history
Nobody sends 3D renderings in the mail anymore
I’m reading Michael Rubin’s Droidmaker, a history of Lucasfilm’s work with computer graphics and computer-assisted editing, and really, a big chunk of Bay Area history I didn’t know much about. (The book’s first section was particularly interesting. It’s largely pre-Star Wars, and Francis Ford Coppola looms large in the SF filmmaking scene.)
Here’s a detail that made me smile. I love a good you’ve-got-to-hire-me story:
Sometimes it seemed as if everyone in the computer industry wanted a job with the Lucasfilm researchers. The small team were sent resumes constantly. As soon as he was situated at Bank Street, [Alvy Ray Smith] began receiving “love notes” from a scientist at Boeing. The term “notes” was perhaps misleading. Someone was sending Alvy 8x10 prints of a mountainscape…
…almost certainly of digital origin, with no explanation. These images caught his eye. He had never seen a computer-generated mountain look so detailed, and although it was likely the result of an application of mathematician Bernard Mandelbrot’s new ideas, neither he nor [Ed Catmull] was sure how it had been done or who had done it.
In time they understood that the pictures came from someone making a presentation at that fall’s Siggraph conference in Seattle. They both made a mental note to find out more about him. Alvy pinned one of the photos to the wall.
The Siggraph presentation—set to a Beatles song—was the two-minute short Vol Libre, an insta-classic in the history of computer graphics. The Boeing scientist, Loren Carpenter, went on to join Lucasfilm and co-found Pixar.
What (Some) People Like On Twitter
The other day on Twitter, I had a particularly silly/dorky Steve Jobs tweet become crazy popular, like a thousand retweets popular. So — being again, particularly silly and dorky myself — decided to pull some of my most popular tweets into a Storify to try to discern a pattern (if any).
BIG PATTERN: People love pop culture references. But my Twitter feed (and probably yours) regularly ABOUNDS in pop culture references. So that actually turns out not to have a ton of explanatory value on its own.
SMART PATTERN: What people really seem to love are oblique, unexpected pop culture references that hit a particular niche. They’re tweets that say: “this message was only for you; now share it with everyone you know.”
BIG PATTERN #2: People definitely respond in a big way to big news events. If something is going on that’s happening in real-time, the retweet button gets a workout.
SMART PATTERN #2: The problem with big events is that everybody’s tweeting and retweeting everything. Which is fine! It’s good! But at the same time, some sort of conceptual scoop that shines a light on something different about what’s happening adds more value.
BIG PATTERN #3: People love anything that reminds them of their childhood.
SMART PATTERN #3: I love anything that reminds me of my childhood. And that Proustian love is a propulsive force that drives me to write better sentences.
On Repeat: Language Refracting in History’s Gravitational Well
Listen to it!
I heard King’s “I Have a Dream” on the radio this afternoon. Despite the grandeur of the visuals of the March on Washington, and the power of the text, I think that radio is the best way to experience it. I am amazed, as a writer, teacher, poet, and speaker, at the range of King’s elocutionary instrument.
He doesn’t just use every sonorous rhetorical tool in the book. He makes words rhyme which shouldn’t. He finds transitory consonants and bends them to fit his alliterative schemes. He has the most versatile spondaic foot I’ve ever heard, so much so it could pass for iambic. (Try to find a genuinely unstressed syllable — or unstressed thought — in the way King says “We Will Not Be Satisfied.”)
And he matches and varies his pitch to highlight his parallelisms of matter and mind, in his voice and in the air; a small, thickly built man, speaking from the roots of the trees, from the center of the earth, knowing that the extension of his own gravity stretches like a column from the molten core to the orbit of the moon. He is a single still point with the granted power to bend straight the crooked lines of history.
Reading revolutions
Here is a link to Tim’s terrific new post over at The Atlantic, provided for your convenience. Like I said on Twitter:
@tcarmody I love that your magisterial media history post totally has a Demand Media headline. Nicely done.
I love the fact that Gutenberg’s press represents just one of ten revolutions here, and I love Tim’s characterization of it:
2. Outside of scholarly circles, the top candidate is usually the better-known Print Revolution, usually associated with Johannes Gutenberg, who helped introduce movable type to Europe. Now, as Andrew Pettegree’s new history The Book in the Renaissance shows, the early years of print were much messier than advertised: no one knew quite what to do with this technology, especially how to make money off of it.
“No one knew quite what to do with this technology.” I can’t tell you much I love that—how heartening I find it. It means we probably haven’t even figured out what the web is really good for yet.
But yo, Tim, I’ve got beef: where’s the paperback revolution in your list?
Constellational thinking
A Tumblr vanity search for snarkmarket.com reveals that someone clipped this comment of Tim’s, in which he defines constellational thinking. I just put a link to it in my browser toolbar so I can summon it at a moment’s notice. I feel like I get something new out of it every time I read it. Maybe this is the beginning of my text playlist?
Western threads
I saw the new video game Red Dead Redemption for the first time this weekend, courtesy of my pal Wilson, who described it (and I paraphrase) as “every awesome Western ever, combined.”
It is indeed totally stunning, and it’s got me thinking about Westerns. Among other things:
- Appaloosa, the recent Western with Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, and Jeremy Irons that I totally enjoyed.
- High Noon and Rio Bravo still explain everything.
- Following on: Howard Hawks (who directed Rio Bravo). I feel like I want to understand him and his work better. Note also the Hawksian woman.
What clicks in your mind when you think about Westerns? Any recent movies I ought to see? Any other fun stuff out there?
Update: Yes, this post was Tim-bait, and whoah yes, he delivers. I’m considering just pasting his comment into the body of the post and moving what I wrote to the comments…
Modern machines for writing
Was about to email this to Tim, but then thought I should probably just post it instead! Check out this great old film on “Modern Business Machines for Writing, Duplicating, Recording, Etc.” There’s a lot packed in, and it’s pretty fast-paced; worth dragging the scrubber around a bit even if you don’t want to sit straight through.
Don’t miss the court reporter’s shorthand machine! Totally ridiculous, and yet, there’s a premonition of our lives today, all SMS shorthand and walking around staring down at weird devices…
(Via @footage.)
The secret origin of hello
Enjoyed this little bit of greeting history from Clive Thompson, by way of Liz Danzico. I’m now imagining a world where people shout “ahoy!” into their phones as a greeting, and I love it.
‘The music’s not in the piano’
I like Howard’s take on the iPad a lot—he describes it not as a device but almost as an undevice. And I like this bit:
In the middle 1980s, [computer pioneer Alan] Kay visited Alaska for a lecture and was interviewed in the Anchorage Daily News, articulating intoxicating ideas that helped awaken me to the brewing information revolution. He was careful even then to caution against focusing too much on devices. “The music’s not in the piano,” he said. “If it was, we’d have to let it vote.”
The music’s not in the piano! That’s mantra-worthy.
The things they carried
A little too under the weather to comment properly, but this series mostly speaks for itself: A History of the World in 100 Objects from the BBC and the British Museum. It’s unfolding now, day by day.
Nat Torkington says:
Exquisitely high quality commentary (available in original audio and in textual transcript), hi-resolution images, maps, timelines, and more.
Talk about stock!