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Medium as Message: A Compendium of Codes From UC Press
The Book of Codes: Understanding the world of hidden messages--an illustrated guide to signs, symbols, ciphers & secret languages. Paul Lunde, ed., ISBN: 978-0-520-26013-9.
by Vic Chapman
The world is full of languages and codes are merely secret languages used for various means. The Book of Codes is a well-executed and thorough overview of the art of secret communications through the ages, illustrating not just the usual obsolete cloak and dagger stuff of the last century, but also the communications networks of sects, secret societies, body language, commerce and the digital age.
The book is brilliantly and powerfully illustrated and designed and keeps the reader on the page with lots of eye candy to engage the mind. Part of this illustrates another code in one section that forms images and letters from the position of type and imagery on the pages themselves. For thousands of years, mankind has needed to do two things at once; communicate clearly and clandestinely and The Book of Codes offers it readers lessons in that art even while the reader is focused on other things.
Though computers have made encryption more thorough than they ever were before, codes arising from a single brain have proved troublesome even for technology; such was the case with the Unibomber. Ted Kaczynski created a mathematic code for his own diaries and notes that remained unbroken for years until a codebook was found in his isolated cabin. Codes offers a useful insight to the Unibomber’s thinking as it does to the Zodiac Killer. The elements are virtually endless and this book covers a lot of ground. Read it if you want to open more windows on the world.
The editors include much else that isn’t usually referred to as “code” though perhaps it should be. Reading the signs of weather, tracking animals, the Kabbalah and early Christianity are languages too, as such, they’re here.
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