Database of Dreams
The Lost Quest to Catalog Humanity
Nonfiction, Science & Nature, Science, Other Sciences, History, Health & Well Being, Psychology
| Author: | Rebecca Lemov | ISBN: | 9780300216646 |
| Publisher: | Yale University Press | Publication: | November 24, 2015 |
| Imprint: | Yale University Press | Language: | English |
| Author: | Rebecca Lemov |
| ISBN: | 9780300216646 |
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication: | November 24, 2015 |
| Imprint: | Yale University Press |
| Language: | English |
Just a few years before the dawn of the digital age, Harvard psychologist Bert Kaplan set out to build the largest database of sociological information ever assembled. It was the mid-1950s, and social scientists were entranced by the human insights promised by Rorschach tests and other innovative scientific protocols. Kaplan, along with anthropologist A. I. Hallowell and a team of researchers, sought out a varied range of non-European subjects among remote and largely non-literate peoples around the globe. Recording their dreams, stories, and innermost thoughts in a vast database, Kaplan envisioned future researchers accessing the data through the cutting-edge Readex machine. Almost immediately, however, technological developments and the obsolescence of the theoretical framework rendered the project irrelevant, and eventually it was forgotten.
Just a few years before the dawn of the digital age, Harvard psychologist Bert Kaplan set out to build the largest database of sociological information ever assembled. It was the mid-1950s, and social scientists were entranced by the human insights promised by Rorschach tests and other innovative scientific protocols. Kaplan, along with anthropologist A. I. Hallowell and a team of researchers, sought out a varied range of non-European subjects among remote and largely non-literate peoples around the globe. Recording their dreams, stories, and innermost thoughts in a vast database, Kaplan envisioned future researchers accessing the data through the cutting-edge Readex machine. Almost immediately, however, technological developments and the obsolescence of the theoretical framework rendered the project irrelevant, and eventually it was forgotten.
