Media Science Heroes
30 Oct 2021 - 20 Jul 2024
- See Media Science
- Jun 1st, 2024 impulse to revamp this page into something like a book prospectus for a survey of software visionaries and the history of human-centric computing.
- Some notable Media Science Heroes, that is, people who pioneered the use of technology to enhance and extend the processes of human thought. This is an incomplete list and maybe focuses too much on individuals – eg, many people contributed to the Logo and Smalltalk and their associated schools of thought, not just Papert and Kay. But if I were to teach a course on Media Science these folks would make up a good chunk of the syllabus.
- Vannevar Bush
- Ted Nelson
- his Dream Machines is especially relevant here; it's basically a catalog of new (in 1974) technologies for thinking and expression.
- Some lesser heroes who were not primarily engineers or designers, but more like critics who revealed the massive role of technology in reshaping thought and language:
- Walter Ong
- Marshall McLuhan
- Other related readings
- Forster, The Machine Stops
- Iser
- Yates
- Any good UI theory (the readinges in NI are all kind of limited and dated)
- Warren Sack, The Software Arts
- The Narrative Intelligence Hypothesis (Dautenham)
- Dennett, self as narrative CG
- Davis, Techgnosis/High Weirdness (? texts as agents)
- Bruno Latour (gotta fit him in somehow)
- Dourish, postcolonial computing (need to read)