the 1999
http://www.alansondheim.org/bctrip0149.jpg
http://www.alansondheim.org/machinelife.mp3 (shakuhachi)
the edited chown 11/19/1999 11:59:59
my own, this is mine, this is really mine, this isn't yours, i
invented it, it's mine to do what i want with 8 chown 745 own 9
man chown 10 h 11 help own 12 h 13 who own 14 whence -v own,
lovely my own my chown, help own, help own me, my "very own
place", 15 you are "my very own" 16 i "own the alphabet" 17 this
is my style why do you use it, why don't you ever comment on it,
why don't you talk to me, why do you leave me hanging like a
dead man in a gully, why do you leave me tethered like a
beautiful russian ballet dancer pirouetting, why do you leave me
lusting like an energized daishin, not found 18 why don't you
read my language, why can't you see my language, why do
my bones show 19 why i invent language from the ground up, from
scratch, from primordial bits and bytes, from the chown chown
russian daishin Nov EST parenthetical, from tablature 20 Nov 19
11:59:59 EST 1999 20a perfect resonance of odd numbers 20b you
never talk about my work 20c you don't even read what i own 20d
you don't let it affect you in any way 20e you stuff my words
down my throat 20f you don't know how to read 21 from you to me
22 "my own take on things, then i'll get back to you" 23 do you
own me? 24 diacritical membrane spread across the entities of
the world: ownership 25 foreclosure across the skin-tableaus of
the body, circumscriptions 27 your name inscribed on me, "the
tip of the knife draws very little blood" 28 exchange of names
29 proper names 30 they're mine to do what i want with 31 is
that a thing? 32 @create $thing called touch 33 "from the ground
up, mine" 34 chown, change file owner and group 35
group 35, i own group 35
The Edited Number-Systems
"And reading Knuth on number-base systems which include, for
example a ternary system with +1, -1, and 0 as the symbols. Such
systems can absorb the positive and negative numbers; there are
others, such as ones based on 2i, that can absorb the complex
number system as well (i.e. a single num- ber of the form ax^n +
bx^(n-1) ... +dx^1 +e). This is an amazing economy of means. The
book is my favorite in the Knuth programming series - the volume
on Seminumerical Algorithms - since it goes into the construct
of arithmetic processes and algorithms we all take for granted.
In my own work, I've always been fascinated by the possibility
of base-1 and base- infinity systems; in the former, of course,
addition becomes concatena- tion, and in the latter, the
addition of any two unique symbols results in a third, i.e. J +
K = L. There's an easy translation from the decimal sys- tem;
say 25 * 26 = 650 - one would just look up within the infinite
multi- plication table, [25] and [26] and see [650] where the
[x] represents the unique symbol. One goes from algorithms to
infinite memorization or look- up. The phenomenology of this is
really interesting, I think. For multip- lication with base-1,
one returns again to concatenation, for example * 111 = 111
111 111 111 which is the same as 4 * 3 = 12. There's nothing to
learn in terms of memorization or lookup tables here; there's
nothing to look up or memorize. Think of this as an infinite
abacus of sticks placed in a single row; one moves from
base-infinity with its pure economy of place and infinite
symbols, to base-one with its pure economy of symbol and
infinite place. This material is fascinating; it says something
about the stability of the world itself, the Aristotelian logic
at the heart of the almost-disconnected plateau of the
life-world. I wrote years ago ex- tensively on such
phenomenologies; it's great to see the structures them- selves
in Knuth." To place sticks in the row, letters in a row, one
counts (literally) on the stability of place and demarcation -
_these_ sticks are counted - _those_ remain unaccounted-for and
uncounted. The sticks need not be in a row; there's no need for
geometry, positioning, since what one is concerned with is the
pure quantity of sticks, not a positional relationship.
Interestingly, positionality also disappears with base-infinity,
since every operation and quantity involves only _one_ pos-
ition. In The Matrix, there is considerable discussion about
"who is the One" - in base-one, everyone is, and in
base-infinity, whatever is _there_ is the one.
What is going on here? On one hand, with base-one, there is the
fact and phenomenology of _substance_ and the quantifiability
and stability of the world; on the other, with base-infinity,
there is the problematic of the proper name in the Kripkean
sense of rigid designator. In the former, names shift towards
processes; in the latter, processes harden as names.
One might also consider issues of perception: exactly what
constitutes a stick or a symbol? Could, for example, two trees
represent 2541 and 1734, a third representing 2541^1734
base-infinity? Is all of nature, in fact, the mathematics
