posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

life is an informational phenomenon (abstract)

We extend the concept that life is an informational phenomenon, at every level of organisation, from molecules to the global ecological system. According to this thesis: (a) living is information processing, in which memory is maintained by both molecular states and ecological states as well as the more obvious nucleic acid coding; (b) this information processing has one overall function – to perpetuate itself; and (c) the processing method is filtration (cognition) of, and synthesis of, information at lower levels to appear at higher levels in complex systems (emergence). We show how information patterns, are united by the creation of mutual context, generating persistent consequences, to result in ‘functional information’. This constructive process forms arbitrarily large complexes of information, the combined effects of which include the functions of life. Molecules and simple organisms have already been measured in terms of functional information content; we show how quantification may extended to each level of organisation up to the ecological. In terms of a computer analogy, life is both the data and the program and its biochemical structure is the way the information is embodied. This idea supports the seamless integration of life at all scales with the physical universe.

Farnsworth, K.D., Nelson, J. & Gershenson, C., 2012. Living is information processing; from molecules to global systems. Available at: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.5908.pdf.

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more cutting room floor

In the continuity of all phenomena that are sensed, a deep interdependence is a fundamental characteristic. Recalling that deployments of amplification systems exist at all scalar levels, a particular TSS may be modeled as a synergy of constituent sub-systems. However, each interdependent social system will approach the process of expressed presence somewhat differently, relative to that interdependence and to historical precedent (pre-existing pathway dependence). Globalization may be seen as essentially the wide-scaled synchronization and standardization of (some of) these differing sub-systems into widely harmonized and ordered pathways—usually to the (energy) detriment of smaller-scaled or more localized systems.

The contemporary globalized Regime stands on a (centralized) system of production and consumption [1] of amplified signals that forcefully promotes the standardization process. The originary signals are still human-to-human as in all systems, but extensive and globally-refined amplification pathways are present in many of these encounters—either by structural chance or by determined choice. In fact this is nothing new for a TSS of smaller size, but the sheer scale of construction of the necessary global infrastructures for collecting and redistributing the flows, as well as the directed flows of amplified energies themselves, is unprecedented in human history. Globalization of the Regime, as a particular scalar culmination of the once-localized system, affects every individual on the planet. more “more cutting room floor”

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thesis proposal :: Background

Background for Research

While individual human presence in this world has fundamental repercussions on be-ing, it is the ever-present and synergistic exchange between humans — forming what I call a “continuum of relation” — that governs much of life. This energetic field of human relation is sometimes fraught with difficulties and complications in spite of the rich and necessary dynamic it brings to life. Technology, as a ubiquitous factor in mediating human relation, often dominates while presented as providing the only opportunity for mediated connection and interaction between humans.

Presence, as apprehended by the Other, circumscribes a range of sensory inputs that require energy (from the Self) to stimulate and drive. The efficacy and sustainability of human connection builds on the very real and tangible transmissions and receptions of energy between the Self and the Other. An interconnected plurality of dialectic human relation may be described as a network. These networks, made up of a web of Self-Other connections form the base fabric of the continuum of relation. Technology appears in these networks as the mediating pathway that is the carrier of energy from node to node, person to person. Technological systems also appear to apply absolute restraints on and attenuation of the idiosyncratic flows inherent in that continuum of relation. The discrete objects that populate the (technological) landscape of the continuum of relation and that modulate the character of communications are literally artifacts of a materialist point of view. A primary assumption in my research is that a materialist or mechanistic view of the world no longer suffices to adequately circumscribe the phenomena occurring within the continuum of relation. more “thesis proposal :: Background”

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

The Regime of Amplification: A Primer

[ED: This text is essentially an extremely preliminary draft—written in Berlin, Germany in 2007-08—of my dissertation The Regime of Amplification.]

I decided to release this text in advance of any hard-copy publication, with another chapter nearing its final stages, and several intermediate chapters forming more concretely. The following is the original ‘final’ text, although there will be a significantly improved one in the years to come.

This speculative essay addresses the process of amplification which expresses itself at a wide range of scales and affects and which models a fundamental aspect of all human presence. It opens with a brief description of a prototypical amplifier, then frames life as the coherent self-organizing expression of energy embedded in a universal field of energy flows. It examines simple biological models of amplification and suggests possible reasons for amplification processes to exist. Narrowing its focus, it looks first at the human species, then the body, and then the collective social system as an operative field of amplification. It subsequently explores the Regime of Amplification as a general manifestation of the prototypical TSS (techno-social system) — a system whose goal is to maintain the viability of localized sub-sets of the species in the face of competition as well as continuous and universal change. Two specific examples — the radio and the military — are presented to simply illustrate the principles suggested. The conclusion reiterates the affects of techno-social amplification on individual be-ing as well as on the entire continuum of relation that the individual is a part of. It suggests some fundamental pathways of action which have an immediate detrimental affect on the hierarchic flows of the Regime.

This essay is built on the subject of one chapter in a book-in-progress titled “Energy of Being :: Dialogue of Creativity” which explores in greater depth many of the issues that are danced only Lightly around here.

KEY TERMS

TSS (techno-social system), Regime of Amplification, energy, amplification, attenuation, flow, continuum of relation, life-energy, life-time, evolutionary development, natural selection, self-organizing, radio, military systems, resonance, social energy bank, life-time=energy=life; attention=life-energy=life-time, feed-forward system, biochemical amplification, concentration, rarefaction, command-and-control … (to be continued)
more “The Regime of Amplification: A Primer”

posted
  • place: Amsterdam, Netherlands

current Capra

Lesson #1
A living social system is a self-generating network of communications. The aliveness of an organization resides in its informal networks, or communities of practice. Bringing life into human organizations means empowering their communities of practice.

Lesson #2
You can never direct a social system; you can only disturb it. A living network chooses which disturbances to notice and how to respond. A message will get through to people in a community of practice when it is meaningful to them.

Lesson #3
The creativity and adaptability of life expresses itself through the spontaneous emergence of novelty at critical points of instability. Every human organization contains both designed and emergent structures. The challenge is to find the right balance between the creativity of emergence and the stability of design.

Lesson #4
In addition to holding a clear vision, leadership involves facilitating the emergence of novelty by building and nurturing networks of communications; creating a learning culture in which questioning is encouraged and innovation is rewarded; creating a climate of trust and mutual support; and recognizing viable novelty when it emerges, while allowing the freedom to make mistakes. — Fritjof Capra

posted
  • place: Berlin, Germany

migrating reality

Miga asked if I would participate in these two projects, in the first as redactor, in the second as a presenter and as a performance artist. should be interesting. especially as it is occurring at the same time as the conference in Savannah. of necessity, I will appear in Savannah virtually, and in person here in Berlin. that’s the easiest option!

we meet down at the Galerie der Künste to scope out the situation.

Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.

The “Migrating Reality Project” organized between 04-05 April 2008 at the Galerie der Künste (Berlin), Potsdamer Str. 93, is a live platform to discuss the mixing and remixing of art forms and digital data flows within the context of the current worldwide reality of migration.

From 01 March in cooperation with the online ‘zine balsas.cc for media and technology we are initiating a focused look at the migration between reality, media, technologies, art, spaces, disciplines, politics, and networks. Migration interests us in cultural and technological aspects as well as in aspects of the movement of different objects and subjects. Balsas.cc has been publishing online in Lithuanian and English from Vilnius, Lithuania since 2005. Every fourth month it announces a new topic and as of now “Migrating Reality” is open for your interpretation.

We invite the submission of texts, sounds, and visuals (photo, video, etc) which will help us to delve deeper into the subject during the Berlin project. Balsas.cc is stimulating interest in the generation and publishing of ideas online — the most important of which will be published in the printed catalog at the end of 2008. We are looking for not only pure texts but also in migrating formats, interdisciplinary discussions, interviews, and the meetings of artists and theoreticians. Please submit texts in English, German, and Lithuanian to balsas@vilma.cc. The rolling submission and publication period is from 01 March to 01 June.

Editorial Board: Vytautas Michelkevicius, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, and John Hopkins

Migrating Reality

The conference and exhibition Migrating Reality is organised by >top – Verein zur Förderung kultureller Praxis e.V. in Berlin and KHM – Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln. It is also generously supported by the Embassy of Lithuania in Germany within the framework of the German-Baltic Year 2008.

The event focuses on the Baltic nation of Lithuania. In the last fifteen years, more than ten percent of Lithuania’s population has emigrated, among them numerous individuals engaged in the cultural sector. Others, while still living in Lithuania, are deeply engaged with the subject of migration. Selected individuals from both these groups will present their work at the conference and exhibition.

Migrating Reality deals specifically with the realities of migration and migrating realities that are independent of global structural changes and economic or cultural processes and are opening unique opportunities for creative exchange.

Electronic and digital cultures generate completely new forms of migration. In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from traditional forms to hybrid digital forms. Analogue products are being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are re-mixed and fused into new data sets.

The emergent processes of migration generate temporary autonomous zones where socio-political actions occur without the interference of formal control mechanisms. These zones and enclaves appear in physical space as well as in virtual space. By integrating these into available structures and temporarily interconnecting them, new trajectories and ideas are created.

Migration is reality and reality is migrating. This dialectic, appearing as a banal topic in everyday politico-economic debate, includes inarticulate issues which, by their fragmented nature have to be dealt with through creative multidisciplinary means. Only occasionally do components of the migrating global situation surface in the mass media, within individual mediums of expression, or in exhibitions as documentation and artwork. This is likely because dealing with the realities of migration in an explicitly European context means accepting the potential for conflict.

This trans-cultural German-Lithuanian event will take on the risk in highlighting certain fragments of the discourse. Participants will be invited to piece together aspects of this inexorable global mobility on the one hand and of retrograde power relations on the other.

posted
  • place: Düsternbrooke, Kiel, Germany

wursts

with the hectic schedule of my hosts, I am able to help out by doing errands and babysitting during the day. meeting Frau Pries, Fritz’s day-care mama, who talks to me as though I understand German fluently. not a bad thing, though I still can’t follow things 100% by any stretch. I do learn she has two brothers who lived in the US — one in Boston, the other in San Diego who recently passed away, dropping dead after getting out of a taxi at a hotel in Chicago. and via a Bluetooth-downloaded email on the share list, a completely different channel for information, apparently huge fires in San Diego as well. more information on that will come when DT supposedly will get the internet installed on Thursday here at the house. we’ll see. unstable infrastructures. compared to stable ones? or simply ones that are more or less unstable. shaking foundations.

back to Frau Pries, yes, juggling the needs of six children under two years old. funny to watch the Brownian motion of a roomful of them. well, partially Brownian, partially magnetic attractors and repellers, part complex harmonic motion, part chaos. the emergent aspect being a social system of chance, whatever that is…

midday stroll to the local butcher’s shop. hot lunch with brats & taters for the Polish guys, Peter, Jan, and Andre, who are doing all the heavy finishing work on the new house. this along with a case of beer every other day, and a bottle of whiskey on Saturdays.

posted
  • place: Chino Valley, Arizona

comparative advantage

Man’s comparative advantage in energy production has been greatly reduced in most situations — to the point where he is no longer a significant source of power in our economy. He has been supplanted also in performing many relatively simple and repetitive eye-brain-hand sequences. He has retained his greatest comparative advantage in: (1) the use of his brain as a flexible general-purpose problem-solving device, (2) the flexible use of his sensory organs and hands, and (3) the use of his legs, on rough terrain as well as smooth, to make this general-purpose sensing-thinking-manipulating system available wherever it is needed. — Herbert Simon

this is a clear statement of the resultant state of the human-technological system (though it does not consider the relationship between the repetitive motions of the machine (technology) and the social system that surrounds both the human and the machine which supplants the human). and it is precisely this relationship that generates the comparative advantage in favor of the machine. the human (to be supplanted) is a participant in the social infrastructure that generates the machine. this social infrastructure comes about as an emergent system as humans come together. any participant in the system gives their lived bio-energy into the system. the system, as an organized entity, needs this influx of energy to maintain its structure. when enough of this energy comes in, a degree of organization that can produce, for example, a moon landing, is formed. the relative state of advance in a technological product is directly related to the ability and efficiency of the social system to gather energy from its constituent individuals. each specific technology is the product of a equivalent state of social order.

Numbers (1) and (2) above are separable, but it is critical to note that the relationship of the two factors are in the material(object) versus its cognate. [cognate meaning the abstracted (linguistic) re-presentation of that object necessitated through the cognitive problem-solving process that the brain undertakes versus the very real interactions of the body with the surrounding techno-social system. it is not necessary to separate (2) and (3) in this case, as they both relate to the expenditure of applied bio-energy.]

more notes on the time:money:energy issue — a quick read-through of Adam Smith on the subject, the topic of VALUE pops out. where value is the process of tagging (or relating) the object to its cognate in the re-presentative system (this being the system of international finance — where value must be negotiated dynamically in consideration of a plethora of factors — all of which are rooted in material measure and its cognate representative in dualistic relation. (i.e., weapons & politics). this dualistic relationship is “acted out” whenever a consumer consumes — trading money (a multi-fold cognate for a range of objects) for material(s). however, this act is always preceded by the consumer being a producer — or, more precisely, one who gives in lived bio-energy into the social system in order that there is an organized production mechanism to create the objects to be consumed).

posted

The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks

A proposal by John Hopkins for Doctoral Thesis research at the University of Bremen, Department of Computer Science (Informatiks) [editor’s note: this initial proposal never was submitted following the accident of 04 July 2005 that set life on another trajectory.]

1.0 Statement of Problem

1.1 Introductory note

Beginning with a series of broad general statements that converge to frame the trans-disciplinary space of my inquiry, I will move to proposals that are more specific. This approach is an important feature of the research itself — where the applicability and efficacy of a model is best challenged when looking from absolute specific cases to increasingly general situations and vice versa. In framing this essentially divergent research, I would suggest that the proposal first be considered as a whole — as I understand that the depth of my knowledge-base varies across some of the disciplinary spaces. more “The Energy Dynamics of Technologically-Mediated Human Relation within Digital Telecommunications Networks”

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs)

this mornings research through the landscape of information theory in biology, neurobiology, and genetics brings me to many places, including the following. rhetorical clusters.

(learn more)
nomological emergence, nonformal patterns, mereological emergence, feminist science scholarship, mechanism schemata, statistical relevance relationships, teleosemantic information, nomological supervenience, emergent with respect, successful intertheoretic reduction, mereological supervenience, basic physical parts, epistemological emergence, pointer observable, textbook semantics, biorthogonal decomposition, ceteris paribus problem, reasoning from data, causal mechanical model, qualified ceteris paribus, criteria for lawfulness, algebraic states, phenetic species, process structuralists, representational items

 
last day of swimming at the college pool. closing for a year’s worth of re-modeling. been using this pool for many hundreds of kilometers over the 20 years visiting this place.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

the price of linguistic reduction

the sheer indeterminacy of ideas about things and actions and events:

Bohr was the first to recognize that the new quantum theory presented us with a view of experience in which different interactional arrangements resulted in complementary perspectives that need not be logically consistent, compatible, or commensurable, and in many critical cases could not be so. The reductionist trick was predicated on the assumption that the different ‘pieces’ or views from different perspectives could always somehow be neatly fit together. But we now know that material processes cannot be comprehended, cannot be exhaustively described within any one single self-consistent formal discourse. They always overflow the limited possibilities of our semiotic models of them. It is only by building more and more semiotic-discursive models, each internally self-consistent, but not limited by requirements of mutual consistency with each other, that we can, by adding together such ‘complementary’ views, attain to the most complete possible account of material phenomena, including semiosis itself. Thus we still come back to a version of ‘assemblage’ but hopefully a more sophisticated one, one that takes into account our own role and perspective as observers, as well as the material means by which we observe, compare, and assemble — the material mediation of our semiotic practices. — J. L. Lemke, in Material Sign Processes And Emergent Ecosocial Organization

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

between unstable renormalizability and quantum darwinism

The vacuum as an organizational phenomenon has the disturbing logical implication that the ancient dream of commanding the ultimate power of the universe just by thinking about it is a delusion, made so not by human frailty but by the very physical processes one is trying to understand. Ironically, nature abets this delusion. It can, and often does, happen that an experiment improved to reveal an ultimate cause reveals instead emergent universality of a nearby phase transition masquerading as one. This effect is unfortunately very likely to be occurring in the vacuum of space-time, for unstable renormalizability, one of its strangest attributes, is observed in tabletop experiments to emerge very generally near phase transitions. If it is indeed the case that the vacuum is characterized by a hierarchical cascade of universalities, then all of our allegedly fundamental knowledge about it is temporary, and destined to pass away in the future as experiments improve. — R. B. Laughlin

posted
  • place: Reykjavík, Iceland

Review of ISEA 94

After a raucous week in Helsinki at the ISEA 1994 conference, returning to Reykjavík, I made these notes:

To write an all-encompassing article about the ever-changing states of cybernetics in art and culture is impossible. Although every digital machine is grounded in the balanced order of Eastern religions through its binary yin-yang core, the one fundamental concept that dominates digital arts today is chaos. Furthermore, chaos and change are themselves only elements of the vast collective rush of information experience that is carrying us on into the virtual spaces of post-industrial info-society.

I recently enjoyed the very chaotic experience of attending the Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Art in Helsinki, co-sponsored by the Inter-Society on Electronic Arts (ISEA) and the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design (UIAH). The five-day conference in late August was attended by around 400 people and covered a wide range of topics, while a parallel array of artistic side-shows provided absolute proof of the far-ranging activity happening in cyberspace arts. more “Review of ISEA 94”