Vineland and Stone Junction: Government as Computerized Big Brother

[Richard Romeo]

this article from the current NY Review of Books
seemed right up Mr. P's alley. It's not online.  brief
mention of Hilbert, etc.

Rich

Geometrical Creatures
By Jim Holt
The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
by Edwin A. Abbott, with an introduction and notes by
Ian Stewart
Perseus, 239 pp., $30.00

Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So
by Ian Stewart
Perseus, 301 pp., $14.00 (paper)

One feature of the world that few people stop to
puzzle over is how many dimensions it has. Although it
is a little tricky to say just what a dimension is, it
does seem fairly obvious that we, the objects that
surround us, and the space we move about in are
structured by three dimensions, conventionally
referred to as length, width, and depth. Even
philosophers have tended to take this for granted.
Aristotle, at the beginning of On the Heavens,
declared that "the three dimensions are all there
are." Why? Because, he argued in a somewhat mystical
vein, the number three comprises beginning, middle,
and end. Therefore, it is perfect and complete.

... 


--- davemarc <davemarc at panix.com> wrote:
> Here's an article by Nat Hentoff (headed by a George
> Orwell quotation) that
> pertains to 1984-ish issues of privacy and
> government monitoring addressed
> by Pynchon in Vineland and Stone Junction.
> 
> http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0250/hentoff.php
> 
> d.
> 


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