Wow. What a week it's been. Learning through the logic of variables, loops, and objects allowed me to really get into the weeds this week and thoroughly enjoy myself. Nothing I made is particularly useful, but it makes good use of plenty we learned this week - for some interesting results. Again, nothing I'm trying to do ad infinitum, but I find I do learn better if I involve a little bit of play. Kind of went to town. Enjoy!
Examples of some little javascripts I created. Click on the links to view the individual works and edit the code.
gradient // disco balls // shapes appear // rainbow with cloud // click the box // scroll over the box // bouncing ball // colorful somewhat responsive animation // responsive generative art
This week's question was: What do computers call their fathers? To that I do not have a good answer.
We humans often call the fathers of computers ‘parents,’ as we tend to anthropomorphize anything remotely similar to what we can perceive. But what do computers themselves call their fathers, or mothers? Probably nothing.
What does a stone call the boulder it was chipped from?
What does the carbon dioxide that escapes my lungs call me?
Again, nothing. Because they don’t have the ability to do anything other than respond to external forces.
So, if anything, a computer would only call its creator that which its creator has programmed it to ‘say’ – meaning it would really simply be creating a noise that we could approximate as close as possible to a word we understand and have a value for.
At the end of the day, we can only program machines to do exactly what we program them to do, so if we really wanted, we could have these machines call us ‘Hero’ or ‘Luke Skywalker’ or ‘Your Great Majesty, Ruler of All that is Holy, Protector of the Earth and all its Inhabitants, First of Your Name, Last of the First Humans, The Magnificent, The Gracious, The Wise’ – if we were that egotistical.
Or maybe I’m wrong, computers do have a true and consistent for the title for their fathers, and I’m simply missing something.