What's Inside Our Heads

There are things we can only understand by comparing them to something else, something different but similar in some way. We understand by analogy and metaphor. Science couldn't understand the mechanics of the human heart until the steam engine was invented. The mind is a persistent puzzle because its workings are invisible, but we understand it a bit better because we've created artificial intelligence. The brain works a bit like the internet, with all its imperfections and unreliability. Firing off thoughts, collating them, making judgments, balancing belief and disbelief. I guess that's what this drawing is about. It's a sketch of a floating metaphor. The guy contemplating it from above makes me think of Rembrandt's painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. I always think of that painting when I pull down our Julia Child cookbook with its photograph of Julia contemplating a lump of bread dough.

All Revolutions Burn Books

In the case of the digital revolution is the fire only virtual fire? I own books where you can actually feel the imprint of the type on the page. Ninety percent of readers under 30 will not know what that means or care. So, in a way, the Fahrenheit 451 scenario I described in the illustration has come true. Even the size of the machine is quaint and antique. While this revolution was taking place I was describing it almost weekly in magazines like Time and USNews and Technology Review, trying to keep up with the hardware, inventing new iconography and metaphors and shorthand for what was happening.