lines of enquiry

Yesterday I visited Kettle's Yard to see an exhibition called 'Lines of Enquiry', containing images created by non-artists for various purposes. It really opened my eyes to the value of drawing and related skills. And the vast array of purposes that such skills can be put to. It's easy to think that artistic activities are segregated from clearly utilitarian, practical and scientific endeavours. This exhibition really showed how both can really benefit from each other. Perhaps it's simpler to see that the distinction is actually artificial, and that by doing away with it, freedom of expression is increased.
It's easy to miss out on visual representations in every day life. Browsing through this exhibition gave me the resolve to get back into drawing again.
One thing I am sure of is that failing to communicate visually is missing out on a dimension of life with huge potential.
What role does visual representation play in your life?
Definitely a line of enquiry to follow up.

decaying filesystems

Wikipedia is a big collection of interconnected articles, each with its own edit history.
If we view each article+history as one object, then it will come as no surprise that links between articles link to the most recent version of the article.
But if instead we view each version of an article as a separate article, a different view comes out. Instead of wikipedia being a big collection of interconnected articles, we have a big collection of interconnected stacks of articles, where each stack represents the article and its previous versions.
Now why do links between articles automatically point to the 'top of the stack'? The article may be changed out of all recognition from what it was further down the stack (earlier in its history).
In fact, we arrive right at the paradox of the heap: when does an article undergoing many small incremental changes actually cross the boundary between being a modification of its earlier self to being a totally new article?
The answer is of course, that it doesn't. The boundary is entirely artificial, and almost entirely not useful.
So this is the fix: wikipedia article links should link through to the version of the article that is relevant to the text linking to it. Intuitive no?
This leads to some nice behaviours: because links can be redirected to different versions of an article you know you're pointing at what you intended to point at. Also, there is more emphasis on the age and stability of the information you're viewing.
But perhaps it would be tedious to have to keep updating links as articles improved over time. Perhaps there could be mechanisms that tracked people's browsing paths and updated links automatically. Or perhaps it would form the basis of a new recommendation system: major edits would gain approval from the community by getting linked to.
This system also suggests another improvement: branching articles. Each modification to an article is actually a branch. Vandalized branches would soon die, while community-approved branches would blossom.
You could even have a system whereby short branches with low link counts (or a high proportion of links from ancient but successful branches, representing abandoned links) could be migrated to lower quality media, or even disposed of: a sort of garbage collection for high-level human-readable information.
Branches are also excellent in that they solve the article renaming, moving, merging and splitting problems at a stroke: because the mechanisms to redirect links quickly are already in place, it is comparatively cheap to perform these operations.
The possibilities are endless. And it would be a job to get right, but it's something we could benefit from a lot I think.

the democratisation of programming

Sitting at work browsing through code and documentation recently, I came to the realisation that computer programming is easier now than it has ever been. Programming languages are more accessible, development environments increasingly more cuddly, and the number of prefabricated parts has exploded.
So now any Tom, Dick or Harry can program.
And what's more, almost any Tom, Dick or Harry can create his or her own programming languages and environments, which has happened more than successfully on more than one occasion.
This is simultaneously very good and very bad.
Lowering the barrier to entry deconcentrates power out of the hands of few. But it also heavily dilutes the skill of the few in the incompetence and mediocrity of the many. When programming was hard, incompetence was weeded out by 'natural selection'. Now incompetence is rife. And for the beginner, wading through all this crud can be quite uncomfortable. And potentially damaging. When you're developing on top of broken items, it's easy to fall into a broken rut yourself.
The solution? Keep your eyes open at all times, and question everything.
Having said that, I did read an interesting article recently about how 'Worse is better'. But I think that's definitely a case of breaking the rules once you know them.

originality isn't new

How often have you sat down to write an essay only to stall right in your tracks because you felt like you were sitting down to write the same old essay that a thousand people had already written?
I know I have many times. It can be a real motivation killer. Which is why I decided to look into the situation a little further. And it turned out to be quite simple. I simply had, and have, no desire to tell people something that they already know. What would be the point in that?
Retelling old stories to people who have already heard them sounded like an easy route to a nice boring reputation. Rewriting old thoughts in fresh ink felt like a sure way to lodge deeper into whatever philosophical rut I’d been trapped in recently. Using the present to recycle the past seemed like a rather sad waste of an opportunity.
Striving for originality can be a very positive drive. If we were all content with reinventing the wheel and rediscovering fire we might never have invented styling mousse or electric toothbrushes. But sometimes originality can get in the way of itself. And all kinds of other innocent bystanders.
Often what is needed is not a new solution, but just a logical application of an old one. And if you have no knowledge of applying old solutions to easy problems, what chance have you got of finding new solutions to new problems?
Originality is a faraway objective that would be nice to achieve, but realistically speaking, isn’t usually. But that sounds rather negative.
What people mean when they say ‘original’ is hazy. Sometimes they mean in relation to the history of humanity. Sometimes they mean in relation to a current trend of thinking. But usually the scope is pretty wide.
I think we can achieve originality if we narrow the scope a little. If I want I can do something original, in relation to me and my history, every day of the week. And from there I can widen out my originality if I want. At least I have a foot in the door of Originality’s home, where before I was fixated by the ‘Beware Of The Dog’ and ‘We’re Not Buying It’ stickers.
So the moral of the story is, sit down, write your essays, explore your thoughts, and tread those ruts ever deeper, because one day you’ll find that either they go exactly where you wanted to go, or, more exciting still, you’ll find that they run out and you have to forge a new path for yourself!
And of course, even old ruts have rough edges which you can smooth or roughen as your mood takes you.
Whatever you do, don’t be intimidated by the towering monster that is ultimate originality. You’ll never come close to it if you don’t start on its minions first!