Comments on: On computers

By: On perversion « The Tar Pit

On perversion « The Tar Pit — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:33:56 +0000

[...] Computing: a perversion of symbols (numbers in particular) and mechanism (arithmetic in particular). [...]

By: A list of scattered definitions « The Tar Pit

A list of scattered definitions « The Tar Pit — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 20:43:06 +0000

[...] speaking, in computing a virtual machine is a software implementation of some particular language/Turing automaton1. In [...]

By: A new system for musical notation? « The Tar Pit

A new system for musical notation? « The Tar Pit — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 23:18:35 +0000

[...] to come -- is without doubt the synthesizer. In a certain sense, synths are very similar to computing machines: in the ideal, they are able to generate arbitrary information given arbitrary inputs, but the [...]

By: WarGames « The Tar Pit

WarGames « The Tar Pit — Thu, 22 Sep 2022 18:05:16 +0000

[...] Except... that's what they eventually did, didn't they? Mechanism by now seems to have become entirely embedded in the sheer force of history itself, regardless of how much it destroys, regardless of how much it [...]

By: On wills, won'ts and lack thereof « The Tar Pit

On wills, won'ts and lack thereof « The Tar Pit — Wed, 25 May 2022 21:37:25 +0000

[...] order. Anyways, the art of speaking was somewhat of a big deal in the twentieth century, and then computers came along and... well, everyone got distracted, so to speak. Democracy works great whenever you [...]

By: The Profiling Machine « The Tar Pit

The Profiling Machine « The Tar Pit — Sun, 15 May 2022 10:24:03 +0000

[...] disparate objects that interact, and thus they are fundamentally emergent objects. For example, a computer, in the von Neumann sense, is a distributed system emerging from processing units, memory, [...]

By: On technology « The Tar Pit

On technology « The Tar Pit — Sat, 02 Oct 2021 19:07:46 +0000

[...] daily basis exploring the innards of computing systems -- and all the related technologies, since "computation", however prevalent in nature, makes no sense outside of a consistent context. However, I have [...]

By: On the tangled ball of music that is rock « The Tar Pit

On the tangled ball of music that is rock « The Tar Pit — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 12:22:46 +0000

[...] them, among these maybe there's to be found a new energy, the seeds of new life -- and not just Pink Beetles in a Purple Zeppelin, as Arjen correctly intuits, but the seeds of actual meaning. It will be difficult for rock, as I [...]

By: Re: Ivanovna et al., 2020 (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58906) « The Tar Pit

Re: Ivanovna et al., 2020 (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58906) « The Tar Pit — Mon, 04 Jan 2021 14:38:27 +0000

[...] relation between the human brain and computers reflects upon that between humans themselves and the darned machines. We reason here that computers are machines, but the human individual is not rational. In his [...]

By: The cost of packaging « The Tar Pit

The cost of packaging « The Tar Pit — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:55:17 +0000

[...] in large quantities after a recipe defined with surgical precision, thanks to The All-Encompassing Automation. This inevitably forces those who sell said shit to spend resources into creating the illusion of [...]