Sometime ago I read a review of a book - "The Information: a history, a theory, a flood" by James Gleick. The review was by Sam Anderson and appeared in NYT Sunday Magazine June 26, 2011. That whole year was a blur, lately I am discovering, and I find it hard to believe I totally missed this thing. Cause it sees like a semi-mystical tome about technology, which is one of my suits.
Gleick it seems discussed the fact that every era thinks its is one of information overload. I get it. Folks immemorial feel something essential is being overthrown during the natural course of communications progress. Certainly the telegraph upset the cozy world of the semaphore, and the telephone unwound the telegraph of things. And on.
Glieck as expounded upon by Anderson picks up on some points that bear some noodling. Let's start with what they said that George Boole said that I did not even know about: "The symbols zero and one in the system of logic are nothing and the universe."
Anderson views the Web as an almanac - as a vast interlocking set of databases that seeks to comprise ALL PREVIOUS TEXT. But in the dance of All or Nothing at All you need two to tango. All text runs against communications. Thus Anderson saddles up upon a basic idea of communications to describe the problem incumbent with today's brand of "too much information."
He interestingly describes the leap from harnessing of electricity to telegraph as a leap based on interruptions of circuit flow - breaks in continuity, coded to hold meaning. And as he describes it you can see Morse's experience possibly affecting Boole's thinking. (We could add Weiner and Shannon.)
He interestingly describes the leap from harnessing of electricity to telegraph as a leap based on interruptions of circuit flow - breaks in continuity, coded to hold meaning. And as he describes it you can see Morse's experience possibly affecting Boole's thinking. (We could add Weiner and Shannon.)
- "We need to remember the value of nothing.
- "We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning."
- "We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning."
- "It’s like breathing: you can’t inhale all day. We need to learn to make peace with the information we don’t know, to embrace the zeroes, to relearn the pleasures of hunger, need, interruption, restraint."
Sam Anderson finds you have to leave the space, you cant fill up the glass, there are not just ones, there are zeros. You could put Monk, Lacy, Ellington, Basie, Morton, lot of jazz in this discussion.
-"We need to remember the value of nothing. We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning. "
Related
-"We need to remember the value of nothing. We need to organize our internal absences to create meaning. "
Related
Randomly
-Fortunately for Western Union, the telegram became the money transfer.
-Fortunately for Western Union, the telegram became the money transfer.
-When I look at SI's web site, I see the Web less as a new threat but a resurgence of the original threat to newspapers and magazine that was TV.
-Derived from this story : Here's a good quote from Benedict Anderson, scholar: "reading a newspaper is like reading a novel whose author has abandoned any thought of a coherent plot." The story we are looking at [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/an-accidental-experimental-masterpiece.html ] juxtaposes thoughts on Glieck's book with what an old style almanac was, and how the Internet is now the almanac and the title of the story describes this: An accidental experimental masterpiece - and I guess that's what I think news is like.
No comments:
Post a Comment