Year: 2011

Philosophy of Memory – Nerves, sound and ecphory

I am deeply fascinated by the notion that nerves operate using sound not electricity.

There is a theory in psychology of memory retrieval called ecphory based on an analogy with sound. Wouldn’t it be something if sound was not an analogy or a metaphor, but the actual vehicle of communication?

via Philosophy of Memory – Nerves, sound and ecphory.

Adactio: Journal—The Language of the Web

I’m not invoking the Sapir Whorf hypothesis here, I just wanted to point out how our language can—intentionally or unintentionally—have an effect on our thinking.

When Ethan Marcotte coined the term “responsive web design” he conjured up something special. The technologies existed already: fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries. But Ethan united these techniques under a single banner, and in so doing changed the way we think about web design.

I’m not invoking the Sapir Whorf hypothesis here, I just wanted to point out how our language can—intentionally or unintentionally—have an effect on our thinking.

via Adactio: Journal—The Language of the Web.

Metronome – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Metronome – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A metronome is any device that produces regular, metrical ticks (beats, clicks) — settable in beats per minute.

These ticks represent a fixed, regular aural pulse; some metronomes also include synchronized visual motion (e.g. pendulum-swing).

The metronome dates from the early 19th century, where it was patented by Johann Maelzel in 1815 as a tool for musicians, under the title “Instrument/Machine for the Improvement of all Musical Performance, called Metronome.”

 

Fortran – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.

 Fortran is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative programming language that is especially suited to numeric computation and scientific computing.

Fortran (a blend derived from The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System) encompasses a lineage of versions, each of which evolved to add extensions to the language while usually retaining compatibility with previous versions.

Successive versions have added support for processing of character-based data (FORTRAN 77), array programming, modular programming and object-oriented programming (Fortran 90 / 95), and object-oriented and generic programming (Fortran 2003).

via Fortran – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The 20 Best Books for Language Lovers | Online College Tips – Online Colleges

The 20 Best Books for Language Lovers | Online College Tips – Online Colleges.

Language pervades everything, building and destroying as time marches ever forward.

And while even the most learned scholars can’t even begin to fully explain its physiology, origins, structures and pretty much every other component, they’ve certainly done a pretty lovely job scratching the surface.

 

The Gutenberg Galaxy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

he Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man is a book by Marshall McLuhan, in which he analyzes the effects of mass media, especially the printing press, on European culture and human consciousness.

It popularized the term global village,[1] which refers to the idea that mass communication allows a village-like mindset to apply to the entire world; and Gutenberg Galaxy,[2] which we may regard today to refer to the accumulated body of recorded works of human art and knowledge, especially books.

McLuhan studies the emergence of what he calls Gutenberg Man, the subject produced by the change of consciousness wrought by the advent of the printed book. Apropos of his axiom, “The medium is the message,” McLuhan argues that technologies are not simply inventions which people employ but are the means by which people are re-invented. The invention of movable type was the decisive moment in the change from a culture in which all the senses partook of a common interplay to a tyranny of the visual. He also argued that the development of the printing press led to the creation of nationalism, dualism, domination of rationalism, automatisation of scientific research, uniformation and standardisation of culture and alienation of individuals.

Movable type, with its ability to reproduce texts accurately and swiftly, extended the drive toward homogeneity and repeatability already in evidence in the emergence of perspectival art and the exigencies of the single “point of view”. He writes:

the world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age.

via The Gutenberg Galaxy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.