Clarke's Second Law

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke.

Corollaries:

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
- Pratchett

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
- Benford

"Any magic, sufficiently debased, is indistinguishable from technology."
- Rosenbaum

"Any sufficiently advanced garbage is indistinguishable from magic."
- Sterling

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a completely ad-hoc plot device."
- Langford

MLP

Apparently these have been out for ages, but just in case: HG2G Trailer, Another.

Also sooo last week, but just in case: google maps has integrated the keyhole satellite imagery they bought. Scrolling west across the map gives 3 screenfuls of blue, then wraps around to the US Pacific coast -- creepy. But now you can switch over to satellite to check that the rest of the world is still there. Europe is mostly low-res land, but Greenland is nice for sightseeing.

I can see through time!

Eleven straight hours of Plastikman. Even when I take the earphones off, I can still hear strange wriggly sounds and the entire world seems to be pulsing gently. That might be the coffee though.

Cool quote from the link above:

The sensory weight of a unit is affected by its proximity to other units, their centres and their boundaries. Metaphorically, sensorially, every observed particle of energy, whatever its form, has a gravitational field or, better, each seems to bend the space in its vicinity. The significance of any event is not constant; it varies with location, with circumstances. It is relative. Therefore, when apparent duplication occurs, there cannot be sameness but only similarity.

If a musician sounds three brief notes, perhaps repeating middle C upon a piano, the three notes cannot be the same. The first will have surprise, even shock if unexpected. The second note, anticipated or not, will produce some resonance in the listener who is carrying a memory of the first note. Whereas the first note was a sound and, if brief and staccato, not fully comprehended as a note, the second note can be savoured, studied and recorded in its fullness. This applies even more distinctly to a third note, which becomes confirmatory. Timing, the relative length of notes and intervals to the intrinsic time of the audience, perhaps their very heartbeats, will suggest whether the third note is a repeat, an echo or a full stop. By inversion, current (published 1980) experiments in the fine arts are exploring the subdivision of a current experience, such as a sustained musical note, a sheet of color, a 'wrapped' landscape, into the discontinuity of the observer's timescale: his beginning, his middle, and his end, which is all one. Ultimately this becomes a passive vehicle for audience participation and is not unrelated to traditional programmes for meditation, both philosophic and religious.

Ya. Right on.

From the book, Logic & Design in Art, Science, and Mathematics by Krome Barratt. Sounds a bit like the software patterns book mixed with GEB and a hefty dose of mysticism. Hmmmm, where's my credit card...?

More from the Department of Productivity and Bright Colours

1. Put on the Wilco album.

2. Load up this swishy piece of javascript and watch the pretty patterns.

Hours of fun.