MachineMachine /stream - tagged with topology http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron text@machinemachine.net Think Globally http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/ The most familiar ideas of geometry were inspired by an ancient vision — a vision of the world as flat. From parallel lines that never meet, to the Pythagorean theorem discussed in last week’s column, these are eternal truths about an imaginary place, the two-dimensional landscape of plane geometry.

Conceived in India, China, Egypt and Babylonia more than 2,500 years ago, and codified and refined by Euclid and the Greeks, this flat-earth geometry is the main one (and often the only one) being taught in high schools today. But things have changed in the past few millennia.]]> Fri, 26 Mar 2010 05:54:00 -0700 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/think-globally/ Incredible Journeys http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/incredible_journeys/ Some animals can instinctively solve navigational problems that have baffled humans for centuries. Now, researchers are uncovering how. The nervous system of the desert ant Cataglyphis fortis, with around 100,000 neurons, is about 1 millionth the size of a human brain. Yet in the featureless deserts of Tunisia, this ant can venture over 100 meters from its nest to find food without becoming lost. Imagine randomly wandering 20 kilometers in the open desert, your tracks obliterated by the wind, then turning around and making a beeline to your starting point—and no GPS allowed! That’s the equivalent of what the desert… ]]> Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:17:00 -0700 http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/incredible_journeys/ Beyond the Topology of the Book http://machinemachine.net/text/featured/beyond-the-topology-of-the-book

…the human perceptive apparatus [has] a potential to break with action and self-organisation: to see as such, without that point of view being folded around my organizing striving centre. It is precisely the image of bounded life that Deleuze sees as the illusion that has dominated philosophy and that is overcome in the radical connections of art.

- Claire Colebrook, Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed

A desire lineBooks are passive, denying their rigid topologies only… ]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 09:01:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/featured/beyond-the-topology-of-the-book