Architect Norma Merrick Sklarek was born in Harlem, New York 1926. Sklarek’s life has been filled with many firsts. She was the first Black woman to be licensed as an architect in New York (1954) and in California (1962). In 1959, Sklarek became the first Black woman to become a member of the American architects’…
Reflection on Bauhuas Philosophy
It is unprecedented that Bauhaus philosophy tends to combine the aesthetics and everyday function. One of the principles Bauhaus strives for is that function before form. It underlies the importance of functionality and can be related to the principles of interaction designs. For modern interaction designers, we mean to create products that help the users…
Thoughts on Bauhaus House
To me, Bauhaus was an avant-garde movement. It was influenced by modernism and constructivism, a style or a moment that meant to break the forms and ideas of traditional and classical values. Not only Bauhaus was one of the first institute that accepted black students, the Bauhaus represented the concept of minimalism, theorized on primary…
Patricia Moore
Patricia Moore, also as known as the Mother of Universal Design, is a female industrial designer in the US. Graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology, Moore chose to complete advanced studies in biomechanics at the New York University School of Medicine and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine. Realized how important of taking empathic research to the extreme to design…
The future envisioned by Vannevar Bush and our network technology today
In the 1930s, Vannevar Bush conceived the information storage devices that people will have in the future. In As We May Think, he envisioned that people would store personal books, communications, and records through such devices, and be able to consult the information in a fast and flexible way. This mechanized device is called Memex….
A new way of recording our lives?
Let’s think about how important recording daily life, feelings and history are. Nearly all people around the world use some kind of tools such as photos, diaries, or audio to record what they are interested in and save for uses. Where to display those memories? Traceback to 1945, from the article “As We May Think”,…
Father of Pac-Man: Toru Iwatani
Game designer Toru Iwatani was born on January 25, 1955 in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. He is completely self-taught, without any formal training in computer, visual arts or graphic design. In 1977, at the age of 22, Iwatani joined NAMCO LIMITED, a computer software company in Tokyo, which produces video games. After entering the company, Iwatani…
From the Prescient Vision in 1945 to Going Viral on “TikTok”
During World War II, many applications of human factors and cognitive science research techniques were being utilized to understand obstacles with soldiers and their use of technology. In fact, many scientists and scholars emerged during wars and in response, they developed practical tools and innovations in order to benefit the efficiency of work on many…
On Exploring Bauhaus: Building the New Artist
After engaging with The Getty Institute’s digital exhibition “Bauhaus: Building the New Artist”, I’m left with a newfound perspective in my practice. Particularly as a student at an art and design school, it is important to reflect on the legacy that Bauhaus has left on the arts, but even moreso in regard to my education….
Memex VS Digital Media
In the article As we may think, Vannevar Bush first brought the issue about the idea of memory extender, a proto-hypertext system, normally known as memex. In his writing, he was tired of traditional methods of using physical power：recording and retrieving piles of documents mannually. As such, he envisioned a tool that could store the…
Alan Turing: Father of A.I.
Alan Turing was a British mathematician and logician, who was born in London, United Kingdom on June 23, 1912, and died on June 7, 1954. He is now renowned as one of the most powerful thinkers of the 20th century, through his major contributions to the fields of mathematics, cryptanalysis, logic, philosophy, and mathematical biology….
The importance of understanding the philosophy of the Bauhaus to modern Interaction Designers
The philosophy of the Bauhaus has a lot of great impact on interaction design. Form and color are among the most elements in interaction design. Form conveys both message and interaction that users can do with the the object. For instance, a light switch, we can tell it has something to turn off and on…
The Memex: From Concept to Reality
Vannevar Bush was a well-known engineer and scientist who played a huge role with the American government Since World War I. He envisioned a device, known as the Memex that could store and manipulate information; whether it be words or pictures, and be mechanized to work at high speed and flexibility. Through his article As…
Chetana Deorah
Chetana Deorah is an Indian American woman who grew up in Mumbai, India and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for her masters and work. She majored in Biology for her undergrad and after a frog dissection gone wrong, quickly realized that was not the correct career path for her. She received her MFA…
Bush’s original vision with the world of blogging and modern blogging tools like Medium, TikTok, Instagram, etc
First the similarity in the annotation, where Bush’s original vision was to help him in his research work and Google did the annotation with comments on the web. They both took advantage of the hypertext as a way to organize information. The difference is that Bush used hypertext for his research work at a small…
#Vannevar Bush’s Vision
The Memex, Vannevar Bush designed a hypothetical document-manipulation system that would permit him to be a better researcher, by managing the annotated links he established between documents. His vision was how we handle and interact with information took a step towards the reality of the creation of hypertext and the basic linked web. It’s similar…
Lisa Welchman – The Guru of Digital Governance
Lisa Welchman is an internationally-recognized author, educator, expert, speaker, and management consultant, who is an accomplished African American leading practitioner in the field of digital governance. In 1995, Welchman started her career journey in Web page coding for Netscape in Silicon Valley. Before she established Welchmanpierpoint in 1999, she was also the program manager for…
Ada Lovelace – The First Programmer
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the well-known poet Lord Byron, born in 1815. Though it was very unusual in her day for women to receive an education, Ada studied science and math from a very young age. Her parents did not want her pursuing the arts, and always supported her love of science. She…
On Information Distribution: Who Decides?
In Vannevar Bush’s article “As We May Think“, he describes a conceptual machine called the “memex” that would allow its users to store, replicate, and share information for the use of research. The significance of the memex lies in its preceding of the Internet by 50 years, and thus the democritization of information. He prescribes…
Eileen Gray
Eileen Gray, born on August 9th, 1878, was a female architect and furniture designer. Gray grew up in London and took up painting as a hobby and job. By 1920, she opened up a shop known as: Galerie Jean Desert. This shop allowed her to open up an art gallery to show her work and…
