Thursday, January 18, 2018
Movable type to moving type
One episode of the best radio program, 'Strange as it Seems', features a murder on an Injun reservation. The script is taken directly from the trial transcript. The mother of the murdered girl is testifying about how she discovered the girl was dead...........
= = = = =
Lawyer: You said that you heard about your daughter Mabel's death from an owl. What did the owl say?
Mother: Owl say: Annie missing. Dead.
Lawyer: Annie missing, dead? I thought your daughter's name was Mabel.
Mother: Owl say: Annie missing. Dead. Her name Annie, too.
(Later...)
Lawyer, terminally exasperated: If the girl's name is Mabel, why did the owl mean your daughter when he said Annie?
Mother, ditto: I tell you! Her name Mabel sometimes! Annie sometimes!
The judge then calls an expert in language who verifies that Injuns have variable names, and that Injuns hear meaning in animal speech.
= = = = =
Variable names aren't a strange idea. Naming by current function or tendency was common everywhere before bureaucracy and printing forced lifetime permanence of ID.
Variable names have returned in the digital world where paper doesn't pin things down. Different avatars in different forums. My name Polistra sometimes! Ockham sometimes!
We could represent the variable parts of the world better if we could formalize this level of variability. Gutenberg brought us movable type, with molded letters capable of taking different positions on the page to spell words and sentences. The next step is movable pixels within the type. Shapeable type.
I've tried this trick a few times:
The O'Brien equation:
Two forms of earthquakes:
A modern variation on O'Brien, typified by the "Silence is violence" ratshit:
= = = = =
If we had better ways of showing a waveform or a pattern as a semantic element, we wouldn't need to smash numbers into a deceptive blob by statistics.
Instead of just listing the median, show the distribution IN the representation:
(This doesn't work as well as the previous examples!)
I've tried this trick a few times:
The O'Brien equation:
Two forms of earthquakes:
A modern variation on O'Brien, typified by the "Silence is violence" ratshit:
= = = = =
If we had better ways of showing a waveform or a pattern as a semantic element, we wouldn't need to smash numbers into a deceptive blob by statistics.
Instead of just listing the median, show the distribution IN the representation:
(This doesn't work as well as the previous examples!)
Labels: Blinded by Stats, Constants and Variables
¶ 3:53 AM
