Term's End Notes

African Fractals:

http://library.mit.edu/item/001267457

In african designs, "the central peak of spiritual power is analogous to the central peak of compuational power in the Crutchfield-Smale complexity measure." (174)

"pattern creation through group activity is supported by conscious mechanisms specific to self-organization as defined in complexity theory." (174)

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Time & Bits: Managing Digital Continuity

http://library.mit.edu/item/000931310

Brian Eno: "Since I'm interested in cultural objects, the question that most interests me is: What is the difference between preserving data, with things like tax returns for example, and preserving cultural objects? [...] To give you an example of a cultural object that's extremely difficult to store in digital form, there's a painting by Kazimir Malevic called White on White[...] in 10,000 years time you'd finally dig deep down [...] and you see that. It is absolutely meaningless without some sense of what it was a gesture towards. [...] I would contend that most objects of culture are very much like that, they're embedded within context and these contexts are embedded within other ones as well. So a characteristic of cultural objects is they're increasingly context-dependent. And they're increasingly embedded in meta-languages." (51)

to read: Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire

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Norman Wiener - The Human Use of Human Beings / Cybernetics and Society

http://library.mit.edu/item/000773556

"In connection with machines that there is no reason why they may not resemble human beings in representing pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the large entropy tends to increase." (47)

"The organism is not like the clockwork monad of Leibnitz with its pre-established harmony with the universe, but actually seeks a new equilibrium with the universe and its future contingencies. Its present is unlike its past and its future unlike its present. In the living organism as the universe itself, exact repetition is absolutely impossible." (67)

Kendall Walton - Marvelous Images

http://library.mit.edu/item/001501024

"Aesthetic value arguably consists in a capacity to elicit in appreciators pleasure of a certain kind, pleasurable experiences. [...] 'aesthetic' pleasures include the pleasure of finding something valuable, of admiring it.