posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

pulling plugs

Can you make a harsh illustration about leaving Twitter because of its toxicity?

I finally pulled the plug on Twaddle, aka eX, deleting my account last month. Long overdue, and I would call on anyone else who is still propping up one of the least socially-conscious oligarchs on the planet to cease-and-desist. Meanwhile, I’ll cheer that misfit on to Mars. As for the rest of them, well, let them eat cake.

Back in the ‘aughts’ I routinely early-adopted social media platforms to maintain current experience for my teaching on what was then still called “new media”. A decade into the World-Wide-Web, 2003 or so, Web 2.0 had arrived, signaling the evolution of general ‘interactive’ web platforms that allowed for user-driven and collaborative experiences. Web 2.0 transformed the internet from a generally static platform into a space where users could dynamically create and share content, but its rise also brought about critical (social, behavioral, personal) concerns that I explored in many of my workshops and lectures. This era’s defining features—social media, user-generated content, and algorithms that tailor information, and now AI—have amplified both personal expression and misinformation, often blurring the lines between fact and opinion. While Web 2.0 promised a democratized digital space, it has led to powerful tech companies amassing vast troves of user data, raising privacy issues and consolidating control over information flow, features almost completely unregulated in the US. Surveillance Capitalism anyone? Algorithms designed to maximize engagement have also been criticized for promoting social echo chambers and polarizing content, contributing to social divides. It’s all about eyeballs in the ‘attention economy‘. Through their perversely inverted efforts to be user-centered, the oligarchs of Web fostered a landscape where manipulation, privacy concerns, and misinformation are increasingly prevalent: it’s user-centered alright, but the user is merely the object of extracted wealth.

Yup, here we are. I hadn’t been active on Twaddle for some years aside from attention paid to the CGS work account up until last year, and a very occasional glance at my feed. It was functional for a time, but the ‘new ownership’ indeed sent it to 100% shit, stimulating the departure. The entire arc of evolution completely confirmed my hypothesis how those who control a communications protocol control both the form(s) and content of the communications occurring. Not only that, but the protocol and its ‘owner’ actually tap off a certain amount of power—real social power—from those using the platform. The X possessor is a case in point, and a case that threatens the stability of the social system. I long ago departed from FazeBuch (2010) and mostly from InstaHam (still have an account but don’t post and rarely look at it).

What about BlueSky and Mastodon? They provide more direct user control without a central governing entity. Back to distributed models versus centralized models: a deep conflict that’s been raging since computing began!

Of course, in the end, there is no privacy left in the US social sphere. What you consume—from food to media, everything; where you go; who you communicate with; what you say; what you do; how much money you have; what medical issues you have; where you work; what you studied; your interests and beliefs; your voting history; your criminal and court records; ad infinitum …

Not only that, all those terabytes of data are subpoenable in a court of law: What’s your level of confidence in the justice system in the US these days?

On the related topic of concentration of wealth, that this infographic is more than ten years out of date makes it even more disturbing:

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

extinction

Consider the sum of all life, the heaped arrays of adaptations flung one after the next into the abundance of forms, each possessing codes pertaining only to its ancestors and its immediate predecessors, teeming organisms hefting around history in their cells, a library of each quirk and evolutionary indecision of the past 3.5 billion years, but only a record in each species of its single divergence from the source, with no register of errors or chance events gone awry because those were discarded to extinction, leaving a peculiar animal honed to a perfect set of symbols and codices, down to the Sonoran topminnow (Poeciliopsis occidentalis), perhaps soon to be vanquished from the planet. Protecting species is the same intrinsic gesture as preserving the original documents and constitutions of an entire civilization, or the love letters of grandparents.

Childs, Craig Leland. The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert. 1st paperback ed. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books, 2001.
posted
  • place: Cedaredge. Colorado

note to self

I’m no photographer. I take pictures, mostly rather banal pictures: re-creations, re-presentations, documentations of reality. When asked, I tell people that I photograph who I am with, what I am doing, and where I am. Suitably self-centric for the pseudo-artist.

Yes, I show up, with camera. And back when there was a physical craft involved, I excelled in the production of fine archival prints, and I was called a Master Printer. Over the years I taught many courses on the craft: master printing, photographic history, and photography. I have thousands of vintage silver, silver/sepia, and silver/selenium prints that have sat in boxes for the decades since I was last in a wet darkroom, plying that craft.

I still hold onto a selection of superb enlarger lenses, though the last enlarger I had access to—in the darkroom that I built for my father—I gave to the local college back in 2002. Their once-vibrant photography program collapsed a few years later. So much for craft, gotta sell those lenses.

oceanic detritus, Dritvík, Iceland, May ©2024 hopkins/neoscenes.
oceanic detritus, Dritvík, Iceland, May ©2024 hopkins/neoscenes. [Ed: and, no, that’s not a Lego, it’s 2-meters (7 ft) tall.]
However, in terms of an evolution of seeing, the eye, not much has changed: perhaps nothing. While specific subjects change, the overarching captures are repetitive and … banal … both in formal compositional metrics as well as the ways that the subjects are engaged. No evolution at all.

Not only that, I still can’t get a true horizontal horizon line! Dammit! Simple composition, strictures I never liked, were not transcended to a level where they could intentionally be disposed of entirely.

After five years of not carrying an analog 35mm camera, shooting only miniDV video from 2000 through 2006, I picked up a DSLR with a lens that gradually reduced itself over more than a decade’s use to a piece of garbage. And forget a clean CCD sensor. It’s worse than in the ‘old times’ with spurts of Dust-Off and manually spotting (or ‘re-touching’) negatives and prints with Spotone and tiny paint brushes. CCDs manifest every dust speck as large dark circles on the screen (and in print). Got a clear sky? Guaranteed to be covered in more-or-less distinct circular blobs. I finally upgraded to a true professional-grade DSLR a few years back—as usual, behind the current mirror-less technology—always several steps behind any state-of-the-art. The only time I was near that was when I was shooting with the two Nikon F2a bodies and a selection of decent lenses that my father generously handed down to me back in the late 1970s.

The successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to acquire a high-end large-format printer ended during Covid when—after seven years of pointless printing—one nozzle got clogged and I didn’t immediately address the issue to fix it. The printer is now a 250-pound paperweight. I could perhaps revive it, but that would require buying a full set of inks, a $2500 investment that might not pay off in the end. I only sold a handful of prints total, and gave away many more than that, by far.

At this point, my images are hardly ‘collectible’ and so the only photographic medium I am using currently is this travelog. That will not change for the duration—despite this virtual world already jam-packed with trillions of images—until the energy winds down, and all archives become cold stardust fodder.

posted
  • place: Cedaredge, Colorado

easy come easy go

The disconnect from this j-o-b evolved quickly, and … easily, though with some angst in shifting the conversion of money to time rather than the reverse. After four years of 100% remote, 3.5 years office-bound before that, immersed in the cash-for-time schema, it comes down to the last day, spent mostly shuffling bytes. I did hear from a number of colleagues and one contractor who I worked closely with during the past year, which was nice, also the head of HR sent a pleasant note. She’d been very supportive when I was in deep conflict with the mindless, unimaginative, and utterly toxic prior management of the organization (thanks to her, I won that battle, seeing the asshole off into ignominious retirement a couple years ago!).

The only communications heard from my current boss the last week was “Have a nice weekend.” Late on Friday afternoon. Seemed a bit weird. He’s got plenty other stuff to deal with at the org. Oh well. Ça suffit!

That whole week was about shuffling data and information sets and writing procedural documentation that will likely never get used. Data acquisition, storage, and display has become an end in itself in many organizations: battling externally-applied standards (see the NGMDB‘s GeMS program), and the ever-present profit-motive of market-dominating libertarian vendors seeking to cash in on all steps of the process. At the same time, the binding of the data consumers into various platform ecosystems culls resources at the receiving end. Tired of addressing all the concerns around that. And what of the science that is supposed to be happening? It’s all the same: as the granularity of data acquisition increases, more and more energy has to be applied to organize and analyze the data. This side-tracks reflection, imagination, and even basic synthesis. The path from data to information to knowledge to wisdom is now largely externalized, rather than embodied. AI, the newest arrival in the fray, is injecting itself into the knowledge/wisdom process with a limitless ferocity given asymptotic CPU capacities and the vastness of the overall information space it is learning from. I will not look to AI for wisdom, only as a holographic representation of hubris.

Today is the second “work day” where I’m not working for someone else. My “mines.edu” email account is now defunct. That chapter of life mercifully over. It will take a bit of time to unwrap mind from all the noise that it’s been filled with over the past years. And to embrace what is to come. It’s happening, here, now. Conversations ensue with the network: Finland, Iceland, Germany, and points in between.

The next step, liquidating some assets so that they are more internationally portable: currency. The first big item, prepping and selling the Cedaredge house. Will have some documentation here so if you are looking for a quiet and dark-sky second home, a writing retreat, a plot of land to start a vineyard or apricot orchard, a base for some of the best Nordic skiing in the lower 48, or if you know anyone who might be … lemme know!

Integral to that will be the losing of accumulated stuff, so that the move back to the base in Arizona is less painful. Gotta get to work!

posted
  • place: Golden, Colorado

the fear of the Other

The fear of the Other seems to be increasing across the social system — perhaps driven by population increase. With increased pressures on available resources, evolutionary traits driving competitive behavior would likely kick into action, countervailing traits that support more wide-scaled socialization. Just as humans evolved traits to operate as ‘social animals’ they must also have traits governing competitive behavior when resources get scarce. Civil society is likely a perturbation that challenges the limits of socialization (yikes, channeling the UnaBomber!). That is, evolutionary socialization is in no way able to cope with globalized society. From the vantage of now, clan-based evolution is as far as we’ve come, despite epigenetic change. Give me that chicken-wing, now, or I’ll fokkin’ kill you!

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on [symbolic] evolution

According to von Bertalanffy the consequences that man was a symbolic animal were immense. Biological evolution which was determined in other animal species by genetic changes was superseded in the human species by cultural history based on the accumulation of experience handed down from one generation to another. In addition to the accumulation of experience, cultural history was characterized by the development of symbolic skills and symbolic systems. The latter, although created by their users, were, as in the case of language subject to their own intrinsic growth and development. This factor could be an additional influence on the behavior of the participants in a symbolic system and to accelerate further the cultural and social changes. At other times the inertia of symbolic systems could cause a delay in adaptation to changing social and economic circumstances — the phenomenon which goes under the name of ‘cultural lag.’ One consequence of the fact that cultural history had in human species superseded biological evolution was a change in its time scale. The time scale of geological epochs by which biological evolution was measured had been replaced by a much foreshortened scale of historical periods by which the sociocultural change was measured.

Weckowicz, T.E., 1988. Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972): A Pioneer of General Systems Theory.

posted
  • place: Boulder, Colorado

Full dissertation text: The Regime of Amplification

Well, I guess it’s about time to put the PhD dissertation text out there in .pdf form, so, here it is (PDF download):

The Regime of Amplification

Have at it, be polite, no grabbing, pushing, or shoving. Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate. If you can prove that you’ve read it back to front, I’ll buy you a bottle of Herradura Añejo Tequila*, as long as we can split it!

*this is my hard liquor drink of choice since 1980 when it was hard to find even in the US southwest — cherished bottles imported into Iceland (bought in NYC at NY Liquors on Canal Street, the only place in NYC that carried it!) would last up to six months, like a fine Scottish whiskey, small glasses for sipping — none of that brutish slugging down shots or making margaritas with this fine distillate.

posted
  • place: Mint Wash, Prescott, Arizona

naming

Hyla arenicolor, Mint Wash, Williamson Valley, Arizona, April 2005

“What is it?” we ask, meaning what is its name? This odd quirk of the human mind: Unless we can name things, they remain for us only half-real. Or less than half-real: nonexistent. A person without a name is nobody. A human’s name can become more important than his person. A plant, an animal, a thing without a name is no thing — nothing. No wonder we humans like to think that in the beginning was — the Word. What word? Any word. Any word at all, anything rather than the silence and terror of the nameless.” —

Abbey, Edward. Abbey’s Road. New York, NY: Plume, 1991.

Plowing (ploughing) through Abbey this time, years since reading “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” his writing seems dated, depressing, even dark. So much of the landscape that he passed through is (de)evolved, so much of what he prognosticated about the Southwest, at the hands of corrupt politicians and developers has materialized like a cancer across the land. The forever-expansion, development-is-good, it-creates-jobs mantra that is chanted by deeply unholy men (and women). Bringing 4000+ square-foot pseudo-adobe MacMansions to dot the landscape along with scaled-up vehicular afterbirth: Hummers in every five-car garage. Although there are places one might go and on a middle-scale—meaning the easily visible—local scale, to the uninitiated eye, the natural system seems untouched. But with any consideration of scientific data—atmospheric systems, plant and animal ecosystems, and hydrological systems are being irretrievably altered. What of the domination of a species that will destroy most of the other macro-species only to live on briefly in an impoverished environment: soon to succumb to a viral celebration in the host of hosts. Definitely, catch it while you can. Take the last road trips around before gas costs what it should and the only way to get out of Dodge will be on foot. And the only way to survive the plague is through a slow and costly counter-evolution.

At any rate, this is a frog (possibly a Canyon Tree frog – Hyla arenicolor). But note the incredible coloration. The green exactly matches a particular lichen that grows on the granite in that area. The pinkish blush of the oxidized feldspar in the granite. There were four of them literally stuck to the side of a large smooth boulder on Mint Wash. I was sitting opposite from them, having lunch with Marianne, about 6 feet (2 meters) away, and at first I thought they were phenocrysts in the granite, but then saw they were frogs. This particular one was the only one I could get close enough to make an image of, it was crouched on a relatively reasonable ridge. The other three were glued to vertical (overhanging!) smooth surfaces, but there was a 2-meter deep hole in the creek bed, full of water immediately below them. So, this one had to do. The beautiful beast is about 1.5 inches (3 cm) long.

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

… if you notice anything suspicious …

The maxim of the Surveillance State is emitted by what is not, unfortunately, a Braindead Megaphone. The Megaphone has a brain that consists of the neural networks of all who pay attention to it, along with the processing power of the Information Society that those folks are tapped into. However, expansive State intelligence is tempered by complexity. A system that is self-monitoring creates a more-or-less dense feedback system. Any feedback sub-system affects the energy flows necessary to support the wider system it services. Within human social systems there seems to be certain degree of inherent paranoia (fear-of-death) that eventually provokes an evolution of these feedback systems, some of them more comprehensive than others (the Stasi and PRK come to mind as extreme examples, but then again, so do Google and Facebook).

Through their energy consumption extreme feedback systems overtake all but the most primitive functions of reproduction optimization (think: the weapon of rape as an expression of power and control and of the re-creation of ‘ones own’; or, state-sanctioned eugenics). The wholesale re-direction of State attention to surveillance signals the eventual end of a sustainable social system.

The maxim of the Surveillance State is an overt expression of the brutality (brutishness) of the norm, it hints at the precise locus of control (that is, within the Self … or not!).

Any expression falling outside this collectively sanctioned norm becomes an excuse, a rationale, a reason for the State to control the source of the expression.

And, by the way, the State is no single government — this is far too naive an image, one promulgated by those ignorantly focused on fearing a ‘takeover’ by the gub’ment — the State is the cumulative structure (path of flows) formed in the process of social evolution, the totality of wide-scale networks that act as binders of the social system as a whole — it is the full fabric of the social system that swaddles us and that we acquiesce to. It includes all the tools that are available to any, to all, for some to use.

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you got problems? Let me tell you …

The dialectical process whereby a solution to one prob­lem generates sets of new problems that eventually pre­clude solutions is summarized in the five steps of techno-social development.

1. Because of the interrelationships and limitations existing within a closed system, a techno-social solution is never complete and hence is a quasi-solution.

2. Each quasi-solution generates a residue of new techno-social problems arising from: (a) incomplete­ness, (b) augmentation, and (c) secondary effects.

3. The new problems proliferate at a faster rate than solutions can be found to meet them.

4. Each successive set of residue problems is more difficult to solve than predecessor problems because of seven factors: (a) dynamics of technology, (b) increased complexity, (c) increased cost, (d) decreased re­sources, (e) growth and expansion, (f) requirements for greater control, and (g) inertia of social institutions.

5. The residue of unsolved techno-social problems converge in an advanced technological society to a point where techno-social solutions are no longer pos­sible.

Stanley, T.R., 1995. Ecosystem Management and the Arrogance of Humanism. Conservation Biology, 9(2), pp.255–262.

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It has been pointed out …

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

Lotka, A.J., 1922. Contribution to the energetics of evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8, pp.147-151.)

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clade dynamics

Evolution may be dominated by biotic factors, as in the Red Queen model, or abiotic factors, as in the Court Jester model, or a mixture of both. The two models appear to operate predominantly over different geographic and temporal scales: Competition, predation, and other biotic factors shape ecosystems locally and over short time spans, but extrinsic factors such as climate and oceanographic and tectonic events shape larger-scale patterns regionally and globally, and through thousands and millions of years. Paleobiological studies suggest that species diversity is driven largely by abiotic factors such as climate, landscape, or food supply, and comparative phylogenetic approaches offer new insights into clade dynamics.

Benton, M.J., 2009. The Red Queen and the Court Jester: Species Diversity and the Role of Biotic and Abiotic Factors Through Time. Science, 323(5915), pp.728–732.

posted
  • place: Arvada, Colorado

natural selection

It has been pointed out by Boltzmann that the fundamental object of contention in the life-struggle, in the evolution of the organic world, is available energy. In accord with this observation is the principle that, in the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.

Lotka, A.J., 1922. Contribution to the Energetics of Evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 8, pp.147–151.

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more from Mr. Moglen

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. — Jim Dwyer, NYT article

posted
  • place: Prescott, Arizona

road :: amplifier / the difference?

The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:

I defined the amplifier as a concept which exists at many different scales and in both ‘natural’ and human-dominated systems (though that particular dialectic is a problematic one). It is a system which concentrates (and by default attenuates) energy flows. It is a defined set of pathways for that energy to flow along. (a life-form is an amplifier!)

(As an example, fundamental physical laws, such as the set of principles—gravitational attraction, strong/weak nuclear forces, EM radiation, thermodynamics, etc.—’govern’ the process of stellar evolution and ‘supply’ the ‘protocols’ for the ‘expression’ of Light energy (radiation) in a highly specific and concentrated form (compared to the availability of that same energy in any random location in the universe).

In essence, humans are simply harnessing these physical laws to form their own pathways of energy flow. Indeed we can do nothing else, as these laws govern the entire observed and implied universe. So the difference between the amplifier and the protocols that ‘define’ it may only be question of articulation — that is, those physical laws, in human terms, simply exist (for us to discover and articulate over time). The protocols arise as humans initiate articulations of the extant energy flows within which we simply are. So the protocol is, again, merely, a human (socio-linguistic) reduction of observed and extant phenomena. We cannot do anything counter to those phenomena that those laws are ascribed to. However, using these reductive protocols/formula, we set up a wide variety of sub-systems which, cumulatively, are our techno-social systems — complex systems of re-routed energies. As soon as energy is re-routed, you have an amplifier situation because you consequently have a concentration/attenuation of flows. An amplifier is perhaps merely the condition of the existence of a concentration of energies. (this does get into the question of the role of, for example, gravity as a ‘protocol’ which drives the coalescing of energized matter in the universe — or is gravity actually increasing the entropy of that matter?)

more “road :: amplifier / the difference?”
posted
  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

schizophonia

Originally all sounds were originals. They occurred at one time and in one place only. Sounds were then indissolubly tied to the mechanisms which produced them. The human voice traveled only as far as one could shout. …

We have split the sound from the maker of the sound. Sounds have been torn from their natural sockets and given an amplified and independent existence. Vocal sound, for instance, is no longer tied to a hole in the head but is free to issue from anywhere in the landscape. In the same instant it may issue from millions of holes in millions of public and private places around the world.

Schafer, R. Murray. (2006). The Music of the Environment in “Audio Culture.” New York: Continuum International Publishers.

This Julian Treasure talk is a very short (seven minute) but provocative dance around some issues of sound and hearing (and listening).

By substituting the concept ‘energy’ for ‘sound’ the issue expands and finds some wider principles. Action, activity, creative and destructive both, releases energy. Many times this energy is in the form of sound. Techno-social systems generate massive amounts of waste energy in this form of sonic vibrations. Living organisms tend not to generate waste sounds as any wasted energy possibly compromises the life-form (life being a negentropic energy-optimizing process). On an evolutionary scale, waste energy (in the form of adaptive experimentation by the life-form) is incrementally minimal when considered in juxtaposition to the total energy expenditure of the life-form itself. However, en masse life clearly plays a role in accelerating the production of entropy of the Terran system when considered in comparison to a planetary system without life.

Humans, in their superficially intelligent pursuit of technological solutions, especially in the recent era, have created the means to generate tremendous amounts of waste energy. While engineering is about solving problems in the most efficient manner possible, the vast majority of devices created are clearly inefficient. This is especially apparent when the entire process necessary to bring a device to a completed configuration is considered, ensemble — that is, the extraction of earth materials, transport, processing, and manufacturing.

Whenever one has a technological process, it is likely that at one or more points in the process, sonic waste energy is being spewed out into the surroundings. This plethora of waste energy impinges on the body system with (un)certain results. (Remember the experiments of playing heavy metal or classical music at plants? It’s easier to understand the effects when you consider the energy content of the two different sonic manifestations.) In a typical urban environment, a tremendous amounts of (sonic) waste energy is, literally, reverberating everywhere. Any flux of (waste) energy will change that which it encounters. It will change the energy state of everything along its pathway to eventual almost-dissolution in the un-stellar void.

Using your ears to guide you, find a place where you can comfortably be for an hour. If eyes desire — sight falling between night sky stars tracing on the retina — could carry the ears to a same-such place, life would have different potential.

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technology as life

The view that technology may be represented as a human constructed/refined pathway for the limited sense of controllable ‘natural’ forces (energies, power, flows) seems to be productive, but it needs to be tested more against deterministic or Utopian views of technology. I’m pragmatic about the outcome being an overlooked pathway hidden among the trillion-plus unique URLs in the webiverse.  Oh well. Ultimately technology is a set of (often socially-proffered) choices that the individual makes as to where to channel his/her life-energies. The channels or pathways are multiplex and are influenced by collectives of Others (both dead and alive), but ultimately are there for the individual to engage or not. Of course, there are social systems which have set rigid command-and-control systems in place to radically limit the choice of pathways available. Other social systems have evolved elaborate methodologies for persuasion so that the participating population will feel compelled to utilize certain technological pathways rather than others — often not even being aware that their ‘choice’ is an illusion.

There is a precursor situation which influences the development of external shared social protocols and that situation is within the refined evolutionary structure of the body-system. The body, as with any life-form, is itself a powerful system for the (consumption and) directed expression of energies, both internally through various sub-systems, and externally as a unitary and singular body. It is the primary technological system (and then all life is a technology…!).

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From The Regime of Amplification to The Road

[editor: this document was used for a mid-way doctoral assessment at the University of Technology Sydney and no longer reflects the final content of the PhD dissertation as of the April 2012 submission at La Trobe University in Melbourne. The presentation was accompanied by the video that is posted at the end.]

Abstract

The DCA project “The Road” is a psycho-geographic perambulation through a web of personal, social, and universal trajectories which form a new knowledge-base on the cosmos as an entropic system of energy flows. Within this worldview the project explores human presence, encounter, and interaction including a close look at the effects of techno-socially prescribed protocols on those indeterminate flows of energy. As a multi-modal online data-space, the project offers a variety of navigational strategies connecting a rich variety of audio, video, text, and image sources from the candidate’s extensive personal archive of creative material.

Introduction

The armature for this DCA as originally proposed was the concept of the amplifier. An amplifier is essentially a device that takes an incoming flow of energy (signal), and through an influx of power, generates a defined outflow of energy with a greater (directed) intensity. The amplification process needs an independent energy source to increase the signal strength. It also requires a set of protocols that guide the flow of energy from input through output: a coherent signal is a controlled energy flow as defined by applied protocols.

The road, as an expression of a techno-social system (TSS), exemplifies, or, more precisely, is one of these protocol-defined pathways. It was this realization during the last year of research which shifted my focus from the amplifier to the road as both a real and metaphoric concept that opens a rich space for inquiry. The road allows the TSS to express amplified energy flows along its protocol-defined pathway. It is not difficult to conceptually extend the idea of the road as any pathway for the directed and concentrated expression of energy of a TSS. more “From The Regime of Amplification to The Road”

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The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming

roadside memorial, near Bitter Springs, Arizona, USA, March 2010
ed: This short note is the epilogue for the Migrating:Art:Academies: book. Because of the heavy-duty editorial tasks, I otherwise didn’t have time to write something more comprehensive on the ideas surrounding movement and learning, maybe next time!

We suspect that even though travel in the modern world seems to have been taken over by the Commodity — even though the networks of convivial reciprocity seem to have vanished from the map — even though tourism seems to have triumphed — even so — we continue to suspect that other pathways still persist, other tracks, unofficial, not noted on the map, perhaps even secret pathways still linked to the possibility of an economy of the Gift, smugglers’ routes for free spirits, known only to the geomantic guerrillas of the art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

This volume Migrating:Art:Academies: represents yet another step on the (linguistic) migration from nation to nation, academy to academy, culture to culture, friend to friend, order to order, life through life. As with the first volume, Migrating Realities, any impossible contortions of English are this editor’s responsibility, and given the time constraints for this latest MigAA tome, there are sure to be some short-comings. But then, of all the movements within the social, language migrates the most of all. It is never static. Nor should it be, especially as it accompanies the learning process — a process which is essentially about encountering and naming that which is not (yet) known. more “The End of the Road and The Onset of Dreaming”

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etc…

The holistic energy-based model is necessary for sense, harmony, and accuracy (in accordance with observed phenomena). However, the entire point is to frame a (creative) praxis that has a broader awareness of the complex inter-relations of things (beyond things, well into flows!). This suggests a constant critique of the status quo, a presumption that life is not proceeding with enough creativity or enough vis viva. When is enough enough? (Too much is never enough!). But are these volumetric quantities anyway? Spatial, Cartesian? Nah! Creativity is a flow, non-localized (it affects all): it is characterized by temporary states, transitory awareness, evolutionary phase changes. It is continuous and indeterminate, available always in the interstitial actions which lie outside the control of the social system.

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myopia and narrow vision

What is certain is that even a skill as abstract as literacy has an unexpectedly strong physical aspect. In the history of humanity, our attention has shifted from the horizon to the length of our own arms: the printed page or the electronic monitor, or at the farthest the television screen. (p. 237)
Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity, Tenner, E., Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2003

 
This shifting of attention has deeply affected the eyes, with a documented rise in myopia in more literate societies. Nothing like a myopic population: with the simultaneous illusion of tele-vision being foisted on bodies everywhere!

Edward Tenner, in Our Own Devices examines a number of basic technologies and their affect on embodied cultural/social participation. Think athletic shoes, chairs, eyeglasses, typewriters/keyboards, baby nursing bottles, flip-flops, and helmets. Where did they come from, why did they develop, and ultimately, what is their affect on users.

There are so many examples of this, one need only select any particular technology and begin to meditate on its source, its uses and (mis)applications: the affects on human presence gradually become apparent. The deeper the meditation on these, and the wider the field of affect is likely to surface. Tenner’s detailed histories become a bit tedious if the reader’s curiosity wears away, as the tone of the writing doesn’t change throughout, but it is in the examination of the details that connections can be made and eventually some basic principles emerge. Tenner himself is a bit glib about the meaning of the deduced affectations, and remains neutral with a slightly optimistic outlook.

In the case of computer keyboards, though, for example, he does not go beyond the direct dialectic between inventor, device, and user. Doing this, he neglects the affectations that arise not from direct usage of a device, but the indirect affects which are present as the widest context in which the device arises in a complex techno-social system. Clearly, this is not his goal, rather it appears to be more of an entertaining and surficial cabinet-of-curiosity stroll through the obscure history of everyday objects. In my opinion he misses a potent opportunity to carry through to the deeper relations between technology, technique, fundamental social relation, and embodied be-ing.

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desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)

Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system’s process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow’s needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through — steps/degrees of flow alteration.] more “desire, complexity, simplicity, determinism (mix-up mash-up)”

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tool-making and control

Nadine's hand, Alsace, France, June 1988

If one constructs a tool, what is one doing, and why is one doing it? How will one do it?

How to control of flows around oneself? And what does this control mean? Where does the desire to control arise from? Is it simply about evolutionary (survival/procreative) pressures? Is there anything about control that is altruistic (or simply outside of the broadly evolutionary imperative)?

The divide between life-forms that make tools and ones that don’t is fundamental, but it may be ignored when regarding the smooth continuum framing life as a system(?) that alters the flows of energy around it generally to its advantage (or to its need to continue — life is about life needing to continue life). The divide then appears to arise only when one considers how (from a mechanistic p.o.v.) that control is exerted.

mine, Bitburg, Germany, July 1988

This divide seems especially arbitrary when the body itself may be seen as a tool. The mechanical relations between bone structures, for example, or the magnifying ability of the lens in the eye. And, extending the definition of tool beyond the purely mechanical to, say, chemical, the body is a clearly a refinery in the exact same sense as a petroleum refinery. It conducts a wide-ranging set of thermodynamically driven reactions to access and distribute concentrated energy sources that it has introduced to its system. While there is a material dividing plane, the skin, which historically looms largely absolute in determining many classifications of relation and order, that plane may also be seen as arbitrary. The surface tissues — including the entire gut and lungs — are highly permeable surfaces which are constantly interchanging matter and energy with the environment they are in. In an optimal sense, at a particular time, this interchange process does not degrade the general order of the biotic system, but it does precipitate localized and systemic change. Also to be considered are the millions of microscopic organisms which synergize with the larger human body system — without which that system would likely not survive.

Andrea, Jersey City, New Jersey, May 1988

Are there, then, distinctions to be made based on body-as-tool and the ‘external’ tool that the body/mind system synthesizes? Or are these distinctions merely artifacts of the entire mechanistic p.o.v.?

It would seem so. If one considers, again, the relations within the body between , say, limb or organ, where a part may be seen as having a particular function which benefits or affects another part. A particular part has a function (as any tool also has) which aids in the performance of the body-system and interacts with other specific mechanisms in the body. In a living body-system these inter-relations are both necessary and sufficient if one includes the those moving between the body and the external. The body is seen as an indivisible whole, but without the constant interactions with the external environment, it would, for practical purposes, dis-integrate immediately.

The point of this short meditation is to emphasize the process which a tool, by definition, precipitates. That process is the fundamental alteration of the energy flows to which the tool is applied. This process unites the purpose of both internal and external systems for energy flow change which may be seen as a tool. The body is a technology as much as anything external to it which causes an alteration of extant energy flows. (Uff, this suggests that life itself be defined as a technology as it always alters the flows around it — we are life, we alter the flows around us, we are a technology.)

The division between tool-makers and those organisms which do not make tools may then be seen as a somewhat arbitrary one. Both organisms are needful of altering the surrounding flows to survive, they actualize that need via evolved mechanisms as they relate with those particular flows. The ultimate point for both internal and external tool use is the optimized continuance of life.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

innovation

Fundamental innovations almost always seem to come from outside the established market leaders, who suffer ‘path dependency.’ Established firms are usually too committed to a particular conception of what their product is. This commitment is embedded in its manufacturing process and endemic in the thinking of its managers. When a major innovation appears, a leading firm understands the technology, but remains committed to its product and its production system.

Technology Matters: Questions to Live With, Nye, David E., MIT Press, Boston, 2006.

Technology, at base, may be defined as a means or pathway to gather and concentrate the (productive) energies of individuals in a social grouping. The difference between inventions lost in the detritus of history and those that become widely integrated in a social system is not necessarily related to the efficiency of the technology itself. The primary difference lies in the efficiency with which the broader social system uses the technological pathway as an effective means of tapping into the individual energies of the population. The broader social system is usually controlled by a subset of people, elites, who impose the pathway on the whole (and who tap off a surplus of energy from the pathway). It is controlled by those who define the pathway of flow. Set pathways have come into being to benefit those who are accessing the concentrated powers they provide. When a pathway is set, it has a built-in inertia which more-or-less resists alteration. This inertia is a mapping of a (counter-(r)evolutionary) resistance of human systems to change. The resistance comes from the relationship of energy flow that the pathway is defining. Individuals participating in either giving and receiving energy are reluctant to change the architecture of that relationship: it is a symbiotic relationship. There can be no receivers without those willing to give their life-energy and attentions to the receivers. Change comes hard. Innovation, the tendency to seek (newer and more) optimal pathways, is always negatively affected by this resistance to some degree. A(ny) technological pathway, once fixed upon, is adapted to and becomes the norm. (The Machine Stops, by E. M. Forster is a nice fictional sketch of this from 1900.)

Nye addresses many other topics aside from innovation, so I’ll be picking through his book in the next days.

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technology fails

20100116 The latch handles on both the driver- and passenger-side door are broken. There is a certain geometry on the plastic lever-arm which, over time of repeated lifting motions, fails. So I have to replace them. The truck is relatively old, compared to the average age of vehicles on the road. I call the Toyota dealer nearby, and they want almost USD100 for each replacement handle. This is called an OEM part — Original Equipment Manufactured — a part which carries some of the branded weight of the maker and its record of quality along with a premium price (including a substantial markup to underwrite the existence of the dealer distribution system). Too much! I knew this would be the case before I called, but I wanted to set a ceiling price before looking elsewhere, online. This particular vehicle model was globally a widely-distributed frame, body, and engine combination and so there turns out to be a substantial non-OEM parts market. The only question is one of quality. Non-OEM parts online appear to be both Mainland Chinese- and Taiwanese-made with what seems to be a substantial US distribution presence in the form of highly discounted warehouses designed for online mail-order sales (with Ebay, Amazon, and their own web sales presence). I find the parts, in several styles (chromed plastic and black) for a small fraction of the OEM cost, USD 20 with free shipping. more “technology fails”

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fealty to nexus

without framing the precise context, a couple quick notes to Rob, regarding the Internet of Things (IOT) and social pro-activity:

sotto voce: I’m not sure these two concepts — decentralized and protocol — can occupy the same actualization (of the techno-social)… protocols arise through a shake-down/feedback/evolution of social relation which ultimately cannot be distributed: but instead they concentrate at certain crux points along social connectors that may not be ‘central’ in that material sense, but that do form a nexus (Latin, ‘a binding together’) which all participating members must drive their expressions through — as a form of fealty to those protocols. Technically, this is not ‘central,’ but because it is formative to the life-trajectories that the participants live out, it is of the same affectation as any (‘centralizing’) social stricture. It’s only a question of degree, how much or how little it alters that individual trajectory to its own purposes. Essentially it is a question of what is done with the shared energy that collects along a shared (protocol-defined) pathway of life-energy. The norm is such that the energy collected from shared social participation cannot (easily) be utilized for the good of the individual. Instead the energy is used for the good of the collective, or, worst case, for a(n elite) subset of the collective. Thus is is statistically rare that there is general satisfaction by all individuals in a collective as to where their collective energy is expressed. (Except when we are talking military victory — where survival-for-procreation is extended by a time.)

and

sotto voce: Unfortunately, however, the language upon which the computational process (devices as well) is constructed upon has that subject/object stasis built in to it at the most fundamental level of the language(protocol) itself. So, to loose oneself from the deterministic relevancy of that system is perhaps not possible because it pervades the underlying ‘logic’ of the system which a ‘new’ form of computational ‘perception’ can’t escape. One might have to code in Sanskrit … in the heart.

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difference, edges

Meanwhile, thinking about difference and edges. Organisms are distinguished by defined/refined difference between themselves and that-which-surrounds through changes in the characteristics of the field/flux. There is also an internal(ized) sensitivity to difference that arises in an organism — as an evolutionary trait related to the search for usable energy gradients as a source for ensuing negentropic action or use. Distinguishing difference: how does it arise and proceed? Or is the energy gradient, a fundamental expression of difference, difference itself? Skin seems to be absolute and abrupt but in fact is a layered, gradational transition from Self to what is out there. And, in fact, if there is a continuous energized substrate within/below/of all, there is only difference in relatively and locally definable by characteristics which are circumscribable with non-absolute frames of reference … sheesh …

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the American Dream is only to survive

David Brooks, columnist at the New York Times writes in this commentary on New Years Day:

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

I have always enjoyed his pragmatism and basic awareness of a wider historical context. It frames the American Way as (merely another) expression of a global continuum of human presence on the planet. And he seems largely to avoid the hybridized reli(geo)-political Destiny’s Child(ish) mentality that so pervades the fragmentary remnants of mediated public discourse in this declining nation-state. more “the American Dream is only to survive”

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

another spadeful of encounter

In the contemporary framework of human encounter—dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence—life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange.

Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?

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Redirecting the Flows of Energy in Natural Systems

(but wait a minute, LIFE is, by definition, a redirecting of the flows of energy in a natural system — a redirecting that is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of living systems — according to basic non-equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems.)

However, there is a scalar difference between humans and other living entities where some humans attempt this kind of control on wide scales, with others re-directing those same energies to completely different configurations, some only images of what their ‘original’ pattern of flow once were. (it’s a question of degree?)
more “Redirecting the Flows of Energy in Natural Systems”

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roadkill

death strewn on the highway. roadkill. carnivore, herbivore, amphibian, insect: getting to the other side of the road is just part of the inexorable (natural) systemic flow. Roadkill represents one intersection of human-defined flows and naturally-existing flows. The result of this fundamental intersection is near-death or absolute annihilation, a rapid reduction to component complex molecules. from the thathunk of meatier species to the simple fluttering splat of the butterfly. Leathery carcasses that persist for days despite the brutal pounding of truck tires and hard-to-remove stains on the windshield that resist even the most vigorous squeegee scrubbing whilst filling-up the tank.

Insects with a low weight-to-surface-area ratio can sometimes avoid liquidation by the slipstream effect which will carry them up and over the vehicle. But trajectory is all, and the meatier bugs, the swarming locusts and grasshoppers, have too much mass in their sagging torsos to experience this sanctified reprieve and thus become one with their maker in a soul-wrenching milli-second that can be a marvel of colorful abstraction a-la Pollack.

Along one stretch of the UFO Highway in Nevada, red locusts were on the march northward along a specific pathway that they were intent on following without regard to individual survival. At 60 MPH, the dynamic was such that their flight reaction to the approaching truck got them only a couple feet off the ground, not over the height of the hood, so, the lower grill was a mass of dessicated carcasses by the time we got to the Grand Army of the Republic Highway, a hundred miles away. Many more were simply crushed by the wheels, leaving greasy red-greenish stains on the road and in the wheel-wells: their natural trajectory on the ground was clearly discernible where it intersected with roads. I noticed in the gas station parking lot in Ely there was a small flock of birds who were picking over the the resulting detritus on the ground, and when they could manage, actually hanging onto the grills and directly harvesting the carnage, ‘burp!’ What would the evolutionary outcomes be? Birds that can smell idling cars? Locusts who tunnel for 40 feet underground when they encounter traces of heavy hydrocarbons, with luck, getting to the other side.

Larger animals, the mammals are the worst, though, when encountered at any speed. Moose and elk torsos will behave something like the old paper-straw-through-the-raw-potato trick — inertial physics at its most fundamental. The front bumper of the car will take out the long spindly legs whilst the massive quarter-ton of body-meat, at just the right height to clear the hood, will simply stay where it is. But where it is relative to the speeding windshield means that it will simply obliterate anything in the front seats of the vehicle. At low speeds, this can mean a struggling, injured animal in the laps of struggling, injured humans, gah.

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dipping into Ellul

Morning reading, sparking off Jacques Ellul’s classic, The Technological Society, where he attempts the first comprehensive definition and discussion of technology as something that pervades and underlies social formation(s). He also discusses a distinct relationship between the machine and technology, where the machine is the most important and obvious aspect of technology; where mechanization “transforms everything it touches into a machine;” but where technology is a cumulative way (perhaps expression?) of integration of the machinic into the social fabric, it is represented by a continuous re-formation of the (human) life-form(s) to the techno-social system. Without this impelling force, humans, as simply another evolutionary life-form expression, would not have arrived at where they are in this moment.
more “dipping into Ellul”

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stories from stricture

from Kevin Hamilton on the iDC list:

Thanks for sharing this tantalizing bit from your project Chris, I’m sure eager to see more of the outcomes. You rightfully remind us that framing the discussion in terms of ideologies or worldviews, even economically-influenced ones, leaves out the fact that there are bodies moving around (or not moving), generating these stories.

Much of the flow of human resources (beings) as a primary energy source, was facilitated (forced along) by the formative pathways of the Military-Industrial complex (Interstate highway system, for example, the car culture in general, etc, ad nauseum). It was the prescribed protocollary forces of that M-I system that facilitated (required!) mobility of the bodies as a dispensable resource. And that enforced mobility had a cost — the essential alienation of the displaced Self. This displaced Self would have been a major social problem in regards to social stability, but that problem was muted by universal consumerism (chain retailing) which imposed a sameness on most major (Cartesian) points under the domain of the M-I complex. The pathways remain the same, but the strictness of their applied impression on each individual gives rise to a plethora of different stories: variations on a theme.

These energy flows are not arbitrary, but are complex interactions between evolutionary expressions of life on the planet (humans as perhaps a non-unique expression of that life, in principle) and how techno-social systems re-form and impress pathways on those energies…

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  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

on participation, part one

I was telling someone the other day that I am a good participant. I know how to jump into a situation and contribute in a way that is sensitive to the ambient flows that are happening at the same time as clearly manifesting a unique set of contributing flows. Perhaps a bit too conservative in respecting the paths of those ambient flows, but it’s probably better to be slightly more conservative than liberal. Uhh, such loaded terms. Useless words after they are so distorted by socio-politics of certain cultural configurations. Although it is ironic to note that here in Australia their political meaning is in (antipodal) opposition. Which simply emphasizes the idiocy of politics (as Peter Tosh observed once: Politics, “poli” means people, “ticks” are parasites, politics, parasites on the people). Words, language, always tends to go through this reification process. Followed by a morphing process when the reified language becomes overwhelmed when attempting to explicate new situations or when circumscribing known situations with a different point-of-view. The reified structures will be bolstered and protected until usage simply makes them redundant.
more “on participation, part one”

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Weltanschauung

The construction of a worldview is a process of feedback, memory, and resonance with that memory arising out of an awareness of difference.

We know remarkably little about the ground functions of practically the entire system we are embedded within.

Writing an idiosyncratic worldview oscillates between the interior and exterior of being. It moves through all culture and social systems, the natural world, and every code encoded, every text ever written. To this passage is mixed lived impression, the accumulate energized traces that life leaves on the body — traces that, ultimately, are memory. And through memory, life compares these two strands: difference arises.

Traces of word and traces of where and when word arrived into the body-system: spoken, written, the two means to no end. Each in arrangement, in relation with an Other, Others. The relation to the Other defined by inarticulate resonance framed and directed into word, and left as traces both embodied and those dis-embodied, change left behind as bodies pass by. more “Weltanschauung”

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MEP and other things

Presuming the Terran system is a (fully) self-regulating system, then the hypothesis would have to include the entire evolutionary process which produced human beings among other biota under the particular macroscopic and microscopic availing conditions. Self-regulation would then suggest that the system will solve the current problems of human over-population and resource spoilage as it solves all other oscillations of what is a system in thermodynamic disequilibrium. Biospheric self-organization (among a holistic range of other mechanisms that we likely have no clue about in the moment), will do it’s thing. Despite, in spite of, and at the effect of what a specific biotic evolutionary line is doing. There is plenty of data showing wide-scale fluctuations in, for example, atmospheric components related to changing biotic fluxes.

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Proxemics

I would prefer that this whole thesis stay out of the regime imposed by semiotics — that is, the approach to social inquiry as an expression of how the dominant worldview is itself dominated by abstracted elements, rather than focusing on the flows of energy themselves. The abstracted systems do, of course, have a heavy bearing on the regime of flows within the social, as they do govern the pathways along which energy flows. However, in order to understand the dynamics of the flows which underlie the abstractions, one has to clear away the abstraction. I hope to frame the issue of language and protocol only to the degree that makes it possible to subtract it from the picture.

Consider the difference as framed following: when two people are speaking to each other, one can make a fundamental structural observation that breaks down the process into the movement of sonic energy and the presence of language-as-protocol. What is the sonic element? It is the movement of embodied energy, energy arising from the embodied presence of one person, arising from the complex negentropic life-processes of one’s self. This particular energy ‘form’ arises through the precise evolutionary configuration of body that allows for that particular expression: the lungs, the throat, the voice box, the mouth, and so on. It is projected through the ‘medium of substances’ from the Self to the Other, into the embodied presence of the second. Into the ear canal to energize the neural system that is hearing. This is a fundamental. This phenomena exists independent of the language being used, and regardless whether that language is shared by the two people.

Proxemics then becomes a question of potentialities and possibilities of flow or not-flow as proffered by the arrangement of energized bodies (at all scales!) — not simply a systematic coding of the arrangements and orientations of bodies in a Cartesian space. Hall does include body-heat (thermal code) in his list of proxemic behavior along with other sensory “codes,” but stays away from the actuality and implications of energetics (as illustrated by the previous paragraph. (A System for the Notation of Proxemic Behavior, Edward T. Hall, American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 65, No. 5, Selected Papers in Method and Technique (Oct., 1963), pp. 1003-1026)

The presence of language, then, is a formulator of meaning. Language does not carry energy itself. What one says is different than how one says it. The use of language (merely) imposes a modulation (amplitude, frequency, in time), a protocol on the energy movement. This modulation is a learned social function. And of that imposed modulation: when examined closely, it loses some of its monumental qualities (semiotics-as-deterministic-abstraction-of-abstraction):

There is no language in itself, nor any universality of language, but a concourse of dialectics, patois, slangs, special languages. There exists no ideal “competent” speaker-hearer of language, any more that there exists a homogeneous linguistic community … there is no mother tongue, but a seizure of power by a dominant tongue within a political multiplicity. — Deleuze and Guattari (Rhizome)

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  • place: Ultimo, NWS, Australia

more Buber

Human dialogue, therefore, although it has its distinctive life in the sign, that is in sound and gesture (the letters of language have their place in this only in special instances, as when, between friends in a meeting, notes describing the atmosphere skim back and forth across the table), can exist without the sign, but admittedly not in an objectively comprehensible form. On the other hand an element of communication, however inward, seems to belong to its essence. But in its highest moments dialogue reaches out even beyond these boundaries. It is completed outside contents, even the most personal, which are or can be communicated. Moreover it is completed not in some ‘mystical’ event, but in one that is in the precise sense factual, thoroughly dovetailed into the common human world and the concrete time-sequence. more “more Buber”

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  • place: Ultimo, NSW, Australia

energy/complexity

Energy has always been the basis of cultural complexity and it always will be. The past clarifies potential paths to the future. One often-discussed path is cultural and economic simplicity and lower energy costs. This could come about through the “crash” that many fear — a genuine collapse over a period of one or two generations, with much violence, starvation, and loss of population. The alternative is the “soft landing” that many people hope for — a voluntary change to solar energy and green fuels, energy-conserving technologies, and less overall consumption. This is a Utopian alternative that, as suggested above, will come about only if severe, prolonged hardship in industrial nations makes it attractive, and if economic growth and consumerism can be removed from the realm of ideology. — Joseph A. Tainter

There is much to explore in the ideas around organizational complexity/simplicity correlated with high/low energy requirements for a system — essentially basic thermodynamics (it always comes down to this). If the wider (widest) scale of human systems could scale social complexity down, the energy requirements would experience a correlative drop. But this is a very substantial IF. And it would mean that the energy reach of the average individual would consequently contract. And human natures seem to preclude any sacrifice of control that is a crucial part of the existing order. China fancies itself victorious, clambering over other nations to arrive soon at the top of the influential complexity heap, but it will soon discover that the price for this status is, literally, high. And it too, as a complex system, will gradually implode again. Though likely not after extracting, demanding, a high flow, or tribute, as the US is now doing, from the global system. That flow comprising the over-consumption and thus concentration of widely distributed materials which now, in their post-use state leave the globe energetically worse off. In the end this is not an issue of nation-state guilt, it is simply the evolutionary state of the tool-wielding bipedal mammalian species. The (over-consuming) developed world crosses many demographic and geographic borders, while likewise the under-consumers are widely distributed.

The human species may be seen as having evolved in the service of entropy, and it cannot be expected to outlast the dense accumulations of energy that have helped define its niche. Human beings like to believe they are in control of their destiny, but when the history of life on Earth is seen in perspective, the evolution of Homo sapiens is merely a transient episode that acts to redress the planet’s energy balance. — David Price

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property

as an example of the problematic of owning, and of property in general, as it is defined in Western social codes:

The proprietor, the robber, the hero, the sovereign — for all these titles are synonymous — imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control; that is, he pretends to be the legislative and the executive power at once . . . [and so] property engenders despotism . . . That is so clearly the essence of property that, to be convinced of it, one need but remember what it is, and observe what happens around him. Property is the right to use and abuse . . . if goods are property, why should not the proprietors be kings, and despotic kings — kings in proportion to their facultes bonitaires? And if each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property, absolute king throughout his own domain, how could a government of proprietors be any thing but chaos and confusion? — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

and

Property, acting by exclusion and encroachment, while population was increasing, has been the life-principle and definitive cause of all revolutions. Religious wars, and wars of conquest, when they have stopped short of the extermination of races, have been only accidental disturbances, soon repaired by the mathematical progression of the life of nations. The downfall and death of societies are due to the power of accumulation possessed by property. — Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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fragmentation

… this false reification of the self is basic to the planetary ecological crisis in which we find ourselves. We have imagined that we are a unit off survival and we have to see to our own survival, and we imagine that the unit of survival is the separate individual or a separate species, whereas in reality through the history of evolution, it is the individual plus the environment, the species plus the environment, for they are essentially symbiotic. — Gregory Bateson

This is exactly what Bohm is talking about when he frames the absolute disaster that a fragmented and materialist worldview has delivered us to (and to us!). And how a holistic and symbiotic view is the only way out of the crisis.

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Energy and Society

Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.

(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)

Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.
more “Energy and Society”

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a small discovery

finding some interesting material from Leslie White, an anthropologist who wrote on cultural evolution and based his views on the idea that cultural systems are ultimately technological systems and that these systems can be ranked by their level of energy use and their capacity to access and utilize adequate energy resources. he had a troubled later life between his wife of 30 years dying and his slide into alcoholism. hmmmm

and then Fred Cottrell, a sociologist writing in his book Energy and Society (1955) about a social systems need for a net energy return. not sure if I can find a copy of this in the Australia uni library system, but hope to.

The evidence for Lotka’s position is not yet sufficient to make it clear that it should be formulated into a law. But the tendency it expresses … fits other evidence that ability to control energy conversion is one factor involved in the persistence of patterns that require energy for their replication. Certainly the patterns of observable human behavior fall into that category. Man cannot escape thermodynamics … his effectiveness in controlling energy conversion so that is serves his needs and satisfies his values is one measure of his probable survival in a habitat. — W. Fred Cottrell

posted
  • place: Sydney, NSW, Australia

structural organization

Structural organization. Weaving this space of inquiry, exposé, or a web of deceit. A fabric of cloaking, or a dust cover for an old arm chair.

Van Leeuwen’s overview (in Multimodal Discourse) of an expressive situation that he labels semiotic production frames first a (situated) discourse which is then subject to design (to shape the delivery mechanism) which is materially formed in the production process followed by distribution (one-to-many propagation). These conceptual and actual stages are closely bound to a semiotics-based view which is rooted in the abstracted space of language and representation. This, despite the fact that the expressive action is indeed a real, tangible movement of energies from the producer to the receiver/consumer — it is not abstract. It is in this space between the models built in the abstracted semiotic space and the real executions that Dialogue, in the extended definition that I propose, occurs. It does not preclude any (most) semiotic models, but is sets the limits of their applicability that arise from the abstraction process that is inherent in language. The Dialogue model looks at these processes, steps in semiotic production as a continua of socially applied protocols which guide (provide a pathway for) energized expression from the Self to the Other — so that semiotic production is clearly not the thing itself, but an abstraction of it. (Van Leeuwen notes this when reflecting on the separation from embodiment that written language imposed on this abstraction process).
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  • place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

to be mindful of modalities

exploring modalities of communication. of connection, of be-ing. Kittler shows up on the radar immediately (hmmm, recalling that extremely uncomfortable evening with him in that bar in Linz before the Intertwinedness happening. he needed the table to circulate around him. and it did because of the language (protocol) gap. I was not fluent in German enough to access the discussion that inevitably circulated, hovered, around him. strange situation. instead I talked with his assistant (and translator whose name I have now forgotten), a young American who came to worship Kittler in Berlin for a time. I left early as I had to catch a train to Copenhagen early the next morning.)

how to bind energy in to the text [as the particular creative output]. to be released in TIME. to the proper receiver.

that from an earlier travelogue entry. it clearly has been on mind for a long time. actually the transition from print-making to performance/happening was a mapping of that need. finding that the silver print was just too rigid a platform when compared to presence. although the print is, as with anything, in retrospect, a resonance of presence and be-ing as is any trace left in the wake of life.
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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

another 50th

I stick around for Chris’ 50th as his folks, John and Barbara, also come into town on their way between Iowa and Tucson. nice to catch up with them. Barbara reminds me about her chocolate-chip cookies when she mentions she doesn’t have any with her. this references the care packages she would send to Chris when he and I were room-mates back at 148 Washington in Golden — she would usually include a tin of her fabulous cookies which Chris would share generously. got to snag the recipe someday. or, film her making them.

all this visiting. catching up. exploring territories. hearing stories. mapping out lives. recitations, prognostications on weather and politics and social systems. sampling lives. and seeing time pass forwards inexorably.

keeping up appearances (the cost of social participation), requires energy. energy paid into the system. (was this the lament of the Man?) versus what? appearing as The Self is and allowing for personal idiosyncrasy, proceed with no particular thought as to impact, just to channel what comes in life.

Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART … EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who — from his state of freedom — the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand — learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER. — Joseph Beuys

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  • place: Columbia, Missouri

Randy Olson

(00:56:52, stereo audio, 109.2 mb)

attend a screening last night of Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos at the RagTag Cinema in Columbia. he was in attendance. and again this morning, he gave a presentation for science academics at the university as a part of their Darwin Days (where the Chair of the Life Sciences Department pointed out they were not allowed to say “celebration” but rather “commemoration”). the film’s premise was to map out the way both sides of the evolution/creationist divide are communicating and presenting their POV to the public. scientists are shown to be poor communicators, creationists shown to be poor communicators except for some who know the value of style and appearance (the Discovery Institute being the chief antagonists posing as a non-partisan think-tank). they are the ones leading the issues. in the same way Republicans have been successful in constructing the narratives guiding the story-following population to the conservative Nirvana. Olson, a former Harvard PhD biologist transitioned to Hollywood via a degree at USC’s film school. he now tells stories that bridge the divide between science and the general public. but the leap from stories to action — stories that form a context for action — well, there is generally a passivity that is a condition of listening/watching a story recitation. listening to stories has to stop at some point. so, the story has to have a transitional mechanism leading to action. how does that work? telling a story and have action arise out of the exchange of energies. the attentive focus of absorbing a story transforming into world-changing action. in the evening Nick and I catch the screening of Sizzle also by Olson. overheard today:

mass media is directed at the pelvic floor, but what about having Kegels for Consciousness…?

later a repaired drum appears, as does a Tibetan singing bowl, and a basket full of instruments. resonant sound-making ensues.

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  • place: Boulder, Colorado

negative lands

Sarah invites me to go to a morning pre-screening in the Atlas Center of the movie Speaking in Code along with David and some of the other principles from the Boulder Media Festival. They are considering the flick for screening at the next festival. It’s … okay … funny how historical the scene got so quickly. Ancient times, techno seems.

Right after lunch, I meet Holly at the UMC and we take a wander around campus talking about her options upon graduation from high school this spring. We make a visit to David’s office to talk about the TAM program, etc. it’s cold out, and the art department is now a construction site. I decide to cycle downtown to meet Sarah and Kate later at the Laughing Goat. Then still later, we wander back up to campus to catch negativland who Jane brought to CU for a couple (free!) shows featuring their concentrated and comprehensive performance on the mediated social system of religion in It’s All In Your Head FM.

We believe that the healthy evolution of art and creativity has more value than simply counting how much money is lost or made. Art, science and technology have evolved because of how we all build upon the ideas and works of those who came before us. Copyright was always intended as a balancing act between giving ownership to creators so as to provide incentive to create new works, and allowing works to lapse into the public domain so that new ideas could develop. But our founding fathers could never have imagined the kind of world we live in today and the amazing new technologies that we are surrounded with – technologies that encourage and inspire us to interact with the world and create in unprecedented new ways. Protecting the author of a creative work is a good thing, but the benefits of copyright have been thrown off balance by the disproportionate influence of those with the most money. In fact, the more recent expansions of our nations copyright laws represents a break from our nations past and from the intentions of our own Constitution. — Mark Hosler

Long day, many ideas are danced around. It’s good to see former students so active with things, thoughts, and spirits.

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thesis proposal :: Basics

Title

Sonic Presence Within The Networked Regime of Amplification

This research explores the relationship of (sonic)energy to social be-ing, technology, and the consequent possibilities for creative action.

Subject

Sound is energy, sound carries energy. Sonic energy is a product and a by-product of life. It forms one expression of organismic presence. It is one particular energized expression of our band-limited life that developed its particular characteristics through evolutionary processes. These processes are essentially structured around variations in the (spatial and temporal) concentrations and availabilities of energy. As one such expression, sound is employed as one means through which humans enhance their survivability. Amplification represents a particular model for what is essentially a life-process that operates on various energy flows, modulating their basic characteristics. How human collectives generate and interact with sonic energy governs a wide swath of their consequent techno-social interactions. This research is a distributed exploration of sound as a carrier of energy between the Self and the Other — as it is mediated through the globe-spanning network of techno-social amplification systems. Specifically, it will be a critical exploration of our contemporary techno-social terrain through the application of this model in a variety of creatively energized situations.

Outcomes

Formally, outcomes will include the dissertation, live/online performances, workshops, a blog, festival participation, and conference presentations. Through developing an energy-based model that amplification provides an armature for, it is my hope that this research will generate a powerful tool for analyzing and understanding the dynamic affects of technological systems on creative human engagement at all scales. This knowledge will be applied to facilitate actual situations for this engagement to be explored.

Keywords

amplification, sound, (sonic) energy, power, technology, techno-social systems, networks, continuum of relation, dialogue, collaboration, presence, sustainable creativity, social action, entropy, thermodynamics

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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”