Posted by Jerry on May 4th, 2004 — Posted in History, New media, Technology
The internet has come up with a range of standards in relation to information about information – meta data standards. The best known of these are the Dublin Core meta data standards But the issues that led to the Dublin core standards are not new. The Rosetta Stone (196 BC) – just 200 years after Plato, and during the Greek administration of Egypt revealed something really interesting – the existence of meta tags almost 2000 years before the Internet.
The two languages in three scripts on the stone revealed the difficulties of applying consistent language standards across an empire. Just as Web pages today specify a language an script to be aplied, so too, the Rosetta stone includes as part of the inscribed decree, the stipulation that it is to be set stone, in the three scripts: heiroglyphic, demotic and Greek.
What we have in fact is a meta data standard that specified the platform (a stel of hard stone), the language versions, the authority of the specification, (Ptolemy V), and its URL (each of the first,second and third rank temples). In web language these would look like this in the
part of the cartouche:
In other words about half of the dublin core meta data standards are incorporated into the Rosetta Stone. This must surely provide us with an insight into something fundamental about the nature of information, and the nature of official discourse. What is needed to establish the intelligibility and authoritativeness of a piece of text when it is removed from the body (speech) and placed into a third-party medium? This is not a new question – and it is the main subject of my next book …
The Rosetta Stone (in the British Museum, London)
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on May 1st, 2004 — Posted in Journal, Technology, Woodwork
One of the things about renaissance technology is that it works – and works well. And what better way to prove it than by using the technology for something useful today! My partner, Sharon has been dyeing threads for some years, but there was always the problem of how to skein the threads off and how to wind them back into skeins when they had been dyed.
The only technology I had seen was at the Canberra School of Art in the Textiles Department – a wonderful German skein winder that ran on smooth bearings – great if you have precision technology for building such things. But there was no way I had that kind of precision in my home workshop so I cast around for a technology from a time when perhaps tolerances were a bit wider than a few tenths of a millimetre.
And among the devices of Leonardo (who designed thread winders and looms) and Taccolla (from whom I picked up the spur and cage gear train) I found the solution! And here it is: My version of a Renaissance skein winder.
And just to prove it works:
Jerry’s skein winder in action
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on April 30th, 2004 — Posted in History, Technology
Now here is a seriously good site – it’s a pity the slide shows are all in Italian – perhaps I could learn it during the downloads (Italian servers seem very slow) but it’s well worth the wait!
This site is an online museum display of renaissance engineers’ work housed at the Museum of the History of Science (Instituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza) and the site is divided into three main entry points: Filipo Brunelleschi; The Sienese Engineers and Leonardo da Vinci. The 3D modelling is good and there are excellent descriptions of Leonardo’s flying machines (as well as his robots, crossbows, machine elements, etc etc). There are again hints that towards the end of his life, Leonardo focussed on fixed wing gliders and hints that a student of his may have actually flown (and crashed, breaking his leg). As for Leonardo’s helicopter, while there are the usual gripes about the inadequacy of human power, it clearly points to the helicopter being derived from a well known flying toy that appears to have been around for about 100 years before Leonardo’s time. So the principle must have been okay, just a poor power-to-weight ratio.
Also, having designed a steam cannon, and several pumps – it’s a wonder that he didn’t come up with a viable steam engine as a motive power. It seems to be a case of all the elements but lacking the one concept to link them together. Other forms of power were seriously considered, such as clockwork and water power – but it seems that was one that got away lest the industrial revolution happen 250 years earlier than it did!
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on April 23rd, 2004 — Posted in History, Technology
Leonardo was certainly one of the greatest engineers of his time, but he was one of quite a number from whom he clearly learnt a lot. What he did accomplish was a good record of the engineering achievements, both his own and those of fellow engineers of the period – remember copyrights and patents weren’t as stringently enforced in those days – so, for example it seems clear that Leonardo borrowed fairly heavily from his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, such as Brunelleschi. And a wonderful exhibition of his work and that of his near contemporaries has been put together over several years showing a good cross-section of the achievements of the time in mechanical engineering, fluid dynamics and a whole host of conceptual groundwork for the achievements of our own time.
Brunelleschi was famous as the young engineer who solved the problem of how to build a big cathedral dome without central scaffolding (the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore – Florence cathedral). Along the way he devised cranes, very similar to today’s tower cranes, for shifting the stone blocks into position with considerable precision. Some excellent sketches survive of Brunelleschi’s cranes – detailed enough for working models to be built.
Brunelleschi’s crane
But possibly Brunelleschi’s greatest achievement was in the organisation of the logistics flow and workforce organisation that enabled construction to take place within a relatively narrow physical urban area and to enable construction to meet scheduled deadlines – on time and on budget – unlike so many renaissance cathedral projects! Check out the exhibition site – it’s well worth a visit
Cheers
Jerry
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Posted by Jerry on April 21st, 2004 — Posted in New media, Technology
A big THANK YOU to The Barrow in The Australian IT for setting the record straight on a supposed Trojan horse virus that allegedly masquerades as an mp3 music file and targets macintosh computers running operating system 10 (OS-X).
Phew – us mac users can play mp3s again safely! Last week the press was full – and I mean full of commentary as they talked about the dangers of a virus that attacks mac OSX operating systems – now these machines have been blissfully free of virus threats for about three years now – good old robust unix-based system! So it was with some trepidation that I began to read of a trojan horse supposedly uncovered by an anti-virus company (hmmm now THAT should have been a warning in itself – like in whose interests is it to advertise a new virus if not an anti-virus company?). Anyhow it all turned out to be much ado about not very much 🙂
It seems there was a piece of software that ran as an application but looked like an MP3 music file was actually completely harmless. Apparently the software involved was real – a proof-of concept showing that it was possible to create an application that was both an application and a legitimate music file – all in one. The problem was that he named the application virus.mp3 – and that’s when the fun started. After mentioning the software on a bulletin board, it seems some enterprising anti-virus company did a bit of ‘sexing-up’ of the information and promptly cried wolf – without the software ever leaving the lab in which it was created! So it hasn’t spread, it is not in the public arena and it is incapable of malicious activity. In short – IT IS NOT A VIRUS DUDE! And this is further confirmed in Mac News Network
cheers
Jerry (Canberra, Australia)
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