Definitely would have been good for Dyson to give Gödel (and Boole) a shoutout there. It’s been a while since I read it, but I think he gives them due credit in the book.
@greglinch
Informa TechTarget (formerly Industry Dive) data + visuals director. DiverseSources.org web dev. McClatchy and Washington Post alum. Fan of art, visual poetry, science, dogs, cats, karaoke. greglinch.com
Definitely would have been good for Dyson to give Gödel (and Boole) a shoutout there. It’s been a while since I read it, but I think he gives them due credit in the book.
That’d be great, thanks! I’m hoping to visit this exhibit in NYC before it closes in March, so it sounds like I need to add a stop.
www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/h...
All that’s to say… thank you and I appreciate you and I love how all these mind-tickling things relate to each other.
“By breaking the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things, von Neumann unleashed the power of the stored-program computer, and our universe would never be the same.” www.edge.org/conversation...
Similar to the Inventing Abstraction typography insight, your line about HTML being two things at once also brought to mind how George Dyson discussed numbers in Turing’s Cathedral.
Sidebar: I found your tweets in my seminar week doc, huzzah!
Anywho, back to the previous part of the thread sparked by your HTML piece: I just went to my Snarkmarket seminar final paper and found an excerpt where you expanded on the typographical connection. Do you mind if I share it here?
Yes! Same here. Coincidentally, this past weekend I was just re-living it through the installation images:
www.moma.org/calendar/exh...
And checklist:
www.moma.org/interactives...
Your reply said something like “it’s in the typography.” Anywho, I visited the exhibit and — no exaggeration — it changed my life. Besides sparking a deep passion for art and how art is connected to other areas, this also served as a guiding light for my Snarkmarket seminar final paper.
Rewind a bit for context: You had tweeted about the Inventing Abstraction exhibit at MoMA. I noticed the timeframe of 1910-1925 and asked this question:
Tim! I encountered this via Kotte’s newsletter, didn’t notice the byline and then I got here:
“HTML is somehow simultaneously paper and the printing press for the electronic age. It’s both how we write and what we read.”
It immediately reminded of something you said (11+ years ago?!)…
👋 Hello, hello! Thank you!