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    Just a few of the fantastic references I scribbled down while listening to this talk by Alex Wright for the Long Now Foundation’s Seminars about Long-Term Thinking series [MP3]: 1) Memory Palace (or Method of Loci); Memory Theater. 2) The idea of a Professor of Books, which is traceable to this essay by Emerson. 4) Charles Cutter, whose library classification system is used in the Library of Congress today (and which Wright argues is superior to Melville Dewey’s). 5) The Belgian librarian Paul Otlet, a fascinating figure whose Treaties on Documentation is detailed in this YouTube clip. 6) Vannevar Bush’s seminal “As We May Think” essay, published in July 1945 by The Atlantic, which includes Bush’s description of something called the “memory extender,” or memex: “A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” 7) Ted Nelson’s pioneering idea of transclusion, which allows one document to be embedded entirely within another without duplicating the document via another concept Nelson coined in 1965, hypertext.

    17 February 2009 — tumblrize Recommended Readings