Text-Oriented Software: Toward a Unifying Software Principle [Paperback]

Francesc Hervada-Sala (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2010

Computers are text machines. This does not mean that we can use computers for text among other purposes. It means that text is all computers are about, the only material that they store and manipulate. This book proposes a fundamental concept of text that reveals that documents, media, relational databases and source code are nothing but particular kinds of texts. The fundamental concept of text will furnish a ground for software integration that will lead to deeply unified computer systems far beyond the current ones, it will provide a way to escape the current Tower of Babel in computing and open up new promising paths.

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About the Author

He grew up in Southern Europe and moved in 1998 to Germany, where he still lives, attracted by its great philosophers, above all Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. He jobs as a programmer and is interested in the ideas from Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson and the Unix culture.

Product Details

• Paperback: 94 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace; 1st edition (January 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1450538738
• ISBN-13: 978-1450538732
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,693,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

He grew up in Southern Europe and moved in 1998 to Germany, where he still lives, attracted by its great philosophers. After some years reading Heidegger and Kant and thinking about language (Whorf, Wittgenstein, Herder), he works on a new theory of text that is very simple and provides a ground for many different fields such as computing, humanities and science. He thinks that the pioneering work from Doug Engelbart toward computer-assisted intelligence must be further pursued and looks forward a world's electronic literature as envisioned by Ted Nelson. He thinks that the Unix / Plan 9 culture is a great example, that it is not just one possible way of doing things among others, but it hits the mark of what computing really is.