Response to Nelson
A File Structure for The Complex, The Changing and the Indeterminate by T.H. Nelson was quite an interesting piece. On the first page Nelson mentions Bush’s Memex in relevance to the goal they were trying to reach at the current time. I found it interesting that Nelson says the uses of the file are so complex yet the structure is to be “simple and building-block” which I found interesting that in order to perform such complex functions the file should be as basic as possible. Nelson has proven himself as an efficient critical thinker in this piece.
From the reading, it can be said that Nelson’s piece is an evaluation and check-up on the predictions of Vannevar Bush which is very intriguing due to the fact that this only two decades later; yet, in present time we have access to this technology.
“To go back only as far as 1945, Vannevar Bush, in his famous article
“As We May Think “l , described a system of this type. Bush’s paper is better remembered
for its predictions in the field of information retrieval, as he foresaw
the spread and power of automatic document handling and the many new indexing
techniques it would necessitate.” (Nelson)
Nelson lists 3 key ideas that need to be investigated in order for this technology to work:
- The information structure; Zippered Lists
- The file structure; Evolutionary List File (ELF)
- The file language; PRIDE
Nelson then goes to mention that the hardware is capable of handling this technology, but the file is not able to handle such an intricate job as to storing mass amounts of data. He discusses reasons why people have not been able to make the file work by introducing three false theories.
These theories are:
- “writing is a matter of inspiration”
- ‘”writing consists of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair”‘
- “all you really need is a good outline”
Nelson’s idea of ELF really caught my eye because everything about it is what we use in today’s world. These include:
- Entries
- Lists
- Links
- Sequences
All of these operations are used in today’s world which makes me wonder what else was created/predicted back then and made its way into today’s world. It is just amazing what people have done in order to contribute to such elaborate technology like this. ELF essentially set up what we have today.
The complexity of ELF