Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 13
Software/Lanier: Software is subject to a strict lock-in process.
I 17
Definition Lock-in/Lanier: happens when many other programs have been tailored to work with a particular program.
>Programming, >Computer languages.
I 18
E.g. Lock-in: MIDI, the possibility invented by Dave Smith in the early 1980s to display musical notes by automatically transcribing the keystrokes on a synthesizer digitally. Thus, only mosaic-shaped transitions could be represented, but not continuous transitions. This is how it has remained until today, as MIDI has become the exclusive standard.
I 23
For example, lock-in: UNIX; UNIX cannot tell whether a person or a program has pressed the return key. It is an exaggerated belief in discrete, abstract symbols and a lack of believe in temporal, continuous, non-abstract reality.
I 28
MIDI: the digital system, which represents people and advertisements in such a way that it is possible to compare them, has a clear resemblance to MIDI.
I 25
Xanadu/Software/Nelson, Ted/Lanier: the first draft for a World Wide Web, Ted Nelson's Xanadu, was thinking of a single huge overall file.
I 33
UNIX/Lanier: UNIX is characterized by the inability to deal with time as people experience it.
I 33
Computer Graphics/Lanier: the digital world looks better than it sounds because a community of digital activists, including people from Xerox Parc (especially Alan Kay), Apple, Adobe and universities (especially Don Knuth at Stanford) protected us from rigid, ugly fonts and other visual elements that we would not have been able to get rid of.
>Human Machine Communication.