In Search Of Structure

"Francis Iannni . . . has drawn upon over 1500 hours of listening to 300 adolescents, studied over a period of ten years, to weave a mosaic of insights into the protean nature of adolescence".--Edmund W. Gordon, Yale University.

&"As an old admirer of Cyril Smith, I'm delighted to learn that a collection of his essays on the arts will be published. They are a unique body of work which only he could have produced.&" &-Meyer Schapiro Science, art, and history all share common or analogous patterns of hierarchical order that are embedded into the structure of the material world as well. This is a central insight of these essays by a generalist who has also spent a lifetime working in his specialty, the nature of materials. To Cyril Stanley Smith, the transformation of metals from one state to another, or the contrasts at one level that merge through repetition into uniformity at a higher level, carries solid metaphorical implications for the human condition. Cyril Stanley Smith's own expansion of outlook to encompass successively technology, science, history, and art is loosely implicit in the chronological ordering of the fourteen essays included in this volume and explicitly developed in one of them that &"comes as close to an autobiography as I am ever likely to write&" and traces the evolution of Smith's ideas on science and art. Trained as an industrial metallurgist, Smith turned to the purely scientific study of the structure of metals and alloys after his experience at Los Alamos during World War II, drawn in part by his delight in the intrinsic beauty of these structural manifestations of symmetry and natural design. A growing interest in the history of the science and technology of materials led him to consult the artifactual evidence&-the art objects in museums that either greatly predate written historical records or provide, through scientific examination, more reliable information than do the surviving documents of their period. This direct contact with fine or formal art only reinforced Smith's intuition that the aesthetic impulse is at play over the full range of human activity, whether it leads to the making of a bronze sculpture, a scientific theory, or a social reorganization. A variety of investigations of art objects is cited in the text, and the author regards the accompanying illustrations to be as important as the text. In particular, the essays make the case that historically many advances and discoveries regarding metals and ceramics came about through aesthetic curiosity and the desire to improve works of fine and decorative art, rather than through scientific investigation or in response to the need for products having practical utility. Many techniques and even whole industries, Smith writes, began with the making and reproduction of art works. Other essays deal with the emerging understanding of the remarkable properties of steel, the positive uses of corrosion, ancient casting and molding techniques, and the connection between attempts to reproduce oriental porcelain in Europe and modern geological ideas. Still others are more philosophical in approach.

Is a story about the humanity living with a natural mind that possess by endless needs, wants and desires. The book explains how we become so intimately connected with life through our mind and by which we are conscious of all of life’s pain, suffering and disappointments it brings. In the process, we become a problem-oriented world as we individually intertwine with a time perception world, construed with the notion of future, opportunities and hope for better tomorrows. As our living continue to revolve around our desires and perceptions, the least of all the choices we will make or want is to become free from fear, free from pain and sufferings and pursuit unhappiness. Fear that if we are not happy, this will mean we have lost ourselves in emptiness and eventually become hopeless. To be hopeful, is to feeding the never ending desire for a better future from the past. In clear, straightforward language, complemented by well-designed mental functioning desire for peace, love, joy and happiness every aspect of this integrative is systematically address the perception that life will get better. From strategies, to family conveys this powerful message of empathy, hope for individuals struggling with ongoing persistent to keep on working as a manager of time to facilitate history of endless expectation. All of us enthralled in this behavior, even with obsession trying to reverse what is perceived negative relationships life and time. Yet, history indicates that the very aspect of empathic is not hopeful beginning or ending, all that does it to continuous integrating toxic relationships while promoting positive attitude toward an unsuccessful outcome. Richard Hooker (1554? - 1600) English theologian, once say, “Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better”. Also another historian Alvin Toffler a U.S. writer (1928 - ) once says, “Even the best strategies seldom take into account more than a few of the consequences that flow from them. The book went on to explains how the appearance that time and the human mind are seemingly inseparable, but biologically speaking that is not entirely conclusive. Nonetheless, as far as being aware of existence is concerned, this is one of the inter-social complexities. This tragic interactive relation is evident in many different aspects for every person living today. While progressive technology has provided the contemporary world with countless time-saving devices and options to managing our time, most people complain and suffering with anxiety about not having enough time to do all the things they want or have to do.

These fourteen essays celebrate the necessary unity between aesthetic curiosity and scientific and technological discovery. Drawing on his own experience as a metallurgist and his wide-ranging studies of ancient and modern artifacts, Cyril Smith offers an intriguing and generously illustrated exploration of the relationship between material structure and our sense of beauty.

Search and navigation in hyperlinked networks have been subjects of research since the Internet emerged. Due to its incompleteness in terms of linking related content, the existing linking structure of the Web and similar networks cannot be utilized as a searchable index without prior application of suitable crawling strategies and content categorization. Following the example of sitemaps, a map-like extension to the existing link structure of the network is proposed that creates additional contextual links. For this, a concept and algorithms are devised that allow the creation of contextual cluster files, to which documents are assigned and between which semantically relevant links are established. The resulting WebMap covers all searchable resources on the original network in a contextual overlay network and enables new search and navigation approaches.

With its theme, "Our Information, Always and Forever," Part I of this book covers the basics of personal information management (PIM) including six essential activities of PIM and six (different) ways in which information can be personal to us. Part I then goes on to explore key issues that arise in the "great migration" of our information onto the Web and into a myriad of mobile devices. Part 2 provides a more focused look at technologies for managing information that promise to profoundly alter our practices of PIM and, through these practices, the way we lead our lives. Part 2 is in five chapters: - Chapter 5. Technologies of Input and Output. Technologies in support of gesture, touch, voice, and even eye movements combine to support a more natural user interface (NUI). Technologies of output include glasses and "watch" watches. Output will also increasingly be animated with options to "zoom". - Chapter 6. Technologies to Save Our Information. We can opt for "life logs" to record our experiences with increasing fidelity. What will we use these logs for? And what isn’t recorded that should be? - Chapter 7. Technologies to Search Our Information. The potential for personalized search is enormous and mostly yet to be realized. Persistent searches, situated in our information landscape, will allow us to maintain a diversity of projects and areas of interest without a need to continually switch from one to another to handle incoming information. - Chapter 8. Technologies to Structure Our Information. Structure is key if we are to keep, find, and make effective use of our information. But how best to structure? And how best to share structured information between the applications we use, with other people, and also with ourselves over time? What lessons can we draw from the failures and successes in web-based efforts to share structure? - Chapter 9. PIM Transformed and Transforming: Stories from the Past, Present and Future. Part 2 concludes with a comparison between Licklider’s world of information in 1957 and our own world of information today. And then we consider what the world of information is likely to look like in 2057. Licklider estimated that he spent 85% of his "thinking time" in activities that were clerical and mechanical and might (someday) be delegated to the computer. What percentage of our own time is spent with the clerical and mechanical? What about in 2057?