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Pixels: Advanced Technology Indistinguishable from Reality?
11/4/2004
Maybe I am a child of pixels, because I have always thought them to be magical, ever since I first heard the term. But in researching this article, all the magic--I mean all the magic--went out of the word "pixel" for me. I had always thought that it was derived in some way from the same language elements as the word "pixie," which certainly lends a magical air to the word. Instead, I discovered that it is a simple combination of two words: "picture element."
I derived the title of this piece from a quotation from Arthur C. Clarke, one that is often on my mind: "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." Clarke might just remind us that pixels, the original pixels that is, were both real and magical. The earliest humans, gazing at Orion's Belt or the Big Dipper, imagined in them entire religions and mythologies, with a resolution (pixels per square observable inch) far less than any of us now see on our various screens.
Did they distinguish with any more clarity than we do now, what is the difference
between the real world and the world represented by pixels?
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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