The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines
Saturday, January 21, 2006, 12:52 AM - Theory
In Slashdot today:"In Dr David Ellerman's book Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life there are a number of interesting essays. But there is one particular essay, entitled "The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines" that caught my attention and which should be of interest to Slashdot readers. In that essay Dr Ellerman claims that "after several decades of debate, a definitive differentiation between minds and machines seems to be emerging into view." In particular, Dr Ellerman argues that the distinction between minds and machines is that while machines (i.e., computers) make excellent symbol manipulation devices, only minds have the additional capacity to ascribe semantics to symbols." Read the rest of John's review.
Isn't that the difference between intelligence and memory? Read the rest of the review by John David Funge
2 comments The Nature of Code
Saturday, January 21, 2006, 12:27 AM - Beautiful Code
Can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? Can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world world help us to create digital worlds? This class will focus on the programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems. We’ll explore topics ranging from basic mathematics and physics concepts to more advanced simulations of complex systems. Subjects covered will include forces, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms. Examples will be demonstrated using Processing with a focus on object oriented programming.
Learn the way of the code with Daniel Shiffman. First week already online!
Blink!
Pornographic Coding
Friday, January 20, 2006, 11:09 PM - Theory
Program code is like pornography. It has linear logic, but no meaning. There is an accumulation of things already known. The focus is always on the same explicit facts. Repetition and boredom rule.
(Adapted from a Neoist slogan)
Art is sanctioned pornography.
(Neoist slogan)we demand a shamanic pornography. Capitalist ``progress'' destroys the imagination through a frenzy of the visible. What we see we no longer need to imagine. A a famous zero from the popsicle academy was once moved to write that every time a man had an erection it was a triumph of the imagination. Power to the imagination, and to sex - for they are one and the same thing. Pornographers of the world close your eyes. You have nothing to lose but your bodily fluids! It is time to decondition ourselves by going beyond the known world.
The shamans of old ingested psychedelic mushrooms, and today we are further armed with a battery of chemically synthesised drugs including ecstasy and LSD. These psychedelics are psychic elevators that can power us through the seven levels of human consciousness. The first four levels of consciousness can be reached in ordinary everyday life. Level Five requires either chemical assistance or long hours of arduous interaction with your computer, and when you hit this level sexual activity is vastly enhanced. Once you go above Level Five consciousness you don't necessarily need coitus. Indeed, at Level Six you are telepathic and sexually combined with your fellow hackers, and this integration is even greater at Level Seven (aka total fucking zero and one pornography).
Drugs and code are the ancient and modern tools with which we can investigate our own minds while turning our bodies into one vast erogenous zone. Our message to purveyours of representational porn is HANDS OFF (OUR) EJACULATIONS (both male and female). WE WANT TO CUM IN ALL THE COLOURS OF ALL THE FLAGS OF ALL THE CONSULATES. As an initiated shaman Jean Cocteau was able to come through the sheer power of his imagination, he could do this without using his hands to manipulate his genitals. Let's keep our hands free to imput date on our computer terminals and use the convulsive power of codes to bring us to orgasm.
Florian Cramer and Stewart Home, Crash conference paper, Feb. 11, 2005
Link
SPOTS media facade berlin
Friday, January 20, 2006, 09:28 PM - Beautiful Code
Well, this is one of those things that make this city so desperately awsome isn't it. The SPOTS media facade opened today at 17:00 on the frozen Park Kolonnaden building. As you can see in the pics, a few series of curated art projects will be delivered for free to a hopefully delighted walking audience for 18 months. You can also buy little postcards with changing images on them. The installation was designed by Realities:United, a Berlin-based architecture studio, also responsible for the amazing BIX facade at the Kunsthaus (Graz).
This selection was curated by Andreas Broeckmann, the big man at the Transmediale, but will include works by Jim Campbell, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Carsten Nicolai and Realities:United in collaboration with John Dekron. Visitors to Transmediale 06 will have a chance to see them all together, one per day, in a special show.
via generatorx
Real men never define acronyms; they understand them genetically
Friday, January 20, 2006, 09:19 PM - Robots
You know you need it: Roedy Green's guide To Write Unmaintainable Code. Become irreplaceable. Ensure a job for life.
In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn't be able to maintain the code!
You don't want to overdo this. Your code should not look hopelessly unmaintainable, just be that way. Otherwise it stands the risk of being rewritten or refactored.
blink!
Owning ideas
Friday, January 20, 2006, 09:17 PM - Sound
The boom in the intellectual property market will not reap rewards for us all: Andrew Brown for The Guardian, November 19, 2005:
The difference between ideas and things is obvious as soon as someone hits you over the head with an idea - so obvious that until recently it was entirely clear to the law. Things could have owners and ideas could not. Yet this simple distinction is being changed all around us. Ideas are increasingly treated as property - as things that have owners who may decide who gets to use them and on what terms.
Ideas such as one-click shopping, getting customer reviews on a website or even putting classified ads on the internet are now patented, which is to say that somebody owns them - Amazon.com the first two, Google, the classified ad patent - and anybody else who wants to make use of them must pay a rent to the owner. Last week, Amazon was also granted a patent that covers getting shoppers to review the things they have bought on its website. BT has tried to patent the hyperlink, Microsoft is trying to patent XML, a way of writing computer files that is fundamental to the operation of modern business.
Keep reading Owning Ideas, one of the most brilliant articles I have read on the topic. If interested, read also Patent Absurdity, another beautiful by a very inspired Richard Stallman.
The Texturize plugin for GIMP
Friday, January 20, 2006, 09:15 PM - Apt-get Install
Textures are probably one of the most undervalued elements in 3D modelling. That's why, among other reasons, this plugin is so awsome:
Imagine that you have an image with a small sample of a texture, like a few strawberries (out of a plate full of them), a few square inches of grass (from a large grassy field), or a few dozens of your cat's hairs (your cat really has more than that). If you want to generate a larger texture with this small image, you could just copy-paste it, and put the copies (or "patches") one next to another, but that wouldn't produce a very good result, since the right (or top) part of the image usually doesn't correspond to its left (or bottom) part, when two copies of the image are assembled.
The Texturize plugin allows you to get all the strawberries, the whole grass field, or your whole cat (well, it doesn't guess you cat's shape, but you can at least get a lot of his hairs!). Moreover, Texturize lets you actually create tileable textures (which is great for game design). Have a look at the examples section to see what it looks like
The Texturize plugin is available under the GPL license and is multiplatform. Blink!
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