All this does have me wondering about the internet-and-society field's interest in, and advocacy for, a certain kind of "transparency" in civil discourse shares lineage with transparency in the comp-sci sense, to the effect that transparency (in the sense of openness and publicness of bureaucratic or deliberative decision-making process) is a quality that can be produced and modified computationally. There is an ideological disposition there to see government as a kind of social UTM upon which different norms, beliefs, and commitments may be run like so many lines of code...

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Nabeel Siddiqui <nasiddiqui@email.wm.edu> wrote:
Dear Tom,

I believe this is from an old 1978 poster that IBM released dealing with virtual memory.  It is sometimes attributed to Scott Hammer, who worked at William and Mary before I got here as a graduate student.  Here is him explaining that this is the first time he saw it:  http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q3/seeit.html

Hope that helps.

Sincerely,
Nabeel Siddiqui

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 11:02 AM, James Cortada <jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
By the way, Mike is alive and well.  Mike can you pipe in and confirm.  This is a fabulous insight and expression.  It should be quoted frequently!!

Cheers.

On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 9:24 AM, David Hemmendinger <hemmendd@union.edu> wrote:
>I heard it from Mike Williams, when he had his professor of computer science hat on! Here's how he said it:
>
>If it is there, but you can't see it, it is transparent.
>If it isn't there, but you see it, it is virtual.
>If it is there, and you see it, it is real.
>
>For the purposes of symmetry, what if something is not there and you can't see it?

        If it isn't there and you can't see it, you're ok.

        David
_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members



--
James W. Cortada
Senior Research Fellow
Charles Babbage Institute
University of Minnesota

_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members


_______________________________________________
This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members



--
matthew battles
associate director, metaLAB (at) harvard
fellow, berkman center for internet and society
twitter = @matthewbattles