The Garden of Forking Paths –
My first thought upon finishing this reading was that Dr. Yu Tsun’s method of delivering his message may not have been the most efficient, but it was definitely clever in a morbid way. As Albert spoke to Yu Tsun and described many different universes in which he and Dr. Yu Tsun may never meet at all, or in which he was already dead, he recognized the possibility that Yu Tsun could be formulating a plan to kill him. Albert turned his back to Yu Tsun despite this. My question is, was this intentional? Did he want to impose a choice upon Yu Tsun? Shoot Albert, and one future is created in which Yu Tsun’s message is delivered. Do not shoot, and an entirely different future is created.
I also was interested by the idea that Tsui Pen wrote his novel about multiple universes without ever mentioning the word “time”. He left his many manuscripts as a puzzle for future generations to figure out, while slyly commenting: ”I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths”. He even envisions the future as a multitude of branching paths leading to a number of different futures/universes being created. In some of those futures, people are able to solve his puzzle and grasp the concept of his garden of forking paths; to others, his ideas are lost completely.
Computer Lib / Dream Machines –
I appreciated Ted Nelson’s discussion about the existence of a huge gap between computer people and ‘laypeople’, which I think still exists today. This gap is certainly closing as programming spreads into other disciplines, such as computational biology, language technologies, and much more; but, there still seems to be a separation between those who are ‘computer people’and those who are ‘not good with computers’. I completely agree with Nelson in that the basics of computers aren’t too hard to understand – it’s just that more information needsto be made accessible and understandable to those who are interested in learning, free of overcomplicated and unecessary technobabble. Oftentimes introductory programming coursesare intimidating and present the student with a huge amount of new information, especially if you’re not too familiar with computers. I think there needs to be more classes that are in a more apporachable middle ground. These should be presented to children at a younger age, to introduce the basics of computers to kids as they grow up so that computers aren’t quite so intimidating anymore.
As for his ideas on computer-assisted instruction, I love the idea of the branching path lesson structure. This could definitely be beneficial to students with short attention spans who want to jump around to many different topics, but it would also allow students who excel at certain subjects to pursue those subjects further. I also appreciate how much he emphasized design and control schemes. Nelson describes how a team of artists, writers, and designers should create the layout and main structure of the lessons, and it’s up to the programmers to implement it and adjust the software/hardware accordingly. While that’s not always how it works in the real world, I appreciate his inclusion of the design components of software as a vital part of the software development life cycle, for I believe that the importance of good design is often overlooked by programmers.
