Word: fractals
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...take exception to the offhand comment that by 2001 everyone will be using computers with Windows 2001 and that the only holdouts will be "aging potheads still designing really cool fractal algorithms" on Macintosh computers. Even in jest, comments like this distort reality. Macs are not relevant only to impractical deadbeats. Most of us know that if you want an elegant computer that is easy to set up, operate and maintain, you buy a Mac. Otherwise you get a PC. ALAN THOMPSON San Mateo, Calif...
...indispensable info appliance, and if Microsoft manages to merge the software that takes us there into Windows, the results will be dramatic. Suppose that, say, five years from now 98% of the world's computers run Windows 2001 (the only holdouts being aging potheads still designing really cool fractal algorithms on Macs). And suppose Gates, hoping to become the world's leading media titan, stops letting entertainment that Microsoft doesn't control be accessed by Windows machines...
...headset and standing on a milk crate, how to manipulate a large, 3-chip Sony studio camera. In the computer-graphics room, instructor Deena Segot will be critiquing an advanced camper's animation created in Macromedia Director. Later the same day, Segot will have beginner students draw butterflies in Fractal Design Painter. Like butterflies, children need freedom. So each day, campers can socialize outdoors until it's time to go home...
...other end of the spectrum, some segments of the show are intentionally laden with metaphorical meaning. The fractal segment, in which these exotic patterns become visible on a screen as the Blue Men spread shaving cream with trowels, is significant to Blue Man cosmology. According to Stanton, the unpredictability of fractals, their structure which is both methodical and chaotic, reflects the randomness of modern life and proves that "We [mankind] are not that crazy after all." Goldman is intrigued that "patterns do a thing which nobody expected them to do, which is look more similar the more complicated they become...
...applied to Crichton. "I think of Michael as the high priest of high concept," says Spielberg. All right, concept: Island. Theme park. Dinosaurs. Adults swallowed whole. Kids in peril. Easy. But who said the author had to give us the history of computers along with it? And chaos theory? Fractal vs. Euclidean geometry? And the workings of a Stegosaurus gizzard? And dna? So much dna it's a wonder Crichton hasn't been called as an expert witness in the O.J. trial...