Reader as a performer
Here's a link to my latest ramblings about consuming version 1.1 generated assemblies from version 1.
It contains a solution to the puzzle I posted the other day. ConeOfSilence challenge
But first...
Reading seems a passive act, like playing a recording ... but it's far more. A reader is a performer of an author's work, just as a musician is a performer of a composer's score. Writers struggle to encrypt their ideas in words, strings of arbitrary symbols. Readers take those symbols and decode them back into mental activity. Sometimes the reader's performance is relatively faithful to the original intent, and corresponding ideas take shape in another person's head. Sometimes the message doesn't get through --- it may be written in an incomprehensible language, or require background knowledge and experience that a particular reader lacks.
Sometimes, in the most fortuitous circumstances, the performance exceeds the wildest hopes of the author --- and the reader's mind leaps to concepts beyond those originally dreamed of. That's poetry ... creativity ... progress....
courtesy of: www.his.com/~z/guestbook/zhurnal02.html