Just Add Water

by Venkat 02.29.2012

A Bill Gates Roy Amara quote I encountered last week reminds me strongly of compound interest. “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” I hadn’t heard this line before, but based on anecdotal evidence, I think s Amara was [...]

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Glimpses of a Cryptic God

by Venkat 02.16.2012

I rarely listen to music anymore. Strange anxieties and fears seem to flood into my head when I try. When I seek comfort in sound these days, I tend to seek out non-human ones. The sorts of soundscapes that result from technological and natural forces gradually inter-penetrating each other. At the Mira Flores lock, the [...]

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Refactor Camp 2012: Generativity and Captivity

by Venkat 02.09.2012

Every interesting thing in my life has been the result of scratching at some weird itch. Every screwed-up thing has been the result of ignoring such itches and attempting to follow some mature-sounding social script instead. Last year, through my travels and field trips,  I was intrigued to discover that itch-scratchers are disproportionately represented in [...]

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The Greater Ribbonfarm Cultural Region

by Venkat 02.07.2012

Now for something a little different and spectacularly self-absorbed. Several of you have suggested over the years that I should make up some sort of helpful landing page to get new readers oriented. I’ve been mulling how to do that in an interesting and helpful way for quite a while now, and about six months [...]

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How to Name Things

by Venkat 02.02.2012

– 1 – Naming and counting are the two most basic behaviors in our divided brains. Naming is the atomic act of association, recognition, contextualization and synthesis. Counting is the atomic act of separation, abstraction, arrangement and analysis. Each behavior contains the seed of the other. To name a thing is to invite it to ensnare itself [...]

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Peak Attention and the Colonization of Subcultures

by Venkat 01.27.2012

Coded, informal communication — significant messages buried inside innocuous messages — has long interested me.  I don’t mean things like “NX398 VJ899 ABBX3″ that the NSA might deal with (though that’s related). I mean things like this: You: let’s get coffee sometime Me: Sure, that’d be great We both know that the real exchange was: [...]

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The World is Small and Life is Long

by Venkat 01.18.2012

In the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling repeatedly uses a very effective technique: turning a character, initially introduced as part of the background, into a foreground character. This happens with the characters of Gilderoy Lockhart, Viktor Krum and Sirius Black for instance. In fact she uses the technique so frequently (with even minor characters like Mr. [...]

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Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater

by Venkat 01.11.2012

Consider this thought experiment: what if you were only allowed 2000 words with which to understand the world? With these 2000 words, you’d have to do everything. You’d be allowed to occasionally retire some words in favor of others, or invent new words, but you’d have to stick to the budget. Everything would have to [...]

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2012 Reading List, January – June

by Venkat 01.06.2012

The last time I froze and posted my short-term reading list on August 12, people seemed to appreciate it. Going by my Amazon Affiliate data and random conversations with some of you on Google+ and Facebook, it looks like at least a few dozen people bought one or more of the books and read along, in [...]

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Complete 2011 Roundup

by Venkat 12.21.2011

Time for another roundup. It’s been, ahem, an interesting year, to say the least.  I’ll do a numbers portrait and some narrative highlights for those of you who have been reading long enough to be interested in the meta-story of this blog as a piece of ongoing performance art. For those who don’t care, skip [...]

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