zlacker

> used to mean grey, but now could mean bright blue (or even black?) due to the march of progress...

Issues (and maybe possibilities) about reading works out of context and time. There's often a need / tendency to place those ideas relative to your own.

On the issues: Downloaded and started looking through Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636, Catholic Patron Saint of Computers and Internet). [1] The striking part reading through the later year discussions and critique though was how often writers needed to place their own later meaning and rearview criticism on an archival encyclopedist from ~1300-1400 years ago.

  > an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, glossed with his own derivations of the technical terms relevant to the topic in hand. Derivations apart, it was lifted from sources almost entirely at second or third hand ..., none of it checked, and much of it unconditional eyewash – the internet, in other words, to a T.
  > His reductions and compilations did indeed transmit ancient learning, but Isidore, who often relied on scholia and earlier compilations, is often simplistic scientifically and philosophically, especially compared to .. figures such as Ambrose and Augustine.

Except that wasn't the point. He was creating an encyclopedia. Isidore quotes from around 475 works from over 200 authors in his works, including those outside the Etymologiae. Several of the works quoted would have never survived or even been known about without Isidore's efforts. The goal (opinion) was preserving the knowledge. He wrote what was there, and 1300-1400 years later there's a criticism that he only gathered 475 works and didn't find first hand sources for every account?

On the maybe possibilities: Neuromancer's pretty great. In the first paragraph you're already transported to another world:

  > “It’s not like I’m using,” Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke.  The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese. [2]

On the opening line in 2024: could mean grey, could mean static, could mean blue, could mean black, could mean a screen saver. Could mean some future unknown "television" from the land of headjacks, AR web topologies, and xeno-sentient entertainment. Even 40 years later the meaning is already changed in reading based on the readers state, and the reader's prior experiences. And because it was a future-tech, cyperpunk image of a world yet to be, was it really meant to be a 1980's television sky?

By the third paragraph Gibson's already discussion "antique" seven-function force-feedback manipulator Russian military prosthesis' and who invented nerve-splicing beneath the towering hologram logo of the Fuji Electric Company.

[1] Etymologiae, WP, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymologiae

[2] Neuromancer, Ch 1, penguinrandomhouse.ca, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/293994/neuromancer-b...

>>araes+(OP)
No idea how far off I may be on my back-of-the-enveloping here, but:

   475 works * 1 yr/work * $300k/yr ~= USD 140 million

assuming 1 year for a scribe to copy a work and that scribal work was high end knowledge work (thus USD 150k salary, 300k fully burdened) would have a current-day Isidore as tackling a project that first required USD ~140 million worth of inputs? (his latter day critics may be jealous that their support is missing one or two of those zeros?)

Blessed St Isidore, protect us from hallucinations and deliver us from recursively chewing our cud... —the LLMs' prayer