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In response, I think I agree(-ish) with BOTH the post and the comment ( Posted by Charles Frith on January 22nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm ) about halfway down the responses to it. …
So, in a kinda binary “healing†moment/deal where I get to fuse/take the best of both of the options (ie. I am cheating)…..
It seems that in order to get things done ,
its really difficult NOT to use the dual/oppositional pairing of “thing†and “not the thing†–
It is a quick way to look at something,
a way to simplify it down to one dimension defined by the extremes of a nominal black and white.
It means we can make a judgement and congratulate ourselves on making one.
Could we do that whilst accepting its (probably) quite messy and multidimensional complexity,
let alone our own as decision makers?
When you are wanting to reach many people with your message,
its seems that this binary approach is so deeply embedded in our way of looking at “things†that it would be impossible NOT to use it.
Its something that we all do in general (am I good, am I bad, am I happy, am I sad etc..)
It might be a common denominator, a bad habit,
or the only way we can actually act rather than be paralysed by too much “dataâ€.
But day and night, love and hate, truth and lies, good and evil, sorrow and joy, success and failure, life and death -
All these thing are real –
yet, do they stand in opposition or do they flow in and out of each other a bit more than we can see at any one given moment?
In computer terms binary is the way all data is resolved to points which have a value of 1 or 0 – of existence or non-existence.
This may be a form of “reality†but it only makes “sense†to us when we zoom out a bit and can see the patterns that these on/off markers represent.
Everything may be constructed from binary states,
but they come to life when you see that the dots represent a dna chain,
or a set of people moving through a crowded street,
or a word,
or the number of births in Venezuela since 1850,
or the pixel colour values in a video clip. etc..
Their reality is unquestionable but their meaning (on/off | 1/0 ) is not as important as where they are, how they are arranged , and how they change.
The question is, can you say something powerful (and powerfully!) without employing binary?
And can you do it in say, 30 seconds?
Maybe there’s a clue here in the jigsaw pieces of the ones and zeroes.
E good story leaves room for imagination to fill in most of it.
Binary on a human level leaves us seeing only part of the picture,
a part decided for us by the questions where the two available options were defined.
But maybe that’s all we can handle.
If we want to do stuff that is.
Jez,
This is a really interesting, thoughtful response.
I wish you would send it to my blog so all the people who saw that post can read this as well.
It’s certainly provocative, and anything that gets us off auto pilot is always good.
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January 22nd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Great Dave !
In response, I think I agree(-ish) with BOTH the post and the comment ( Posted by Charles Frith on January 22nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm ) about halfway down the responses to it. …
So, in a kinda binary “healing†moment/deal where I get to fuse/take the best of both of the options (ie. I am cheating)…..
It seems that in order to get things done ,
its really difficult NOT to use the dual/oppositional pairing of “thing†and “not the thing†–
It is a quick way to look at something,
a way to simplify it down to one dimension defined by the extremes of a nominal black and white.
It means we can make a judgement and congratulate ourselves on making one.
Could we do that whilst accepting its (probably) quite messy and multidimensional complexity,
let alone our own as decision makers?
When you are wanting to reach many people with your message,
its seems that this binary approach is so deeply embedded in our way of looking at “things†that it would be impossible NOT to use it.
Its something that we all do in general (am I good, am I bad, am I happy, am I sad etc..)
It might be a common denominator, a bad habit,
or the only way we can actually act rather than be paralysed by too much “dataâ€.
But day and night, love and hate, truth and lies, good and evil, sorrow and joy, success and failure, life and death -
All these thing are real –
yet, do they stand in opposition or do they flow in and out of each other a bit more than we can see at any one given moment?
In computer terms binary is the way all data is resolved to points which have a value of 1 or 0 – of existence or non-existence.
This may be a form of “reality†but it only makes “sense†to us when we zoom out a bit and can see the patterns that these on/off markers represent.
Everything may be constructed from binary states,
but they come to life when you see that the dots represent a dna chain,
or a set of people moving through a crowded street,
or a word,
or the number of births in Venezuela since 1850,
or the pixel colour values in a video clip. etc..
Their reality is unquestionable but their meaning (on/off | 1/0 ) is not as important as where they are, how they are arranged , and how they change.
The question is, can you say something powerful (and powerfully!) without employing binary?
And can you do it in say, 30 seconds?
Maybe there’s a clue here in the jigsaw pieces of the ones and zeroes.
E good story leaves room for imagination to fill in most of it.
Binary on a human level leaves us seeing only part of the picture,
a part decided for us by the questions where the two available options were defined.
But maybe that’s all we can handle.
If we want to do stuff that is.
j.
January 30th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Jez,
This is a really interesting, thoughtful response.
I wish you would send it to my blog so all the people who saw that post can read this as well.
It’s certainly provocative, and anything that gets us off auto pilot is always good.
May 23rd, 2010 at 5:39 pm
Pointers on what to do with the recovery of the financial sector?