The Sunya Machina - Part I

The concept Sunya (zero) is a tantric machine. It sits at the root of arithmetic, a number that denotes paradox itself. Zero is the signature and symbol of something that does not exist and yet it could have or would have. Having zero mangoes means having no mangoes at all. And yet, despite the lack of mangoes, you do have something – a signifier of your lack.

In this way zero splits the continous flux of kala (time) into two channels – that which is, and that which isn't. It has now become customary to denote 'that which is' with the number '1' and that which isn't with '0'. Therefore, zero is a seed (and generator) – it necessitates the birth of 1. However, wherever there is difference (is/isn't), there must be a repetition. One is zero as seen from a Universe with one less dimension.

As soon as '1' takes birth, it usurps the not-being of '0' as a kind of 'being somewhere else' (in some other Universe) and sees it's own holographic reflection/repetition, giving rise to a duality instead of a union – the number 2.

Two is to be understood therefore as '1 more of that which we called 1 before' or 'both is and isn't are now here'. Even then, these three concepts above cannot by themselves describe all of existence – the superset of which they are merely subsets. That Superset, the Totality of Existence would consist of the following entities (and in brackets we have the symbols associated with each concept):

Totality of Existence (Kala) = That which isn't (0) + That which is (1) + That which is and isn't both(2) + The remaining cosmos (3).

The number 3 therefore denotes the final doubt of the Descriptor, the sign that even though he may have attempted to describe in exact terms universal phenomenon, there is something that will always be out of his grasp, because the Descriptor is a mere subset of that which is being described. Not only does the Sunya Machine obviate the next 3 terms, it generates all the numbers till infinity without the help of symbols like 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. How does it do that?

The number line of integers from 0,1,2,3....and onwards to infinity is a kind of cellular automaton. Euclid proved long ago in the fundamental theorem of arithmetic that every natural number greater than 1 can be written as a unique product of prime numbers. The original section of the number line (0,1,2,3) is a conceptual machine that 'generates' the rest of the numbers as an output. Merely two unique symbols (0 and 1) are sufficient to represent all the numbers in binary, and number systems with a base greater than 2 are justified by their practical circumstance.

Abhijit Bhattacharjee's “polar place value number system” is a system based on his conjecture (the Bhattacharjee Conjecture) that any kind of number, even fractional number – can be expressed as additions or subtractions of powers of three. He has provided an algorithm in Pascal to calculate these factors for any given number. If proven rigorously by a mathematician who knows the jargon that is valid in academia, this finding could stand as a more profound observation than Euclid's fundamental theorem. Euclid showed that all numbers can be produced by prime numbers, but Bhattacharjee is trying to show that all numbers can be produced by the numbers upto 3. This is a significant reduction/compression in the algorithmic complexity of the number system. Marvin Minsky has written in an email to Abhijit that more mathematicians should take note of his work. Meagre doubts that one might have will be clarified only by a careful study of his Pascal algorithm.

How to Grow a Spaceship - Part II

[A previous article described an intended approach to 'grow spaceships' in a simulated set of artificial, monadological universes. Here, we continue that line of thought, although we should abandon using Processing as the coding platform for various reasons, and adopt something more powerful - like C.]

Suppose that your particular distribution of Linux was a planet like Earth, and it was crawling with little pieces of emergent code that wanted to escape the pull of its 'gravity'. In this case, 'gravity' would be the equivalent of the linguistic resistance the system posed as a whole for some random piece of code to make a TCP connection with another computer and replicate itself. Any piece of code that does succeed, could then be called a spaceship. By that definition, a spaceship is a |thought+entity| that escapes it's progenitor's desire to remain as a Unit, and by its very escape - converts that notion of Unity into a notion of Source. This is why a spaceship has been emblematic of progress in the second half of the twentieth century.

The remarkable thing about Thomas Kuhn's 1962 work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that it places the evolution of cosmic knowledge (a.k.a "the laws of physics") at the mercy of the same laws that govern the cosmos. This is fairly close to the intuitive notion of the anthropic principle in a sense. If the ideas above were to be framed in the form of a simple question, it would go like:

If the world is governed by the laws of physics, and the laws of physics to begin with, since that is the underlying foundation of all other scientific laws, then what governs the rate at which these laws (i.e, cosmic knowledge) will be revealed to us - the laws of physics themselves?

On the surface, this is a paradox - but it is not so. It places a greater question mark on the scientific method, which presents itself as a logical algorithm for the formulation of science, and an adequate, mechanical method of 'discovery'. On the contrary, the history of science is replete with accidents. Neither did the scientists choose the laws they were about to discover, nor did the laws have much cognition of the people they were going to pop in the heads of (did they?). Moreover, the ideas of invention, proof and discovery were so closely tied to linguistic heritage, that many ancient cultures' 'proofs' of what is considered modern knowledge may soon be considered acceptable.

The holographic principle is an aspect of modern thought that reflects these ancient beliefs. A crude explanation would be that: Let us say that the actual universe exists in a (N+1 ) dimensional dynamical form, but its image in N dimensions is a "surface" that contains all the information needed to describe the things going on in N+1. In terms of a black hole's entropy, a relation was established where the totality of entropy inside the black hole was proportional to the surface area of it's event horizon.

This relationship between surface and inside/outside is of fundamental importance to perhaps all the sciences, and the mother of all sciences - philosophy. For the surface is a distinction, and the act of marking the first distinction between an object and the world is an act of logik. It is logik that creates a cascade of distinctions, not distinctions that necessitate the need for logik.

And we return to the question posed in the beginning - what is the Shannon entropy of a linux box at any given point?

Graphite Music Sequencer

I'm an idi0t. Yes, it's tr00.

I was playing with a similar concept in early Jan 2008, but apparently Caleb Coppock already made this absofrikking beautiful graphite sequencer on which you can compose symphonies with just a paper and pencil:

Graphite conducts electricity. Two wires brush against the surface of a paper disk as it spins. The wires are connected to a simple electronic tone generator. When a line of graphite is drawn across the disk, connecting the two wires, a tone is heard. The quality of the line effects the sound. For example, if the line is thick, allowing more current to pass over it, a lower tone is heard.

I'd also like to point out that the actual gramophone circuitry and hardware is simply being used as a rotor here, it has no role in the processing or amplification of the audio.

Microsoft memorabilia (1977)

In the middle 1980s I joined an extra-curricular class to learn C, just down the street in Jaipur. Having come back to the city, I met up with my teacher Dr. P.D. Morarka again. He was happy with the success of Linux, and I found myself saying that, "Open systems survive, closed systems die. Linux is the future...".

Every time I make these sweeping prophecies, I often regret them very soon after. Given my recent experiences with Linux and the temporary solace offered by XP, I'd say this kid doesn't look that evil to me. I do think that Linux will be much better in two or three years than any OS ever made, but it might just get worse for now.

All that aside, this is the story of this fascinating video (from the man who shot it), aired when I was roughly an year old. I had no idea what countries were, let alone computers.


TV news report from KOB-TV in Spring, 1977. Includes maybe the first ever TV interview with Bill Gates.

When I was 22, I worked at a TV station in Albuquerque, processing news film and editing videotape. Occasionally, I'd do on-air stories. The first personal computer kit had been introduced by a local company, MITS, and Albuquerque was home to the first computer store. A small company called Micro-soft opened up shop to write software for these new machines, and I did a series of news stories about the news industry that began just up the street from me.

So, when I visited Micro-soft (it had a dash in the name at the time), I spoke to Bill Gates. We were both 22. His comments, and the other interviews, were prophetic about the future of software stores and illegal program copying at a time before most people even considered having a computer in their home.

Playing the Building - David Byrne

I think this is an improved setup of David Byrne's classic installation piece - Playing the Building. As it suggests, he uses some nifty engineering tricks to convert an entire building into a giant musical instrument, playable via a deceptively simple organ.

Devices are attached to the building structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices do not produce sound themselves, but they cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.

Chitra Bandham - geometric poems

Geekery and crystalpunkism had reached its first peak in the vedic age, with Sanskrit poetry. Tesselating, combinatorially gossamer, and mathematically dense syllabic verse is not uncommon in the poetry of that age. However, it takes a special kind of talent to work on verse that can be interpreted AS geometry - chitra bandham - or verse that follows a geometric pattern, for instance the figure of the Lotus flower।

Go, vedicrystalpunks!!!

The Book of Five Rings

This vedicrystalpunk (thanks, Paul) will soon begin learning Japanese from a native gentleman, and this post marks the realization that 1/f may be a Japanophile or otaku. Nintendo, you are to blame for injecting all this subliminal stuff into an innocent child's brain - but now the subject has discovered more sophisticated distractions, such as the Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, written circa 1645. Go ahead and read all the wonderful quotations extracted by the kind Wikipedian who wrote that detail, for example:

Timing is important in dancing and pipe or string music, for they are in rhythm only if timing is good. Timing and rhythm are also involved in the military arts, shooting bows and guns, and riding horses. In all skills and abilities there is timing.... There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this. In strategy there are various timing considerations. From the outset you must know the applicable timing and the inapplicable timing, and from among the large and small things and the fast and slow timings find the relevant timing, first seeing the distance timing and the background timing. This is the main thing in strategy. It is especially important to know the background timing, otherwise your strategy will become uncertain.

There is going to be a whole lot more Japan to come, I suspect.