From: v140pxgt@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu (Daniel B Case)
Summary: What would Great Authors do in Comp. Sci. ?
Date: 4 Feb 93 22:33:00 GMT

In article <C1x5qz.5Bt@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>, rharlan@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Rick Harlan) writes...
> 
>	The text book for our Intro to CS course opens its preface
>with : 
> 
>	"Programming should be from the beginning a creative and
>literate endeavor." 
> 
>	(from Springer and Friedman, _Scheme and the Art of Computer 
>Programming_, 1989) 
> 
>	So, it occured to me to wonder what would the Great Literary
>figures of Western Culture be doing, if they worked in the computer
>industry.  I've collected some of my ideas below.  Please follow up
>with your own ideas. 
> 
>If Nathaniel Hawthorne worked in computers, I suppose that he would
>	design software for printer fonts.
> 
>Now, I think that Herman Melville would probably develope a networking
>	package entitled "Call me E-Mail".
> 
>Samual Beckett would probably be an executive in charge of marketing
>	new releases for Microsoft (tm).
> 
>Cervantes would most likely try to force MS and IBM out of the market 
>	with a new line of business software for the Amiga. 
> 
>Plato would be involved with research into virtual reality.
> 
>Jacques Derrida (OK, I know he's still alive) would not work on
>	anything other than word processors...
> 
>And, Samual Johnson would write the spell-checkers for them. 
> 
>If Wittgenstein could write code, we wouldn't be able to understand
>	it. 
> 
>Confucius would spend most of his time writing protocols for
>	communication between child processes and their parents. 
> 
>Pauline Reage would do research on optimizing algorithms. 
> 
>Ayn Rand would program in C++ for the right price.

James Joyce would write the greatest hypertext novels.

Marcel Proust would specialize in data recovery, and would write new software
for this called Madeleine.

Sigmund Freud would analyze the reasons behind computer errors and gibberish

Carl Jung would theorize about the collective memory of various computer 
networks.

Jacques Lacan would pronounce "The unconscious is structured like a computer 
language" and "An e-letter always arrives at its destination".

John DOS Passos would be an expert in DOS.

Homer would create "Trojan Horse" programs to break into mainframes.

Ernest Hemingway would design the first efficient computer crap-detector and 
find ways to kill a lot of bull.

Paul de Man would show how all computer programs are really just allegories of
their own creation and concern themselves with the slippery nature of computer 
language.

Sinclair Lewis would write a novel called "Mainframe".

Henry David Thoreau would break into systems as a matter of principle.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge would forget to back up his disk (q.v. Kubla Khan).

Franz Kafka would find he could not log off.