Theodor Holm Nelson will be teaching a possibly final, or 'bucket',

course on all his computer work and ideas. The title is "CINEMA OF

THE MIND: Philosophy and Art of Designing Interaction" (Computer

Science 194, U.C. Santa Cruz, winter quarter 2013). ☛ Further course

details will be found at the end of this note.

Dr. Nelson is an independent designer and thinker who for fifty

years-- since before others imagined personal computing or

screen-to-screen publishing-- has had deep designs for a computer

world very different from that we now face. While Microsoft, Apple

and the Web veered backward, imitating the past and paper, Nelson

always designed for the screens-only world we are at last approaching.

Nelson's Xanadu document designs, well known if not well understood,

are generally recognized as precursors to the World Wide Web. His

broader alternative software designs, and their radical theoretical

underpinnings, are not well known. This course boosts their survival

and the chance some may eventually prevail.

While other software depicts time as conventional clocks and

calendars, Nelson shows it as a spiral that can be tightened to

nanoseconds or opened to the lifetime of the universe, wherein you can

reconcile people's schedules for next week or annotate historical

theories. While others' bookkeeping systems show only money, Nelson's

applies to all exchanges-- money, Christmas cards, favors, grudges.

Instead of today's isolating "apps" and social cattle pens, he plans a

sharable, unifying world of interactive diagrams that zoom to all work

and reading, with everything annotatable.

His radical infrastructure includes automatically-coupling data

structures, an operating system without hierarchy, and

connection-lines between the contents of windows. These lead to a

completely different computer world, and-- he fervently hopes-- a

different human life around them.

All of this is viewed through Nelson's Schematic Philosophy, offering

new terminology and diagrammatics for analyzing complex subjects.

=== COURSE DETAILS

The class is scheduled for Wednesday afternoons from 4 to 7:30,

Engineering 2, room 399. A typical class will consist of a discussion

session, a tough lecture, a break, an easy lecture, and another

discussion session.

There will be two midterm examinations and a final. Projects for

extra credit (leading to a possible A+) must be negotiated in the

first three weeks.

The course is open not just to UCSC undergraduate and graduate

students, but to outsiders as well, via a process known as "Concurrent

Enrollment." Outsider tuition cost appears to be $1355 ($100

application fee for Concurrent Enrollment, plus $1255 tuition). Two

forms are required: "Concurrent Enrollment Application" to join the

university loosely, at

http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/sites/default/files/imce/public/pdf/CEAp.pdf

(to be mailed or faxed to the University with the $100-- or $65 if

before 14 December)

and a form to be signed by the instructor and sent in with tuition payment, at

http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/sites/default/files/imce/public/pdf/CEInstrAp.pdf

(final deadline appears to be in mid-January).

More details (not necessarily all consistent) are at:

http://www.ucsc-extension.edu/open-campus/enroll

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