Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge

Pickover, Clifford

ISBN 10: 0312061315 / ISBN 13: 9780312061319

Published by St. Martin's Press, New York, 1991

About this Item

xix, 419 pages, illustrations (some colour); 25 cm. Tight, clean copy. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. *** CONTENTS: PART I. INTRODUCTION; Computers and the unexpected; PART II. SIMULATION; Simulation: Introduction; Butterfly curves; The cancer conundrum; Growing your own font; Experiments with a leaning tower of books; Building your own artificial web; A wiring problem; Desktop evolution; Research and development; PART III. SPECULATION; Speculation: Introduction; A soda-can sized super-super computer; Who are the ten most influential scientists in history?; The mummy project; A personal computer placed in the year 1900; Research and development; PART IV. VISUALIZATION; Visualization: Introduction; Pain induced patterns; The Ikeda attractor; Virtual voltage sculptures; The world of chaos; Irregularly oscillating fossil seashells; Picturing randomness with noise spheres; Visualizing cantor cheese construction; Twisted mirror worlds; Polyhedral paradise; Turning a universe inside-out; From math comes beauty: Monkey curves and spirals; Visualization of the Gleichniszahlen-Reihe monster; The moire effect: Practical and pictorial patterns; Computer exoskeletons; PART V. EXPLORATION; Exploration: Introduction; The lute of Pythagoras; Results of the very-large-number contest; A prime plaid; Infinite sequences in centered hexamorphic numbers; On the existence of cakemorphic integers; A Fractal goose; All known replicating fibonacci-digits less than one billion; The juggler sequence; Earthwork algebra; Friendly technology; Palindromes on parade; Reversed numbers and palindromes; Chimpanzee/man hybrid; Infinite triangular arrays; Undulating undecamorphic and undulating pseudofareymorphic integers; A pattern based on the Mandelbrot set; The computer smorgasbord; Million-point sculptures; Continued roots in the complex plane; Pictured spherical lissajous figures; Fractal faces; PART VI. INVENTION; Invention: Introduction; Self-correcting anti-dylexic font; Speech synthesis grenade; Pictorial password systems; Evolving computers; PART VII. IMAGINATION; Computer-generated poetry; PART VIII. FICTION; The twenty-fourth annual meeting of the Chaos Society; The big black bug; There will be soft cattle. Size: 8vo.

Seller Inventory # 029419

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press, New York
• Publication Date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0312061315
• ISBN 13: 9780312061319
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Book Type: Collectible
• Seller catalogs:
  • Movements::Digital Arts
  • Photography::Techniques
  • USA::6. Late Modern, 1945-1999
  • XL: Extra Large
  • XXX::COLLECTIBLES

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Reviews

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.