Richard Nicholson - Roy Snell, Last One Out series; London, 2006–2009 Last One Out is photographer Richard Nicholson’s…

dodgenburn:

Richard Nicholson - Roy Snell, Last One Out series; London, 2006-2009

Last One Out is photographer Richard Nicholson’s documentation of the fleeting London darkrooms.  

Analog is a kind of elegy for the pre-digital era of sound and photographic production and Nicholson’s prints are the most elegiac components in the mix. He has photographed each darkroom on large format film, working in total darkness with a flashgun. The result might have been what Nicholson calls “a detached typology of modernist industrial design" in which the enlarger stands at the centre, strangely human in its form. Except that these darkrooms are also human dens, full of the clutter of human endeavour – Post-it notes, piles of prints, boxes of paper, toys, rulers, marker pens and batches of photographs pinned to boards.

- Sean O’Hagan, The Observer

A few words on Doug Engelbart

engelbart, NLS, history, computing, augment

If you attempt to make sense of Engelbart’s design by drawing correspondences to our present-day systems, you will miss the point, because our present-day systems do not embody Engelbart’s intent. Engelbart hated our present-day systems. If you truly want to understand NLS, you have to forget today. Forget everything you think you know about computers. Forget that you think you know what a computer is. Go back to 1962. And then read his intent. The least important question you can ask about Engelbart is, “What did he build?” By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to admire him, to stand in awe of his achievements, to worship him as a hero. But worship isn’t useful to anyone. Not you, not him. The most important question you can ask about Engelbart is, “What world was he trying to create?” By asking that question, you put yourself in a position to create that world yourself.

http://worrydream.com/Engelbart/

Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework

augment, NLS, engelbart, computing, history, 1962

By “augmenting human intellect” we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble. And by “complex situations” we include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers–whether the problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations. We refer to a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human “feel for a situation” usefully co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.

http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment–3906.html

Turbulence, and Fluid Mechanics in General

Turbulence, fluid mechanics, physics, Navier-Stokes, references, cosmo shalizi

So what, you may ask, is the fabled “problem of turbulence”? In essence, this: what on Earth do our statistics and our equation have to do with each other? A solution to the problem of turbulence would be, more or less, a valid derivation from the Navier-Stokes equation (and statements about the appropriate conditions) of our measured statistics. Physicists are very far from this at present. Our current closest approach stems from the work of Kolmogorov, who, by means of some statistical hypotheses about small-scale motion, was able to account for the empirical laws I mentioned. Unfortunately, no one has managed to coax the hypotheses from the Navier-Stokes equation (sound familiar?) and the hypotheses hold exactly only in the limit of infinite Reynolds number, i.e. they are not true of any actual fluid.

http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/turbulence.html

The weirdest languages

language, NLP, weirdness, linguistics

For each value that a language has, we calculate the relative frequency of that value for all the other languages that are coded for it. So if we had included subject-object-verb order then English would’ve gotten a value of 0.355 (we actually normalized these values according to the overal entropy for each feature, so it wasn’t exactly 0.355, but you get the idea). The Weirdness Index is then an average across the 21 unique structural features. But because different features have different numbers of values and we want to reduce skewing, we actually take the harmonic mean (and because we want bigger numbers = more weird, we actually subtract the mean from one). In this blog post, I’ll only report languages that have a value filled in for at least two-thirds of features (239 languages).

http://idibon.com/the-weirdest-languages/

Südthüringer-Wald-Institut

research, collapse, east germany, cryptic refugia

Südthüringer-Wald-Institut is an independent, distributed research organization founded in a cave 200m deep below the Southern Thuringian Forest in the former East Germany. Physically positioned as a default site of refuge from the possibly inevitable collapse of the pervasive technological and social infrastructures that scaffold contemporary existence, the conceptual agenda of the Institute is framed by the present luxury of a world where discourse around mitigating unpleasant contingencies is still unhindered by the profound stress of needing to survive them.

http://www.suedthueringerwaldinstitut.de/

Creative People Say No

creativity, time, focus

Time is the raw material of creation. Wipe away the magic and myth of creating and all that remains is work: the work of becoming expert through study and practice, the work of finding solutions to problems and problems with those solutions, the work of trial and error, the work of thinking and perfecting, the work of creating. Creating consumes. It is all day, every day. It knows neither weekends nor vacations. It is not when we feel like it. It is habit, compulsion, obsession, vocation. The common thread that links creators is how they spend their time. No matter what you read, no matter what they claim, nearly all creators spend nearly all their time on the work of creation. There are few overnight successes and many up-all-night successes.

https://medium.com/design-thinking–1/bad7c34842a2

I’ve Seen Gardens, Compared with Which this Would be a Wilderness

Mute, review, Stanislaw Lem, Summa Technologiae, Martin Howse, books

Stanislaw Lem’s 1964 opus, Summa Technolgiae, has only just been translated into English. Over half a century later, Lem’s work stands as an astonishing feat of future-casting and a profound meditation on how technology, reason and language protect and enclose humanity from empty cosmic indifference.

http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/ive-seen-gardens-compared-which-would-be-wilderness

In the same way, if the evolutionary function of fiction is—at least in part—to simulate the big dilemmas of life, people who…

“In the same way, if the evolutionary function of fiction is—at least in part—to simulate the big dilemmas of life, people who consume a lot of fiction should be more capable social operators than people who don’t. The only way to find out is to do the science, and the psychologists Keith Oatley, Raymond Mar, and their colleagues have made a start. In one study, they found that heavy fiction readers had better social skills—as measured by tests of social and empathic ability—than those who mainly read nonfiction. This was not, they discovered, because people who already had good social abilities naturally gravitated to fiction.”

– Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal, How Stories Make Us Human. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. (viacarvalhais)

beef noodles RAF spook sign drone tower weathered pre- soul-delay urban. modem alcohol futurity concrete sensory paranoid…

“beef noodles RAF spook sign drone tower weathered pre- soul-delay urban. modem alcohol futurity concrete sensory paranoid bicycle dome alcohol military-grade. bridge saturation point RAF disposable 8-bit neural smart- shanty town spook gang. otaku -ware concrete car hacker bicycle engine youtube dolphin girl.”

–Forget Lorem Ipsum. UseLorem Gibson. (viathisistheverge)

Oct. 15, 1925: From the Mid-Week Pictorial, “High Art of the Zoo: The giraffe of the mechanical menagerie will stoop to nothing,…

new york times, photography, photograph, 1920s

Oct. 15, 1925: From the Mid-Week Pictorial, “High Art of the Zoo: The giraffe of the mechanical menagerie will stoop to nothing, so the artist must climb skyward to present him with spot No. 203.” Photo: The New York Times (via http://livelymorgue.tumblr.com/post/52788994874/oct-15-1925-from-the-mid-week-pictorial-high)

Keywords and Co-Occurrence Patterns in the Voynich Manuscript: An Information-Theoretic Analysis

Voynich manuscript, language, information theory, semantics, patern

The Voynich manuscript has remained so far as a mystery for linguists and cryptologists. While the text written on medieval parchment -using an unknown script system- shows basic statistical patterns that bear resemblance to those from real languages, there are features that suggested to some researches that the manuscript was a forgery intended as a hoax. Here we analyse the long-range structure of the manuscript using methods from information theory. We show that the Voynich manuscript presents a complex organization in the distribution of words that is compatible with those found in real language sequences. We are also able to extract some of the most significant semantic word-networks in the text. These results together with some previously known statistical features of the Voynich manuscript, give support to the presence of a genuine message inside the book.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0066344

Dark Mountain is both a refuge and an adventure. It’s an escape from false hope and teeth-gritting optimism, as well as a quest…

“Dark Mountain is both a refuge and an adventure. It’s an escape from false hope and teeth-gritting optimism, as well as a quest to investigate and redefine humanity’s place in the world. The escape isn’t from, but to, reality. The quest can be painful and exhausting, but rather than bringing me despair it brings a form of optimism deeper, and more truthful, than what I felt before. The extraordinary diversity of voices the books and wider movement attracts shows I’m not alone in feeling this.”

–

Nick Hunt (author and editor) on why the Dark Mountain books matter to him

Read more on our subscriptions page

(viadarkmountainproject)

Compact does “English”: hello, i am a program. set “a” to 0. set “b” to 0. please give me a value to put in “a”. please give me…

“Compact does“English”: hello, i am a program. set“a” to 0. set“b” to 0. please give me a value to put in“a”. please give me a value to put in“b”. if“a” is less than or equal to 0 then do as follows. i have to say:“Os valores devem ser positivos”. that’s all, if things go as planned. otherwise, do as follows. if“b” is less than or equal to 0 then do as follows. i have to say:“Os valores devem ser positivos”. that’s all, if things go as planned. otherwise, do as follows. set“d” to 1. if“a” is greater than“b” then do as follows. set“m” to“b”. that’s all, if things go as planned. otherwise, do as follows. set“m” to“a”. and that’s it. set“i” to 2. while“i” is less than or equal to“m” do as follows. if the rest of the division of“a” by“i” is equal to 0 then do as follows. if the rest of the division of“b” by“i” is equal to 0 then do as follows. set“d” to“i”. and that’s it. and that’s it. set“i” to“i” plus 1. alas, the cycle we started by testing whether“i” is less than or equal to“m” ends. this is“d”. and that’s it. and that’s it. we have reached the end of our journey. i hope you enjoyed it as much as i did.”

–David Martins de Matos

Government Secrets and the Need for Whistle-blowers

NSA, Schneier, Snowden, government, surveillance, transparency, accountability, law

Knowing how the government spies on us is important. Not only because so much of it is illegal – or, to be as charitable as possible, based on novel interpretations of the law – but because we have a right to know. Democracy requires an informed citizenry in order to function properly, and transparency and accountability are essential parts of that. That means knowing what our government is doing to us, in our name. That means knowing that the government is operating within the constraints of the law. Otherwise, we’re living in a police state.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/06/government_secr.html

Killer robots and human rights

UN, LAR, HRI, drone warfare, warfare, automation

“The possible introduction of LARs (lethal autonomous robots) raises far-reaching concerns about the protection of life during war and peace,” Mr Heyns said. “If this is done, machines and not humans, will take the decision on who is alive or dies.” Mr Heyns presented a report on his research and called for a worldwide moratorium on the production and deployment of such machines, while nations figured out the knotty legal and ethical issues.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/stop-killer-robots-now-un-asks–20130531–2nfe2.html