Dear friends of the If Monks had Macs… new media library,
It was seven years ago that I began to build a library of interactive essays, games, art and literature called If Monks had Macs… That library now has 24 volumes. As the cloister fountain gently splashes, relax to the unearthly beauty of a Gregorian chant and enjoy our library’s view of the Columbia River Gorge. Or browse, on our 4-sided revolving bookcase, the library’s four collections – “Art & Ideas,” “The American Renaissance,” “The Monks’ Library,” and the “JFK Archives.” They concern subjects as diverse as Thoreau’s Walden, the Tower of Babel, and the testimony of JFK assassination witnesses. Still, they all seek to find the meaning of our past and our present. If Monks had Macs… isn’t information fashioned for a particular marketing niche, but an attempt to probe the destiny of the ideas our civilization has embraced. I only have space here to introduce a few of the 24 volumes now available on the If Monks had Macs… CD-ROM.
One volume in Art & Ideas examines a masterpiece created during the first years of mankinds’ most revolutionary idea – multi-national capitalism. You can use our painting navigator to examine over 90 color enlargements of that masterpiece – Bruegel’s insanely detailed painting of the Tower of Babel. Art & Ideas also includes a new work on a German student led anti-Nazis resistance group known as The White Rose. It features the first accurate English translations of the White Rose leaflets, a White Rose survivor’s memoir (published here for the first time) and a new focus on art and resistance.
But don’t fear that even these serious subjects have put an end to innocent delights like the old (and newly refurbished) monastery jukebox. Expect more entertainments. In Art & Ideas, you’ll find “The Dance of Despair” – an existential art puzzle game in which each dance of despair ends in a dance of delight.
In the American Renaissance collection “The World of an Idea in the Life of Henry David Thoreau” examines, from five distinct points of view, Thoreau’s life and ideas in the context of the American Renaissance of the 1850’s. Nancy Kaplan, a Professor of Literature and a leading hypertext critic, wrote:
“The World of an Idea” offers not one world, but two: a miniature of Henry David Thoreau’s warts and all - and a glimpse of ours. As a tour of Thoreau’s life and work, “The World of an Idea” provides just the sort of rich, various, and polyphonous text a complex thinker’s work requires. As a glimpse of what hypertexts enable, this beautifully designed and constructed project demonstrates that a hypertextual representation need not drown its navigators in a whirlpool of unstructured information. “The World of an Idea” models just the sort of tension between structure and liberty I believe that good – by which I mean both useful and delightful – hypertexts embody.”
The powerful multi-linear journal that comes with each copy of the library gives you a chance to apply a structured approach to hypertext to an examination of your own life. The guide to “journaling,” “Get an Inner Life!,” includes a guide to using our new journal as Henry David Thoreau might have used it, and a guide to applying modern psychological techniques designed to get you beyond any obsession with the details of your life to the creative spirit within that can shape that content. The new journal’s quote library includes six collections of quotes: Writer’s on Writing, Walden Zingers, Emerson’s Evidence, Psalms, Hindu Slokas, and Cynicisms. The American Renaissance collection also includes electronic editions of Walden (and “Civil Disobedience”), “Spend the Summer with Thoreau” (by reading his journal), and The Scarlet Letter.
The new If Monks had Macs… library proudly adds “JFK Witness” to its expanded JFK Archives. “JFK Witness” provides tools to access unedited testimony from the 26 volumes of hearings before the Warren Commission from all the witnesses to the assassination referenced in the best-selling books by authors for and against a conspiracy. “JFK Witness” displays over 100 Warren Commission exhibits in the context of over 500 pages of Warren Commission testimony. It includes powerful research tools and a guided tour that shows how the testimony contradicts the Commission’s conclusions. One of the other volumes in the archives, our expanded “JFK EXTRA!,” now presents an in-depth rebuttal to every major published argument against the conspiracy, and an enhanced interactive synopsis of the case.
New visitors to the library will find refurbished editions of all the original volumes (including our adventure game about a monk’s trek through the medieval wilderness) as well as something new in The Monks’ Library But I worked long and hard on the new collections thinking of those of you who had, so many years ago, enjoyed my first vision of the possibilities of this medium. Today, when every pundit writes about cruising the information highway I hesitate to add that one of the volumes in the library combines interactive art with essays I have written over the years about the media/information explosion. My first exposition about this library, which was distributed before the internet’s World Wide Web or even multimedia CD-ROMs existed, asked: “Computer pundits talk as if information navigation were knowledge; but, if all the world’s information were at our fingertips, would our thoughts be any less scattered?” Only a sense of purpose can transform information into ideas. If Monks had Macs… combines a sense of purpose with a sense of humor.
Brian Thomas
The If Monks had Macs… CD-ROM is available from the Voyager Co. for $34 (and 95 cents).
To order call the Voyager Company toll-free at: 1-800-446-2001
If you access the internet with NetScape check out Voyager’s World Wide Web site: http://www.voyagerco.com
From outside the USA call: 914-591-5500 – Japanese distributor: 354 674 64 60 – German distributor: 49 89 32 39 03 40
System Requirements: Any color Macintosh; 3,500k of free RAM; 13"+ (640x480+) monitor; CD-ROM
