Edited by Clive Hilton, Sunday, 13 Mar 2011, 23:02
One of the activities we did at yesterday's day school was a visual version of Chinese whispers (which we also did last year). I made the point that no man-made mechanism for copying any object had yet been devised that could reproduce something without introducing change - even if only at the tiniest level. Eventually, I argued, though individual iterations of change would be insignificant, the accumulated change would lead eventually lead to versions that are radically different from their origins.
In a stroke of serendipity, I came across this fascinating example today:
The original key, (at right) was copied and then copies were made of subsequent copies. Eventually, this led to the disappearence of the original profile in the key at far left. Full article here:
Copying changes things
One of the activities we did at yesterday's day school was a visual version of Chinese whispers (which we also did last year). I made the point that no man-made mechanism for copying any object had yet been devised that could reproduce something without introducing change - even if only at the tiniest level. Eventually, I argued, though individual iterations of change would be insignificant, the accumulated change would lead eventually lead to versions that are radically different from their origins.
In a stroke of serendipity, I came across this fascinating example today:
The original key, (at right) was copied and then copies were made of subsequent copies. Eventually, this led to the disappearence of the original profile in the key at far left. Full article here:
http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/