| Author | : Rebecca Lemov |
| File Size | : 40,6 Mb |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Language | : English |
| Release Date | : 24 November 2015 |
| ISBN | : 9780300216646 |
| Pages | : 369 pages |
Database of Dreams by Rebecca Lemov Book PDF Summary
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.