Chapter 17

1970
Software - exhibition at the Jewish Museum, organized by Jack Burnham

• visitors were being asked to interact/operate computers in several contexts
• the actual exhibition went really poorly, but the implications remained important
• Ted Nelson created a catalogue of information called Labyrinth, the first publicly-accessible hypertext - readers decided what to read and in what order and the computer would store this information to be printed out for each reader at the end of their visit
• Nicholas Negroponte headed the Architecture Machine Group which presented Seek - a series of metal blocks creating an environment inhabited by gerbils. the blocks were moved by a computer controlled robotic arm that reacted to the movements and alterations of the blocks caused by the gerbils
• broadcast poetry via AM radio using the glass windows as low-grade speakers
• goal was "to focus sensibilities on the fastest growing area in this culture: information processing systems an their devices."
• before Software, computers making art were mainly trying to imitate alredy existing artforms, but this was an exploration of computers rather than trying to create finished products - express ideas and art propostions

Ted Nelson made a comment about the Seek display in which he felt that perhaps the gerbils presented a danger in this kind of human-computer interaction in that he "had a sense that [the gerbil] was worshiping it." I wonder if we see this kind of "worshiping" today, and if we are, do we notice? Clearly this exhibition was ahead of its time in terms of ideas and desires for the use of computers.