Creative Computing

Joel Gethin Lewis

Week 4: Lecture 8: Linking

What I'm going to talk about now:

0. Group meditation.
1. Questions?
2. The History of the Internet, The History of the Graphical User Interface, The History of Hypertext.
3. Encryption.
4. Trees and Graphs.
5. Google, Facebook and CS183.
6. Decentralisation: P2P, Blockchain and IPFS and Filecoin, Merkle Trees and DAT and Beaker.
7. Mark Lombardi, Listening Post and Celestial Mechanics
8. Feedback.
9. Homework Assignment - exercises from Code as Creative Medium - Graphic Elements.

0. Group Meditation

1. TBC.

1. Questions?

• All questions allowed!
• 2 minutes alone on post it notes, then double group size every 1 minutes until it's the whole group.
• This idea came from Zach Lieberman. He does this exercise at the start of every session of School of Poetic Computation in New York.

2. The History of the Internet, The History of the Graphical User Interface, The History of Hypertext.

• It all began with Cybernetics.
• 1941: The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges.
• 1945: As We May Think by Vannevar Bush. History of the Internet.
• 1958: SAGE system for Nuclear Defence.
• 1960: Man-Computer Symbiosis by J. C. R. Licklider. History of the GUI. NLS and the Mother of All Demos.
• 1960: Project Xanadu by Ted Nelson. History of Hypertext. Computer Lib/Dream Machines. Ted Nelson in Herzog's "Lo and Behold"

3. Encryption.

• Caesar cipher.
• Public-key cryptography, RSA and Clifford Cocks.
• Steganography.
• Machine Identification Code / Voynich Manuscript / EURion Constellation.

4. Trees and Graphs.

• Trees and Graphs.
• Seven Bridges of Königsberg.
• Travelling salesman problem.
• Dijkstra's algorithm.

5. Google, Facebook and CS183.

• You can think of Google as a way of brute forcing a two way world wide web - the way it was meant to be in the first place if Ted Nelson had had his way.
• I have respect for Google as the orginal PageRank algorithm was a technical breakthrough in web search. Facebook on the other hand was just in the right place at the right time, with good marketing.
• Peter Thiel was one of the original investors in Facebook, you can read about his startup methods in the course that he taught at Stanford, CS183. More notes from the revised course here. Basically have a public and private plan and go for monopoly.
• Interestingly another early investor was CIA, via its investment arm, In-Q-Tel. People will survey themselves these days! Another key Thiel company is Palantir Technologies.
• Thiel is the subject of the documentary Nobody Speak, about freedom of the press and billionaires censoring of it.

6. Decentralisation: P2P, Blockchain and IPFS and Filecoin, Merkle Trees and DAT and Beaker.

• Decentralisation.
• Peer to Peer - means you don't need a central authority any more.
• Blockchain - means you don't need trust any more.
• Two interesting projects have emerged in the past few years: Dat and InterPlanetary File System.
• There is some controversy about IPFS and it's methods of funding, indeed the IPFS emerged from Dat.
• A good talk the need for IPFS by Juan Benet, one of its creators.

7. Mark Lombardi, Listening Post and Celestial Mechanics.

• Mark Lombardi. NPR podcast on him. Images of his work. Bonus bonus: watch all of Adam Curtis's documentaries.
• Listening Post by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin. Article on Listening Post 10 years on.
• Celestial Mechanics by Scott Hessels and Gabriel Dunne.

8. Feedback

• What's working?
• What's not working?
• What am I missing?
• Lets talk now or you can Slack me in private.

9. Homework assignment!

• Exercises from Code as Creative Medium - Images and Time and Interactivity.

Thanks!

• More about me: @joelgethinlewis
• Get in contact via the CCI Slack!
• Website:
  https://jgl.github.io/CCIDiploma-AutumnWinter2019
• Today's slides:
  https://jgl.github.io/CCIDiploma-AutumnWinter2019/lecture_08.html