Byte Magazine Cover on LISP, A Space Odyssey, Nietzsche
Xah Lee
• Byte Magazine Cover on LISP, A Space Odyssey, Nietzsche
http://xahlee.org/funny/byte_mag_lisp.html
plain text version follows.
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Byte Magazine Cover on LISP, A Space Odyssey, Nietzsche
Xah Lee, 2010-08-04
byte mag cover 1979-08 LISP
Byte magazine cover, 1979-08. ❐ source Kazimir Majorinc (
http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2010/07/cover-of-byte-1979-lisp-issue.html
) (used with permission)
What is the overall meaning of this drawing? The first time i saw
this, i thought of one thing, but next day, looking at this pict
again, i got a opposite impression. (scroll down to see my
impressions)
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At first i thought it's a tombstone, meaning: lisp is dead. Quite
funny. But in a 1979 mag cover?? But the next day, i realized that the
tombstone i see is the giant monolith, a theme borrowed from the movie
“2001: A Space Odyssey”.
On reading Wikipedia about 2001: A Space Odyssey, quote:
The film has a memorable soundtrack—the result of the association
that Kubrick made between the spinning motion of the satellites and
the dancers of waltzes, which led him to use the The Blue Danube waltz
by Johann Strauss II,[2] and the famous symphonic poem Also sprach
Zarathustra by Richard Strauss, to portray the philosophical evolution
of Man theorized in Nietzsche's homonymous work.[3][4]
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Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Richard Strauss, Nietzsche
------------------------------
Thus Spoke Zarathustra the Music
I'm familiar with The Blue Danube waltz, but which is the “Also sprach
Zarathustra”? Ah, that's the one sometimes known as the “sunrise”.
Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.
------------------------------
Thus Spoke Zarathustra the Philosophy
But more interesting is the mentioning of nihilist philosopher
Nietzsche. Reading on Wikipedia: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, i found
several interesting things. Quote:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also
sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen) is a philosophical
novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four
parts between 1883 and 1885. Much of the work deals with ideas such as
the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of
God", and the "prophecy" of the Overman, which were first introduced
in The Gay Science.[1]
Described by Nietzsche himself as "the deepest ever written," the
book is a dense and esoteric treatise on philosophy and morality,
featuring as protagonist a fictionalized prophet descending from his
recluse to mankind, Zarathustra. A central irony of the text is that
Nietzsche mimics the style of the Bible in order to present ideas
which fundamentally oppose Christian and Jewish morality and
tradition.
You know how today with New Atheism movement, there's the phrase
“death of God”. That phrase is actually popularized by Nietzsche's
book. Quote from Wikipedia on the “god is dead” article:
"God is dead" never meant that Nietzsche believed in an actual God
who first existed and then died in a literal sense. It may be more
appropriate to consider the statement as Nietzsche's way of saying
that the conventional "God" of 19th century middle class Christianity
is no longer a viable or believable source of any received wisdom.
Nietzsche recognizes the crisis which the death of God represents for
existing moral considerations, because "When one gives up the
Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from
under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident... By
breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one
breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands."[1] This
is why in "The Madman", a work which primarily addresses atheists, the
problem is to retain any system of values in the absence of a divine
order.
The music, is inspired by Nietzsche's philosophical work of the same
name. The work features a character named Zarathustra, which is
actually borrowed from a “ancient Iranian prophet and philosopher
Zoroaster. I'll have to read that some other time.
The Giant Monolith
That eerie giant black monolith featured in 2001, always seems a bit
strange to me in the film. I realized that is also inspired from
Nietzsche's work. Quote:
Thus Spoke Zarathustra was conceived while Nietzsche was writing
The Gay Science; he made a small note, reading "6,000 feet beyond man
and time," as evidence of this.[2] More specifically, this note
related to the concept of the Eternal Recurrence, which is, by
Nietzsche's admission, the central idea of Zarathustra; this idea
occurred to him by a "pyramidal block of stone" on the shores of Lake
Silvaplana in the Upper Engadine, a high alpine region whose valley
floor is at 6,000 ft.
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It's quite interesting that a mag cover lead to so many deep and old
discoveries. I learned in my experience in particular of readings in
the past 7 years, that a person can know so little of our society,
surroundings. I felt, for a healthy society today, each person should
have equivalent of 3 university degrees, 2 in humanities. (See:
Futuristic Calamity.)
In 2007, i was slaving in Second Life's sex world all day, which led
to the Gorean role playing communities, which led me to read about
John Norman's novel “Chronicles of Gor”, which led me to Nietzsche's
concept of Master-slave morality. That's the first time, i got some
basic concept of who Nietzsche is and his philosophies. (See: Goreans
in Second Life.)
Note that Byte (magazine) was a very successful magazine. According to
Wikipedia, it seems to have suddenly died in 1998 when sold to a new
owner and the owner shut it abruptly, trying to peddle its other
publications.
Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/
☄
Tim Bradshaw
>
> What is the overall meaning of this drawing? The first time i saw
> this, i thought of one thing, but next day, looking at this pict
> again, i got a opposite impression. (scroll down to see my
> impressions)
Yes, it's obviously a reference to 2001: the people who built the
monolith (and hence the people who made us human) used Lisp.
Kazimir Majorinc
> of interest to lispers:
>
> • Byte Magazine Cover on LISP, A Space Odyssey, Nietzsche
> http://xahlee.org/funny/byte_mag_lisp.html
>
You developed interesting set of associations.
This is the note inside that BYTE Magazine, page 4:
About the Cover
"This month, Ken Lodding has created a fantasy on far-out application
with a Lisp theme. The surface of some asteroid has been discovered.
A monolith engraved with the S-expression form of a Lisp program is
gazed upon by some astronauts. We presume some archeology of this
monolith will have to be done to uncover the balance of the program.
We leave it to readers familiar with LISP to identify the textbook
from which these S-expression fragment were taken, and the purpose
of the program."
--
Kazimir Majorinc,
http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com
Petter Gustad
> Xah Lee, 2010-08-04
> byte mag cover 1979-08 LISP
I actually have that Byte magazine (as well as the Smalltalk version a
couple years later, august was always the language issue). I love the
title of one of the articles:
BYTE August 1979, Volume 4, Number 8, Page 10
An Overview of LISP,
John Allen
Signetics
811 E Acques Ave
Mail Stop 38
Sunnyvale CA 94086
"LISP is a higher level machine language"
--
.sig removed by request.
Zerkon
> I learned in my experience in particular of readings in
> the past 7 years, that a person can know so little of our society,
> surroundings.....
...
> In 2007, i was slaving in Second Life's sex world all day..
Please LISP the gap!