User:Ssstephen/Reading/As We May Think

(from the Life magazine reproduction, September 1945)

• Image: The scientist recording an experiment with a "universal-focus lens" in 1945 was presumably an optimistic or hopeful one, and the title and subtitle seem to follow along with this but for me the idea of "universal-focus" is terrifying and presumably for many people today at least unrealistic. A jpeg (which this article probably isnt, but most likely uses a similar compression format) does not have a universal focus but rather makes compromises (thinking or cognition?) on how much to represent, the resolution and also the frequency of information to represent. Like the human eye it was designed for, the compression algorhythm ignores high frequency data. Alias, the "universal-focus lens" seems to me an unrealistic and unwanted dream.

Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.

Who should witness them? What is witnessing? When you witness a document you write your name on it. "Witness" comes from wit as in knowledge.

Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood.

Does understanding (observing) affect the world? Is reading a form of writing?

• Image: A scientist smoking a pipe and holding a large cylindrical flask half full of liquid. They are looking into the flask and attempting to keep a serious face while trying desperately to remember if it is the top or the bottom of the meniscus that should be read. The pipe greatly assists in this attempt as it forces the scientist to keep their lips tightly pursed. This image shows, much more clearly that the previous one, the artefacts of fourier space compression; a splash of high frequency here, a dab of low frequency there, the algorithm's fingerprints poured into its work.

Under [Vannevar Bush's] direction 6,000 scientists worked on such projects as the development of radar and the atomic bomb.

Between the original publishing of this article in the Atlantic July 1945 and this version in September 1945 there was one month which was called August 1945 and it had thirty one days including the 6th of August 1945 and the 9th of August 1945. From here Im finished with the opinions of this Little Boy, but I kept reading the images.

• Images: Ex-lax is presented as the goldilocks zone laxative through three images and accompanying text, not like those "fright!" strong laxatives or "sissy" weak laxatives. Just stay centrist and no-one will get spanked!

• Image: The "supersecretary of the coming age" has a big smiley head on it. The line drawing style of the illustration reminds me of operating manuals and assembly instructions. The supersecretary is a tool (hence the big smiley head).

• Image: The Mifflin ad is quite frightening. Perhaps this isnt from the original, but this compressed version of the image looks like the woman has a very intense stare. Maybe this is in relation to the poem she recites to herself (to me?) and her intense body rubbing which seems to contradict the slogan "Rub and relax with Mifflin".

• Image: An eagle in a circle.

• Image: A right foot with three corns.

• Image: Coins I thought but then I read they are awards for watchcraft.

• Image: Sir Walter Raleigh.

• Image: Automobile User's Guide.

• Image: Mechanical pencil.

• Image: Server room with controller which has pressure gauges and VU meters.

• Image: A boy cycles away from his dad, both wave.

• Image: A magazine with a picture of a girl on a bike (the boy's bike?)

• Image: A bag of Richardson's After Dinner Mints.

• Image: Ceci c'est un pipe.

• Image: A girl drinking orange juice, and a bottle of orange juice.

• Image: A tube of paste called Glider.

• Image: A woman smoking indoors.

• Image: A person in their underwear.

• Image: Fudge.

• Image: Robinson Reminders, a pocket memory system (to be used with the mechanical pen?).

• Image: A dog wrappen in a suspender.edit: no a sock garter.

• Image: A shoe that transforms soldiers into businessmen.

• Image: A board game that appears to be a combination of scrabble and pictionary.

• Image: Cute puppies.

• Image: Another woman smoking (location not specified visually).