Claire Baumgartner

I will admit, when I saw the topic for this week’s blog I shuddered a little. I’ve had classes dealing with copyright law before and it’s always such a tangled subject. Having read a lot about copyright and patent lawsuits, I know that this is a difficult subject to tackle and I can imagine that it’s that much more difficult on the Internet.

Online, it’s easy to share documents and files, music and movies. We do it all the time, through emails and other websites. It’s become a basic part of our communication with each other; I can’t remember the last time I had a professor who didn’t put the syllabus up on Blackboard so they wouldn’t waste paper.

Last year, SOPA and PIPA were the big things to talk about-I actually wrote a paper on US copyright laws for a criminology class because I wanted to discuss these acts. The Internet was furious about them; Google and other websites had a “blackout day” where they rendered their websites useless for a day as protest against these two acts. They would have restricted Internet sharing much more than it already was. The file sharing behemoth MegaUpload was also shut down last year following a long FBI investigation into their website practices.

It’s really difficult to place copyrights on Internet works because it’s really hard to track Internet works. Files can be shared so easily and so quickly that it’s almost impossible to find someone who has not illegally downloaded something. We’re all guilty of it, I’m sure. I don’t quite subscribe to the idea that “piracy isn’t a victimless crime”, mainly because I think that the prices put on media we get form the Internet is ridiculous. It seems silly to have to pay almost two dollars for one song!

Of course, while it’s very easy to share things over the web, it’s also very easy to track those same things. If someone felt the need to print off copies of a book and pass them around to friends it would be very difficult to track, unless one could round up all the copies. But Internet copies are different. Search engines make it easy to find what you’re looking for, and once you’ve found it you can begin building a case against the person who violated the copyright.

There’s a fine line between public domain and copyright infringement, and I think that on the web the line becomes that much more fine.

Like many students, I love Wikipedia. Yes, I know that there can be terrible inaccuracies in their articles but it’s always a great jumping-off point, especially if you’re unfamiliar with your research topic. It’s also a great go-to for quick trivia bits and things outside of the classroom (I, for one, really like to look up movie endings before I watch them because I hate surprises).

Of course, everyone knows that Wikipedia is just about the least reliable “legitimate” source on the Internet, but it really can be useful. I know that a lot of people like to get an overview from the article and then go to the bottom and see what sources were used. Some people actually go to these sources and use them if they seem legitimate enough.

For this blog entry I looked up The War of the Roses because I’ve been to the Wikipedia page before and I knew it was a good one. The article is quite long and in-depth, but that of course does not necessarily mean that it’s legitimate. The problem with Wikipedia articles is that usually, most of their information is correct but some of the details are wrong, and sometimes details are the most important part. The Wikipedia page for The War of the Roses has both a bibliography and a references page, which is heartening because I know that many pages only have one or the other. There are twelve different works cited throughout the article, which may seem like a small amount but most of the cited works are quite long and all-encompassing of the war. All but one have a linked ISBN number where you can look up the book on either Amazon or Google.

I think that having background knowledge on a topic allows the reader a little insight into the accuracy of a Wikipedia article. I probably know more about The War of the Roses than most people who look it up, and in fact I’ve read at least two of the source texts listed in the bibliography. Overall, I think that Wikipedia is a good place to orient yourself and learn a little about your topic, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. For real research, I’d go to a university database or somewhere a little more trustworthy.

1) An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970

• To find this I first went to ProQuest and simply typed in “1970 public schools+labor dispute” and came up with 0 results.
• I then just searched “public school labor dispute” and got 20884 results.
• I narrowed down the search by specifying that I wanted a letter to the editor, which left me with 413 results.
• I further narrowed my search by choosing a time frame (1960-1969) and was left with 86 articles
• When I narrowed it further (to 1969 only) I found this article, written about a social workers in the public schools by Mrs. Mary Lee Brady to the Chicago Tribune in January of 1969.

2) The first documented use of solar power in the United States

• I first entered the term “solar power” into ProQuest and came up with loads of entries that I couldn’t possibly narrow down, as I had no idea what time period I should be looking in.
• I then entered the phrase “use of solar power” and sorted the 135 entries by date (oldest first) instead of relevance.
• I got this  article from the Boston Globe in November of 1940, which tells about the sun’s heat causing a water boiler to heat within five minutes. While this is probably not the very first solar power encounter in the US, it seems to be a big enough feat (at the time) to at least be quite early on in the study of solar power.

3) The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data

• Disclaimer: I wasn’t quite sure what to be looking for with this one; it doesn’t make much sense to me. But I did my best!
• Using ProQuest (perhaps my favorite search tool) I looked up “California ballots” and got a lot of unrelated answers.
• So I narrowed the search to “California ballot initiatives” and was on the right track- only 11 results came up.
• Again, I’m not really sure of the parameters of this item, but I found an article from a 1988 issue of The Christian Science Monitor about a California ballot initiative and found it interesting regardless.

This scavenger hunt was quite a long process, and very frustrating. I think that it’s nearly impossible to find items to these exact specifications, especially #2 and #3. With #2, the first documented case of solar power being used in the US could have been published in a tiny town newspaper, or in a foreign newspaper-who knows? #3 is a little subjective, if I’m honest, because it’s our opinion of what’s the best resource. It all depends on preferences and the kind of format in which people best absorb information.

I really enjoy the fact that so many older issues of newspapers are now digitized and accessible to us. My New England-based family has read both The New York Times and The Boston Globe religiously since before I can remember and I think it’s really extraordinary that I can go back and read the same articles that my grandparents were reading before I was born, and even before my parents were born.

Digitizing newspapers and the like is also a really helpful tool to anyone researching anything, ever. They’re first- or second-hand accounts of past issues and events, and they really help to set the tone of a research topic. For this assignment, I decided to search the newspaper archives for articles about the moon landing. I got over ten thousand hits when I entered the search term “moon landing” into The New York Times database. Intimidating? Yes. But there are so many ways to narrow down the search. I could add in additional keywords that qualify that I am looking for the first moon landing. Alternatively, I could specify the publication dates, the document type, or the title of a document.

It was easy to narrow my search to four documents and find the front page article from July 21, 1969 “ASTRONAUTS LAND ON PLAIN; COLLECT ROCKS, PLANT FLAG”. That’s a moment in history that can now be pulled up with a few clicks of a mouse, which is both amazing and a little terrifying.

There are, of course, some drawbacks to having all this information, literally, at our fingertips. I am one of those purists who believe that nothing can come close to the real thing. I have held an actual July 21, 1969 New York Times newspaper in my hands and read the exact same article that is on the screen of my computer now, and I can say with certainty that the experience is very different. With a digitized document it feels as if you are removed from it somehow; I find it much more difficult to connect it with a period in history.

Another problem is the veritable inundation of information we receive. Over ten thousand articles, all about a moon landing, all from one single newspaper. That’s an incredible amount of information to wade through, especially if you don’t have anything specific in mind. Yes, there are parameters you can use, but sometimes they’re little to no use.

That being said, I still believe that the digitization of newspapers is an excellent and incredibly helpful tool to have for anyone.

T.H Nelson begins his paper, Complex Information Processing: A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing and the Indeterminate, by stating that the use of a computer for personal reasons is very different than the use of a computer for business reasons. He references Vannevar Bush’s Memex, which we read about last week, to explain that personal use of a computer is much more creative and therefore sometimes more difficult to cater to. Every person has different personal tasks that they will use a computer for, as opposed to the relatively more uniform usage of computers for business purposes.

In his paper, Nelson declares that he will explain three things:

• The original problem of specifying a computer system for personal information retrieval.
• Why the problem is not simple but the solution must be simple.
• The philosophical implications of such an approach.

He goes on to say:

“I knew from my own experiment what can be done for these purposes with card
file, notebook, index tabs, edge-punching, file folders, scissors and paste,
graphic boards, index-strip frames, Xerox machine and the roll-top desk. My intent
was not merely to computerize these tasks but to think out (and eventually
program) the dream file: the file system that would have every feature a novelist
or absent-minded professor could want, holding everything he wanted in just the
complicated way he wanted it held, and handling notes and manuscripts in as subtle
and complex ways as he wanted them handled.”

-T.H. Nelson

According to Nelson, there have only been a few impediments to the process. The three main ones were:

1. High cost
2. Little sense of need
3. Uncertainty about system design

However, he adds that the third one is the only real problem left, and proposes a system called ELF (evolutionary file structure) to remedy that. This file structure is relatively fluid and has the potential to be shaped to fit the needs of the user. The ELF has a very simple structure, with only three elements:

• Entries
• Lists
• Links

This is a hypothetical drawing of ELF’s capacity for filing as used by a historian.

My Thoughts: 

I’ll be honest, not much of this article made sense to me. However, I do understand that Nelson was intent on building on the framework provided two decades earlier by Bush, whose article I did understand (a little). It’s clear that both of these men were eager to find a way to organize and simplify both business and personal lives by introducing modern, digital filling systems. I think it’s a little brilliant that they were thinking so far ahead, considering that computers have become integral parts of our lives in a relatively recent amount of time. It amazes me that there were people sixty or seventy years ago who were already visualizing the machines that we take for granted in this day and age.

It’s very odd to read Vannevar Bush’s thoughts on the future of technology, to say the least. In his article As We May Think, Bush describes a new information system that he believed would come about in the near future, a future that-for us-has already occurred. He writes of a machine that will be able to spit out information more quickly than ever before, a machine that would simplify everyday life in extraordinary ways.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

– Vannevar Bush

It is clear to us, as readers from the 21st century, that he is in effect describing a computer. For most modern day members of society a computer is an everyday household object that is not given much thought until it needs to be fixed or updated. for most of us it is hard to imagine a world where computers only exist in the minds of a few. It is unbelievable that an article written in the 1940’s can still be so accurate in 2012.

Bush does not only describe future technology- in fact, I am not entirely sure that was the point of his article. At the very end he states:

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

-Vannevar Bush

Bush is intent on impressing to his readers that, although he believes technology will be helpful, it can also be harmful. The technology we possess today allows us to do extraordinary things, but it also has the ability to do absolute devastation. We must consider the power we now wield, especially because technology will only continue to advance.