Underlying the brain’s ability to learn reading lies its protean capacity to make new connections among structures and circuits originally devoted to other more basic brain processes that have enjoyed a longer existence in human evolution, such as vision and spoken language. We now know that groups of neurons create new connections and pathways among themselves every time we acquire a new skill. Computer scientists use the term “open architecture” to describe a system that is versatile enough to change – or rearrange – to accommodate the varying demands on it. Within the constraints of our genetic legacy, our brain presents a beautiful example of open architecture. Thanks to this design, we come into the world programmed with the capacity to change what is given to us by nature, so that we can go beyond it. We are, it would seem from the start, genetically poised for breakthroughs.

Thus the reading brain is part of highly successful two-way dynamics. Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed, both physiologically and intellectually. For example, at the neuronal level, a person who learns to read in Chinese uses a very particular set of neuronal connections that differ in significant ways from the pathways used in reading English. When Chinese readers first try to read in English, their brains attempt to use Chinese-based neuronal pathways. The act of learning to read Chinese characters has literally shaped the Chinese reading brain. Similarly, much of how we think and what we think about is based on insights and associations generated from what we read. As the author Joseph Epstein put it, “A biography of any literary person ought to deal at length with what he read and when, for in some sense, we are what we read.”

These two dimensions of the reading brain’s development and evolution – the personal – intellectual and the biological – are rarely described together, but there are critical and wonderful lessons to be discovered in doing just that.

So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn’t published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you.

In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop pass the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.

With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).

All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.

You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.

You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book, and it isn’t only a book you are taking with you but its novelty as well, which could also be merely that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dust jacked begins to yellow, until a veil of smog settles on the top edge, until the binding becomes dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of libraries.

No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which , having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue it, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You never can tell. Let’s see how it begins.

Perhaps you started leafing through the book already in the shop. Or were you unable to, because it was wrapped in its cocoon of cellophane? Now you are on the bus, standing in the crowd, hanging from a strap by your arm, and you begin undoing the package with your free hand, making movements something like a monkey, a monkey who wants to peel a banana and at the same time cling to the bough. Watch out, you’re elbowing your neighbors; apologize, at least.

Or perhaps the bookseller didn’t wrap the volume; he gave it to you in a bag. This simplifies matters. You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you; the light is green, you’re blocking traffic.

One of the best tracks on Extras is Liza Radley, another song about disenfranchisement from the place and society you’re growing up in.

For some reason Paul Weller changed the lyrics for the album version (above, can’t find demo version online anywhere), and again the demo is much stronger. Lyrics reproduced below:

Liza Radley see the girl with long hair
See her creeping ‘cross summer lawns at midnight

And all the people in the town where we live say
“She’s not quite right”
But she don’t fit in with a small town

They just can’t understand why she’s got to be free
And for their lives only, she cries

Liza Radley see her jump through loneliness
Liza Radley take me when you go

And all the people in the town where we live say
“She’s not quite right”
But she don’t fit in with a small town

They just can’t understand why she’s got to be free
And for their lives only, she cries

Liza Radley I pledge myself to you alone
Then she kissed my face and says “love means nothing at all”
She kissed my face and says “life means nothing at all”

Plus as a bonus, the lyrics to the Burning Sky one that’s still potent for me:

How are things in your little world, I hope they’re going well and you are too.
Do you still see the same old crowd, the ones who used to meet every Friday.
I’m really sorry that I can’t be there but work comes first, I’m sure you’ll understand.
Things are really taking off for me business is thriving and I’m showing a profit and
And in any case it wouldn’t be the same,
’cause we’ve all grown up
and we’ve got our lives
and the values that we had
once upon a time,
seem stupid now
’cause the rent must be paid
and some bonds severed and others made.

Now I don’t want you to get me wrong, ideals are fine when you are young
and I must admit we had a laugh, but that’s all it was and ever will be,
’cause the Burning Sky keeps burning bright. And as long as it does (and it always will),
there’s no time for dreams when commerce calls.
And the taxman’s shouting
’cause he wants his dough
and the wheels of finance
won’t begin to slow.
And it’s only us realists
who are gonna come through
’cause there’s only one power
higher than that of truth and that’s the Burning Sky.

Oh and by the way I must tell you, before I sign off,
that I’ve got a meeting next week,
with the head of a big corporate
I can’t disclose who but I’m sure you’ll know it and.
And the Burning sky keeps burning bright.
And it won’t turn off til it’s had enough,
it’s the greedy bastard who won’t give up,
and you’re just a dreamer if you don’t realize,
and the sooner you do will be the better for you,
then we’ll all be happy and we’ll all be wise, and we’ll all bow down to the Burning Sky.
Then we’ll all be happy and we’ll all be wise and together we will live beneath the Burning Sky.

Full demo version here:

“He was, of course,” said Emberlin, “occupied in giving splendour to Art by Numbers. And this, as far as I can gather from Zuylerius, is how it all happened. He just suddenly fell in love with numbers head over ears, amorous of pure counting. Number seemed to him to be the sole reality, the only thing about which the mind of man could be certain. To count was the one thing worth doing, because it was the one thing you could be sure of doing right. Thus, art, that it may have any value at all, must ally itself with reality must, that is, possess a numerical foundation.

He carried the idea into practice by painting the first picture in his new style. It was a gigantic canvas, covering several hundred square feet I have no doubt that Eupompus could have told you the exact area to an inch and upon it was represented an illimitable ocean covered, as far as the eye could reach in every direction, with a multitude of black swans. There were thirty-three thousand of these black swans, each, even though it might be but a speck on the horizon, distinctly limned. In the middle of the ocean was an island, upon which stood a more or less human figure having three eyes, three arms and legs, three breasts and three navels. In the leaden sky three suns were dimly expiring. There was nothing more in the picture; Zuylerius describes it exactly. Eupompus spent nine months of hard work in painting it. The privileged few who were allowed to see it pronounced it, finished, a masterpiece. They gathered round Eupompus in a little school, calling themselves the Philarithmics. They would sit for hours in front of his great work, contemplating the swans and counting them; according to the Philarithmics, to count and to contemplate were the same thing.

Eupompus’ next picture, representing an orchard of identical trees set in quincunxes, was regarded with less favour by the connoisseurs. His studies of crowds were, however, more highly esteemed; in these were portrayed masses of people arranged in groups that exactly imitated the number and position of the stars making up various of the more famous constellations. And then there was his famous picture of the amphitheatre, which created a furore among the Philarithmics. Zuylerius again gives us a detailed description. Tier upon tier of seats are seen, all occupied by strange Cyclopean figures. Each tier accommodates more people than the tier below, and the number rises in a complicated but regular progression. All the figures seated in the amphitheatre possess but a single eye, enormous and luminous, planted in the middle of the forehead: and all these thousands of single eyes are fixed, in a terrible and menacing scrutiny, upon a dwarf-like creature cowering pitiably in the arena … He alone of the multitude possesses two eyes.

“I would give anything to see that picture,” Emberlin added, after a pause. “The colouring, you know; Zuylerius gives no hint, but I feel somehow certain that the dominant tone must have been a fierce brick-red a red granite amphitheatre filled with a red-robed assembly, sharply defined against an implacable blue sky.”

“Their eyes would be green,” I suggested.

Emberlin closed his eyes to visualize the scene and then nodded a slow and rather dubious assent.

“Up to this point,” Emberlin resumed at length, “Zuylerius’ account is very clear. But his descriptions of the later art become extremely obscure; I doubt whether he understood in the least what it was all about. I will give you such meaning as I manage to extract from his chaos. Eupompus seems to have grown tired of painting merely numbers of objects. He wanted now to represent Number itself. And then he conceived the plan of rendering visible the fundamental ideas of life through the medium of those purely numerical terms into which, according to him, they must ultimately resolve themselves. Zuylerius speaks vaguely of a picture of Eros, which seems to have consisted of a series of interlacing planes. Eupompus’ fancy seems next to have been taken by various of the Socratic dialogues upon the nature of general ideas, and he made a series of illustrations for them in the same arithmogeometric style. Finally there is Zuylerius’ wild description of the last picture that Eupompus ever painted. I can make very little of it. The subject of the work, at least, is clearly stated; it was a representation of Pure Number, or God and the Universe, or whatever you like to call that pleasingly inane conception of totality. It was a picture of the cosmos seen, I take it, through a rather Neoplatonic camera obscura very clear and in small. Zuylerius suggests a design of planes radiating out from a single point of light. I dare say something of the kind came in. Actually, I have no doubt, the work was a very adequate rendering in visible form of the conception of the one and the many, with all the intermediate stages of enlightenment between matter and the Fons Deitatis. However, it’s no use speculating what the picture may have been going to look like. Poor old Eupompus went mad before he had completely finished it and, after he had dispatched two of the admiring Philarithmics with a hammer, he flung himself out of the window and broke his neck. That was the end of him, and that was how he gave splendour, regrettably transient, to Art by Numbers.”

Emberlin stopped. We brooded over our pipes in silence; poor old Eupompus!

So the ‘buzz’ and potentially most interesting development revolves around the web intents they released back in September. This allows you to embed a tweet:

.@hmtreasury the people want @MrGeorgeOsborne to regulate #foodspeculation? Or is he on the side of the banks? j.mp/v73xf0

— Tom Allen (@geecologist) December9, 2011

Nifty eh?

How about this for a meta-embed – the auto-tweet about this blog post:

Web: How to use the new Twitter geecologist.org/2011/how-to-us…

— Tom Allen (@geecologist) December 10, 2011

You can simply copy and paste some javascript code having clicked embed by the tweet you want, simple. Alternatively web intents also support an oEmbed endpoint which allows for dynamic calling of certain tweets based on URL or ID number of tweets. This could be used in some very interesting ways, so looking forward to seeing the bright ideas flow around it!

Another new killer development is the new buttons Twitter have introduced. They have refreshed the look and functionality of the embeddable buttons to Tweet, Follow and Hashtag.

Below are all the large buttons as examples:

Share this link
Tweet

Follow
Follow @geecologist

Hashtag
Tweet #geek

Mention:
Tweet to @geecologist

Dawn freshens. Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers’ declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart’s outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston’s or Crawford’s:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman’s knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Like projects such as One Laptop Per Child, the goal is to bridge the gap of information accessibility between poorer countries and the rich world. There are loads of fantastic ICT4D projects underway, many made possible by technologies pioneered by the superb FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi (including their recent spin off Huduma).

As far as I’m concerned, this sits right at the centre of modern development work, and is key to halting the yawning gap between the global rich and poor. Expect more evangelising over these kind of projects soon!

After having worked at my current tech firm for the larger part of a year, I have come to the conclusion that my co-workers aren’t so much idiots as they are fellow citizens in the thrall of various modes of persistent low-grade autism.

The clinical definition is that they are suffering from mild versions of “pervasive development disorders” or “sensory integration dysfunctions.” Asperger’s syndrome is one variant that has recently garnered much media hype. People with this sort of condition are known as “high functioning” autistics because they can more or less operate in the day-to-day world. Some people like to think of high-functioning autism as a trendy disease. Wrong. It is not a disease, it’s a condition. Most high-functioning autistics resent being talked down to and value their condition. It is not a badge of victimhood for them – it is merely who they are.

Perhaps the broadest way of understanding the world of the high-functioning autistic is to treat all stimuli that impact on the human body not as sensory input but as information bombardment. Most people are able to sift out the day’s excess information without ever thinking about it, but to the tech worker exhibiting autistic – okay, let’s just say the word: geek – to most geeks, a hug is not a hug, it’s the physical equivalent of holding a novelty marine foghorn up to the ear and blasting it directly into the central nervous system. When you hug a geek, you’re overloading them in a manner they find intolerable. They feel and express shock and revulsion when touched.

Here’s a personal example. Low-grade autistics have problems with sensory input, sound being a biggie. My boyfriend, Ethan, is a seemingly average NT (neurotypical), and yet he exhibits a specific autistic variant called hyper acuity. He has a small, specific band of sound frequencies that make him go mental. If I’m in the bathroom with the door closed and Ethan is in the living room watching a Wrestling Entertainment marathon with the volume set on high, all I have to do is clip one of my toenails with a small generic nail clipper and his entire cerebral system shuts down. He screams at me for making “that awful fucking noise.” Likewise, Ethan cannot fall asleep if the Braun eight-cup coffeemaker on the floor below us is turned on because, according to him, it makes a specific brain-spiking click every forty-five seconds. I have pulled a chair up to the coffee maker and sat with my ear pressed right up to it. I have yet to hear such a noise. The fact remains that Ethan screams at me to turnitthefuckoff every forty-five seconds.

Here is another example. My cubicle mate John Doe (yes, that is his legal name – a long story) is a complete geek. He finds an immense sense of relief in performing small specific tasks that cumulatively lead to something larger – a textbook prerequisite of the previously mentioned condition called Asperger’s syndrome. John is ideally suited to the coding universe, where tens of thousands of lines of numbingly dull code string together to make a hockey puck shoot and score with thrilling real-time physics.

I, too, am a geek and have my own set of autism-related problems. I have a mild version of facial blindness, prosopagnosia. It’s hard for me to remember faces and names, and I have trouble telling when someone is either happy or sad. It’s not something I’m too thrilled about.

It turns out that most people suffer from prosopagnosia to some degree. Who out there past the age of twenty-five can get through an entire party without faking a name or two? The entire Dale Carnegie method of Winning Friends and Influencing People boils down to ways of mechanically training yourself past facial blindness. It appalls me that people will like and respect you for no other reason than that you give the illusion of remembering their name. Is that all we are in the end – vain lumps of DNA flattered by the cheesiest of mnemonic devices?

More examples will follow. What is important here is at least to become comfortable with the increasingly more apparent scientific fact that what we describe as “character” and “personality” are not so much spiritual or cosmic states of being, but rather, an overall effect created by clusters of overlapping brain dysfunctions.

Witness the universally understood archetype of the class clown. Is he funny and lovable, or is he farther along the personality spectrum of disinhibition? In the middle of the spectrum you have the bulk of society. Move a bit to the left and you find people who are “talkative” or “funny.” Move a bit more to the left and there’s the class clown. Move along farther and you find a personality who “doesn’t know when to shut up.” Farther still is someone who talks to himself, or perhaps someone with Tourette’s syndrome, which is merely one dimension of disinhibition. Perhaps at the farthest reaches of disinhibition we have the babbling idiot.

Very well. Now then, let’s go back to the centre and move a little the other way. We find a person who is “quiet.” Then we find people who are “shy.” Moving ever rightward, we encounter the “aloof,” then the “loners” and then the “spooky.” At the far right we have the Unabomber frothing away inside his geographically secluded shack.

My point here is that autistic mini-traits exist within the general population, and that microautism seems to favour people in tech and computer industries.