When Information is Cheap, Attention is Expensive

Book Report: The Information - James Gleick

This monster of a book has come out amidst a wave of other information- & internet-related publications, all of which seem to be getting a great deal of attention in the media. It seems obvious to me that books ought to be written in this area, but the high attention tells me that

1. people are growing concerned about the spread of consumer technologies & the ubiquity of the internet
2. people are not thinking about these subjects as much as I believe, so any book written in the area seems a novel breakthrough by a person who must have prophetic insight.

Does James Gleick have this prophetic insight? To be fair, the full title is The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood. Recognizing his historical agenda, there isn’t so much prophecy involved in his endeavour. He goes into painful detail at times, and often I questioned the necessity of many of the chapters, and how they hung together. At times it seemed more a survey of various topics than a clear narrative. In the words of Antoine de Saint Exupery (authour of The Little Prince) “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” After spending many, many hours pushing through Gleick’s book, I suggest that by Saint Exupery’s standards, the book is not quite perfect.

Electric Geometry

Walking in downtown Toronto yesterday I spotted a police camera hanging on a street corner. They're very easy to spot. I’ve seen them before, and thought about them before, but never considered them in this way . . .

Electricity has brought us post-Euclidean geometry.

Definitions, please . . . 

Euclidean Geometry = 

The ‘standard’ geometry which has been kicking around since Greek mathematician Euclid (who’d have guessed...) developed it. 

Based on a series of simple definitions such as ‘Two parallel lines will never cross,’ he develops the rest of his geometry with postulates, corollaries, definitions and other excitement, all stemming from these definitions in a logical manner only a computer or a savant can really enjoy.

The Complicated Futility of Ignorance

Book Report: HOCUS POCUS - KURT VONNEGUT

Here’s my take on a few points in Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s a book well worth reading, though I can’t quite put the whole thing together, here a few things that stand out:

Hartke being fired from the school is the realist’s run-in with established fairy-tale America.

They don’t like him teaching their kids because he’s a pessimist, not keeping afloat the American virtue of hope, and they say his pessimism itself is anti-American. Ultimately, Vonnegut’s termination is after the board of trustees is blackmailed by a right-wing talk-show host named Jason Wilder who threatens to denounce the school if Hartke isn’t fired. Indeed, he might have good reason to denounce it from his standpoint, because independent thought is not part of his America.

     
No, Wilder’s America is founded on the illusion of perpetual motion.

     
The title of the book, Hocus Pocus, refers in one way to the myth of perpetual motion. The idea, of course, is that a machine can power itself by its own motion. For example, a fan-powered car, whose fan turns by gears connected to the rolling wheels. Ain’t that America.

But Hartke, as we see, is not quite the faithful disciple. “I used to tell classes that anybody who believed in the possibility of perpetual motion should be boiled alive like a lobster”. 

     

Meta-Post.1: an entry about entries

Does the world need another blog? Certainly not.

Does information lie in short supply? No.

Yet with the waves rushing past me from all sides, I have to let a bit go, for fear of getting swept away myself. So here's that. My hope to keep my feet moored and offer something to the proverbial sea.

The tide is rising and the boats are few, and here are more drops added to the Great Bucket. 

But on the other hand, if Google has 2 million searches per minute then this paltry addition can be no more than tossing ice cubes in the ocean.

Maybe the techno-Kantians out there can still find fault in this, but then again . . . 

They'll ask me, "Well, what if everyone else does the same?"

To which I'll reply, "Then I'd be crazy not to."

And the fact is, everyone else is doing the same.

Onto the bandwagon I've hopped.

Giddy-up.