[FRIAM] Kissing Kissinger

[Tom Johnson]

I'm reading John Markoff's biography of Stuart Brand, who was heavily
influenced by Bateson.

=======================
Tom Johnson
Inst. for Analytic Journalism
Santa Fe, New Mexico
505-577-6482
=======================

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 6:57 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:

> In 1978 as I was about to leave Pittsburgh for a job at Bell Labs my wife
> and I were staying with with Scott and Penny Fahlman since our furniture
> was on a moving van.  Scott was an AI hotshot who had recently arrived at
> Carnegie Mellon.  I was typing the final revision of my numerical analysis
> dissertation on my Smith Corona when Scott said, "Frank, that will be the
> last computer science dissertation ever written on a typewriter."
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 5:20 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>
>> Holy Moley!
>>
>> The references to Kissenger et. al.'s "The Age of AI: and our Human
>> Future" here lead me to find his  1950 Senior Thesis at Harvard (scanned
>> copy of the typewritten original
>> <https://ia903000.us.archive.org/23/items/HenryAKissingerTheMeaningOfHistoryReflectionsOnSpenglerToynbeeAndKant/Henry%20A%20Kissinger%20-%20The%20Meaning%20of%20History_%20Reflections%20on%20Spengler%2C%20Toynbee%2C%20and%20Kant.pdf>
>> ).
>>
>>
>> https://ia903000.us.archive.org/23/items/HenryAKissingerTheMeaningOfHistoryReflectionsOnSpenglerToynbeeAndKant/Henry%20A%20Kissinger%20-%20The%20Meaning%20of%20History_%20Reflections%20on%20Spengler%2C%20Toynbee%2C%20and%20Kant.pdf
>>
>> I am only 20 something pages into this 400 page tome and definitely over
>> my head in several ways.   His language reads a little *overly* flowery and
>> technically specific, and yet that may just be a result of the *era* and
>> it's topic as an analysis of three writer's take on history itself
>> (Spengler, Toynbee, Kant).   I have tried resolving several obscure terms
>> such as "genus Culture", references to which I can only find in archaic
>> botanical texts?   I have not read Spengler and only skimmed Toynbee and
>> the Kant I read is now 40 years past, so of course I don't have much more
>> than an effing clue of what he is effing on about here, yet it is
>> fascinating nevertheless.
>>
>> Even reading the typewritten type carries a sort of spectre of the time
>> and place this was generated.   It adds significance that I gifted my last
>> working typewriter (at times I have had as many as 5 or 6 which could be
>> made to work with a little care in use) to one of our house-sitters while
>> we travel.   She may well be typing on it as I type this.  The unevenness
>> of a manual typewriter, the waviness of the line and the uneveness of the
>> impression reflects in some way the mechanical device but also the
>> operator.   My instinct is that Kissinger did not type this final
>> manuscript himself if in fact he even typed any of it.   It has the
>> evenness (relative, given the limits of the type of device) of an
>> accomplished typist, typing in a workman-like way.  The digital copy (pdf)
>> appears to be a scan of a photocopy to boot, adding contrast enhancement
>> and some subsequent elision of bits by thresholding.
>>
>> I was tempted to cut-n-paste a few choice lines (images, not txt) and
>> comment on them, but realize that perhaps nobody else here cares and it
>> would just be a manual exercise for myself to no point otherwise.   OCR is
>> good enough these days to make it possible to render it as txt, etc.  but
>> since I am bogged down in the text itself and distracted by trying to graze
>> through Jenny's library here in Weesp, while quaffing the entireity of one
>> of her favorite tomes (a biography of Gregory Bateson), I will leave it now
>> and see if anyone else delves deep enough into the source material to spark
>> a conversation here that I can join or simply enjoy.
>>
>> So many books, so little time!  If I had more time I would learn to
>> speedread so I can have more time to read more.
>>
>>
>>
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