Expectations
Maybe I expect things to go fast and well. Maybe I want them to be just as elaborate in their concrete state than in the tangled and garbeld contraptions I find them in at some point in my head. Maybe…
Norman Bel Geddes’ Miniatures
Norman Bel Geddes’ models have added an extra dimension to pictorial reporting. By recreating large or small parts of the sea and the earth’s surface in miniature they have made it possible for the camera to take positions which would…
“It’s all language”
I prefer my title to the one the video uploaded was with: “Graphic Design can change your life”. On his blog, Erik Spiekermann comments it with a simple “their words, not mine”. A blog really worth exploring, by the way….
Mechanics of thought
When one considers the structure of the Difference and Analytical Engines, their resemblance to living “computers” becomes even more apparent. Babbage knew little or nothing about anatomy or physiology, and before the articulation of cell theory in the late 1830s,…
Signs of infinity
Observe that our contact with infinity is always and only through writing Rotman, B. (1993). Ad infinitum–the ghost in Turing’s machine: taking God out of mathematics and putting the body back in: an essay in corporeal semiotics. Stanford: CA: Stanford…
“The Balloon the the Mind”
HANDS, do what you’re bid; Bring the balloon of the mind That bellies and drags in the wind Into its narrow shed. – Yeats, W. B. The Wild Swans at Coole. New York: The Macmillan company, 1919; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/148/. [Date of…
Computer Guts
I booted Ubuntu 10.10 on my netbook a few days ago. As I pressed ESC to start the procedure with my USB drive, codes erupted on the screen. Swift white on black alignments accumulated too quickly for my eyes to…
Thought embodiment
You need to give the thoughts a physical embodiment, to put them down on paper. A thought written down (and not immediately thrown into the wastebasket) is stubborn, doesn’t change its shape, can be compared with the other thoughts that…
Mathematics as language
…little need to insist that mathematics is a language: who after all among those familiar with it would deny the proposition ^ Certainly not those users – accountants, engineers, economists, actuaries, statisticians, cliometricians, meteorologists, and the like – who have…
The Possible and the Actual
Take, for instance, the possible fat man in the doorway; and again, the possible bald man in the doorway. Are they the same possible man, or two possible men ? How de we decide ? How many possible men there…