Last year I wrote an
article entitled Orunmila’s Machine: The Meta-Mechanics
and Reduplication of the Ancient African Internet. Therein I stated that the Ifa divination
system is a reference point for the “Information Superhighway” that we
use on our laptops, desktops, and smart phones. Today, a friend showed me a
video that added to what I had shared over a year ago.
The lecture below
features Ethno-mathematician Ron Eglash, who is the author of African Fractals: Modern
Computing and Indigenous Design. According
to Eglash’s bio “the book examines the fractal patterns underpinning
architecture, art, and design in many parts of Africa. By looking at
aerial-view photos—and then following up with detailed research on the
ground—Eglash discovered that many African villages are purposely laid out
to form perfect fractals, with self-similar shapes repeated in the rooms of the
house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village, in
mathematically predictable patterns.”
Is this a fractal design too?
As Eglash puts it: “When
Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very
disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans
might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.” I’m sure someone reading
this has a great talent that they’re not sharing because someone told them that it is
useless and of no intrinsic value. Perhaps this will inspire you to reconsider what you
have to offer the world.
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