the supermarket example, but they fan out in greater complexity as the systems get more complex. Credit cards, for instance, were only made possible by computers and computerized credit verification; but it is only now, fifteen or so years into the credit-card era, that laws protect the cardholder against unlimited liability if he loses it.
Yet we plunge ahead, and it is obvious why. Transaction systems managed in, and by, computers allow more flexible and (in principle) reliable operations. For instance, in the securities business, thousands of stock certificates are lost and mislaid, and the transaction paper must be typed, shuffled, put in envelopes, sent, opened, shuffled again, compared… all by hand. Little wonder they’re working on an Automated Stock Exchange System. But if it’s taken fifteen years to get the implicit bugs out of credit cards … not to mention the frequent allegations that much Wall Street “inefficiency” is actually the disguised marauding of Organized Crime. . . uh-oh. {If they can buy the best lawyers, they can probably buy the best programmers.)
Then there is the Checkless Society. This is a catchphrase for an oft-advocated system that allows you to transfer money instantly by compu
ter;
supposedly some such thing is working already in France. Again, they better get it pretty safe before a sane man will go up in it.
The safety of such systems is of course a matter of immense general concern. IBM portentiously (sic) announced its intent to spend millions of dollars on “computer security” a few years ago. However, a few million dollars is not going to plug the security holes in the IBM
360,
and evidently the 370 is just about as
vul
nerable .
(In this light, even the greatest IBM-haters will have to admit that there may be a proper motive behind IBM’s current refusal to let others use its new operating system language: that way they may be able to prevent special holes in the system from becoming known to programmers.)
It is interesting that one profession seems to be stepping forward to try to improve this situation: the auditing profession, devoted to verification of financial situations of companies, seems to be branching into the verification of computer programs and the performance of complex systems. This will be great, if it works.
Cynics,
however, may note that auditors have permitted some remarkable practices in the “creative” accounting of recent years. (Obviously the way to check out the safety of big systems is to offer bounty to those who can break its security. But who is willing to subject a system to a test like that?)
Hereabouts are a few other computerish things you may run into which more or less defy categorization.
should of course be called MATCHUP DATING, since there ia nothing particularly computerish about either the process or its intended result. But there we go again: word-magic, the
impli
cit authority of invoking the word Computer. (See “Cybercrud,” p. .)
In the early sixties, a perky young fella at the Harvard B-School, I believe, one Jeff Tarr, came up with the notion of a computerized dating service. The result was Operation Match, an immense financial success, which sort of came and went. No followup studies were ever done or success statistics gathered, unfortunately, but they certainly had their fun.
The basic principle of “computer dating” is perfectly straightforward. Applicants send in descriptions of themselves and the prospective dates they would like to meet. The computer program simply does automatically the sorts of thing you would do if you did this by hand: it attempts to find the “best’1 match betweeen what everybody wants and what’s on hand.
THE COMPUTER GRAVEYARD
In the mid-sixties there was a junkyard in Kingston, N.Y. that was like an automobile graveyard– except piled high with dead computers .
They were from various manufacturers. The guys would smash them with sledgehammers, or other awful things, to make sure they could never work again. Then you could buy the circuit cards. I saw 1401s five high, Univac File Computers, tape drives… it was an electronic nut’s paradise. You could decorate your den with huge old control panels, mag disks and whatnot, lt seems to be gone now. They forbade pictures.
Obviously this could be a matter for serious operations research: attempting to
dis
cover the best matchup techniques among things that never really fit together, detail for detail; trying to find out, by followup questionnaires, what trait-matchings seemed to produce the best
result,
etc. But such serious matchup-function research remains, so far as I know, to be even begun.
Obviously there are several problems. Demographically it is almost never true that “for every man there’s a woman”— in every age-bracket there’s almost always an imbalance of the opposite sex in the corresponding eligible age-bracket, either too many or too few. But more than that, there is little likelihood that the traits women want are adequately represented among the available males, or vice versa. For introduction services it’s obviously worse: there is no balance likely between what comes in one door and what comes in the other. The service can only do its best with the available pool of people– and make believe it’s somehow made ideal by the use of the computer. It’s like an employment office: applicants don’t match openings.
Numerous other dating services have ap peared, some of which don’t even pretend to use the computer (and others which claim to be a registry for nonstandard sexual
appetites),
but none that’s gotten the attention of the original Project Match.
But there’s no question who got the best dates out of that one. Jeff Tarr.
DO YOU GOT RHYTHM?
A device called the BIO-COMPUTER (trade mark) purportedly helps you predict your “body
beats.”
telling you what days are the right sort of time to do particular things in terms’ of your own biological energies. The object costs $15 postpaid from BIO-COMPUTER. Dept. CLB/DM (why
not?),
964 Third Ave.. NY NY 10022.
The question with all such special purpose
devices–
“fishing computers,” horse-racing computers, etc., is always whether the theory and formulas which are built into them are cor
rect.
There is no ready way to
tell.
One possibility, nice and expensive, is to rent a number of mailing lists from a single mailing-list house, with them guaranteeing that they’ll compare all the lists you choose and not send to any person more than once.
But as you may be suspecting, this costs money. All this screening and intercomparing requires computer time, and so, even though you are getting a more and more perfect mailing, you are paying more and more and more money for it. So you can see why reasonable businessmen are willing to send out ads even when they know some recipients will get several duplicates.
Another interesting point. There are mailing lists for all kinds of different possible customers. The possibilities are endless. Minority-group doctors. People interested in both stamp collecting and flowers (you’d have to get a company with both lists, and have them go through them for the duplicates… you get the
idea).
Theodor H Nelson 458 H 20Th St
Hejf
York,Ny 100H
Great news! for t
Branch 011
elsonjf amily!
Houldn’t y4u like your money to work for you full time., even when you’re asleep? How th^Nelsonfamily can save right -at their own bank.
–
Passbook Savings Plan which -noarterly or even
Note that mailing lists are priced according to their desirability. Weeded mailing lists, featuring only Live Ones, people who’ve ordered big in recent times, are more expensive. Lists of doctors, who buy a lot, .are more expensive than lists of social workers. And so on.
Then there’s the matter of the pitch.
The ad’s phrasing may be built around the mailing plan. Some circulars come right out and tell the recipient he’s going to get several copies because he’s such a wonderful person.
new””
IRS
THEN there are those advertisements that are actually printed by the computer, or at least certain lines are filled in with the recipient’s name and possibly some snazzy phrases to make him think it’s a personal letter. Who responds to such things I don’t know. My favorite was the one– I wish I could find it to include here
—
that went something like
You’ll really look swell, Mr. Nelson walking down Main Street of New York in your sharp-looking new slacks…
I don’t know whether I enjoyed the spaces or the Main Street more.
But you see how this works. There’s this batch-processing program, see, and the names and addresses are on one long tape, and the tape goes through, and the program takes one record (a name and
address),
and decides whether to call the addressee “Mr.,” “Ms.” or whatever, and then plugs his name into the printout lines that give it That Personal Touch; and then the mailing envelope or sticker is printed; and the tape moves on to the next record.
We may look forward to increasing en croachments on our time and trust by the direct mail industry: especially in better and better quack letters that look as though they’ve really been personally typed to you by a real human being. (It is apparently legal for letters to be signed by a fictitious person within a company.) In the future we may expect such letters to be sent on fine paper, typed individually on good typewriters, and convincingly phrased to make us think a real personal pitch is being tendered.
Dear Reader:
fj^rj.apa^.intta-.to
mutual funds.
you’ve undoubtedly £ ™ % ^ of promises and premiums. I won t try to p
•K„
, „ 11
i
nil vou won’t get rich quicK. If you subscribe to «www^ You won’t bowl over friends and
busi”»°-
clever rem””1″-
•= = 5
PCWTL^o PLACE.
BOULDER,
COLORADO
S0302
3ULDER.
COLORADO
80302
fc
hwj won’t appeal
tol^fS^^^”^1^^^
if it Per-W’U ippeal to
VOQ/HT^NI]
SOTJ5
^^}^Bsi^/
we think ” Because it *~ “» aives vou
There is, however, a final solution.
YOU CAN GET OFF ALL MAILING LISTS
—
that is, the ones “participating” in the Association– by writing to
Direct Mail Advertising Association Public Relations Department 230 Park Avenue New York, NY 10017
They will send a blank. If you fill it in they’U process it and delete your name from mailing lists of all participating companies.
Presumably this won’t help with X-rated or stamp-coUecting
lists,
but it ought to keep you from getting semiannual gift catalogs from places like The House of Go-Go Creative, Inc. and those million solicitations from Consumer Reports and that File Box company .
You call up the bank and ask your balance and they say, “I’m afraid I can’t get that information. You see, it’s on a computer.”
(See Baaic Rejoinder, nearby.)
Well,
the reason it’s this way is that they’re handling things in Batch (see p-HS ) and they aren’t storing your account on disk, or if they are they don’t have a terminal they can query it with.
But to say that they can’t get the infor mation becauae it’s on a computer is a typical use of the computer as an excuse (see Cyber-crud, p. $ ); and second, if the person believes this to be an explanation, it’s a sign of the intimidation and obfuscation that have been sown among the clerks who don’t understand computers.
Write them a letter. Change banks. Let’s get the banks to put on mare and more citizen services. Rah!
62
Everybody blames the computer.
People are encouraged to blame the computer. The employees of a firm, by telling outside people that it’s the computer’s fault, are encouraging public apathy through private deceit. The pretense is that this thing, the computer, is rigid and inhuman (see “The Myth of the Computer,” p. ? ) and makes all kinds of stupid mistakes.
Computers rarely make mistakes. If the computing hardware makes a hardware error in a billion operations, it may be noticed and a repairman called. (Of course, once in a billion operations is once in a thousand seconds, or perhaps every ten minutes. That ought to be mentioned.) Anyhow, innocent gadgetry is not what forces you to make stupid multiple choices on bureaucratic forms; mere equipment isn’t what loses your subscription records;
By system we mean the whole setup: the computer, the accessories that have been chosen for it, its plan of operation or program, and the way files are kept and complaints handled.
Don’t blame the computer.
Blame the system; blame the program
mer;
blame the procedures; best of all, blame the company. Let them know you will take your business to wherever they have human beings. Same for governmental agencies: write your congressman. And so on.
4 $Sit
l^jotfcW
we should all practice and have ready at the tip of our tongues:
WHY THE HELL NOT? YOU’RE THE ONES WITH THE COMPUTERS, NOT ME!
Let’s froth up a little citizen indignation here.
In principle we no longer need account
numbers.
Now that text processing facilities are available in moBt (if not all) major computer languages, the only excuse for not using these features is the programmer’s notion of his own convenience— not that of the outside customer or victim.
Example. Someone I know got brand new
^•**4*»»*4B>B«ss>J>>and
Mmmob*
credit
cards.
He made no note of their numbers. Then he lost them both. Duly he reported the losses. Neither service could look him up, they said. without the numbers. Not having used them, he had no bills to check. Even though he was the only person at that addresa with anything like that name. And why not, pray tell? Either because they were fibbing, or because they had not Been fit to create a simple straightforward program for the purpose. (See Baaic Rejoinder, nearby.)
I have heard of similar cases involving major life insurance companies. Don’t lose the
numbers.
Let’s all dance to it:
When anything is issued to you, Write the number down.
AT
“Cot*
tortus”
Pew of us can help feeling outrage at the book clubs, or subscription offices, or billing departments. that don’t reply to our
letters.
Or reply inappropriately, with a form printout that doesn’t match the problem.
First let’s understand how this happens.
These outfits are based on using the com puter to handle all correspondence and trans
actions.
The “office” may not have any people in it at all– that is, people whose job it is to understand and deal sensibly with the problems of customers. Instead, there may just be keypunch operators staffing a Batch System, set up by someone who has long since moved on.
The point of a batch system (see p.f$”) is to save money and bother by handling everything in a controlled flow. This does not mean iri principle that things have to be rigid and restrictive, but it usually means it in practice. (See “The Punch Card Mentality,” p. •) The system is set up with only a fixed number of event types, and so only those events are recognized as occurring. Most important, your problem is assumed to be one that will be straightened out in the course of the system’s flow. While there may be provision for excep
tions–
one clerk, perhaps— your problem has not seemed to him worthy of making an exception for.
Here is my solution. It has worked several times, particularly on book clubs that ignored typed letters and kept billing me incorrectly.
Get a roll of white shelf paper, two or three feet wide and twenty or more feet long.
Write a letter on the shelf paper in magic marker. Make it big, perhaps six inches to a word. Legibility is necessary, but don’t make it too easy to read.
Explain the problem clearly.
Now take your punch card— you did get
one,
didn’t you, a bill or something?– and mutilate it carefully. Tear it in quarters, or cut it into lace, or something. But make sure the serial number is still legible. Staple it lovingly to your nice big letter..
Now fold your letter, and find an envelope big enough for it to fit in, and send it, registered or certified
mail,
to ANY HUMAN BEING, ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT, or whatever, and the company’s address.
This really works quite
well.
I am assuming here, now, that your prob lem has merit, and you have been denied the attention required to settle it. If we want justice we must ourselves be just.
There is one further step, but, again, to be used only in proportion to the offense. This step is to be used only if a meritorious communication, like that already described, has not been properly responded to in a decent interval.
We assume that this unjust firm has sent you a reply envelope or card on which they must pay postage. Now carefully drafting a follow-up letter, explain once again, in civil language, the original problem, your efforts at attention, and so on. Now put it in a package with a ten or twelve-pound rock, affix the reply envelope to the outside, and send it off.
The problem, you see, has been to get out of the batch stream and be treated as an exception. Flagrantly destroying the punch card serves to remove you from the flow in that fashion. (However, just tearing it a little bit probably won’t: a card that is intact but torn can simply be put in a certain slot of the card-punch and duplicated. Destroy it good and plenty.)
In all these cases remember: the problem is not that you are “being treated as a number,” whatever that means, but that your case does not correctly fall in the categories that have been set up for it. By forcing attention to your case as an exception, you are making them realize that more categories are needed, or more people to handle exceptions. If more people do this when they have a just complaint, service will improve rapidly.
The people who send it out like to call it personalized advertising and the like. But most of us call it Junk
Mail.
And its vagaries are NOT THE POOR COMPUTER’S FAULT. What gets people angry derives from the system built around the poor computer.
You may wonder why you get more and more seed catalogs, or gift-house catalogs, as time goes on, even though you never order anything from them. Or why a deceased member of the household goes on getting mail year in and year out, regardless of your angry postcards .
How does it keep coming?
Through the magic of something called the Mailing List.
And especially the peculiar way that mailing lists are bought and sold.
me
rcBMwu.
MDIUH
Now, a mailing list is a series of names and addresses of possible customers. stored on computer tape or disk.
You can buy the use of a mailing list.
But you cannot buy the mailing list itself.
Suppose you have a brochure advertising pumpkin-seed relish, which you suggest has rejuvenating powers. You want this brochure to go out to rich college graduates.
You go to a mailing-list house.
“I cannot sell you this mailing list
out
right,”
says the jolly proprietor, “for it is my business to sell its use again and again, so I do not want anybody else to have a copy of
it.”
So you leave 2500 pumpkin-seed relish brochures with the mailing list company. and pay them a lot of money. And they swear on a stack of bibles that they have mailed the brochures to their special list of rich college graduates .
Well,
let’s say you get 250 sales from that mailing. (10% is fantastically good.) But out of curiosity you go to another mailing-list house and have another mailing sent out– this one to people who have low incomes and little education.
This time you get lj>% orders.
Now guess what you are acquiring.
A mailing list of your very own. Of peo ple who eat pumpkin-seed relish.
Mailing lists are, you see, generally ren ted blind, with no chance to see the addressees or check as to whether they’ve already been mailed to.
And that explains all the duplications.
If an advertiser is going after a certain type of customer, and goes to several mailing-list houses asking for mailings to that particular type of customer, chances are some people will be on several of the lists. And since there’s no way to intercompare the lists, these poor guys get several copies of the mailing.
(Another way this can happen is if some cheapskate has his own mailing Hat and doesn’t cheek it for repeats of the same name. But writing the computer program to check for repeats of the same name is not easy– there might just be a Robert Jones and a Rob Jones at the same address– and these things are not usually checked manually. They’re big.)
Another possibility exists for eliminating duplications when you rent mailing lists. You can bring in a magnetic tape with your mailing list on it, and they can send out the mailing only to the members of their list who are not already on your list. That way you still cant steal their list, since the tape is on their premises. The trouble is, they can steal your
list,
by making a copy of the tape. Oh dear.
From all this, one last speculation creeps forward.
Ivan Sutherland, in considering the struc ture of subroutining display processors, has . noted that as you get more and more sophisticated in the design of a display program
fol
lower, you come full circle and make it a
full-
fledged computer, with branch, test, and arithmetic operations.
If the somatic mechanism should turn out to have a program follower as described, it is not much of a step to suppose that it might have the traits of an actual computer, i.e., the ability to follow programs, branch, and perform manipulations on data bearing on those operations.
In other words, the digital computer may actually have been invented long before von Neumann, and we may have billions of them on our person
B
already.
It may sound far-fetched, but the mechan isms elucidated at this level are so far-fetched already that this hardly seems ridiculous.
THE COMPUTER FRONTIER
Regardless of what’s actually in the
cell,
it is clear that being able to adapt molecular chemistry, especially DNA and RNA, to computer storage is a beckoning computer frontier.
This would make possible computer mem ories which are far larger and cheaper than any we now have.
Basically we can separate this into two
aspects:
The DNA Readout. This part of the
sys
tem would create long molecules holding digital information.
The DNA Readin. This would convert it back to electrical form again.
Weird possibilities follow. One is that (if chemical memory is generic, rather than idiosyncratic to an individual’s neural pathways) knowledge could be set up somehow in “learned” DNA form, whatever that might turn out to be, and injected or implanted rather than taught • Weird.
As our ability to create clones improves, we could clone new creatures, or genetic “improvements”– which, considering the racehorBe and the Pekinese, means “those sorts of nonviable modifications supported in human society.” And of course that ghastly stuff about building humanB, or semi-humans; having traits that somebody or some organization, ulp, thinks is desirable…
But the real zinger is this one. It might juBt be a small accidental printout meant to test the facility, or maybe just a program bug—
— but the system could output a virus that would destroy mankind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
James D. Watson, Molecular Biology of the Gene. Beautifully written; meant for highschool science teachers. But potentially
formi
dable;
if so, start” with his autobiographical The Double Helix, which ia a gas.
Mark Ptashne and Walter Gilbert, “Genetic Repressors.” Scientific American, June
1970,
36-44.
S.E. Luria, Life: The Unfinished Experiment. Scribner’s.
Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a
Cell.
Viking, 57. Eloquent writing to popularize, among other things, the Hew Cenetlc view that your modern animal cells, and mine, actually contain varloua fungi and other stray ding-a-llngs that slid into one of our ancestors and found useful work, joining the basic genetic program.
It used to be fashionable to say, “The brain la a computer.”
But now people say, “The brain is a hologram.”
Fashion* change.
Almost nothing is known about the brain.
Oh,
there are lots of picture-books showing cross-sections of brains… Maybe you thought it was just a big cauliflower, but it’s full of strings and straps and lumps and hardly anything is known about any of it.
Clinical evidence, of course, tells us that if this or that part is cut out, the patient can’t talk, or walk, or smell, or whatever. But that doesn’t come close to telling us how the thing works when it does work. The histologists, the perceptual psychologists, the anatomistB, are all working at it— with no convergence. Beautiful example: the split-brain stuff, which 1 just better not even bring up here (see new Maya Pines book, Harcourt
Brace).
We used to dissect brains when I worked down in Dr. Lilly1 B dolphin lab. Dolphin brains are about 1.2 times the size of ours, and Lilly quite reasonably pointed out that this might mean dolphins were smarter than us.
And, of course, the bigger whales even smarter. We had a killer-whale brain in the deepfreeze that was about 2i feet across. And whales come much bigger than that; the Killer’s maybe a quarter the length of the Blue.
(I should point out here that Lilly’s pub licity on the intelligence of dolphins was a little too good: it somehow didn’t get mentioned that dolphins are just very small whales, the only ones you can feasibly keep in a lab. So think of whales as the possible super-smarties, not just dolphins.}
What’s that you say? That “brain size isn’t what counts”? That’s an interesting point.
People with small heads are by and large just as smart as people with big heads. That’s one argument.
However, people have much bigger brains than almost any other animals. That indicates something too.
I believe that the only other animals with very big brains are elephants and whales. (An anatomical explanation: the weight is supported on the man by balancing it, on the elephant by a heavy and comparatively inflexible neck offset by a grappling
tool,
and in the whale by putting it in the front of a torpedo. But most other anatomies couldn’t manage a big brain, so they can’t evolve one.^
Anyhow, so the scientific question is whether big-brained species are smart.
Well,
dogs are smarter than rats…
But about these other guys in our league and beyond. How do we know soientifically that “the size of the brain isn’t what counts”? Because obviously they’re not as smart as we
are,
people say. Therefore it isn’t brain size that counts. The depth of this logic should be
evident.
(I’ve even heard people say, “Of course they’re not as smart. They don’t have guns.”)
Pay close attention to an elephant sometime.
Working elephants in India respond to some 500 different oral commands.
Can you think of a 501st thing to ask an elephant to do? (I rather suppose it could oblige.)
Anyway, the dozen whales I’ve known per sonally were smart as heU.
It used to be believed that memory was exclusively a matter of synaptic connections–the gradual closing of little switches between nerve cells with practice.
It is now known that temporary or short-term memory is synaptic, but something else takes place after that. It’s believed that after a certain period, and it has something to do with rest and sleep, memories are trans-ferred to some other form, presumably chemical. But how?
My friend Andrew J. Singer has a beau tiful hypothesis that wraps it up. His guess is that memories are moved from synaptic storage to DNA (!) storage during dreaming, or more specifically REM sleep. I like that one.
61
Wvt^rNexT?
By browsing this book you may have more sense of what computers are doing, can do, should do.
What will you do now?
By reading this book in some detail, es pecially that difficult machine-language stuff (see “Rock Bottom” and “Bucky’s Wristwatch,” pp. 32 “3 )
•
or *ne pieces on specific computer languages Cpp-t^-^^l >• you really should be mentally prepared to get into programming, if you dig it.
Maybe you should consider buying your own minicomputer, for a couple of thousand. Or (if you’re a
parent),
chipping in with several families to get one. Or a terminal, and buying (or cadging as cadge can) time on a time-sharing system. Maybe you should start a computer club, which makes it easier to get cast-off equipment; if you’re kids, write the R .E.S.I .S .T.O.R.S
.
(p.
f^).
If you have a chance, maybe you should take computer courses, but remember the slant these are likely to have. Or perhaps you prefer just to sit and wait, and be prepared to speak up sharply if the computer people arrive ready to push you around. Remember:
COMPUTER POWER TO THE PEOPLE! DOWN WITH CYBERCRUD!
Computers could do all kinds of things for individuals, if only the programs were available. For instance: help you calculate your tax interactively till it comes out best; help the harried credit-card holder with bill-paying by allowing him to try out different payments to different creditors till he settles on the month’s best mix, then typing the checks; WRITING ANGRY LETTERS BACK to those companies that write you nasty letters by computer; helping with letter-writing in general. You’ll have to write the programs.
How do you think computers can help the world? What are you waiting for?
IHE COPPER MAN WALKED OUT OF THE ROCKY CAVERN
“fee
HiTicjrOHfom?
The focus of attention in genetics and organic chemistry has for a decade now been the remarkable systems and structures of the molecules of life. DNA and RNA.
DNA ia the baaic molecule of life, a long and tiny strand of encoded Information. Actually it is a digital memory, a stored representation of codes necessary to sustain, reproduce, and even duplicate the creature around it.
It is literally and exactly a digital memory. Its symbols are not binary but quaternary, as each position contains one of four code molecules; however, as it takes three molecules in a row to make up one individual codon, or functioning
symbol,
the actual number of possible symbols is 64– the number of possible combinations of four different symbols in a row of three. (I don’t know the adjective for slxtyfourishness, and it’s just as well.)
The basic mechanism of the system was worked out by Francis Crick and James Watson, who understandably got the Nobel Prize for it. The problem was this: how could living cells transmit their overall plans to the cells they split into? and how could these plans be carried out by a mechanical process?
The mechanism is astonishingly elegant. Basically there is one long molecule, the DNA molecule, which is really a long tape recording of all the information required to perpetuate the organism and reproduce it. This is a long helix (or
corkscrew),
as Linus Pauling had guessed years before. The chemical processes permit the helix to be duplicated, to become two stitched-together corkscrews, and then for them to come apart, unwinding to go their separate ways to daughter ceLU.
One theory about the mechanlca of this ia that a sort of zipper slide, called the ribosome. chugs down the tape, attaching the called-fbr~ amino aclda and peeling off the ever-longer result.
As a tape recording, the molecule directs the creation of chemicals and other cells by an intricate series of processes, not well understood. Basically, though, the information on the basic DNA tape is transferred to a new tape, an active copy called “messenger RNA,” which becomes an actual playback device for the creation of new molecules according to the plan stored on the original.
Some things are known about this process and some aren’t, and I may have this wrong, but basically the DNA– and its converted copy, the RNA– contain plans for making all the basic protein molecules of the body, and anything else that can be made with amino acids. (Those molecules of the body which are not proteins or built of amino acids are later made in chemical processes brought about by these kinds.)
Now well may you ask how this long tape recording makes chemical molecules. The answer, so far as is known, is extremely puzzling.
As already mentioned, the basic code molecules (or nitrogenous bases? are arranged in groups of three. When the RNA is turned
on,
these triples latch onto the molecules of amino acid that happen to be floating by in the soupy interior of the
cell.
(There are twenty–seven amino acids, and sixty-four possible combinations of three bases; this is fine, because several different codons of three bases can glom onto the same passing amino acid.)
Now, the tape recording it divided into separate sections or templates; and each template does its own thing. When a template is filled, the Btring of amino acids in that section separate, and the long chain that results is a particular molecule of significance “in some aspect of the critter’s life processes— often a grand long thing that folds up_ in a certain way. exposing only certain active surfaces to the ongoing chemistry of the
cell.
Now, here are some of the funny things that are known about this. One is that there is a particular codon of three bases that is a stop
code,
just like a period in ordinary punctuation. This signals the end of a template. Another is that the templates on the tape are in no particular order, but distributed higgledy-piggledy. (Geneticists engaged in mapping the genes of a particular species of creature find that the gene for eye color may turn out to be right next to the gene for length of
tail–
but where those are really, and what the particular molecules do that determine it, are still mysterious sorts of question.)
Here is some more weird stuff about this.
Large sections of the DNA strand are “dork,” it turns out, just meaningless stretches of random combinations of bases that don’t mean anything— or ever get used. This ties in, of course, with the notion that genetic change is random and blind: the general supposition is that genetic mutation takes place a base or two at a time, and then something else activates a chance combination in a dry stretch that turns out to be
useful,
and this is somehow perfected through successive
1-base
changes during the process of successive mutation and evolution.
Amazing use is made of these mechanisms by some viruses. Now, viruses are often thought of as the most basic form of life, but actually they are usually dependent on some other form and hence more streamlined than elemental.
Well,
some viruses (but not all) have the capacity for inserting themselves in the genetic material: breezing up to the DNA or RNA, unhooking it in a certain place and lying down there, then being duplicated as part of th£ template, then unhooking themselves and toddling away– both parent virus and copy. I can’t for the life of me think of an analogy to this, but I keep visualizing it as happening somehow in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
CONTROL MECHANISMS
Now. all cells are not alike. From the first beginning cell of the organism (the
zygote),
various splits create more and more specialized, differentiated cells. A liver cell is extremely different from a brain
cell,
but they both date back by successive splitting from that first zygote. Yet they have different structures and manufacture different chemicals.
One simplification may be possible: the “structure” of a cell may really be its chemical composition, since cell walls and other structures are thought to be special knittings of certain tricky molecules. Okay, so that may reduce (he question slightly. How then does the cell change from being an Original (undifferentiated, zygotic) cell to the Specialized cella that manufacture particular other complex chemicals?
One hypothesis was that these other cells have different plans In them, different tapes. But this theory was discarded when John Gurdon at Oxford produced a fresh frog zygote from the intestinal cell of a frog (which accordingly, in due time, became a frog de
facto).
This proved, most think, that the whole tape is in every
cell.
Thus there must be aomething-or-other that blocks the different templates at different times (You there, now you’re a full-fledged
epi
thelial
cell,
never mind what you did before) and selects among all the subprograms on the tape.
Much preBaing research in molecular bio logy, then, is concerned with searching for whatever it Is that switches different things on and off at different times in the careers of the ever-splitting cells of our bodies. Not to mention those of all other living creatures, including
turnips.
COMPUTERISH CONJECTURES
The guys who specialize in this are usually chemists, and presumably know what they’re doing, so the following remarks are not intended as butting into chemistry. However, new perspectives often give fresh insight; and the matters we’ve covered BO far might seem to have a certain relevance.
DNA and RNA, as already remarked, may without distortion be thought of as a tape. Indeed, on thia tape is a data structure, and indeed it is a data structure which seems to be involved with the execution of a program— the program that occurs as the organism’s cells differentiate.
There is evidently some sort of program follower which is capable of branching to different selections of (or subprograms) in the overall program, depending on various factors in the cell’s environment– or perhaps its age.
Now, it is one thing to look for the par ticular chemical mechanisms that handle this. That’s fine. On the other hand, we can also consider (from the top down) what sort of a program follower it must be to behave like this. (This is like the difference between tracing out particular circuitry and trying to figure out the structure of a program from how it behaves.)
At any rate, the following interesting con jectures arise:
1. The mechanism of somatic reproduction is a subroutining program follower— not unlike the second program follower of the subroutining display (see p. That is. it steps very slowly through a master program somewhere, and with each new step directs the blocking or unblocking of particular stretches of the tape.
As the program is in each
cell,
presumably it is being separately followed in each
cell.
(This is sometimes called distributed computing.)
2. In each
cell,
the master program is directing certain tests, whose results may or may not command program branching– successive steps to new states of the overall program. It may be testing for particular chemical secretions in its environment; it could even be testing a counter.
3. (This is the steep one.) If this were so, we might suppose that this program too was stored on the DNA, in one or more program areas; and it would therefore be necessary to postulate some addressing mechanism by which the program
fol
lower can find the templates to open and close. (And perhaps further sections of the program.)
4. Indeed, it makes sense to suppose that such a program has the form of a dispatch table –a list of addresses In the tape, perhaps associated with specifications of the tests which are to cause the branching.
ue for every gena. As suggested in the above article, we may consider both ita logical structure— its mech-nlsma and effects, considered from a co.p u ce run’ s point of view— and lta chemical itructurt, or what Is eally happening. The genes are turned o_f_f by grabbing molecules, or repressor*, which glom onto the inl t i a tor (~»j action* of the genes which they have bean specifically coded to repress. Research in this area must now find v ‘ h« specific coding of molecules which block and unblock specific genea, and how theae fit in the overall graph f meteboliam, immunology, development, and so on. If there is anything to make an old atheist uneasy, it Is ha extraordinary beauty of this clockwork.
nd Stop. The lnitiato fectivelyflabela the gene. This initiator ted in the above article, we may conalder both lta logic che
ni-
4
These wild speculations are offered in the spirit of interdisciplinary good fellowship and good clean fun. Whether (1) and (2) have any actual content, or are merely paraphrases of what is already known or disproven, I don’t know; somebody may find the rest suggestive.
Two more observations, though. These are not particularly deep, and may indeed be
obvious,
but they suggest an approach.
5. There ia definitely a Program Restart: to wit. whatever it is that turns an old differentiated intestine cell into a fresh zygote.
6. Cancer ia a runaway subroutine. The above remarks aeem to be obsolete. The genetic mechanism really seems to be a list processor (see p
.
2i>
tdl lng associative, rather than numerical addressing. The gene Is now thought to be divided Into four segments,
„.
fcv- celled Promoter, Initiator, gene proper, and Terminator. As I understand
~/
w’
HJKMV
it, the promoter and terminator sonee contain codes which mean, simply, r, is a coded segment which ef- BIBLIOGRAPHY (Ur
»«t*.
•» Her Gobind Khorana, Millard Glbbs lecture. May 1974, “Progress In the Total Synthssis of the Tyrosine tHm\A>Gen« and Its Control Elements.”
ft. fl?EVlWJLY
Not all kidi oho play with computer* ar*
quit*
aa law-abldtng •• tha R.E.6.I.S.T.O.R.S. And th* tamptatlona art vary strong.
On*
such youngster want on a hlghschool field-trip to * suburban Philadelphia police •tatton. and aaw a demonslrstion of tha polloa remote Information ayatem. Tha police who war* demon*trating II, not balng computer
freak*,
didn’t realise how •1mpie
11
waa to observe the dial-in numbers, paaaworda and protocol. When thla lad got home, ha merrily want to hla computer terminal In the basement and proceeded to en tar Into Philadelphia’* llal of
moat-
wanted criminal! th* n*m*s of all hla taachera. A few days later • man came to hla houae from the
FBI.
He waa evidently not • regular operative but a technical
type.
He aaked very nicely
It
the boy had a
terminal.
Then Ihe FBI man aaked very nicely if ha had put In theae
names.
The boy admitted, grinning, that he had. (Everyone In tha achool knew
II
had lo be he.)
“Of course lt didn’t do any harm,” aay*
th*
culprit.
“I had them down for crime* llk* ‘intellectual murder.’ What could happen to then for that*” Ooea that make you feel better*
PHILADELPHIA’S AND CROOKS PLEASE NOTE: Thia happened five or six year* ago, end without a doubt the ayatem la by now totally aecure and
Impenetrable.
Let’*
hope.
looser-Of
ftcPRJ)5:
The question of “privacy” in the aba tract ian’t really an laaue. Who carea if God
a***
under your clothe*? The problem la what happen* to you on the
but*
of people’ your record*. Margo St. Jamei I case In point Ma. St. Jame* la a celebrated * prostitute, once well known for her activities with Paul Kraaaner aa “The Realist Nun;” she la now Chairraadam of an organization called COYOTE, campaigning for the decriminalization of prostitution. She originally had no intention of becc ing a prostitute. Rather, she learned that there waa a falae record of her arrest for prostitution; and despite her efforts to clear her
name,
the record followed her wherever she tried to get a Job. Finally the said the hell with It and did become a prostitute.
tlMK.
Ai/d Blue
trHD
*5J>
hU
eve*.
The phone ayatem ia bruised and bleeding from the depredation* of people who have found out how to cheat the phone company electronical
ly.
Such people are called Phone Freak* (or
Phreax);
articles on them have appeared in such placea aa Ramparta, The Re«ll*t and Oul. For no clear reason, the electronic device* Ihey use have been given various colorful namea:
bl*ck box: device which, attached to a local telephone, permita It to receive an incoming call without billing the calling party; ii “look* like” the phone ia *UII ringing, aa far aa the billing mechanism la concerned. blue box: device that generate* the magical
“Inside”
tones that open up the phone network and stop the billing mechanism. Poseaaion of a blue box can put you In prison. with * many thing*, th* i not designed under at there would be phone ayi the aaauti thousanda of electronic w capable of fooling around with II. Thus the phone system la tragically vulnerable to auch mealing around. The only thing they can do la get ferocious laws passed and really try to catch people, both of which are apparently happening. Supposedly It la illegal to poaaeas a tona gener
ator,
or lo inform anyone aa lo what the magical frequenclea are– even though a allda whistle ia auch a tons generator, and any engineering library la
a*ld
lo hev* th* information.
red box: device that almulates th* elgnala mads by falling coin*. The fact that th* namea of theae devices are given here is not lo b* construed as In any
same*
approving of thsm. and anybody who masses around with them la a
fool,
playing with napalm. Even if people wars entitled to ateej beck eaoeae profit! from the phone company- ths so-called “people’s dlaoounl’– tha trouble is thai they
mas*
things up for everyone. We have a beautiful and delicate phone ay .tern, on* that atands ready lo do wonderful things for you Including bring computer service to your home; •van If. for the sak. of argument. II I* run by dirty
rati,
meaalng around with It la Ilk*
poi
soning tha reservoir for everybody.
any part «tione’
tore “data bank” doesn’t have icular technical meaning. It era to any large store of infor-especially something attached to
“And the rocket’s red
glare,
The bomb* bunting in air, Gave proof through the night That our flag uae etill
there.
wher< For ins the at D*T! uth College, scientists have been hand with their big time- f dai orklng hand-i sharing projec is already available on-line in the so.
sciences.
The last census, for instant In detailed and undigested form. Suppi you're at Dartmouth and you get into argument over whether, say, divi
<
the age
i
age who
olve:
you just go to the nearest terminal, in a quick program in BASIC, and the
The usefulness should be evident. Because of the way census data is hand led, now, it is not possible to ask for the records of a specific individual. But this kind of capability leads to some real danger* There is a lot of information stored •bout most individuals in this country. Credit information, arrest records, medical and psychiatric files, drivers' licenses, military service records, and so on. Now, it is not hard to find out about an individual. A few phone calls from an official-sounding person can ascertain his credit rating, for instance. But that is very different from putting all these records together in one place. The potential for mischief lies in danger to individuals. Persons up to no good could carefully investigate someone through the computer and then burglarize or kidnap. Someone unscrupulous could look for rich widows with 30-year-old unmarried daughters. Organized crime could search for patsies and strong-arm victims. In the face of this sort of
possi
bility, computer people have been worrying for years; noteworthy is the study by Alan Westin that originally sounded the alarm, and his too-reassuring follow-up study of some data-gathering organ-nations (see bibliography). But the scary data banks, the ones that evidently keep track of political dissenters, aren't talking about what they do (see Schwartz
piece).
Basically, the two greatest from data banks are organized cri the Executive branch of the Fede:
i
has
id-
had had control national data Enough said.
tt may seem odd, bi he is concerned about computers and the privacy problem. Cynics may joke about what his concern actually is; but a more credible stand was taken by vice-president Ford at the 1974 National Computer Conference. Ford expressed personal concern over privacy, particularly considering a proposed system called FEDNET, which would supposedly centralize government records of a broad variety.
Not mentioned by Ford was the matter of NCIC, the National Crime Information Center. This will be a system, run by the FBI, to give police anywhere in the country access to centralized records. THE QUESTION IS WHAT GETS STORED. Arrest records? Anonymous tips? (It would be possible to frame individuals rather nicely if a lot of loose stuff could be slipped into the file.) Many people seen to be concerned with preserving some "right to privacy," which is certainly a very nice idea, but it isn't in the Constitution; getting such a "right" formalized and agreed upon is going to be no small matter. But that isn't what bothers me. Considering recent events, and the character of certain elected officials whole devotion to, and conception of, democracy is lately in doubt, things' are scarcely as abstract as all that. Considering how helpful our government has been to brutal regimes abroad-- notably the Chile overthrow, which some say was run from here (and which used sports arenas for detention just as John Mitchell did--) we can no longer know what use any information may find in this government. Tomorrow's Data Bank may be next week's Enemies List, ' " i Protective Custodial Advis-
Ita nasa haa kspt changing, poaalbly to lull th* public, possibly to gull the
Congress.
Anyhow, would you believe a systea, totally controlled by computers, designed to shoot down oncoming •lsailaa? If you would, read on. It's been called Nifce-X, Safeguard and goodness knows whet. (It's even been called a "thin shield"-- masculine, huh7 Perhaps Congress would pay son if they called it the Trojan 4X.I But generally wa refer to lt aa the MM {Anti-Ballistic
Missile).
It's the anti-oissile Missile people have talked about, and in it lis aany interesting morals, possible comparison*, etc., for which there Is no
of the telephone company, remember, the sane people who mak* the Prlncesst" phone. Of the
hundred,
of Billions al dollars they are taking in on this project, auch which makes the computers: to Bell labs, which guides the project, whose Whlppany, H.J. facility is totally given over to iti to the rocket-builders snd ao
B
systs Note that in telling you
thi*
I em drawing only on information that ia publicly available, and drawing eoncluatona from lt the way on* usually draws conclu-
Her*
ia how th* great ABM is sup-
Isswns*
radars scan ov*r th*
hori
zon looking for possible reflections that alghe be intercontinental missiles. The radar laiagas sre forever constantly analysed ij computers, using •vary trick of pattern Recognition (see
p.
on
ID-
Anal Somsthlng is coming.
Great doors swing open, and a long phallic snap* arises. It has jagged angular fine, inherited from th* mailer anti-aircraft Nik* (wa aay Hikey that preceded lt. Thia eUsslls
th*
Spartan. It take* off.
.lad
and
f
xt yel i Ten > List (I don’t know if you saw Robert Mardian’s eyes on the Watergate hearings, but they chilled my blood.)
“Computers, Privacy, and Securer Decision*. Kay 74, 46-48. river snd Freedoe. 1967.
The computer system is tracking tha oncoming missile. Here lt comas— it’s dodging now– the Spartan ia turning, going faster and faster– they’re coming
Oncoming aiasll* speedi maybe 15,000 alias an hour. Spartan spaed, maybe
10,000,
who knows. In these f*w minutes the Spartan has gone 400 alias. How’s your tannlal
r>
you h 1 fired a
•ut now cones th* good part.
Th*
Spartan
go**
off. lay! It too
UTso—
‘ ” * ndmark Study ot Computer-Prfv*cy Problems Completed.” CACM, Dec 11, 1096-7. nt review of Uestln 4 Baker. If 1 Hies of
StC).
110. •*•* Found, • lecord.: rirst th* Psnscrs; Thenl’ Datamation, Dec 7}. 105-110. * Fair Are Those Fair Credit Guides'” Pat—ation Hay 73, 110-114. 1 HirstD. Computer Systems end the Isau* of Privacy,
HOW
Far away Is 1M4T”
Data—tion.
JetX,
the attacking mlsall*. the hope 1* that Uu attacking aiasll*’* thermonuclear warhead will get heated on one side and misfire. So lt lands in Time* Square, just break* a few buildings and spreads radioactive contamination. •ut welt. What If Spartan alseed.
oops,
aorry, Montreal. Never fear! Have you forgotten Sergeant York? Have you forgotten the
helplai
There 1. another missile. It is called Sprint, it l, .haped Ilk, the point of s pencil, it Is alsoat all propellent. Wn*„ ^m gr,,c cemputars realise that the bad guy ha* gotten through, up goes Sprint: Sprint ia elo qu*ntly ealud the “terminal def.™.
systeat.”
it only ha* . couple of elnutee. Brlghtar than . thousand suns! Sorry, Scsrsdal*. can’t win >em all. If you find this description mind- boggling, that’, bec.u.. it is. Anybody -ho imsgine. U-t thl. project, on which Billion* of your dollars hav* already been spant, can work. Is a wishful thinker Indeed. Even If
•!sill,,
,t*y*d like they the good old days of 1«2, big clunkers they had to fuel up
J™1
ooior* th* shoot, th* likelihood of
th.
5-mil. ABM detonation they count on was pretty low. (Supposedly ACTA waa hoping that Spartan and Sprint could ba replaced with ultrapcver, fry-ln-the-sky laser beaaa, sapping down all comers with aky-plercing stab* under computer
control—
but that Is said to hav* been abendoned.) But oven given, and only for th* sake of argusmnt, the feasibility of Spartan-Sprint for Ei*h-in-«-barrel shota, look what’s happening now. MlJtVs and rOBa. MI*V (Multiple Independently Tar-
g*t«d
Re-entry Vehicle) basically swans Multiple warheads. On. rocket can carry all these little guys, aee, that fan out whan lt gate near the target, and each one goes to Its own target city or Installation. POB, or fractional Orbital Bombardment aystem, just means that thay send the thing Into an orbit around the world, snd the warheads com* in from the opposite sid*. Any side. Meaning that all those radars pointed at Russia would
•ak*
good drive-in
anvl*
screene. ABM la sort of a dead duck: the on* face-saving Instillation ia in North Dakota, and there won’t be any others. But one wonders how such things could ever be funded. But then again I remember once hearing Eric Sevsreid, whom soma call a liberal, pontifical* on thla sub
ject.
“They describe it aa a ‘thin •hieid,'(he said) Why can’t w* just spend a few billion more and get complete protection?” Othsrwia* canny people, if fooled by th* technologists, will believe anything. But the ABM is a beautiful sumpla ! top-down planning— like the Vletnam-is war. I imagine that th* Sprint cam* >out aome thing like this
t
“Garfield, our people In Operations Basearch have concluded that Spartan won’t work.”
“Garfield, I want your team to gat on lt and find somsthlng
addi
tional that will make it work.*
3
his cubicle and cs ‘Lease clearj
t
jus fil
r
fling additional, •Gee whir, they aay to aearch and destroy. I guess that suat mean…” Something new, this: the top-down project of th* worst sort, where the orders go down, and only news of partial success goes up, rather than th* facts of total hopelessness. As in Viet-
The sophisticated argument is that
th*
ABM effort
l*ts
our nation “keep its hand in,” “sharpen skills,” in case something vsguely like this is *v«r r**lly needed— and possible. But this overlook* the overall strategic problem. All this foolishness leads away from tha stability keeps everybody alive. (An Interesting point to notei a biologist and population geneticist named Sternglas* claims lt doesn’t matter: that human reproduction is so susceptible to radiation poisof
df—
I
fsw d
mid end
h
good prograsmiw major language*] on the futility
itally, an illustrious Dan McCracken (author Of ailng text* on seat of the goes around lecturing
Ii in Imposing lerm which means almost anything. Basically, “simulation” means any activity that represents or resembles something. Computer simulation is using the computer to mimic something
real,
or something thai might be, for any purpose: to understand an ongoing process better, or lo see how something might come oul in the
Hero again, though, the Science myth steps In to mystify thia process, aa though the mere use of the computer conferred validity or some kind of truth. (On TV shows the Space Voyagers stand In front of the “computer” and ask In firm, unnaturally loud voices what will be the results of so-and-so. The computer’s oracular reply Is
Infal
lible.
On TV.) Let there be no mystery about this. Any use of a data structure on a what-if basis is Simulation. You can simulate in detail or crudely; your simulation can embody any theories, sensible r stupid-, and your results may or may not cor- 1 to reality.
A
“computer prediction” ia the outcome of a simulation thai someone, evidently. Is willing to stand behind. (See “computer election predic
tions,”
p. 4iS~”,) These point* have to be stressed because if there Is one computer activity which is pretentiously presented and stressed, it is simulation. Especially to naive clients. There is nothing wrong with simulation but there is nothing supernatural about it either.
Another term which n iam« la modelling.
In the loose sense, simulation or
model
ling consists of calculations aboul any des-crlbable phoenomens– for Instance, optical equations. In optical modelling (and this ia how they design today’s great
lenses),
a data structure is created which represents the curvature, mounting, etc. of the separate glasses in a lena. Then “simulating” the paths of Individual rays of light through that lens, the computer program
test*
that lena design for how well the rays come together, and so on. Then the design I* changed and tried again. Another type of simulation, an important and quite diatinct one– Is thai which represent* the complex interplay of myriad units, finding out the upshots and consequences of intricate premise*. In traffic simulations, for Instance, II 1* easy enough to represent thousands of cars In a data structure, end hsvc them “reset” like drivers– creating very convincing traffic
Jams,
again represented somehow within the
Basically simulation requires two things;
•
representation, or data structure, that somehow represents the things you’re simulating in the as pacts that concern you; and then a program does something to these data, that is In some way ilka the process you’re concerned about acting on the thing* you’re modelling. And each event of significance enacted by the program must somehow leave ita trace in the data structure. The line between simulation and other pro gramming Is not always clear. Thua the calculation of the future orbits of the planets could be called “simulations.” • The most Intricate case*, though, don’t particularly resemble any other kind* of program*. The intricate enactments of physical movement*, especially swarms and myriads with mixed and colliding populations, are especially Interesting.
On
a recent Scientific American article, simulation helped to understand possible stream era of stars between galaxies as resulting from normal conalderatlon* or Inertia and gravitation. (Alar and Juri Toomre, “Violent Tides between
Gsi*lies.”
Sd. Am. Dec 73,
18-48.
)J
Models of complex and changing rates are another interesting type. Enacting complex thing*, whose amounts are constantly changing In terms of percentage multipliers of each other, sound easy in principle, but their consequences can be quite surprising. (See “The Club of
Rone.”
p. tf .)
To Imagine th* kinds of mixed-case myriad
modal*
now possible, we could on today’s big computers model snlirs societies, with s separate record describing each Idlvldual out of million*, and specifying his probabilities 0f action and different preference* according to various theories
—
then follow through whole societies’ behavior in terms of education, Income, marriage, sex poverty, death, and anything else. Talk about tin soldier, and boats In the bathtub. Any computer language can be used for some kind of simulation. For simulations
invol
ving relatively few entitles, but lots of rates or formulas, good old BASIC or FORTRAN is fin*. OlAOI’s “Synthavision” system, which could be said lo “simulate” complex figures In a three-dimensional space, i» don* In Portren;
•**
P-S*\1.)
for simulation* involving s lot of separate object*, special cases and discrete
events.
TRAC Language (see p.
|
e ) [a great. 1/ numerous mathematical formula, are Involved, and you want to change them around oonslder-sbly In an experimental sort of way. APL Is well suited (aee pp 2j2 ). There ar* a number of special “atmuUuon” languages, notably BTM8CRIPT and QP8S. Thee*
hav*
additional features useful, for Instance, In simulating *venta ovar time, auch a* “EVENT” command* which synchronize or draw dl vision
–
lines In Urn* (th* simulated
Urn*).
Simulation languages generally allow a great variety or data types and operations on them.
The llat-procaaalng fanatic*, of ooure*, insist that their own languages (such as U8P and SNOBOL) ar* best And than there’s PLATO Case p^£,>, who** TUTOH languag* 1* splendid for both formulas and discrate work– but allow* you only 1(00 variables, total (60
bit*
.each).
Th*
thing Is. any set of assumptions, no natter how intricate, can be enacted by a computer
model.
Anything you can express exactly can be paired out, snd you can see its conse
quence*
In the computer’s readout– a printout, a screen display, or some other view Into the resulting dels structure. Obviously these enactments (or sometime* “predictions”) are wholly fallible, deriving any validity they may have from th* soundness of the Initial data or
model.
However, they have another Important function, one which is going to be very Important In education and, I hope, general public understanding, as computers get spread about more widely and become more usable. The availability of simulation modela can make things easier to understand. Well-set-up simulation programs, available easily through terminals, can be used as Staged Explanatory Structures and Theoretical Exploration
Tool*.
The user can build hi* own wars, his own so
cieties
.
his own economic conditions, snd see what follow* from the ways he sets (hem up. importantly, different theories can be applied to the same setups, to make more vivid the conse
quence*
of one or the other point of view.
(Indeed, similar facilities ought to be
avail
able for Congress, to allow them lo pour s new tax through the population and see who suffers, who gains…) I should point out here that for this pur
pose–
Insightful Simulation— you don’t always need a computer. I have in mind the so-called “simulation games.” which If well designed give extraordinary Insights to the players. Allen Calhamer’s brilliant game of Diplomacy, for instance (Games Research, Boston; available from Brenlano’s. NYC) teaches more about international politic* than you could suppose possible, t am also Intrigued by a game called “Slmsoc,” worked out by a sociologist to demonstrate the development of social structures from o state of random creation, but I haven’t played it. (Clark C.
Abt.
or Abt Associates, Boston, has also done a lot of Interesting design here.) A last point, a very “practical” application. Simulation makes il possible (o enact things without trying Ihem out In concrete reality. For in
stance,
in the lens-design systems mentioned earlier, the lenses don’t have to be actually built to find out their detailed characteristic*. Nor la lt necessary to build electronic circuitry, now. to find out whether it will work– at least that’s what the sales men aay. You can simulate any circuit from a terminal, and “measure” what it does al any time or In any part with simulated
meters.
Similarly, when any computer la
des
igned now, It’s simulated before It’s built, and programs are run on Ihe simulated computer, aa enacted within a real computer, lo aee if it behaves as Intended. (Actually there are aome hot-wire types who insist on building thing*
first,
but one assume* that the more sensible computer designer* do this.) With automobiles it’s harder; but CM, for instance, simulates the handling characteristics of lta cars betore they’re ever built– so that designers can redistribute weight, change steering characteristics and so on, till the handling char acts rl tat ics come out Ihe way the Consumers seem to like.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Simulation magazine ia the official journal of Simulation Councils, Inc., the curiously
–
named society of the Simulator*. It costs SIB a year from Simulation Councils, Inc.. Box 2228. La J oil a CA 62037. For all I know you get annual mem bership free with that. I’ve always wonted to join bul it was always the one thing too many: but their conference programs are
sensation*).
Where else can you hear papers on traffic, biology, military hardware, weather prediction and electronic design without changing your seal?
Y^t
Y^Y^*-
Y^
Y
3t Y^-Y Y^
Y
“Simulation” means almost anything that in any way represents or resembles something. useless or Improper
Ex amp lea. Here are ways we could “simu-
Show dots moving around an oval track on a completely random baals, and declare the first lo complete the circuit The Winner. Assign odda to Individual horses, and then use a randomizer to choose Ihe winner, taking into account those odds. (This ie how the PLATO “horserace” game works; see p.JHJ7.) Give conditional odds to the differenl horses, based on possible “weather conditions.” Then flip a ooln (or the computer equivalent, weighted randomisation) to test the “weather conditions,” and aaslgn the horse’s performance accordingly. Program an enactment of a horaa race. In which the winner 1* selected on Ihe basis of
th*
Interaction of th* horoscopes of horse and rider.
Create a data structure representing th* three-dimensional hinging of horse’s bones, and tha Interlaced timing of the the horse’* gait. (This haa been don* at U. of Pennsylvania on a DEC 111.) Than hav* (h*ae stick figures run around a track (or the data alructure
equivalent).
Using a synthetic photography system auch aa MAuT’a Synlhavielon (see
p.jn^),
create the ID data structure for th* entire surf ace of a running horae over time; then make several copies of this horae run around a track, and make simulated photographs of it. And
so
on. So don’1 be snowed by th* term “simulstton
.”
H a**n* much, little or nothing, depending.
If simulation mean* the Enactment of some event by computer. Operations Research means doing theae enactment* to try out different atrat-
egies,
and teat the moat effective ones. Operations research really began during World War II with such problems as submarine hunting. Given so-and-so many planes, whst pattern should they fly in lo make their catching submarines most likely? Building from certain types of known probability, (but in areas where
found),
operotions researcher* could sometime* find the best
(“optimal”)
strategies Tor many different kinds of activity. Basically what they do is ploy the situation out hundred* or thousands of Hmea. enacting it by computer, end using dice-throwing techniques to determine the outcomes of all the unpredictable
parts.
Then, after all entities have done their thing, the program can report on what strategies turned out to be most effective.
Example. In 1973 the Saturday Review of so me thing-or-other printed s piece on the solution
.
by OR techniques, of the game of Monopoly. Effectively the game had been played thousands of
times,
the dice thrown perhaps millions, and the different “players” had employed various different strategies against each other In a varying
mix:
Always Buy, Buy Light Green, Utilities snd Boardwalk, etc.
A
complete solution was found, the strategy which tends (over many playa) to work beat. I forget what it wa*.
Using another technique. Ihe game of foot ball was analyzed by Robert E. Machol or Northwestern and Virgil Carter, a football personage. Their idea was to test various maxims of the
game,
to find out which common rules about beneficial plays were Irue. Whs! they did waa replay fifty-six big-league football games on s play-by-play basis, rate the outcomes, and see which circumstances proved most advantageous on Ihe average. I’ve mislaid the reprint (Operations Research• a recent
year),
and being totally ignorant of football can remember none of Ihe find
ings.
Anyhow,
that’*
where
to
look. (faT**
J****,
The earlier explanation or Operations Research wasn’t quite right. It’s any systematic study or whnl works best. Computers can help.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Virqil Carter and Robert E. Machol, “Operations Research on Football.” Operations Research, 1, 541-544.
m
i
sm
Until now, the obscurity of computers has kept the public from understanding that anything like political issues were involved in their use. But now a lot of things are going to break. For instance–
rlHiTHer,
FBI?
J. Lds;ar Hoover’s recent death raised a very serious problem. What about all those files he had been keeping? Responsible critics of the FBI, such as Fred J. Cook, have claimed t.ut Hoover’s policy basically consisted of chasing lone punks (like Dillinger, Bonnie and
Clyde),
harassing political dissenters, and keeping vast unnecessary records on innocent citizens– thus virtually creating the vast network of organized crime in America, which stays off the police blotters. Thus the ques- of the FBI
The question has been answered. In July 1973 Nixon appointed Clarence Kelley, police chief of Kansas City. After the previous goings-on– for instance, Nixon’s seeming to offer the post to Judge Byrne while he was presiding over the Ellsberg
trial–
this looked to the press like a aid and uncontroversial resolution. But i itT Kelley certainly is aware of tech nology. It seems to be he that put
dis
play screens In Kansas City police cars, created the ALERT system (Automated Law Enforcement Response Team) and COPPS (Computerized Police Planning
System],
which for your amusement ties into MULES (Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement
System).
(See Helvin F. Bockelman, “On-Line f>n~ puters Keeping Things Straight,” which describes the Kansas City computer setup. Communications. June 73, 12-Z0.) In a more threatening vein, supposedly the Kansas City department kept computer files on “militants, mentals and
acti
vists.”
(Schwartr article, p. 19.) “hat Kelley does is thus of interest to us all. The big question is whether, for all his concern with police automation, he is also concerned with the freedoms this country used to be about.
NECESSITY
HAS BEEN THE
EXCUSE
FOR
EVERY
INFRINGEMENT OF
HUMAN
FREEDOM,
IT
IS
THE
ARGUMENT
OF TYRANTS;
IT
IS
THE
CREED
OF SLAVES,
OF
CD^fWfj
A lot of people think compute in some way cruel and destructive, comes in part from the image of the ^, puter as “rigid” (see “The Myth of th« Computer,” p. );
TIME-SHARING (e.g. the CTSS system, see p. fT); HALFTONE IMAGE SYNTHESIS (the Utah algorithms: but see all of pp. J.»,
“St.
– 31 ); and lots
more.
Some folks might say that proves it’s all
evil.
I say let’s look at cases. While they have military applications, that’s simply because they have
appli-
“military itions in every field, and the e just where the money is. Just to enumerate tary things–
•ili-
whj ,nd and control– the problem .f keeping track oi who’s done what to nd what’s left on both sides, ipm, , . – lemn : .rony that the gn “46SL Command and Control System”– a grand room with many projectors drlvei by computer, only something like thosi In “Dr. Strangelove” and “Fail-Safe”–may be a prototype for offices and cot ference rooms of the future. “Avioi all the ele< mlc eluding thoi piece described how wonderful it felt to fly the F-111-- which has a computer managing the Feel of the Controls for you.) al : ef i iir frequenc elligence"- • whatever they cosput leu-- how tt think about we get that forma ces. This is no find out what i. ntradictory info it. Don't think information. ill*] (Did you know c ilther chirps bac in from simple prob-so from a nation; about how t all be Big Bird satel- its pictures by m as Droppings?) losing ground t even has comput QUIS CUSTOOIBT, mj >n with gadgets does noi helped us militarily al is demoralized, and the itry that h«n
7J,
p.
21.
K
sysMets analyst
:
the welfare progr*
f\^»oT«r
(Vp»»-j
Digital Equipment Corporation, in re •port mo to the “Energy Crisis” of 1973, didn’t turn out their Christmas tree. Instead they hooked it up to a water wheel they happened to neve. Typical.
DEC
Tit
FDPe^l*
The computer companies are often referred to in the field as “Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs”–
a phrase that atays the same even aa the lesser ones (like RCA and General Electric) get out of the buslneaB one by one. The phrase
suggest*,
that they’re all alike. To an extent; but there ia one company sufficiently different, and Important enough both In Its history and its continuing eminence, to require exposition here. This is Digital Equipment Corporation, usually pronounced “Deck,” the people who first brought out the minicomputer and continue to make fine stuff for people who know what they are doing.
Other computer companies have mimicked IBM. They have built big computers and iried lo sell them to big corporations for their business data processing, or big “scientific” machines and tried to sell them to scientists.
DEC went about 11 differently, always de signing for the people who knew what they were doing*, and always going to great lengths to tell you exactly what their equipment did.
First they made circuits for people who wanted to tie digital equipment together. Then, since they had the circuits anyway, they manufactured a computer (the
PDP-1).
Then more computers, increasing the line slowly, but always telling potential users aa much as they could possibly want to know. The aame for its manuals. People who wrote for information from Digital would often
get.
not s summary sheet referring you to a local sales office, but a complete manual (say. for the
PDP-8),
including chapters on programming, how to build interfaces to it, and the exact liming and distribution of the main internal pulses. The effect of thia was thai sophisticated users–espectally in universities and research establishments– started building their own. Their own interfaces, their own modifications to DEC computers, their own original systems around DEC computers.
This policy ha* made for slow but steady growth, In effect, Digital built a national
cus
tomer base among the most sophisticated clients. The kids who as undergraduates and hangers-on built interfaces and kludgey arrangements, now aa project heads build big fancy systems around DEC equipment. The places that know computers usually have a variety of DEC equipment around, usually drastically modified.
Because of the great success of its small computers, especially the PDP-8. even many computer people think ihey only make small compu
ters.
In fact their big computer, the PDP-10, is one of the most successful Ume-shsring computers. An example ot its general esteem In the field: it is the host computer of ARPANET. the national computer network among scientific installations funded by the Department of Defense; basically this means ARPANET is a network of PDP-lOs.
DEC’s computers have always been designed by programmers, for programmers. This made for considerable suspense when the PDP-11 did not appear, even though the higher numbers did. and the grapevine had il that the 11 would be a sixteen-bit machine. It proved to be well waiting for (see p. 22.}, and has since become the standard sophisticated 16-bit machine in the industry.
An area DEC has emphasized from the first haa been computer display (discussed al length on the flip
side).
Thus it is no surprise that their interactive animated computer display, the GT40 (see P-M|) is an outstanding design and
success.
(And” the University of Utah, currently Ihe mother church of computer display, runs its graphic systems from PDP-lOs.)
In this plucky, homespun company, where even president Olsen is known by his first name
(Ken),
il is understandable thai marketing pizazz takes a back seat. This apparently was the view of a group of rebels, led by vice president Ed deCastro, who broke off in ihe late sixties to start a new computer company around a 16-bit computer design called the Nova— rumored lo have been a rejected design for ihe
PDP-11.
The company they started, Data General, has not been afraid to use the hard
sell,
anil between their hard sell and sound machine line they’ve seriously challenged the parent company.
But Digital marches on. the Cor,(>ulor
I’ur.’s
computer company. If IBM Is computerdem’s Kodak, whose overpriced but quite reliable goods have various drawbacks, DEC is Nikon, with u mlx-and-match assortment of what the hotshots
want.
That’s pluralism for you.
KMOW ?0Ut mn: UNC.
(There were no PDP-2. 3 or 13.)
JXds
*T»a4t
«*»ie
for*
e»h|»fer.
I’m not getting any favors from DEC, 1’n t saying about them what people ought (o
However. I do have grateful recollections of the warmth and courtesy with which people from Digital Equipment Corporation have taken pains to explain things to me. hour after hour, conference after conference.
In the early sixties they had one man in one small office to service and sell all of New Jersey and New York City. But that one guy, Dave Denniston. spent considerable time responding to my questions and requests over a period of a couple of years, and in the nicest possible
way,
even though (here was no way I could buy anything. You don’t forget treatment like thst.
Some kinds of periph puter accessories, are alway .1 de or com puter uttcsiuiici, arc always necessary. Only through peripherals can you look at or hear results of what the computer does, store quantities of information, print stuff out and
whatnot.
Trying to print lists of available stuff here is hopeless. There are thousands of peripherals fron hundreds of manufacturers. If you buy a
mini,
figure that your peripherals will cost I1S00 (Teletype) on un_. But maintenance (see p. 5C ) is the biggest problen. If you buy peripherals from the manufacturer of the computer, at least you can be sure soncone will be willing to maintain the whole thing. (Independent peripheral manufacturers will often repair their own equipment, but nobody wants to be responsible for the interface.)
If you want a list sec “Table of
Mini-
peripheral Suppliers,” Computer Dec is ions, Dec 72, 33-S; otore thorough poop “Is offered by Datapro Research Corp., 1 Corporate Center, Route 38, Moorestown NJ 08057.
As to the serious matter of disks, an ex cellent review article is “Disc Storage for Minicomputer Applications,” Computer Design June 1973, 55-66. This reviews both principles of different types of disk drives, and what various manufacturers offer.
Also helpful on disks and tapes: “Making a Go of Ministorage,” by Linda Derner. Computer Decisions. Feb 74, 32-38. Best recen”t
Any nuubcr of diftei are used for mass storagi information! each haa iti t magnetic devices [ symbolic (digital) m medium, or form
Viek drive for the 11. Moot auch devices go at 30 spirts a
second,
or 1600 rpm. The heads that read and urite moving arms that have to be positioned on the different tracks. (Sons disks have a head for every
track,
uhiah
If you have disk drivse ($5600 saah) you need a controller (S5S0O). Sigh.
tsd disk itself is hidden in the plastic
case.
Never
theless, they sometimes get soratahed or
break.
A disk costs S?S and holds up to 2,400,000 characters of
infor
mation (1.2 million PDP-11 uords, uhiah are IS bits each).
TYPICAL
d
SIS,000.
[e.rie>l*t,wAls Tsv.J
••twaJr*.*- the holes n the aards.
Surely nobody can resist th* peripherals offered by General Turtle, inc., 545 Technology Square, Cam
bridge,
Massachusetts 02139.
Th*
Turtle is a sort of caaserola on wheels that takes a pencil down tha middle, Attached to your computer, it can be programmed to ramble around draw-‘ in? picture*, or Just do wheeU** on the parquetry. SBOO. $ Then the Hualc
voices,
enough for i and looks to th* cos play you samples on
•oa Is 1600. tt sing* In four lot of Vivaldi, doe* fiva octaves fftiter like • -Teletype. Thay will tha phone (617/661-1773). For either of theae you r
BRAlLLt Ho joke her*. People are still making Braille copies of things by hand. But th* way to do lt 1* by computeri ‘he machine can punch out new copies of whatever’* stored in lt, repeatedly. A Brailie-punching adapter kit is avail able for tha plain 33 Teletype, I believe froet Honeywell.
[It 1* of Interest that an early use of
Mooers’
TRAC Language was with Braille convsz slon.l
EFFECTIVELY STANDARDIZED BY IBM 3/4-inch magnetic tap*.
Pr*-196S:
6 tracks data, 1 track parity. Post-196S: 8 tracks data, 1 track parity. 2741 disk Stack of removable platters site of a layer cake. 3330 diak Same but bigger cak*. Plastic case, size of coolis hat, enclosing disk. (loppy disk rlaxible, card-thin disk enclosed in square 8″ envelope. data cell Inot very common) Plastic strips pulled out of wedge-shaped tube* arranged In a rotating cylinder. Strip i* pulled out of
thi*
carouael,
whipped around a drum to aaka temporary drum memory, returned to case. EFFECTIVELY STANDARDIZED BY OTHERS L IMC tape 3/4-lnch tape on a 4-inch reel (fits in
pocket).
apecially coated against friction, developed at Lincoln Labs for LIWC computer (see p. 41). °kCt*Sa**i’ else and real but differently for matted for DEC machines (variaa with
modal).
Vary reliable. A personal favorite of many prograossers. 3M CARTRIDGE The Scotch-tape people say th* caaaetta is unreliable, and offer aa an alternative a belt-driven quarter-Inch baby, coating maybe S10OO without Interface. CRAM (Card Random Access
Memory)–
rare Big place* of plastic [about four Inch** by two feet) pulled by notch*a out of a cartridge and whipped around a drum. National Cash Register. HARDLY STANDARDIZED AT ALL “Cassettes”— Phllip*-typ* audio-type cassette. Used by various manufacturer* in various way*. Syk*s. Sycor. DEC, Data General end other, hav. separata, snd usually incompatible, system*.
YOU
never know what you’ll sea next. In 1969 one firm announced a “high-density r-ad-only memory device- which anyone could sea waa a plain 45 RPH phonograph— but with digital electronics. And it mad. senas. But it doasn t •earn to have caught on.
56
A LITTLE GEM FROM THE IBM SONGBOOK (Who lays IBM doesn’t encourage Individualism? To tha tuna of “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.”) “TO THOMAS J. WATSON, President, IBM- Pack up your troubles– Mr, Watson’s here! And smile, smile, smile. He is the genius In our IBM He’s the man worth while. He’s inspiring all the time. And very versatile– oh) He Is our strong and abla President
1
His smile’s worth while. “Greet organizer and a friend s Say all we boys. Ever he thinks of things to say To Increase our Joys. He Is building every day In hi* outstanding style— so Pack up your troubles, Mr And Smile– Smile– Smile
“THERE IS A WORLD ELSEWHERE.” – Corlolsnus
Watson’s here
(As a nostalgic public service Advanced Computer Techniques, Inc.. of Boston, gave sway LPs of IBM songs at the ’69 SJCC. They might Just have some left…
IBM can put pretty much anything on s single
chip,
to make a functioning machine the size of a postage stamp; but so can a lot ol other companies. The question really becomes whether what goes on thst chip ia a worthwhile machine lhat does what people want.
..
.BUT THE SAME OLD BLOCK? It Is by no means clear that IBM has any general ability to make computer systems easy to
This is a psychological problem. A* a corporation they are used to designing systems that people have to use by
fist,
and must be trained to use. contributing to the captivity and inertia of the customer base. Thus the notion of making things deeply and conceptually straightforward, without special Jargon or training, may not be a concept the company is ready for.
There is no way to escape IBM entirely. IBM mediates our contacts with government and
medi
cine,
wilh libraries, bookkeeping systems, and bank balances. But these Intrusions are still limited, and moat of us don’t have to live there.
There are many computer people who refuse to have anything to do with IBM systems. Others, not so emphatic, will tell you pointedly that they prefer to stay as far away from IBM computers a* possible. If you ask why. they may tell you they don’t care to be bothered with restrictive, unwieldy and unnecessary complications [the JCL language is usually
mentioned).
This Is one reason that quite a few people stick with minicom
puters,
or with firms using large computers of other brands.
It is possible to work productively In the computer field and completely avoid having to work with IBM-style systems. Many people do.
The famous Consent Decree of January 1956. (In a consent decree, an accused party admits no guilt but agrees to behave In certain ways thereafter.) In response to a federal anti-trust
suit.
IBM agreed to: sell as well as lease its computers, and repair those owned by others; permit attachments to lta leased computers. not require certain package deals; license various patents; not buy up used machines; and get out of the business of supplying computer
services,
i.e., programming and hourly rentals. Unbundling decision, late sixties. While this was not a government action but a an internal policy decision by the company, it somehow had a public-relations appearance ol official compulsion. Beset by pressures from makers of look-alike machines, users of competitive equipment, and the threat of anti-trust action, IBM decided to change its policy and sell programs without computers and computers without programs. Delight amongst the Industry turned to chagrin as this became recognized as a price hike.
The Telex Decision. September ’73; Telex Corp. of Tulsa was awarded
$352,
500.000 in triple damages (since reduced) for losses attributed to IBM’s “predatory” pricing and other marketing practices. Much more important. IBM was required lo disclose the detailed electronics required to hook things to their computers and accessories within sixty days of announcing any. This was a great relief for the whole industry. Essentially it meant IBM could no longer dictate what you attach to their machines Unlortunately, it is not clear whether this will stand. But what we’re waiting to hear about is whether tha Nixon Justice Department
is,
or is
not,
going to press the big anti-trust suit which has been long brewing, al the persistent request of other firms in the Industry,
“THINK OF THE COMPUTER AS ENERGY.” says a recent series of IBM ads. But in terms of monopoly, price, un the world’s convenience, there woul seem only one way to complete the analogy, viz.:
“THINK OF THE COMPUTER AS ENERGY. “Think of IBM as King Faisal.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY Harvey D, Shapiro, “l.B.M. and all the dwarfs.” New York Times Magazine, July 29. 1«73,
10-36.
An objective, factual article, sympa thetic to IBM– although it drew at least one irate letter from an lbmer who didn’t think it sympathetic enough.
lall?”
Newsweek. Octo-
Frank T. Gary, letter to the editor, Newsweek,
Oct.
15 73, p, 4. A snappish reply to the above by the IBM Board Chairman, who evidently didn’t like the article very
Robert Somuelson. “IBM’s Times Sunday linan
1973,
p. 1. -•This article gives a unique glimpse of some of the interesting things lhat came to light in the Control Data suit against IBM– citing trial documents never publicly released .
* William Hodgers. Think. Stein and Day. 1969. Subtitled A Biography of the Watsons and IBM. -» Concentrates on the days before computers. Fascinating profile of Watson, a business tiger; but the view of the corporation in an evolving nation Is general Americana that transcends fiction.
Would you believe Rodgers says Watson was tha kingmaker wo put General Ike in the White House? Unfortunately, the book has relatively less on the computer era. so the inside story ol many of their momentous decisions since then i
Marvelous; hard to
get;
Gould thinks IBM quietly bought up all the copies. The musings of a sophisticated, clever and observant cynic who began knowing nothing about IBM, Gould’s wide-eyed observation of its corporate style and atmosphere is a jolt to those of us who’ve gotten used to
it.
And he thought it was just another big company!
-^Questionnaire survey intended to test truth of common accusations against IBM. (Discussed in text above.) W.David Gardner, “The Government’s Four Years and Four Months In Pursuit of IBM.” Datamation, June 1973, 114-115. Almost any Issue of Computerworld or Datamation, tha two main industry news publications, carries articles mentioning complaints about IBM from various quarters on various issues. Datamation’s letters are also sometimes Juicy on the topic.
Any Issue of On Line, a news sheet of th* Computer Industry Association, ten bucks a year. (C1A– no relation to the intelligence agency 162S5 Ventura Blvd., Encino, CA 9131B.)
SOME DIVISIONS OF IBM you may hear about
OPD OHice Producta Division. Typewriters, copisrs.
OPD
Data Processing Division. Computers and accessories. F8D Federal Systems Division. Big government contract*: NASA
*tufl.
and who knows what. ASDD Advanced Systems Development Division. Very secret. Component* Division. Makes parts for th* other guys, including Integrated circuits. BRA Science Resasrch
Associates.
Chicago. Publishes textbooks and learning
kit*.
Hstson Lab T.J. Watson Research Laboratory. Wsatchaatar County, north ol New York City. Theoretical snd lookahaad research.
focyk/6 of w
For a long time, during th*
sixties.
IBM’s high prices provided sn environment that made II easy for other companies to come into tha field and sell computers and peripheral*. These high prices were referred to as “the IBM umbrella.” However, this era haa ended. IBM now cuts prices in whatever areas It’s threatened. A brief flourishing of companies making add-on disk and core memories for IBM computars ha* become precarious; not only will IBM now cut prices, but thay have shown themselves still disposed to invent new restrictive arrangements (the recent “virtual memory” announcement for the 370 claimed thai th* program will only work oo IBM disk and
core).
other reasons.
! Think left off;
Ths author regret* not being able to liat mora articla* and books favorable to IBM. but th*** do not aeem to turn up so much However, her* are s fsw.
For an axample of the kind of adulation of IBM baaed on
faith,
see Hsnry C. Wallich, “Trusl-Bustlng the U.S.A.,” N*wsweek
1 Oct
73,
p.
SO.
Th*
IBM Songbook, any yaar– they haven’t been issued since th*
ftftla*–
Is definitely a collsctlbla.
55
IBM announced a number of worthy objectives when the 360 line was announced in 1964. IBM should certainly be thanked for at least their lip service to these noble goals. 1, ‘One machine for all purposes, business and scientific.’ (Thus the name'”360,” for the “full circle” of applications.) By “business” this mainly meant decimal, at four bits a digit. Actually this meant grafting 4-bit decimal hardware to an otherwise normal binary computer, and making both types of users share the same facility. 2. ‘Information storage and transmission will be stan dardized.’ The 360 was set up to handle information 4 bits at a time, 8 bits at a time, 16, 32, and 64 bits at a time. (The preceding standard had been 6, 18 and 36 bits at a time.) In their 360 line, IBH also replaced the industry’s stan dard ASCII code with a strange alphabetical code called EBCDIC
(“Extended
Binary Coded Decimal Information
Code”),
ostensibly built up from the 4-bit decimal code
(BCD),
but believed by* cynics to have been created chiefly to make the 360 incompatible with other systems and terminals.
3. ‘360s will all look alike to the nrogran can be moved freely from machine to machine.’
facilitate the moving of programs
froi,
aillBii Lumputers to big ones, a more important effect has perhaps been to make it hard to move from a bi£ computer to a smaller one. Note* tn~”T usefulness of this apparent paradox toTBM’s
m*IrTetinr.
Between the trade press and dozens of acquaintances in the field, almost everything 1 hear about IBM and its products is negative (say five or ten to
one)–
except from people who work or have relatives there.
Perhaps it’s Just sour grapes. Or the authority- hating character or research typos. Or selective reading.
Or perhaps there really is something sinister.
The major questions are theae.
1. How clean is their salesmanship?
2. Are their systems unnecessarily difficult or cumbersome on purpose?
3. How deep is their system of entrapment and forced commitment of the customer? How necessary are the de-standardizations and the constant changes?
4. Do they have a final liberating vision? Do they really, after
all,
Intend to bring about a day when life is easier for people? When the difficulties of present-day computer systems, especially theirs, wither away? 1 think that history’s Judgment on IBM in our time may narrow down to that simple question.
(In this light it is not hard to understand IBM’s stand on software copyrights vs. patents. IBM is against programs being patentable, which would cover abstracted properties, but argues in favor of copyright, whose protection Is probably more limited to the particulars of a given program. If they have their way. It would be assured that IBM could use any ingenious new programming tricks without compensation, whereas all unnecessary complications of bulky, cumbersome software would be covered In entirety by copyright.)
Finally, tt has not been demonstrated that IBM has any general ability to make systems conceptually simple and easy to use. (Two good examples of hard systems are the Mag Tape S electric and Data text – easy for program
mers,
but hardly for secretaries.) There seems to be no emphasis on elegance or conceptual simplicity at IBM. Those who adopt such a philosophy (such as Kenneth Iverson) do so on their own.
As mentioned earlier, this has something to do with the fact that individuals generally use IBM’s
Bystems
because they have to, being employees or clients of the firms that rent IBM equipment, so there is no impetus to design programs or systems to run on simple or clear-minded principles, or dress out intricate systems so they can be used easily. 4. THE IMAGE.
It is hard to analyze images, corporate or
personal.
They are often received in such different ways by different populations. But there may be a commonality to
the
IBM image as generally seen. The image of IBM involves some kind of cold magic, a brooding sense of sterile efficiency. But other things are percolating In there. If we elide that connotation ol efficiency aside, the IBM image seems to have two other principal components, authoritarianism and complacency. It is this mixture that longhalrs will naturally find revolting. This same combination, however, may be exactly what it is that appeals to buainess-management
typas.
IP YOU REALLY WANT IT. ..
you can get character-by-character responding systems on IBM computers. The new Stock Exchange system uses s “Telecommunications Access Method” permitting non-IBM terminals to respond character-by-character. Just as systems for non-computer-people should.
Trying to use this Input-output program on your local IBM computer Is another problem, though. Aside from program rental costs, there Is ths problem of its compatibility with Ihe whole line of IBM software. Adaptation* and reprogramming would probably be necessary up snd down the line j
THE FUTURE
What will IBM do next?
Speculation ia almost futile, but necessary anyhow. The prospects are fascinating if not terrifying.
No one can ever predict what IBM will do; but trying to predict IBM’s actions– IBM-watching is something like Kremlin-watching– is everybody’s hobby in the field. And Its consequences affect everybody. With so many things possible, and determined only in the vaguest way by technical considerations, the question of what IBM chooses to do next Is pretty scary. Because whatever they do we’ll be stuck with. They can design our lives for the foreseeable future.
We know that In the future IBM will announce new machines and systems, price changes (both up and down) in fascinating patterns, rearrangements of what they will “support,” an3 changes in the contracts they olfer (see box. “IBM’s
Control”).
Occasional high-publicity speeches by IBM high officers will continue to be watched with great care. But mainly we don’t know.
IBM’s slick manufacturing capabilities mean that practically any machine they wanted to make, and put on a single chip, they could, and in a very short time. (The grapevine has it that the Components Division, which makes the computer
parts,
has bragged within the company that it doesn’t really need the other divisions any more — it could just put whole computers on teeny chips if it wanted to.)
In this time of the 370, things are for the moment stable. The 370 computer line is still their main marketing thrust. Having sold a lot of 370 computers (basically sped-up
360s),
their idea is at the moment to sell conversion Jobs to adapt the 370 to run the new “Virtual System” control program (VS or OS/VS or various other names)
.
This system (which is. incidentally, widely respected) makes core memory effectively much larger to programs that run on
it.
This effectively encourages programmers to use tons of core, by means of virtual memory: essentially getting people in the habit of programming as if core were infinite. ThiB extension of apparent memory size distracts from any inefficiencies of both locally written programs and IBM programs, thus tending to increase use and rental charges.
When that marketing impetus runs out we’ll see the next thing.
The other new IBM initiative is with smaller
machines,
the System 3 and System 7, being pushed for relatively small businesses. That is where they see another new market. How easy and useful their programs are in this area will be an important question.
With the System 7, a 16-bit minicomputer for $17,000, IBM has at last genuinely entered the minicomputer market.
(.Balancing
its speed and cost against comparable machines, we can figure the IBM markup as being about 50%, which is typical.)
In addition, it is rumored that IBM might put out a tiny business
mini,
to sell out of OPD. (Datamation. Dec 72. 139.) But really, who knows.
In addition to this huge-memory strategy for its big machines, and the starting foray into specialized mini systems, there is the office strategy and “word processing.”
IBM has conceptually consolidated its various magic-typewriter and text services under the name ol “word processing,” which means any handling of text that goes through their machines. This superficially unites their OPD efforts (typewriters and dictation machines) with things going on in UPD, auch as Datatext, and allays inter-divisional rivalries for awhile Also, by stressing the unity of tha subject matter, il leaves the door open for later and more glamorous initiatives, such as hypertext systems (see “Carmody’s System.1′ flip side) .
In other words, the foot Is in the door. Mr. Businessman has the ides thst automatic typing and things like that are IBM’s special province.
Even if it is true, as Anonymous says (see Bibliography) that IBM intimidates people and keeps its enemies from getting jobs at IBM-oriented establishments, that’s not the end of the world. Grosch, Gould, Ilodgers and McGurk are alive and working. Extramural harassment like that employed by CM against Nader, for example, has not been reported.
END OF THE’DINOSAURS?
To a very great extent, IBM’s computer market is based on big computers run in batch
mode,
under a very obtrusive operating system.
Many people are beginning to notice, though, that many things are more sensibly done on small computers than on big ones, even in companies that have big computers. That way they can be done right away rather than having to wait in line. Is this the mammal that will eat the dinosaur eggs?
On the other hand, a very unfortunate trend Is beginning to appear, an implicit feud within large organizations, which may benefit IBM’s big computer approach. Those who advocate
mini
computers are being opposed by managers of the big computing installations, who see the minis as threatening their own power and budgets. This may for a long time hold the minis back, perhaps with the help and advice of computer salesmen who feel likewise threatened. But there will be no holding back the minis and their myriad offspring, the microprocessors (see p. ^ ). And the inroads should begin soon.
(Others are growing to know and love true high-capacity time-sharing as a way of
life,
like that offered for DEC. GE and Honeywell machines.
This.
too. may begin to have derogatory effects on IBM’s markets.)
Finally, it must be noted that almost all big companies have computers, usually IBM computers, and so an era of marketing may well have ended. It may be possible for IBM to go on selling bigger and bigger computers to the customers who already have them, but obviously this growth can no longer be exponential.
a amy iw Herb Grosch. now editorial director of Computerworld. Is perhaps IBM’s worst enemy. Once he worked for old man Watson, and was the only IBM employee – , IRM gTvts speeches and testimony wherever possible shout ths Menace ol IBM, at conlerences. at governmental hearings, and In letters to editors. Yet IBM’s main computer sales strategy today is to stress ths advan tages of big computers wilh lots of core memory (and persuade you you don’t want highly Interactive systems or independent minicomputers) . And the fundamental rule staung the advantages of big computara Is called Grosch’a Law. formulated years ago by none other. Seep.
allowed to have a beard. Now. among other things, he
Few firms anywhere have the confidence to advertise generiosJry a product which Is made by others as
well,
as in IBM’s “Think of the computer as energy” series.
An interesting example ot an IBM non- breakthrough was the dramatic announcement in 19B4 of the 380 computer, portrayed as a machine which would at last combine the functions of both “business” computers and “scientific” com
puters.
Bul other companies, such as Burroughs (with the 5500) had been doing this for some
time.
The quaint separation of powers between scientific computers (with all-binary storage of numbers) and business computers (decimal storage) was bssed only on tradition and marketing considerstions. and was otherwise undesirable. In amalgamating the “two types.” IBM wss only rescinding their own previous unnecessary distinction. The drama of the announcement derived in large measure from ths stress they had previously laid on the division. (Fortune ran an Interesting piece on the decision struggles preceding the introduction of the 3G0 computer, and the internal arguments as to whether there should be one line of computers or two. See the flve-billlon-dollsr gamble piece. Bibliography.)
This ties in closely with another interes ting aspect of the IBM image, the public notion that IBM is a great Innovator, bringing out novel technologies all the time. It is well known In the field that they are not: IBM usually does not bring out a new type of product until some other company has pioneered it. (Again remember the earlier point, that the product offering Is a strategic maneuver.) Bul of course such facts do not appear in the promotional literature, nor are they volunteered by the salesman.
The expression for this in the field is that IBM “makes things respectable.” That is, customers get that reassured feeling, when IBM adds other people’s innovations to their product
line,
and decide it’s okay to go ahead and rent or buy such a product. (This also sometimes kicks business bsck to the original manufacturer.)
A few examples of things that were already on the market when IBM brought them out. often making them sound completely new: transistorized computers (first offered by
Philco),
virtual memory
(Burroughs).
microprogramming (introduced commercially by
Bunker-Hamo).
This is not to say that IBM is incapable of innovation; merely that they are never in a hurry about it. The introduction of IBM products is orchestrated like a military campaign, and what IBM brings out is always a carefully-planned, profit-oriented step intended not to dislocate its product line. Thia is not to say that they don’t have new stuff in the back room, a potential arsenal ol surprises of many types. But it is probable that most of them will never be seen. This is because of IBM’s “impact”
Unique in IBM’s position is the problem of fitting new products Into the market alongside its old ones. Its problem is much worse, say, lhan lhat of Procter a Gamble. The problem is not merely its size and the diversity of its
products,
but the fact that they may interfere with each other
(“impact”
each other, they say) in very complicated ways. A program like their Datatext. for example, which allows certain kinds of text input and revision from ter
minals,
may affect its typewriter line. These are no small matters: the danger is that some new combination of products will save the
cus
tomers money IBM would otherwise be getting. Innovations must expand the amount IBM is taking In, or IBM loses by making them.
These complications of the product line in a way provide a counterbalance to IBM’s fearsome power. The corporation has an Immense inertia based on its existing product line and customer base, and on ways of thinking which have been carefully promulgated and explained throughout its huge ranks, that cannot be revised quickly or flippantly.
Nevertheless it Is remarkable how at every turn– notably when people think IBM will be set back– they manage to make policy declaiona or strategic moves which further consolidate their position. Often these seem to Involve restricting the way their computers will be used (see box, “IBM’s Control.”) (The most ironic such counter move by IBM occurred a few years ago with the so-called “unbundling” decision. IBM at last agreed (on complaint from other software firms] to stop giving Its programs away to people renting the hardware. Glee was widespread in the industry, which expected IBM to lower computer prices In proportion to what it would now charge for the software. Not st all. IBM lowered Its computer prices by a minuscule amount and slapped heavy new price* on the software– often charges of thousands of dollars per month.)
A persistent r a lhat IBM tin all Its sale am en in a geographic area if a key or preeUge sale is
“lost,”
as when M.I.T’s Project MAC switched over to General Electric computers in the
sixties,
or when Western Electric Engineering Research Center passed over IBM computers to get a big PDP-10.
Much aa some people would like to believe these
stories,
there seems to be no documentation. You would think one such victim would write an article about It if it were true.
Finally, there 1* the popular doctrine of IBM’s Infallibility. Thla. too. la a ways from the truth. The most conspicuous example was something called TSS/380. TSS/360 was B time-sharing system– that Is, the control program to govern one model of the 3G0 as a time-sharing computer. According to Datamation (“IBM Phases Out Work on Showcssa TSS Effort,” Sept. 1, 1971,
5B-9).
over 400 people worked on lt at once for a total of some 2000 man-years of effort. And it was scrapped, a writeoff of some 100 million dollars In lost development costs. The system never worked wall enough. Reputedly users had to wait much too long for the computer’s responses, and the system could not really compete with those offered elsewhere. The failure and abandonment of this pro gram is thus responsible for IBM’s present noncompetitive position In time-sharing: customers are now assured by IBM that other things are more important. IBM-haters thank their stars that this happened. Cynics think it conceivable that high-power time-sharing was dropped by IBM in order to shoo Its customer base toward areas it controlled more completely.
Two other conspicuous IBM catastrophes have been specific computers: the 360 model 90 in the late sixties, and a machine called the STRETCH somewhat earlier. Both of these machines worked and were delivered lo
cus
tomers.
(Indeed, Ihe STRETCH Is said by some to have been one of the best machines ever.) But they were discontinued by IBM as not sufficiently profitsble. Therein Is said lo have been the “failure.” (However, it has been alleged in court cases thai these were “knockout” machines designed to clobber the competition at a planned
loss.
]
B.
Negative views of IBM systems.
In the technical realm. IBM Is widely un loved because many people think some or all of their computers and programs are either poor, or far from what they should be. The reasons vary. Some of the people feeling this way are IBM customers, and for a lime they had an organized lobby, called SHARE (which also facilitated sharing of programs)
.
Recently, however, SHARE has become IBM-dominated, a sort of company union, according to my sources. The design of the 360, while widely ac cepted as a fact of life, is sharply criticized by many. (See “What’s wrong with the 3607”,
IBM’s programs, while they are available for a broad variety of purposes, are often notoriously cumbersome, awkward and inefficient, and sometimes dovetail very badly. However, the less efficient a program is. the more money they make from it. A program that has to be run for an hour generates twice as much revenue than if it did its work in thirty minutes: a program that has to be run on a computer with, say, a million spaces of core memory generates len times the revenue it would in two hundred thousand.
The complex training and restrictions that go with IBM programs seem to have interesting functions. (See box. “IBM’s Control.”)
C. Theories of IBM design. The question Is. how could a company like IBM create anything like the 360 (with Its severe deficiencies) and its operating system or control program OS (with its sprawling compli
cations,
not present in competitors’ systems)? Three answers are widely proposed: On Purpose (the conspiracy
theory),
By Accident (the blunder
theory),
and That’s How They’re Set Up (the Management Science
theory).
These views are by no means mutually exclusive.
The Management Science theory of IBM design is the only one of these we need take up. The extensive use of group discussion and committee decisions may tend to create awkward design compromises with a certain intrinsic aimlessness, rather than incisively distinct and simple structures. (See Gould’s marvelous chapter, “The Meeting.” 58-80.)
Their use of immense teams to do big programming jobs, rather than highly motivated and especially talented groups, Is widely viewed aa counterproductive. For Instance, Barnet A. Wolff, in a letter to Datamation (Sept. 1, 1971,
p.
13) says a particular program “remains ineffflcient, probably because of IBM’s unfortunate habit of using trainees fresh out of school to write their systems code.”
There may also be something in the way that projects are Initiated and laid out from the top down, rather than acquiring direction from knowledgeable people at the technical level, that creates a tendency toward perfunctorlness and clunky structure.
Thus there may very well be no intentional policy of unnecessary complication (see Box, “IBM’s
Control”).
Bul the way In which
goal*
are set and technical decisions delegated may generate this unnecessary complication.
Of
i*>}
IBM appeared In 1911 as the con solidation of a number of small companies making light equipment, under the name C-T-R Company (Computer-Tabulating-
Record).
This was prophetic, considering how aptly it described the company’s future business, and especially prophetic considering that today’s stored-program computer was undreamed of at that time.
According to William Rodgers’ definitive company biography Think, the company’a creator was a shrewd operator named Charles R. Flint, dashing entrepreneur and former gun runner to the South American republics, who in his shrewdness brought in to run the company an Incredibly talented, fire-breathing and self-righteous
indi
vidual named Thomas J. Watson, even though Watson at that time was under prison sentence for his sales practices at another well-known company
.
The sentence was never served, and Watson went on to preside for many years over a corporation to which he gave his unique stamp.
Watson arises from the pages of Think as a sanctimonious tyrant, hard as nails yet reverently principled in his words: the pillar of fervid, aggressive corporate piety.
IBM was totally Watson’s creation. The company became what he admired in
others,
a mechanism totally obedient to his will and implementing his forceful and inspiringly rationalized convictions with alacrity. As the Church is said to be the bride of Christ, IBM might be characterized as the Bride of Watson, molded to the styles of demandingness. pressure, efficiency and pietism which so characterized that man. But the ideas flowed from Watson
alone,
except for a few confidantes who received his nod. The company is vastly bigger now, and slightly more
colorful,
in a muted sort of way; but it is still the stiff and deadly earnest battalion of his dream.
Because of Watson’s background as salesman, he made Sales the apex of the corporation. The salesmen had the most prestige within the company and could make the most money; below that was administration, below that, technical stall.
Watson eliminated the meat-slicing
machines,
and pushed the product line based on punched cards developed by IBM’s first chief engineer, Herman Hollerith. According to Rodgers. it was impetus from the Depression, and the new bookkeeping requirements of Roosevelt’s remedies, that skyrocketed the firm uniquely during the depths of general economic catastrophe, till Watson came to draw the highest salary of any man in the nation. In 1934 his Income was $364,432 (Will Rogers, not the author of Think, was second with •324.314)
.
Watson had neatly arranged to gel 5% of IBM’s net profit.
While IBM participated in the creation of certain early computers, it is Interesting that Watson dismissed Eckert and Mauchly when they came around after World War II tring to get backing for their ENIAC design, in certain ways the first true electronic computer. Eckert snd Mauchly went to Remington Rand, and the reaulting Univac was the first commercial computer.
However, IBM bounced back vary well If there was one thing they knew how to do it was
sell,
and when they brought out their computers It was practically clear sailing. (The Univac I was the first of many computers to be delayed and boggled in the completion of its software, and this considerable setback helped IBM get the lead very quickly; they have never lost It since.)
In the early sixties the IBM 7090 and 7094 were virtually unchallenged as the leading scientific computers of the country. But IBM in the late sixties almost relinquished tha fields of very big computers and time-sharing to other companies, and their computers are not regarded as innovative. Nevertheless, IBM’s Systems 3B0 and
370,
despite various criticisms, have been very successful; thousands of them are in operation around the globe, far more than all their
rivals’
big computers all put together. This
des
pite the fact that some of these systems have
failed,
including the big Model 91 (an economic failure) and the TSS/360 time-sharing program, a technical catastrophe.
They have from time to time been accused of unfair
tactics,
and various antitrust and other actions (see “Legal Milestones” box) have required IBM to change us arrangements in various ways. One decree required them to sell the computers that before they had only rented: .mother decision,
lo.
“unbundle,” or bull computers separately from their programs (previously “given” away with the computers they ran on), Is widely believed to have prevented government action on the same matter. Showing characteristic finesse. IBM thereupon lowered the computer prices almost imperceptibly, then slapped heavy price-tags on the programs that had previously been free.
Recent moves by the government have suggested an especially serious and far-reaching anti-trust suit against IBM. possibly one that might break the company up, with its separate divisions going various ways. However, In today’s climate of cozy relations between business and government. It is hard to imagine that such matters would not be settled to IBM’s liking. This lends a curious tint lo a remark one IBM person has made to the author, to
wit,
that maybe IBM wants to be broken up. That might be one way of reducing the unwieldiness and lnter-dependency of its product line; In addition to reducing its vast, underutilized personnel base. (Another
angle:
Acting Attorney General Bark has expressed the view that IBM Is big only because its products and management are wonderful, so the antitrust case may simply evaporate during the rump days of the Nixon incumbency.)
•
In
some
v
tars
in its c
world that
t
But
IBM la
deeply sensluvs,
in it* way,
lo public relations,
and has
woven
sn
axtsnslve aystaa
ol
political
Uas and
1 agenda
(if not
mythology) which hav* kept
it
almost completely exempt from
the
critical attention
of
concarn.d ctuzena, Thus
It if
necessary her*, simply
as a
matter
of
covering
the
field
at an
Introductory
level,
to
rale* aome que*lion*
and
criticism* that occur
to
people
who are
concerned about IBM
IBM
presumably wilt
not
mind having these matters raised. th*ir public-spirited concern
in so
many ar*** assures that wh*n something
so
publicly important
•• the
character
ot
their
own
power
Is
concerned, occasional scrutiny should
be
welcome
It
Is
important
to
note first
of all
lhat
IBM
is
In
many respects
the
very model
of a
generous
and
dutiful corporate citizen.
In
“community relations,”
in
donations
to
colleges
and
uni
versities,
In
generous release
of the
time
of Its
employees
for
charitable
and
civic undertaking*, it
It
almost certainly
the
most public-spirited corporation
In
America,
and
perhaps
on Ihe
face
of the
earth.
They have been generous about many public interest project*, from Braille transcription
to
donating photographers
and
facilities
Tor
films
on
child development. The corporation sponsors worthwhile
cul
tural events.
“Don
Quixote” with
Rex
Harrison on
TV was
terrific. Katherlne Hepburn’s “Glass Menagerie”
was
marvelous.
IBM’s enlightenment
and
benevolence toward
its
employees
la
perhaps beyond that
of
any company anywhere They have rigorously upgraded
the
position
of
women
and
other minority employees;
the
opportunities
for
women
may
be greater there than anywhere else. They have upgraded repair
of
their systems,
at any
level, to white-collar status,
and
tool kits
are
disguised as briefcases. This innovation, making
a
repairman Into
a
“field engineer,”
Is one of the
cleverest public-relations
and
employment policies ever instituted.
They
are
opanhanded
to
employees
who
want
to run (or
office, evidently regardless
of
platform.
In the
sixties there were peace
candi
dates
who
worked
for IBM. and
evidently
got
time
off for it.
More recently, Fran Youngsteln. an
IBM
marketing instructor,
was a 1973
candi
date
for
Mayor
of New
York
on the
ticket
of the
Free Libertarian Party, opposing
all
laws against victimless crimes
(e.g.
prostitution
and odd sex),
as well
as Day
Care
and
welfare.
They also rarely fire people. Once you’re
in.
and
within certain broad outlines,
it’s ex
tremely safe employment.
For
those
who
turn out
not to fit in
well,
they have
a
tradition
of
certain gentle pressure-practices like moving you around
the
country repeatedly
at IBM ex
pense.
This encourages leaving,
but
also
ex
poses
the
less-wanted employee
to a
variety
of
opportunities
he
might
not
otherwise
see.
without the trauma
and
anxiety
of
dismissal. (It
is
said that there
are IBM
firings,
but
they
are
rare
and
formidable. Hey wood Gould’s description
of an IBM
firing (Corporation Freak,
pp.
113-115),
for
which
he
does
not
claim
au
thenticity,
ia
nevertheless bloodcurdling.) IBM’s international manners
(in its 115
countries)
are
likewise praiseworthy. Compared to
the
perfidious behavior
of
some
of our
other multinational corporations, they
are
sweetness and light
and
highschool civics. Sensitive
to
the feelings
of
people abroad, they
are
said
to
operate carefully within arrangements made
to
satisfy each country. They train nationals
for
real corporate responsibility rather than bringing in only outside people.
And
they
are
sensitive to issues:
for
instance, they recently refused
lo
set
up an
Apartheid computer
in
South Africa.
ONE THING
IS
PERFECTLY CLEAR: IBM
has no
monopoly
on
understanding
or
sophistication.
Among computer people, feelings toward IBM range from worship
to
furious hate (depending only
in
part
on
whether
you
work
there).
Many, many
are of
course employed
by
IBM.
and the
devotion with which they embrace the corporation
and Us
spirit
is a
wonder
of the
But
the
spiritual community
of IBM
extends further. Upper-management types, especially Chairmen
of
Boards
and
comptrollers, seem
to
have
a
reverence
for IBM
that
is not of
this world, some amalgamated vision which entwines images
of
eternal stock
and
dividend growth with
an
idealized notion
of
management efficiency. Many others
use and
live with IBM’s equipment, and view
IBM as
anything from
“the
greatest company
in the
world”
to “a
fact
of
life”
or
even “a necessary
evil.”
In
some places whole colonies
of
users mold themselves
in its
image,
so
that around
IBM
computers there
are
many “Utile
IBMs.”
full
of
people
who
imitate
the
personalities
and
style
of IBM
people.
(RCA.
before
lis
computer operation fell
to
pieces. Imitated
not
Just
the
design
of
IBM’s
360
computer,
but a
whole range
of
titles
and
departmental names from
out of IBM. The
sincerest form
of
flattery.)
But outside this pale– beyond
the
spiri
tual community
of IBM–
there
are
quite
a few
other computer people. Some simply ignore
IBM.
being concerned with their
own
stuff. Some like
IBM but
happen
lo be
elsewhere. Others dislike
or
hate
IBM for a
variety
of
reasons, business
and
social.
And
this smoldering hatred
Is
surely
far
different
In
character from anybody’s atutud* toward Kodak
or GM.
While
it la not tha
Intent hers
to do any
kind
of an
anti-IBM number.
It la
nevarthsless necessary
to
attempt
lo
round
out Ihe
on*-*ld*d picture that
1*
projected outside
th*
computer world.
In
what follow* there
I* no
room
to try
to give
a
balanced picture. B*c*uae
IBM can
speak
(or
llaelf,
and
doe*
so
with many voles*. It
1*
mors Important
to
indicate here
tha
kind* of crlUcism* which
ar*
commonly made
of IBM
by sophisticated people within
th*
industry,
so
that IBM-worshipar* will have some idea
of
what bother* people.
But of
course
no
attempt
can
be made here
to
Judge the** matter*,
thl*
i*
Just intended
a*
source material
for
concerned
They offer many computer programs
for a
variety
ol
purposes.
A company
or
governmental agency can
get
immense amounts
of
“help” and “information” from IBM. which offers free courses, even
IBM
people
on
“released time”
to
look over
the
problems
on the
premises.
IBM offers various kinds
of
compatibility among
its
systems.
IBM equipment
Is
rugged
and
durable,
and
their repairmen or “field engineers” struggle with great diligence
and
alacrity to keep
it
running
Now
for the bad
news.. These programs
are not
necessarily sat
up the way you
would want them. (But
If
you
take
the
trouble
to
adapt to them, you’ll probably never
get
back.) The programs favor card
or
card-like input and.
to
date,
strongly discourage time-sharing
and
widespread convenient terminal
use by
untrained
people.
IBM programs
are
also notoriously inefficient. (That
way you
have
to use
bigger machines
for
longer
.)
The courses indoctrinate with
the IBM
outlook,
and the
planted people spread
II.
Moreover, both mechanisms help IBM spot
the
people they
can
work wilh to make
a big
sale–
and
(lt
is
alleged by some) those
who
stand
in the way.
It always seems
to
cost extra.
1. SOCIAL ASPECTS
OF IBM.
It
Is
perhaps
in the
social realm. Including its Ideological character, that
a
lot
of
people are turned
off by IBM.
IBM
has
traditionally been
the
paternalistic corporation. [Paternalistic corporations were some kind
of big
philosophical issue
to
people In
the
fifties,
but
nobody cares anymore. Anyway, the rest were perhaps inconsequential compared to IBM.)
Big IBM
towns
not
only have
a
Country Club
(no
booze)
,
but a
Homestead
far the
comfort of important corporate guests. There
are
dress codes (although non-white shirts
and
below-the-collar hair
are now
allowed)
,
and
yes. codes of private behavior
(now
subdued)
.
These irritate people with libertarian concerns. They
do not
bother employees, evidently, because employees knew what they were getting into.
Generalizations about
IBM
people obviously cannot
be
very strong
.
Obviously there
is
going to
be
immense variation among 265,000 people, half
of
whom have college degrees;
but of
course one
of the
great truths
of
sociology
is
that
any
non-random group
haa
tendencies.
More lhan that
In
this case.
In a way IBM
people
are an
ethnic group. Impressive indeed are
the
general energy
and
singlemindednesi of
the
people, galvanized
by
their certainty that IBM
is
true, good
and
right,
and
that
the IBM
way
is the
way. This righteousness
is of
course a
big
turn-off
for a lot of
people.
Perhaps
It
leads
in
turn
to the
most-heard slurs about
IBM
people,
that thay
are
brainwashed
or
provincial.
MrjOoR
BjM.
dOWW
Iff,
G-MVCf
1350s (TUBES) 650 (Decimal)
700
Series 701 702 (decimal) ?-> 705 (decimal)
MID-1960S (INTEGRATED CIRCUITS) 360 Series (32-bit
as weU as
decimal)
30,
35, 30. 40.
is.
SO.
65.
67,
I
75. 35.
90.
91
370 Series
125, 135.
US.
153,
IBS.
IS*.
199..
1970s
(“MEDIUM-SCALE
INTEGRATION”)
(Variable) Syatem
7
(19 bits)
The asm* slick marketing could
be
applied
lo any
other industry
.
But it wouldn’t
be IBM
Nowhere else could
the
mystery
of
the subject be
met and
enhanced with
so
many more mysteries.
||oU](5vN\*)
r\*S
Ff*MC«j>
Those of us who were around will never forget the Days of Madness
(1968-9).
Computer stocks were booming, and their buyers didn’t Know what it was about; but everywhere there were financial people trying to back new computer companies, and everywhere the smart computer people who’d missed out on Getting Theirs were looking for a
deal.
Datamation for November 1969 was an inch thick, there were that many ads for computers and accessories.
At the Fall Joint Computer Conference that year in Las Vegas, I had to cover the highlights of the exhibits in a hurry, and it took me all afternoon, much of it practically at a trot. Then, after closing time, I found out there had been a whole other building.
It is important to look at how a lot of these companies were backed, the better to understand how irrationality bloomed in the system, and made the collapse of the speculative stocks in 1970 quite inevitable.
A number of companies were started at the initiative of people who knew what they were doing and had a clear idea, a new technique or a good marketing slant. These were in the minority, I fear.
More common were companies started at the initiative of somebody who wanted to start “another X”— another minicomputer company, another terminal company, expecting the product somehow to be satisfactory when thrown together by hired help. Perhaps these people saw computer companies as something like gold mines, putting out a common product with interchangeable commodity value.
The
deal,
as some of these Wall St. hangers- on would explain it, was most intriguing. Their idea was to create a computer company on low
capital,
“bring it public” (get clearance from the SEC to sell stock
publicly),
and then make a killing as the sheep bought it and the price went
up.
Then, if you could get a “track record” based on a few fast sales, the increasing price of your stock (these are the days of madness, remember) makes it possible to buy up other companies and become a conglomerate.
*«••,
it*a
real.
Life imitates art on Routs 46, N.J.
It was very difficult to talk to these people, particularly if you were trying to get support for a legitimate enterprise built around unusual ideas. (Everybody wants to be second.) And what’s
worse,
they tended to have that most reprehensible quality: they wouldn’t listen. Did they want to hear what your idea actually was? “I’ll get my technical people to evaluate it”– and they send over Joe who once took COBOL. I finally figured out that such people are impossible to talk to if you’re sincere– it’s a quality they find unfamiliar and threatening. I don’t think there’s any way a person with a genuine idea can communicate with such Wheeler-Dealers; they just fix you with a piercing glance and say “Yeah, but are we talking about hardware or software?” (the two words they know in the
field).
“ITS A WHEELER T
The joker is that if you missed out on all this you were much better off. Anyone with a genuine idea is being set up for two fleecings: the first big one, when they tell you your ideas, skills and long-term indenture are worth 2i% (if you’re lucky) compared to their immense contributions of “business knowhow,” and the second, when you go public and the underwriter gets vast rakeoffs for his incomparable services. What is most likely to get lost in all this is any original or structured contribution to the world that the company was intended, in your mind, to achieve.
In part this is because anyone with tech nical knowledge is apparently labelled Silly Technician in the financial community, or Impossible Dreamer; it is entrenched doctrine among many people there that the man with the original idea cannot be allowed to control the direction of the resulting company. In one case known to me, a man had a beautiful invention (not electronic) that could have deeply improved American industry, lt was inexpensive, simple to manufacture, profoundly effective. He made his deal and the company was started, under his direction. But it was a trick. When the second installment of financing came due (not the second round. mind you), the backers called for a new
deal,
and he was skewered.
Result:
no sales, no effect on the world, no nothing to speak of.
51
This is all the sadder because the com panies that achieve important things in this field, as far as I can see, are those with a unifying idea, carried out unstintingly by the man or men who believe in it. I think of Olsen’s Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General, Evans and Sutherland Computer Corporation, Vector General. This is not to say that a good idea succeeds without good management or good breaks: for instance, Viatron, a firm which was the darling of the computer high-flying stocks, had a perfectly sound idea, if not a deep one: to produce a video terminal that could be sold for as little as $100 a month. But they got overextended, and had manufacturing troubles, and that was
that.
(You can now get a video terminal for $49 a month, the Hazeltine.) Of course, a lot of ideas are hard to evaluate. A man named Ovshinsky, for instance, named a whole new branch of electronics after himself (“ovonics”), and claimed it would make integrated circuits cheaper or better than anybody else’s. Scoff, scoff. Now Ovshinsky has had the last laugh: what he discovered some now call “amorphous semiconductor technology,” and his circuits are being used by manufacturers of computer equip
ment.
Another example is one Frank Marchuk, whose “laser computer” was announced several years ago but hasn’t been seen yet. Many computer people are understandably skeptical.
This is still a field where individuals can have a profound influence. But the wrong way to try it is through conventional corporate financing. Get your own computer, do it in a
garret,
and then talk about ways of getting it out to the world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
John Brooks, The Go-Go Years. Weybright * Talley. $10.
\s
gou6r|r ^^©U)
For (he most part, his; computer;- hnve alwayn been rented or leased, rather than bought outright. There are various rcanons f’ir thia. From the customer’s point of view, it mskes the whole thing tax-deductible without amortisation problems, and means that it’s
pos
sible to change part of the package – the model of computer or the accessorieB– more easily. And big amounts of money don’t have to be shelled out at once.
From the manufacturer’s point of view (and of course we are speaking mostly of IBM), It is advantageous to work the leasing gnme for several reasons. Cash inflow is steady. The manufacturer Is in continuous communication with the customer, and has his ear for changes and improvements costing more. Competitors are at a disadvantage because the immense capital base needed to get into the selling-and-leaslng game makes competitition impossible.
Basically, leasing really may be thought of as having two parts: the sale of the computer, and banking s loan on it; essentially the lease payments arc Installment payments, and the real profits come after the customer has effectively paid the real purchase prk-e and is still forking
over.
Many firms other than IBM prefer to sell their computers outright. Minicomputers are almost always sold rather than rented. However, for those who believe in renting or leasing, the so-called “leasing firms” have appeared, effectively performing a banking function. They buy the computer, you rent or lease it from them, and they make the money you would’vo saved if you’d bought.
IBM, now required to sell its computers as well ss lease them, keeps making changes in its systems which cynics think are done partly to scare companies away from leasing, since if you’ve bought the computer you can’t catch up. (Large computers bought from companies that like to sell them, auch as DEC and CDC, do not aeem to have this problem.)
una*, mfyMTetvMCt
h practical problea of Immense importanct meaning repair and upkeep ol compute Lots of guys in Boston and L.A. are but here you are stuck in Squeedunk iving fun Baking conputem id it doesn’t work anynore
You can aign a “aaintenance contract” with the manufacturer, which is sort of like breakdown Insurance: whatever happens he’ll fix. Eventually. If you own equipment frc •anufacturors, though. It’s worse-, each ns contract to fix his own equipaent. (And r
who’ll Raytheon
i tha biggest point in favor of IBM. Their maintenance is
•thing called third-party maintenance: companies to keep all your hardware working. RCA and o that.
THE SEVEN DWARVES AMI THEIR FRIENDS The computer companies arc often called “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” even though the seven keep changing. Here are some main ones beside IRM. 1 hope I haven’t left anyone out. Requiescanl in Pi Sperry Rand Univac Honeywell Burroughs Control Data Corporation (CDC) National Cash Register (NCR) Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) Xerox Data Systems (XDS; formerly Scientific Data Syslems (SDS)) Hewlett-Packard (HP) Data General Interdata, Inc. Vartan Data Machines Lockheed
General Electric (sold out to Honeywell) RCA (sold out to Univac) Phllco General Foods a others beyond recollection.
SOFTWARE Computer progroits. or “software,” used 10 come fr«c with the computer. Bul IBM turned around and “unbundled,” meaning you had lo buy It separately, and Ihere has been some
fol
lowing of this example. However, for users who are buying a computer with some conned program for a particular purpose, prices are obviously for the whole package; it’s people who use the same computer for a lot of different things that have to pay for individual programs.
There are many small software companies. For the cost of a letterhead anyone can start one; the question is whether he has anything special lo
sell.
Some people whomp up programs on Iheir own which turn out to be quite useful. (For instance, one Benjamin Pitman offers a magnificent program in Fortran to generate textual garbage. It’s so good it can be used lo expand proposals by hundreds of pages. He calls it Simplified Integrated Modular Prose (SIMP) and lt sells for J10. His address is Computer Center, University of Georgia, Athens GA 30602?)
Obviously, lo create big systems for
intri
cate management purposes requires a great deal more effort. Traditionally these are done by vast programmer teams working in COBOL or the like, constantly fighting wilh monitor programs snd chewing up millions of dollar*. However, the ntw Quickie Languages (three shown pp. |L-?$) may offer great simplification of such programmin^
Programs are protected by copyrighl–
Ihflt’e.
the only way there can be a software Industry at all– but since there has been no court litigation in Die field, nobody knows what the law really is or whht it covers. Everybody agrees that traditional copyright precedent covers a lol of ground— “derivative works” definitely violate copyright, even study guides to textbooks
–
— but no one knows how far this goes. Same for patents. The Patent Office has granted program patents, notably the one on Ihe sorting program of Applied Data Research,
Inc.,
but The Patent Office has a profound
dis
taste for this potential extension of its duties, unrt it telling everyone that programs aren’l patentable, even though they clearly fall within its mandate as unique, original prccesscs. People who only nud Ihe headlines thirk thai the Supreme Court struck down the patentability of programs. No such thing. In this light the patents lhat the University of Utah has gotten on the halflonc image synthesis programs of Warnock and Wylic and Romney (sec
p.
) are of considerable interest. These patents use the “software-as-hardware” ruse: the program
it.
described in detail as taking place in a fictitious machine shown In many detailed drawings whose nebulous character is not readily seen by the uninitiated: events vaguely taking place in “micreprogrammable microprocessors” have been neatly foisted on the Patent Office as detailed technical disclosure. It’s a great game. The idea is that the claims are so drawn as to cover not just the fictitious machine, but any program that should happen to work the same
way.
But such approaches, though c previous.patent practices, have not ye! litigated in this field.
USED COMPUTERS While in principle there would seem to be every advsntage in buying used computer!., there ore certain drawbacks, Service is the main one: the manufacturer ia not very helpful about fixing discontinued machines, and you may have to know how to do it yourself. Even with machines still available, you may have trouble getting onto a service contract from Ihe manufacturer, since It “may have been mistreated.” (American Used Computer, in Boston, will usually guar
ante*
that its merchandise will be accepted back into manufacturer’s contract service.) A final drawback is price: a popular machine may cost aa much used aa new, since they’re saving you the waiting period.
It’s kind of unfortunate: otherwise usable machines get wasted. (But here’s waste for you: certain well-known laboratories, owned by e profit-making monopoly, smash their u*ed computers if nobody wants them within Ihe lab. They claim they can’t resell them because they would then be “competing” with the manufacturers. I wish thr conservationists would get on that one.)
(Notts from all over: it seems thst all the surviving numbers of the Philco computer, a nice machine but very much discontinued, have either gone to the stste of Israel or to Prslt
Insti
tute in Brooklyn. When I spoke at Pratt they showed me their Philco machines, chugging
heal
thily, and said they had (I think) some four more Phil cos in crates, donated by their original owners.
ANNOUNCEMENTS An eccentric aspect of the computer field is the Announcement, the statement by a company (or even individual) that he is planning to make or sell a certain computer or program. Some very odd things happen with announcements in this field. (None of this is unique tu computerdom, but it goes to unusual extremes here.)
Under our system it is permissible for any person or firm to announce that he will make or sell any particular thing, and even if he’s lying through his teeth, it’s not ordinarily considered fraud unless money changes hands. Talk is cheap. Thus it is common prsctice in American industry for people to say that they will soon be selling hundred-mile-an-hour automobiles, tapioca-powered rocketships. antigravity belts.
Okay. In the computer world the ssire thing happens. Th’ strategy depends on the announcer’s market position. The liitle guys arc often bluffing wistfully, hoping someone will get interested enough lo put up the money to finish the projtct, or the like; the big companies are often “testing the water.” looking to see whether there are potential customers for what they hsven’1 even attempted to develop. Announcements by big companies also havt strategic value: if they announce something a smaller guy has already announced, they may cut him off at Ihe
pass,
even though they htvo no intention of delivering. That’s just one example. The
anal
ysis of IBM’s announcements is a parlor game in the field. It has been alleged, for Instance, thht IBM announced its 360 computer long be fere it was ready to cut off incursions on its
cus
tomers by oilier firms; Control Data, in a recent
suit,
alleged that the Model 90 number* of (he 360 were announced, and then developed, simply tt> destroy Control Data and its own big fast
mcchincs.
These art just examples.
In other » t auditor.
Datamation ran several good articles on buying computer stuff in its Septem
ber,
15. 1970 issue. “Software Buying” by Howard Bromberg (3S-40) and “Contract
Caveats”
by Robert P. Blgelow (41-44) are very helpful warnings about not getting burned. Another, “Projecl Management
Games.”
by Werner W. Leutert (24-34) is an absolutely brilliant, bloodcurdling strategic analysis of the ploy* and dangers involved ir. buying and selling very expensive things, such as computers and software. ANYONE INVOLVED IN COMPUTER MANAGEMENT SHOULD READ THIS MACIIIAVELIJAN PIECE WITH THE GREATEST CARE. Anyone interested in the theory of showdown and negotiation can read it with a differ-
SbWivYji
OF
-nfc fi
jiXST
One of the stranger projects of the sixties was a game played by the most illustrious programmers at a well-known place of research; the place cannot be named here, nor the true name of the project, because funds were obtained through sober channels, and those who approved were unaware of the true nature of the project, a game we shall call SURFIT
(“SURvival
of the FITtest”.) Every day after lunch the guys would solemnly deliver their programs and see who won. It was a sort of analogy to biological evolution. The programs would attack each other, and the survivors would multiply until only one was left.
It worked like this. Core memory was divided up into “pens,” one for each programmer, plus an area for the monitor.
3K’
us
it
Is Cur
both
out
siders
end
many professionals. Secondly,
und
this
was
the self-seeking
impect,
I noted that these kids were quite
export,
and
interested
in
Riving
me
advice where computer professionals would
not.
They
got
interested in helping
me
wilh
my
(perhaps quixotic) Xanadu”” project
(see
flip
side).
This
was
enough
lo
keep
me
visiting
for a
couple
of
years.
Now, some people
arc too
proud lo
auk
children
for
information. This is dumb. Information
is
where
you
find
it.
The last
I
hcurd.
the
Resistors were ut work
in
;i
COBOL compiler for
the
Pl)l’-ll.
hoping it would save the local high school from
the
disastrous
(10
them) purchase of
an IBM
1130. (Since the school’s intent
WOB
lo teach business programming, Ihcy hoped that
the
avuilabillty
of
COBOL would encourage the school
to buy
the more powerful
und
less expensive PUP-11.)
The Resistors
urc
few,
but
I think they
are
very important in principle,
an
cxislencc
proof.
They show
how
silly
and
artificial is
our
edifice
of
pedagogy
,
with ull its sequences
und
sterilizations, end
how
anybody
cun
learn anything
in Ihe
right atmosphere, stripped
of
Its pomposities.
The
Resistors
arc
not obsessed with computers; their love
at
computers
is
part
of
their love of everything, and everything
is
whut computers
arc for.
R.W.\J.T.0.|y. frtteta,.
“7
Lauren. 14.
was
t»lking to another girl at
Ihe ACM TO con
I
was
driving some Resistors around Princeton- ihev
w*™
yelling con.radie.ory driving inatructions. “I demand trujle
re
dundancy
,n
the directions.”
I
„„[<,.
-Right
up
ahead
you
turn right right away." said
a
seok.-mnn
Since there
was
H
lot
.,t
(;.i1,.-.e,ty
.
(ho
Resistors
got
a free account
on a
national time-sharing system, Though they didn't have to
pay,
the system kept them informed
on
whet they would have owed.
In a
year
or so
they
ran up
funny-money bills of several hundred thousand dollars.
Did they rale free subscriptions to computer ma go
tines*
I asked. Could they claim Ihcy really "make decisions affecting the purchase of computers"? "Of course
we
do!"
was the
reply. "All together: shall we
buy a
computer?" Resistors (in unison)
"NO!"
Their originul advisor chievous
in
his
own
right.
It
on
a
bright Saturday,
end
I
»
with
Nat and
Elliott wher
whom
we
shall coll Gaston,
is
mis-was meeting-time al Gaston's piece us
on
the fawn working
on
Xanadu
(l
interrupted
lo say
that
an
unwelcome salesman
of
burg lar alarms
was
about
to
arrive.
"Let's have a little fun with him." said Gaston.
The
kids were to
be
introduced as Gaston's children, I
was an
uncle.
We
took
our
stations.
The salesman
may
have realized
ho was
walking into
a
trap from all
the
strangely beaming adolescents that stood
in
the living room.
He
got
out
his wares
and
started to demonstrate the burglar iilarm,
but
it didn't
go
right.
Peter, standing
in
front
of
Ihe equipment with
n
dcmonicully vucuous grin,
had
reversed
n
diode behind his back
so
thul Ihe alarm rang continuously unless
you
broke the light beam.
"Itumpf," said Gaston,
"you wan
system?"
We
trooped into the kitchen, running. ANY NEWS? typed Gaston.
CREAM YELLOW BUICK PULLED INTO DRIVEWAY, replied the
Teletype.
JERSEY LICENSE PLATE
. . .
(and the salesman's license
number).
and
finally.
OWNER
OF
RECORD
NOT
KNOWN. John
was
typing this from the other Teletype
in
the barn. The salesman stared
nt
the Teletype
He
looked around at
our
cherubic smiling
faces,
lie looked
at
the
Teletype.
"That's all right," said
the
salesman.
"But now I'd
like
to
show
you a
real security system.
. ." And
it
was
back
to
the old burglar alarm.
The public
is
thoroughly confused about computers,
and the
press
and
publicists
are
scarcely free from blame.
IT'S
TIME
FOR EX
PLANATIONS. People want
to
know what computer systems really
do-- no
more
of
this "latest space-age technology" garbage.
Mr.
Business*
•an,
Mr.
Writer,
are you man
enough
to
start telling
it
straight? The computer priesthood, unfortunately, often wants
to awe
people with,
or
unduly
stress,
the
notion
of the
computer being
in
volved
in a
particular thing
at all. It is
time
for
everybody
to
stop being impressed
by
this
and get on
with things. Don't just copy-edit what they give
you.
Nose around
and
really find
out,
then write
it
loud
and
clear.
tha These simple rules
are my <
inging
on
more intelligent
dei
'11 help enlighten
the
publ
gge:
for ;
by
t 1. FIND
OUT AND
DESCRIBE
THE
FUNDAMEN TAL APPROACH
AND
PHILOSOPHY
OF THE
PROGRAM.
Thi*
can
invariably
be
stated
in
three clear English sentences
or
less,
but not
necessarily by
the
person
who
created
it.
THIS
IS
WHAT WRITERS
ARE FOR: it is
your duty
to
probe
un
til
the
matter
has
become clear. Examples. "This chess-playing progri
notes
for
various kinds "This archseologici
What
or
whose computer
is
used
to do a
thing
is of
almost
no
concern (unless
it is
one
of
unusual design,
of
which there
are
comparatively few).
Not the
make
of the
compu
ter,
but the
GENERAL IDEA
OF HOW THE
PROGRAM OPERATES,
Is the
most important thing. Of coui hardware
mat
equipment
01
your real
di
put
the fad
ing paid
by ,
have
ti
• that < public understanding,
and
>ss.
(If you
think
It
can’t splendid Kodak
ads in the
I.
Keep gee-whining restricted
to the
crlptlon
of a
system’s psychological effect real people. (What impresses
you may
turn to
be old
hat.)
1—
3. Look
for
angles special
to f
reporting. Pursuing details
is
like! bring
up
better story pegs
and
more
I
terest.
Instead
of
saying “computer
1
done something,
you
might find
1
• tlni unlike:. “Never before’hes so small
the
six< (end having only
1
how thl oph/slcist
and 1
finding what's special•• s been done
on a
compute: a portable typewriter 4000 words
of
menory)..
ists"
4. Attempt
to
find
out how
else computer: are used
in the
particular area,
and
mention these
to
help orient
the
reader. This goes against
the
cxclusivist tenden cies
we all
have when
we
want
to
ballyhoo something.
It is a
matter
of
conscience,
an
important
one.
What could
go
wrong? And most important:
Wha
IMPORTANT DISTINCTIONS It
is
only
by
clarifying distinction; ' going
to get
anything
7. Don't
say "a ma
1functioning computer' (hardware error)
if the
computer functioned as
it was
directed
on an
incorrect program (software
error).
(And
remember that
the
best programmers make mistakes,
so
that
a
catastrophic
bug in a
system
is no
sign that it
was
programmed
by an
incompetent, only that
it
isn't finished.) 8.
(A
particular point about graphics. See flip side.) Don't
say "TV
screen"
if a
computer screen
is not TV, i.e., S2S
hori
zontal lines that
you can see on the
screen if
you
look
for
them.
(See
p. >» c versus
p.
£w\?J.)
HOW
ABOUT: “visual display screen”? —
you can add, “on
which
the
computer
can
draw moving lines,”
or
whatever else
the
particular system does.
9. Don’t assume that your audience
is
computer-illiterate.
10.
Don’t assume that
lt
can’t
all be
said simply. Only lazy
or
hard-pressed write! are unclear.
11.
Do not use
cutesy-talk, particular that which suggests that computers have
an in
trinsic character.
By
“cutesy”
I
mean sentences like “Scientists have recently taught a computer
to
play chess,” Mis-Leads like “What does
a
computer sound like?” (when talking about music constructed
by a
particular program
in a
particular way),
and
awe-struck ‘ icrlptlons like,
“At
last
the
Space
Age has
come
to the
1
bus!
12.
Do not use the
garbage term “compu terized,” unless there
is a
clear statement of whore
the
computer
is in the
system, what the computer
is
doing
and how. A
“computerized traffic system,”
for
instance, could
be
any damn thing,
but a
“system
of
traffic light under computer control, using various timing techniques still under development,” says something.
13.
Don’t
put in
cliches
as
fact,
for
example
by the use
Jit such terms
as
“mathe
matical”
or
“computer scientist” unless they really apply.
Do not
imply
any
mathematical character unless
you
know
the
system possesses
it:
many programs contain
no
operations that can fairly
be
called mathematical. Similarly, :ompu Lentis ‘
is
tidely
deeply versed
in
computers
or
softw just
a
programmer. (Anyway,
if son
been programmed
by an
entomologist, probably more interesting
to
refer an entomologist than
as a
“computer
14.
Do not
refer
to
apparent of
the
computer (unless that feature
of the
program].
Cre
thing
has
it
is 3 him as
“the clever comp it
is the
progra if
you
think
so, say
rathe)
nor.
Do
j inybody
is
:cogn ihey dese These guys don’t
get
progr; and
s|
folloi
S. Never, never
say
“teach
the
computer elliptical
way of
saying “write computer
ms.”
Programming means creating exact ecific plans that
can be
automatically ed
by the
equipment of
dr
like of flushing
it.
•
ile
‘cry”
an
the
flip
taught.”
should
be de
suggests
the
baby, puppy
•
t Imply that something
is ‘
*ss
you
have checked that
BIBLIOGRAPHY Ernest Gowers, Plain Words. This wonderful little book showed English civil Jervants “bureaucratic writing”
was
totally unnecessary.
Its
precepts– mainly concerned with callini
i are • mystery to others, iwhat frightening, somewhat oncerns see* so peculiar,
•re,
their language so in-
Computer pi who see them as ridiculous. Th< their hours so I comprehens ible. Computer people nay best be thought of as a new ethnic group, very »"ch unto them
selves.
Now, it is very hard to characterize ethnic groups in words, and certain to give offense, but if I had to choose one word for them it would be elfin. We are like those little people down among the mushrooms, skittering around completely preoccupied with unfathomable concerns and seemingly indifferent to normal humanity. In the moonlight
(i.e.,
pretty late, with snacks around the equipment) you may hear our music. Most importantly, the first rule in
deal
ing with leprechauns applies ex hypothes
i
to computer people: when one promises to do you a magical favor, keep your eyes fixed on hla until he has delivered. Or you will get what you deserve. Programmers' promises are notor-iously unkept. But the dippy glories of this world, the earnestness and whimsy, are something else. A real computer fre»k, if you ask him for a program to print calendars, will write a program that gives you your choice of Gregorian, Julian, Old Russian and French Revolutionary, in either small reference printouts or big ones you can write in. Computer people have many ordinary traits that show up in extraordinary ways-- loyalty,
pride,
temper, vengefulness and so on. They have particular qualities, as
well.
Of dogged-ness and constrained fantasy that enable them to produce in their work. (Once at lunch I asked a tablefull of programmers what plane figures they could get out of one cut through a cube. I got about three times as many
ans
wers .as I thought there were.) Unfortunately there is no room or time to go on about all these things-- see Bibliography-- but in this particular area of fantasy and emotion I have observed some interesting things. One common trait of our times-- the tech nique of obscuring oneself-- may be more common among computer people than others (see "The Myth of the Machine." p.
“BEFORE
1
ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR INTERRUPT. LET ME TAKE THIS PROCESS TO TERMINATION,” -COOKWG IS AN ART OF INTERLEAVING TDME-BOUND OPERATIONS.” (I.e..doing parts of separate jobe in the right order with an eye on th* clock.)
In the early throes of computer enthusiasm, it ii easy to suppose that anything tan be done by computer– that is, any thine involving the chewing or diddling of information. This is decldealy not so. For Instance, lt Is easy enough, and often
practical,
to have a computer do something a few mi
111
on tines. But it is almost never practical to have a computer do something s trillion times. Why?
Well,
let’s say (for the **ke~oT sTSpli-city) that a certain program loop takes
1/1000
of a second. To do it a thousand times, then, would take one second, and to do it a million tines would take a thousand seconds, or about seventeen minutes. But to do it a trillion times now, would mean doing it 17,000,000 “minutes. or ‘ over thirty years. Now, you will note that even if you speed up thst loop to
1/1,000,006
of a second, a trillion repetitions will take almost twelve days which is obviously going to need some justifying, even assuming that it Is otherwise feasible. (For problems of this type people begin thinking about building special hardware, anyway. It will be noted, for instance, that the PDP-I6– see p. JT
– –
lets you compile your own special equipment for problems thst need eternal repetitions. COMBINATORIAL EXPLOSIONS One kind of thing that’s too much to do is generally called a combinatorial explosion–that is, a problem that ‘^explodes” into too many things to do. for instance, consider the game of chess. Just because you can write a program to look ahead at all the possible
out
comes of, say, tic-tac-toe, that doesn’t mean you can consider ail the possibilities of chess. To look at “all” the possibilities just a few moves ahead involves you in trillions of calculations. Renembcr about trillions? And it turns out that there are a lot of problems like that.
Basically, an opernl
i
rig s y s
1
cm is program thst supervises all the other p grams in s computer. For this also called a supervi sor or a Because the operating system i be in charge, many computers nun cial wired-in instructions that r operating system can use. This j other programs from taking complete control of the machine. Operating systems cone in all sues. The bigger ones take up a lot of computer tine because they have to do a lot. The smallest kind,which are really kind of different, are just to help a single programmer move quickly between his basic programs. {A typical such system is DEC’s
DOS,
or Disk Operating 5ystem, which you can get with the PDP-11.) This system is really a kind of butler that keeps track of where your basic programs are stored on disk and brings then in for you quickly. A step up is the Batch Monitor, or op erating system set up for Batch Processing (see
p.5~£3r).
In batch processing, pro-grans go through the computer as if on a conveyer belt, one at a time (or in some systems several at a
tine).
The operating system shepherds then. Hatch processing is used when programs don’t need any interaction with human users.
(Or,
and this is more common, when human users want tine-sharing but can’t ge_t it; see below.) A multiprogramming operating system is one that allows several different prograns (or conveyor-belt sequences of batch programs) to operate at one tine. (This is how most IBM J60s are used.)
IS
Some
i^MerwiT
jm-imr>H(r
$tn
KBVU»
TMt
WoRVj:
Grt’
calls.
‘
log sharing systetis arc- local, other:
”
allowing users in other them with local telephone
Perhaps the nost far-reaching time-sharing system, though, is General Electric’* MARK III, with concentrators in many of the najor cities of the world (mostly
Europe).
The nam computer is in Ohio, but the overall system may be thought of as an octopus around the globe. Besides hundreds of cities in the USA, The GE system offers local access in Australia, Austria, iielgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France aly. Netherlands,
,
Puerto Rico, .itcJ Kingdom and Hest
What this basically neans is that if a company has offices in these places, it can do its internal communication through lencrai ETectric’s computer system. This presents obvious merits and difficul
ties,
which there is no room to discuss here. The service is said to be expensive. They also offer a toll-free number for program consultation.
General Electric Inforoa-
i batch mode.
have cone up with tor tne J/U. It i* a sort of interactive batch pro gramming. That i*. it allows the user at •
•
-imunicaie with programs running
i is a form of true time-sharing, iractor* tend to compare it with
“true”
time-sharing, such as
‘-10),
it has a number of draw-
,
the model 1SI, a fair ly large machine (ca. ISO,000 a •»»*»-*”•
p.
38), TSO normally allows only twntj.
The bad feature of TSO -oat “‘”D tioned is its slow response time. mas tioneu is »” .nmetimes aood. sometimes response may be sometime* g««u. execrable. IBM is urcina its fan* to believe that
it.
ndt grating” system, called OS/VS2-2. will be auch batter.
HfRf
THEY COMC—He
Microprocessors are what’s happening. Computers cost several thousand bucks on up. Microprocessors cost several hundred on up, and that price range is falling fast. So»e microprocessors are already on integra ted circults, postage stamp-sized electronic tangles that are simply printed and baked, rather than wired up; this means there is effectively no bottom limit to the price of microprocessors. Hark this wel
1.
It means thst in a few years there will be a microprocessor in your refriger
ator,
your typewriter, your lawnmower, your car, and possibly your wallet. (If you don’t believe
this,
look what happened to pocket calculators in the last couple of years. The chip those arc built around costs five bucks. But next come the programmable chips, the microprocessors.) Microprocessors should not be called micro computers
,
a tern that seems to have captivated Hall Street lately. “Microcomputer” just means any teeny computer; but there is an exact and crucial difference between an ordinary computer e) and a microprocessor (what-
licroprocessor el computer. You will remember from the “Rock Bottom” section (pp. 3Z-3) that every computer has an internal language of binary patterns or “aachine language” (i11 ustrated in horrendous detai1 in the program called “Bucky’s tfristwatch,”
pp.33-4).
Well,
a microprocessor has two levels, has an upper-level program follower with it binary program; but each instruction of th upper-level program is in turn carried out program follower running a program at a lowe:
level–
called a nlcroprog’ by
•
This has • r extraordinary ramifications. First of all, it means that the upper-level binary language can be anything you want– that . any feasible computer language–because each of its instructions, in turn, will be carried program. by
This for . __. , that machines can be created which may be programmed directly in some higher-level language, such as APL (note Canadian machine described on p. Z_i) or BASIC (note one of the Hewlett-Packard machines described on p. 17 ).
Th*
characters in the upper-level program (APL or
BASIC),
stepped through by the upper-level program follower, cause the lower-level program foilower to carry out the operations of the language. Second, the machine costs less to Bake than an ordinary computer. The reason is that the
archi
tecture of ordinary computers is designed now (at last) for programmer convenience. Thus a machine like the
PDP-11,
which in principle does nothing any other computer doesn’t do, is still more desirable than most, because its instructions arc so well designed. It is clear and sensible to the programmer, with the result that programming it takes less time and costs less money.
Microprocessors reverse this trend. The lower- level structure of registers and instructions can be anything that is convenient to manufacture, whether -* -**. programmers like it. Low manufacturing cost ‘ ‘ i design criteria. ! of the i The purpose of microprocessors, you see, is generally to be hidden in other equipment and do some simple thing over and over; not to have their programs changed around all the time as on an
ordi
nary computer. There are exceptions, computers which have a second level down where you can put microprograms; and these are called, sensibly enough, microprogram-Sable computers. They are bought and set up with regular computer accessories, plus facilities to change the microprograms. Thus they cost a lot more but oh, they do so much more for you. You can design your own computer– i.e., its in*truetion-sat– and then create it, with a microprogram. (See the Standard Computer and the Met.-4, nearby.)
TWO LF.VELS, TWO SPEEDS The trick that makes this alt work– whether for the hidden-away type or the computer type of microprocessor– is that the lower level has a ouch faster memory than the upper level. This means that an upper-level word can be taken, and looked up in the lower level, and all the lower-level steps carried out, very fast compared to the upper-level memory. Many such machines, for instance, have lower-level speeds in the nanoseconds (billionth: of a
second),
while the upper-level speeds are merely in the microseconds (millionths of a
second).
A last point. One of the most important char acteristics of an ordinary computer is its worJ length, that is, the number of binary positions in a usual chunk of its information.
C*MM.
Lin-
42
Sooo
I have heard no computer more widely praised among computer people than the Burroughs SOOO (replaced by the
5SO0).
The SOOO was designed about 1960 by Edward Claser and Bob BaTton. It was designed to be used only with higher languages, not allowing programmers access to the binary instructions them
selves.
Indeed, it was particularly designed to be used with ALGOL, which would have been the standard language if IBM had allowed it (see p. 31 ) and is still the “international”
language.
Because of this approach, its main regis ters were to be hidden from the programmer, and attention centered instead upon the stack, a high-level programming device (see box on
Stacks).
However, index registers were added to make it better for Fortran. The SOOO was marketed as an “all-purpose” computer with an operating system, anticipating IBM’s 360 of a few years later. Indeed, after the 360 was announced, Burroughs sales picked
up,
because IBM salesmen were at last-promoting the concepts that customers hadn’t understood when they heard about them from Burroughs salesmen years before. the Hi the
The Burroughs Corporation t be an acknowledged leader in computer design. Apparently their sales force is something else unfortunately. I once spent some time with a Burroughs salesman who not only knew nothing about the magnificent structure of the machine he represented, but would not get me further information unless I demonstrated that the company’1 represented (a large corporation) was seriously interested. He wore very fancy
clotHes”;
*”
Ml
_ of TH»
The Stack is a mechanism– either built into the computer
(“hardware”)
or incorporated in a program
(“software”)
which allows a computer to keep track of a vast number of different activities, interruptions and complications at the same time. Basically, it Is a mechanism which allows a program to throw something over its shoulder in order to do something else, then reach hack over its shoulder to get back what it was previously working on. But no matter how many things it throws over its shoulder, everything stays orderly and continues to work smoothly, till it has resumed everything and finished them all. It goes like
this:
if the program has to set aside one thing, it puts that one thing in core memory at a place specified by a number called a stack pointer. Then it adds one to the stack pointer, to be ready in case something else has to go on the stack. This is called a PUSH. “ruriT
When a program is ready to resume a prev ious activity, it subtracts one from the stack pointer and fetches whatever that stack pointer points to. This is called a POP.
It may not be immediately obvious, but this trick has immense power. For instance, we may stack any number of things together–the addresses of programs, data we are moving between programs, intermediate results, and codes that show what the computer was doing previously, Using stacks, programs may use each other very freely. It is possibIe, for instance, to jump among subroutines– independent little
programs–
willy-nilly, using a stack to keep track of where you’ve been.
In this case the stack holds the previous locations and intermediate data, so that the program follower can go back where it came from at the end of each subroutine.
STICK
%Jt$»T 11)1 fig.
This even mako
.
nns^ii.i,.
••
r . .,
meaning
„,brou.i„eS .hi, ciiZ’S
,?”}””•
and
recursive”
programs, meaning programs
hat
«,„.,»
„
the.sei,.,
.Sen the,
themselves
arc in progress.
Stacks are also used for handling “interrupts” — signals from outside that require the computer to set aside one job for another. Having a built-in hardware stack enables the interrupts to pile up without
.-nnfi.tinn-
Finally, stack arithmetic, like that done on the BurrougK^SbUO, enables arithmetic (and other algebraic types of activity) to be handled without setting aside registers or space in core memory. As a simple-minded example on a hypothetical machine, suppose v-to handle e wanted
On this machine, le to a program and a this gets compiled
T±}>
Some computer companies, such as IBM, resolutely ignore stack architecture, though hardware stacks have become widely adopted
In electronics, a “bus” l connector that supplies power and from several destinations. ising carrying a compl In computer: among several ix parallel
1 idea among computers, m is used here be-i, “Unibus,” is a DEC The Grand Bus, a is catching on. (The cause the colloquial 1 t rademark.) Basically the Grand Bus i of multiple wires that goes among several pieces of equipment. So far that’s just a
bus.
But a Grand Bus is one that allows the different pieces of equipment to be changed and replaced easily, because signals to any common piece of equipment just go out on the
This means that the interface problem is deeply simplified, because any device with a proper bus interface can simply be plugged onto the bus. It does mean a lot more complexity of
signals.
The Unibus, for example, has about fifty parallel strands. But that means various tricky electrical dialogues can rapidly give instructions to devices and consider replies about their status, in quick and standardized
ways.
Prominent grand buses include: The Nova hus (nameless) the first?) PDP-ll’s Unibus Lockheed SUE’s Infibus PDP-g’s Omnibus. The idea is great in general. For your home audio equipment, for instance. Grand Bus architecture would simplify everything. Not only
that,
but Detroit is supposedly going to put your car’s electrical system on a Grand Bus. This will mean you can tell at once what is snd isn’t working, and hook up new goodies easily.
The PDP-11 is not a beginner’s computer. But the power and elegance of its architecture have established it, since its introduction in
1970,
as perhaps the foreraost smal1 computer in the world. Actually, though, we can’t be too sure about the word
“small.”
Because as successive parts of the line arc unveiled, it becomes increasingly clear that this line of
“small”
computers has been designed to include some very powerful machines and coupling techniques among them; and it would seem that we haven’t seen everything yet.
In other words, DEC’s PUP-1 which has already cut into sales of their PDP-8 12-bit series and PDP-15 18-bit series, may soon c into its PDP-io 36-blt series–designer Bell unveils (perhaps) monster PDP-lls in arrays or dou word-length or whatever.
The PDP-11 was designed by C, Gordon Bell and his associates at Carnegie-Mellon Univer
sity.
In designing the architecture, and especially the ins
truetion-set,
they simulated a wide variety of possibilities before the final design was decided. The resulting architecture is extremely efficient and powerful (see box, “The ll’s
Modes”).
well.
There are eight main registers. Two, though, function specially: the program counter (that part of the program follower that holds the number of the next
instruction),
and the hardware stack pointer, both follow the
s.ime
programming rules as the main registers–jn unusual technique. Thus a jump in the program is simply a “move” instruction, in which the next program address is “moved” into main register *7, the program counter. In addition, all external devices seem to the program to be stored in core memory. That
is,
the interface registers of accessories ri.ive “addresses” numerically similar to core
locations–
so the program just “moves” data, ,ith MOVt instructions, to doorways in core, ilhis is facilitated by the automatic handling of previously bothersome stuff, like Ready, Wait and Done bits.) Physically all devices are simply attached to a great sash of wires called a Unibus. (See Grand Bus box.)
BIBLI0BRAPHV R.W. Southern, PDP-11 Programming Fundamentals. [Programmed worx-oooV. No price listed.) Algon-
JJ.-I
college Bookstore, 1385 Wood-
‘..-nue,
Ottawa, Ontario,
PDP-11 lookalikes are sold by Cal Data. Other firms have been scared off by DEC’s
E
a
tent,
but Cal Data say they ave a patent too.
-w 11V
rs in
cramp*.),
and >u th* basic uchitactur* ts how to cram Into •nouqh choices for getting around
In d**lgnlng th*
PDP-11,
Cordon Bell and hi -worker* systematically sought • powerful sol-
ion,
simulating various possible *tructur*s by •puter piogram, trying out • variety at differ t combination* and •
Th*
eleganc* and power of
littl*
abort of braathtaking•
11,
th* final design, provide*
type*
of indlr*ct addressing.
•olutl
through table*, and various oth* following di*gr*
nan*
for stepping 1 POP, dispatch tables, •mming technique*. Th* int for handy r*f*r*nc*.
The
IBH 360 (now
called
370
because
*
ful line
of
computer
in the
world. Is
the
best. There
are
those not their computers.
(si
pp.
bought becai very tough
;
A strange unseen curse seems
to
haunt
the 360
series;
in
deed, some cynics even think
it
results from deliberate
poli
cies
of
IBM!
Yet the 360 (and its
software) seem somehow
or
ganized
to
make programs inefficient
and
slow;
to
make programs big, needing lots
of
core memory (with numerous enticements
for
the programmer
to
take
up
more);
to
prevent
the
compatibilities that
are so
widely advertised, except through expensive options; to make things excessively complicated, thus locking
in
both
its
customers
and the
employees
of its
customers
to
practices iind intricacies that
are
somehow unnecessary
on
other brands
of
FI«T
OF
Tl|f
fu»t»e6»fHrt«|fr,
AJ,.
‘loo
tsoo.
Control Data’s 6600 computer
was the
first really
big
computer.
The
first
one was
delivered around 196S.
The
machine
and its
operating system, CHIPPEWA, were created
by
Seymour Cray
and his
team
in
hinterland
Min-
lixtreme speed
was
designed into
the
com puter
in a
number
of
ways.
The
main computer has
no
input
or
output
at
all; this
is
handled
by
data channels which have been built
up
into full-scale minicomputers
or
“peripheral processors”
of 18
hits.
7&”^ujft
t>==rr=~ ^xr*
C=^I1-
tkClawicLJH’C
The design
of the
360, which
was
basically decent.
The architecture
of the 360 was
quite simil (now
the
PDP-10),
designed about
the
same time: general-purpose registers
of
over thirty
bi1
16 i
i
registers
i
:ithei
•
to the
PDP-6 ising
the
accumulators
or
index registers. form
of
addressing
was
adopted, called “base- register addressing.” This
had
certain advantages
for the
operating system that
was
planned,
and was
thought
to be
sufficiently powerful that
you
wouldn’t need Indirect Addressing.
Two
main registers were required,
one
holding
a
“base” more
or
less equal
to the
program’s starting address,
and an
“index register,’ whose contents
are
added
to the
base
to
specify
an
address. Often
a
third number,
or
“offset,”
is
added
as
well.
The ides
of
this technique
is
that programs
can be
“relo catable,” operating anywhere
in
core memory.
A few
instructions at
the
beginning
of
each program
can
ascertain where
it is
running from,
and
establish
the
Base accordingly. The basic idea
of the 360
seems
to
have been doped
out for
multiprogramming,
or the
simultaneous running
of
several programs
in
core,
a
feature
IBH has
pushed heavily with this
com-
WHAT’S WRONG WITH
THE
360* The main differences between
the 360 and the
PDP-6
and 10
represent conscious
and
legitimate
and
arguable design decisions. To fans
of the
PDP-6
and
10, here
are the
360’s main drawbacks: NO INDIRECT ADDRESSING. This
was
because, within
the ad
dressing scheme adopted, indirect addresses could
not be
adjusted automatically.
(But it
also makes programs more inefficient, thus more profitable
to IBM.)
NO STACK. Why?
Too
expensive, said Amdahl, Blaauw
and
Brooks
in tha IBM
Systems Journal. Funny, they have stacks
on
IS000 PDP-IU-—nj’ it would have saved everybody
a lot of
money
on
programming. NO MEMORY MAPPING (axcapt
on
certain
models).
Where
the
PDP-6’s
successor,
the
PDP-10, automatically takes care
of re
distributing addresses
in
core
to
service evory program
•> if
it were operating from location zero
on
up,
the 360
left this general problem
to
local programmers
and (on
certain levels)
to
operating systems. Handling this automatically
in the
PDP-10’s hardware
ob
viates
the
complications
of
base-index addressing
and
make*
pos
sible
the
efficiencies
of
indirect addressing.
And Amdahl,
no
longer with
IBM and now
head
of the
Amdahl
Corp.
Is
coming down
the
pike with
a
super-360
of his
own,
in
E
art backed
by
Japanese money.
It
will
be
bigger lhan IBM’s
iggast–
and
cheaper.
(See
Hesh Wiener, “Outdoing
IBM: th*
Amdahl Challenge,” Computer Decisions. March
73,
18-20.)
However, • memory much slower than
the
main registers,
a
trick is used: program instructions
arc
drawn from core into
a
superfast instruction list ‘often called
a
cache).
and any
jumps
or
loops within this seven-word cache
can be
executed
at
unthinkable speeds– perhaps tens
of
millions of times
per
second. The machine
is i
floating-point nurabc of
the
intense speed
of the “fas
cache,
many instructions (such tion
and
division
of
integers) plishcd faster
by a
short they
had
actually been
wi
lly geared
for
5
9).
Because I instruction
They 6600 became
the St.
line,
including
the
6400,
68(
The 6400
is
used
by
I’L.VfO
(s.
t
of a
whole and othersi
Basically
the
atory
was
thlai aome
of the
higher people-
at
DEC, perhaps disaatlsfled with DEC’a aoft
ooll,
pochap*
out for
their own personal share
of
thing*, broke
out and
i their
own
corporation. Thoy
had in
ie do*inn
for a
hot, *olid minicomputer ‘ojected design fortV-
th~r*h~’
Ut i : PtiP-l iable
i
lold
i
.rd.
iua
{»t,
time goe* on, thoy concentrate
on
making
tha
Nov* faator
and
smaller. Thay began
by
competing against DEC—
es
pecially
in “tho UKM
market,” purchaaer*
who
are burying mi
ni
computer*
in
larger *
).
Indeed, Line programmers often use
the
machine just that way:
the
PDP-8 running
an
actual program,
the
Line part running the
CRT
display
in
conjunction with
it.
A horrifying
and
weird picture
of an
experimental monkey sitting
on a
POP-12
and
making like
the
Creature from
the
Black Lagoon
is
to
be
seen
in
Tine,
14 Jan
7-J,
p. 54. It
looks very scientific.
BIBLIOGRAPHY The classic book:
C.
Gordon Bell
and
Allen
Newell,
Computer Structures: Readings and Example?” HcCraw-IIill, lTTT: Note thst Bell designed various of
the
PDPs,
and
Newell pioneered
in
list processing
(see p. It
)- Computer Characteristics Review keeps
you
^n”touch with
the
traits
of
available computer*
and
peripherals. l-25/ye*r_
,
The
Architecture
and
Bngii
Heavier than Boll
and
Newell.
A
catalog
of
thousands
of
structures
and
tricks,
emphasizing
the
tradeoffs among
1)0
Jt>Ml
Here,
then,
are
some thumbnail descrip tions
of
some great, classic
or
popular com
puters,
expanding OUT basic diagrams
as
needed. Individual computers represent variations of
the
patterns shown
so far.
The particular structure
of
registers, memories
and
pathways among them
is
called
the
architecture
of a
computer
(see p. 02, ). The
binary instructions available
to the
programmer
are
called
the
instruction-set
of the
particular computer
(see
p,J3).
(The
word “architecture”
is
oftenuscd
to
cover both, including
the
instruction-set
as
well.)
The principal variations among computers are
the
word length
(in
bits–
see
“binary
patterns,”
anti
tne
number
and
arrangement
of
main registers. Then come
the
details of
the
instruction-set, especially
the
ways in which items
are
selected from core memory
—
the
addressing structure. Then
the
instruc
tion-set,
whose complications
and
subtleties can
be
considerable indeed.
The individual computer
is the
complex result
of all of
these.
If
they
fit
together
well,
it is a
good design.
If
they
fit to
gether poorly,
it is a bad
design.
A bad de
sign
is
usually
not so
much
a
matter
of
overt stinky features
as of
ramifications which
fit
together disappointingly. (Glitch
is a
term often used
for
such stinky features
or
relationships
.)
The possible ways
of
organizing computing hardware
are
vast,
and
only partly explored, (An aside
to
computer guys:
on the
Intel chip debugging consoles they have
an
address trap (trapping
on a
presettable effective address) and
a
pass counter (trapping after
n
passes).
How come
we
haven’t seen these sooner?)
The machines mentioned here
are an
arbi
trary selection. Some
of
them
are the
Great
Numbers,
computers
so
important that folks
use
their numbers
as
proper nouns, with
no
brand
name:
“Do
you
have
a 360 up
there?”
6600,
a 10 and a
“Personally,
I*d
rather work
on a
5500. Here
is
what they
are
talking about.
—
1
on*
c
I
j
lit
4
,Nk.)
The
PDP-8
ws*
designed
by
Gordon Boll (in
its
original vereion,
the
PDP-5) about
I960.
Originally
it
cost about
$25,000;
as
of
Hey 1974
that price
lat
down
to
about
$3000,
or loss than
*
thousand dollars
if you
went to
buy th*
circuit*
and
wire
it all up
your-•elf.
Tup,
here cornea that Heathkit.
The PDP-8
haa
boon DEC1m hottest seller) you’ll find then
in
industrial plants
and
museums,
or
oven hidden
in the
weirdest equip
ment,
from typesetting devices
to big
disk
drive*.
At
universities
all
over there
are
kid*
who
know them inside
out.
Today
the
PDP-8 *eea>* archaic, with
its
one accumulator
and
awkward addressing schemes! you
can
only
get to 2£6
different addresses
in
core memory directly,
and it’s
chopped
up
into
pages.
But for its
time
it was a
brilliant design, packed like
a
parachute,
and
even
to
day there
are
people
who
swear
by it. (But
look
at
what
Bell’*
done latolyi
the
PDP-11.)
So many programs exist
for the
PDP-8, though,
snd so
auch sentimental fondness, that lt will
be
with
us for the
foreseeable future. Thus
tha
“Bucky’s Wri*twatch” example
(*««»,.
*
1
T) is not
totally frivolouai
we
stay a a suae that
a
PDP-8
on one or two
wristwatch-sized chips
Is
only
a
year
or ao
sway.
But
lot’s hope they
do the 11
first.
(Lookslikes available frost Digital Computer Controls
and
Pabri-Tek.t
7U
5t
LTJ)
The
IBM
7090
was the
classic computer. Introduced about
196O and
mostly gorfo
by ’66,
it
was
simple
and
powerful, with clean
and
decent instructions. With
its
daughter
the
70941
it
became virtually standard
at
uni
versities, research institutions
and
scientific establishments.
At
many installations that went
on to
360s they long
for
those clearminded days.
The
90 had
three index registers
and
fifteen bits
to
specify core addresses. (This meant,
of
course, that core memory could ordinarily
be no
longer than 32,768 words
(“32Kn—
see
“Binary patterns,” p.’J’J.) A later
model,
the 94,
went
up to 7
index registers, since there were three bits
to
select them with.
Though these were million-dollar
ma
chines
ten
years
ago, you now
hear
of
them being offered free
to
anyone who’ll cart them away; partly because they needed
a lot
of power, airconditioning
and oso on. But
they were great number crunchers.
(if you
want
a 90, I
believe that
90
lookalikes
are
still available from Standard Machines
in
California.)
Univac’s
1106 and 1108 are
fast, highly regarded machines.
In
designing
the
computer Univac
did a
clever thing: they built
an up
graded 7094. This meant
(as I
understand
it)
that
all the
programs from
the old
7094 will run
on it. But
instead
of two
main registers they have
28.
(Where they found
the
bits
in the
instruc tion word
to
select among
all
those registers I can’t tell
you.)
The
1108 is a
larger version, with twice as marly main registers.
DEC’s PDP-10
is in
some ways
the
computer that
the IBM
7094
was in the
The PDP-10
is
excellent
for
making highly interactive
systems,
since
it can
respond
to
every input character typed
by the
user.
It
is a
favorite
big
computer among research people and
the
well-informed.
The
ARPANET, which connects
bia
computers
at
some
of the
hottest research establishments is largely built with PDP-lOs. There
are
PDP-lOs
at MIT ‘
U.
of
Utah, Stanford, Yale, Princeton
and
Engelbart’s snon (see
p.
Jnu-fc).
The
-Watkins
Box (see
p.»ny>) hooks
to a 10.
Digital Equipment Corporation, aware that
its
computer trademark
PDP”
connotes minicomputers
to the
uninformed now wants
the 10 to be
called DECsystern-1Q rather than
PDP
We’ll
see if
that catches
on.
Who designed
it is not
entirely clear.
I’ve
heard people attribute
it
variously
to the
Model Railroading Club at
MIT, to
Gordon
Bell,
and one
Alan Kotok. Originally
it was the
PDP-6, which appeared about
1964
and
was the
first computer
to be
supplied with
a
time-sharing system, which worked from
the
beginning,
if
rockily.
Now
it’s good
and
solid. DEC’S operating system
for it (see p
45)
is
called TOPS,
but BBN
sells
one
called TENEX, also highly regarded.
The 10
does time-sharing, real-time programming
and
batch processing simultaneously, swapping
to
changeable areas
of
core memory. (This feature should soon be available,
at
last,
on IBM
computers
(“VS2-2”).)
PDP-10 time-sharing works even
if you
don’t have
a
disk, using DECtape (DEC’s cute little
tapes).
Of
course, without disk
it’s
really hobbling,
but
this capacity
is
nevertheless noteworthy.
The PDP-10
has
debugging commands which work under time sharing
and
with
all
languages,
and
hugely simplify programming.
Unlike
the IBM 360,
whose hardware protection comes
in
options,
the 10 has
seven levels
of
protection:
the
user
can
specify
who may
road
his
files,
run
them, change them,
and do
four other things.
The
PDP-10 does have
job
control commands, but they
are not
even comparable
in
cumberosity
to
IBM’s
JCL
Language
(see p. 31), and
they
are the
same
for all
three modes
of
operation: time-sharing, real-time
and
batch.
It Grucral °ajuT*« (iT-onUt », J>4« Bey/ho)
*F
fajterl
The PDP-10
has 36
bits
but has
instructions
to
operate on chunks,
or
bytes,
of any
length.
It has
sixteen main reg
isters,
as
does
the 360, but
uses them more efficiently. The PDP-10 also
has
unlimited indirect addressing:
an
instruction
can
take
its
effective address from another
lo
cation, which
can in
turn
say to
take
its
effective address elsewhere,
ad
infinitum.
For
your heavy tight elegant stuff. Perhaps most important,
the 10 has a
full
set of
stack instructions
(see “The
Magic
of the
Stack,”
p. 42),
allowing programmers
to use
multiple stacks
for
purposes
of
their
own.
(The operating system’s
own
stacks
are
protected.) mers
do not
have
to
save each other’s registers,
as on the 360.
Programmers
are
relatively safe from each other.
Some think
of the
PDP-6
and 10 as a
glorified 7094 (with 18 addressing bits, instead
of 15). In
this case
we
might consider
the 360 a
stripped-down version
of the 6,
since
IBM
threw
out the
stack
and in
most models
the
memory napping. PDP-lOs
are
ordinarily sold where
the
views
of
scientists and engineers
are
considered important,
and
comptrollers
do
not have first choice. Nevertheless, some
say
that
its
busi-
ness-programming facilities (i.e., COBOL,
duh) are
just
as
good as those
of
companies
who
claim
to
have designed computers
tor
all purposes.” First National City Bank
of New
York
has
found that
the
PUP-10 makes
a
splendid banking computer
for
internal
use,
profitable
at an
internal charge
of
$3.75
an
hour plus processing charges. Prices
for a
PDP-10 system with disk start start about JS00.OO0,
or (15
grand
a
month,
and go up
into
‘he
millions.
However,
DEC
salesmen
are not
like IBM’s,
who can
reputed ly sell Eskimos
to
iceboxes.
For one
thing,
DEC
salesmen
are
on salary. That fits DEC’S demure, aw-shucks image,
but it
doesn’t exactly sell
big
computers. (For
you
Firesign Theater fans,
the
mutterings
of the
dying computer
on the
“Bozos” album
are
various PDP-10 system
thingies,
artistically juxtaposed.)
<~<,f, > . «… w.™.
M
P«
rf-
4″
…..
—..W
a /or of-
*P»CB
IK cor?
•MKrrrtet;
Cote MEMORY
^7
l,,..
A>n » H «TH em
-.-»vy
(?- »” “TH
iJl.l.or…
-TV
the
u«ht*
»« topped) and other high-level impressions. For that reason some big computers, beginning with the CDC 6600, started doing away with the fancy lights and bringing written messages to the operator on a CRT scope instead (for lots more on the glories of CRTs see the flip side, pp. ‘
Big computers can have multiple program followers and sets of registers (a program follower and its ?ml.n
re*isters
are together called a CPU, Central Processing Unit) A computer with two CPUs,
i.’e.,
two sets of program followers and registers to carry the programa6ut, is called a dual processor; a computer with more than two CPUs is called a multi-processor.
Separate independent sections of core memory may be put in one computer, allowing separate program followers and data channels to work at the sane
time.
(Note: a “bank” of core memory is an independent section. Except in this sense of “core memory bank” or “core bank,” there is no other correct usage of the layman’s vague term “memory bank.” Computer people only say “memories,” and distinguish further among core, disk, tape, etc. Note that “data banks” are a separate
issue–
see “Issues,” p.J”?.) DINOSAURS?
Many computer people, the author included, entertain certain doubts a-bout the long-term usefulness of big computers, since minicomputers are cheaper, especially in the long run, and can actually be in the offices and homes where people create and use the information. Big computers are necessary for time-sharing (see p. 45) and huge “number-crunching” jobs (see “Grosch’s Law,”
nearby).
However, it will soon be cheaper to put standardized number-crunching jobs in standalone or accessory hardware; see “Microprocessors,” p. i)^.
Fans of big computers also argue that they are necessary for business programming, but that only means tra-ditional business programming– non-interactive and batch-oriented. For tomorrow’s friendly and clear business
systems,
networks of minis may be pref
erable.
But makers of big computers may be unwilling to admit this
possi
bility.
Tend* to happen several times e day.
Glow’s
W Minicomputers are ao nifty that we may ask why have big computers at all. The answer is that there arc considerable economies, especially in applications that require many repetitive operations and don’t need interaction with users.
A hypothesis about the economy of big computers waa formulated a long time ago by Herbert J.R. Grosch, onetime director of IBM’s Watson Lab und now a heovy detractor of IBM. Thus it is called Grosch’s Law. The idea is basically that there is a square-law relationahip between a machine’s size and its power (narrowly defined in terms of the coat of millions of operations, and without considering the edvantsges of interactive systems or other features which may be of more ultimate
value).
Anyway, when I asked him recently for his formulation of Grosch’s Law. 1 got the
fol
lowing:
“Grosch’s Law
(formal):
Economy in computing ia as the square root of the speed.
(informal):
If you want to do it ten limes as cheap, you have to do it a hundred times as fast.
(interpretive):
No matter how clever the hardware boys are. the software boys piss it away!
38
-BIGGIE
The operator muses at the console of the main computer at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. It is an IBM 370 model 159, which rents for about $50,000 a month, including all accessories and a dozen or so terminals — in the parlance of big-computer people, a “medium-sized installation.”
This
is a big
computer.
In
principle
it’s
no
different
from
a
small
one; but
it
has
bigger
memories,
more
registers,
more
program
followers.
There
are
more
specialized parts,
and
more
things
happening
at
once.
(Thus
the
term
“digital
computer
complex”
is
sometimes
used
for a big
computer.)
It
comes
supplied with
a
monitor
program
or
operating
system
(see p. 45) and a
variety
of
other
utility
pro
grams
and
language
processors.
Biggies
have
many
ominous
and
seemingly
incomprehensible
things
to
scare
the
layman.
For
one
thing,
where
is the
computer?
All
you see is a
lot
of
roaring cabinets.
WhicTPis
it?
Answer:
all
of
them.
“The
computer”
is
divided
among the
different
cabinets (note
diagram
and
cluster
of
pictures
locating
the operator
among
them,
below)..
The
external devices
or
peri
pherals
(see p. S”7) are
usually
in
separate housings. Usually
there
is one
single
box or
“mainframe”
containing core
memory,
main
registers,
program-following
circuitry,
etc.,
as in the ma
chine
illustrated,
but
these things don’t
have
to be in one box,
and
sometimes
aren’t.
Operator’s console of this particular setup. The operator may use the keyboard or light’-pen (see p. to select among waiting programs, submitted by various programmers and departments
–
The up
to be
repaired
like
ref
wiring
o
tions
or
ing
toda; having
v>
them.
I
cuit
she>
sideways
There’s
about
th
structio
other fi
tangle
o
low thes
call
it
parts
of a
computer
are set
gotten
at,
to be
refilled
and
Their—Innards
swing
open
rigerators.
Similarly,
the
f
computers
is in
separate
sec-
modules
(“module”
merely
be
y’s
stylish
term for
“unit”),
ery orderly connections
among
ndividual
circuits
are on
cir-
ets
or “cards”
which
plug
in
and
may be
replaced
easily,
nothing
really
computerish
is,
it’s
merely
sensible
con-
but it
is
traditional
in
elds
to
build
something
as a
f
wires.
(When TV
makers
fol-
e
rational
practices, they
“space
age
construction.”)
Why are the
different
parts
so
far
apart?
So
there’s
room
to
swing
them
open,
refill
or
change
them,
sit.
down and
repair
them.
Refrigerators
could,
and
perhaps
should, also
be
built
in
separate sections,
but
it’s not
traditional.
Automobiles
can’t be spread
out
because
they
have
to en
dure
the
jostles
of the
road.
But
computers
like
this
baby
aren’t going
anywhere.
Also
intimidating
is the
fact
that
you
have
to
step
up as you
enter
a
computer
room.
~TnatTs
because
com
puter
rooms
ordinarily
have
raised
floors,
permitting cables
to be run
around
among the
pieces
of
equipment
without
your
tripping.
Computer
rooms
are
generally
lit
by
millions
of
fluorescent bulbs,
making
them
garishly
bright.
This
is
simply
tradition.
Big
computers
can
have
millions
of
words
of
core
memory.
Moreover,
there
are
usually several disk drives and tape drives,
as
seen
in the
pic
tures,
used
to
hold data
and
programs.
(Some of the
programs
are the
system
programs,
especially
the
language
processors
and the
operating
system–
see
p. tfS– but
other
programs
and
most
of the
data belong
to the
users.)
AN OPERATOR IS NOT A PROGRAMMER
Cindy Woelfer is the day-shift operator of Circle’s big computer. The job mainly consists of changing disks and tapes, starting and stopping different jobs listed on the scope, and restarting the computer when the system crashes (gratuitously ceases
operation).
Ms.
Woelfer, a thoughtful person, says she does not find her job very stimulating. She can program, but the job doesn’t involve pro-granming. It’s also a lonely job. Non-systems people, except Mayor Daley, aren’t ordinarily allowed around. About the only people to talk to are the systems programmers who stop through to look at the scope and see whether their programs are up next.
7/77/
3
37
^
v >..- 1″-.+
tft-e.-
4 tW .„
J)lKltO€J:
3K
overvievr
There
is
great confusion
as
between various types
of
small computer, with
the
latest stupid term, “microcomputer,” adding
to the
confusion.
We
have:
minicomputer
or
mini Traditionally,
any
computer having
an
architecture (memory
and
main registers)
of 18
bits
or
less.
Lately, unfortunately, some people have been advertising their 24-bit
and
even 32-bit computers
as
minis. This is just confusing. (They base this
on the
fact that “minicomputer”
has
also
re
ferred
to a
machine sold without a
lot of
programs.
But
that’s really
a
separate issue.) microprocessor Two-level computer
(see p. ) •
microcomputer Crummy term apparently being used to mean
any
tiny computer, regardless
of its
structure. Thus
all
computers will
be
“microcomputers” in
a few
years. This clarifies nothing
as to
their structure
or
use.
midi computer Remember midi skirts?
Well,
this term
has
been used
for
computers larger than
16
bits
or
faster than
usual,
by
people seeking
to
give the impression that their machines are bigger than minis
and
less than
biggies.
Even
the
PDP-10
(a
genuwine biggie)
has
sometimes been called a
midi.
(<«rr. Dfl J>
MA CHANNEL
C”Ji”tCT
Meis.^ /idcey
“J
C«& F.
A product called Cling Free
—
comes scented in a spray can, for preventing static in your laundry— is said to eliminate static electricity in carpeted computer rooms. Spray it all over the rug, especially near the computer, and you won’t zapp the computer with sparks from your fingers.
HEY, SOME MINI RENTALS MAY BE REASONABLE
Nova minicomputers are leasable from:
Rental Electronics, Inc. (a subsidiary of Pepsico) 99 Hartwell Ave. Lexington, MA 02173
for as little as $250/mo., long-term.
WHER5T«e£rtri
A long
but
incomplete list
of
minicomputer manufacturers
ie at the
bottom
of
p.
7.5,
l^C -FUKJ Of T^L8UGfe|*JGr- OK fit
rA\*i!
v^fTU |^J+
\’0
ie*
rfji/»f
(oWa*-
f°y-
The mini
man is
like
a
rock climber, chimneying
and
twisting
to
squeeze through to
his
goal—
not his
body,
of
course,
but
his program.
36
^ MINI
This is a PDP-11, one of the world’s beet-designed minicomputers (see p.
YZJJ
•
The PDP-11 is a 16-bit machine. Shown is Model 45, the fastest PDP-11, which has various special features.
Stripped,
with 4K of core memory (that’s 4096 locations), it costs about $13
grand.
A smaller PDP-11 goes for some
$5000.
A
minicomputer simply
means a
small
computer,
no
different
in
principle
from
the big
ones
(see
next spread),
and
it
can do
all
the
same
things except
as
limited
by
speed
and memory
capacity.
(Mind,
we are
talking
about
real
computers,
not the
little
cal
culators
you
hold
in
your
hand
that
just
do
arithmetic.
A
real
compu
ter
is one
which
works
on
stored
programs
and
all kinds
of
data, working
not
merely
on
numbers
but
on
such
other things
as
text,
mu
sic
and
pictures if supplied
with
appropriate
programs;
see
flip
side.)
There
is
some
argument
over
what
constitutes
a
minicomputer;
basically
we
will
say
it’s
any com
puter
with
a
word
length
of.18
bits
or less
(see
“Binary Patterns,”
p.
2-7).
(Some
companies,
like
Data-
craft
and
Interdata,
are
trying
to
peddle
their
worthy
computers
as
“minicomputers”
even
though they’re
24 and 32
bits,
respectively,
but
that’s
very
odd.
Interdata
says
any
computer
under
ten
thousand
is a
mini– which
means
all
computers
will
be
minis
by and by; a
vexing
thing
to do to the
term.)
Traditionally
minicomputers
come
with
much
less.
In the old
days
pretty
much
all
the
programs
you
got
with
it
were
an
assembler
(see
p. ys) and a
debugger
(see p. Jo) and a
Fortran compiler
(see p. 2D
if
you
were
lucky.
Today,
though,
with
minis having
highly
built-up
software
like
(see pp.io-t/?
for
descriptions)
the
PDP-8,
the PDP-11 and the
Nova,
you can get a
lot
of
different
assemblers,
to
gether
with
Fortran,
BASIC, and a
little
disk
or
cassette operating
system
(see p. H&) to
make
your
life
a
little
easier.
The idea
of
owning
a
computer
may*
seem
strange
to
some
people, but
with
prices
falling
as
they
are
it
makes
perfect
sense.
Numerous
individuals
own
minis,
and as the
price
continues
to
drop
the
number
will
shoot
up. For
several
families
with
children
to
pool together
and
buy
one for the
kids
makes a
lot
of
sense.
One
friend
of
mine
has an 8,
another
is
contemplating
an 11.
(I’ve
been
trying
to get my own for
years;
perhaps
this
book…)
Any
how, the
general
price
range
is now
$3000
to
$6000
plus accessories, and
that’s
dropping
fast.
Rental
is
usually
a
great mis
take:
prices are very high
and
after
six
months
or
so
you’ll
have
paid
for
it
with
out
owning
it.
(But names of
rental
places
will
be
found
in
this
book,
and
some
of-thera
may
offer
good
ar
rangements.)
Minis
may now be had
in
quantity
for
$1000
each–
price
of
the
PDP-8A
in May
1974–
and
soon
that
will
be the
consumer
price.
Unfortunately,
the
price
of the
computer
itself
is
dropping
faster
than
that
of the
accessories,
such
as
the
basic terminal
you’ll
need,
which
still
weighs
in at
$1000-5000.
Moreover,
as
soon
as you
want
to do
anything
serious
you’11
need
a
disk
(starting
around
$4500)
or at
least
a
cassette
memory
(starting
around
$1500).
But
these prices
too
will
come
way down as the
consumer
market
opens.
Some
of us
minicomputer freaks see
little
real
need
for
big
computers.
Minicomputers
are
splendid
for
inter
active
and
“good-guy”
systerns
(see P* 13)» as
personal
machines,
to
han
dle
typing
and
bookkeeping;
even
for
business systerns, if
you
recognize
the
value
of
working
out
your
own in BASIC or, say,
TRAC
Language.
Minicomputers
are
being
put
in
side
all
manner
of
other
equipment
to
handle
complex
control.
(However,
for
repetitive
simple tasks,
the
latest
thing
is
microprocessors
(see p.
If), which cost less
but are
harder
to
program.)
Minicomputers
are now
being found
in
highschools;
active
marketing
to
highschools
is now
being
done
by
both
DEC and
Hewlett-Packard.
Children’s
museums
in
Brooklyn and
Boston
have
recently
obtained
PDP-
lls
for the
kids
to
interact
with.
In
the
Brooklyn
case,
the
computer
will
even
demonstrate
the
exhibit
and
help
the
child
discover things
about
it,
in
ways
worked
out by
Gordon
Pask
fsee
D
In
the
future,
networks
of
minis
may be the
systems
to
offer
low-cost
information
services
to the
home
(for
speculations,
see P.
1>V\
£7). But minis
will
also
start
to
make
big
ger
and
bigger incursions
on the
terri
tory
of the big
machines.
For
instance, one
group
proposes
a
time-sharing system which
will
simply consist
of
Novas
interconnected
in a
ring,
the
so-called
STAR-RING,
which
will
supposedly
com
pete
with
big
time-sharing.
Here’s that selfsame PDP-11 in its overall
setting.
With peripherals shown, plus the magnificent Vector General display (shown later on in
book,
p?*3l& eleewhere), this setup cost well over a hundred
grand.
(This is the Circle Graphics Habitat,
oth
erwise known as the Chemistry Department Computer,
JJ.
Illinois at Chicago Circle. Why do chemists need such things? See p.
The good ol’
PDP-8,
perhaps the most popular minicomputer (12 bits). Full PDP-88 now cost about
$3000,
“kits” less. Shown here with a Sykes
cas
sette tape
deck—
a
nice,
rather reliable unit— and a screen display (see
ppf^TZr’S)
•
Courtesy Princeton University . S
R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S.
(see
p.
M
Kids love computers. They belong together. This lad flips panel switches on a Nova, perhaps the third most popular mini after the 8 and 11 (16 bits; 80s
35
This la what the program looks like In the computer’s cure memory. (A printout like the following is called a ntaohlne-lantuage listing.) Since all the addresses are filled In, thin program ia aafd to be In absolute binary. IT they weren’t filled in, It would be called relocatable binary . Machine language listing* come in different
flavors.
A binary listing (or dump) ia generally in ones and serves. An octal listing groups the bits by threes and substitute* Ihe numbers zero through seven for the different combinations of three bits The other main kind, the hexadecimal listing or dump (an IBM
thing),
groups the bite by fours end substitutes the numbers 0-9 and the letters A lo F, for the sixteen different combinations of four bits.
This Is whet the program looks like when you set lt up for the Assembler, which is the easier way. A program laid oul like this in called an Assembly Listing. Studying it may help you debug (see p. An easy-to-remember alphabetical code la uaed to represent eech final instruction desired. Such an abbreviation Is called a mnemonic; usually they’re more cryptic. The mnemonics ere turned by the assembler Into the binary opcode. You don’t have lo Know (he actual addreasea in core memory, you just use alphabetical names or labels, and the Assembler figures out where they really go and puta in the binary addresses. Desired numbers, such as 9, are plugged into the address parts of Instructions. YOUR OWN COMMENTS (here set off wilh slashes) csn stay here loo. In this FIDO example, the Assembler follows two common practices: it recognizes a label because lt ends in a comma, and recognizes a comment because lt begins wilh a slash.
COUNTS
“THIS
COPPER
MAN IS NOT ALIVE AT ALL”
ooo oox
0X0
oxx xoo xox xxo
XXX OOX ooo
oox
oox OOX 0X0
oox
oxx
oox
xoo
oox
xox
oox
xxo
oox
XXX 0X0 ooo
oxo
oox
oxo
oxo
oxo
oxx
oxo
xoo
oxo
xox
oxo
xxo 0X0 XXX
oxx
ooo
oxx
oox
oxx
oxo
oxx
oxx
oxx
xoo
oxx
xox
oxx
xxo
oxx
XXX
xoo
ooo
xoo
oox
xoo
0X0
xoo
oxx
xoo
xoo
xoo
xox
xoo
xxo
xoo
XXX
xox
ooo XOX oox XOX QXO
xox
oxx
xox
xoo
xox
xox
xox
xxo
xox
XXX
xxo
ooo
xxo
oox
xxo
0X0
xxo
oxx
xxo
xoo
xxo
xox
xxo
xxo XXO XXX XXX OOO XXX OOX XXX OXO XXX oxx XXX XOO XXX XOX XXX XXO XXX XXX X OOO OOO X OOO OOX X OOO OXO X OOO OXX X OOO XOO X OOO XOX X OOO XXO X OOO XXX X OOX OOO X OOX OOX X OOX OXO X OOX OXX X OOX XOO X OOX XOX X OOX XXO X OOX XXX X OXO OOO X 0X0 OOX XOXO OXO X 0X0 OXX XOXO XOO X OXO xox X OXO XXO X OXO XXX
XXXXXOOOOOOO XXOOOOOOOOOO OOOOXXOOXXOX XOXOOOOOOOOX XXOOOOOOOOOX OOOOXXOXOOXX XOXOOOXXOOXO XXXXXOOOOOOO
xxooxoooooox xxooxooooxoo xxooxoooxoox xxooooooooxo ooooxxoxooxo xoxoooxxoxxx
XXXXXOOOOOOO XXOOXOOOOOXO XXOOXOOOOXXO XXOOXOOOXOXO OOXOOXOXOXXX OOXOOXOXOXOX OXXOOOXOOOOX
ooxooxooxxxo oxxoooxooxxx oxxoooxxxxxo
XXXXXOOOOOOO OOXOOXOXOXXX OOXOOXOXOXXO OXXOOOXOXXOX OXXOOOXXOOOO OXXOOOXXXXOX OOXOOXOOXXXO OXXOOOXOXOXX OXXOOXOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOXXOXOOXX XOXOOOXOOXOX XOXOOOXXXXOO OOOOXXOXOOOO XOXOOOXOXXXX OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOXXOOXXXX XOXOOOXOXXXX XXXXXOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOXOOXOOXXXO OOOOOOOOOOOO XOXOOXOOOOOX OOXOOXOOXXXO OOOOOOOOOOOO XOXOOXOOOOOX OOXOOXOOXXXO XXOOXOOOOOOX XXOOXOOOOXOX
xxooxoooxoox
XOXOOOOOOOOX OOXOOOOOXXXO XXOOXOOOOOXO XXOOXOOOOXXO XXOOXOOOXOXO XOXOOOOOOOOX XXXXXOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOXOOXOOXXXO OOOOOOOOOOOO XXXXXOOOOOOO OOXOOXOXOXXX OOXOOXOXOOOX OOOOXXOXOXOO XOXOOXOOXOXX XXXXXOOOOOOO OOXOOXOXOXXX OOXOOXOXOOOO OXXOOXOXOXXX XOXOOOOOOOOX OXXOOXOXOXXX XOXOOOOXOOXO OOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOCOX OOOOOOOOOOXO OOOOOOOOOOXX OOOOOOOOOXOO OOOOOOOOOXOX OOOOOOOOXOXO OOOOOOOOXXXX XXOOOOOOOOOO XXOOXOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOO
AD10HR.
OUT1P2.
IN2P1.
t
STORN,
CLEAR INPUT t TEST ZERO JUMP CHKCL INPUT 1 TEST NINE JUMP ADMIN CLEAR OUTPUT 1 OUTPUT 4 OUTPUT 9 INPUT 2
TEST
FrVE JUMP AD2TEN CLEAR OUTPUT 2 OUTPUT 6 OUTPUT 10 ADD N ADD INPUT STORE INI ADD ONE STORE IN2 STORE 1N2P1 CLEAR ADO N ADD OUTPUT STORE 0UT1 STORE 0UT1P1 STORE 0UT1P2 ADD ONE STORE OUT2 STORE 0UT2P1
TEST NINE JUMP PAST JUMP AD10HR TEST THREE JUMP 1NCHR
TEST TWO JUMP INCHR CLEAR
JUMP INCN ADD ONE OUTPUT 1 OUTPUT S OUTPUT 9 JUMP CHKCL ADD ONE OUTPUT 2 OUTPUT 6 OUTPUT It JUMP CHKCL CLEAR
ADD ONE CLEAR ADD N ADD FOUR TEST PTEEN JUMP STORN CLEAR ADD N ADD THREE STORE N JUMP CHKCL STORE N JUMP ROUND ZERO. 9 ONE, 1 TWO. 2 THREE, 3 FOUR, 4 FIVE, S NINE. 9 FTEEN. IS INPUT. 6t$tB OUTPUT, S2MB N. I
/CLOCK
IS I/O
SLOT
#0000000. IK NEW
MINUTE?
/NO,
CHECK
CLOCK
AGAIN.
/YES, READ
MINUTE
SLOT
OF 1ST
WATCH.
/IS IT A 9?
/NO.
GO TO
MINUTE
INCREMENTER
/YES. SET
EACH
/TEN-MINUTE
DIGIT
/TO
ZERO.
/CHECK
TEN-MINUTE
DIGIT.
/NEW
HOUR?
/NO.
GO TO
TEN-MINUTE
INCREMENTER.
/YES, SET
EACH
/TEN-MINUTE
DIGIT
/TO
ZERO.
/GET
CLOCK-NUMBER
COUNTER
/AND
FORM
INPUT
INSTRUCTION
/PUT
IT
WHERE
IT BELONGS.
/FORM
OTHER
INPUT
INSTRUCTION.
/PUT
IT
WHERE
IT BELONGS. /HERE TOO.
/GET
COUNTER
AGAIN.
/AND
FORM
OUTPUT
INSTRUCTION.
/PUT IT HERE
WHERE
IT BELONGS.
/AND
HERE. /HERE
TOO.
/FORM
OTHER
OUTPUT
INSTRUCTION.
/PUT
IT
WHERE
IT BELONGS. /HERE
TOO.
/BECOMES
“INPUT
N”
/IS
HOUR
DIGIT
A 9?
/NO,
TEST
AGAIN
/YES. GO
FLIP
10-HOUR
DIGIT
/IS
HOUR
DIGIT
A 3?
/NO,
GO
INCREMENT
HOUR.
/BECOMES
“INPUT
N
+ l.” /IS
TEN-HOUR
COUNTER
A
TWO?
/NO.
INCREMENT
HOUR
NORMALLY
/YES.
IT WAS 23:59, SO SET
/TIME
TO pi: it.
“OUTPUT
N*l” IS HERE. /SET AC TO 1.
/AND
“OUTPUT
N” HERE.
/GO
INCREMENT
CLOCK-NUMBER
COUNTER
/ADD
1
TO
HOUR
/BECOMES
“OUTPUT
N”.
/CO
INCREMENT
CLOCK-NUMBER
COUNTER
/ADD
1 TO
MINUTE
DIGIT.
/AND
PUT IT
/IN
ALL /THE
MINUTE
DIGITS.
/THEN
GO
BACK
TO
CLOCK-WATCHING
.
/ADD
1 TO
TEN-MINUTE
DIGIT
/AND
PUT IT
/IN
ALL
/THE
TEN-MINUTE
DIGITS.
/THEN
GO
BACK
TO
CLOCK-WATCHING.
/FIRST CLEAR
/HOUR
DIGIT
(BECOMES
“OUTPUT
N”)
/THEN
GET
TEN-HOUR
DIGIT
/AND
ADD
1
TO IT.
/BECOMES
“OUTPUT
N*I”.
/ROUTINE
TO GET
NEXT
CLOCK
NUMBER.
/ADDING
FOUR
TO
CLOCK
NUMBER
/TAKES
US TO
NEXT
CLOCK.
/HAVE
WE
RUN
OUT
OF
CLOCKS
(N=15)?
/NO.
GO
STORE
N
AND
RETURN
/YES, SET /N=3
/AND
RETURN
/TO
START OF
PROGRAM
/OfE’VE
DONE
CHECKING
CLOCKS).
/STORE
NEW
CLOCK-NUMBER
COUNTER
/AND
SERVICE
NEXT
CLOCK.
END OF
MAIN
PROGRAM.
/
THESE ARE
CONSTANTS.
/RAW INPUT INSTRUCTION. (OCTAL) /RAW OUTPUT INSTRUCTION. (OCTAL) /COUNTER FOR WHICH CLOCK WE’RE ON.
1U
&J
*>-
Ten minutes after starting to program in Machine Language you will probably want Assembly Language. It’s a pain trying to get ail the ones and zeroes right. (£*«> i-A
.L,
%t
5*«<
*.»-y) It's a pain trying to keep track of binary numbers for where things are stored.
SO:
let's give them alphabetical names. That's assembly language. (And the conversion program we put our alphabetical into, to turn them back inlo Ihe binary patterns that really run the machine-- lhat conversion program is called the Assembler.)
An assembler is a direct and non-incky translator, intended mainly to handle the details
of
exact transposition between instruction codewords and the exactly corresponding machine-language program that you intend.
IT WORKS LIKE THIS: The assembler scans through the assembly
-
language program, testing the successive alphabetical characters. After finding the key punctuation marks or delimiters (shown as comma and slash for the FIDO
assembler),
it scans for the alphabetical Instruction mnemonics, and translates them by a table in core memory into the corresponding binary codes. (Il ignores everything on a line after a slash , which is lucky, since in the comments you may use words which are the same as instruction mnemonics.)
The assembler also counts the in st ruction a, and (starting wherever you say) figures where in core memory the instructions (and any data or spaces you put in) go. Then it makes a list of these addresses, called a symbol table (also called a name Hal at less elegant
places).
An assembler is the simplest form of compiler (see
p.30).
Basically it translates an aaaembly-language program, which cannot be run directly, inlo a binary program which can. Then from this symbol table it fills Ihe resulting binary addresses into the binary commands of the program. m't you glad you don'l have to? Generally the assembler then sends out the binary program to some external device, such as a disk memory or paper tape punch. Then it can be put into core memory when you want to run it. (You can put s program into core memory one bit al
a~tlme
through the front-panel switches; but nobody likes doing this except for teeny pro
mote:
an aaaembler for one computer (say the
PDP-8)
lhal runs on a different computer (say, the 360) is called a cross assembler.)
you §ee
W4
ni,
Kt I'*-
H"
iff.
-A.«mbly l-pw progri.n.i.,1 I. jo* <" >“« ” Folk Mylng
31
*
VJT^TTOi*
There is a certain folk hero whom the people all call Bucky. It ia said that he wears three wrletwatches: one for where he la now, one for where he will be next, and one that telle whst time it is at his home.
Well now. Here’s sn example of a little problem on which to try our FIDO computer.
Let’s wire up a msgic wrlstwatch for Bucky the Folk Hero, one that will use a teeny FIDO on a chip (the coming-
thing),
attached to three rows of numerical readouts flike those on pocket
calculators).
Thia application Is not so absurd aa you might think. It la obvloualy quite simple in principle.
It will let us see some of the ways that the rock-bottom machine langusges or computers are used.
Naturally this got saved for last, and what is presented here shows it.
The example was meant to be a case of not-very-numerical programming that would ahow the abstract ness of it all. The program Itself has no intrinsic quality related to the problem; thai much should be visible.
Anyhow, I programmed this myself a few weeks ago In the FIDO language, and was very pleased with it, but then discovered a couple of appalling bugs. As time closed in on this project 1 asked my friend Mike O’Brien to code the program, and he kindly consented, taking time out of his previous weekend plans. Here is Mike’s program, for which I am grateful.
HowEVer, after it waa set in type, Mike realized that lt too has some gross flaws and would not work as here presented. We thought of having a chocolate chip cookie contest for corrections, sending out chocolate chip cookies to entrants fixing it up, but we don’t have such a computer and we wouldn’t run the program if we had one anyway, so see if you can get the basic’idea of it, snd if you are a real wise guy fix the program for your own satisfaction, and that will be that.
The basic idea is that we have a FIDO, presumably on a single integrated circuit chip, attached to thirteen external devices (or periph
erals,
or input-output devices, or I/O devices or
whatever).
These devices are a timer or clock, which reaches zero once per minute–thls is a computer clock, meaning a timer, not something that people can read– and the three rows of numerical readouts that are the desired Superwatch.
For simplicity’s sake we assume here that each numeral is interfaced to do either input or
output;
thus the FIDO computer can aak any given numeral what it says, and change its con
tents.
The finished Wriatwatch ia going to give time on a twenty four-hour baaia. not twelve, like at NASA and suchlike places. After 12: 59 comes
13:00.
After 23:59 comes 01:00.
The bulk of the program is occupied with testing the numerala and changing them. How
ever,
in proportions of activity, the poor thing ia going to spend moat of its time Baying, “Is it time yet? Is it time yet? Is it time yet?” (That’s the second, third and fourth instruction.)
Because the FIDO selects the particular input-output device with the last seven bits of an input or output instruction, this has been done with “address modification” arithmetic: creating an output instruction to address a particular device by adding the
Inst
ruction to the “*”» °I »« device. Thia ia an ancient snd” honorable programming trick.
In several cases, the program chooses a device to examine, or
fill,
by taking a blank input or output instruction (kept at locations X OXO XOX and X OXO XXO, reapectively) and
*dd”
‘« the AC, to a counting number that la being used to step around In the array of numerala. (Thia counting number is “N,” alored in location X OXO XXX.) (Theae instructions were put into the slots in octal form, ss “6»MB” and “62MB” respectively. The
al
ashes sre meant lo distinguish &eroea from Ohs. The
*B”
at the end (in the assembly Hating) means that the assembler ia supposed io translate these number, to Binary, taking them three bits at a
UlM
« • » • cornea out lo XXO OOO OOO OOO.)
EQUIPMENT SETUP FOR THIS PROGRAM
MVKt
jKy.f, M 3 4 1
i
7 (o S
0
0–0O
nqtx
6(¥>ct
WVKI
atwt* »»vn«
12,
il io
A«r-3
•sans,
“stuff the number 3 into the variable A.” A variable Is a named location in core memory
•
Anyhow, what the program is really doing, when it finds the timer has reached zero, is. testing whether the rightmost digit is a nine. (It only has to test one, since minutes are the same round the world.) If it’s not nine, il just adds one to each— a part of ihe program called ADMIN, starting at XXO OXO. If it’s
nine,
however, il sets the final digits all to
zero,
end then testa the tens digit to aee if it’s a five, meaning the end of an, hour. (The number five has been Ingenuously stored in a location which Mike has called FIVE, which assembled lo slot number X OXO OXO. If you look
there,
you will see that the slot does, indeed, contain the binary pattern for the number 5.)
What a pity there is no lime to take you on a guided tour of (his profound, magnificent program. If you dig this sort of thing, however, you might just be able to dope it out.
:
had your taste. Hope you
X 1MI
Mike
O’Brien’s
elightly diagruntled poeteoript to the
program.
[OOP
H-\’ X>f
\„TL -frt
“KVitt kj”
‘I
*
.cUI
AM.
n»f
h
UIKh-Of
We look at lest •! what realty happen* Inside • given computer. It muil be a specific computer because there la no single Inner language for all computers. For •Impllclty’a take (llk* most Introductory teste) wa haraby present a flctlttoui machine.
(Faithful Instrument. Domesticated and
Obliging).
The FIDO la a twelve-bli machine. The main register (It haa only one) la twelve
bit*
long, and every memory slot la twelve bits long. Every Instruction ts twelve bits long; every data word Is twelve bits long, though of course much longer pieces of data can be put together by taking more than one twelve-bit
Some rudimentary instructions of the FIDO are listed In a nearby box. The instruction* of the FIDO are of two type*: plain onea that Just use the main register (like
CLEAR),
and the divided one*, which select a memory alot or output device. On the FIDO theae are divided Into an operation code (opcode) of five blia–the bits that tell the program follower what the operation ia to be: and an address of seven
bits,
specifying which memory alot (or external device) 1* to be operated on. These seven bili allow exactly 128 differ ent patterns. (from OOOOOOO to
XXXXXXX),
which means we can select among exactly 12B different memory slot*. (See Binary Patterns. p.->S.) (HJ».)
The Ft do come* with one row of light* and switches; the row of lights can ahow the contents of any specific working register or memory slot. When the computer Is stopped, this i* helpful for debugging programs (see p.
Ah.
if only we could tell you all about the FIDO hare! Its many more instructions. The option bits in the commanda that allow fancy variation*, or the option bits In the Interfaces, spoken of earilar. which allow the program to give different commands to external devices. i with i
OPCODE^
pattern pattern selecting selecting where to perform operation) operation) OPCODE ADDRESS
X X X X X
(
don’t matter
o the pulsating rhyihma of., _m-\\ ^
OPERATION CALLED FOR
CLEAR AC This Instruction c filled with teroes. ADD (from memory to AC) This adds the contents of (he
speci
fied memory location to the contents of the
AC.
Result remslns in the AC. Whatever was in the memory before is still there. This instruction Is also used to bring a new pattern to the AC. copying it from the specified memory location; but you have to CLEAR the AC first, so you’re adding It lo
STORE This instruction copies the contents of the AC to the specified memory location. Whatever was In the memory location is destroyed. Whatever was In the AC Is still there
INPUT* This Instruction copies the c of a specified device register to the AC. OUTPUT* This instruction cop lea the contents of the AC to a specified device register. JUMP This instruction makes the program follower take its next Instruction at the specified address snd go on from Ihere. TEST. SKIP IF EQUAL” This is a common test instruction, permitting the program to branch depending on various conditions. The contents of the AC are compared with the specified core memory location, tf they are not the
same,
the program continuea and lakes the next instruction in Ihe normal fashion. IF the two patterns are Ihe same, the program follower SKIPS the next instruction and goes on lo Ihe one after.
For instance, thai middle instruc-
i>Ui>
can be a JUMP instruction, taking the program lo a whole nother part of
——
memory and a new series of events.
,
core memory and a ne
If you want information on the machine language and assembly language of any given machine, write the manufacturer for ihe programming manual. There may also be a
pock6t
card.
An occult aspect of computer design la the matter of how lo pack into the so-many bits of an instruction word all the option, th. programmer should have.
ft
For no particular reason ths instruction •elect
bit*
are usually on the left, the address
bit*
on the right, and option bits (no room for them in thia book, unfortunately) In the middle. The number of bits in the address deter mines the number of places in the memory that Ihe programmer can choose among, 15 bits in the address means s choice of 12.768 memory lo
cations.
7 bita mean* • choice of only 128 (See “Binary Patterns,” p. 33 .)
Deciding whal the instruction layouts are lo be hinges on the architectural design of the computer (see p.3*. ) and the ins
an
18 four
bit*
ri
‘
>~j 32 five
bit*
TT 1 I”*! 64 six
bit*
128 •even
bit*
2S6 eight
bit*
512 nine bits 1014 ten bits (“ONE
It-
is 1024: memories and everything else c one In
K’s,
or multiple* of 1024.)
Actually th* term “k,” atandlng for “kilo-,” should mean one thousand. and the term BK, or Binary IC, la used by fussy people to aland for the very important nearby number 1021. But computer people generally uae expressions ending in K for Ihe following special
numbers:
THAT’S HOW MANY COMBINATIONS FIT IN eleven bits twelve bita thirteen bits fourteen bits
NUMBER 2048
(“2K”)
40S6
(“4K”)
8192
(“BK”)
16.384
(“18K”)
32.T88
(“32K”)
flftM
bits.
rease very fast, and
n up. •
ides
this:
th* number of
bit*
u»*d to select so me thine H»Hs the number of things you csn »«lecl among. For
instance,
if
you have a computer memory with }2K different
locations,
you need fifteen
bit*
exactly to
•
pacify a location In memory. Here sre some rsmiflcallons:
•
Th* word length of • computer determine* how large a number il can hold. A computer with
*
lw«lve-bit word can only hold a number up lo 4089 In one memory location (since we ua« 000 000 000
000,
in* firat combinslion. to slsnd for
t*ro);
if wo want lo use longer numbers we have to set eaida iwo or more word locations per number. (A l#-blt computer can hold a number up 10 63,MS in one memory location.)
•
In designing dsia
structure*.
If
you use binary codes (rsther
lhan.
say. alphabetical
characiars),
you hav* to allow enough bits for all the allernalivei lhal might turn up.
.
In the design of tha wired-ln instruction* (or a computer, therefore. Ihe number of bita set aaide to specify *n sddreaa
‘
‘ “u thai instruction can salaci (nun 11 or Juat s part of It
n core determines whether
^
THC HI6t««. UNWM6CS Every computer ia wired to accept a spe cific ayatem of commands. When theae commands •re atored in the computer’s memory, and the computer’? program follower gels lo them, they cauee it to respond directly by electronic reflex. Thia is called nusohln* laaMfusfjs. the very language of the machine Itself In most available computers the machine languages »™ binary, meaning composed of only two eltemstive symbols. Binary because it’s a sensible way of organizing the machine’s struc
ture;
It permits programs to be reduced to a •ingle common form of information, and permits programs to be stored in binary memory. Each individual instruction or command ordinarily occupies one memory slot, though some computers have commands of varying length. Different computers have different machine
languages,
but the Inatructiona of all computers are basically aimilar. Big computera have more
commands,
with more variations, and carry them oul faster; bul those variations are lust extra ways of saving atepa. not qualitatively different features.
These deep-down operations ARE ALL THE THINGS THE COMPUTER EVER DOES. However, in their combinations these instructions can be woven Into chains and diadems of complex actiona.
ALL COMPUTER PROGRAMS ARE EVEN TUALLY WRITTEN OR ENACTED IN THE MACHINE’S PARTICULAR BINARY LANGUAGE . Now, it ia entirely poe«ible to write your programs at thia level, considering and arranging rock-bottom commands. Thia is called machine-language programming (and assembly programming; aee examples a little later on). Indeed, working at thia level ia very highly respected in aome quarters. Others avoid it. Thia l« a very aerioue matter of teats and what you’re working on.
Higher-level languages. seen on earlier
pages,
have more convenient forms for people, but must be translated, either ahead of time or on • running basis, to the bottom-most codes that make things happen in the machine. All of them are built out of machine language. Writing the language processors, programs that enact or translate theae higher-level languages, is considered a black art. (See p.J*.)
Every programmable device haa a “machine
language,”
or rock bottom code aystem that
acti-
vatea the thing directly; ite program follower responds electrically to these codea. and enacta them one instruction at a time. True computera are programmable devlcea thai can modify their own i nat ruction a, change their sequence of operations and do other versatile stuff.
(>^U^r^kcHITEtT^
1V«
W »4 Wb
Computera are baalcally alike. Ignore their
appearances:
a roomful of roaring cabinets may have a great deal in common with • small blinking
box;
indeed, they may have the same architecture, or atructure. and therefore be the same computer. The atructure of computers, in their glorious similarities and fascinating differences, ia called computer architecture. (For the architecture of a beginner’s com
puter,
see p.S*; for the architecture of aome famous computers, eee^p.’jo-} .) Computer architecture covera three main
things:
registers (places where something happens to information); memories (places where nothing happens to information): their interconnections; and machine language, all the bottom-level instructions (for this last see “Rock Bottom,” p. 32,). REGISTERS AND MEMORIES Computers are made, basically, of two
things’,
registers snd memories. A register is where something happens to information; a memory la where nothing happens to information. Let’a go over that alowly.
A register is a place where something happens to information: the Information can be flipped around, tested, changed by arithmetic, or whatever. (We noted earlier that registers are what connect a computer to its accessories. They are also principal parts of the computer Itself.)
A memory is a place where nothing hap- pena to information. A program puts the information there, and there it stays till some program pulls it out again or replaces it,
A main or general register (often called ths accumulator, for no good reason) is where the program brings things to be worked on, tested, compared, added to and so on. There can be several of them in a computer. Other registers perform other functions in the computer; a given computer’s design, or archi-
techture,
is largely the arrangement of registers and the operations that take place between them.
The reason we don’t just have all registers– and no memories at all– ia that registers traditionally cost more than memories. (However, some machines are being tried that have all working registers instead of memory. See STARAN,
p.43.)
Memories come in all sizes and speeds. So lots of computers have big alow memories, such as disk memories, along with their small fast r
THE ROCK BOTTOM PROGRAM FOLLOWER
How, you ask desperately, does thla inner most program follower work? The on* that ia built into the computer?
A memory consists of numerous holding places or storage locations, each holding one standard piece of information for the computer, e word having a specific number of bits (see p. .) We muat stress: a “COMPUTER WORD” HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ENGLISH WORDS OR ALPHABETICAL CHARACTERS. The term refera to a specific machine’s standard memory slot, having a fixed number of bit positions.
One important reason for this standardiza tion is that each holding place, or memory loca
tion,
can be given a number or address. If every slot in the memory has an address, information can be stored in specific places:
and gotten back out of specific places:
A core memory has a definite rhythm or
cycle,
into which It divides the passing time. The memory cycle of a core memory ia so important that Its duration is often called the cycle time of the A request to the core memory made at the beginning of the cycle is honored at the end of the cycle. Core cycles are very fast, being theae days about one microsecond, or millionth of a second. A core memory can only perform one act (store or fetch) during one memory cycle.
One last point about core memories. The number which speciSes an address to the memory is a binary pattern– lust like all the other information (see “Binary Patterns,” p. ). (Or more exactly, whatever binary pattern is sup-piled lo the memory as the address to store or from which to fetch, that pattern will be treated as the address to store or from which to fetch, that pattern will be treated aa a binary number whether it was supposed to be or not. It could be the alphabetic word GRINCH which got there by mistake (aee “Debugging,” p. JJO ), but the memory will treat it as an address number and go to the address specified by that pattern.
The word length (number of bit-spaces in a main register and memory slot) The number of main registers and what they can do; i.e., how they are set up and what operationa can take place in and among them; i.e., the Instruction Set (see
nearby);
The amount of memory; The accessories or peripherals; The cycle time.
Here’s the computer, then, in all its glory: s device with a symbolic program, stored in a memory, being stepped through by s program follower.
The commands of the program cauae the program follower to carry out the individual steps requested by each command of the program.
Aha.
Basically it consists of two specific regis
ters,
tha Program Counter (usually sbbreviated PC) and th* Instruction Register (usually abbreviated IR), and other electronic a tuff, loosaly termed “decoding logic.”
(Since we are already visualizing the program follower aa a little hand, let’s think of the index finger as the program counter and imagine that the thumb can flip an Instruction into a little cup, the Instruction Register or IR What the heck.)
WHEN s program is set into operation, the binary pattern specifying Its first address In memory la put Into the program counter.
Then the instruction at that address 1* fetched to the program follower (that is, put in the Instruction
register),
decoded and carried
THEN THE PROGRAM COUNTER AUTOMAT ICALLY HAS ONE ADDED TO IT, SO IT POINTS TO THE NEXT INSTRUCTION .
The instruction pulled from memory is held In the command or instruction register and there decoded by the system’s electronics. It ia of no concern to the programmer how Ihis Is done electronically. (And indeed electronics is generally of little concern to computer
people,
unless they are trying to design or optimize computers or other devices themselves. Indeed, the electronic techniques are constantly changing.)
All we need to know is that an electrical decoding ayatem (called the logic circuits) carries out the specific instruction– for instance, by shutting off the path to the memory, turning on the adding circuit, and opening paths through the adding circuit and beck to the main register. Now that the program counter holds tha number of the next instruction it in turn Is accordingly fetched and executed.
When an instruction calls for a jump or branch in the program, what happens? The Jump command causes a new number to be stuffed into the program counter, that’s
what,
and ao that’s where the program goes next. ALTERNATING CYCLES Many Instructions tell the program follower to take a data word (also a binary pattern) from memory and put lt in a main register or vice
Such an Instruction is translated by the decoding logic into a request to the memory. Since a core memory can only do one thing during one of ita cycles, the next instruction In the program cannot be fetched until the data haa moved to or from the memory. Thus in many types of program the cycles
Instruction cycle (fetch tha next) Data cycle (data goes to or from
memory),
In at ruction cycle, Data cycle, and ao on.
\S
* $©OT TO v»fjc0l..b.
YOUR BASIC COMMANDS, NOW (Computers exist which do little more than these, and yet they can in principle do anything fancier computers can do.) TO BE SHOWN: The following are tha rock-bottom baaic operations of computers, available aa speclflq Instructions in all computers (with some
variation).
The Drat seven listed below will be used in th* extended example In the next spread. LOAD a binary pattern from cor* memory to a main ragiatar. STORE a binary pattain in cor* memory from a main ragiatar.
NOT TO BE SHOWN: Here are the real of the utterly fundamental commands of computers. (Theae are not used in th* forthcoming example.)
TEST ONE SPECIFIC binsry pattern, and branch in the program depending on the result. SET AN ACCESSORY IN OPE RATION/TURN IT OFF. REVERSE (or “COMPLEMENT”) a binary pattern– changing all the X’a to O’a and vice versa. SLIDE (or “SHIFT”) a binary pattern sidelong through a register. FLIPPER (or “LOGICAL”) operationa between two binary pattern*, especially— OR (or “INCLUSIVE OR” or
“IOR”)–
result ia an X where either original pattern was an X. AND (or
“MASK”)–
reault la an X only where both original
pat
terns had an X.
FANCY OPERATIONS The following operation* ar* deairable but not strictly necessary, and many computers, especially minicomputers, don’t hav* them all. SUBTRACT. (Can also be don* if necessary with combination of adda and flip*.)
SUBROUTINE JUMP— “Go to another part of the program but re me member thia place because you’ll be coming back on your own.” RETURN FROM SUBROUTINE– “Go back to wherever it wa* in the program that you last came from.”
PUSH (on Stack machines only, aee p.
)
—
take a binary pattern and put it on top of the Stack. POP (on Stack machines only, aee p. )— take whatever binary pattern is now on (he lop or the Slack. ADD ONE (or
“INCREMENT”)–
(Uaeful when you’re counting the number of timea something haa been done.) SUBTRACT ONE (or “DECREMENT.” not “excre
ment”)–
(Alao uaeful when you’re counting the number of time* something haa baei
ASTRONOMICAL/WPINITBSIMAL ARITHMETIC (or “FLOATING POINT” arithmetic)– operates on a certain number of Significant Digits and keeps separate track of the decimal
point–
actually a Binary Poinl, ainca it’a rarely If ever done decimally.
Somehow LOADING. STORING, MODIFYING AND TESTING BINARY PATTERNS DOESN’T SEEM TERRIBLY FRAUGHT WITH POSSIBILITIES: bul the endleaa variation a and ramification* make chess look like tic-tec-toe. And part of ihe power, of course. Ihe great speed, the teeny fraction of a second each slop lakes: five hundred operations yel^ take only about a thousandth of a second, no matter how intricate the enactment to which these tiny elepa are built, il atill happen a awfully fast.
A computer, then. Internally Juat consists of certain places to work on information (main
registers),
certain places to keep it the
r**t
of the lime
(memories),
certain pathway* and Interconnection* between them, an instruction-B*I having certain power* whoa* instructions can be operated on out or memory, and • program
fol
lower thai oarrlea out tha tnetructlone of that lnatruction-eet.
ADD TWO binary pattern* together (Thla causes th«m lo be treated aa numbers, whether they were lo begin with or not.)
TUT TWO binary patterns against each other, and branch or not in the program depending on the reeult.
MORS FLIPPER
(“LOGICAL”)
operations: XOR (or “EXCLUSIVE
OR”)–
reeult is an X only where one pettarr. had an X, bul not both.
NAND–
reversed AND. NOR
—
reversed OB.
Almost any operationa can be “built in”-” The sky la of oouraa the limit, since any electronic operation can be added Io a computer’s
1
nat
ruction-ae I if dealred– say. “turn on the electric blender” or “multiply quat
ernions”–
but tha former la more easily done a* an output instruction, and tha latter aa part of a program.
INSTRUCTION-SIT. The ay stem of command pattoms daalgned and wired Into a particular computer, •sen with its exact results
A certain number
of
computer languages sre very widely accepted
and
used;
1
list them
here.
If you
wsnt
to
learn
any of
them,
I
believe that Dsniel McCrscken
has
written
a
manual
on
every
one of
them.
(Not the
variants listed, though.)
Why their namea
are
always spelled with capital letters
I
don’t know. (Generally they get
let
down
in
longer articles, though.)
FORTRAN
wsa
crested
in the
late
fifties,
largely
by
John BackuB,
ae sn
algebraic pro
gramming
syatem
for the old IBM
704.
fflowever, the usual story
is
thst
it
stands
for
“FORmula TRANslator.)
Fortrsn
is
“algebraic,” thst
is,
it
uses an algebraic sort
of
notation
and was
mostly suited,
in the
beginning,
to
writing programs that carried
out the
sorts
of
formulas that
you
use
in
highschcol algebra.
It’s Btrong on
num
bers
carried
to a lot of
decimal places
(“scientific”
numbers)
snd the
handling
of
arrays, which
Is
something else mathematicians
and
engineers
do
a
lot (see
Arrays under
BASIC).
Fortran
has
grown
and
grown, however; after Fortran
1
came Fortran
II,
Fortran
III and
Fortrsn
IV;
as
well
ss a lot of
variants like Fortran
Pi
(“irrational,
and
somewhere between HI
and
IV”),
WAT FOR
and
WATFIV.
The larger Fortrsns– thst
is,
language processors that
run on the
bigger computers–
now
have many operations
not
contemplated
in
the original Fortran, including operations
for
handling text
and so on.
BASIC, presented earlier,
is in
some
res
pects
a
simplified version
of
Fortran.
This program
uas a
surprise from Alan Nslles,
a
student
at
Chicago Circle.
Be wae
amused
by my
praa-tias
of
alphabetising phone
num
bers,
and
wrote
a
program
to do it
automatically.
Premises
of tha
program:
you
sup
ply
it
-jith your phone
number,
and
it prints
out all the
alphabetical combinations that could also
be
dialled
to
reach your telephone.
ITFHIHT
tuoctTin
Behold ecne
of the
combinations.
The
reaipient picks
out the one he
likes from pages
of
them.
ALGOL
is
considered
by
many
to be
one
of the
best “scientific” languages;
it has
been widely accepted
in
Europe,
and is the
standard “publication language”
in
which procedures for doing things
are
published
in
this country. It
is
different from FORTRAN
in
many ways, but
a key
respect
is
this: while
in
FORTRAN the programmer must
lay out at the
beginning of
his
program exactly what spaces
of
core memory
are to
have what names,
in
ALGOL the spaces
in
core memory
are not
given names except within subsections
of the
program, or “procedures.” When
the
program follower gets
to a
specific procedure, then
the
language processor names
the
spaces
in
core memory.
This
has
several advantages.
One ia
that
it can be
used
for
so-called “recursive” programa,
or
programa that call
new
versions of themaelves into operation.
I
guess
we
better not
get
into that.
But
mathematicians like
Originally this language
was
called
IAL,
for International Algebraic Language,
but
then as
it
grew
snd got
polished
by
various international committees
it was
given
its new
name. 0 don’t know
if
anyone consciously named it after
Algol,
the
star.)
It
has
gone through several versions. Algol
62,
the
publication language,
is one
thing; Algol
70,
the
1970
version,
is
much more complicated
and
strange.
Several versions
of
ALGOL have gotten popular
in
this country.
One.
developed
at
the University
of
Michigan,
ia
called
MAD
(Michigan Algorithm
Decoder);
its
symbol
is
of course Alfred
E.
Newman. Another favorite (for
its
name, anyway)
la
JOVIAL (Jules’
Own
Version
of the
International Algebraic
Language),
developed under Jules Schwartz
(and
supposedly named without
his
consultation)
st
Syatem
Devel
opment Corporation.
When
IBM
announced
Ua
System
360
back in
1964,
there
had
been hope that they would support
the
international language committees and make Algol
the
bssic language
of
their
new
computer line.
No
such luck. Instead they announced
PL/1
(Programming Language I),
a
computer language that
was
going
lo be ail
things
to all man.
In programming style
il
resembled COBOL, but
had
faculties
for
varieties
of
“scientific” numbers
and
soma good data structure systems, lt
is
available
for the 360 and for
certain
big
Honey we
U
computers; indeed,
the
operating ayatem
tor
MULTICS
(see p. 1? ) was
written
In
PL/1.
Whether there
ar*
people
who
love
the
language
I
don’t know; there
are
certainly people
who
hate
It.
Below:
Relies’ program
to
calculate
the
date
of
Easter.
The language
is
Algol.
!
tEV«t lJJLeT rii:*T
j ~Jj
j
|
I
lis
at
‘ifiror nnnn* none
5
flfftnT
•BE6IM’
•
IITFC*’ vE»«.t. 1HlNirr.ro(n,vt*B7i
i
jj o»r*
*ca or
iVTbj “fi
”
f”T
“PACE
0’Olj
*:
lt*i 1
II
1
H ‘
Li…
•HFfipi’
”
Hitters.1
CiiRTB.Ct^r
,”,L ,f,F
,
r»T
•IITT.r*.’
»’
rftiTFR|/l:SUlt*r.».l:2/M
•iNTtfir*1
•Puncrnjer
•
xnnn.vit
‘iiTrcf*.1; ~~~rhtc’Si!.c*jsC«.’/’i«o” Mt.^.ciiT-crNT./ts-cisc’FW•i»V«7iiST
•
•WOtCIMTSlaTIJL-
‘IO”|T”
n j
r.:-«onc-J«»«,i*ii
ii’i”c»i ot
••wiDin,
in i
|>no2*
I. |T” ‘IF’ r-«*(*•
*
‘THEN*
M
T.ir” S’JUTl
CI*
*»
I
•£
IP*’*
•
It
HAY!
–
HAV * I
I
‘OD’O*
00:
~|T
‘
A»*.U»;F«WM/KAV
.1/1 i
‘GOTO’ «AWr*.i *Ml|ilF*«!rai/KAif.l/t ‘COtO’
•
I
>»«r.1Na
»i.»AM*»l/X*r,l/Pt
_ ..
.
_ .
C/«.«*.
W
I
t*E*$tE*
l/S.l/lI
1
il
E«T**l/*.l/ll-Al ACFtt1|S(«AV.*/ll_
_
T
TP ‘ ~
F»WS(/-IAV.?/li.E4WE1l/*.?/lt.
4–
-li
„.„•”‘””•-<
: —
Jl
Yecct^
IT'S
C250U
Resesrch
snd
hobby types hate COBOL
or
ignore
it,
but
it's
the
main bualness programming language. Your income
tax.
your checking
ac
count,
your automobile license—
all are
presumably handled
by
programs
in the
COBOL language.
COBOL,
or
COmmon Business Oriented Lan
guage,
was
more
or
lesa demanded
by the
Department
of
Defense,
and
brought into being
by a
committee called CODASYL. which
is
apparently still going. COBOL uses mostly decimal numbers, is designed basically
for
batch processing (described
elsewhere),
snd
uses verbose
and
plonking command formats.
Just because
it's
standard
for
business programming doesn't mean
it's
the
best
or
most efficient language
for
business programming; I've talked
to
people
who
advocate bualness programming
in
FORTRAN, BASIC, TRAC
and
even APL.
But
then
you get
into those endless argu
ments...
and it
turns
out
thai
a
large proportion of business programmers only know
Cobol.
which pragmatically settles
the
argument.
There
are
people
who say
they've discovered hidden beauties
in
COBOL;
for
instance, that
it's
a splendid language
for
complex pointer manipulation (see Data Structures,
p.
Xie
)- That's what makes horse racing.
CJL^f
±
Sos.t 6s.ll
,f
ft**/
"After
you
etudy
it for six
months,
it
makes perfect
sense."
—An IBM
enthusiast. JCL
is a
language with which
you
subrait programs to
an IBH 360 or 370
computer. "Submit"
ia
right.
Its
complications, which many call unnecessary, symbolise the career
of
submission
to IBM
upon which
th* 360
programmer embark*.
(Sea
IBM, pp. S2-3,
and
360,
p. 41.)
SNOBOL
is the
favorite computing language of
a lot of my
friends.
It is a
list-processing language, meaning
it's
good
for
amorphous data. (It derives from several previous list-processing languages, especially IPL-V
and
COMIT.^
SNOBOL
is a big
language,
and
only runs on
big
computers.
The
main concept
of it is
the "pattern match," whereby
a
string
of
symbols is examined
to see if lt has
certain characteristics, including
any
particular contents, relations between
contents,
or
other variations
the
programmer
can
specify;
and the
string substitution, where some specified string
of
symbols
is
replaced
by
another that
the
programmer contrives.
is probably
the
favorite language
of the
artificial-intelligence freaks
(see
.ff*
UP
•
A
fondnesas
for
LISP, incidentally,
is not
considered
to
reflect on your masculinity.
LISP
is a
"cult" language,
and its
adherents are sometimes called Lispians. They
see
computer activities
in a
somewhat different light,
as
composed
of
ever-changing chains
of
things called
"cars"
and
"cudders," which will
not be
explained
here.
LISP
was
developed
by
John McCarthy
at
BUT,
based largely
on the
Lambda-notation
of
Alonzo Church.
It
allows
the
chaining
of
operations
and
data
in
deeply intermingled forma. While
it
runs
on
elegant principles, moat people object
to its
innumerable parentheses
(a
feature shared
to
some extent
by
TRAC
Language).
Joaeph Weizenbaum, also
of
MIT,
has
created
a
language called SLIP, somewhat resembling LISP, which runs
in
FORTRAN. That means you
can run
LISP-like programa without having access
to a
LISP processor, which
is
helpful.
T^eN,
TWs
*W*
tt\s
^
Basically there are two different methods .
A compiling language, auch as FORTRAN or COBOL. i compiler program, which nits in the computer, and “source program,” the way receives the input progri the assembler does. It analyzes the source program and substitutes for it an object program, in machine language, which is a translation of the source program, and can actually be run on the computer. The relation of the higher language is not one-to-one to machine language: many instructions in machine language are often needed to compile a single instruction of the source program
.
(A source program of
100
lines can easily come out a thousand lines long in its output version.) Moreover
,
because of the interdependence of the instructions in the source program. the compiler usually has to check various arrangements all over the program before it can generate the final code.
Most compilers come in several stages. You have to put the first stage of the compiler into the computer, then run in Ihe source program, and the first stage puts out a first intermediate version of the program. Then you put this version inlo a second stage, which puts out a second intermediate version; and so on through various stages. This is done fairly automatically on big computers, but on little machines it’s a pain.
(In fact, compilers tend to be very slow programs; but that depends on the amount of “optimizing” they do, that is, how efficient they try to make the object program.)
An interpretive language works differently. There sits in core a processor for the language called en interpreter; this goes through the program one step at a time, actually carrying out each operation in the list and going on to the
next.
TRAC and APL are interpretive; it’s a good way to do quickie languages.
Interpreters are perhaps the easier method of the two to grasp, since they seem to correspond a little better to the way many people think of computers. That doesn’t mean they’re better. For programs that have to be run over and over, compiling is usually more economical in the long run; but for programs that have to be repeatedly changed
,
interpreters are often simpler to work with.
A BLACK ART
Making language processors, especially compilers, is widely regarded as a black art. Some people have tricks that are virtual trademarks (see below) .
Actually, the design of a language– especially the syntax. how its commands fit logether– strongly influences the design of its processor. BASIC and APL. for instance, work left-to-right on esch line, and top-to-bottom on a program. Both act on something stored in a work area. TRAC, on the other hand, works left-to-right on a text string that changes size like a rubber band. Other languages exhibit comparable differences.
MIXED CASES AND VARIATIONS (for the whimsical)
There are a lot of mixed cases. A load-and-go compiler (such as WATFOR) is put into the computer wilh the program, compiles
it.
and then atarts it going immediately. An interpretive compiler looks up what to do with a given instruction by interpreting il into a series of
steps,
but compiling them instead of carrying (hem out. (A firm called Digitek is well known for making very good compilers of this type.) An incremental compiler just runs along compiling a command at a time; this can be a lot faster but has drawbacks.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
David Gries, Compiler Con at ruction for Digital Computers. Not for beginners, but a beautiful book. Good on abstract theory of languages, too.
How does a computer program print something out an a printing machine? tt sends the code for each letter out to the printing machine.
How doea a computer program respond to something a user types in? It compares the codes that come in from the letters he types with a series of codes in memory, and when it finds a match between letters,
numbers,
words or phrases, brsn-ches to the corresponding action.
How does a computer program measure something? It lakes in numerical codes from a device which has already made the measurements and converted them to codes.
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
Some TV writer’s idea of a computer announces this when data are insufficient or contradictory. Ho hum.
Codes are patterns or symbols which are assigned meanings. Sometimes we make up special codes to cut down the s-mount of information that has to be stored. On your driver’s license, for instance, they may reduce your hair color to one decimal digii (four bits of information), since there are less than nine possibilities for quick identification of hair-color anyway.
Obviously, codes can be any dam thing: any set of symbols that is less than what you started with. But by compressing information they lose information, so that subtleties disappear (consider the use of letters A to F to grade
students).
When you divide a continuum into categories, not Just the fewness of the categories, but the places you draw the line— called “breaks” or “cutting-points”– present problems. Such chopping frequently blurs out important dis-tinctiona. Coding is always arbitrary, frequently destructive and stupid.
Lots of waya now exist to handle writ ten information by computer. These often present better wsys to operate lhan by using codes of this type. But many computer programmers prefer to make you use codes.
(NOTE: there are two other senses of
“code”
used hereabouts: 1) the binary
pat
terns msde to stand for any information, especially on input and output; 2) what computer programs consist of, that is, lines of commands.)
IF
yvO WAMT MUtV&tKS,
WE GOT ‘C^
The basic kinds of number operations wired into all computera are few: Just add (and sometimes subtract) binary numbers. However, up above the minicomputer range, a computer may have multiply, divide, and
more.
Fancier computers offer more types and operations on them.
PLAIN BINARY— Very important for coun ting. Represents numbers aa patterns of l’s snd O’s (or X’s and Oha, if you
prefer).
How to handle negative numbers? Two waya: TRUE NEGATIVE– binary number with a sign bit at the beginning, followed by the number.
JoMt
Points
“Logical deduction” really consists of tech niques for finding out what’s already in a data structure.
“Logical inconsistency” means a data structure contradicts itself. Rarely does it happen that a computer helps you discover something new about a subject that you didn’t auspect or see coming without the computer: after
all,
you hsve to set up a study in auch a way as to make room to find things out, and you can only make room to find some things out.
7n« PlWdH
ChKb
*CUTH»H
Punch cards are not Intrinsically
evil.
They have served many uaeful purposes. Bul the punch-card mentality is still around. Thia will be seen in the programmer who habitually aels things up so we have to use punch cards (when other media, or interactive terminals, would be
better);
who in-aists on the user or victim putting down numbers (when with a Utile more effort the program could handle text, which ia easier tor the human, or even look up the information in data it has
already);
who Insists that people’s last names be cut down to eleven letters because he doean’t feel llk« leaving a longer field or handling exception* in hi* program; who insist* on the outsider cutting hi* information Into anarfy little codes, whan such digestion, if nseded al all, could be batter don* by tha program; and ao on.
The punch card mentality is responsible tor many of the mow that have been blanked on “oonputars.”
Trouble is, the arithmetic is harder to wire for this kind, because there are two zeroes (plus and
minuB)
between 1 and -1. ADD ABLE NEGATIVE— this system does a sort of flip and begins a negative number with all
ones.
It means that the machine doesn’t have to have subtraction circuitry: you Just add the flipped negative version of a number, and that actually subtracts it. This has now caught on generally. (It’s usually called “twos complement negative,” which has some obscure mathematical meaning.] BCD (Binary-Coded
Decimal)—
the accoun tant’s numbering system. Used by COBOL (see p. ^\ ). It’s plain old
decimal,
with every numeral stored in four bits; the machine or language has to add them one numeral at a
time,
instead of crunching together full binary words. FLOATING POINT– the scientist’s number technique for anything that may not come out even. Expresses any quantity as an amount snd a size.
The “amount” part contains the actual binary numerals, the “size” is the number of places in front of or after the decimal point that the number starts. Very important for astronomical and infinitesimal matters, since a floating-point number can be bigger, say, than
9,676,543,210.000
or smaller than
.00000001234567
For some people
even
this isn’t precise enough, so they program up “Infinite precision arithmetic,” which carries out arithmetic to as many places as they want. It takes much longer, though.
WHAT’S AVAILABLE IN MACHINES AND LANGUAGES
Some machines, like the 360, are more-or-less wired up to handle several number types: binary, floating point, BCD. Little machines usually only have plain bin
ary,
so other types nave to be handled by programa built up from that fundamental binary.
Languages make up for this by providing programs to hsndle numbers in some or all of these formats. There are languages that offer even more kinds of
numbers–
IMAGINARY numbers (two-part numbers following certain rules) QUATERNIONS (like Imaginary numbers but worse) and goodness knows what else.
On Ihe other hand, aome languages restrict what number facilities are available for simplicity’s sake. BASIC, for Instance, doesn’t distinguish between Integers (counting numbers) and those with decimal points; all numbers may have decimal points. TRAC Language only
give*
you integers to start, since it’s easy enough to program other kinds of number behavior in QXkm Infinite
precision).
For historical ressons computers have been used mostly with numbers up to now but thst is going to be thoroughly turned ‘ -round. Within a few years there maTbe more text- written prose and poetry-atored on computers then numbers.
During the recent massive lawsuit by
Srr;^”
‘BM’ U WM r«v«l«l that IBM had an awesome number of letters and communications stored on msgnelic memory.
When I lived in New York, I had a driver’s license with the staggering serial number
NO 5443 12903 3-4121-37
Now it may very veU be, as in some serial numbers, that information is hidden in the number thst Insiders can dope out, like my criminal record or automobile
acci
dents,
if any, (N is my initial, and two of the digits show my date of birth, a handy check againat alteration by thirsty minors. But the rest of it is ridiculous.) The fact that that leaves 15 more decimal digits means (if no other codes are hidden) that New York State has provision in their license numbering for up to 999,999,999,999,999 inhabitanta. It is doubtful that there will ever be that many New Yorkers, or indeed that many human beings while the species endures.
In other words, either New York State ia planning on having many, many more occupants, or an awfully inefficient code has been adopted, meaning a lot of memory space is wasted holding those silly big numbers for millions of drivers. However, thst doesn’t represent a lot of money. 10 million decimal spaces these days fits on a couple of disk drives. But It’s an awful pain in the neck when you want to cash a check.
Data has to get inside the machine somehow, and results have to get back out. Two main types of codes— that is, standardized patterns— exist, although what forms of data programs work on Inside varies considerably. (The input data can be completely transformed before internal work starts.)
1. ASCU (pronounced “Askey,” American Standard Code for Information Exchange. This allows all the kinds of numbers and alphabets you could possibly want (for instance, Swahili) for getting information in and out of computers.
ASCII is used to and from most Teletype terminals and key scopes.
However, ASCII is also used for internal storage of alphabetical data in many non-IBM systems, andit la also ths running form of a number of programming languages, such as TRAC language (see
p.
19),
TECO
jie*
–“T.
and GRASS (see IBM’s deliberate undermining of ths ASCII code i* a source of widespread anger. (See IBM,
p.
57,.)
2. EBCDIC (pronounced “Ebaadick.”) Extended Binary Coded Decimal. Thia was the code IBM brought out with the 360. passing ASCII by. (IBM seems to think of compatibility a* a privilege that mu«l be earned, i.e., paid for.) EBCDIC also el-lowa numbers, the English alphabet, and various punctuation marks. Thla ia used to and from most IBM terminals CZ741
type”).
H 4/’» HOLLERITH, meaning the column patterns that go in on punched card*. (They can also come out that way, If you want them to.) CARD-IMAGE BINARY. If for some reason you want exact binary patterns from your program, ihey can be punched oul as rows or column* on punch cards. BT BRUNO Just to show you how comical thing* can get. th* original PL/I specification* (see p.3j; ) allowed numbers to be input and output In lerma of Pounds. Shilling* and Pence 112 pence to the
shil
ling, 20 shillings to the
pound).
No provision waa msde for Guineas (the 21
shil
ling
unit),
or farthings. unfortunately
Data la punched Into cards according to some plan associated with the program. MAGNETIC STORAGE
Data usually has to be marshalled into
rows,
or even regiments and battalions, before lt can go into a computer.
(Some people juat get their data into a computer by sitting at a terminal and typing it in. perhaps answering questions typed to them by s front-end program. But they’re the lucky
ones.
Most of us have to get the data set up on some kind of holding surface before it gets fed in. That’s sn input medium. J
DATA MEDIA
A date medium
(“medium”
is the singular of “media”) is anything thst holds the marks of data outside the core memory of a computer. Thus punched cards and punched paper tape may be used as input media. used for putting information into a computer. (Each medium needs a corresponding input or output device, to whisk across the surface and translate Its marks or holes into the corresponding electronic pulses.)
There are three types of data media:
input,
output snd storage media. An input medium carries the data in. An output medium receives the results of a program; for instance, a sheet of paper coming out of a printing device is an output medium, ss is a punched card or punched paper tape.
Storage media are output media that may be used as input media later on. Thus punched cards and punched paper tape can be storage media. But the better storage media use magnetic recording (which is faster and leas
bulky),
like magnetic tape and disks, or just plain
“disks”
as we generally call them. (See fuller list of mag media under “Peripherala,” p. 57 )
The units and arrangements of data used for input, output and storage are in principle not necessarily the true ones of the data structure used by the program. The blocks and records of storage, for instance, may have irregular data with pointers sitting in them. (Unfortunately there is some carryover, in that programmers are tempted to use data structures which are easy to store and run in and out, rather than handling the true complexities of the sub
ject.
This is always s temptation.)
Let us consider the units and arrangements of data used for input and output and storage. These are, respectively, fields, records, files and blocks.
THE PUNCH CARD
Let’s begin with s fun example: that hoary old medium for input and output, the punched (or “punch”) card. The punch card will ahow ua what a field is.
The punch card is generally believed to have been invented by Herman Hollerith (although the author’s in laws had bitter recollections lo the
contrary).
It waa first uaed on a broad scale to count up the census of 1890, snd lster became an early cornerstone of IBM, but thst’s another story.
The punohes on a csrd represent a row of information (auch as a row of typed
letters),
this is not obvious because the card is a rectangle rather than a line. However, the length of the card ia actually divided into eighty poai tiona, each of which may hold one number, alphabetic character or punctuation mark. These poaitiona are actually narrow columns, eighty of them, with different poaitiona in which holes may be punched. One hole in a column represents • numeral; which position in the column apecifiea what number. Two holes in a column generally mean a letter of the alphabet, three holes in a column mean a punctuation
•rV»uc*.iTH v.«n
J*
*, r-^
Beyond those simple matters there is no preordained arrangement for information on a punch card; it nil depends on whnt the program calls for. But each separate piece or section of information– each bunch of consecutive characters that together have a specific meaning — are called a field.
A field can be a name, a number, an amount or money, an alphabetical code representing something, a numerical code representing something, or other stuff. When the cerda go into the program, the program can pick off the information it needs one field at a time–putting the field in columns 1 to 17 into one program variable, the field from columns nine to ten into another program variable, and so
The punch card is an important example of an input unit influencing the structure of computer programs. It is convenient to use fields on a punch card as the basic data structure of a program and say, “That’s the way it has to be for the computer. In the worst cases we see the workings of the “punch card mentality” or “BO-column mind” (see box).
—•People will often thrust a punched data card at you and ask, “What does this mean?” Who knows? It may have lettering banged along the top, showing what charscters the holes rep
resent,
but if these charscters don’t
Bhqw
anything understandable, such as the person’s name, you’re in the dark. The card may have preprinted section lines dividing it up, but these ere rarely self-explanatory. It’s often impossible just to look at a punched card and tell by eye what the individual fields are for, or even where they begin and end; all that depends on the program. Only someone who understands the program, or at least knows what fields the card is divided into and what the characters represent there, can help.
Sometimes, in dismal systems we encoun ter day-to-day— like for university registration — a punch card will have a person’s name in the first few columns, or worse, a personal serial number. Other information continues from there. These may or may not be recognizable, either from reading the holes by eye, or from designations pre-printed on the card.
ASCII code. You can figure out from the table the bit pattern for any letter, or what any given combination of seven bits
means.
Example. Find the capital letter G in the table. For the first three bits of the
code,
look at the top of the column: 100. For the next four, look sideways to the
left:
Olll.
So G la: 1000111.
VuV
WA*.
r»o-~4 t»«x ‘ ****
(An eighth bit Is uaed as a check on tha number of ones in the code; this la called the parity bit, and either rounds to an even number of bits (even parity) or an odd number of bits (odd
parity).
Thus if a code cornea through to the computer with a wrong number of ones, ths computer can take remedial action.)
Thoee funny multlletter codes are for controlling terminals and like that.
Pocket card courtesy of Computer Transceiver Syatema, Inc.
The same principle of fields applies in other data media, especially magnetic tape and disk. We may extend the notion of a field to explain records and files.
A fl*ld- generally speaking, is a section of positions on some medium reserved for one particular piece of information, or the data in it,
A record is a bunch of fields atored on some medium which have some organized use. (For instance, the accounting information held by an electric utility company about a particular customer is likely to be stored as a record with at least these fields: account number-, last name;
initials;
address; amount currently owed.)
A file is a whole big complete bunch of information thst is stored someplace. In many applications a file la composed of numerous similar, consecutive records. For instance, an electric company may well store the records for all of its customers on a magnetic tape, ordered by account number (account 000001
first).
Storing sequences of similar records in long files is typical of business programs, though perhaps this should begin to change. It’s especially suited to batch processing, that is. handling many records in the same way at the same time. (See “System Programs.”)
Now, the divisions of field, record and file are conceptual: they are what the programmer thinks about, based on the information needs of a specific computer program.
A block is something else, which may be related only to quirks of the situation.
A block is s section of stored material, divided either according to the divisions of the data or peculiarities of the device holding it, such as a disk drive. Short records may be stored many to a block. If records are long they may be made up of many blocks.
-tin particular, tape blocks can be almost any size, while disk blocks often hsve a certain fixed size (number of characters or bits) based on the peculiarities of the individual device. (This can be a pain in the neck.)
On the other hand, due
to.
the quirks of magnetic recording, your program usually can’t just change something in the middle of a block; the whole disk block or tape file has to be replaced. This is less trouble with s short disk block than a long tape file.
TRADITIONAL CONVEYER-BELT PROGRAMS
Many traditional business programs sre of this type, reading in one data record at a time, doing something to it (such as noting that an Individual haa paid the exact amount of his gas) and writing out a new record for that customer on the current month’s tape.
THB PROBLEM Standardized fields, blocks snd records sre often necessary or convenient. But, on th* other hand, the kinds of computer programs people find oppressive often have their roots in this kind of data storage and Its associated styles of programming, especially the use of fixed-field records as the be-all and end-all. The more interesting uses of th* computer (Interactive, obliging, artistic, etc.) use a greater variety of data structures.
People’s naive idea of “programming” is often a reasonable approximation to the notion of “dels structure.” Data atructur* ia how information ia est up_. After it’s set up. programa can twiddle it; but the twiddling options ar* based on how the information is set up to begin with.
A CONCRETE EXAMPLE
.
Suppose we went to represent the genealogy of the moneroha of Eng-England. so far aa ia known, in a computer data atructure. NOTE THAT A DATA STRUCTURE IS DIFFERENT FROM A PROGRAM: if eeveral programmers agree beforehand on a data structure, then they can go separate ways and each can write a program to do something different with it– if they have really agreed on a complete and exact layout. which they may only think they’ve done.
First we con alder the subject matter. Gen ealogy is conceptually simple to us, but aa data ia not aa trivial aa it might seem at first. Every person haa two parenta and a specific date of birth. Each pair of parents can have more than one child. and individual parenta can at different times share parenthood with different other individusls.
Presumably we would like a data structure that allows a program to find out who waa a given person’s parent, who were a given person’s
chil
dren, what brothers and sisters each person had. and similar matters
(BO
far as is known by histor
ians–
another
difficulty).
Note that just because it ia simple to put this Information in a wall chart, that does not mean it la simple to figure out an adequate data structure.
Note too, that any aspect of
the:
data which is left ou£ cannot then be handled by the program. What’s not there is not there.
The easy way out is to use a language like,
say,
TRAC Language, and use its basic units (in this case, “forms”) to make up a data structure whose individual sections would show parentage,
dates,
brothers and sisters and so on.
The braver approach ia to try to aet it up Tor something like FORTRAN or BASIC, languages which treat core memory more like a numerically-addressed array or block, as does rock-bottom machine language.
Let us assume that we hsve decided to use an array-type data structure, for instance to go with a program in the BASIC language on a 16-bit minicomputer. We do not have much room in core memory, so for each person in our data structure we are going to have to store a separate record on a disk memory, and call it into core memory as required.
After much head-scratching, we might come up with something like the following. It is not a very good data structure. It is not a very good date structure on purpose.
It uses a block of 28 words, or 448 bits, per individual, not counting the length of his
name,
which is an additional 8 bits per character or space. However, this in itself is
nei
ther good nor bad. It’s more than you might
expect,
but leas than you might need.
(Incidentally, out of concern for storage
space,
some date fields are packed more than one to a 16-bit computer word. This is scornfully called bit-fiddling by computerfolk who work on big machines and don’t have to worry about such matters.)
Individual’s own (name)
mother father brothers (up to five)
sisters (up to five)
date of 1st reign, if any date of 2d reign, if any female children, up to five
male children, up to five
[_ monarch no. (if any)
,
sex r serial no~. \ stringpointer ^ (two 16-bit words long) serial no. 1 aerial no. ‘”aerial no.
tSUl.Ul bits} Too. months start
BONE HIP BONE KNEE BONE NECK BONE SHIN BONE SHOULDER BONE THIGH BONE
Malcolm C. Hi Data-Structurt Programming. Scott, Foresman, 1973.
-•This book can be recommended to ambitious beginners. It has useful summaries of different languages, as well as fundamental treatment of data structures as they intertwine with specific languages.
An obscure and intricate study of the inter- chongcability of data structures-‘- how they fundamentally interconvert– has been the longtime research of one Anatol Holt, who calls his work Mem-Theory. Mem is from memory. and also, conveniently, a Hebrew letter.
This is an extremely ambitious study, as it in principle embraces not juat much or all of computer science, but perhaps mathematics itself. Math freaks attention: Holt haa said he intended to derive all of symbolic logic and mathematics from relation* and pointer structures. Let’s hear it for turning Russell on his head.
I don’t know if Holt has published snything on it in the open litersturt or not.
However, he does have a game available which seems weirdly to embody these principles. The gamo of Mom la available for (6.50 postpaid (S6.86 to Pennsylvanians) from Stelledar, Inc., 1700 Walnut St.. Phila. PA 19103. It has beautifully colored pieces, looks deceptively simple, and is unlike anything, except discrete abstractive thinking itself. Recommended .
Charles W. Bachman. “The Programmer as
Navi
gator.” CACM Nov 1973. Bachman waa the prime mover in the development of large linked disk data aya-tema at General Electric; he is the Pioneer. This is about big n-dimensional stuff.
David Lefkovitz, File Structures lor On-Llne Syalema. Spartan-Hayden Booka, 112.
Alfonso F. Cardenas, “Evaluation of File Organ ization- a Model and Syatem ” CACM Sep 73. 540-548. Not surprisingly. » turns out that different file organUationa have different advantages. Edgar H. Sibley and Robert W. Taylor. “A Data Definition and Mapping Language.” CACM Dec 73. T50-7S9. Example of current sophisticated approaches; a whole language for nailing the data just the way it should be. Has helpful further citations.
J)AT4
STfOCW
One of the commonest end most destructive myths about computers is the idea that they “only deal with numbers.” This is TOTALLY FALSE. Not only ia it a ghastly misunderstanding, but it is often an intentional misrepresents!ion, and as such, not only ia it a mi arep re sen
tat
ion but it is a damned
lie,
and anyone who tells it ia using “mathematics” as a wet noodle to beat the reader with.
Computers deal with symbols and patterns.
Computers deal with symbols of any kind–
letters,
musical notes. Chinese ideograms, arrows, icecream flavors, snd of course numbers. (Numbers come also in various flavors, simple and baroque. See chocolate box, p,
9f\
.
Data structure means any symbols and
pat
terns set up for use in a computer. It means what things are being taken into account by a computer program, and how these things are aet up– what
symbol*
and arrangements are used to represent them.
The problem, obviously, is Representing The Information You Want Just The Way You Want It, in all its true complexities.
(This is often forbiddingly stated as “making a mathematical model”– but that’s usually in the
rhetorical,
far-fetched and astral sense in which all relations are “mathematical” and letters of the alphabet are considered to be a special distorted kind of number.)
Now It happens that there are many kinda of data atructure, and they are interchangeable in intricate ways.
The aame data, with all its relationships and intricacies, can be set up in a vast variety of arrangements and styles which are inside-out and upaide-down versions of each other. The same thing (aay, the serial number, 24965, of an automobile) may be represented in one data structure by a set of symbols (such as the decimal digits 2, 4, 9, 6, 5 in that
order),
and in another data structure by the position of something else (such as the 24965th name in a list of automobile owners registered with the manufacturer).
Furthermore, many different forms of data may be combined or twisted together in the same overall aetup.
The data structure choaen goes a long way in impoaing techniques and stylea of operation on the program.
On the other hand, the computer language you use has a considerable effect upon the data structures you may choose. Languages tend to impose styles of handling information
.
The
deci
sion to program a given problem in a specific lan
guage,
auch aa BASIC or COBOL or APL or TRAC Language, either locks you into specific types of data structure, or exerts considereble pressure to do it a certain way. In moat cases you can’t aet it up just any way you want, but have to adjuat to the language you are using– although today’s languages tend to allow more and more tvDea of data.
Plainly, then, it ia theae overall structures that we really care about; but to understand over-alt atructures, we need an idea of all the different forma of data that may be put in them.
VARIABLES AND ARRAYS
The earliest data structures in computera. and still the predominating ones, are variables and (We met them earlier under BASIC, aee
fP-H>-f7.
and APL
.
aee
pj,
)
A variable ie a apace or location in cor* memory. (Por convenience, moat programming languages allow the programmer to call a variable by a name. ao that he doesn’t have to keep track of its numerical address.)
An array (also called a table) ia a section of core memory which the programmer cordon8 off for the program to put and manipulate data in. If SPENCER is the name of the array
,
then SPENCER(l) Is the first memory slot in
it,
SPENCER(2) is the second, and ao on up to however big it la.
(You can get a feel for how this ordin arily relates to input from outside– see “How Data Comes, Goes
.
and Sits ,” nearby .)
The contents of a numerical field, or piece of data coming in, can simply be stuffed by the programmer into a variable.
The contents of a record, or unified set of fields, con get put into an array. The program can then pick into it for separate variables. If desired, or just leave them there to be worked on.
Then you twiddle your variable) your program as desired. with
When you’ve done one record, you
repeat.
That’s how lots of business programs
go.
Some other routine kinds, too.
FANCY STRUCTURES
Many forms of advanced programming are based on the ides that things don’t have to be stored next to each other, or in any particular order.
If things aren’t next to each other, we need another way the program can tell how they belong together.
A pointer, then– sometimes called a link– is a piece of data that tells where another piece of data is, in some form of memory
.
Pointers often connect pieces of data.
1 One piece Pointer I
j
of Data
1
Another piece] of Data
A pointer can be an address in core memory: it can be an address on disk (diskpointer); it con point to a whole string of data, such as a name, when there is no way of knowing in advance how long the siring may be (stringpointer).
A series of pieces of data which point to each other in a continuing sequence is celled a threaded
For this reason the handling of data held together by pointers– even though it may make all sorts of different patterns– is called list processing. (The (The term “list processing” might seem to go a-gainst common sense, as it might suggest something
like,
say, a laundry
lisl.
which is structured in a very simple blocklike form. But that’s what we call it.)
Prominent list-processing languages include SNOBOL, L6 and LISP (see p.^l ). There is argument as to whether TRAC Language is a list-processing language.
Here are some interesting structures that programmers create by list processing:
RINGS (or
cycles).
These are arrangements of pointers that go around in a circle to their first item again.
deii;
-a
TREES.
These are structures that fan out. (There are no rings in a tree atructure. technically speaking.)
D • • an aa •
GRAPH STRUCTURES (sometimes called
plexca).
Here the word “graph” is not used In the ordinary way, to mean a diagrammatic sort of pic
ture,
but to mean any atructure of connected
points.
Rings and trees are special cases of graph
PAST
–
CHANGING DATA
One of the uses of such structures is in strange types of programs where the interconnections of information are changing quickly and unpredictably. Such operations happen fast In core memory. In this kind of programming (for which languages like LISP, SNOBOL and TRAC Language are especially
convenient),
the pointers are changed back and forth In core memory, every which way, all the time
.
Presumably according to the programmer’s fiendish master plan– if he’s gotten the buga out. (See Debugging, p.To .)
FANCY FILES
But these structures are not restricted to data in core memory. Complex and changeable filea can be kept on disk In various ways by the same kind of threading (called “chaining” on ma
storage).
Another way of handling changeable files is through a so-called directory block, which keeps track of where all the other blocks are stored.
But these techniques, you see, may be used in both fast and slow operations, and for any pur
pose,
so trying to categorize them tends not to be
helpful.
(Note also that these techniques work whether you’re dealing with bits
,
or characters , or any other form of data.)
Note:
By decent standards of English, the word data should be plural, datum singular. But the mBtter is too far gone: data is now utterly singular, like “corn” and “Information,” a granular collective which may be scooped, poured or counted.
But I draw the line at media ore many, “media” Is plural! Media
“Computers pui ‘orylhing into pigeonholes.”
Graph atructures can go any which way.
Wrong. People put things into pigeon
holes.
And designers of computer programs can set up lousy pigeonholes. If you let ’em. More sophisticated programming con often avoid pigeonholes entirely.
People who want to feel With It occasionally uae the term “bit” for any old chunk of information. like a name or address. Thia is Wrong. A Bit is the smallest piece of binary information, an item that can b* one of two things, like heads or tails, X or 0, one or zero; end all other information can be packed into a countable number of bits. (How many may depend on th* data structure chosen,)
As a handy rule of thumb: uvery letter of the alphabet or punctuation mark ie eight bits (se* ASCII
box);
for heavy storage of ev*ryday decimal numbers, every numerical digit can be further packed down (to four
bit*
in BCD code)
WHERE TO GET IT
ROUND (art obacur* and donnish Joke) p. the Greek letter “rho,” Ii en APL operator / for testing the size of
arrays.
When used In the one-sided format, tt
gives
tne of each dimension of an array. Thus />A. when A is /
is 2
2.
IT
frr
YOUR BOAT’ equals 9. since there are 9 letters In the array ‘YOUR BOAT’; YOUR BOAT’ since p 9 la 1, and ‘YOUR BOAT’ Is likewise 1.
This language is superb for “scientific” programming, including heavy number crunching and experimentation with different formulas on small data
bases.
(Big data bases are a problem.) It ia also not bad for a variety of simple business applications, such as payroll, accounting, billing and inventory.
FAST ANSWERBACK IN APL If you want quick answers, the APL terminal just gives you the result of whatever you type in. For instance,
7 1 2 3 4 (carriage return) typed-in array PROGRAMS IN APL
But the larger function of APL is to create programs that can be stored, named and carried out at a later time.
For thia, APL allows you to define programs, a line at a time. The programs remain stored in the system as long aa you want. Using the “Del” operator (V), you tell the system that you want to put in a program. Del causes the terminal to help you along in various ways.
A nice feature is thai you can lock your APL
programs,
that is, make ihem Inaccessible and unreadable by
others,
whether they are programmers or
not.
in this case you define a program starting with the mystical sign del-tilde (Ays) instead of del ( V>. Bnd invoke the names of dark spirits.
APL, like BASIC, can be classed as an “algebraic” language— but this one is built to please real msthematlcians, wilh high-level stuff only they know about, like Inner and Outer
Products.
Paradoxically, thia makes APL terrific for teaching these deeper mathematical concepts, helping you aee the consequences of operations and the underlying structure of mathematical
things.
Matrix aUjebra, for
Instance,
can be visualized a lot better by working up to It with lesser concepts (like vectors and inner products) enacted on an APL terminal. It would be really swell if someone would put to gether a tour-guide book of higher mathematics at the grade/high school level for people with access to APL. Interestingly, Alfred Bork (U. of
Cal.
at Irvine) Is taking a similar approach to teaching
physics,
using APL as a fundamental language in his physic*
SNEAKY REPEATER STATEMENT IN APL? One of the APL
operators,
“iota” ( i). seema to make Its own program loop within a line. When uaed one-sided, it furnishes a series of ascending numbers up to the number It’s operating
on.
This until the last one la reached. You type: 3 x \ T APL replies: 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 In other words, one-sided iota looks to be doing Its own Utile loop, Increasing its starting number by 1, until It gets to the value on lta right, and chugs on down tha line with each. Very aneaky way of doing a loop . However! It isn’t really looping, exactly. What the lota doea Is crest* a one-dimensional •rray
,
a row of integers from 1 up to the number on It* right. Thia result ia what then moves on
IBM doesn’t sell APL
services.
Their time sharing APL Is
available,
however
,
from various suppliers. Of
course,
that means you probably have to have an IBM-type terminal, unless you find a service that offers APL to the other kind– an addition which seems to be becoming fashionable.
Usual charge Is about ten bucks an hour connect charge, plus processing, which depends on what you’re doing. It can easily run over $15 an hour, though, and more for heavy crunching or printout, so watch It. The salesman will come to your house or
office,
verify that your terminal will work (or tell you where you can rent
one),
patiently show you how to sign on, teach you the language for maybe an hour if he’s a nice guy, and proffer
—•APL services are probably safer to sign
onto,
in terms of risked expenses, than most other time-sharing systems. (Though of course all time-sharing involves financial risk.) Because the system Is restricted only and exactly to APL, you’re not paying for capabilities you won’t be using, or for massive disk storage (which you’re not allowed in most APL services
anyway),
or for acres of core memory you might be tempted lo
fill.
—• In other words, APL Is a comparatively straight proposition, and highly recommended If you have a lot of math or statistics you’d like to do on a fairly small number of
cases.
Also good for a variety of other things, though, including fun.
Different vendors offer interesting variations on IBM’s bssic APL\360 package, ss noted below. In other words, they\ompete with each other in part by adding features to the basic APL\360 program, vying for your business. Each of the vendors listed also offers various programs in APL you can use interactively at an IBM-type terminal, in many cases using an ordinary typeball and not seeing the funny characters; though how clear and easy these programs are will vary.
And remember, of course, that you can do your own thing, or have others do It for you, using APL.
APL is also available on the PDP-10, and preaumably other non-IBM big machines.
THE VENDORS Scientific Time-Sharing Corporation (7316 Wiscon sin Ave., Bethesda MD 20014) calls its version APL’PLUS. They’ll send you a nice pocket card summarizing the commands.
APL-PLUS offers over twentyfive concentrators around the country, permitting local-call services in such metropolitan centers as Kalamazoo and Rochester. (Firms with offices in both cities
,
please note.)
They also hsve an “AUTOSTART” feature which permits the chaining of programs into grand complexes, so you don’t have to call them all individually.
APL’PLUS charges the following for storage, if you can dig
it:
J10 PER MILLION BYTE-DAYS. (A byte is usually one character.) The census is probably taken once a day.
This firm also services ASCII ter
minals,
which some people will consider to be a big help. That means you can have Interactive users of APL programs st ASCII terminals, and that you can also program from the few APL terminals that aren’t of the IBM type.
Time Sharing Resources. Inc. (777 Northern Blvd., Great Neck, N.Y. 11022) offers a lot of APL service, including text systems and various kinds of file handling, under the name TOTAL/APL. Among the interesting features Time Sharing Resources. Inc. have added is an EXECUTE command, which allows an APL string entered st the Keyboard in user on-line mode to be executed as straight APL. This Is heavy.
Perhaps the most versatile-sounding APL service right now Is offered by
,
of all people, a subsidiary of Ihe American Can Company . American Information Services (American
Lane,
Greenwich CT 06830) calls their version VIRTUAL APL, meaning thst it can run in “virtual memory”– a popular misnomer for virtually unlimited memory–and consequently the programmer is hardly subject to apace limitations st
ell.
Moreover, files on the AI5 syatem are compatible with other IBM languages, so you can use APL to try things oul quickly and then convert to Fortran, Cobol or whatever. (Or, conversely, a company may go from those other language* lo APL without changing the way their filea are stored on thla service.) APL may indeed Intermix wilh theae other language*, how
And Ihe prices look especially good: $8.75 an hour connect, »15 a month minimum (actually their minimum disk space rental — 1 IBM cylinder– ao for that amount you get a lot of
storage),
But remember there are still core charges, and II per thousand characters printed or transferred to storage. In the West, a big vendor is Proprietary Computer
Systems.
Inc.
,
V*n Nuy*. Csllfornla.
For an APL
terminal,
you might just want • 2741 from IBM (about a hundred a month, but on a year
contract).
Or see the list under “Terminals”
(p.^),
or ask your friendly APL company when you sign up. Two more APL
terminsls,
mentioned here instead of under “Terminals” for no special reason: Tektronix offers one of its green
ie
graphics terminals (see flip side) for APL (the model
4013).
This permits APL to draw pictures for you. It seems to be an ASCII-type unit.
Computer Devices, Inc. supposedly makes an an APL terminal using the nice NCR thermal printer, which is much faster and quieter lhan a mechanical typewriter. Spookier, though. And the special paper costs a lot of money.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Iverson has a formal book. Ignore it unless you’re a mathematician: Kenneth E. Iverson, A Programming Language. Wiley, 1962. Paul Berry, APL\360 Primer. Student Text. Available “through IBM branch offices,” or IBM Technical Publications Department. 112 East Post Road. White Plains, NY
10601.
No IBM publication number on
it,
which ia sort of
odd.
1969. -•This is one of the most beautifully written, simple, clear computer manuals that is lo be found. Such a statement may astound readers who have seen other IBM
manuals,
but it’s true.
AD.
Falkoff and K.E. Iverson, APL\360 Users’
Manusl.
Also available from IBM. no publication number. POCKET CARDS (giving very compressed sum maries) are available from both: Scientific Time Sharing Corp. (see WHERE TO GET IT) Technical Publications Dept., IBM. 112 East Post Road. White
Plains,
N.Y.
10601.
Ask for APL Reference Data card S210 0007-0. May cost a quarter or something.
Paul Berry. APL\ll30 Primer. Adapted from 360
manual.
Same pub. But for version of APL that runs on the IBM 1130 minicomputer. Roy A. Sykes. “The Use and Misuse of APL.” $2 from Scientific Time-Sharing Corp.. 7316 Wisconsin Ave.
.
Bethesda MD Z0014. A joker for you math freaks. Trenchard More,
Jr.,
“Axioms and Theorems for a Theory of
Arrays.”
1BM Journal of Resch. * Devt.. March 73. 135-157. This is a high-level thing. a sort of massive set theory of APL, intended to make APL operators apply to arrays of
arrays,
and lead ultimately to the provability of programs. “Get on Target with APL.” A suggestive circular sales thingy. IBM G520-2439-0. IBM has a videotaped course in APL by A.J. Rose. (Done 1968.) £^>What you really need to get started is Berry’s Primer, Falkoff and Iverson’s manual, and a pocket card. Plus of course the system snd the friend to tutor you.
Power and simplicity do not often go logether. APL is an extremely powerful language for mathematics, physics, statistics, simulation
to debug. Indeed
.
APL programs are hi to understand because of their density. And the APL language does no! fit very well or
OS7″”
APL is not just a programming language. It is also used by some people as a definition or description language. that
is,
a form of notation for stating how thing* work (laws of nature, algebraic systems, computers or
whatever).
For instance, when IBM’s 3S0 computer ceme
out,
Iverson and his friends did a very high-class article deacriblng formally in APL juat what 360* do (the machine’s architecture). But of course this was even less comprehensible lhan Ihe 380 programming manual. Falkoff. A.D.
.
K.E. Iverson snd E.H. Sussenguth. “A Pormsl Description of System/360,” IBM Systems Journal, v.3
no.
3.
1964. The forms! description In APL. IBM System/360 Operating System: Assembler Language. Document Number C28-6514-X (where X is a number signifying the latest
edition).
IBM Technical Publication*. Whit* Plain* New York. The Manual.
Few people know ell or APL. or would went to. The operation” are diverse and obscure. and many or them are comprehenaible only to people in mathematical fields. However. if you know a dozen or so you can really get off the ground
Aa in BASIC, you can use subscripts to get at specific elements in arrays. Referring to the examples above, if you type
JOE
[2]
you get back on your typewriter its value
7.1
and if you type
NORA £2. 4J
you get back
There are basically four kinds of information used by APL, and all of them can be put in arrays. Three of theae types are numerical. and arrays of them look like thia on paper:
Integer arraya: 2 4 -6 8 10 2048
Scalar arrays: 2.5 -3.1416 0.001 2795333.1 (a scalar is something that can be measured on a ruler-like scale, where there are always points in betweeen.)
Logical arrays: 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 (theae arrays of ones and zeroes are called “logical” for a variety of
reasons:
in this case we could call them
“logical”
simply because they sre uaed for picking and choosing and deciding.)
These three numerical types of information may be freely intermixed in your arrays. One more type, however. 1B allowed. It’s hard to figure out from the manuals, but evidently this type can’t be mixed in with the others too freely. We refer to the alphabetical or “literal” array, as in
The quick brown fox tumped over the lazy dog.
Now, pre-written APL programs can print out literal information, end accept it from a user al a terminal, which ia why APL is good for the creation of systems for naive users (see “Good-Guy
Systems,”
p. ‘7).
Literal vectors may be picked apart, rearranged and assembled by all the regular APL operators. That’s how we twiddle our text.
CRASHING THE SYMBOLS TOGETHER
Now that we know about the operators and the arraya, what does APL do?
It works on arrays, singly and in pairs, according to those funny-looking symbols, ss the APL processor scans right-to-left.
IVERSON’S TAFFY-PULL
A number of baaic APL operators help you stretch, squish and pull apart your arrays. Consider the lowly comma (called “ravel,” which means the same as
“unravel”).
,A forget A’s old dimensions, make it one-dimensional. A,B make A and B one long one-dimensional array.
Here la how we make things appear and disappear.
(“Compression.”)
A/B A must be a one-dimensions! array of ones and zeroes. The result is those elements of B selected by the ones. Example: 1 0
1 /
c a t results in
The opposite slash has the opposite effect, inserting extra null elements where there are zeroes: 1 1 0 l\3 5 » results in 3 5 0 9 Here’s another selector. Thia operator takes the first or laat few of A. depending on size and sign of B:
snd B 4 A is the opposite.
If you want to know the relative poaitiona of numbers of different sizes in a one-dlmenaional array,
^ (name of array) will tell you. Il gives you the positions, in order of size, of the numbers. And ^ doea It tor descending order.
These sre Just samples. The list goes on
SAMPLE PROGRAMS
Here is an APL program that types out backwards what you type in. First look at the program, then the explanation below.
V
Explanation. The down-pointing triangles
(“delB”)
symbolize the beginning and end of a program, which in this case wc have called REV. On Line 1, the “Quote-Quad” symbol (on the right) causes the APL processor to wait for alphabetical
input.
Presumably the user will type something. The user’s line of input is stuffed into thing or array 1. The user’s carriage return tolls the APL processor he has finished, so it continues in the program. On the second line. APL takes array I and does a one-Bided (Jj to
it,
which happens to mean turning it around. Left-arrow into the quote-quad symbol means print it out.
Because of APL’s compactness, indeed, this magnificent program can all go on one line:
^7 REV
v First the input goes into I, (hen the processor does a p I (reversal) and puts it out.
And here is our old friend, the fortune-cookie prisoner.
V1NF
‘HELP, I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP’ 10 o
v
On line 1 the program prints out whatevcr’s in
quotes.
And line 2 causes it to go back and do line 1 again. Forever.
THE
TKT-W>-&BMJcH
‘V( I|TL
It should be mentioned at Ihis point that branching tests are conducted in APL programs by specifying conditions which are either true or
false,
and APL’s answer is 1 if
true,
0 if false. (This is another thing these logical arrays are for.)
This operation leaves the number 1, because 3 is greater than 2. So you could branch on a test with something like
—» 7 a A > B
which branches to line 7 in the program if A Is greater than B. and is ignored (as an unexccutable branch to line zero) if B is greater than A.
Some love
lt,
some hate it.
THE APL ENVIRONMENT
Aside from Ihe APL language itself, lo program in APL you must learn a lot of “system”
commands,
alphabetical commands by which to tell the APL processor what you want to do in general — what to store, what to bring forth from storage, and so
on.
Ordinarily you have a workspace, a collec tion of programa and data which you may summon by name. When it comes– that is, when the computer has fetched thia material and announced on your terminal that it ia ready– you can run the programa and use the data in your workapace. You can also have passwords for your different workspaces, so others at other terminals cannot tamper with your stuff.
This is not the place to go into the syatem
commands,
ir you’re serious, you can learn them rrom the book or the APL salesman.
There are many, many different error messages that ihe APL processor can send you, depending on the circumstances. It is possible to make many, many mIntakes In APL, and there are error messages for all or them. All or them, that ia. lhat look to the computer like
errors;
If you do something permissible that’s not what you intended, the computer will not tell you.
But It is a terminal language, designed to help people muddle through.
Crjoitej
of
jYMtocy
Iverson’s notation Is built around the curious principle of having the same symbols mean two things depending on context. (Goodness knows he uses enough different symbols; doubling up at least means he doesn’t need any more.) It turna out that this notation represents a consistent series of operations in astounding combinations.
The overall APL language, really. Is the carrying through of this notation to create an immensely powerful programming language. The Impetus obviously came from the desire to make various intricate mathematical operations eosy to command. The result, however, is a programming language with great power for simpler teaks aa
well.
Now, the consequences of this overall Idea were not determined by God. They were worked out by Iverson. very thoughtfully, so as to come out symmetrical-looking and easy to remember. What we see is the clever exploitation of apparent but inexact symmetries in the ideas. Often APL’s one-sided and Iwo-sided pairs of operators are more suggestively similar than really the same thing.
When Iverson assigns one-sided and two- aided meanings to a symbol, often the two meanings may look natural only because Iverson is such an
artist.
Example:
two-sided one-sided AX B AB A times B the sign of B
This makes sense. To argue that it is Inherent in “taking away half the idea of multiplication.” however, is dubious.
Some symmetries Iverson has managed to come up with are truly remarkable. The arrow, for instance. The left arrow:
Assignment statement: B (which may have been computed during the leftward scan) is assigned the name of A;
The jump statement, where B (which may have been computed during ihe leftward scan) is a statement number; the program now goes and executes that line.
This symmetry is mystically interesting because the assignment snd jump statements are so basic to programming.
Or consider this:
x«-n take input from the user and stuff it into X.
Another weird example: supposedly ihe conditional branch B/A
(one way of writing, “jump to A if B is true”) is a special case of the “compression” operator. (Berry 360 primer. 72 and 165.) This is very hard to understand, although it seems clear while you’re reading it.
On the other hand, there is every indication that APL is so deep you keep finding new truths in
it.
(Like the above paragraph.) The whole thing is Just unbelievable. Hooray for all that.
APL FOR USER-LEVEL SYSTEMS (See “Good-Guy Systems.” p. 15 ) Because APL can solicit text input from a uaer and analyze It, the language la powerful for the creation of user-level environment and systems– with the drawback, universal to all IBM terminals, that input linea muat end with specific characters. In other worda, it can’t be aa fully Interactive a* computer languages thai use ASCII terminals. Needless to say, the mathematical elegance and power of th* system Is completely unnecessary for moat user-level syatems. Bul It’s nice to know it’s there. APL Is probably beat for syatems with well-defined and seg regated filea – “array-type problems,” like payroll, accounts and so on. It Is not suited for much larger emorphoua and evolutionary aluff. the way liat languages like TRAC are. Don’t us* APL if you’re going to store large evolving texts or huge brokerage data
bases,
like what tankers are free in the Mediterranean.
The quickesl payoff may lie in using APL to replace bu*in*aa form* and hasten the flow of information through • compsny. A salesman on the road with an APL
terminal,
for instance, can at once enter hi* order* in the computer from the cu*tomer’a
office,
checking inventory directly
.
If th* program ia up.
23
Here is another example showing how we chug
•Jong
the row of symbols and take it apart, Again, the alphabetical entitles represent things.
^
first
operation (one-sided^
second
operation (two-sided)
Try
dividing
up
these
examples:
ROMEO
ELEANOR <3> SAM C^? SUSIE
One more thing needs to be noted. Not only can we work out the sequences of operations, from right to
left,
between the symbols; the computer can carry them out in a stable fashion. Which is of course essential.
The
truth
of the matter is
that
APL In the com
puter
is a
continuing
succession
of things being operated on and
replaced
in the
work
area.
first
thing
f
‘YARGH
thing
that
results
from
operation Ly done to
that
by UG V
and so o
What is effectively happening is that the APL processor is holding what it’s working on in a holding area. The way it carries out the scan of the APL language, there only has to be one thing in there at a time.
Suppose we have a simple user program,
Y + – Z
Starting at the right of this user program, the main APL program puts Z into the work area. That’s the first thing. Then, stepping left in the user program, the APL processor follows the rules and discovers that the next operation makes it
which happens to mean, “the negation of Z.” So it carries this out on Z snd replaces Z with the result,
-Z.
Then, continuing to scan leftward, the APL processor continues to replace what was in the work area with the result of each operation in the
suc
cessive lines of the user program, till the program is completed.
0
^ r-y-)
f
+ -7.
.-IN
SOME APL OPERATORS
It would be insane to enumerate them all. but here is a sampling of APL’s operators. They’re all on the pocket cards (see Bibliography).
For old times’ sake, here are our friends: (And a cousin thrown in for symmetry.)
•A plain A (whatever A should hsppen to be) A+B A plus B (whatever A should happen to B. heh heh) -B negation of B A-B A minus B xB the sign of B (expressed as -1,0 or 1) AxB A times B
And here are some grooviea:
!A factorial A (1×2*3 … up to A) A! B the number of possible combinations you can get from B, taken A at a time ?A a random integer taken from array A A?B take some Integers at random from B. How many? A.
But.
of course, APL goes on and on. There are dozens more (including symbols made of more than one weird APL symbol, printed on top of each other to make a new
symbol).
Consider the incredible power. Single APL symbols give you logarithms, trigonometric functions, matrix functions, number system conver
sions,
logs to any arbitrary base, and powers of e (a mysterious number of which engineers are
fond).
Other weird things. You can apply an oper ation to all the elements of an arrsy using the / operator: +/A is the sum of everything in A, x/A is the combined product of everything in A. And so on. Whew.
As you may suspect, APL programs can be incredibly concise. (This is a frequently-heard criticism: that the conciseness makes them hard to understand and hard to change.)
MAKE YOUR OWN
Finally and gloriously, the user may define hia own functions, either one-sided or two-sided, with alphabetical names. For instance, you can create your own one-sided operator ZONK, as in
ZONK B
and even a two-sided ZONK,
A ZONK B
which can then go right in there with the big boys:
A ^ ZONK \ ^ B
Don’t ask what it means, but it’s allowed.
APL THINGS, TO GO WITH YOUR OPERATORS
As we said, APL has operators (already explained) and things. The things can be plain
numbers,
or Arrays (already mentioned under
BASIC).
Think of them as rows, boxes and superboxes of numbers:
2 4 6
2 4 3 5
1
I S I
10 a one-dimensional thing
a two-dimensional thing
a three-dimensional thing, seen from Ihe front. Maybe we better look at the levels side by side: 13 2 4 5 7 6 8
APL can have
ThingB
with four dimensions, five and so on, but we won’t trouble you here with pictures.
Oh yes, and finally a no-dimensional thing. Example:
It is called no-dimensional because there is only one of
It,
so
it
is not a row or a
box.
Seriously, these are arrays, and Iverson’s APL works them over, turns them inside out, twists snd zsps through to whatever the answers are.
As in BASIC and TRAC, the arrays of APL are really stored in the computer’s core memory, associated with the name you give them. The arrays may be of all different sizes and dimensionality:
(empty Biray, but a name is saved for it.)
[NUML
3.1416]
(a zero-dimensional array, since it’s only one number.)
Esch array is really a series of memory locations with its label and boxing information— dimensions snd lengths— stored separately. One very nice thing about APL is that arrays can keep changing their sizes freely, and this need be of no concern to the APL progTsmmer. (The srrays csn also be boxed and reboxed in different dimensions just by changing the boxing information— with an operator called “ravel.”)
Swine
PRESS©!
An APL machine, a mini that does nothing but APL. is now available from a Canadian firm for the mere pittance of
THREE
THOUSAND
FIVE
HUNDRED
DOLLARS
,
the price of many a mere terminal. This according to Computerworld. 10 Oct 73.
Run, don’t walk, to Micro Computer Machines, Inc.. 4 Lansing Sq., Wlllowdsle, M2J 1T1, Ontario, Canada. That $3500 gets you a 16K memory, the APL program, keyboard and numerical keyboard, and plasma display. Cassette (which apparently stores snd retrieves arrays by name when called by the program) is $1500 extra. RUNS ON BATTERIES. Sorry, no green stamps. (Note that the APL processor
tekeB
up most of the 16K, but you can get more.)
The rumor that IBM has APL on a chip. Inside a Selectrlc
—
which therefore does all these things with no external connection to any (external) computer– remains unsubstantiated. The rumor haa been around for some time.
But it’s quite possible.
The thing is. lt would probably destroy IBM’s entire product line– and pricing edifice.
22
TWO-SIDED OPERATORS SAME SYMBOLS WORK BOTH WAYS
In old-fashioned notations, such as ordinary arithmetic, we are used to the idea of an operator between two things. Like
2+2
or in algebra,
STATIC
6UVe|^
APL
Some people call it a “scientific” language. Some people call it a “mathematical” language. Some people are most struck by its use for interactive systems, so to them it’s an interactive language. But most of us just think of it as THE LANGUAGE WITH ALL THE FUNNY SYMBOLS, and here they are:
These,
too, occur in APL; indeed, APL can also nest two-sided operators— that is, put them one inside the other, like the leaves of a cabbage. Old-fashioned notations nest with parentheses. But APL nests leftward. It works according to a very simple right-to-left rule.
xX y X 2
the result of this ,
*punoc*w+e
J
A\=Q;
{”
°
V
‘
A <*S2=>)V:i_(+T-*i~0?L-
1238U657]9.BFiUN-ITOQV*
PRVCAZxWYEMO/XL.SJGKH
Enthusiasts see it as a language of incon ceivable power with extraordinary uses. Cynics remark that it has all kinds of extraordinary powers for inconceivable uses— that is, a weird elegance, much of which has no use at
all,
and some of which gets in the way.
This is probably wrong. APL is a terrific and beautiful triumph of the mind, and a very useful programming language. It is not for everybody, but neither is chess. It is for bright
chil
dren, mathematicians, and companies who want to build interactive systems but feel they should stick with IBM.
APL is one of IBM’s better products, probably because it is principally the creation of one man, Kenneth Iverson. It is mainly run on 360 and 370 computers, though implementations exist for the DEC PDP-10 and perhaps other popular
machines.
(Actually iverson designed the language at Harvard and programmed it on his own initiative after moving to IBM; added to the product line by popular demand, it was not a planned product and might in fact be a hazard to the firm, should it catch on big.)
APL is a language of
arrays,
with a fascinat ing notation. The array system and the notation can be explained separately, and so they
will.
Let’s just say the language works on things modified successively by operators. Their order and result is based upon those fiendish chicken scratches, Iverson notation.
THAT NIFTY NOTATION
The first thing to understand about APL is the fiendishly clever system of notation that Iverson has worked
out.
This system (sometimes called Iverson notation) allows extremely complex relations and computer-type events to be expressed simply, densely and consistently.
(Of course, you can’t even type it without an IBM Selectric typewriter and an APL
ball.
Note the product-line tie-in.)
The notation is baaed on operators modifying
things.
Let’s use alphabetic symbols for things and play with pictures for a minute.
is operated on by the next thing and operator, yielding another result
which is in turn operated on by the next thing and operator, yielding final result.
ONE-SIDED OPERATORS
We are also used to some one-sided operators in our previous
life.
For instance:
–
1
means the negation of 1;
means negating that.
APL can also nest one-sided operators.
Now
.
one of the fascinating kickers of APL is the fact that most of the symbols have both a one-sided meaning and a two-sided meaning; but, thank goodness, they can be easily kept straight.’
Here is a concrete example: the symbol T or “ceiling.” Used one-sided, the result of operator f applied to something numerical is the integer just above the number it is applied to: [7.2 is 8. Used two-sided, the result is whichever of the numbers it’s between is larger: 10 f 6 is 10. (There is also [_ . floor, which you can surely figure out.)
Now, when you string things out into a long APL expression, Iverson’s notation determines exactly when an operator is one-sided and when it is two-sided:
As you go from right to left,
another thing?) OP THING another op? J ^-
you generally start with a thing on the right. Then comes an operator. If the next symbol is another thing, then the operator is to be treated as a two-sided operator (because it’s between two
things).
If the object beyond the first operator is another operator, however, that means APL is supposed to stop and carry out the first operator on a one-sided
basis.
Example:
Conclusion: It’s two-sided. Interpretation: “subtract B from A.
first operator is applied to A;
result is worked on by second operator; thing,
result is worked on by third operator;
result is worked on by fourth operator, yielding final result.
stop.
Conclusion: The first operator is one-sided. Interpretation: “negate B.” Then take next symbol.
A
Weifcj)
exwie,
jt nut
WITH
W n°TWOIS/.
f*\wt.i\\\jf t*w 1t*t
In considering the successive meanings of thia rebus we are proceeding from right to
left,
as you note, and each new symbol adds meaning. ThiB is the general idea.
You will note, in this example. the curious arrangement whereby you can have several pictures
,
or operators
,
in a row
.
This is one of the fun features of the language.
Just for kicks, let us make up a notation having nothing to do with computers, using these Iverson principles:
1) If an operator or symbol is between two names of things, carry it out two-sidedly. If
not,
carry it out one-sidedly.
2) Go from right to left.
The best simple example I can think of involves file cards on the table (named A, B, C…) and operators looking like this:
OJ 45} 90J 180J 455 90T 1805
to which we may assign the following meanings:
ONE-SIDED: ROTATION OPERATORS 0J A do nothing to A
45^
A rotate A clockwise 45* 90J A rotate A clockwise 90*
etc.
TWO-SIDED: STAPLING OPERATORS B 45^ A staple A (thing named on the right) to B (thing named on the left) at a position 45* clockwise from middle of B’s centerline.
A90^B T 1
A
90)
90} B l_
90!
A
90}
B
455 A 90} B
455 A
90}
90} B /x
B 0}
45)
A
C 45) B 0)
90)
A
0)
A
I
~* X*
B
4,fl,
.ut
(..
And equivalently for other angles.
Now
.
using these rules, and letting our things be any file cards that are handy, here are some results:
It’s hard to believe, but there you are. This notation seems adequate to make a whole lot of different stapled patterns.
Exercise! Use this nutty file card notation to program the making of funny patterns
.
Practice with a friend and see if you can communicate patterns through these programs. one person uncomprehendingly carrying out the other’s program and being surprised .
The point of all this has been to show the powerful but somewhat startling way that brief scribbles in notations of this type can have all sorts of results.
#(ZLP,S,4)
which is allowed to survive as is, because the moving finger of the TRAC scanner does not re-scan the result.
It Is left to the very curious to try to figure out why this Is needed.
Whatever
can be
executed
is
replaced
by
its
i
•suit.
ThiB
may or may not
yield
something
which
is in
turn
executable.
When
nothing
left
is
executable,
what’s
left
is
printed
out.
That’s
the
TRAC
language.
OUTPUT.
PS,
string PRINT STRING: prints out the second argument. INPUT. RS READ STRING: this command is replaced by a string of characters typed In by the user, whose end Is signalled bv a changeable “meta” character. CM, arg2 CHANGE META: first character of second argument becomes
^
new meta character. May be carriage-return code.
READ CHARACTER: this command is replaced by the next character the user types in. Permits highly responsive interactive systems.
DISK COMMANDS. SB,blockname,forml,form2 …
L,ST0RE
BLOCK: under block name supplied, stores forms listed
FB,
blockname FETCH BLOCK: contents of named block are quietly brought in to forms storage from disk.
FAST ANSWERBACK DM TRAC LANGUAGE
TRAC Language can be used for fast answerback to simple problems. Typing in long executable TRAC expressions causes the result, if any, to be printed back out immediately.
For naive users, however, the special advantage is in how easily TRAC Language may be used to program fast answerback environments of any kind.
A SERIOUS LANGUAGE; BUT BE WILLING TO BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEE
TRAC Language,is, besides being an easy language to learn, very powerful for text and storage applications.
Conventional computer people don’t necessarily believe or like lt.
For instance, as a consultant I once had programmed, in TRAC Language, a system for a certain intricate form of business application. It worked. It ran. Anybody could be taught to use it in five minutes. The client was considering expanding it and installing a complete system. They asked another consultant.
It couldn’t be done in TRAC Language, said the other consultant; that’s some kind of a “university” language. End of project.
HOW TO GET IT
There have been, until recently, certain difficulties about getting access to a TRAC processor. Over the years, Mooers has worked with his own processors in Cambridge. Experimenters here and there have tried their hands at programming
It,
with little compatibility in their results. Mooers has worked with several large corporations, who said said they wanted to try processors to assess the value of the the language, but those endeavors brought nothing out to the public.
FINALLY, however, TRAC Language service Is pub- lically available, in a fastidiously accurate processor and with Mooers’ blessing, on Computility™timesharing service. They run PDP-10 service in the Boston-to-Washington area. (From elsewhere you have to pay long distance. ) The charge should run $12 to $15 per hour in business hours, less elsewhen. But this depends to some extent on what your program does, and is hence unpredictable. A licensed TRAC Language processor may be obtained from Mooers for your own favorite PDP-10. Processors for other com
puters,
including minis, are in the planning stage.
TRAC Language is now nicely documented in two new books by Mooers, a beginner’s manual and a standardization book (see Bibliography).
Since Mooers operates a small business, and must make a livelihood from
it,
he has adopted the standard business techniques of service mark and copyright to protect his interests. The service mark “TRAC” serves to identify his product in the marketplace, and is an assurance to the public that the product exactly meets the published standards By law, the “TRAC” mark may not be used on programs or products which do not come from Rockford Research, Inc.
Following IBM, he Is using copyright to protect his documentation and programs from copying and adaptation without authority.
Mooers also stands ready to accommodate academic students and experimenters who wish to try their hands at programming a TRAC processor. An experimenter’s license tor use of the copyright material may be obtained for a few dollars, provided you do not Intend to use the resulting programs commercially.
For Information of all
kinds,
including lists of latest literature and application notes, contact:
Calvin N. Mooers Rockford Research, Inc. 140-1/2 Mount Auburn Street Cambridge, Mass. 02138
Tel.
(817)876-6776
MAIN FORM COMMANDS.
DS,
formname, contents DEFINE STRING. Discussed in text.
CL,
formname,
plugl,
plug2,
plug3 … CALL: brings form from forms storage to working program. Plugl is fitted into every hole (segment gap) numbered 1, plug2 into every hole numbered 2, and so on.
SS,
formname,
punchoutl,
punchout2 … SEGMENT STRING: this command replaces every occurrence of punchoutl with a hole (segment gap) numbered 1, and so on.
INTERNAL FORM COMMANDS. (All of these use a little pointer, or form pointer, that marks a place in the form. If there is no form remaining after the pointer, these instructions act on their last argument, which is otherwise ignored.)
LN,
formname,
string,
default Looks for specified string IN the form, starting at
pointer.
If not found, pointer unmoved. (NOTE: string search can also be done nicely with the SS command.)
CC,
formname, default CALL CHARACTER: brings up next character in form, moves pointer to after it. CN, formname,
no.
of
characters,
default CALL N: brings up next N characters, moves pointer to after them.
CS,
formname,
default CALL SEGMENT: brings up everything to next segment gap, moves pointer to it. CR, formname CALL RESTORE: moves pointer back to beginning of form.
MANAGING FORMS STORAGE LN, divider LIST NAMES: replaced by all form names in forms storage, with any divider between them. Divider is optional.
DD,
namel,
name2 … DELETE DEFINITION: destroys named forms in forms storage. DA DELETE ALL: gets rid of all forms in forms storage.
TEST COMMANDS.
EQ,
firstthing,
secondthing,
ifso,
Unot Tests if EQual: if firstthing is same as secondthing, what’s left is ifso; if not equal, what’s left is if
not.
GR,
firstthing,
secondthing,
ifso,
if not Tests whether firstthing is numerically GReater than second-thing. If so, what’s left is ifso; if not, what’s left is if
not.
OH YEAH, ARITHMETIC. (All these are handled in decimal arithmetic, a character at a time, and defined only for two integers. Everything else you write yourself as a shorty program.) AD }> mentioned in text. DI
}
BOOLEAN COMMANDS. (Several exist in the language, but could not possibly be understood from this writeup. )
*
Description of TRAC language primitives adapted by permission from “TRAC, A Procedure-Describing Language for the Reactive Typewriter,’ copyrlght©1966 by Rockford Research, Inc.
BIBLIOGRAPHY =. Calvin N. Mooers, The Beginner’s Manual for TRACW Language, 300 pages,
$10.
00,
from Rockford Research, Inc. (See “Where to Get It.”) ^ Calvin N. Mooers, Definition and Standard for TRAC^T-64 Language, 86 pages,
$5.0u7″from
Rockford Research, Inc. Calvin N. Mooers, “TRAC, A Procedure-Describing Language for the Reactive Typewriter,” Communications of the ACM, v.9, n.3,
pp.
215-219 (March
1966).
Historic paper, out of
print.
This paper is copyrighted, and the copyright Is owned by Rockford Research,
Inc.
,
through legal assignment from the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. And for those who want to understand the depth of the standardiza tion problem, Mooers offers freebie reprints of: Calvin N. Mooers, “Accommodating Standards and Identification of Programming Languages,” Communications of the ACM,
v.ll,
n.
8,
pp.
574-576 (August
1968).
an interpretive language (each step carried out directly by the processor without conversion to another form
first);
an extensible language (you
can add
your
own
commands for your
own
purposes);
a Ust-processing language (for handling complex
and
amorphous forms of data that don’t fit
in
boxes and
arrays).
It is
one
of the
few
such lan guages that fits
in
little computera.
3. DRILLING
THE
HOLES
TEST COMMANDS
IN
TRAC LANGUAGE
There
are
test commands
in
TRAC Language,
but
like everything else they work
on
strings
of
characters. Thus they
may
work
on
numbers
or
text. Consider
the EQ
command (test
if
equal):
#(EQ,
firstthing,
secondthing,
ifso,
if not)
where “firstthing”
and
“secondthing”
are
the strings being compared,
and
ifso
and
if not
are the
alternatives. If first-thing
is the
same
as
secondthing, then ifso
is
what
the
TRAC processor does,
and
if not
is
forgotten. Example:
#(EQ,
3, #(SU, 5, 2),
HOORAY, NUTS)
If it turns
out
that
3 is
equal
to
#(SU,
5, 2),
which it is, then all that would
be
left
of
the whole string would
be
The holes (called
by
Mooers segment gaps)
are
created by
the
SEGMENT STRING instruction.
#(SS,
formname,
whateverl,
whatever2
…)
where “formname”
is the
form
you
want
to put
holes
in and
the whatevers
are
things
you
want
to
replace
by
holes. Example: Suppose
you
have
a
form
YOU
ARE A
CREEP|
You make this more general
by
means
of the
SEGMENT STRING instruction:
#(SS,
INSULT, CREEP)
resulting
in
•{YOU
ARE A [ 1]
which
can be
filled
in at a
more appropriate time.
Fuller example. Suppose
we
type into
the
TRAC processor the following:
#(DS,
THINGY,
ONE FOR
THE
MONEY
AND
TWO FOR THE
SHOW)
#(SS,
THINGY,
ONE, TWO, )
t
note space
We have
now
created
a
form
THINGY
and
replaced parts
of
it with segment gaps. Since each
of the
later arguments
of
SEGMENT
STRING
specifies
a
differently numbered
gap,
we will have gaps numbered
[l],
[2],
and
[3].
The gap [1]
will have replaced
the
word ONE,
the gap
[2] will have replaced the word TWO,
and a
lot
of
gaps numbered [3] will have replaced all
the
spaces
in the
form (since
the
fifth argument
of
SS
was a
space).
The
resulting form
is:
[THINGY]
[[ll3^1^3]THE[3]MONEY[3M^
We
can get
it
to
print
out
interestingly
by
typing
#(CL,
THINGY,
RUN, HIDE) (since after
the
call,
the
plugged-in form will still
be in the
forms storage.) This
is
printed:
RUNFORTHEMONEYANDHLDEFORTHESHOW
or perhaps, if
we use a
carriage return
for the
last argument ,
we can
get funny results.
The
call
#(THLNGY,
NOT A
FIG, THAT, [carriage return]
should reeult
in
NOT
A
FIG FOR THE MONEY AND THAT FOR THE SHOW
In TRAC Language, every command is replaced
by its
result as
the
program’s execution proceeds This
is
ingenioua, weird
and
highly effective
while otherwise
the
TRAC processor would produce NUTS.
To most computer people this looks completely inside-
out,
with
the
thing
to do
next appearing
at the
center
of the
test instruction. Others find this feature at-trac-tive.
DISK OPERATIONS
Now
for the
juicy disk operations. Storing things
on ‘
disk
can
occur
as an
ordinary TRAC command.
#(SB,name,forml,form2,form3 …
)
creates
a
place
out
somewhere
on
disk with
the
name
you
give
it,
and
puts
in
it
the
forms you’ve specified. Example:
#(SB,
JUNK, TOM, DICK, HARRY)
and they’re stored. If
you
want them later
you say
#(FB,
JUNK)
and they’re back.
Because
you can mix the
disk operations in with every thing else
so
nicely,
you can
chain programs
and
changing environments with great ease
to
travel smoothly among different systems, circumstances, setups.
Here
is a
stupid program that scans all incoming text for
the
word SHAZAM.
If the
word SHAZAM appears,
it
clears
out
everything, calls
a
whole nother disk block,
and
welcomes
its new
master. Otherwise nothing happens.
If
you have access
to a
TRAC system
(or
really want
to
work on
it),
you may be
able
to
figure it
out.
(RESTART must be
in the
workspace
to
begin.)
/RESTART]
_ .
fJHftsTTEMP,
#{RS))#(SS,TEMP,
)#(RPT)|
#(EQ, SHAZAM,
#(TEST),
(#(EVENT)))#(RPT)f
f(CS^TEMP, (#(RESTART)))[
#(DA)#(FB,MARVEL)*(PS,
WELCOME
O
MASTER)|
In this example, however,
you may
have noticed more parentheses than
you
expected.
Now for why.
PROTECTION
AND
ONE-SHOT
The last thing we’ll talk about
is the
other
two
syntactic
layouts.
We’ve already told
you
about
the
main syntactic layout of TRAC Language, which
is
It turns
out
that
two
more layouts
are
needed, which
we may
call PROTECTION
and
ONE-SHOT. Protection
is
simply
( )
which prevents
the
execution
of
anything between
the
parentheses.
The
TRAC processor strips
off
these plain parentheses
and
moves on, leaving behind what
was in
them
but not
having executed
it.
(But it
may
come back.
)
An obvious
use is to put
around
a
program you’re designing:
#(DS,
PROG,
(#(AD,
A, B)))
f
safe
|
stripped stripped but other uses turn
up
after you’ve experimented
a
little. The last TRAC command arrangement looks like this
and
you can put any
command
in
it,
except that
its
result will only
be
carried
one
level
##(CL, ZOWIE,3,4)
results
in
(using the forms
we
defined
earlier),
THE MAGIC SCAN The secret
of
combining TRAC commands
la
that every command, when executed,
la
replaced
by
its answer; and whatever
may
result
Is
In turn executed. There
la an
exact procedure for thia:
SCAN FROM LEFT
TO
RIGHT UNTIL
A
RIGHT PARENTHESIS; r-»RESOLVE
THE
CONTENTS
OF THE
I PAIRED COMMAND PARENTHESES / (execute
and
replace
by
the command’a
result);
STARTING
AT THE
BEGINNING
OF THE
RESULT, KEEP SCANNING LEFT-TO-RIGHT UNTIL
A
RIGHT PARENTHESIS,
– j
WHEN
YOU GET TO THE
END, PRINT
OUT
WHAT’S LEFT.
IJ’i*adk*y«^
(>/V’V
BASIC
Ok
(Note:
This is how lt looks •
In
a minicomputer. On a time-sharing system there’s a lot of irrelevant other atuff going on, which we’ll leave out.)
And we will assume, aa previously mentioned, that you have some kind of a terminal– that ia, a device with a keyboard, aome kind of place the computer can aend messages to you and vice verse, and is more or less standard.
Now then: all that ia needed Is for you to understand the BASIC language, and you can program thia computer within the confine* of BASIC.
**•
It
is one of the strange aspects of this field that languages can be taught independently of discussions of the machine itself.
VARIABLES
The BASIC language, like a number of other languages, allows you to set aside places in core memory and give them names. These places may hold numbers. They can be used to count the number of times that things are done (or not
done),
to hold answers, numbers to test against, numbers to multiply by and so on.
In BASIC, these places are given names of one alphabeti cal letter. That means you can have up to 26 of them.
Examples:
1 sometimei even X
Because these named spaces in memory may be used something like the way letters are used in algebra, we call them variables. In
fact,
each one is a place with a
name.
EEL fji-w”! t\*\.
Act-*
I
*44*«J eouUU
e*H*t#i.
If you use the names B ,C and D for variables In your program, the BASIC processor will automatically
setup
places for them to be stored.
The END command
The END command in BASIC simply consists of the word END. It must come last in the program. Therefore it must have the highest line number. Example:
99 END
The PRINT command
Whenever the program follower gets to a PRINT command, it prints out on the terminal whatever Is specified. Exsmple:
97 PRINT “HAIL CAESAR. BIRD THOU NEVER WERT”
When and if the program follower gets to this command, the terminal will print out
HAIL CAESAR. BIRD THOU NEVER WERT
The GOTO command (pronounced “Go 2”)
The GOTO command tells the program follower the number of the next command for it to do, from which It will go on. Example:
62 GOTO 99
which means that when a program follower gets to command
#62,
it must next Jump to 99 and go on from there, unless that happens to be the END statement.
A SIMPLE SAMPLE PROGRAM
These are enough commands to write a sample program.
43 PRINT “HELP
,
I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP” 67 GOTO 43 68 END
The program will start at the first instruction, which happens in this case to be instruction number 43. That one prints a message. The next command, by line number, is 67. This tells the program follower to go back to 43, which it does.
43 PRINT “HELP
,
I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP” <-i 67 GOTO 43 ' 68 END
The result is that your terminal will print
HELP
,
I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP HELP, I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP HELP, I AM CAUGHT IN A LOOP
Interminably, or until you do something drastic. It never gets to the END statement. (Two strategies for doing something drastic are usually to hold down the CONTROL button and type C, or hold down both CONTROL and SHIFT buttons. If you hsve them, and type P. One of these usually works.)
The LET command
The LET command puts something into a variable. Example:
43 LET R= 2.3
What is on the right side of the equals sign in the laat statement. in this case 2.3, is stuffed into whatever location of core memory is designated on the left side, in this case a place known to you only as R. With the result that someplace
in
core memory ia
The LET statement is an example of an assignment statement, which most computer languages have; an assignment statement assigns a specific piece of Information (often a number, but often other things) to some name (often standing for a particular place in core
memory).
The LET command in BASIC can also be uaed to do arithmetic. Example:
14 LET M = 2.3 + (12-7999.1)
(The asterisk has to be used for multiplication because traditionally terminals don't have a times-sign.) BASIC will work this out from right to left snd store the result
in
M.
Tha INPUT command The INPUT statement asks the person at the terminal for a number and then shoves it into a variable. Example:
41 INPUT Z
which causes the terminal to type a question mark, and
wait.
When the user has typed in a number foUowsd by a carriage return, the BASIC processor stuffa Ihe number Into the variable and proceeds with ths program. Here is a program uaing the INPUT statement.
are what make computers go 'round. H your computer only did one thing, then to start it you'd only need one button to
If your computer only did two do sen
things,
without variations, then you could let each operation be started by pressing-one of the keys of the terminal, and thai would be that. But that's not what it's about. We have lota of different things that wc want computers to do, and we want one command to work on different varieties of data, or on the results of a previous command, or even to chew on another command itself: and so a computer language is a contrived method of g-iving commands to a computer that allows the commands to be entwined in a complex fashion.
Thia means having rules the computer can carry out and the person can remember. This means having baaic operations that can be built Into bigger operations (routines, subroutines, subprograms,
programs).
Thus a computer language is really a method by which a user can tie these programs together. Computer languages are built according to contrived sets of rules for tying programs together. Such rules arc 1imi ted only by the imagination of their contrivers, Each computer language has its own contrived system of
rules,
and it may be completely different from the contrived rules tying together any other computer language. (That's one reason for here presenting three different computer languages, to show some of the mad variety that can exist.)
Computer languages tend to look like nothing else you've ever seen. Thus computer programs, which of course have to be written in these computer languages, look pretty weird. Some programs look like old train schedules (in nultiple
columns).
Some look a little like printed poetry. In any case, a COMPUTER PROGRAM NO MORE LOOKS LIKE ITS RESULT THAN THAN THE WORD "COW" LOOKS LIKE A COW. One of the central concepts of this book is that of a'"program follower," a dynamic entity which somehow follows a program,
'.Veil,
EVERY LANGUAGE HAS A PROGRAM FOLLOWER FOLLOWING ITS OWN PARTICULAR RULES. These rules are contrived for convenience, suitability to a purpose, and "aesthetics" of a sort-- often some forra of stark compression. (The program followers wired into computers are some what more akin to one another; see "Rock Bottom," p. 32.) About all we can say languages have in common is: EVERY COMPUTER LANGUAGE ALLOWS LOOPS, TESTS AND BRANCHES, AND COMMUNICATION WITH EXTERNAL DEVICES, as mentioned on p. 11. Beyond that the differences are incredible.
So the basic secret of computer peo ple is this: it's not that the necessarily know so much, but they can adapt to a whole new world of possibilities more quickly.
"lHl3££
i,jui,:iciei
Everyone should have some brush with computer programming, just to see what it Is and isn't. What it is: casting mystical spells in arcane terminology, whose exact details have exact ramifications. What H isn't talking or typing to the computer in sum.' way Din! requires intelligence by the machine Whui is: an intricate technical nrt. What it^ isn't: science. Why three languages? Because one would look loo much alike. Only by perusing several do you get any sense of the variety they take. These three languages make it possible in principle for you to learn computers with no coaching. All you need fin principle) is your own terminal, and tinc-sharinj; accounts with firms running BASIC (most of them do), TRAC Language (for availability see p. 21), and/or API. (for partial list of e p. 25).
Why these three? Several good reasons.
One.
they can be used from a terminal, which means that you could in principle get a terminal in your home and play with the computer from over the telephone. But this is expensive, and at worst fraught with accidental financial liabilities, so the possibility is minor right now. Nevertheless, it should be practical and inexpensive fairly soon.
These languages have been chosen be cause they arc important, very different from each other, very powerful, influential and highly regarded in the field interactive fron time-sharing
<-.v,
tens ind very suitable for making
i
nt Vac
t
i
vc pFUgrans and good-guy systens." cate programs
•imilages .
Because the'
•
: r
.
i we might call < '
Note:
into:
L
. * ; the programmer, i_.ni change from the terminal; interactive are those which interact with users, um is different. However, these languages .irt quite suitable for both. Another reason for these three: they represent, in a way, several major types, BASIC ii, n widespread .ind fairly standard language- that is, il is available on computers everywhere. Moreover, it looks rather like Fortran, which is the most importnm "scientifie" computer language.
TRAC Language, (hough well-known among researchers, has mighty powers lhat are not so well known. Moreover, it achieves its powers through the simple and highly consistent following of a few simple principles, and is ihus both very easy to learn and an elegant Intellectual triumph for its inventor.
Moreover, it is a so-called "list language." meaning lhat it can handle information having extremely varied and changing form-- a very important feature to those of us interested in computer applications like picture-making and text handling, which use amorphous and busy types of data. (See "Data Structures,"
pp.26T)
APL is another elegant language, also worked out handsomely from certain basic i-1— by a very thoughtful and inspired i
In the contemplation of these three lan guages you may begin to see the influence of the individual human mind in the computer field quite contrary lo the stereotype. I would like to stress here that each of these three languages represents somebody's individual personal achievement, and is in turn a foundation upon which others, writing programs, can build
fwo of these language-* r-rn.- rh" creation of interactive : *•
-
\ori on a line-by-line
basi;;
rpj^r
Language (pp. 18-21) p., 'ion of systems that react - , the user types in, rather
tl. .:. .„:;•.,•
.,r Ine carnage return at the end of a line This permits you to profiraia user-level systems that arc even more responsive.
IF YOU'RE SCARED. Don't worry, it's not a test. Flip the pages and look at the exam
ples,
(in particular, you might look for the same program which appears in each language: a program to cause the computer to print "HELP, [ AM TRAPPED IN A LOOP" forever.)
This book is organized so you can look at it or skip it in any order, so there is no particular reason you have to fight through the next three chapters if you want to press on. But if you want to study these languages, by all
Languages that can be used from a terminal are called on-line languages. There are a number of other popular on-line languages: JOSS (the
original),
FOCAL. LOGO. SPEAKEASY. I'm just sorry there's no room for them here.
Some popular non-interactive language arc briefly described on pp. jil->l.
start programming is to have a terminal running A tins nearby who already knows the language and !i; rupterl with questions.
Till more ma note y„u the feci of it. And find yourself writing prolans th.it uoi
V{e
*CST
WAV
TO
ce*w.
A “program” runs on an ordinary computer, without necessarily interacting wilh the outside world: a “ayatem” involves a whole setup, of which the computer and a program in it are just the central things.
A computer language is a system Cor ty int] together the fundamental operations of computers for larger tasks. Each conputer language fits together according to its own principles, based in part on the personality and preoccupations of the person or people who designed it. Modern computer languages generally can handle all the main kinds of programming: text handling, number crunching, storing tiles on disk memory and getting them bock, and controlling whatever external devices vou nay have. Even [ticking pictures in some
Wee
&idit(°yfab}f*\^
Th*
Having Finjjer write*; and, having writ. Hovel on: nor all your Ptely nor Wit Stull lure il back to cancel half a Line, Not ill yoor Test* waih oul a Wurd uf n.
Xhayyam/Fitage raid
Numerous interactive programs exist for editing text at’ computer terminals– in other
words,
for doing what Magic Typewriters do, b. using a computer instead of a small special-purpose machine. Unfortunately most of tiiese systems are
dreadful.
Dreadful, that is, for ordinary human beings. What computer people seem to think of as appropriate systems for handling
Such systems allow you to insert text (with sons
difficulty),
delete (with some dif
ficulty),
and rearrange
(maybe).
Ordinarily the user must learn an explicit cosuaand language, son* system of alphabetical commands that have to be typed In to effect any change m • c ,i. Programmers think this »* goo,i
i-ighens
the mind.
The program geno ag inary “poin te r ,” a i in the text the progr. ally gives the user an in-arker specifying what point m is currently concerned
What is the pointi the operations iirt- to
i of the poii ith
•
trolling the cuiicm
{IUMLIUJI
OJ moving it backward or forward by a spccilic number of characters (including punctuation marks and spaces) or lines (known to the program by the carriage-return codes interspersed in the
text).
2X
J
*
)
A
‘ D }.
:.\\1L
frM«-i
You would think the fundamental dichotomy among: computer terminals waa between those that print on paper and those that show you stuff on
•
screen. But it
isn’t.
(That’s like the difference between people and whales- much greater outside than inside.) Actually the fundamental distinction between terminals is between ASCII (pronounced “Askey”) and IBM terminals. ASCII is a code and scheme of organization which was adopted by “the indus
try.”
under the blessing of the National Bureau of Standards. But IBM has pointedly ignored this standard. The principal terminal of the ASCII type, in sheer numbers, is the model 33-ASR Teletype (trademark of Teletype
Corp.).
so this kind of terminal Is called the “33 ASR type.” or “Teletype-
type.”
or wc even say a given terminal “looks to the computer like a Teletype.”
IBM, however, seems to like changing its systems around a
lot.
for instance changing its codes when it brings out a new computer. (Fortunately, it just happens thai they also sell adapters between them. Whew.) So IBM-type terminals are different by design. There is one main type, however, exem plified by the IBM model 2741 terminal. Thus we say a terminal is an “IBM-type” or “2741-type”
terminal.
Both Teletype- and IBM-type terminals come in either video-acreen or printing models, from a variety of manufacturers.
Indeed, even the Selectric (IBM
trademark),
__EB«=p-i-=-3
typing mechanism appears in some Teletype-type terminals.
There is a very important performance difference between ASCII and IBM terminals. The ASCII terminal can send each character typed by the user– each “keystroke”– to the computer immediately. This means that highly responsive programs can be written, which examine the user’s input and can reply instantaneously, if need be, after anything Ihe user types.
IBM-type
terminals,
however, require a “line feed” character or an “end of transmission” character to be typed by the user to make it the coropuler’a turn. This locks the keyboard so the e
it.
Then the computer must type mlock” signal something, ending with its o that makes it the person’s turn again
Why thia unwieldy design? Supposedly it results from the curious decision, in the design of IBM’s 360 computer, to make aU devices resemble the card reader as far as the computer is concerned. Just as the card reader reads punched cards till the last one is done, the IBM terminal Is designed lo send and receive characters until a “finished” condition Is reached.
,
r-…–t.
(Hy
^l-H…^}
f™-, DGC (.a,
‘f.
ni.
If1,
U ^,it\ VTor, fj.t
VIDEO TERMINALS WITHOUT THE VIDEO
A very hot item right now is a terminal called the “Digi-Log”– actually several different
models–
available from Dlgi-Log Systems
,
Inc., 666 Daviaville Rd., Willow Grove, Ps. 19090. This device fits in a briefcase. Basically it is a keyboard with a socket for the phone, and an antenna wire. You phone the computer, drop the phone handset in the
slot,
and clip ihe wire to the antenna of a TV
set.
Presto! On the TV set appears what you and the computer type at each other. This is especially good for travelling salesmen (to communicate with their offices and ordering system via time-sharing computer) and executives who do computer work from the road. Also for people who want to show off remote computer systems.
Disadvantage: only 42 characters per line, which is awkward for some things, such as programming in Fortran.
Price;
$1200 io $1400. They also
lease.
al rates as low as $40/monlh (3
years).
Also available on rental, supposedly, from Westwood Associates, Inc.
,
SO Washington Terrace, East Orange, NJ 07017.
Ann Arbor
Terminals.
Inc. (Ann Arbor, Mich.?) is said to offer a similar unit that is
The equivalent IBM-type terminal– keyboard, coupler and clip to the TV– is the IPSA-100, offered by I.P. Sharp Associates, Inc. (Bridge Administration Building, Bridge Plaza, Ogdenaburg, NY
13669).
Unfortunately it’s much larger than Ihe Digi-Log– it comes in a medium-size suitcase
—
and more expensive ($1700
up).
However, they offer the APL character-set (see APL under “Magic Languages,”
p’2.2)
as an option– even a model with both normal and APL character-sets as a switch-selectable option (costs even
more).
Recently
,
of all things, plans for a do-it- yourself unit of Ihis type were announced in a popular electronics magazine (Don Lancaster, “TV Typewriter,” Radio-Electronics. Sept. 1973,
43-52).
This does not include Ihe full plans, which ore available for $2 from TV TYPEWRITER, Radio-Electronics. 45 E. 17th
St.
.
New York. NY 10003. Supposedly this can be built for “around
$120″–
probably a deal more – if you are a skilled electronics builder or technician. But that looks to include a great deal of labor. The finished unit holds up to 32 characters per line and up lo 16 lines on the screen: a second memory can be added, to hold a second alternative
screenful.
Upper case only.
The
*Ug-c
Typewriter.-
coated
When you wan’ t in clean pape the beciiininK,
If you’re lucky. A number of different systems are coi.iin- Unfortunately some of th- • v !-••, ne tive di:fi on the market to aid you in error-free tynin” quite badly thought out. hi ,i compu:- I am not sure whether they writes -r IBH would have you call these “word pro- are accidentally or on pur;.. know wh cessing systems,” since that makes them sound pretation is nattering to t’. of-a-piece with their dictation equipment, Ac- I”‘1’ tually they’re text regurgitation systems, but 1
,iave
naJ extensive experience with two lypc-w
r
i
r
.-
r
-.
let’s just call them Magic Typewriters. “c- these systems, the IBM Mag Tape Selectric a hi-Men nun and the
1
HM M,i); Card
I
>.
e
,’u
t
i
ve
.
Suffice it to .is
i
I-.
1
i say th.i
i
‘<•:..
• • ' •
t
.
t
these systems were as cun' '• accident, then the
secti-
. '1 and its, products
•„
:
• Generally these are being sold as secre- might !. lant. \s it is, i.., tarial aids, partly because they tend to be too these in r.-:s 1 I (bay) ungainly for use by writers themselves. A a week, .mi :
• - *
i
* •
n
A I 11.» principal use has been in large law offices, to their cm. using a Tyco where contracts, wills and such are stored as given
littl.-
MI,; "Printing Te "boilerplate" (standard
^
i-.;
t
i
ons of Document) else. In both operand then mod
i
•
. •
L-
lawyer to ficialplausibi, in
;<
ren- 01ivet t justify the ises knots into t.-njiled r..' . !i cessing Syst. verge on the prepusti-ri.ii>. ‘ >ok they say,
1
Si
nagnetlc memory, such as card or disk, and equina circuitry, which responds to Records, on sprocketed Umn …. various acts by the user. used for movie sound
rccoi,!:
…terested in this sort o different tapes to get com ‘ -…national Word Processinj WHAT THEY DO: allow you to type stuff in, which T, AMS Building, sillo’ ia both typed on the paper and at the same time It. v
•
i
• stored an the magnetic whatever. Small errors plast
:
; . Z .
>
i
•
i –
J
:
i. you correct as you type along, generally by magnet . :ih r.i
„
s,t
,•
i
me noon backspacing, presei. MI…
II
.
13
tfsed
to be
that ordinary people
had Co
deal with computers
by
filling
out
intricate
forms,
which were then translated into punch
cards.
The
forms
put
things
in
weird categories
(see
“Coded-Down Data,”
p. .}
No longer. Anyway,
no
longer necessary. Computer systems
can now
give
you
action, excitement–
and
explanations. This
is
done through
the
magic
of the
TERMINAL. Terminals come
in two
conspicuous flavors (typewriter
and
screen
or
“boob tube”) and also have
two
less
–
noticeable divisions
(“Teletype”
or
“industry” versus
“IBM
type.”) Anyway,
a
terminal
is
something that allows
a
person
and a
computer
to
type
at
each other. Now, computers
are
merely gadgets
for
twiddling information. They
no
more understand English,
or
human psychology, than puppies
can
read music.
(See
“Artificial
In
telligence,” p-lVJSl
But the
computer’s prog-ran
can,
for
instance, direct
the
computer
to
type
out a
simple question,
and
compare
the
user’s answer with
a
simple
set of
alternative!. For example, suppose
the
user
is
visiting
a
hos
pital.
A
computer
can
sign
hin in
without
the
abrasiveness
of a
receiving nurse,
and
with
far
more patience.
The
following might
be a
sample dialogue. (Here
the
computer types what’s
in
caps,
and the
use
A
replies
are in
lower- case-) DO
YOU
HAVE
AN
ACUTE PAIN?
(Y,
N, DK)
dk YOUR ANSWER
IS:
DK FOR
“DON’T KNOW.” DOES THAT MEAN YOU’RE
NOT
SURE WHAT ‘ACUTE’ MEANS? (ANSWER
A)
A PAIN COMES
AND
GOES? {ANSWER
B)
YOU HAVE
A
PAIN SORT
OF ON THE
BORDER? (ANSWER
C)
An interactive system
of
this kind
is
call
ed
a
conversational system,in that
it
“converses” with
the
user.
TKe
secret
is
that
the
alternatives
in the
computer program
are few and
carefully worked
out
beforehand: there
are
great
pit
falls when there
are too
many alternatives,
as
when such conversational systems
are
used
for
teaching
(sec
pp.
\?.xa ).
Here
is a
straightforward example:
a
system I wish
I had for
balancing
a
checkbook. Note that
the
inner program
for
this conversational system could
be
written’in
any of the
three languages presented later. WHAT PRDGRAM WOULD
YOU
LIKE
TO
RUN? ckbk CHECKBOOK PROGRAM STARTS. DO
YOU
WANT
TO
PROOF
THE NEW
STATEMENT
FOR
MARCH?
y
PLEASE LIST
THE
CHECKS THAT HAVE COME
IN.
231,
239
,
240, 242, 244,
24S.
SUM
OF
INCOMING CHECKS
IS
$345.72.
DO YOU
WANT BREAKDOWN?
n
PRESUMABLY BANK
IS
CHARGING
YOU .60 FOR
SIX CHECKS. ALSO MONTHLY CHARGE
OF
FIFTY CENTS (PLEASE
CONFIRM).
y
ARE THERE
ANY
OTHER BANK CHARGES THIS MONTH?
n
ARE
THE
FOLLOWING DEPOSITS
ON
THIS STATE MENT
—
MARCH
1
SALARY, JSS4.007
y
GIFT FROM AUNT AGATHA,
14
MARCii, $25.00?
n
TOTAL
ON
STATEMENT SHOULD
BE
$1753.21, PLEASE CONFIRM,
y
YOUR CURRENT FLOAT
IS
$656.75.
DO YOU
WANT BREAKDOWN?
y
CURRENT FLOAT
AS
FOLLOWS–
NO.
241
IRVING’S RECORDS
7
MARCH
$ 6.75
NO.
243
SINISTER
5
MALADROIT (LEGAL FEES)
12
MARCH 1600.00
NO.
246
DOGGIE HAIRDRESSERS 12 MARCH
$ 20.0(
NO.
247 SAM
CRONK (REPAYMENT) 14 MARCH
i
30.0C TOTAL $656.7! ARE
YOU
DONE WITH CHECKBOOK PROGRAM?
y
(The part shown above
is
easy. Thinking out
the
ways
for the
user
to
correct
his re
cords,
and/or
the
bank,
is the
tough part.)
A number
of
companies make minicomputers (partial list
on p. M>
); however, companies who want business systems built around
mini
computers
may
want
to
investigate companies that will
put
together whole business systens for them around minis. (It
is
lioped that
one
contribution
of
this book will
be to
give
the
reader
a
better idea
of
what
to ask for.)
i
to be in
this
Genesis
One
Computer Corporation, 99 Park Ave.,
NY
10016. Appears to
use
BASIC language
(see
pp.16-17).
Qantel Corp. (offices
in
five major
cit
ies).
Sells
a
minicomputer
of
their own manufacture, using
a
language called
QIC
(Qantel Interactive
Code),
which
a
salesman tells
me is
“just like BASIC”
(see pp.
16-17).
Mini
mum setup includes
a
display terminal, printer, computer
and
6-milllon-character disk,
at
$31,000.
terminal
or
keysaope
0
“Modem” takes
the
terminal’s pulse code and warbles
it
into
the
phone
as
audible
tones.
The
computer answers with similar warbles
and
tweedling;
the
modem converts that back into alphabetical characters.
tt
RS-23Z
is tha
standard lnterfai trvcitl t»*1S >«TJ<
OK
4-
tidr
&H,fvree.
(*«* f
•**)•
It's awfully easy to fool people with simple words, let alone buffalo them with weird technical-sounding gab. The thing about tech talk la that It can really ba applied to any area. The trick Ilea In the arrangement of boxcar adjective nouna. and In the vsrue use of windy term* that have connotations In aome particular technical area - aay. the apace program. Juat conalder. He might call • r g-arden sp*de--A PERSONALIZED EARTH-MOVING EQUIPMENT MODULE A MINERALOOICAL MINI-TRANSPORT
AN ENTRENCHING TOOL (Flrealgn Theater) A ZERO-SUM DIRT LEVEL ADJUSTER A FEEDBACK-ORIENTED CONTOUR MANAGEMENT PROBE AND DIGGING SYSTEM A GRADIENT D1SEQUILIBRAT0R A MASS DISTRIBUTION NEGENTROPRIZER
JWT LtfeC
e*Mt«/u
AHKr\e5
Juat the way everyone can understand cameras, vll "A cuter* la a device you point et something to willfully capture its appearance."
"A car la a device people get inside which then goes scaatwher* elae, under the willful control of the driver."
Well,
how about "A computer ii a device which manipulate! information and external accessories, according to a plan willfully prepared by a plann
iHSffATioNAL
In the computer field, the lune things are often called by different namea (for instance, the IBM 1B00, a fairly ordinary minicomputer, is called by them the "IBM 1800 Data Acquisition and Control
System"),
different things are often called by the same names, and thing* can be inside-out and upside down versions of each other in extraordinary variety. (Indeed, computer people may find thla book inside-out, which is okay with me. Life is • Klein bottle.)
Sorting things out. then, means having a few basic concepts clear in your mind, and knowing when you see examples and variations of them.
fh«r*'a no suah
thing.
But faying *uoh thingm intimidate*
many,
especially (ho** who hav been told they do not have "logioal
minds.'
What is meant,
actually,
is indeed important: in working uith
computer*
you must often uork out ths exact ramifioatione of speoifio combinations of things, uithoue skipping steps. But the other mode of
thinking,
the intuitive, has ite place in the computer field too. e-hiehauei- vour habitual style of
mind,
oomput. offer you
food—
and utensils-- far thought.
HORRIBLE MISUNDERSTANDINGS Some people think of computers aa things that somehow mysteriously digest and assimilate all knowledge. "Just feed
it
to (he computer." Is , the
motto.
But what you feed into ths computer Just eits there unless there's a program,
"How would you do that by computer?" Is a question people often
ask.
Ths question should
b*,
"how would you do thst st all?" If there is a method for doing somsthlng which can be broken down inlo simple
steps,
and requires no human
Judgment,
then maybe we can take those step* and program them on e computer, Bul maybe we can also think of s simpler wsy to get them done.
Than there is the Idas that • computer Is something you ask
questions.
This assumes, 1
guaas,
lb* earlier premiss, that Ihe computer has already digested and assimilated s lot of stuff and can sling
tt
back at you in new arrange- Actually what must happen, to get
"questions"
answered. Is
this:
there must be some program lhal puts Input mate Hal Into a data
structure.
(Sea "Date Structures.") Then you need programs that will oounl and trace, or whatavsr, through the data structure in wsy* you
desire.
Than you need s wsy to start these tracing-end-searching program* going through
th*
date structure In ways you
want.
So you need • program accepting input from s keyboard, or
whatever,
snd starting the other program* tn
operation.
.
.
FICTIONS ABOUT WHAT COMPUTERS DO Many people suppose there Is mot do (s« think thei
A couple of years ago, a leading picture magazine carried a piece a-bout Stanford's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, claiming that one "Shakey the Robot" had been developed to near-human intelligence and capa
bilities.
This was pure bosh, since repudiated in the computer magazines, but a lot of people Out There in Readerland believed it. (See "The
God-Builders,"
flip side.) Once I had a long discussion with a somewhat wild-eyed young woman who believed that the government was
moni
toring her brain with computers. I think I persuaded hei 1 -
thi:
foa: ible uld I ost the •f dolla
~V—IT
* Computer operators t S
/—•*>.
change programs, ‘ • change disks and tap 6«”tU.
•ne.’Vios.
eeleet modes of opet that can do more ths (See
p.
38.)
Input typists (also called keypunch operstors) are clerks who copy Information into the conputer (on terminals) or onto something the ccmput (punch cards, magnetic disk. NOTE: these Job* may end 1 when nothing
els*
has to fa because users put things 1
<9Y*jNcM
OKtaWt
Computer repairmen, or "field engineers,' fix computers and their accessories when something goes wrong electrically
l HAIVE USER (no offense) Is an ordinary person fho doesn't need to know any of these in order to do something useful with i
Oat out of your head the notion that aome one syatem you've seen showed you what Computer* Are Really Like. Computer systems can be as different externally aa bata and whales. (Yet it's the same kind of
heartbeat,
bul thst's no help in dealing with them.) Then what is It computer people know . you may ask, that leads them to understand new systems quickly? Aha. Computer people simply adjust faster to whole new world*.
THE AUTOMOBILE ANALOGY (mi r-to-bumper, rest stop it tollbooth.
orchange,
How incomprehensible to someone fn
1905.
Yet how siaple-minded when you ui derstand it. That's how it is wi th com
puters.
sounds so strange ant o you folks out there-it's often as simple < if you know the funda-
USING A COMPUTER SHOULD ALWAYS BE EASIER THAN NOT USING A COMPUTER . If
It
Isn't,
you (or your company, or your state) may have bean sold * bill of good*. OR they may hav* decided your inconvenience 1* leas important than somsthlng
sis*.
In any case, you have a right to ssk sharp questions.
THE DAMNED LIE "Computers ar* rigid and inhuman." A BETTER APPROXIMATION People are sometimes (all too often) rigid" and inhuman. (Machines snd animals are nonhuman-- the term "inhuman" applies only to people.) "Rigid and inhuman" computer systems are th* creation of rigid and inhuman
WHAT IS THIS SYSTEM ABOUT? Handy questions to six* up what s computer Is supposed to
What data doa*
It
contain? Where is the data stored?
What information do you suppo** can reasonably be derived from that?
does Information go In and out?
The first, or Classic, computer era 1 straightforward equipment and work->n straightforward problems.
CUM
it
ewrvtn
l\\ “7£;r ba
„.»•’)
The second, or Baroque, conputer era used intricate equipment for hard-to-understand purposes, tied together with the greatest difficulty by computer professionals who couldn’t or wouldn’t explain very well what they were doing.
out a change is cominj pany or faction is bringinj though some nay feel it is
interest.
1 would like to the DIAPHANOUS age of the c mputer,
of By “diaphanous” I refer both to thi
transparent,
understandable character the systems to come, and to the likelihood that computers will be showing us everything (dia
-,
across everything, phainein,
to~sTow).
\&rr
The computer, being a machine, doean’t know or care that device register 17 (say) controls a hog feeder, or device register 23 (aay) receives information from smog detectors. But what you
choose,
in your program, to put Into device register
17,
controls what the hogs eat, and what comes into device register 23 will tell your program, you hope, about smog conditions. Choosing how to handle these things in your program la your
business.
il
HOW DOES THE LOOP WORK?
The computer does things over and over by changing a stored count, then testing the stored count against another number which is what the count should get to, and going to the beginning if the desired count haB not been reached. This is called a loop. Of there’s no way it can ever get out, that’s an endleas loop.) (Actually, the program loop is done the same wsy as a program branch: IF a certain count has not been reached, it branches BACK to the start of the loop.)
Other things besides programs may be stored in the memory. Anything besides programs are usually called data.
The instructions of programs use the data in different
ways.
Some programs use a lot of data. some use a little, some don’t use any. It is one of the fascinating and powerful things about the computer that both the instructions of a program. and the data they work
on,
are stored as patterns of bits in the same memory, where they can be modified as needed. Indeed, the program can modify its own patterns of bits, a very important feature.
WHAT DO PROGRAMS LOOK LIKE?
In what forms are these programs stored, you ask?
Well,
they are written by people in computer languages, which are then stored in some form in the computer’s fast core memory, where the program follower can act on them. But what does a computer language look like, you ask? Aha…
0)
To PAGe \lp
Of you want to see what the bottom-most level looks
like,
with all the bits and things, skip ahead to p.OK)
WHATEVER IT MAY DO IN THE REAL WORLD, to the computer program it’s just another device.
)
ANALOG COMPUTERS DISPOSED OF
There are two kinds of computers: analog and digital. (Also hybrid, meaning a combination.) Analog computers are so unimportant compared to digital computers that we will polish them off in a couple of paragraphs.
“Analog” is a shortened form of the word “analogy.” Originally an “analog” computer was one that represented something in the real world by some other sort of physical enactment– for instance, building a model of an economic system with tubes and liquids; this can demonstrate Keyneslan economic principles remarkably
well.
However, the term “analog” has come to mean almost exclusively pertaining to measurable electrical signals, and an “analog computer” is a device that creates or modifies measurable electric signals. Thus a hi-fi amplifier is an analog computer (it multiplies the
signal),
a music synthesizer is an analog computer (it generates and reshapes analog
signals).
Thus the term has deteriorated: almost anything with wires is an analog computer.
Analog computers cannot be truly programmed. only rewired.
Analog equipment is useful, important and indispensable. But it is simply not in the same class with digital computers, henceforth called “computers” in this book, which manipulate symbols on the basis of changeable symbolic programa.
“Analog computer” also means any way of calculating that involves measuring approximate
readings,
like a alide rule.
10
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6HPR!i
Forget what you’ve ever heard or imagined about computers. Just consider this:
The computer is the most general machine man has ever developed. Indeed, it should be called the All-Purpose Machine, but isn’t, for reasons of historical accident (see
nearby).
Computers can control, and receive information from, virtually any other machine. The computer is not like a bomb or a gun, which can only
des
troy, but more like a typewriter, wholly noncommittal between good and bad in its nature. The scope of what computers can do is breathtaking. Illustrated are some examples (although having all this happen on one computer would be
unusual).
It can turn things on and off, ring
bells,
put out fires, type out on printing machines.
Computers are incredibly dogged. Computers can do things repeatedly forever, or an exact, immense number of times (like 4,901,223)
,
doing something over and over, depending on whether it’s finished or not. A computer’s activities can be combined in remarkable ways. One activity, repeated over and over, can be part of another activity repeated over and over, which can be a part of still another activity, which can be repeated ad infinitum. THERE ARE DEFINITE LIMITATIONS on what computers can do, but they are not easy to describe briefly. Also, some of them are argued about among computer people.
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Computers are COMPLETELY GENERAL, with no fixed purpose or style of operation. In spite of this
,
the strange myth has evolved that computers are somehow “mathematical.”
Actually von Neumann, who got the general idea about as soon as anybody
(1940s),
called the computer
THE ALL-PURPOSE MACHINE.
(Indeed, the first backer of computers after World War II was a maker of multi-lightbulb signs. It is an interesting possibility that if he had not been killed in an airplane crash, computers would have been seen first as text-handling and picture-making machines, and only later developed for mathematics and business.)
We would call it the All-purpose Machine
here,
except that for historical reasons it has been slapped with the other name.
But that doesn’t mean it has a fixed way of operating. On the contrary.
COMPUTERS HAVE NO NATURE AND NO CHARACTER,
save that which has been put into them by whoever is creating the program for a particular purpose. Computers are, unlike any other piece of equipment, perfectly BLANK
.
And that is how we have projected on it so many different faces.
l^pi*^
in
or.
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h
(On the other side of Ihis book, Dream
Machines,
we will curry this mailer further. The most exciting thinga in the computer field are coming from people trying to realize their wildest dreams by computer: artificial intelligence, computer music, computer picture-making and so on.)
A number of people have gotten mad at me for coining the term “cybercrud.” which I define as “putting things over on people using computers.’ But as long as it goes on we’ll need the word. At every corner of our society, people are issuing pronouncements and making other people do things and saying it’s because of the computer. The function of cybercrud is thus to confuse, intimidate or pressure. We hsve all got to get wise to this if it is going to be curtailed.
Cybercrud takes numerous forms. All of them, however, share the patina of “science” that computers have for the layman.
la) COMPUTER AS MAGIC WORD
The most delicate, and seemingly innocent, technique is the practice of naming things so as spuriously to suggest that they involve computers. Thus there is a manufacturer of pot-pipes with “Data” in its name, and apparently a pornography house with a “Cyber-“.
lb) COMPUTER AS MAGIC INGREDIENT
The above seems silly, but it is no less silly than talking about “computer predictions” and “computer studies” of things. The mere fsct that a computer is_ involved in something has no bearing on its character or validity. The way things are done with computers affects their character and validity, just like the way things are done without computers. (Indeed, merely using a computer often has no bearing on the way things are done.)
Thia same technique is easily magnified to
suggest,
not merely that something involves computers, but is wholly done by computers. The word “computerize” performs this fatal function. When used specifically, as in computerize the billing operation, it can be fairly clear; but make it vague, as in computerize the office, and it can mean anything.
“Fully computerize” is worse. Thus we hear about a “fully computerized” print shop, which turns out to be one whose computers do the typesetting; but they could also run the presses, pay the bills and work the coffee machine. For practical purposes, there is no such thing as “fully” computerized. There is always one more thing computers could do.
BY THL AID OF THE MIRROR SHE PUT ON THL HEAD
2) WHITE LIES: THE COMPUTER MADE ME DO IT
Next come all the leetle white lies about how such-and-auch ia the computer’s fault and not your decision. Thus the computer is made a General Scapegoat at the name time it’s covering up for what somebody wants to do anyway . “It has to be thia way.” “There’s nothing we can do; this ia all handled by computer.” “The computer will not allow thia.” “The computer won’t let ua.” The translation is, of courae, THE STINKY LOUSY PROGRAM DOES NOT PERMIT IT. Which means in turn: WE DO NOT CHOOSE TO PROVIDE. IN OUR PROGRAMS AND EQUIPMENT. ANY ALTERNATIVES.
Now. it is often the case that good and sufficient reason exists for the way things are done. But it is also often the caae that companies and the public are inconvenienced, or worse, by decisions the computer people make and than hide with their claim of technical necessity. (See p.^L: Dealing with computer people.)
3) YAGOTTAS: COMPUTER AS COERCER
More aggressively, cybercrud is a technique for making people do what you want. “The computer requires it,” you say
,
and so people can be made to hand over personal information, secretaries can be intimidated into scouring the files, payment schedules can be artificially enforced.
THE GENERAL STATUS TRICK
Status tricks, combining the putdown and the self-boost, date back to times immemorial. But today they take new forms. The biggest trick is to elevate yourself and demean the listener at the seme time, or, more generally, the technique is making people feel stupid while acting like a big cheese. Thus someoneone might say , “People must begin to get used to the objec tive scientific ways of doing things that computers now make necessary.” But the translation seems to be: “People must get used to the inflexible, badly thought out, inconvenient and unkind systems that I and other self-righteous individuals and companies are inflicting on the world.”
YOU DON’T ALWAYS GOTTA
The uninformed are bulldozed, and even the informed are pressured, by the foolish myths of the clever, implacable and scientific computer to which they must adapt. People are told they have to “relate to the computer.” But actually they are being made to relate to systems humans have designed around
it,
in much the same way a sword dance is designed around the sword.
When establishment computer people say that the computer requires you to be systematic, they generally mean you huve lo learn their system. But anyone who tells you a method “has to be changed for the computer” is usually fibbing. He prefers to change the method for the computer. The reasons may be bad or good. Often the computer salesman or indoctrinator will present as “scientific” techniques which were doped out or whomped up by a couple of guys in the back room.
“If it can’t be done in COBOL, I Just tell people it can’t be done by computer. It saves a lot of trouble.”
Attributed to somebody in Rochester. (See COBOL, p 7) I -)
St.;*
In the movie “Fail-Safe.” they showed you lots of fake tape drives with the reels constantly turning in one direction. This they called a “computer.” Calling any sinister box “a computer” is a widespread trick. Gives people the willies. Keeps ’em in line.
Here is an example, as told to me. A friend of mine worked in a dress factory where they had a perfectly good system for billing and bookkeeping. Customers were listed by name and kept in alphabetical order. The fast pace of the garment industry meant that companies often changed names, and so various companies had a number of different names in the file. This bothered nobody because the people understood the system.
Then management bought a small computer, never mind what brand, and hired a couple of guys to come in and put the bookkeeping system on it.
Still okay. Indeed, small programming firms con sometimes do this sort of thing very
well,
because ihey can work flexibly with the people and don’t necessarily feel committed to making it work a certain way .
Well,
this was a nice instance where the existing system could have been exactly transferred lo the computer. The fact thai some customers had several names would certainly have been no problem; a program could have been written that allowed users to type any acceptable customer
name,
causing the computer to look up the correct account (and if desired, print its usual name and ask for verification).
But no. The guys did not answer employees’ questions comprehensibly, nor did they want suggestions. They immediately decreed that since computers only worked with numbers (a fib. but a convenience to
them),
every customer would thenceforth have lo be referred to by number.
After that the firm had nothing but Iroubie, through confusion over the multiple names, and my friend predicted that this would destroy the company. I haven’t heard the outcome.
This story is not necessarily very inter esting; it merely happened. It’s not s made-up example.
Moral:
until we overthrow the myth that people always have to adapt to computers, rather than the other way around, things will never go
right.
Adaptations should take place on both
sides,
darn it.
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You can buy little boxes with blinking lights thst do nothing else but blink. They really put people uptight. “Are you recording what I say'” people ask. “Is it a computer?” They’ll believe such a box is anything you tell them.
EVERYBODY DOES IT
Cybercrud is by no means the province of computer people alone. Business manipulators and bureaucrats have quickly learned the tricks. Companies do it to the public. The press, Indeed, contributes (see Suggestions for Writers and Spokesmen, p. ). But the computer people are best at it because they have more technicalities to shuffle around magically; they can put anybody down.
Now
,
computer people do deaerve respect. So many things that people do with computers are hard. It can be understood that they want to be appreciated, and if not for the particulars, for the machismo (mschinismo?) of coping with
intri
cacy
.
But that is no excuse for keeping others In controlled ignorance. No man has a right to be proud that he is preserving and manipulating the ignorance of others.
1)
to manipulate situations. 2) to control others . 3) to
fool.
4) lo look like hot stuff. 5) lo keep outsiders from seeing through something. 6) to sell something. 7) to put someone down . 8) to conceal. 9) general secretiveness. 10) low expectation of others’ mentality. 11) seeking to be the broker and middleman for all relations with the computer. 12) vagueness sounds profound. 13) you don’t have to show what you’re not sure of. 14) your public image is monolithic. 15) you really don’t know.
THE MAIN COMPUTER ORGANIZATIONS
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery. This is the main computer professional society; the title only has meaning historically, as many members are concerned not with machinery itself, but with software, languages, theories and soon.
If you have any plans to stick with the subject, membership in the Association for Computing Machinery is highly recommended. ACM calls itself “The Society of the Computing Community.” Thus it properly embraces both professionals and fans.
Dues for official students are $8 a yeai $35 for
others,
which includes a subscription to Communications of the ACM, the official mag. Their address for memberships and magazines is ACM, P.O. Box 12105, Church
St.
Station, New York, NY 10249. (The actual ACM HQ is at 1133 Ave. of the
Americas,
New York, N.Y. 10036.)
They have stacked the deck so that if you want to subscribe to any ACM magazines you’d better join anyway
.
Here are the year prices:
Member Communications of the ACM free Computing Surveys $7 Computing Reviews $12.50 Journal of the ACM $7
The one drawback to joining the ACM is all the doggoned mailing lists it gets you
on.
It’s unclear whether there’s anything you can do to prevent
this,
but there oughta
be.
SIGs and SICs. For ACM members with special interests (and we all have
them),
the ACM contains subdivisions– clubs within the club, of people who keep in touch to share their
interests.
These are called SICs (Special Interest Committees) and SIGs (Special Interest
Groups).
There are such
clubs–
SICs and SIGs– in numerous areas, including Programming Languages, Computer Usage in Education, etc. Encouraging these subinterests to stay within ACM saves a lot of trouble for everybody and keeps ACM the central society,
AFIPS.
AFIPS is the UN of computing. They sponsored the
Joints,
and now sponsor the NCC
.
Just as individuals can’t join the UN, they can’t join AFIPS, which stands for American Federation of Information Processing Societies. Depending on your special interests, though, you can join a member society.
The constituent societies of AFIPS are, as of June 1973: (If any turn you on, write AFIPS for addresses: AFIPS, 210 Summit Ave. Montvale NJ 07645.) ^5″ACM: the Association for Computing Machinery. IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. This is the professional society of electronics guys. Simulation Councils. This is the professional society for those interested in Simulation (see p.TiK). Association for Computational Linguistics
.
(Where language and computer types gather.) American Association of Aeronautics and Astronautics. American Statistical Association. Instrument Society of America. Society for Information Display. (See flip side.) American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. American Society for Information Science. (This group is mainly for electronified librarians and information retrieval types– see flip side.) Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Special Libraries Association. Association for Educational Data Systems.
IFIP. This is the international computer society. Like AFIPS, its members are societies, so joining ACM makes you an IFIP participant.
IFIP holds conferences around the world. Fun. Expense.
CONFERENCES.
Conferences in any field are exciting, at least till you reach a certain degree of boredom with the field. Computer conferences have their own heady atmosphere, compounded of a sense of elitism, of being in the witches’ cauldron, and the sure sense of the impact everything you see will have as it all grows and grows. Plus you get to look at gadgets.
Usually to go for one day doesn’t cost much, and at the bigger ones you get lots of free literature, have salesmen explain their things to you, see
movies,
hear fascinating (sometimes) speakers.
THE JOINTS! The principal computer confer ences have always been the Spring Joint Computer Conference, held in an astern city in May, and the Fall Joint Computer Conference, held in a Western city in November (the infamous Spring Joint and Fall Joint, or SJCC and
FJCC).
In 1973, because of poor business the previous year, the two were collapsed into one National Computer Conference (NCC) in June (Universal Joint?) The Joints have always been sponsored by AFIPS (see
below).
The National Computer Conference will henceforth be annual, at least for a while.
The cost of attending is high– while it’s just a couple of dollars to look at the exhibits, this rises to perhaps fifteen dollars to go to the day’s technical sessions or fifty for the week (not counting lodging and
eats)–
but it’s very much worth
it.
The lower age limit for attendees is something like
twelve,
unfortunately for those with interested children. Other important conferences: the annual ACM conference in the summer; BEMA (Business Equipment Mfrs. Assn.) in the fall and spring (no theory, but lots of
gadgets);
and other conferencs on special subjects, held all the time all over. Lists of conferences and their whereabouts are in most of the magazines; Communications of the ACM and Computer Design have the biggest
lists.
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
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‘
» As you may know, conferences largely con sist of separate “sessions” in which different people talk on specific topics, usually reading out loud from their notes and showing slides.
Conference proceedings are books which result Trom conferences. Supposedly they contain what each guy said; in practice people say one thing and publish another, more formal than the actual presentation.
This leads to a curious phenomenon at the main computer conferences (SJCC.FJCC. ACM and now NCC). When you register they give you a book (you’re actually paying perhaps $15 for
it),
containing all the papers that are about to be given, nicely tricked out by their authors. If you rush to a corner and look at the book it may change your notion of which sessions to go to.
Anyway, the resulting volumes of conference proceedings are a treasure trove of interesting papers on an immense variety of computerish and not-so-computerish subjects. Great for browsing. Expensive but wonderful. (Horrible when you’re moving, though, as they are big and heavy.)
JOINT PROCEEDINGS. Proceedings for the Spring Joint and Fall
Joint,
from the fifties to 1972, are available from AFIPS Press
,
as are proceedings of the 1973
NCC.
(AFIPS Press, 210 Summit Avenue, Montvale NJ 07645.) They cost $20-26 each after the conference is over; less in microfilm. (At the Joint Conferences, AFIPS Press often gives discounts, at their booth, on back Joint proceedings.) £^>If you want to spend money to learn about the field. Proceedings of the Joint Conferences are a fine buy.
Back ACM Proceedings. From the ACM.
Other Proceedings. Often sold at counters at conferences. Or available from various publishers. Join the ACM and you’ll find out soon enough .
TRY TO GET TO THE NATIONAL JOINT. Just as every Muslim should go to Mecca, every computer fan should go to a National Joint (National Computer Conference, or NCC). The next two are (check the
magazines):
May 1974, Chicago May 1975 rSan Fganoisgo- A WA H E-1M,
NO QUALIFICATIONS ARE NEEDED
.
Think of it as a circus for smart alecks, or, if you prefer, a Deep Educational Experience.
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There is a lot of talk about “best” ways of teaching about computers, but in most places the actual alternatives open to those who want to learn are fairly dismal.
Universities. Universities and colleges tend to teach computing with a mathematical emphasis at the start. Indeed, most seem to require that to get into the introductory computer
course,
you must have had higher math (at least calculus. sometimes matrix algebra as
well).
This is preposterous, like requiring an engineering degree to drive a car. (Gradeschool kids can learn to program with no prerequisites.) •
t>lt seems to be to cut down enrollment, since they’re not set up to deal with all those people who want to learn about computers. (And why not?) Also it’s a status thing; as if this restriction somehow should keep enrollment to students with “logical minds.” whatever those are, or “mathematical sophistication
,”
as if that were relevant.
“Computer schools,” community and commercial colleges, on the other hand, tend to prepare students only for the most humdrum business applications– keypunching (which is rapidly becoming
obsolete),
and programming in the COBOL language on IBM business systems. This gets you no closer to the more exciting applications of computers than you were originally.
Some experimental trends are more encouraging. Some colleges, for
instance,
offer “computer appreciation courses,” with a wider introduction to what’s available and more varied programming intended to serve as an introduction to this wider horizon.
Highschool courses seem to be cutting through the junk and offering students access to minicomputers with quickie languages, usually BASIC. Both Digital Equipment Corp. and Hewlett-Packard seem to be making Inroads here.
Kiddie setups, rumored to exist in Boston and San Francisco, are geared to letting grade-school children see and play with computers. Also one company (General
Turtle,
see p.kV/) is selling computer toys intended to encourage actual programming by children.
There
are
several major places
you get
infor mation
in the
computer field: friends, magazines, bingo cards, conferences
and
conference proceedings.
Friends
we
can’t help with.
But you
might make aome
at
conferences.
Or
join
a
computer club?
The principal magazines
are
(first
few
listed roughly
by
degree
of
general
interest):
Datamation.
$15 a
year
or
free.
The
main computer magazine,
a
breezy, clever monthly. Lots
of
ads, interesting
arti
cles
the
layman
can
read with
not
much
effort.
Twits
IBM.
Subscriptions
are $15
if
you’re not
a
computer person, free
if
you are.
Datamation,
35
Mason St., Greenwich CT 06830.
Computer Decisions. Some
$7 a
year
or
free. Some nice light articles.
as
well
as
helpful review articles
on
different subjects. Avoids technicalities. Computer Decisions,
50
Essex St.
,
Roselle Park
NJ
07662.
Computers
and
Automation. Avoids techni calities
but
quite
a bit of
social-interest stuff. Nobody gets
it
free; something like $7.50
a
year. Berkeley Enter
prises,
Inc.,
815
Washington St.
,
Newtonville, Mass. 02160.
Computerworld (actually
a
weekly tabloid
paper).
Not
free:
$9 a
year. More up-to-the-minute than most people have time
to
be.
Computerworld,
Circ.
Dept.,
797
Washington
St..
Newton, Mass. 02160.
Computing Surveys. Excellent, clearly written introductory articles
on a
variety
of
subjects.
Any
serious beginner should definitely subscribe to Computing Surveys.
(See
ACM,
below.)
Communications
of the
ACM.
High-class fj.v journal about theoretical matters
and
* Vl’v’-Py events
on the
intellectual side
of the
field. (See
ACM,
below.)
Computer Design. $18/yr.
or
free. Concen trates
on
parts
for
computers,
but
also tells technical details
of new
computers and peripherals. Computer Design, Circulation Dept. .
P.O. Box A,
Winchester, Mass. 01890.
Data Processing magazine. Oriented
to
conventional business applications
of
computers.
$10.
North American Publishing
Co.,
134 N. 13th St.,
Philadelphia.
Pa.
19107.
Computer. (Formerly IEEE Computer Group News.) $12/yr. Thoughtful, clearly written articles
on
high-level topics. Quite
a bit on
Artificial Intelligence (see flip
side).
IEEE Computer Society, 16400 Ventura Blvd., Encino
CA
91316.
Here
are
some other magazines that
may
interest
you.
No
particular order.
PCC. Delightful educational/counterculture tabloid emphasizing computer games and
fun.
Oriented
to
BASIC language. $4/yr. from People’s Computer Company,
P.O. Box
310,
Menlo Park, CA 94025.
Computing Reviews. Prints reviews,
by
individuals
in the
field,
of
most
of the
serious computer articles. Useful,
but
subject
to
individual biases
and
gaps. (See
ACM,
below.)
The
New
Educational Technology. $5/yr. Presumably concentrates
on
activities of
its
publisher: General Turtle,
Inc.,
545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139: wonderful computer toys
for
schools
and the
well-heeled.
The Honeywell Computer Journal. Something like
$10 a
year. Honeywell Information Systems,
Inc.,
Phoenix, Arizona. Showcase magazine
of
miscellaneous content; readable, nicely edited.
Has
unusual practice
of
including microfiche (microfilm card)
of
entire issue
in a
pocket.
IBM Systems Journal. Showcase technical journal
of
miscellaneous content, especially arcana about
IBM
products. $5/yr.
IBM,
Armonk,
NV
10504.
IBM Journal
of
Research
and
Development. Showcase technical journal
of
miscellaneous content. $7.50/year.
IBM,
Armonk,
NY
10504.
/ Journal
of the
ACM.
A
highly technical, math-
(“j”*,CVlV’\
orientedi°urnal-
Heavy
on
graph theory \
^ / and
pattern recognition.
(See
ACM.
below.)
Digital Design.
$15 or
free. About computer parts
and
designs. Digital Design,
Circ.
Dept.
.
167
Corey Road, Brookline,
Mass.
02146.
Infosystems. Aspiring
mag.
$20 or
free. Hitchcock Publicatons,
P.O. Box
3007, Wheaton,
111.
60187.
Think. This
is the IBM
house organ. Presumably free
to IBM
customers or prospects.
IBM.
Armonk,
NY
10504.
There
are
also expensive (snob?) magazines, bought
by
executives.
Computer
Age.
$95/yr.
EDP
News Services
Inc.,
514 10th
St. N. W.,
Washington DC 20004.
Computer Digest. $36/yr. Information Group
,
1309 Cherry St.
,
Philadelphia
PA
19107.
Data Processing Digest. $51/yr. 6820 la Tijera Blvd. .
Los
Angeles
CA
90045.
Hey
now,
here’s
a
magazine called Computopia. Only
$15 a
year. Unfortunately
in
Japanese. Computer
Age
Co. Ltd.,
Kasumigaseki Bldg.,
Box
122,
Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, Japan.
The best review
of
what’s happening lately,
by
none other than
Mr.
Whole Earth Catalog himself: Stewart Brand, “Spacewar: Fanatic Life
and
Symbolic Death among the Computer Bums.” Rolling Stone.
2
December
72,
50-56.
He
visited
the
most hotshot places
and
reports especially
on
the fun-and-games side
of
things.
Gilbert Burck
and the
Editors
of
Fortune.
The
Computer
Age.
Harper
and Row
.
Ignore the ridiculous full title.
The
Computer
Age
and
Its
Potential
for
Management; this book has nothing
to do
with management,
but is
a nice general orientation
to the
field.
Thomas
H.
Crowley, Understanding Computers. McGraw-Hill. This
is the
most readable
and
straightforward introduction
to the
technicalities around.
Jeremy Bernstein,
The
Analytical Engine. Random
House,
1964.
History
of
computers, well told, and
the way
things looked
in
1964.
which wasn’t really very different.
Donald
E.
Knuth,
The Art of
Programming.
(7
vols.) A monumental series, excellently written
and
widely praised,
for
anyone
who
wants
to dig
in
and be a
serious programmer. Three
of
the seven volumes
are out so
far.
at
about twenty bucks apiece.
Vol.
1:
Fundamental Algorithms.
Vol.
2:
Seminumerical Algorithms.
Vol.
3:
Sorting
and
Searching. Addison-Wesley.
BUMMERS
This
is
perhaps
a
minority view,
but I
think any introduction
to
computers which makes them seem intrinsically mathematical
is
misleading. Historically they began
as
mathematical,
but now
this
is
simply
the
wrong
way to
think about them. Same goes
for
emphasizing business uses
as if
that were
all.
We will
not
name here
any of
the
various disagreeable pamphlets
and
books which stress these aspects
and
don’t make things very clear.
tJJ>VBOUT
FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS. Many
of the
magazines
are
free
to
“qualified” readers, usually those willing
to
state
on a
signed form that they influence
the
purchase
of
computers, computer services
,
punch cards,
or the
like. (They
ask
other questions
on the
form,
but
whether
you
influence purchase
is
usually what decides whether they sci.d
you the
magazine.)
It is
also helpful
to
have a good-sounding title
or
company affiliation.
k BINGO CARDS.
These
are
little postcards
you
find
in
all
the
agazines except
the ACM and
company ones. Fill
1
in
your name
and an
attractive title
(“Systems
/Consultant”
or
“consultant”
is
good– after
all,
someday someone
may ask
your advice)
and
circle the numbers corresponding
to the ads
that entice you. You’ll
be
flooded with interesting, expensively printed, colorful, educational material
on
different people’s computers
and
accessories.
And
note that enders don’t lose:
any
company wants
its
products known.
However,
a
postoffice
box is
good,
as it
helps to avoid calls
at
home from salesmen, wasting their \ time
as
much
as
yours.
If
you arc in a
rural-type \ area where
you can
assume
a
company name with
no
k legal difficulties,
so
much
the
better.
“Cloven
fbfs”-
h
JWtfs- A number
of
inexpensive gadgets purport
to
teach
you
computer principles. Many people have been disappointed,
or
worse, made
to
feel stupid, when they learn nothing from these. Actually
the
best these things really
can do is
give
you an
idea
of
what
con be
done with combinations
of
switches. From that
to
learning what computer people really think about
is a
long, long way.
I
That
ihe
field
hus run
boon popularized
by its
better writers
may
simply come from
an
honest doub. that ordinary people
can
understand computers.
1 dispute that. Through magazines, millions of Americans have learned about photography. Through the popular sciencc-and-mcchanics type magazines, and more recently
the
electronics magazines, various other technical subjects have become widely understood.
So
far
nobody
has
opened
up
computers. This is
a
first attempt.
If
this book won’t
do it
another
one
will.
And
you
better believe that Popular Computers magazine
is not
very
far
oway. Soon
a
fully-loaded minicomputer will cost loss than
ihe
best hi-fi sets. In
a
couple
of
years, thousands
of
individuals will own computers,
and
millions more will want to. Look
out.
here
we go.
i
Woops.
here
it
is.
Popular Computing,
$15 a
year ($12
If
prepaid),
Box
272.
Culabasas.
CA
91302
3
y\ipecT>
OF TW
$t»K
People ask me often where they can learn about “science.” As in all fields, magazines are usually the best sources of general orientation.
Science Digest is kind of helpful for a atart, although unfortunately they print summaries of every fool study that generalizes to the hearts of all humanity from two dozen Iowa State freshmen.
Scientific American is the favorite. Some stuff is hard to read but some,isn’t; the pictures and diagrams are terrific.
Science k Technology magazine seems to me one of the better ones– breezy, informa
tive,
not trivial.
Science magazine is read by most actual scien
tists,
and if you have a lively curiosity and can guess at the meanings’of words, will tell you an incredible amount, (This is a main source for the science articles in the New York Times, which in turn…) Their articles on politics of science, and the future, are very interesting, important, and depressing. You have to join Am. Assn. for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C.
Daniel S. Greenberg’s Science and Government Report (sorry— $35 a year) is what really tells it. Greenberg is the man who knows, both what is shaping up in science and the insane governmental confusions and floundering responses and grandstanding and pork-barrel initiatives… Greenberg is, incidentally, one of the finest writers of our time and a great humorist. Science and Government Report, Kalorama Station
(really?).
Box 21123, Washington, D.C. 20009. This is the wall that the handwriting is on.
The explanations— not yet fully debugged— are intended for anybody. The listings of expensive products and services are intended not only as corroborative detail, for a general sense of what’s available, but also for business people who might find them helpful, for affluent individuals and
c.lubs
who want to try their hand, and finally as a box score of how the prices are coming down. Because we are all going to be able to afford these things pretty soon.
flTtooo (nr-r)
r
This diagram shows the amazing and unique way prices drop in the computer field. The prices shown are for the first minicomputer, the PDP-5 (and its hugely popular offspring, the
PDP-8);
but the principle has held throughout the field, and the downward trend will probably accelerate due to the new big integrated circuits.
Another example: an IBM 7090, a very decent million-dollar computer in 1960, was put up for sale at a modish Parke-Bernet “used computer auction” in 1970. If
I
remember aright, they could not get a $1000 bid, because today’s machines are so much smaller, faster and more dependable.
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IT’S AT
IK
tiiis
book,
38 40
43 44
45 45 45 46 47 47 48 50
52 57 57 58 58 58 58 59 60 62 64 68
INTRO “Where It’s At” Sources of Information CYBERCRUD THE MYTH OF THE COMPUTER The Power and the Glory THE DEEP DARK SECRET (Computer Basics Reduced to One Easy Page) THE NEW ERA INTERACTIVE SYSTEMS TERMINALS COMPUTER LANGUAGES: Prelude 1. BASIC 2. TRAC® Language 3. APL DATA STRUCTURES Binary Patterns COMPUTER LANGUAGES: Postscript ROCK BOTTOM: Inner Languages of Computers; Computer Architecture BUCKY’S WRISTWATCH, a sample machine-language program The Assembler Your Basic Computer Structure: THE MINICOMPUTER BIG COMPUTERS GREAT COMPUTERS: Sketches of Some Specific Machines List of Mini Makers MICROPROCESSORS (The New Third Kind of Computer) ADVANCED PROGRAMS OPERATING SYSTEMS TIME-SHARING COMPUTER PEOPLE Program Negotiation Suggestions for Writers Fun and Games How Computer Stuff is Bought and Sold How Computer Companies are Financed, Sometimes IBM Digital Equipment Corporation Peripherals for Your Mini SIMULATION OPERATIONS RESEARCH GREAT ISSUES MILITARY USES OF COMPUTERS The ABM System DNA DAMN THAT COMPUTER! STUFF YOU MAY RUN INTO THE CLUB OF ROME
THE BUCK STOPS HERE
Everywhere in the world people can pretend that your ignorance. or position. or
credentials.
or poverty. or general unworthiness, are the reasons you are being pushed around or made to feel small. And because you can’t
tell,
you have to take it.
And of course we can do the same thing with computera. Yea. we can do it in spades. (See “Cybercrud.” p. S.) But many of us do not want to. There has to be a better way. There haa to be a better world.
“WHoee irs AT
Computers are where it’s at.
Recently a bank employee was accused of embezzling a million and a half dollars by clever computer programming. His programs shifted funds from hundreds of people’s accounts to his own. but apparently kept things looking innocent by clever programming tricks. According to the
papers,
the program kept up appearances by redepositing the stolen amount in each account just as interest payments were about to be calculated, then withdrawing it again just after.
(“Chief
Teller Is Accused of Theft of $1.5 Million at a Bank
Here.”
New York Times, 23 March 73, p. 1.) The alleged embezzlement was discovered, not by bank audit, but by records found on the premises of a raided bookmaker.
In B recent scandal that has rocked the insurance world, an insurance company appears to have generated thousands of fictitious customers and accounts by computer, then bilked other insurance companies— those who re-Insured the original fictitious policies— by fictitious claims on the fictitious misfortunes of the fictitious policy-holders.
In April of 1973. according to the Chicago radio, s burglary ring had a “computerized” list of a thousand proapective victims.
There have been instances where dishonest university students, nevertheless able programmers, were able to change their course grades, stored on a central university computer.
It is not unheard of for ace programmers to create gram} incomprehensible systems that run whole companies, systems they can personally play like a piano, ind then blackmail their firms.
A friend of a friend of the author ia an see programmer at ths Pentagon, supposedly a private supervising colonels. On daya he is mad at his
boss,
he says, the army cannot find out ita strength within 300,000 men. Or three million if he so
chooses.
This awkward Btste of affairs, obviously spanning both the American continent and most realms of endeavor, haa come about for various
reasons.
First,
the climate of uncomprehension leads men in management to treat computer matters as “mere technicalities”– a myth aa sinister aa the public notion that computers are “scientific”— and abandon the kind of scrutiny they sensibly apply to any other company activities.
Second, moat of today’s computer syatems are Inherently Usky and insecure– and likely to stay that way awhile. Getting things to work on them involves giving people extraordinary and invisible
powers.
(Eventually thla will change, but watch out for the meantime.)
The obvious consequence is simply for the computer people to be allowed to take over altogether. It may Indeed be that computer people — the more well-informed and visionary ones, anyway– can see the farthest, and appreciate most deeply the better ways things can go, and the steps that have to be taken to get there. (And Boards of Managers can at least be partially assured that hanky-panky at the lower levels will be prevented, if men in charge know where the bodies are buried. >
That seems to be how it’s going. Examples:
The president of Dartmouth College, John Kemeny, is a respected computerman and a developer of one of the important computing languages, BASIC (aee p. I£ ).
The new president of the Russell Sage Foun dation, Hugh Cline, used to teach computing at Columbia.
It’s probably the same in industry. In other
words,
more and more, for better and for worse, things are being run by people who know how to use computers, and this trend is probably irreversible .
In some ways, of course, this is a sinister
portent.
In private industry it’s not so bad, since the danger is more of embezzlement and botch-up than of public menace. But then there’s the problem of the government. The men who manage the information tools are more and more in charge of government, too. And if we can have a Watergate without computers, just wait. (See “Burning Issues,” p. $”£)
The way to defend ourselves against computer people is to become computer people ourselves. Which of course is the point. We must all become computer people, at least to the extent that we have already become Automobile People and Camera
People—
that is, informed enough to tell when one goes by or when someone points one at you.
MANY MANSIONS
The future is going to be full of computers, for good or ill. Many computer systems are being prepared by a variety of lunatics, idealists and
dreamers,
as well as profit-hungry companies and unimaginative clods, all for the benefit of mankind. Which ones will work and which ones we will like is another matter. The grand and dreamy ones bid fair to reorganize drastically the lives of mankind.
For instance, Doug Engelbart at Stanford Research Institute has a beautiful system, called NLS, that will allow us to use computers as a generalized postoffice and publication system. From your computer terminal you juBt sign onto Engelbart’s System, and you’re st once in touch with lots of writings by other subscribers, which you may call to your screen and write replies to.
(These grander and dreamier applications are discussed on the other side of this book.)
But the plain computer visions are grand enough.
The great world of time-sharing, for instance.
(“Time-sharing”
means that the computer’s time is shared by a variety of users simultaneously. See
p.
“/?.) If you have an account on a time-sharing computer, you can sign on from your terminal (see p.
/
Piald.
Lecturer in computer education. Office of Instructional Resource. Development. U. of Illinois «t Chicago Circle. 1973-4. “H »
SuM*AM
Or tH’J IMY^
All rights reservrcl.
Additional copies are $7 postpaid from Hugo’s Book Service, Box 2622, Chicago, Illinois 60690.
Package
of ten copies, S50 postpaid.
Man has created the myth of “the computer” in his own image, or one of them: cold, immaculate, sterile, “scientific,” oppressive.
Some people flee this image. Others, drawn toward
it.
have joined the cold-sterile-oppressive
cult,
and propagate it like a faith. Many are still about this mischief, making people do things rigidly and saying it is the computer’s fault.
Still others see computer’ for what they really sre: versatile gizmos which may be turned to any purpose, in any style. And so a wealth of new styles and human purposes are being proposed and tried, each proponent propounding his own dream in his own very personal way.
This book presents a panoply of things and dreams. Perhaps some will appeal to the reader. ..
THE COMPUTER PRIESTHOOD
Any nitwit can understand computers, and msny do. Unfortunstely, due to ridiculous historical circumstances, computers have been made a mystery to most of the world. And this situation does not seem to be improving. You hesr more and more about computers, but to most people it’s just one big blur. The people who know about computers often seem unwilling to explain things or answer your ques
tions.
Stereotyped notions develop about computers operating in fixed ways–and so confusion increases. The chasm between laymen and computer people widens fast and dangerously .
This book is a measure of desperation, so serious and abysmal is the public sense of confusion and ignorance. Anything with buttons or lights can be palmed off on the layman as a computer. There are so many different things, and their differences are so important; yet to the lay public they are lumped together as “computer stuff,” indistinct and beyond understanding or criticism
.
It’s as if people couldn’t tell apart camera from exposure meter or tripod, or car from truck or tollbooth. This book is therefore devoted to the premise that
EVERYBODY SHOULD UNDERSTAND COMPUTERS.
It is intended to
fill
a crying need. Lots of everyday people have asked me where they can learn about computers, and I have had to say nowhere. Most of what is written about computers for the layman is either unreadable or silly. (Some exceptions are listed nearby; you can go to them instead of this
if
you want.) But virtually nowhere is the big picture simply enough explained. Nowhere can one get a
simple,
soup-to-nuts overview of what computers are really about, without technical or mathematical mumbo-jumbo, complicated examples, or talking down. This book is an attempt.
(And nowhere hsve
I
seen a simple book explaining to the layman the fabulous wonderland of computer graphics which awaits us
all,
a matter which means a great deal to me personally, as well as a lot to all of us in general. That’s discussed on the flip side.)
Computers are simply a necessary and enjoyable part of
life,
like food and books. Computers are not everything, they are just an aspect of everything, and not to know this is computer illiteracy, a silly and dangerous ignorance.
Computers are as easy to understand as cameras. I have tried to make this book like a photography magazine— breezy, forceful and as vivid as
possible.
This book will explain how to tell apples from oranges and which way ia up. If you want to make cider
,
or help get things right side up. you will have to go on from here.
I am not a skillful programmer, hands-on person or eminent professional;
1
am just a computer fan, computer fanatic if you
will.
But if
Dr.
David Reuben can write about
Bex I
can certainly write about computers. I have written this like a letter lo a nephew
,
chatty and personal. This is perhaps less boring for the reader, and certainly less boring for the
writer,
who is doing this in a hurry. Like a photography magazine, it throws at you some rudiments in s merry setting. Other things are thrown in so you’ll get the sound of them
,
even if the details are elusive. (We lesrn most everyday things by beginning with vague impressions, but somehow encouraging these is not usually felt to be respectable.) What
I
have chosen for inclusion here has been arbitrary, based on what might amuse and give quick
insight.
Any bright highschool kid
.
or anyone else who can stumble through the details of a photography magazine, should be able lo understand thia book. or get the main
ideas.
This will not make you a programmer or • computer person, though it may help you talk thst talk, and perhaps make you feel more comfortable (or at least able to cope) when new machines encroach on your life.
If
you can get a chance to learn programming-
–
Bee the suggestions on p. — it’s an awfully good experience for anybody above fourth
grade.
But the main idea of this book ia to help you tell apples from
oranges.
and which way is
up.
1 hope you do go on from here. and have made a few suggestions.
I am “publishing” this book myself, in this first draft form, to test its viability, to see how mad the computer people
get.
and to see if there is as much hunger to understand computers, among all you Folks Out There, as
1
Ihink. I will be interested to receive corrections and suggestions for subsequent
editions.
if any
.
(The computer field is its own exploding universe. so I’ll worry about up-to-deteness at that time -)
Knowledge is power and so it tends to be hoarded. Experts in any field rarely want people to understand what they do,and generally enjoy putting people down.
Thus if we say that the use of computers is dominated by a priesthood, people who spatter you with unintelligable answers and seem unwilling to give you straight ones, it is not that they are different in this respect from any other profession. Doctors, lawyers and construction engineers are the same way.
But computers are very special, and we have to deal with them everywhere, and this effectively gives the computer priesthood a stranglehold on the operation of all large organiza
tions,
of government bureaux, and anything else that they run. Members of Congress are now complaining about control of information by the computer people, that they cannot get the information even though it’s on computers. Next to this it seems a small matter that in ordinary companies “untrained” personnel can’t get straight questions answered by computer people; but it’s the same phenomenon.
It is imperative for many reasons that the appalling gap between public and computer insider be
closed.
As the saying
goes,
war is too important to be left to the generals. Guardianship of the computer can no longer be left to a priesthood. I see this as just one example of the creeping evil of Professionalism ,* the control of aspects of society by cliques of insiders
.
There may be some chance. though, that Professionalism can be turned around. Doctors, for example, are being told that they no longer own people’s bodies
.
And this book may suggest to some computer professionals that their position should not be as sacrosanct as they have thought, cither.
This in not to say that computer people are trying to louse everybody up on purpose. Like anyone trying to do a complex job as he sees
fit,
they don’t want to be bothered with idle questions and complaints. Indeed, probably any group of insiders would have hoarded computers just as much. If the computer had evolved from the telegraph (which it just might
have),
perhaps the librarians would have hoarded it conceptually as much as the math and engineering people have. But things have gone too far. People have legitimate complaints about the way computers are used, and legitimate ideas for ways they should be used, which should no longer be shunted aside.
In no way do I mean to condemn computer people in general. (Only the ones who don’t want you to know what’s going on.) The field is full of
fine.
imaginative
people.
Indeed, the number of creative and brilliant people known within the field for their clever and creative contributions is considerable. They deserve to be known as widely as
,
say
.
good photographers or writers .
“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 ethica of various roles of machines in human
affairs.”
Ken Knowlton in “Collaborations with Artists– a Programmer’s Reflections” in Nake a Rosenfeld
,
eds.
, Graphic Languages (North-Holland Pub. Co.),
p.
399.
• This Is a side
point.
I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, * sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) csn bring things to a halt if their particular new increased demands are not
met.
(Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round-
–
but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows.
Ellen Frankfort. Va^^PflHllcs. Quadrangle Books Boston Women’s Health
Collective.
Our Bodies. Ourselves. Simon a Schuster.