Here is little thought trail I hiked to warm up my brain for a day of coding.
From my ear to Beethoven’s brain, with some assumptions and generalizations:
- I hear music!
- I perceive time in my brain
- impulses from my ear are perceived as sound over time
- speaker drivers pressurize and depressurize air near my ear
- electrical impulses are sent from my iPod to the speakers
- the iPod decodes a compressed binary file into degrees of pressure over time
- computer copies encoded file to ipod
- computer encodes compressed file from uncompressed CD data
- CD is pressed with record audio data
- record is digitized at a resolution that will fit on a CD
- record is edited and filtered to remove noise and balance volume
- electrical impulses are recorded over time
- microphone translates air pressure over time to electrical impulses
- instruments alter the pressure of the air over time
- orchestra plays instruments!
- orchestra reads and interprets notes on the page
- orchestra practices playing music…many, many times
- music notes are duplicated on paper
- Beethoven writes notes on paper
- Beethoven codifies this music into notes
- Beethoven imagines music!
Every one of those actions has infinite tangents within it. How does electricity travel along a wire? What ink did Beethoven use? How did the quality of light reflecting off the page affect Beethoven’s thought of the music. And the same for the orchestra, and for everyone else.
I suppose a thought is never finished, but left alone for the moment. Now, back into time and work.