50 yrs. of Star Trek!

[Ian S. King]

It's interesting to me that the Enterprise computers were effectively
command-and-control grammars, albeit somewhat freeform regarding the
commands (e.g., "Provide information about such-and-so" with no paramters
as to *what* knowledge).  There were only a select few episodes about
self-aware or self-actualizing computers, and ISTR they were all critical.
 -- Ian

On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 12:00 PM, jim stephens <jwsmail at jwsss.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 9/8/2016 10:41 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
>
>>
>> On 9/8/16 10:03 AM, Murray McCullough wrote:
>>
>>> What role did Star Trek play in the rise of small computers that are
>>> so ubiquitous today?
>>>
>> The main thing that comes to mind is how often images or references to TOS
>> appear in mid-70's computing magazines.
>>
>
> I would say that Samuel Harbison's ascii art was impacted.  He did a
> project to produce ascii
> art very early on (I think there is a tape floating around if you have a
> spare impact line printer
> around) which included a Spock picture.  The image I think is dated 1973.
>
> When I went to track him down to get permission to share his tape of
> images, I went at it
> just looking for the Sam Harbison of the header on the tape images. I then
> realized he is the
> Harbison of Harbison & Steel which was on the shelf behind me as my main C
> programming
> reference manual.  Duh.  He is a very nice fellow and said he had no
> objection.
>
> I noted Mike Loewen interviewed him about it some time later and did a
> nice web page
> about it.
>
> http://i.imgur.com/K9EZq.jpg
>
> http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~alien/aaa.html
>
> https://savedparadigms.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/harbison-
> s-p-steele-g-l-c-a-reference-manual-5th-ed.pdf
>
> http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/ASCII/
>



-- 
Ian S. King, MSIS, MSCS, Ph.D. Candidate
The Information School <http://ischool.uw.edu>
Dissertation: "Why the Conversation Mattered: Constructing a Sociotechnical
Narrative Through a Design Lens

Archivist, Voices From the Rwanda Tribunal <http://tribunalvoices.org>
Value Sensitive Design Research Lab <http://vsdesign.org>

University of Washington

There is an old Vulcan saying: "Only Nixon could go to China."