December 26, 2007: X writing Y because Z
Been thinkin' a lot about techniques for extra-subjective representation.
The NASA Voyager "Golden Record" is an elegant example to follow: Dr. Carl Sagan and friends got together in the 70's with the goal of creating a best-approximation record of life on earth (for intelligent beings in space). In the book, Murmurs of Earth, Sagan and the Voyager team describe the epistemological problems that face any aspiring summarizer of society: the balance between over-specification and genericization.
There seem to be two approaches to this encyclopedic middle ground: the diversity of specimen and the universality of a given example. I have previously addressed the question of subject matter diversity, but for reasons relating to a current project, I have been researching universal (extra-subjective) representation. I am looking at gestures and behaviors and assigning metasyntactic variables. Converting from the form "Jeff drank water from a cup" to "X drank Y from a Z" is simple enough, but representing the XYZ form on film has proven difficult. It seems that movies don't quite work like linguistic exercises.
Comments
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Posted by: Rob | December 26, 2007 4:40 AM
You are breaking my heart with all of this beautiful math! Wordsearch: first-order logic, axiomatization, flowcharts,
and fractals--my favorite eg of something both infinitely complex and simple.
We got my dad a replica of the Golden Record for one of his birthdays.
Also, maybe rethink your use of "genericization."
Posted by: jay cee | December 26, 2007 3:26 PM
it's all good.
Goulet!
Posted by: Joel | December 27, 2007 2:00 PM
Quite eloquent, Jefe. I think one problem in summarizing society without giving some specificity is that the patterns used to denote our intelligence may just seem like background patterns of the universe.
I mean, the fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are incredibly complex concepts but appear ubiquitously throughout nature. One could come to the conclusion that there is an "intelligent designer" or that intelligence is just the natural counterpoint to entropy.
Carl Sagan suggested that if we wish to convey our intelligence to aliens tuning into radio waves, that we should send out a sequence of prime numbers. Since their place in nature is quite odd (pun intended), then it would show that there is some organizing (intelligent) force behind the signal.
In the words of Wayne Coyne,
"I don't know where the sunbeams end, and the starlight begins, it's all a mystery."
Posted by: Ryan | October 26, 2008 4:42 PM