equivalents project

examples of things we take for equivalents:

1. handwriting and text
2. conversation and telephone
3. film and video
4. rolodexes and contact lists
5. calendars and planners
6. a person and a medical trace (monitors, charts, bills)
7. the place and its map
8. handwriting and type
9. relationships and analysis
10. places and information graphics
11. vanilla beans and vanillin (a chemical equivalent)

and this is really nuts! data extracted from real-world items is always a cold and distant mirror. the disparity is rank.

let’s also consider data storage. data retrival is a kind of performance because it needs to be reconstituted by some mechanism. and data is an abstraction that can’t be communicated without the host. the host does interpretation, and provides a specific context. every time we read data we reinterpret it. and it is possible for that context to disappear. though databases are more comprehensive than ever before, is not the data also more fragile than ever? databases are not clay tablets.