change
What others want them to be
The subtlest slightest kinds of differences
Focus on the rate of change
When we hit our lowest point
Interlocking
Scales of change
A directional quality
A gradual refinement
All things change
The authors of this prognostication evidently assumed that the introduction of the sewing machine would result in more sewing – and easier sewing – by those who had always sewn. They would do the work they had always done in an unchanged setting. Reality turned out to be quite different.
It should be evident by now that there is no such thing as "just introducing" a new gadget to do one particular task. It is foolish to assume that everything else in such a situation will remain the same; all things change when one thing changes.
Ever, Never
EVER PRESENT, NEVER TWICE THE SAME EVER CHANGING, NEVER LESS THAN WHOLE
We change them and are changed
"We fill pre-existing forms and when we fill them we change them and are changed."
— Frank Bidart, Borges and I
How Buildings Learn
A Book by Stewart BrandBe A (Re)Visitor
An Article by Rob WalkerI was thinking about this not long ago while reading in Petapixel an essay by a photographer named Scott Reither, “Long Form Study: Why Photographers Should Repeatedly Revisit A Scene.” In it, he described photographing one particular stretch of beach, over and over, throughout his career.
Of course that landscape has changed over time, and of course he’s had moments when he felt he’d captured the same territory so many times there was nothing left to see.
But there was always something more to see — maybe because of a change in Reither’s life, rather than in the physical environment.
The Sheaves
A Poem by Edwin Arlington RobinsonWhere long the shadows of the wind had rolled,
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay—
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.Theory of Change
An Essay by Aaron SwartzA theory of change is the opposite of a theory of action — it works backwards from the goal, in concrete steps, to figure out what you can do to achieve it. To develop a theory of change, you need to start at the end and repeatedly ask yourself, “Concretely, how does one achieve that?”
When decades happen
A Quote by Vladmir LeninThere are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks when decades happen.
The Tiling Patterns of Sebastien Truchet and the Topology of Structural Hierarchy
A pattern of tiles illustrated by Douat in 1722.
A translation is given of Truchet's 1704 paper showing that an infinity of patterns can be generated by the assembly of a single half—colored tile in various orientations.
Separation and connection in all things
Truchet's approach was more topological than geometric, and the qualitative aspects of pattern take priority over the metric ones. His principles provide a kind of metaphor for the hierarchy of separation and connection in all things.
Corpuscles of nothing and atoms of something
The structure of matter devolved ultimately into the intimate coexistence of something like corpuscles of nothing and atoms of something, segregating through the accidents of history to yield regions differing in density intimately interwoven on different scales. The experience of the world as well as human perception and analysis of any part of it is a matter of the angular scale of resolution and of the time necessary for making comparison between the different parts.
Without such variations and without time to compare remembrances of them, nothing can be experiences.
The scale of resolution determines what is seen
The patterns of Truchet's tiles appear at first glance as variously shaped interlocked regions of black and white, the boundaries between the square tiles being submerged whenever the two regions flanking them have the same color, just as in a real floor the air or cement between the tile edges is not perceived—until one looks closely. The scale of resolution determines what is seen.
This is history
It is easy to see how rapidly diversity is developed by the aggregation of the simplest local choices of direction. This is history.