Chapters 7 & 8 Summary

"The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin" by William Burroughs is a call to arms for everyone to begin experimenting with randomness and recombination in writing. An author or artist can acheive the cut-up method explicitly by using scissors to cut up an original work and paste it back together to create a collage. Burroughs says that this method will introduce "a new dimension into writing." The article was published in 1961, paving the way for Ted Nelson's coining of "hypertext" and the further deconstruction of hierarchical text.

One year later, Douglas Englebert, the genius involved in the development of the internet, word processor, mouse, and window, takes the deconstruction of traditional text much futher in his bookAugmenting Human Intellect, a Conceptual Framework. The framework focuses on the goal of "increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation," or increasing human intellectual effectiveness. Englebert encourages a systems approach to the problem.

He first references Vannevar Bush's conception of the Memex, and expounds upon it to illuminate possibilities stemming from a mechanical card system of organization. Here, Englebert introduces associative linking to connect card A to card B and develop genereal grouping classifications.

The next section discusses an electronic computer based augmentation system. An extensive dialogue is played out in which the subject comes to realize that human intellect does not work linearly like our traditional symbol structures (books, etc.), but rather criss-crosses, feedbacks, and operates with substructures and antecedent links. We should ultimately be able to operate computers in a similar way, by manipulating documents to create links among topics and streams of thought. We will acheive better comprehension if human symbol structures (text) mirror human conceptual structures of nodes, branches, and links.
My favorite comment of Englebert's articulates how valuable such a leap in processing would be:

"I found, when I learned to work with the stuctures and manipulation processes such as we have outlined, that I got rather impatient if I had to go back to dealing with the serial-statement structuring in books and journals, or other ordinary means of communicating with other workers. It is rather like having to project three-dimensional images onto two-dimensional frames and to work with them there instead of in their natural form. Actually, it is much closer to the truth to day that it is like trying to project n-dimensional forms (the concept structures, which we have seen can be related with many many nonintersecting links) onto a one-dimensional form (the serial string of symbols), where the human memory and visualization has to hold and pucture the links and relationships."

Human's naturally think in multiple-dimensions incorporating reversion and association, yet until the 20th century our language and text symbol structures remained as a flat, linear represenation. Douglas Englebert imagined a future where humans developed better mechical and electrical tools in efforts to acheive the great potential of the human intellect.