Notes From Breakfast 2008-04-06
Every Sunday morning, give or take a few, for the past couple of years, I have breakfast with my good friend Aaron (who I met 20 years ago in junior high). It's always an interesting conversation that covers lots of topics.
This morning, I came away with more notes than average, so I thought I'd share some of the stuff we talked about.
A lot of the conversation revolved around Aaron's master's thesis/project: Complexity Machine 1. He's doing some really interesting stuff that deals with the intersection of emergent behavior, simulated flocking behavior, generative architecture and computer science. Complexity Machine 1 is the software that's the result of his research, where he's asking:
My question to those of you who are willing to explore is: how can you imagine this software could be used to create architecture? Consider it a kind of speculative Rorschach test. Perhaps you don't consider it useful at all, or feel it needs some some vital piece of functionality before it's useful.
Along the way, Aaron mentioned that he'd picked up a copy of Seed Magazine (due to an article related to his research) and found it to be a really decent magazine. When I got home, I hit the website and think I might subscribe.
At one point, the conversation turned to non-textbook books that help in the understanding of how computers work. I mentioned that I think that anyone with an interest in the workings of computers should read the novel: The Diamond Age.
He seconded that recommendation and also through out The Advent of the Algorithm from David Berlinski as worth reading along with Berlinski's A Tour of the Calculus. Both were critical to his actual "getting" the topics.
I mentioned that I had a copy of The Turing Omnibus sitting on my shelf that I've been wanting to get a chance to dig into.
On my way to drop him off back at home, the topic of my quest to find a better way to create presentations that are destined for online distribution rather than live presentation.
Powerpoint, Keynote, S5 and others all frustrate me in some way and what I really want is something that makes it much easier to focus on the content of the presentation and still generate something that fits with the aesthetic that Presentation Zen is pointing toward.
Aaron mentioned that he'd messed with Quartz Composer, Soundslides and Quicktime for what I described. And, of course, with most of his thesis research being done in Processing, he sees some serious promise for a nice presentation system.
