The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 60

At the other end of the spectrum defined by Carlyle's faith in books comes a fascinating note from Louis Hennepin (1684): "We told them [the Indians] that we know all things through written doc.u.ments. These savages asked, 'Before you came to the lands where we live, did you rightly know that we were here?' We were obliged to say no. 'Then you didn't know all things through books, and they didn't tell you everything'"

A. Grafton, A. Shelford, and N. Siraisi,The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.

In comparison to Carlyle's criticism of mechanical mediation of the Industrial Age comes this evaluation of the Information Age or Post-Industrial Age:

"In the industrial age, when people need to achieve something, do they have to go through a series of motions, read manuals, or become experts at the task? Not at all; they flip a switch.... It isn't necessary to know a single thing about lighting; all one needs to do is flip a switch to turn the light on. [...] To take care of a number of tasks, you push a b.u.t.ton, flip a switch, turn a dial. That is the age of industry working at its best, so that you don't have to become an electrical engineer or physicist to function effectively.

"To get the information you need...do you need to go on-line or open a manual? Unfortunately, most of us right now end up going through a series of activities in order to get the precise information we need. In the age of information...you will be able to turn on a computer, come up with the specific question, and it will do the work for you." (cf. Address by Jeff Davidson, Executive Director of the Breathing s.p.a.ce Inst.i.tute of Chapel Hill, before the National Inst.i.tute of Health, Dec. 8, 1995; reprinted in Vital Speeches, Vol. 62, 06-01-1996, pp. 495, and in the Electric LibraryT.)

George Steiner. The End of Bookishness? (edited transcript of a talk given to the International Publishers' a.s.sociation Congress in London, on June 14, 1988) in Times Literary Supplement, 89-14, 1988, p. 754.

Aldus Manutius, the Elder (born Aldo Manuzio, 1449-1515): Known for his activity in printing, publis.h.i.+ng, and typography, especially for design and manufacture of small pocket-sized books printed in inexpensive editions. The family formed a short-lived printing empire (ending in 1597 with Aldus Manutius, the Younger) and is a.s.sociated with the culture of books and with high quality typography.

Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. An abridged version appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction (1950) under the t.i.tle The Fireman.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). Mein Kampf (translated by Ralph Manheim) Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.

Mao (1893-1976). Comrade Mao Tze-tung on imperialism and all reactionaries are paper tigers. Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1958.

Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose (translated by William Weaver).

San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1983. Originally published in Italy as Il nome della rosa. Milano: Fabbri-Bompiani, 1980.

Topos uranikos, in Plato's philosophy is the heavenly place from which we originally come and where everything is true. Vilm Flusser wrote that, "The library (transhuman memory) is presented as a s.p.a.ce (topos uranikos)" cf. On Memory (Electronic or Otherwise), in Leonardo, 23-4, 1990, p. 398.

Great libraries take shape, under Libraries, in Compton's Encyclopedia (Compton's New Media), January 1, 1994

Noah Webster (1758-1843) wrote The Compendious Dictionary of the English Language, in 2 volumes, in 1828. He was probably inspired by Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), who wrote his Dictionary of the English Language in 1755.

Larousse de la Grammaire. Paris: Librairie Larousse. 1983

Dudens Bedeutungswrterbuch: 24,000 Wrter mit ihren Grundbedeutungen (bearbeitet von Paul Grebe, Rudolf Koster, Wolfgang Mller, et al). Zehn Bnden. Mannheim: Bibliographisches Inst.i.tut. 1980

Vannevar Bush. As We May Think, in The Atlantic Monthly, A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics. vol. CLXXVI, July-Dec., 1945.

The blurb introducing the article states: "As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. VANNEVAR BUSH has coordinated the activities of some six thousand leading American scientists in the application of science to warfare. In this significant article, he holds up an incentive for scientists when the fighting has ceased. He urges that men of science should then turn to the ma.s.sive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge," (p. 101). In many ways, this article marks the s.h.i.+ft from a literacy-dominated pragmatics to one of many new forms of human practical activity.

Ted Nelson. Replacing the Printed Word: A Complete Literary System, in Information Processing 80. (S.H. Lavington, Editor).

Amsterdam: North Holland Publis.h.i.+ng Company, 1980, pp.

1013-1023.

Ra.s.sengna dei siti piu' utilizzati, and Bibliotechi virtuali, in Internet e la Biblioteca, http://www.bs.unicatt.it/bibliotecavirtuale.html, 1996.

The Infonautics Corporation maintains the Electric LibraryT on the World Wide Web.

The Sense of Design

The term design (of Latin origin) can be understood as meaning "from the sign," "out of the sign," "on account of the sign,"

"concerning the sign," "according to the sign," "through the medium of the sign." All these possible understandings point to the semiotic nature of design activity. Balducinni defined design as "a visible demonstration by means of lines of those things which man has first conceived in his mind and pictured in the imagination and which the practised hand can make appear." It is generally agreed that before Balducinni's attempt to define the field, the primary sense of design was drawing. More recently, though, design is understood in a broad sense, from actual design (of artifacts, messages, products) to the conception of events (design of exhibitions, programs, and social, political, and family gatherings).

"Nearly every object we use, most of the clothes we wear and many things we eat have been designed," wrote Adrian Forty in Objects of Desire. Design and Society since 1750 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986; paperback edition, New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992, p. 6).

International Style: generic name attached to the functionalist, anti-ornamental, and geometric tendency of architecture in the second quarter of the 20th century. In 1923, Henri-Russel Hitchc.o.c.k and Philip Johnson organized the show ent.i.tled International Style-Architecture Since 1922, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Among the best known architects who embraced the program are Gerrit T. Rietveldt, Adolf Loos, Peter Behrens, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Eero Saalinen.

H. R. Hitchc.o.c.k and P. Johnson. The International Style. New York: Norton, 1966.

Jay Galbraith. Designing Complex Organizations. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1973.

Devoted to the art of drawing, a collection of lectures given at the Fogg Museum of Harvard University in March, 1985, Drawing Defined (Walter Strauss and Tracie Felker, Editors, New York: Abaris Books, 1987) is a good reference for the subject. Richard Kenin's The Art of Drawing: from the Dawn of History to the Era of the Impressionists (New York: Paddington Press, 1974) gives a broad overview of drawing.

Vitruvius Pollio. On Architecture (Edited from the Harleian Ma.n.u.scripts and translated into English by Frank Granger).

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

Marcus Cetius Faventius. Vitruvius and Later Roman Building Manuals. London: Cambridge University Press. 1973. This book is a translation of Faventius' compendium of Vitruvius' De Architectura and of Vitruvius' De diversis fabricis architectonicae. Parallel Latin-English texts with translation into the English by Hugh Plommer.

Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, 1887-1965). One of the most admired and influential architects and city planners whose work combines functionalism and bold sculptural expression.

Since the time design became a field of study, various design styles and philosophies crystallized in acknowledged design schools. Worthy of mention are the Bauhaus, Art Deco, the Ulm School (which continued in the spirit of the Bauhaus), and Post-modernism. A good source for information on the becoming of design is Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of Modern Design, Harmondsworth, 1960.

The Scholes and Glidden typewriter of 1873, became, with refinements, the Remington model 1 (Remington was originally a gun and rifle manufacturer in the state of New York.) Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Micropedia, Vol. 12, 1990. pp. 86-87). See also History of the Typewriter (reprint of the original history of 1923). Sarasota FL: B. R. Sw.a.n.ger,1965.

Peter Carl Faberg (1846-1920). One of the most renown goldsmiths, jewelers, and decorative artists. After studying in Germany, Italy, France, and England, he settled in St. Petersburg in 1870, where he inherited his father's jewelry business.

Famous for his inventiveness in creating decorative objects- flowers, animals, bibelots, and especially the Imperial Easter Egg-Faberg is for many the ideal of the artist-craftsman.

Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933). American painter, craftsman, decorator, designer and philanthropist who became one of the most influential personalities in the Art Nouveau style who made significant contributions to gla.s.smaking. Son of Charles Louis Tiffany (1812-1902), the jeweler, he is well known for his significant contributions to gla.s.smaking.

Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873): British politician, poet, and novelist, famous for The Last Days of Pompeii. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition, Micropedia, Vol.

7, 1990. p. 595).

James Gibson. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

In our days, design is focused on major themes: design integrity (promoting exemplary forms of typography and form studies, as with the Basel School and its American counterparts), design function (of concern to industry-oriented schools), computation based on design. Originating from Gibson's studies in the psychology of man-nature relations, the ecological approach in design has its starting point in affordance. Thus many designers reflect concern for an individualized approach to the understanding of affordance possibilities.

Costello, Michie, and Milne. Beyond the Casino Economy. London: Verso, 1989.

D. Hayes. Beyond the Silicon Curtain. Boston: South End Press, 1989.

Mihai Nadin. Interface design: a semiotic paradigm, in Semiotica 69:3/4. Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988, pp. 269-302.

-. Computers in design education: a case study, in Visible Language (special issue: Graphic Design- Computer Graphics),vol.

XIX, no. 2, Spring 1985, pp. 282-287.

-. Design and design education in the age of ubiquitous computing, in Kunst Design & Co. Wuppertal: Verlag Mller + Busmann, 1994, pp. 230-233.

Kim Henderson. Architectural Innovation: The reconfiguration of existing product technologies, in Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 35, January, 1990.

M. R. Louis and R. I. Sutton. Switching Cognitive Gears: From habits of mind to active thinking. Working Paper, School of Industrial Engineering, Stanford University, 1989.