Jottings - Slice of Life - 251 ( revival of timeless wisdom, Hyperlink - the legacy of Vannevar bush, and the extraordinary repository of shimmering insights by a young Bulgarian)

(Note to my readers : This is a long essay. I apologize. There are three strands of thought that come together here; each related to the other in a way that make sense from a higher perspective. At the time when each of these ideas germinated, it would have been impossible to speculate that one day the aims of renaissance, the birth of the internet, and evolution of the webpage would collectively lead to new way of designing and transmitting content. It is a fascinating story, and I have made a cursory sketch in this essay to present the three ideas to a lay audience.)

The Renaissance during the fifteenth century Europe was not an accident, or an event propelled by social upheavals-as is usually the case, when one epoch gives way into another. From the tenth century onwards, the dark ages which began with internecine warfare, deterioration in ethical standards, rise of superstitious beliefs , visible dimming of curiosity, and above all an collective amnesia of all accumulated knowledge and wisdom of ages - led to a point, when libraries and book hives, those treasures houses of Man’s wisdom, record of his quest and understanding became lost , forgotten or relegated to dusty corners of ancient monasteries scattered around the remote corners of Europe. In the beginning of the fifteenth century, when the world was still reeling under the effects of crusades and tightening of orthodoxy, a few thinkers, philosophers like Plutarch, Thomas of Aquinas began to reminiscence of the golden age that preceded centuries of misty ignorance. The original wisdom in the greek and latin tongues found a revival, and slowly a steady series of patient monks under the guidance and patronage of few revivalist patrons, began to visit dilapidated monasteries, abandoned and dusty libraries and private collections to either buy, steal or copy manuscripts written in a lost tongue. One can imagine those thin, emaciated monks, riding on weak and weary horses, in search of important manuscripts, having to placate or painstakingly endear themselves to high nosed and suspicious head priests of closed monasteries with the single intent to bringing out the ancient wisdom contained within its walls, restore its timeless wisdom, and attempt to replenish the sagging moral and intellectual spirit of the age. It was a noble endeavor, and a one that saved the western civilization from passing away into oblivion. Stephen Greenblatt in his 2012 Pulitzer winning book “The Swerve: How the world became modern”, beautifully describes the tale of one such book by Greek philosopher Lucretius “On the nature of things”, and how that book was retrieved by sheer chance from a vault by a Papal messenger and ardent book lover Poggio Bracciloni. In Greenblatt’s fascinating book, he opines that the finding of this book and its message was seminal in inspiring the best minds of the renaissance.

It seems to me, the twenty-first century also seems ripe for another intellectual renaissance. There is proliferation, no doubt, of information, news, facts and stories in print and digital media; But I think in all of this abundance, what is slowly disappearing are the voices that speak of timeless wisdom and truths that resonate no matter what. The written word is still a dominating force, thanks to the internet and free availability of information; but again, bombarding oneself with information without the yeast of wisdom is harmful, if not disastrous. Blogs are aplenty. Anyone who wishes to comment, observe or opine had free access to write and disseminate their musings. As readers, our attention and time is becoming as fleeting as the passing wind , and the blogs we read reflects the attitude that we need know only so much that can help us live efficiently, and not so much with intelligence, depth and compassion. Every generation speaks to us in few choice voices; and those voices are our conscience, the underlining thread of humanism against whose background all else is measured. Those voices are timeless words of insights, hope and wisdom articulated by minds who have grasped the essence of being human. If readers are not periodically exposed to those profound voices, chances are high, we may lose the thread of intellectual continuity for ever in the ever increasing miasma of information. We may fall once more into a period of dark ages, where all that we know will superficial, passing, hollow and meaningless without that touch of intellectual integrity and depth - which makes human life a miracle and worth living to its full.

The world wide web was born of this need to assemble vast quantities of information in a manner that makes it easy to access. Knowledge was becoming more and more specialized, and less and less available to others. Foot notes, bibliographies are credits were filling up more pages in a book than the subject matter itself. Vannevar bush (Not only in the IT field will know/remember his name these days), one of the pioneers of modern computing, wrote an epochal article in 1945 titled “ As we may think”. It appeared in the Atlantic monthly magazine and later published in his book “Endless horizons”. This article laid the thought foundation for what was to become one of the most important features of the Internet - The hyperlink. Way beyond his time, Bush suggested that the best way to retrieve data is to mimic the human brain, which hops from association to another stringing together a coherent picture of the subject in attention, seemingly without much effort. Though the brain is extraordinary and infinitely quick in its prowess to retrieve information from its complex neuroplasm; to build a computer that could match the human brain in its complexity and associations would be science fiction at the time Bush wrote about it. However, in that beautiful article, Bush thinks aloud on his hunch that with increasing quantities of knowledge accumulating each day, the only way to collaborate and use this swelling repository and cross referencing when needed is by “linking” all of them in a meaningful manner mimicking the model of the brain. Decades later Ben Schniederman from University of Maryland, and Tim Berner lee would evolve his masterful insight into the concept of a “Hyperlink” on a webpage to navigate from one topic to another. For those of us who work in the field of Software, this article by Vannevar Bush is a must read. Like the vedas which is perhaps Man’s first attempts to encapsulate the wonder he felt about the universe and his place in it, Bush’s three page article is one of the first thought journeys that would eventually culminate in the modern notion of digital transformation.

Maria Popova’s blog “Brainpickings.org” is perhaps the best illustration of the confluence achievable by bringing the insights and wisdom of thinkers, artists and scientists - past and present - to a web portal with a design, keeping in mind Vannevar vision of being able to navigate at will to areas linked to main topic. The story of Maria and her unique effort in maintaining this blog as a full time profession is fascinating and worth recounting. Born in iron curtained Bulgaria to a father who was Salesman at Apple , and a mother who studied library science, Maria’e early educations wasn’t compromised. She studied at an American school in Bulgaria. It was however, from her paternal grandfather, that she learnt the art and beauty of reading eclectically. Every evening, he would pull out the encyclopedia, and read random pages out it, creating in the young girl’s mind a deep interest in diverse fields of knowledge, and an awareness at an early age that individual strands of knowledge are useless unless one can connect it to the whole and apply it lead a meaningful life. After high school, she resumed her education in America in the University of Pennsylvania. Formal education wasn’t her preference, and she disliked the vocation aim of education, used as she was to learning and understanding at a different level. To relieve the mechanical cadence of her college work, she joined a small advertisement company to escape the tedium of routine college work and make some money. It was during this period, she conceived the idea of creating a short mailer each week, encapsulating thoughts and ideas from different fields of human endeavor , and sharing it with seven of her colleagues to help them find sources of creative inspiration. Her autodidactic studies came in handy, and each week, she was able to cull and piece together in a coherent manner, a set of ideas that glowed with intellectual and aesthetic brilliance. Her co-workers loved her email, and slowly expanded the circle of recipients. This was in 2006. By 2009, Maria was clear on her life’e work. She took a short course on web designing and quickly designed her portal - which she aptly named “brainpickings”. Within a decade, brainpickings.org has grown to estimated 7 million subscribers world wide and Maria Popova , hailed as the literary princess behind the carefully collected, chiseled and articulated essays. Maria calls her blog a “human-powered discovery engine for interestingness”. There is nothing in the blog that can be stereotyped. Music, painting, sciences humanism, criticism, environment, ethics, mysticism - almost anything that touches the substratum of human existence finds a place in her essays. And true to the spirit of internet, her essayist are prolifically hyperlinked. As a reader, one can take off on a detour into deeper exploration of a subject, or can read sequentially one essay after another. The writer Maria disappears, and only the essence of her reading, thinking and understanding is distilled for us. The portal requests for donation from readers if they are interested in contributing. It is not a mandate. But, believe me, for those of us who find inexhaustible wisdom in what she presents, a $10 per month is well worth the price.

It is hard to believe that Maria Popova is only 33 years old, and she has established a standard for what she believes a new age virtual library on how to lead a meaningful life. This was the same question the thinkers during the renaissance asked themselves, and in their quest for answers collected important scrolls hidden in obscure monasteries and revived the spirit of reading and learning. For this age and time, the internet is the repository, and what we put out there will be the trigger for humanistic revival - a sore need of the hour, when so much empty rhetoric and meaningless dialogues fills much of our public and private discourses. In Maria Popova’s words during a recent interview, she defined the vision fo Brainpickings.org in one simple sentence: “I want to build a new framework for what information matters..”

In Maria’s telescopic vision, the beauty of wisdom from different sources, the reach of the internet, and the power of the webpage in navigating through information — all of them come together in a manner that makes technology humanistic and worth having. I have been regular reader of Brain-pickings for many years now. Sometimes, I get lost in it for hours moving from link to another, deeper and deeper into a journey of self-exploration. I would start off with a painting of DaVinci embedded on the blog, and from there follow the thoughtful links Maria conceives to drive the reader into esoteric corners and angles of the science, art and philosophy. The layout and design is simple and unpretentious and gives prominence to matter presented. After few hours, one comes out the blog dazed and refreshed at the same time. Like scuba diving, we are lost in wonder and reflection on the written word and colorful pictures that illuminates a thought, before the reality of daily life rudely awaken us. But the effect of absorption in its contents leaves it indelible mark on how we think and act. That is the litmus test of a great work of art - which is what Brainpickings.org is in its technological, intellectual and aesthetic sense.

https://www.brainpickings.org/

God bless,

Yours in mortality,

Bala