I have always envied Alexander the Great, because he had Aristotle as a personal tutor. In those days, Aristotle knew pretty much everything there was to know. Even better, Aristotle understood the mind of Alexander. He understood which topics interested Alexander, what Alexander knew and did not know, and what kinds of explanations Alexander preferred. Aristotle had been a student of Plato, and he was himself a great teacher. We know from his writings that he was full of examples, explanations, arguments, and stories. Through Aristotle, Alexander had the knowledge of the world at his command.
With that, Danny HillisW, E introduces his idea for Aristotle, an AI tutor that will move in a smarter web he calls the knowledge web. I find his dream somewhat unconvincing, somewhat pedantically unrealistic and somewhat suspicious of oversimplification. (Even though he considers it but a steppingstone towards Neal Stephenson’s Young Lady’s Illustrated PrimerWP, ELZR, which I love.) It is from the eminent responses to his essay where there’s gold.
As a lapsed gamer myself, Nintendo’s new strategy—simplicity, in several senses—makes a lot of sense and strikes me as a major step in the evolution of our tech gizmos. Since a 1995 Gameboy, the DSWP is the last handheld console that I remember caring for (and that’s mostly for that intriguing Brain AgeWP game).
An epithet is a term used to characterize a person or a thing—a meaningful nickname if you will—and I’ve been obsessed with them (through my obsession with self-definition) for a long time. Examples abound, from the simple Dougie Houser, MD, to Warrren Buffet, the sage of Omaha:
- Claude PironWP, famous Esperantist and psychotherapist, calls himself ”plifelicxigisto” (literally, more-happy-maker), because most of the people that come to him don’t do it because of a particular ailment but because they want to enjoy life more.
- Piron also famously described Esperanto as ”la bona lingvo” (“the good language”).
- Margaret Thatcher is “the Iron Lady”.
- GuadalajaraWP prouds itself as “The Pearl of The West.”
- Among the X-Men, mutant ForgeWP, whose special power is technological brilliance (that is, a superhuman ability to understand, conceive, and build machines), is often referred as “Maker” (and that has got to be the coolest, most heretical epithet ever).
- William GibsonWP is invariably introduced as “the coiner of the term ‘cyberspace’”.
- William Shakespeare is “the Bard (of Avon)”.
- Steven Johnson describes himself numerically as “a father of three boys, husband of one wife, and author of five books.”
- Lord VoldemortWP is best known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named”.
- Benito JuarezWP is the ”Benemérito de las Américas” (“the meritious one of the Americas”).
- Juan GabrielWP is fittingly called “El divo de México” (“Mexico’s male diva”).
- In role-playing games epithets according to your level and race are common; I remember Erasmo, who usually used Yang, an assassin, as his main character, really fancied his early-level epithet: “Yang, the man.”
- Adolfo calls himself (amusingly) an “infoplebeian.”
- Carl Friedrich GaussWP is “the prince of mathematicians.”
- MadonnaWP has long been known as “the material girl.”
- Shiva is usually “the destroyer”, but he is given thousands of namesWP in Hindu scriptures.
- Satan is “the prince of darkness”, or, in Michael Bakunin’s famous description in God and the State, “the eternal rebel, the first freethinker, the emancipator of worlds.”
- Jaime Sabines wondered, upon being called “a great poet”, if he could even be considered, simply, but truly, “a poet”—only to conclude he’s actually just “a pedestrian.”
I could go on forever.
But on a more pedestrian note (or not) what epithets do you fancy for yourself?
Without any pretense of deserving any of them, I personally like webcraftsman, formistELZR, and whimsicistELZR (which I stole shamelessly from someone I can’t remember now!). Other favorites, preceded with the same warning as before, include singularitarian, amateur, (techno-)libertarian, anarchocapitalsit, dynamist, reader, freethinker, and designer—this last one with or without any qualification, but I’m particularly fond of interface designer and analytic designer. Symbolist would also be a nice (undeserved) compliment and so would hacker. As of this moment, perhaps my favorite epithet of all is conceptual designer—a huge post on the subject upcoming.
For my webfront and brand-to-be, 
, I came up with the sloganesque epithet of “avantgarde webcraft” and I quite like it.
But really, I’m all ears, what labels look good on you? (And you don’t have to write them here, just think about it, between you and you.)
I hope you are—just as I was—blissfully ignorant of the following quote and the game it portrays, for, if that’s the case, you’ll probably end up—just as I did1—with a day-long smile on your face. I mean, isn’t this something2?:
Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move. In that respect it differs from almost every other game. The primary activity of Nomic is proposing changes in the rules, debating the wisdom of changing them in that way, voting on the changes, deciding what can and cannot be done afterwards, and doing it. Even this core of the game, of course, can be changed.
Wikipedia, as usual, is a great intro to the topic.
1 I’m riffing the structure of this paragraph from Matrix’s Morpheus memorable quote: “Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Did you got that before I told you? Is there someone out there as linguistically disturbed as I am?
2 That beat comes from this other article, interestingly, on luck.
Bob represents the domestication of the personal computer, in the pejorative sense of the word, turning the miraculous shape-shifting capacities of these machines into a dulled repetition of everyday, household reality.
The real magic of graphic computers derives from the fact that they’re not tied to the old, analog world of objects. They can mimic much of that world of course, but they’re also capable of adopting new identities and performing new tasks that have no real-world equivalent whatsoever. People who get hooked on computers get hooked for this reason. They don’t become high-tech junkies because their machines remind them of their Rolodexes; they’re junkies because their machines do things they never thought possible. Interface design should reflect this newness, this range of possibility.
Amen.
Good ole
Tetris is a wonderful example of those possibilities, of that unreality, and so is
Photoshop. For a more recent, fascinating example look no further than the
Namekuji game
(but be warned, by clicking this link you therewith relinquish the next couple of hours).
