Looking past the horizon
Exploration. How; Why; Where?
muizz and
Looking past the horizon
So there are fundamentally two mindsets about the future. A pessimistic one where we see the Earth as finite in resources and conclude that we must limit ourselves. And an optimistic one where we see the Earth as finite in time and conclude that we must grow our knowledge towards infinity. The former mindset is not only uninspiring but will... See more
Albert Wenger • To Infinity and Beyond
In 1820, if you wanted to discover a new idea, you’d probably sail to a new continent
Anthony Pompliano • Writing for Leverage, Teenage Billionaires, The Problem with Mainstream Media, and More - David Perell on Off the Chain, Hosted By Anthony Pompliano • Podcast Notes
Howard Aiken—the inventor of the earliest general purpose computer—was never worried about people stealing his ideas. “If your ideas are any good” he’s quoted as saying, “you'll have to ram them down people's throats.” And yet, we think that the moment that we hit the dance floor, all eyes will be on us. The moment we hit publish, the world will... See more
Zac Solomon • Freedom in Obscurity
The first, and most obvious thing, is that they are visual. If I was going to move a piece on a map then I could point to where it was and where it needed to go. Navigation was visual but that was normal. Except, I realised it wasn’t. When people stopped me in their cars to find their way to the nearest petrol station — this was 2004 and GPS was... See more
medium.com • On Being Lost
A map, in other words, is an arrangement of symbols into a system of meaning — and we use maps because we understand the language of signs that undergirds them. If the mapping of space was a human invention, she explained, one could also invent a means of mapping time.
Susan Schulten • Emma Willard's Maps of Time
These aren’t sculptures, they’re maps of water. Navigators from the Marshall Islands made ‘stick charts’ to record wave patterns in the sea, treating the ocean as terrain—the shells indicate islands. Their methods and skills are the most advanced of any known for ‘reading’ water
It seems obvious in hindsight…
Island chains in the middle of the Pacific cause predictable disturbances in ocean currents. If you listen carefully, you can find the source of the perturbations.
Apart from a very limited amount of state sponsorship, it was usually the prospect of commercial gain or of new lands for settlement which funded exploration – a misleading term, which usually signified the ‘mapping’ of existing trade paths through local informants. But the propulsion of economic or demographic need was spasmodic at best.