> I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own. - MdM
Montaigne knew how to play The Glass Bead Game.
(and anticipated the Memex' associative trails with a low-tech implementation)
Montaigne knew how to play The Glass Bead Game.
(and anticipated the Memex' associative trails with a low-tech implementation)
I had been recalling that the raw materiel (the "beads", see millefiori in neighbouring thread) was shared, part of the "extant literature" if you will, but that plays were supposed to be novel as well as good. (a bit like an LZ decompressor, where each additional bit of input both recalls something in the dictionary and adds a new entry)
I have been assuming it was the players' personal styles that provided the novelty, but upon reflection that could easily be my US background more than the source text speaking!
Edit: come to think of it, maybe that's a valid criticism of the game as played in Castalia — that the castalians had become too conventional, losing the playfulness of their play?
(in possible relation, I was watching a national championship final over a decade ago with the mother of one of the contestants: she was very critical of her daughter, and correctly predicted the other would become champion. Why, I asked during the match? Her response: her daughter always came up with the classical textbook plays, whereas the the eventual champion knew how to exploit gambits: plays that were, on paper, weaker, but in practice, strong due to the element of surprise)
I do remember that Hesse description of how the past colours our experience of the present and his thoughts on both the nature of subjectivity and the place of spirituality made a strong impression on the young me at the time.
I probably should read this book again. It seems like the time is right.
> The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.
Montaigne incorporates classical material (by reference) into the personal trails of his essays. Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millefiori beads, Glass Bead Game (Hesse) players incorporate old material into new contexts of their own devising...