Aneesh Sathe

Tag: writing

  • A Good Dictionary

    Yesterday I wrote about good documentation opening doors to options you didn’t realize you had. In the book On Writing Well Zinsser mentions how one of his key tools is the dictionary. That got me curious about the limitations about the dictionaries available to us. This is not just about the dictionary on the bookshelf but the ones that we have in-context access to. The ones on our computer and phones. 

    In my searches I came across this post by James Somers who references another great writer John McPhee and his article Draft No. 4. McPhee shows us how the dictionary is to be used. The crux is that modern dictionaries have taken all the fun out and left all the crud in. The old way is the proper way to play with words. 

    J.S ends with instructions on how to install the (apparently perfect) 1913 version of Webster’s dictionary. Unfortunately, his instructions are a little out of date. Which is to be accepted since he’s talking to people 10 years in his future. Luckily for us Corey Ward from speaking to use from just 5 years ago had updated instructions for MacOS that mostly still work.

    I’m updating Corey’s instructions below:

    1. Get the latest release for Webster’s 1913 from the Github Releases page for WebsterParser. Download the file: websters-1913.dictionary.zip and unzip it. You will see a folder like file with the extension .dictionary.
    2. Open the Dictionary app on your computer, and select File > Open Dictionaries Folder from the menu, or navigate manually to ~/Library/Dictionaries.
    3. Unzip the file, and move the resulting websters-1913.dictionary file into the dictionaries folder that you opened.
    4. Restart the Dictionary app if it is open (important), then open Dictionary>Settings (⌘,). At the bottom of the list of dictionaries you should see Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913) in the list. Check the box, and optionally drag it up in the list to the order you’d like.

    The dictionary is also available online if you don’t want to install.

    The best option is probably the OED . It’s expensive, but you may get access through your library. 

    Wordnik also cool. 

    Through J.S. I also discovered this interesting site: Language Log. They get really deep into language. I mean how much can you write about Spinach, apparently a lot. 

    I’d love to get back to a world where the internet was used in its raw form. If you are reading my posts, please do comment, share your site/blog and your posts. Social media is also good. More from Somers.

  • Nothing Ventured

    The wave towered over me. Then the sound filled my ears. Not the calm breath of the waves;  but it was surf music. I was maybe 3. Song names and artist names were beyond me. There was only the blue-green wave and the twang of the guitar. 

    The Very Best of the Ventures Album

    I have chased music all my life. Just had to figure out the tools. The record player and the giant speakers taught my first lesson: pressing buttons was joy.  In my pursuit I learned in about records, tapes, CDs, mp3, flac, streaming, Napster, torrents, Winamp, VLC, blanks, CD-R/RWs, compression, bit rates, conversion, transfer, backups, VPN, networking, impedance matching, DACs, amplifiers, calibration, ARC, fibre, buying, licensing, and streaming in approximate order. 

    I discovered that they were called The Ventures by accident. Late in the college years I watched Pulp Fiction and wanted all the music. This one wasn’t quite home but it was the right street. It was surf music.

    The hunt was on. Only a notion of the song and the confidence that I would know it when I heard it. I didn’t know the name of the album only that it had a big wave on the cover. It took me the better part of 6 months, on slow DSL, trawling all the sources I knew. Listening for that drum fade-in. Then one day I found it. 

    It’s been decades since the record player stopped spinning. I’ve moved a dozen times, the records were lost. I am the default A/V guy and love the role. Now I live in one of the surfiest places on the planet, the current still pulls but I walk, don’t run. 

  • The Arrival of Composable Knowledge

    Traversing through human history, even in the last two decades, we see a rapid increase in the accessibility of knowledge. The purpose of language, and of course all communication is to transfer a concept from one system to another. For humans this ability to transfer concepts has been driven by advancements in technology, communication, and social structures and norms.

    This evolution has made knowledge increasingly composable, where individual pieces of information can be combined and recombined to create new understanding and innovation. Ten years ago I would have said being able to read a research paper and having the knowledge to repeat that experiment in my lab was strong evidence of this composability (reproducibility issues not withstanding).

    Now, composability itself is getting an upgrade.

    In the next essay I’ll be exploring the implications of the arrival of composable knowledge. This post is a light stroll to remind ourselves of how we got here.

    Infinite knowledge, finite time, inspired by Hakenes & Irmen, 2005, pdf

    Songs, Stories, and Scrolls

    In ancient times, knowledge was primarily transmitted orally. Stories, traditions, and teachings were passed down through generations by word of mouth. This method, while rich in cultural context, was limited in scope and permanence. The invention of writing systems around 3400 BCE in Mesopotamia marked a significant leap. Written records allowed for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge across time and space, enabling more complex compositions of ideas (Renn, 2018).

    Shelves, Sheaves, and Smart Friends

    The establishment of libraries, such as the Library of Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE, and scholarly communities in ancient Greece and Rome, further advanced the composability of knowledge. These institutions gathered diverse texts and fostered intellectual exchanges, allowing scholars to build upon existing works and integrate multiple sources of information into cohesive theories and philosophies (Elliott & Jacobson, 2002).

    Scribes, Senpai, and Scholarship

    During the Middle Ages, knowledge preservation and composition were largely the domain of monastic scribes who meticulously copied and studied manuscripts. The development of universities in the 12th century, such as those in Bologna and Paris, created centers for higher learning where scholars could debate and synthesize knowledge from various disciplines. This was probably when humans shifted perspective and started to view themselves as apart from nature  (Grumbach & van der Leeuw, 2021).

    Systems, Scripts and the Scientific Method

    The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century revolutionized knowledge dissemination. Printed books became widely available, drastically reducing the cost and time required to share information. This democratization of knowledge fueled the Renaissance, a period marked by the synthesis of classical and contemporary ideas, and the Enlightenment, which emphasized empirical research and the scientific method as means to build, refine, share knowledge systematically (Ganguly, 2013).

    Silicon, Servers, and Sharing

    The 20th and 21st centuries have seen an exponential increase in the composability of knowledge due to digital technologies. The internet, open access journals, and digital libraries have made vast amounts of information accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Tools like online databases, search engines, and collaborative platforms enable individuals and organizations to gather, analyze, and integrate knowledge from a multitude of sources rapidly and efficiently. There have even been studies which allow, weirdly, future knowledge prediction (Liu et al., 2019).

    Conclusion

    From oral traditions to digital repositories, the composability of knowledge has continually evolved, breaking down barriers to information and enabling more sophisticated and collaborative forms of understanding. Today, the ease with which we can access, combine, and build upon knowledge drives innovation and fosters a more informed and connected global society.