https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rYHNg3pM34
Second edition of this video...
The Secretary: Transcribing (Second Edition) Coronet Instructional Films, a division of Esquire, Inc., 1966<br /> James R. Meehan, Ed.D, Dean of Administration Hunter College of the City University of New York
Successful Secretary Presented by Royal Office Typewriters. A Thomas Craven Film Corporation Production, 1966. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If5b2FiDaLk.
Script: Lee Thuna<br /> Educational Consultant: Catharine Stevens<br /> Assistant Director: Willis F. Briley<br /> Design: Francisco Reynders<br /> Director & Producer: Carl A. Carbone<br /> A Thomas Craven Film Corporation Production
"Mother the mail"
gendered subservience
"coding boobytraps"
"I think you'll like the half sheet better. It is faster." —Mr. Typewriter, timestamp
A little bit of the tone of "HAL" from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). This is particularly suggestive as H.A.L. was a one letter increment from I.B.M. and the 1966 Royal 660 was designed to compete with IBM's Selectric
This calm voice makes suggestions to a secretary while H.A.L. does it for a male astronaut (a heroic figure of the time period). Suddenly the populace feels the computer might be a bad actor.
"We're living in an electric world, more speed and less effort."—Mr. Typewriter<br /> (techno-utopianism)
The Secretary: Transcribing. 16 mm, Instructional film. Coronet Instructional Films, 1955. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7wAJki9ec4.
Deutsch’s close friendJoseph Stolz, writing of the Chicago rabbi Bernard Felsenthal (1822–1908) who hadpenned a history of that city’s Jews and was instrumental in the 1892 formation of theAmerican Jewish Historical Society, noted that Felsenthal ‘was not the systematic orga-nizer who worked with a stenographer and card-index’ (Stolz, 1922: 259).
Great example of a historian implying the benefit of not only a card index, but of potentially how commonplace it was to not only have one, but to have stenographers or secretaries to help manage them.
Link this to the reference in Heyde about historians and others who were pushed to employ stenographers or copyists to keep their card indexes in order.
Given the cost of employing secretaries to manage our information, one of the affordances that computers might focus on as tools for thought is lowering the barrier for management and maintenance. If they can't make this easier/simpler, then what are they really doing beyond their shininess? Search is obviously important in this context.
What was the reference to employing one person full time to manage every 11 or 12 filing cabinets' worth of documents? Perhaps Duguid in the paper piece?
to record the 300- odd sermonshe delivered, the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) relied on his sec-retaries to take notes during his sermons, which Bernard then revised and madepublic. But other listeners in attendance also came away with notes from the ser-mons, from which some circulated unauthorized versions.6
If Bernard of Clairvaux had secretaries take notes during his sermons for later revision and circulation, how did he compose them in the first place? Were they outlined and delivered mnemonically/orally with some extemporaneous embellishment?
The job of the scribe is write down anything and everything that The Priest clergyman and king I had to say. They were basically secretaries.
@dancohen @ayjay, don't forget the noble professions of philosopher's clerk or secretary:
What it would be like to be a philosopher’s clerk: “It’ll be a matter of filing the generalisations, tidying up paradoxes, laying out the premises before the boss gets in.” —Tom Stoppard
For five years he [Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)] served as personal secretary to, yes, Francis Bacon. In fact, I’ve noted over a course of years that the job of a secretary can be utterly fulfilling just in case one’s boss happens to be Francis Bacon. —Daniel N. Robinson
(reply to https://micro.blog/dancohen/11752827)