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 <jwsm...@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."
