I was always told that the difference between art and design is that the artist creates the problem, and the designers solve them.
I thought it followed the Socrates tradition in that the true philosopher is the one asking the questions, and it is the role of the student to answer them.
I wish ancient Greek techne τέχνη hadn't gone through the split that left "art" on one side and "technology" (or work?) on the other.
The split of art vs. design you're talking about or one of the many ways to divide the act of creation into a classical/romantic divide or one of the many other ways to describe it should be considered harmful.
And I'm not trying to split hairs here but wishing the dichotomy you're talking about didn't exist and encouraging folks not to frame the world that way.
Your mental models of the world are reflected in how you interact with it.
If you have an idea that there's a split between "creating beautiful stuff" and "creating useful stuff" then your world turns into one where something is only one or the other where someone creating only does one or the other.
These days it's thought of unique or special if something is both and the fact this isn't standard is influenced by the mental model of them being separate.
I understand where you’re coming from. I differ from this view. I think we can hold a dialectical view. We can recognise art that raises questions or creates problems, while also recognising design or technology that solves problems.
Human progress depends on both: defining the problem and solving it.
Moreover the people who create useful things don't often take the time to try to make them beautiful, with the result that everything is a utilitarian grey box with some buttons on it.
Is that true? I think for it to he true we'd have to overly abstract the definition of technology to the point of uselessness.
You can draw images in the sand. Is a stick "technology"? What about using your finger?
Do we need paints? There are natural dyes. I don't mean in the sense of extracting things but some are as simple as "smash this berry". I believe the answer to this is rather critical since you specifically mention cave paintings. Many of those were done by hand, not by brush.
What about things like rock balancing? Sand sculptures? Singing/vocal instruments? Poetry (spoken, not written)? Story telling (ditto)? And so on
There is so much we consider art that can be done by any human with no tool use nor any external objects. I won't even mention how people call a sunset a work of art, and I do think we should avoid that as it has the same problem I bring up with defining technology. But I do not think most people would consider speech or vocal sounds technology, though certainly we would include things like writing.
It takes a considerable amount of development before you can make the distinction at all between separate concepts of art and technology. For a long time there wasn't a split because it was difficult to conceptualize how to split the two.
It is used to strengthen materials. For example if plaster has crumbled, or the paint on a canvas has become flakey, or wood rotten, Paraloid B-72 can be used to hold everything together. The issue is that generally it is not reversible. Therefore one should always look at varnishes that can easily be removed and reapplied, but sometimes only Paraloid can hold everything toghther.
The issue is that it does yellow but after 25 to 50 years. The challange is that it is very difficult to reverse.
On the restoration of my house I allow its use on very specific cases. It very useful for example in strengthening wood that has rotten. Sometimes Paraloid is the only thing that can be used, but it needs to be used with care.
It does discolor over time. The point is that one should be thinking about the impact over centuries and not years.
It needs to be used with care and other alternatives need to always be considered.
For a painting or building that has survived for half a millennium we need use methods that will preserve the object for another 500 years.
Too many times I hear people say we will just use Paraloid.
You'll have to ask @ErdalToprak on Twitter on that one. I just thought it was funny that this slopfluencer, who's taken money to advertise Vercel, ostensibly believes that using a VPS/k3s is "a stupid take."
So during the intermittent period IBM and American Airlines were focused on research of the problem.
The system was a based on a military messaging system.
What is important to note is before SABRE the system used was a sell at will until a stop message was issued. Then sales would be on request. This method is still used between different airline systems today.
Before the implementation of SABRE airlines used teleprinters as a way of communicating. Some of the commands SABRE and other IBM 360 systems come directly from this period. For example AJFkSFO9MAR was a way of economizing on characters sent. It means what is the available seats from JFK to San Francisco on the 9th of March. This predates SABRE.
There is several reasons that the System 360 (the reservation systems used by airlines like SABRE) is one that it is written in Assembler, and also the logic is very tied into its role of reservation. For example it was designed in the days of punchcards, which have a totally different method of matching than a relational
Database. The logic is still used on matching a seat to a fare.
On the pure speed much of it is gained by clever engineering tricks. An example would be the passenger record. This is 9 alphanumeric id of the passenger reservation. It is the hash of virtual memory location of the reservation.
It takes 4 cpu cycles to retrieve it.
I thought it followed the Socrates tradition in that the true philosopher is the one asking the questions, and it is the role of the student to answer them.
I wish I remembered who I am quoting here
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