We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.
James GleickRead
Tiny differences in input could quickly become overwhelming differences in output.... In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butter- fly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.
Interpretation
Small changes can lead to significant consequences over time.
This quote highlights the concept that minor variations in initial conditions can drastically impact outcomes, as illustrated by the Butterfly Effect. It suggests that seemingly trivial actions or events can result in major changes, emphasizing the interconnectedness and sensitivity of complex systems, like weather patterns and even broader life events.
In practice
This quote can be used in a talk about climate change to illustrate the importance of small actions.
We have met the Devil of Information Overload and his impish underlings, the computer virus, the busy signal, the dead link, and the PowerPoint presentation.
A good part of 'The Information' is about the transition from an oral to a literary culture. Books effected such a great transformation in the way we think about the world, our history, our logic, mathematics, you name it. I think we would be greatly diminished as a people and as a culture if the book became obsolete.
I'm trying to look at many, many things in modern life that I believe are going faster, and I'm trying to look at why they're going faster and what effect they have on us. We all know about FedEx and instant pudding, but it doesn't mean we've looked at all the consequences of our desire for speed.
Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace.
Every time a new technology comes along, we feel we're about to break through to a place where we will not be able to recover. The advent of broadcast radio confused people. It delighted people, of course, but it also changed the world.
"Half genius and half buffoon," Freeman Dyson ... wrote. ... [Richard] Feynman struck him as uproariously American-unbuttoned and burning with physical energy. It took him a while to realize how obsessively his new friend was tunneling into the very bedrock of modern science.
Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.
If you ask almost any of them, 'Do you stand behind your theory? Is this the answer?' I think almost everyone would say, 'No, no, no. I'm just trying to expand the range of possibilities.' We really don't know what's going on.
I tell my students, with a feeling of pride that I hope they will share, that the carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that make up ninety-nine per cent of our living substance were cooked in the deep interiors of earlier generations of dying stars. Gathered up from the ends of the universe, over billions of years, eventually they came to form, in part, the substance of our sun, its planets, and ourselves. Three billion years ago, life arose upon the earth. It is the only life in the solar system.
Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.
The goal of scientific physicians in their own science ... is to reduce the indeterminate. Statistics therefore apply only to cases in which the cause of the facts observed is still indeterminate.
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