Gleick

Cryptography is fascinating I haven’t ever really thought about it much but after reading about I understand it a little more. Codes are I think one of the wonders of our language. Its crazy the things you can do with numbers and letters. Its odd to think that a code can be generated from the language and if that code is understood can be used for so many things.

Margaret Mead said some interesting things. I want to focus on Meads thoughts about the meaning in a message, like anger, needs to be considered when sending and/or receiving a message. Meads thoughts are one that in my eyes just got fixed, because of the things we can do now with icons and codes for computers to read we have just recently solve that problem. Just to give an example if I sent an email to a friend and I said yo where you at? He doesn’t know if I’m mad angry sad or happy and just wanting to know where he is. Now we have these little faces that make the emotion that we are feeling on the screen. Its mostly used in text messaging but it has definitely solved the emotion thoughts that Mead had.

Norbert Wiener had a viewpoint that I feel is valid for today. He worried about understanding mental disorders; about mechanical prostheses; and about the social dislocations that might follow the rise of smart machinery. Like today if a person doesn’t have his/her cell phone or laptop they cant function. We have become so dependent on our machinery that we don’t even realize it because its handy. I wonder what would happen if the cell phones networks shut down for the day. Chapter 9 also discusses order I think that Gleick did a good job showing the linkage between math, engineering, physics, psychology, and communication.