“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth” said Sherlock Holmes, in The Sign of Four, ch. 6 (1889). One of the ways to eliminate the impossible is to first enumerate everything that can be enumerated — probable or not. René Descartes said something similar. His last rule for…More
Tag Archives: ciphercity
Riddle of the Sphinx
When is a riddle like a passcode? That’s not a riddle by the way. The Sphinx guarded the gate to the city of Thebes and required travellers to answer a riddle before gaining access to the city. Riddles are a bit like passcodes. They typically present as permutations, combination of elements, albeit for small numbers,…More
Unlocked
TOOOL stands for The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers. According to their website they’ll be holding a LockCon event in October 2019 in The Netherlands, which is where the organisation was founded. The organisation distances itself from criminal activity, i.e. breaking and entering. It provides instructions and runs competitions as a kind of “door hardware sport.”…More
Architecture’s pragmatic turn
There was once a linguistic turn. The philosopher Richard Bernstein describes the ascent after WWII of analytical philosophy with its focus on plain language and clear argumentation, as it pushed aside other philosophy deemed imprecise and speculative. But now we have entered the pragmatic turn. Bernstein published a book in 2010 entitled just that: The…More
Tags and codes
Graffiti tags are like the scents left by animals to mark territory. The territorial call signs of birds presumably fill a similar function. Territories are defined as much by secret conventions as they are by walls and boundaries. As explored in my previous post, one of the technical terms for such sign conventions is “deictic”…More
Trash talk
Like most urban commuters I have learned to tune out other people’s mobile phone conversations. But when I’m forced to attend to one-sided overloud jibber-jabber the interlocutor may as well be speaking in code. “She said that? … He did it then. … Ask him to give it to me when I’m there.” Deixis Deictic…More
One knock for yes two for no
You might think that advanced technologies obliterate the need for a belief in spirit, a world outside of everyday tangible experience. More accurately, techno-science, and its attendant promotion of rationalism and the cultures of modernity have supposedly disenchanted the world. Techno-science explains the world without the need to look for extra-physical cause and effect. There’s…More
Everything is code
“He doesn’t give you questions. He doesn’t give you orders. He speaks in a code. I understand the code because I’ve been around him for a decade” said convicted ex-lawyer Michael Cohen about his ex-boss (Trump) before the US House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. As any student of semiotics knows, speaking in code is what…More
A life of crime
Crime is immensely popular — in fiction if not in everyday life. No victim enjoys the consequences of crime. But many of us enjoy a good mystery, and the narrative aspects of crime meet some human need, as when solving a puzzle, or watching others solve it. Burglary materialises metaphor, putting a thing in the…More
Breaking and entering
A burgh is simply a town, usually with some kind of protection or fortification. Think also of a castle, a court or a manor house — and the related noun borough. In native English a burgh-breche was a break-in, now contracted to burglary, “The crime of breaking (formerly by night) into a house with intent to commit felony” (OED),…More
Reflections on Technology, Media & Culture 