[FRIAM] Kissing Kissinger

[Frank Wimberly]

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.
>
>
>
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20220611/09bee5ff/attachment.html>