Talk:Typographics

Accela Text Block Source Investigation

The source used for the final block of text in the "Accela" section is surprisingly hard to find, and I'd like to give it a proper citation! Basically, it would be nice to find an authoritative answer to the question of:

How would this document have landed in the hands/on the screens of the writers and producers working on Serial Experiments Lain?

Original Source Information - Gubing .doc file

The listed source of this text is an article titled "Nanotechnology: Magic of Century 21st". Previously, no author was listed - just the following link: http://www.gubing.com/wbl/Docs/wf/nanotech.doc

However, this file must be a re-upload - the Internet Archive has only been tracking since 2021. If the text itself was used in Lain, it must have existed in at least 1998, if not before.

Because of this, I started digging around for another source of the file, and found it referenced in this paper: https://www.def-logic.com/articles/_pdf/Nanomachines-by-Brent_Silby.pdf

In this paper, their citation appears as:

Chen, Chau-Jeng (Jeremy) (2000). "Nanotechnology--Magic of Century 21", http://www.gwforecast.gwu.edu/documents/nanotech.doc

However, a publication year of 2000 for this document shouldn't be possible. If it was published in the year 2000, it's text couldn't have been included in Lain.

However, this provided a new URL for the document: http://www.gwforecast.gwu.edu/documents/nanotech.doc

Newer Source of Information - GWU .doc file

Upon checking the Internet Archive, we can see that this document's archival stretched back to at least 2001: https://web.archive.org/web/20010612210105/http://www.gwforecast.gwu.edu/documents/nanotech.doc

However, there are no earlier entries.

That being said, upon inspecting the metadata of that archived document from 2001, we can see the following information:

• file_name: nanotech_edu.doc
• title: Are You suprised ?
• subject: Birthday
• author: LSK
• keywords: Birthday
• comments: Shankar's Birthday falls on 25th July. Don't Forget to wish him
• last_modified_by: OPEY A.
• software: Microsoft Word 8.0
• create_date: 1999-04-21 06:45:00
• modify_date: 1999-12-27 04:09:00
• company: GWU

This gives us some additional interesting context! First of all, some weird old spam seems to have been archived in the metadata of the file...? I'm not sure what to make of the birthday comments.

But more importantly, this shows a file creation date stretching back to April of 1999. However, that may be when this specific file was made available on this GWU web server - not when the actual document was first created.

However, this is where my trail fizzled out - I haven't been able to find any additional information that actually provides an authorship date for when this document was made, or how the staff of Serial Experiments Lain would have originally discovered it.

If anyone else would like to take the torch from here and continue searching for the original source or publication location of this article, that would be great! I think it would be very interesting to learn how it landed in the hands of the writers/producers at Triangle Staff.