Author: Sean Carney
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Norbert Wiener on Using Statistics to Emulate Language
One may get a remarkable semblance of a language like English by taking a sequence of words, or pairs of words, or triads of words, according to the statistical frequency with which they occur in the language, and the gibberish thus obtained will have a remarkably persuasive similarity to good English. This meaningless simulacrum of…
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Norbert Wiener on Feedback vs Learning
Feedback is a method of controlling a system by reinserting into it the results of its past performance. If these results are merely used as numerical data for the criticism of the system and its regulation, we have the simple feedback of control engineers. If, however, the information which proceeds backward from the performance is…
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Norbert Wiener on Structure and Performance
Cybernetics takes the view that the structure of the machine or organism is an index of the performance that may be expected from it. Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, Cybernetics and Society
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Recapturing the Magic of the Early Blogging Days
Chuck Grimmett’s post on recapturing the magic of the early blogging days describes a lot of my intentions with the latest changes to my website. The one thing I would add from my philosophy is: ‘spend less time building, more time using and maintaining’
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Norbert Wiener on the Environment, Progress
What many of us fail to realize is that the last four hundred years are a highly special period in the history of the world. The pace at which changes during these years have taken place is unexampled in earlier history, as is the very nature of these changes. This is partly the result of…
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December 2024
This website After reading a number of thought provoking articles on sharing work and connecting with people, I’ve decided to become more intentional with this website and share more of what I’m doing, what I’m reading, and what I’m thinking about. This necessitates a bit of a redesign of the website so apologies in advance,…
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Fire Insurance Maps of Calgary
Back in the early days of fire insurance, when you wanted to insure a building, the insurance company would send a underwriter to view the building and gain a first hand appreciation of the risk. As cities began to expand at the turn of the century, this became less practical and a new solution came…
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Speaker Grills of the World
Speaker Grills of the World is a single topic website, which is exactly what it sounds like, a collection of different speaker grill designs. A great source for examples and inspiration when designing patterns of holes in things.