Read Online The Information by James Gleick - Free Book Online
Authors: James Gleick
Tags: Non-Fiction
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London, one-fourth in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, and the rest missing, and saw what he could only describe, anachronistically, as an algorithm:
A cistern.
The height is 3,20, and a volume of 27,46,40 has been excavated.
The length exceeds the width by 50.
You should take the reciprocal of the height, 3,20, obtaining 18.
Multiply this by the volume, 27,46,40, obtaining 8,20.
Take half of 50 and square it, obtaining 10,25.
Add 8,20, and you get 8,30,25.
The square root is 2,55.
Make two copies of this, adding to the one and subtracting from the other.
You find that 3,20 is the length and 2,30 is the width.
This is the procedure. ♦
“This is the procedure” was a standard closing, like a benediction, and for Knuth redolent with meaning. In the Louvre he found a “procedure” that reminded him of a stack program on a Burroughs B5500. “We can commend the Babylonians for developing a nice way to explain an algorithm by example as the algorithm itself was being defined,” said Knuth. By then he himself was engrossed in the project of defining and explaining the algorithm; he was amazed by what he found on the ancient tablets. The scribes wrote instructions for placing numbers in certain locations—for making “copies” of a number, and for keeping a number “in your head.” This idea, of abstract quantities occupying abstract places, would not come back to life till much later.
Where is a symbol? What is a symbol? Even to ask such questions required a self-consciousness that did not come naturally. Once asked, the questions continued to loom.
Look at these signs
, philosophers implored.
What are they
?
“Fundamentally letters are shapes indicating voices,” ♦ explained John of Salisbury in medieval England. “Hence they represent things which they bring to mind through the windows of the eyes.” John served as secretary and scribe to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century. He served the cause of Aristotle as an advocate and salesman. His Metalogicon not only set forth the principles of Aristotelian logic but urged his contemporaries to convert, as though to a new religion. (He did not mince words: “Let him who is not come to logic be plagued with continuous and everlasting filth.”) Putting pen to parchment in this time of barest literacy, he tried to examine the act of writing and the effect of words: “Frequently they speak voicelessly the utterances of the absent.”The idea of writing was still entangled with the idea of speaking. The mixing of the visual and the auditory continued to create puzzles, and so also did the mixing of past and future: utterances of the absent. Writing leapt across these levels.
Every user of this technology was a novice. Those composing formal legal documents, such as charters and deeds, often felt the need to express their sensation of speaking to an invisible audience: “Oh! all ye who shall have heard this and have seen!” ♦ (They found it awkward to keep tenses straight, like voicemail novices leaving their first messages circa 1980.) Many charters ended with the word “Goodbye.” Before writing could feel natural in itself—could become second nature—these echoes of voices had to fade away. Writing in and of itself had to reshape human consciousness.
Among the many abilities gained by the written culture, not the least was the power of looking inward upon itself. Writers loved to discuss writing, far more than bards ever bothered to discuss speech. They could
see
the medium and its messages, hold them up to the mind’s eye for study and analysis. And they could criticize it—for from the very start, the new abilities were accompanied by a nagging sense of loss. It was a form of nostalgia. Plato felt it:
I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, [says Socrates] that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a
A cistern.
The height is 3,20, and a volume of 27,46,40 has been excavated.
The length exceeds the width by 50.
You should take the reciprocal of the height, 3,20, obtaining 18.
Multiply this by the volume, 27,46,40, obtaining 8,20.
Take half of 50 and square it, obtaining 10,25.
Add 8,20, and you get 8,30,25.
The square root is 2,55.
Make two copies of this, adding to the one and subtracting from the other.
You find that 3,20 is the length and 2,30 is the width.
This is the procedure. ♦
“This is the procedure” was a standard closing, like a benediction, and for Knuth redolent with meaning. In the Louvre he found a “procedure” that reminded him of a stack program on a Burroughs B5500. “We can commend the Babylonians for developing a nice way to explain an algorithm by example as the algorithm itself was being defined,” said Knuth. By then he himself was engrossed in the project of defining and explaining the algorithm; he was amazed by what he found on the ancient tablets. The scribes wrote instructions for placing numbers in certain locations—for making “copies” of a number, and for keeping a number “in your head.” This idea, of abstract quantities occupying abstract places, would not come back to life till much later.
Where is a symbol? What is a symbol? Even to ask such questions required a self-consciousness that did not come naturally. Once asked, the questions continued to loom.
Look at these signs
, philosophers implored.
What are they
?
“Fundamentally letters are shapes indicating voices,” ♦ explained John of Salisbury in medieval England. “Hence they represent things which they bring to mind through the windows of the eyes.” John served as secretary and scribe to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century. He served the cause of Aristotle as an advocate and salesman. His Metalogicon not only set forth the principles of Aristotelian logic but urged his contemporaries to convert, as though to a new religion. (He did not mince words: “Let him who is not come to logic be plagued with continuous and everlasting filth.”) Putting pen to parchment in this time of barest literacy, he tried to examine the act of writing and the effect of words: “Frequently they speak voicelessly the utterances of the absent.”The idea of writing was still entangled with the idea of speaking. The mixing of the visual and the auditory continued to create puzzles, and so also did the mixing of past and future: utterances of the absent. Writing leapt across these levels.
Every user of this technology was a novice. Those composing formal legal documents, such as charters and deeds, often felt the need to express their sensation of speaking to an invisible audience: “Oh! all ye who shall have heard this and have seen!” ♦ (They found it awkward to keep tenses straight, like voicemail novices leaving their first messages circa 1980.) Many charters ended with the word “Goodbye.” Before writing could feel natural in itself—could become second nature—these echoes of voices had to fade away. Writing in and of itself had to reshape human consciousness.
Among the many abilities gained by the written culture, not the least was the power of looking inward upon itself. Writers loved to discuss writing, far more than bards ever bothered to discuss speech. They could
see
the medium and its messages, hold them up to the mind’s eye for study and analysis. And they could criticize it—for from the very start, the new abilities were accompanied by a nagging sense of loss. It was a form of nostalgia. Plato felt it:
I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, [says Socrates] that writing is unfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of life, and yet if you ask them a
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