We are now almost a quarter of the way through what looks likely to go down in history as the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing press. There is new content, of course, so much content, and there are new themes; there are new methods of production and distribution, more diverse creators and more global audiences; there is more singing in hip-hop and more sampling on pop tracks; there are TV detectives with smartphones and lovers facing rising seas. Twenty-three years in, though, shockingly few works of art in any medium — some albums, a handful of novels and artworks and barely any plays or poems — have been created that are unassimilable to the cultural and critical standards that audiences accepted in 1999. To pay attention to culture in 2023 is to be belted into some glacially slow Ferris wheel, cycling through remakes and pastiches with nowhere to go but around. The suspicion gnaws at me (does it gnaw at you?) that we live in a time and place whose culture seems likely to be forgotten.
Simply stated, the Curry-Howard correspondence posits that two concepts from computer science (types and programs) are equivalent, respectively, to propositions and proofs — concepts from logic.
One ramification of this correspondence is that programming — often seen as a personal craft — is elevated to the idealized level of mathematics. Writing a program is not just “coding,” it becomes an act of proving a theorem. This formalizes the act of programming and provides ways to reason mathematically about the correctness of programs.
No matter how technologically advanced our society becomes, humans will always be captivated by fire. The fear and fascination it instills in us is primal, a sobering reminder of human fragility. Perhaps the lasting appeal of a flambé lies in our ability to manipulate fire to create something sweet and luxurious, one of the few moments in life where we feel the tiniest degree of control over Mother Nature.
A quartet’s name represents the life of a performing entity, subsuming the individual in four musicians’ quest for musical identity and communication. Simmenauer writes from the inside with depth, musical insight and understanding of idiosyncrasy, human foible, and immersion in artistic endeavour.