Bob Kerns: Thinking

The Computer History Pantheon

[This is a post I made to Livescribe's forum on 2008-06-01. Livescribe is no more; the closest equivalent are some tablet apps.]

I was listening to the start of Jim Marggraff's podcast this evening, and he made mention of Vannevar Bush's Memex idea.

It occurred to me that probably most people don't really know the origins of the ideas behind all this fancy hyperlinked multimedia technology we're coming to take for granted these days. And this site needs a link...

Vannevar Bush was an MIT professor, Vice President and Dean of Engineering from 1932-1938. His idea originated during this period, but was put on hold during the war period, while he (among other things) ran the Manhatten Project and advised Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.

But after the war, he dusted off the idea, and published it as an article in the Atlantic Monthly. This single article, in July of 1945, over 9 years before I was even born -- this ancient article, is the true root of all our modern idea of Internet, and of the World Wide Web.

A number of years ago, Atlantic Monthly put this article up. If I recall correctly, they continued to make it free even while they experimented with paid web access.

The article is entitled As We May Think. I highly recommend anyone who has not read it before, and is interested in the direction and possibilities take a little time out to read this article. It is written from the perspective of microfilm technology, which younger readers won't even have heard of, and yet it anticipates technologies that weren't developed for another 50 years, and which still have not been applied to the extent outlined in this article.

I know of no visionary article, on any topic, at any time, which has had the impact, the long-lived influence, and the amazing degree of fidelity into the future as this article.

It has inspired all of the major players in the evolution of what we do with computers: Douglas Englebart (inventor of the mouse and much more), Ted Nelson, who, in his 1974 book, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, coined the term "hypertext". This book tried to be a prototype of what it advocated -- extremely non-linear in form, leading you on a journey from point to point throughout the book. I sure wish I still had my copy....

And let's not forget J. C. R. Licklider, whose 1963 memo, Memorandum For Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network led directly (and quickly) to the creation of the Internet. Nine years later, when I came to MIT and Project Mac, the lab he founded and later directed at MIT, the internet (then called ARPAnet) was already up, running, and developing its own culture.

There are two projects which, combined, start to come close to what Vannevar Bush envisioned 70 years ago.

The first is Wikipedia itself. (There is a reason I chose Wikipedia articles for my earlier links!).

The second is Gorden Bell, best known for being VP in charge of Engineering at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). He is now capturing his entire life digitally, in the MyLifeBits Project.

Against this historical backdrop and vision of capturing, integrating and communicating our daily human experience, the pen stands out as a holdout, the last important mode of human communication to integrate.

I myself, have shunned the pen in preference to the computer for these 36 years, precisely because of this lack of integration.

This is why it is so interesting, and exciting, for me personally, to see Livescribe focus on a platform for re-integrating the pen. It's not about capturing handwriting. It's not about capturing audio.

It's all about the integration. Pen with audio with location with events with phone with network with ideas captured with ideas borrowed with ideas shared.

Vannevar Bush's vision was constrained by the technologies he had at hand -- largely mechanical and photograhic. Yet look how far he saw.

When you look at what the Pulse Smartpen can do today, don't look at it as being about capturing writing done in the old way. Try to look ahead at what writing could become for you, once integrated with the rest of your Life Bits. How would you use writing differently?

You, too, can be a pioneer.

In this historical canvas, Lifescribe is just a small yet-unpainted corner. But I'd argue it is important (if it succeeds) precisely because they occupy that last unpainted section, that last unmet need.

That last blank space, where will be writ, by Livescribe and others -- by all of us, the final signature, of the end of the Age of Paper, and the true beginning of the Digital Millennium.

Addendum:

It just occurred to me, I should add one more project to the list that are completing Vannevar Bush's Memex vision:

Brewster Kahle's Internet Archives captures the history of the internet. If you're looking for something that used to be there, then you need only go to the archives, and check the Wayback Machine. If it was there long enough, the Internet Archives will have one or more snapshots of it. It is also other film & video, and audio, text, and other digital artifacts.

Anonymity, and On Teachers Blogging

Recently, I commented on two topics, which intersect. Kent Pitman posted on the topic of anonymity on Open Salon, and I responded with a few of my thoughts on that topic.

And then came the case of Natalie Munroe, a teacher in Pennsylvania, who has been suspended with pay for blogging anonnymously, and talking (without naming herself, her school, or her students) about the frustrations in her work.

While I definitely feel there's a need and role for anonymity, I think there' is great strength and value in the courage to stand up and speak publicly.

I reproduce here a comment I originally made on an Education Week blog yesterday.

---

Back in 1979, Brian Harvey left the MIT AI Lab (or was it the Stanford AI Lab? I forget the chronlogy), to teach computers at the Lincoln-Sudbury High School in Massachusetts.

I was a devoted reader of his semi-regular email list on his experiences there. This was about as close to a blog as you could get back then. We didn't have Google back then, of course, but we did have a more open environment, and his writings were discoverable -- in fact, I suspect that's how I discovered where he'd gone and that he was writing about it, and asked to be on the mailing list.

I learned a lot from this. Had he been gagged, I would not have learned a thing. He also wrote in other contexts about his experience and lessons learned, for example: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/freedom.html

Schools are already far too much a secret society, with the public, parents, and even the students themselves being outsiders. Of course there are issues. If my kids were specifically blogged about by a teacher, I would have some concerns about that, even if not by name. Not "Thou shalt not blog about my kids", but issues of fairness, motivating kids, and privacy arise, and must be handled with care.

I don't know that  Ms. Munroe crossed those lines. According to Ms. Munroe (who I heard speak on the radio earlier today), those quotes that are making headlines, like "not as smart as she seems", were from a list of alternate check-off report card items she'd like to see -- satire and humor.

And you know what? Although I can't check her blog now, since it's been taken down -- I believe her, because that one is not original -- I've seen it before, in just such a list.

Did the press manage to get that?  Apparently not. Aparently, satire, irony, and humor are utterly lost on our modern "press" in their rush to the most sensational headlines possible. One can only imagine what their teachers thought about their reading ability when they were young!

I think the reaction is plain backwards. I think teachers should be encouraged to communicate about what happens in the classroom. Carefully, of course. But -- if a student acts up in class and disrupts learning for the entire class, I'd like to hear about it from the teacher, and not just from my kid's viewpoint.

I can be a better parent, and a better citizen of our school district, if I understand better what goes in in the classrooms, and the minds, of our teachers. And our students could be better students.

But -- there has to be some respect and some professionalism. If Ms. Munroe failed anywhere, I'd guess it was most likely here.

But within those bounds, the more blogging the better. Given the nature of the world our children are growing up in, I would argue that we really should REQUIRE our teachers to blog weekly.  It would be a tremendous opportunity for education, for kids to see their environment, and their behavior, challenges, and progress blogged about. Done right, it could be a tremendous motivator.

And most importantly, it would be leadership by example, about how to write, and how to write about others with civility and respect.

If Ms. Munroe erred in her conduct on her blog, I strongly suspect that the anonymity under which she operated was a major contributing factor. I would expect that she would have written a better blog had she not been hidden behind the veil of anonymity, and had the expectation that she would have to stand by her words into the distant future.

Because the internet has preserved posting I myself wrote back in the 1970's. I learned long ago to regard everything I write as potentially permanent and public. I've also learned the courage to speak my mind, to allow others to disagree, and to disagree with respect. I've learn some skill in calming online arguments, bridging communication gaps, and refocusing conversations.  And most importantly, I've learned the courage to quickly aplogize when I have erred, or have simply allowed myself to be misunderstood.

And always, under my own name.

I would like our teachers to be able to teach this generation of students some of the same lessons.

Advice to Young Journalists

I wrote up some advice for the students in the newspaper club at our local middle school. It's been well-received, and I'd like to share it, under the Creative Commons license.  

The document itself was originally created for paper distribution, but I have converted it to Google Docs to make it more accessible on the web. My apologies for the loss of formatting that entails.

Advice for Young Journalists by Bob Kerns is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Publishers: Stand up to the Texas State Board of Education

Eric Mann pointed me at a Credo Action-sponsored mailing campaign to the major textbook publishers.

This is a way YOU can make a lasting difference in our education system.

They provide you with a pre-written letter you can send, but allow you to send your own instead. So even if you don't agree with Credo Action's politics, and even if you don't like their letter, I urge you, please take a moment and send something.

Here is what I sent. Please write, either via this link, or directly. Please feel free to steal anything you like from my piece.

Dear sirs,

As an MIT-educated parent, with a life-long interest in education, I have watched with increasing horror the ever-escalating manipulations by the Texas State Board of Education.

There are times when a company must walk away from business. Times when the indirect costs far outweigh any profits. Times when the lasting damage to ones reputation is more important than the bottom line today.

Now is that time.

If we -- no, if YOU allow this blatant manipulation, we will all be poorer for it. I can think of no greater harm to be done to our educational system, than to allow this bunch to insert their propaganda into the nation's textbooks.

But it's not enough to supply an alternate version for a state which appears to have slipped into an alternate reality.

It is time to take a corporate stand, that you will have NO PART IN THIS.

I do not believe the Texas State Board of Education will continue have this extremist makeup for much longer. I think any books you were to make for them would have a very short lifespan, anyway.

But if you take a stand for intellectual honesty -- a PUBLIC stand, I believe you will hasten that day. You'll help put the issue on more Texan voter's radars.

I actually think you'll have a chance to make up for any lost sales, when those damaged-goods propaganda pieces that most parents would cringe at giving their kids, are urgently replaced with real textbooks again.

Please stand up to these folks!

Our children are counting on you.

Pink Slip Day: Time for a New Kind of Taxpayer Revolt

Today, up and down the length of California, something shameful is happening. Dedicated teachers are being told there won't be jobs for them in the fall -- not because they are not needed. Experienced teachers clearly are desparately needed -- and in a few years, we'll have to hire new, inexperienced teachers to replace them.

Teachers, and other staff who support them and our students, are being laid off -- not because of the economy. No, not because of the economy. In fact, while it's worse this year, it happens every year here.

They are being laid off because our school funding is controlled primarily by the state. And not only can't the state run its own finances on a year-to-year basis, it even takes back money already promissed and commited and in many cases spent.

On Wednesday, I attended a budget session of our local school board. What struck me, more than anything, was the stark contrast with how the school runs its finances, compared to how the state does.

Even in this time of crisis, the school retains significant reserves. It is fighting to maintain those reserves, in anticipation of even rougher times ahead.

What does the reserve look like at the state level? Where we use bonds to bridge over shortfalls, where we borrow from voter-dedicated funds, and where we take money promissed for education with empty promisses to pay it back "someday"? Hah!

I don't think our local school has nearly enough reserves, given how much impact the fiscal incompetence at the state level has on their budget.

In response to questions from the audience -- yes, the board will look at going to the voters for an additional parcel tax -- the only option available on the revenue side, other than grants (which may save the arts, BTW). This difficult decision (in this time) would make it possible, if the voters approve, to both further build reserves against future disruption, and to resume needed expansion projects to accomodate the growth in student population. (Remember: there are cost savings to be had in building in a down economy!)

How did we get into this mess? It's a long story, but it begins with property taxes, which were out of whack and posing an increasing burden on many homeowners, because there was really no restraint on how much money a community and the state could raise and spend. A real, legitimate problem. Along came a man with a vision. Howard Jarvis. He proposed trying to solve the spending problem with a cap on the property taxes. Proposition 13 was the result.

And our schools were the victims. Proposition 13 has proven, dramatically, that simply trying to curb government by restricting taxation has horrendous unintended side-effects.  Yet even today, as we lay off teachers, I heard on the radio an ad for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation, touting how wonderful Proposition 13 is, and how we have to have more of the same.

Shameless.

Oh, something needed to be done then, yes. And now, too. But not that.

We need to run the state more like a local school board.  With real constraints, a real mission that has to be fufilled, transparency, and a process that exposes every line item to intense scrutiny -- and every mission is judged by how well it is served.

I'll come back to this theme. But let me say that the Republicans with their no taxes pledge are just as much at fault for this mess as the Democrats who continued to spend on Polyannaish assumptions, without reserves. We need to turn this process inside-out, and drive it from one central question: What is the mission of our government? Whether you think government should be a safetynet, or should just handle roads and schools -- wherever that debate ends up, it needs to feed into a sane, stable budget process, with cost controls, auditing of results, reserves to cover the uncertainties, and the ability to cut programs individually, whether because they aren't producing the desired result, or because they have become a luxury in tight times.

We, the taxpayers, need to demand -- NO MORE BUDGET SPECTACLES!

You may say: "The state is too big to run like a school board". And you have a point. So why has it taken over the school board's job?

Let's return more financial control to the local school boards, and remove school spending from the Legislature's job description.  They've done a bad job of it -- maybe the problem is that they're overloaded.

Of course, there's a whole other debate about how schools should be funded, with many issues and many options. But I think this one -- of the state setting amounts and formulas and manipulating them to fix its own budget woes -- is not viable.

It has reached a point where third graders, of their own iniative -- are talking about trying to do something about it. My own daughter and her friends, are trying to organize a bake sale to raise money for the school, because they see the problem, and because they have the initiative and will to do something about it.

I'm very proud.

It's time we, the voters, the taxpayers, the parents, and yes, the students, stood up and said "No more!"

No, to divisive politics.

No, to one-sided "solutions"

No, to short-sighted fiscal policies

No, to borrowing from our future to cover our present, while defaulting on our debts to the past.

And I hope we can generate a plan -- a responsible plan -- one that even our friends who have joined the "no new taxes pledge" camp, can get behind, and work together on.

Because we've seen how well their current strategy has worked.

We need a new politics -- one where levels of spending and levels of taxation are addressed in a balanced way (that is, spending < taxation), one where, legislators are held directly, individually accountable for each bit of spending they propose, or they approve, and the tax burden that results, as well as the needs left unfilled.

We don't need a system divided into two camps, each driven to more and more radical positions.