Some notion of I as an individual being came first. Then I found a mate and two became one such that 1 could be divided into 2. And baby makes three, and 1 can be divided by three and four. Was it some form of share and share alike? A provider and a number of mouths to feed? A “we” divided further, as the both partners must have contributed, if not equally in production equally in what was required to maintain a life which isn’t equal, but we shoot for it? Muscle mass verses reproductive capacities mass + what ever was needed?
How long have simple fractions been around? Care to throw a bone this way? I’ll turn it into a tool.
So I was born before computers and the internet were mainstream. I was a senior in high school when the first programming class was available. Punch cards and a dial up modem. The internet and math were way ahead of a thirteen year old. I didn’t realize until much later that vector mathematics pioneered in 1931 would be used by a military machine in 1942, to be modified by a graphics programmer to become Adobe Illustrator and now be a licensed product you’ve got to pay for even if you aren’t using it. And here comes the sun.
When did “new math” come into play and how has it shaped peoples thinking? The computer era… Shit the damn thing run’s on 64 bits of processing power. How many digits does a calculator factor to? Think about scale… I was taught “old” math. I learned about decimal notation back then, before computers. I can use a sliding rule. Well aware of the relationship between fulcrum and leverage. A unit into so many parts feeds how many?
I played with Adobe Illustrator 88. You could crash the program by folding a segment of a line parallel to itself. The stroke cast was infinite. Sent the computer into a recurring loop, attempting to calculate where the parallel lines of the stroke width would converge. Never, and that caused some problems for a graphics program. So how many radial degrees of one will a computer program resolve too… a ridiculously more number of decimal points then were required to fly a man to the moon.
And how do you think PI plays out in a computer driven universe? How many digits of PI are actually required?
Believe me I’ve played. Adobe Systems uses a rounding up approach, while Corel Draw uses a counter 90 degree approach, rounding up in the first 90 degrees then rounding down and then back up and back down. 1000 rotations of a rectangle gets far less fucked up using Corel’s approach.