Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge

An examination of how visualization has transformed the way humans perceive and understand their world uses a computer to gain insights into the origins of human creativity.

Art and science are conflated in Pickover's new discipline of "scientific visualizations," demonstrated here in a colorful sampler for math hobbyists and puzzle fans, containing computer-generated palindromes, Fibonacci-based structures, artificial spider webs and fractal palaces of wonder. Here is mathematics' beauty made visible, with super computers and a kind of cybernetic aesthetic. Pickover's short, sometimes puzzle-like presentations will give computer-literate readers the eerie feeling of being present at the creation of a mathematical world where imagination finds its tool in the scientific revolution. Pickover is the author of Computers, Pattern, Chaos, and Beauty.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This very rich offering of interesting computer exercises contains a large number of brief chapters clustered into large sections such as Simulation, Speculation, Visualization, and Exploration. Each chapter or subchapter discusses one idea, picture equation, or concept and frequently provides a "pseudocode" for readers to generate examples on their own computers. The book is a stimulat ing potpourri for readers with a fair amount of mathematical and computer knowledge, although it will likely prove to be hard going for novices. The author is a specialist in computer graphics and its applications. Computers and the Imagination is recommended chiefly for academic and large public libraries.
- Jack W. Weigel, Univ. of Michigan Lib., Ann Arbor
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.