little A "sermon" I like to insert into a class now and then
is as follows :
Do _not_ divide humanity into two groups
* the "upper" minority who produce innovations, invent, have
things named after them, etc, etc - the "stars" and so on,
* the "lower" majority who consume (pay for) innovations, wait
for new inventions, etc, etc - the ordinary people,
implicitly placing yourself in the second category.
It's a false dichotomy that serves the purposes of some people
who do not have your autonomy in mind.
The difference between an innovator/inventor and yourself in many
cases is that they thought of it before you did. Look at an
ordinary paper clip. Did you know that before some "genius"
invented that people used to PIN papers together ? Do you feel
that if you had never seen a paper clip before and were tired
of stabbing yourself with paper pins you could invent what we
now call a paper clip ?
If not, why not ? Almost all our socialisation and much of our
education, including the trash on the magazine stands, is aimed
at supporting a false dichotomisation that puts the majority in
the lower category.
Many of the ideas in this course are actually quite simple.
One of them is that the information contained data in that
selects 1 out of N, can be measured in bits, and is _not_
the integer
floor( log2 N )
which is the maximum number of data bits that could be
encoded by such a choice, e.g.
N = 6 {A,B,C,D,E,F} floor(log2 6) = 2
A -> 00
B -> 01
C -> 10
D -> 11
E -> 11
F -> 11
and is also _not_ the integer
ceiling( log2 N)
which would be the minimum number of bits required for an
encoding of such an alphabet, e.g.
N = 6 {A,B,C,D,E,F} ceiling(log2 6) = 3
000 -> A
001 -> B
010 -> C
011 -> D
100 -> E
101 -> F
but is t...