The Factory of Thinking

“Yet another one who, instead of working, wastes his time playing with LaTeX”.

I myself, Porphyry of Tyre, was one of Plotinus’ very closest friends, and it was to me he entrusted the task of revising his writings. Such revision was necessary: Plotinus could not bear to go back on his work even for one re-reading; and indeed the condition of his sight would scarcely allow it: his handwriting was slovenly; he misjoined his words; he cared nothing about spelling; his one concern was for the idea: in these habits, to our general surprise, he remained unchanged to the very end. He used to work out his design mentally from first to last: when he came to set down his ideas, he wrote out at one jet all he had stored in mind as though he were copying from a book. Interrupted, perhaps, by someone entering on business, he never lost hold of his plan; he was able to meet all the demands of the conversation and still keep his own train of thought clearly before him; when he was fee again, he never looked over what he had previously written–his sight, it has been mentioned, did not allow of such re-reading–but he linked on what was to follow as if no distraction had occurred.

• Melissa Terras, For Ada Lovelace Day – Father Busa’s Female Punch Card Operatives, 2013, online
• Isabelle Collet, « La disparition des filles dans les études d’informatique : les conséquences d’un changement de représentation », Carrefours de l’education n° 17, nᵒ 1 (2004): 42‑56.

• Jacques Derrida, « La pharmacie de Platon », Tel Quel, nᵒ 32,33 (1968).

• Christopher N. Gamble, Joshua S. Hanan, et Thomas Nail, « What Is New Materialism? », Angelaki 24, nᵒ 6 (2 novembre 2019): 111‑34
• Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2007).

Thomas Young, 1801: is the light a wave or a set of particles?

Bohr argued that if we were to perform a two-slit experiment with a which-path device (which can be used to determine which slit each electron goes through on its way to the detecting screen), we would find that the interference pattern is destroyed. That is, if a measurement is made that identifies the electron as a particle, as is the case when we use a which-path detector, then the result will be a particle pattern, not the wave pattern that results when the original unmodified two-slit apparatus is used. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe halfway, p. 103

Bohr’s argument for the indeterminable nature of measurement interactions is based on his insight that concepts are defined by the circumstances required for their measurement. That is, theoretical concepts are not ideational in character; they are specific physical arrangements. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe halfway, p. 109

• Dehut, J. (2018). « En finir avec Word ! Pour une analyse des enjeux relatifs aux traitements de texte et à leur utilisation ». Carnet de recherche.

• Kirschenbaum, M. G. (2016). Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing. Cambridge, États-Unis d’Amérique: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

• WYSIWYG and “disintermediation”
  • loss of skills
• loss of control
• poor information
• loss of utility (using a computer as a typewriter)
• sustainability issues
• a formatted way of thinking