ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals
something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account
of himself is probably lying, since any life when
viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
— Eric Arthur “George Orwell” Blair
“Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on
Salvador Dali” in THE SATURDAY BOOK
FOR 1944 (London: Hutchinson)
1903
June 25: Eric Arthur Blair was born in Motihari, India. The Blairs were relatively prosperous British civil servants.
GEORGE ORWELL
1904
Ida Blair moved back from India to England so she would be able to bring up her children Marjorie Blair and
Eric Arthur Blair in a proper Christian environment.
GEORGE ORWELL
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1917
Eric Arthur Blair was admitted to Eton College.
GEORGE ORWELL
1921
Eric Arthur Blair left Eton College.
GEORGE ORWELL
1922
Eric Arthur Blair returned to India to join the Indian Imperial Police.
GEORGE ORWELL
1927
Eric Arthur Blair resigned from the Indian Imperial Police and returned to London.
GEORGE ORWELL
2
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1928
Eric Arthur Blair moved from London to Paris to become a writer. To support himself, he would wash dishes
in a restaurant.When he returned to London, he had to live as a tramp until he found work first as a teacher at
a private school, and then running a bookstore. Such positions would give him time to write, and his first book,
DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON, would be published in 1933 under the pseudonym George Orwell.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
3
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1933
George Orwell’s DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON.
1934
George Orwell’s BURMESE DAYS and his A CLERGYMAN’S DAUGHTER.
4
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1936
George Orwell’s KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING. He received a grant from the Left Book Club to produce a
work dealing with the conditions of the poor, which resulted in the publication of THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER.
June 9: Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell) got married with Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy.
December: It was the period of the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell enlisted in the POAM (he would be wounded in
the neck and would return to England in 1938).
WORLD WAR II
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
5
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1938
Thomas Wolfe, author of “Look Homeward Angel” and “You Can’t Go Home Again,” died at 37 after brain
surgery revealed that tuberculosis had spread.
George Orwell, wounded in the neck, returned from the Spanish Civil War to England. His account of his
experiences in Spain appeared, as HOMAGE TO CATALONIA. He fell ill with tuberculosis.1
1. For many years we would celebrate a cult of the celebrity tuberculosis victim. The last of these celebrity sufferers from
tuberculosis were the generation of George Orwell (1950), Eleanor Roosevelt (1962), and Vivien Leigh (1967).
6
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1941
Every county in the United States of America was certified as no longer having a problem with bovine
tuberculosis — which is to say, all infection rates were less than one half of one percent. It was estimated that
this program, although expensive, was saving 20,000-25,000 lives per year.
The tubercular George Orwell went to work for the BBC as a broadcaster for India, a post which he would
relinquish to become literary editor for The Tribune.
1943
September: The antibiotic streptomycin was isolated to treat tuberculosis, for which sulfa drugs and penicillin had
almost no effect:
I have been horribly ill the last few weeks. I had a bit of a
relapse, then they had another go with the streptomycin, which
previously did me a lot of good, at least temporarily. This time
only one dose of it had ghastly results, as I had built up an
allergy or something....
— George Orwell
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
7
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1944
In the year 1830, some 88,000 Americans had died of tuberculosis, but by the year 1974, with a far greater
total population, only 3,513 would succumb to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In Japan in this year, with the
advent of the antibiotic dihydrostreptomycin, all surgical treatments and all open-air treatments were abruptly
discontinued. During the era in which you and I have been reared, dear reader, if a doctor discovered a
tubercular lesion in your lung tissue this has meant merely that you were going to need to take some drugs for
a year or so, perhaps a combination of isoniazid, rifampin, and ethambutol. It had been very much otherwise
during Henry David Thoreau’s era — and it would seem that, since the microorganism has now mutated to be
able to avoid this complex of chemical toxins, the situation that had obtained during Thoreau’s era is soon
going to reassert itself.
The tubercular author George Orwell and his wife Eileen Maud O’Shaughnessy Orwell adopted a boy named
Richard. His review “Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali” was printed as part of THE SATURDAY
BOOK FOR 1944 but then the London publisher Hutchinson in its wisdom physically cut the review from all
the printed copies prior to distribution.
While living on my grandfather Charley Mattox’s “pit farm” near Clay City and Cory, Indiana, Granddad had
thought it just the hugest joke to squirt unpasteurized and unboiled milk out of the cow’s teat into his city
grandson’s mouth, on account of my squeamishness at this and the faces I made — and so I had contracted
bovine tuberculosis (Pott’s Disease, a nonpulmonary tuberculosis), collapsing my lumbar spine. Here is an
illustration from a medical textbook, showing “exaggerated lumbar curve” as typical of lordosis:
Fortunately for me, however, the State of Indiana had in 1941 repealed its mandatory sterilization law for the
unfit, and therefore I did not have to worry that I was going to have to undergo sterilization on account of my
new life condition of deformity (caused of course by lack of sterilization, that is to say, by lack of
8
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
pasteurization, rather than by any inherent genetic problem).
All I had to worry about was that the various Indiana chiropractors my family took me to in a vain attempt to
re-straighten my spine would not break my back (above is one such effort, pictured in a Hippocratic treatise
on joints, showing three chiropractors at work on a late medieval patient), and of course that Indiana’s still-inexistence miscegenation law, by which it would have been a crime for me to have grown up to marry with any
of the little girls of “pure blood” in my school even were I not deformed in body (since my Mother’s family,
the Mattoxes, bore a racial taint, of a small mixture of Cherokee blood, an eighth or a sixteenth or a thirtysecond part).
Of course, none of the girls of pure blood would have married me even if it had not been for this race taint.
None of them would be seen with me, I never ever had any sort of date, due to my bodily deformity. In this
connection some quotations seem appropriate from Robert Garland’s historical study of the treatment accorded
by Eurocentric societies to the deformed and/or disabled, titled THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: DEFORMITY AND
DISABILITY IN THE GRAECO-ROMAN WORLD (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 1995, page 178). This
problem of how to live as a deformed person in our society is little talked about, but it is huge. There is literally
nothing else of more influence over the life of a deformed person, than his or her deformity. Nothing. Literally
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
9
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
every facet of one’s life is touched in some way by the fact of deformity, and society’s reaction against it:
A perennial problem confronting those afflicted with severe
deformity, and one, too, not wholly unfamiliar to those who suffer
from even relatively mild disabilities, is how to escape the myths
and stereotypes which divest them of a full, complex and rounded
humanity. Whatever does not conform to the norms of the dominant
group tends to be treated either with suspicion, terror and
contempt, or alternatively with an unhealthy blend of amusement,
fascination and embarrassment. It is such today and it was so
throughout antiquity.... Even though individuals shun the
deformed and disabled and seek to alienate them from the world of
the able-bodied, society as a whole still finds many practical
uses for them. Their mere existence can serve as an object lesson
in public morality by personifying a particularly frightening
form of punishment meted out to the parents of the deformed for
having egregiously offended God or the gods; or their terrifying
appearance may be interpreted as a warning that human weakness
has so corrupted and contaminated Nature that the common
substance with which she fashions human beings is becoming
debased and degenerate; or they may function as scapegoats,
thereby enabling the able-bodied to close ranks in times of
emergency; or finally, they may provide an amusing and
titillating diversion, a role which they have continued to
perform virtually until the present day.
Allow me to lay out graphically how this plays in a real contemporary life. Shortly after I became deformed
at the age of seven, my father Benjamin Bearl Smith abandoned my mother and me. He went to Reno, Nevada
and filed for divorce. The divorce was immediately granted and no support was ever forthcoming. The timing
of all this may have been a coincidence. The fact that his son had just become disgustingly deformed may have
had nothing to do with any of this. However, I do remember him, before he abandoned us, shoving me up
against the corner of a room, and ordering me with extreme ill temper and disdain to just stand there and press
my back against the wall –and remain there as long as it took until my back was straight – and then he walked
away (I remember waiting and waiting, trying and failing to get the small of my back in contact with the wall,
and finally after I don’t know how long, tentatively going outside and playing while waiting to be detected and
summoned and punished for disobedience). I remember, also, him running alongside me and demanding that
I go up on the balls of my feet, when I absolutely could not run in that way, when absolutely the only way in
which I could move was flatfooted. —And this was merely months before he took himself permanently out of
our lives and abandoned all his responsibilities as a husband and as a father.
R E TROJECTION
After he left, my maternal grandmother Sylvia Mae Long Mattox behaved very badly toward me on the Indiana
farm. It was no accident she was Lutheran. She professed the attitude of Martin Luther, that an outward
10
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
physical deformity reveals the presence within of a demon.
Quoting the Good Book to the effect of saving the child by not sparing the rod, she flogged me incessantly.
She was going to very literally, and Lutheranly, beat the devil out of me. My spine was going to be straight or
else.
What is Replacement ?
The first thing I would need to do after one of these basement beatings would be go to the bathroom and use
cold water to cleanse blood spots off my clothing, because, I was instructed, warm water sets blood, and
because blood will hopelessly stain cloth a dirty blotchy brown once it is allowed to dry. I had in particular to
wash out my socks, repeatedly and thoroughly, because of the manner in which blood would trickle down my
legs and soak into my socks during these floggings, which were by ritual done with one dozen limber
“switches” which I had had to go out and cut from the trees, each one selected to be the thickness of my thumb
at its base. Such a flogging was to continue until each of these limber fresh “switches” was worn down to be
too short to be able to strike a blow. She said she was trying to drive the Devil out of me, but actually, I am
quite sure, she was trying to beat my back straight — because her treatment was remarkably similar to the sort
of ancient medical treatments for spinal problems that Garland describes in his historical treatise quoted above
(there is an interesting illustration of them on page 129).
She would meanwhile be accusing me of not loving her.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
11
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
Garland refers to this circularity of abuse of the deformed, in regard to ancient Western society, on his page 23:
They [the deformed and/or disabled] were deemed to feel
resentment ... towards society for ... denying them their full
human status. By a circular argument their “resentment” also
served as a convenient justification for their marginalized
status and ill-treatment in the first place.
What is Intensification ?
I got even with her! Many years later, when she was lying in a nursing home with a hole in her nose, waiting
to die, I went to see her and — I forgave her. She didn’t have much short-term memory at that time, but her
long-term memory was excellent. There is no question but that she remembered exactly what it was for which
I was forgiving her. Before she died she gave me her blessing, and a blessing is a really really big thing in this
religious family.
If there is anything which might qualify for the descriptor “American,” it is the quest to discover in others the
stigma of inferiority. This comes out of the fact that in the USA we have no recognized aristocracy.
Because we have no fixed way of assigning merit and social position, an American has only the social standing
which they can establish for themselves by “blowing their own horn,” and by making invidious distinctions
between themselves and others. This has become, of course, under such circumstances, the constant American
preoccupation. In America it is so important that it has been granted an honorific name. It is referred to as
egalitarianism. The person who, with a detectable stigma of inferiority, is perceived to be maneuvering to
present himself or herself as an acceptable human specimen, is considered to be guilty of a violation of
egalitarianism — for American egalitarianism requires, in order that the social fabric be maintained, that these
inferior types are to be detected and deselected. Thus it has become a preoccupation in America to “find out”
any person of tainted racial background, and publish the fact that they are merely “passing” as white, and
obtaining a standing which they do not deserve. And, it has become a preoccupation in America, to “find out”
any person of unusual sexuality, and publish the fact that they are queer, and take measures accordingly.
And, it has become a preoccupation in America, to “find out” any person who is guilty of a thought crime, such
as being Soft-on-Communism during the 1950s, or such as being Politically-Incorrect during the 1990s, etc.
It should not be seen as strange that, in such a social context, a man who happens to have a non-disabling
twisted spine, who is attempting to present himself as a normal and decent and competent and entitled human
being, would encounter in life the sort of episodes of discrimination which I in fact have encountered.
In fact, it should be seen as strange when, in any context, with my protruding buttocks and coccyx,
I succeeded in obtaining standing in the community.
As of 1943 I could sing the Lord’s Prayer with a soprano quaver that would yank your Indiana heart right out
through your mouth. At the age of six I could thump a Bible on the pulpit. I had been growing up as a
preacher’s brat. Then I caught bovine TB from my grandfather’s cows and my spine twisted and my goldenhaired daddy boogied. That being what went down, I need to make some comments to you about purity in
religion, because suddenly any thought that the son might also “receive a call from Christ” became ludicrous.
Christ was not going to call me with my obscene new posture to stand in front of the faithful: it was made very
clear by my elders and betters that any such intimation from me would be interpreted by them as a delusion
sponsored by Satan.
Now, one might suspect that such an attitude toward deformity and disqualification from religious office
comes straight to us from the ancient Jews, since once upon a time it was possible to forestall a man from any
possibility of ever being made the High Priest at the temple in Jerusalem simply by cutting off one of his ears.
One may suspect that, but would that antique attitude be the proximate cause? Would such an ascription of
12
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
precedent be mere Antisemitism? Do we really have enough by way of evidence, to be able to say how this
purity slant was being handled, in the ancient Jewish society, when obviously we really don’t know all that
much about how this purity slant has been handled even in recent years? Would there be any basis whatever
for our singling out Judaism, among the various huge religious institutions, any basis for our presuming that
it had in antiquity a particular problem with purity that was obsessively more major than would have been
exhibited by other religions of that time? Is it actually true that we can legitimately extrapolate from preserved
ancient texts in this manner, since it would be simply impossible to demonstrate the negative? To explain that
third point: if I were to go back into my Indiana context of origins and seek to work out a rationale for the sort
of presumption that was present during my own childhood, that gave us all such a lead-pipe assurance that a
damaged individual like myself could not rise into the ministry, that after TB knocked on my door Christ was
simply not going to call me, I’m pretty sure that this rationale wouldn’t involve any hard textual evidence.
What we would be dealing with would be just a bunch of soft stuff, that is to say social customs, usual attitudes,
prejudices, dispositions — stuff that wouldn’t fossilize all that well. If anyone 3,000 years from now were to
raise a question, there wouldn’t be any Indiana texts to back up those social customs, usual attitudes,
prejudices, and dispositions, but that absence of texts would not mean that we hadn’t had a problem with our
attitudes about purity. Also, the medieval German monk with abhorrent attitudes toward deformity, Martin
Luther, is not as far away from us in time as the Jewish culture of 0 CE, so in our search for a proximate cause,
he would stand closer. For these reasons, I would recommend that in order for us to have a full and fair
evaluation of our topic, which I take to be “This Purity Thingie In Religion And How It Can Go Very Wrong,”
we ought to just leave the ancient Jews out of it, and discourse in general on our own impulse to purity, this
perennial impulse to keep oneself free of all blame and guilt, this impulse to discover all the evil and
imperfection of this world to be located safely outside one’s own self, projectable safely outward upon some
other person (some enemy figure or some scapegoat figure) who can safely be condemned and cast away.
ASSLEY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
13
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1945
George Orwell resigned as literary editor for The Tribune to begin work on ANIMAL FARM. His wife Eileen
Maud O’Shaughnessy Orwell died during an operation. Soon after her death, ANIMAL FARM appeared.
The tubercular author, suddenly famous, moved to the island of Jura off the coast of Scotland. While at Jura,
Orwell would write his novel 1984, and marry again, with Sonia Bromwell.
14
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1948
In this year George Orwell was writing a novel that he would title “1984” in which he described the “memory
hole,” a chute to the furnace where embarrassing facts burn to nothingness.
I will tell you an embarrassing fact that, for me, refuses to burn to nothingness. There was a friendly little wren
that had a nest in my grandmother Sylvia Mae Long Mattox’s grape arbor, outside her kitchen pantry window
on the far side of the well and cistern. She loved to listen to that wren’s beautiful warbling. I waited for the
wren and shot at it again and again, at ever-closer range, with my Daisy BB-gun, until I finally hit it and
knocked it to the ground. Then I buried its tiny, tiny body. Grandmother began to remark that she wasn’t
hearing her wren anymore, and I was terrified that I might give away my secret. I knew very well, as she
grieved, that if she came to suspect me, that would be the occasion for another of her bloody thrashings.
I’ve never fully processed why I killed that little bird — except that I could, and except that my grandmother’s
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
15
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
affection for it had made it an obvious target. But I do find it useful to recall, from time to time, this incident
from my childhood, whenever I am tempted to deliberate too emphatically upon the perversity of others by
way of contrast with my own inherent nobility and innocence! The memory reaffirms my awareness of
ambivalence as the fundamental human condition. May that embarrassing fact never burn to nothingness.
ASSLEY
“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals
something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account
of himself is probably lying, since any life when
viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
— Eric Arthur “George Orwell” Blair
“Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on
Salvador Dali” in THE SATURDAY BOOK
FOR 1944 (London: Hutchinson)
Sunspots
Min/Max
1901-1905
1913-1917
1924-1928
1933-1938
1944-1948
1954-1958
1965-1970
1976-1980
1986-1989
199?-19??
In this year we moved from Lincolnville, Indiana to a painted chickenhouse in Urbana, Indiana. A small
Quonset Hut of corrugated steel had been added to the back of the chickenhouse, providing space for two cots
along the walls for my little sister and myself, and it was a tall enough arch that a child could stand without
crouching between the two cots.
16
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1949
His tuberculosis having gotten to its galloping stage, George Orwell returned from to the island of Jura off the
coast of Scotland to England. His novel 1984 was published.2
“History is the why of now.”
— Austin Meredith
2. For many years we would celebrate a cult of the celebrity tuberculosis victim. The last of these celebrity sufferers from
tuberculosis were the generation of George Orwell (1950), Eleanor Roosevelt (1962), and Vivien Leigh (1967).
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
17
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
18
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
1950
January 21: Eric Arthur Blair died of tuberculosis. (For many years we had celebrated a cult of the celebrity TB victim.
The last generation of these celebrity sufferers would be that of George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, who would
succumb in 1962, and Vivien Leigh, who would succumb in 1967. During the era of effective treatment of
infections by the bacterium with antibiotics while the bacterium did not present much of a threat –and then
during the present era in which multi-drug-resistant strains of the bacterium have swept through our prison
populations, where many inmates have compromised immune systems due to the AIDS virus rendering the
disease again a scourge– this Mycobacterium tuberculosis would sacrifice much of its popularity.)
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
19
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
1971
A couple of amazing things were accomplished by America’s white people in this year, to rectify their past
errors:
•
The first was a scenario straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, with its “Ministry of Truth”: For
a nativist fantasy and environmental warning film entitled “Home” being made by the Southern
Baptist Radio and Television Commission, a Texas screenwriter named Ted Perry created a
politically correct environmentalist speech for “Chief Seattle” to have delivered as of 1854.
In this creation he had the actor playing Headman Seattle (See-Ahth of the
Susquamish) describe birds not from his own region of the country, had him describe from his
personal experience American bison See-ahth had surely never been within 800 miles of, and
had him deliver reminiscences about white people indiscriminately shooting these bison from
the windows of trains — trains magically running on transcontinental tracks that had not yet
been surveyed as of 1854 and that would not be laid down for over a decade. (An
environmentalist “Letter from Chief Seattle to President Franklin Pierce” has also been created
out of this material, but I am not sure who invented this portion of our national story, or when.
I’ll have to admit, however, that the idea of a letter is a neat credibility touch, isn’t it? How can
we doubt if there is somewhere, misfiled in a Presidential Library, a preserved document?)
•
The other was that the remaining deformed and mutilated body parts of Taoyateduta, Headman
Little Crow V who had during his lifetime been Headman Little Crow IV of the Woodland
Dakota tribes, were taken out of their case and off public display at the Minnesota Historical
Society and given to a grandson, Jesse Wakeman, so he could inter them decently in a family
cemetery.
DIGGING UP THE DEAD
1974
News items relating to the development of ELECTRIC WALDEN technology:
•
•
•
20
The DEC Digital Equipment Corporation entered the Fortune-500 ranking of the largest industrial
companies. This must have gone to their heads, for when one of their engineers, David Ahl,
suggested that they produce an inexpensive version of their PDP-8 minicomputer, that they could
sell for US$5,000 at a profit, the top management termed such an idea foolish.
The intel Corporation introduced the 8080, an 8-bit microprocessor that would find use in
numerous personal computers.
Zilog was formed.
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
COMPUTER LIB
•
The database description language SEQUEL was pioneered. This eventually would become the
SQL Structured Query Language.
Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn published “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication,”
specifying in detail the design of a TCP Transmission Control Program for linking disparate
computer networks.
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. opened Telenet, a commercial version of ARPANET, as the first
public packet data service.
Southwest Technical Products Company introduced the TVT-11 kit for US$180, and an ASCII
keyboard kit for US$40.
Texas Instruments introduced their TMS1000 one-chip microcomputer.
Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie developed the C programming language.
The RCA 1802 was able to run at a blazing 6.4 MHz (this is considered one of the 1st RISC
reduced instruction-set devices).
Gary Kildall and John Torode of Microcomputer Applications Associates began to sell CP/M, a
disk operating system for intel 8080-based microcomputers.
Xerox produced the Alto computer.
At a company called MITS, Ed Robert created a kit which they offered to sell at mail order for
US$439, by which one might build at home something which would qualify as a personal
computer. As the company was preparing the kit, one of the employees suggested calling it the
“Little Brother” as a sly reference to George Orwell’s Big Brother figure of the novel 1984, but
Lauren Solomon, 12-year-old daughter of Les Solomon, publisher of Popular Electronics,
suggested the name “Altair” (on their TV, “Altair” happened to be the name of where Star Trek’s
Enterprise was going that night). Ed sent his only prototype Altair 8800 to New York for review
and photography for publishing by Popular Electronics — and Railway Express lost it en route. It
would be this little lost computer, and the “Homebrew” clubs it spawned, which eventually would
bring forward the plan for Steve Wozniak’s Apple II.
Theodore Nelson’s COMPUTER LIB /
(also known as DREAM
MACHINES /
), 11 inches wide and 16 inches tall and 300,000 words in length.
Publication of this work would lead to the association between the non-programming dreamer
Theodore Nelson and the programming dreamer Roger Gregory, the “Mother of Xanadu.”
DREAM MACHINES
•
“GEORGE ORWELL”
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
21
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,
such as extensive quotations and reproductions of
images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great
deal of special work product of Austin Meredith,
copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials will
eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some
of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button
invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap
through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—
allows for an utter alteration of the context within
which one is experiencing a specific content already
being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin
Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by
all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any
material from such files, must be obtained in advance
in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”
Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please
contact the project at <[email protected]>.
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until
tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”
– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”
in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: March 29, 2013
22
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request we
have pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out of
the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). What
these chronological lists are: they are research reports
compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data modules
which we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.
To respond to such a request for information, we merely push a
button.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
23
HDT
WHAT?
INDEX
“GEORGE ORWELL”
ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR
Commonly, the first output of the program has obvious
deficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modules
stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and
then we need to punch that button again and do a recompile of
the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely
resembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know and
love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,
and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes
available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the
creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out
of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking
and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of
a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and
upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge.
Place your requests with <[email protected]>.
Arrgh.
24
Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith