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Template:M intro design System redundancy: Difference between revisions
Template:M intro design System redundancy (view source)
Revision as of 16:14, 17 September 2023
, 17 September 2023→Reductionism about time
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The JC’s developing view is that this grimness is caused by the poverty of this model when compared to the territory it sets out to map. For the magic of an algorithm is its ability to reduce a rich, multi-dimensional experience to a succession of very simple, one-dimensional steps. But in that [[reductionism]], we lose something ''essential''. | The JC’s developing view is that this grimness is caused by the poverty of this model when compared to the territory it sets out to map. For the magic of an algorithm is its ability to reduce a rich, multi-dimensional experience to a succession of very simple, one-dimensional steps. But in that [[reductionism]], we lose something ''essential''. | ||
The Turing machines on which [[data modernism]] depends have no ''[[tense]]''. There is no past or future, perfect or otherwise in code: there is only a permanent simple ''present''. A software object’s ''past'' is rendered as a series of date-stamped events and presented as metadata in the present. | The Turing machines on which [[data modernism]] depends have no ''[[tense]]''. There is no past or future, perfect or otherwise in code: there is only a permanent simple ''present''. A software object’s ''past'' is rendered as a series of date-stamped events and presented as metadata in the present. An object’s ''future'' is not represented at all. | ||
In reducing everything to data, spatio-temporal continuity is represented as an array of contiguous, static ''events''. Each has zero duration and zero dimension: they are just ''values''. | In reducing everything to data, spatio-temporal continuity is represented as an array of contiguous, static ''events''. Each has zero duration and zero dimension: they are just ''values''. | ||
Now the beauty of a static frame is its economy. It ''can’t move'', it can’t surprise us, it takes up minimal space. We can replace bandwidth-heavy actual spacetime, in which ''three'' dimensional objects project backwards and forwards in a ''fourth'' dimension — with ''apparent'' time, rendered the single symbol-processing dimension that is the lot of all Turing machines. | |||
The apparent temporal continuity that results, like cinematography, is a conjuring trick: it does not exist “in the code” at all; rather the output of the code is presented in a way that ''induces the viewer to impute continuity to it''. When regarding the code’s output, the user ascribes her own conceptualisation of time, from her own natural language, to what she sees. The “magic” is not in the machine. It is in her head. | The apparent temporal continuity that results, like cinematography, is a conjuring trick: it does not exist “in the code” at all; rather the output of the code is presented in a way that ''induces the viewer to impute continuity to it''. When regarding the code’s output, the user ascribes her own conceptualisation of time, from her own natural language, to what she sees. The “magic” is not in the machine. It is in her head. | ||