“Caffeine,” he rants as he points to the word. “Does this say ‘caffeine’ to you?”

It’s fascinating how form can follow function, and function can follow form, in everything from physiology to poetry to words.

Humans have opposable thumbs, and this little digit allows us to do everything from type blogs to build houses.

I recently learned (at New York Public Library’s excellent exhibit on Jack Kerouac) that Gregory Corso’s famous poem, “Bomb” was itself a bomb until Kerouac shaped its words into a mushroom cloud.

And, of course, there are fonts. I left Helvetica and couldn’t help but be amazed just how present the font is in our day-to-day lives. I can’t walk a block in New York without seeing it: the font that can be superimposed on a grid, the font without little “feet” on its edges. These are changes without meaning.

And yet ….

I can’t imagine waiting at a sign that says STOP or STOP or STOP .