A computer does not think, it feels nothing, and what it is said to "know"--bits of information all cast in the digital mode--has ...no fringe. Nor has it a memory, only storage room. On any point called for, the answer is all or none. Vagueness, intelligent confusion, original punning on words or ideas never occur, the internal hookups being unchangeable; they were determined once for all by the true minds that made the machine and program. When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity; the greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex ...about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a reportorial quality in Hemingway's work that is absent from Fitzgerald's fiction. Hemingway's technique--in his early w...ork, at least--was to let the observed detail convey emotion with no authorial analysis. Fitzgerald was more concerned with evoking and analyzing the feeling of an experience than with recording detail. As he advised his daughter, "But when in a freak moment you will want to give the low-down, not the scandal, not the merely reported but the profound essence of what happened at a prom or after it, perhaps that honesty will come to you--and then you will understand how it is possible to make even a forlorn Laplander feel the importance of a trip to Cartier's!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film... studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief.... Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l'originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le sol--pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Self-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts ...have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function. They have ceased to be concerned with the legitimate and permanent material of art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The difference between digital and analogic forms is exemplified in the two different types of watches and clocks now available. A... digital watch presents the time in discrete units. It is either 12:57 or 12:58 (or some discrete unit in between, such as 12:57 and 10 seconds as opposed to 12:57 and 11 seconds). With the analogic watch, however, time is continuous. A person who sees the time as "12:57 and 10 seconds" on a digital watch, may see the time as "about one o'clock" on an analogic watch. A similar difference exists between a digital calculator and the analogic slide rule. The slide rule is excellent for making "approximations," but it cannot yield precise digital data.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, ...I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Speedometers, for example, may be digital and give a numeric readout, or analog and produce a lengthening rectangle (or rotating p...ointer). The analog output is less precise, but puts one's speed in some perspective. An 82 and a 28 are almost indistinguishable, but a long rectangle is quite distinct from a short one, and if its length is changing, that too is manifest. The same trade-off is present with clocks and watches, digital timepieces producing precision, but lacking in all the associations a clockface can engender.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission a...s he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparen...ts' memories on special occasions perhaps--no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »