When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented them. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be contained in brains. So we learned to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library. A book is made from a tree. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House, Inc., 2002 ed. New York, NY: Random House, 2002.
Somewhat innocent optimism on Sagan’s part, as the book is only one particular mechanism for the externalization of memory: there are costs across all means. ‘Social’ media as a prime example. The wholesale off-shoring of memory to external devices renders the embodied meat-space imprint of memory obsolete, while at the same time, allowing ubiquitous (and ultimately dangerous!) manipulation of what were once considered ‘my’ memories. Parsing of trillions of individual memories into commerce-driven meme-streams is a fundamental corruption of the internal and very-much embodied life of the individual.
Dark magic has arrived in this time: “Jesus wept.”
Following is an excerpt, Chapter One, from an old favorite, The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem—written back in the 60s under the umbrella of the Situationists. Be forewarned, it is not a particularly easy text. Arising out of the wide-spread social unrest fomented by the post-WWII generation of European intellectuals, it contains hundreds of gems reflecting on both the roots and current realities of life. You may find it stylistically dated, lacking intersectionality, and overly idealistic, even romantic, however, there are plenty of core messages and observations that are spot on. In the current cavalcade of faux information saturation it’s well worth studying! more “The Revolution of Everyday Life”
A few comments on where the site is in the moment:
A year ago my old friend, Howard Rheingold—the Silicon Valley journalist, who, among other activities was part of the WELL and who coined the term “virtual communities”—connected me with a start-up hosting company, ReClaim, that caters to the educational community. I’ve been part of the global educational community for more than thirty years: if the shoe fits! That and I’ve been increasingly annoyed/disgusted with GoDaddy—fifteen years the site host—for re-defining their “unlimited” hosting offers. In 2021 they threatened to kill the neoscenes.net site unless I deleted 30 of the 40 gigs of content. Faugh, enough of that: I signed on with ReClaim immediately. Rescued! This was the sixth major platform rollover for the site since 1993, and it’s only recently that I was able to take the time to revive those 30 gigs of the archival content.
There are still some format/embed and sizing problems with images that accompanying postings before 2009, brought on by fundamental changes in WordPress. It’s an endless process to keep the beast up to even a minimal contemporary standard. Currently there are ~8100 entries, several thousand images, a few hundred videos and maybe 2,000 audio pieces. I’ve decided if I can hit 10,000 substantive entries I will either stop posting, and/or be declared a daisy-pusher.
Screenshot of site in 1995, when hosted on the ISMENNT server in Reykjavík.
In the meantime, compiling the wretched news on Social Security and Medicare, monthly income will be, well, grim, in this, the richest … country … in … the … world (sorry, gagging on the phrase). Okay, okay, I am a privileged white male who tried to follow his own idiosyncratic path internationally. And, honestly, it feels like the ‘system’ it meting out its interpretation of just punishment for my ludicrous belief that what I did along that path had some socially-redeemable value in cash: it didn’t.
Staring out the window on the unseasonably warm and very dry environs, waiting for the arrival of a colleague to gather the remaining office gear: two MacBook Pros; an iMac; iPad; a couple Dell monitors; 2000 slides in archival boxes; a set of data DVDs; some of the org swag accumulated over the years; university credit card; Mines BlasterCard ID; various cables; and my internal identity as an employee of the Colorado Geological Survey and the Colorado School of Mines. It was a job I took out of desperation to lock in some minimal fiscal security before boredom, age, and ageism made it impossible. Indeed, it filled that role, somewhat, but I’m still in a relatively precarious state. Will soon liquidate the Cedaredge property if a reasonable renter can’t be found, though I hate to give up the Covid-era 2.25% mortgage!
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Creative output sputters and stalls in the face of tapering life energy, with far too many menial tasks absorbing the dregs. Future creative engagement requires that I relinquish this living situation and move on, sooner than later. Sure, the maintenance, ordering, and re-wilding process may be understood as creative in a wide, cosmological sense: a performative action affecting the state of the macrocosm. The amount of time siphoned off into property upkeep, along with the demands of the ‘regular’ j-o-b has precipitated a high level of social isolation—something that I’m not used to, and something that’s not good. Driving the maintenance desperation is an acute and currently unavoidable fear-of-the-future. Sheesh. The ratio of my embodied energy level to the overall entropy of the situation is in the negative orders-of-magnitude level.
e–::E(s) ≥ 10-5
With no capital to exploit in this terminally oligarchic nation, aside from whatever I can physically manipulate.
There is a limit to what I can do to ‘catch up’ on years of zero wealth accumulation in the stead of transnational creative engagement (aka, bottom-feeding). Options are limited, but success depends more on the vitality of will—closely allied with physical stamina these days—along a simple fearlessness to make it happen. Fear is so diffuse—and previously not a factor—that surely it can be overcome (again) with focused human engagement.
Plans are developing. The first is leaving full-time work-for-pay despite compromising long-term viability. The second is to liquidate the property. Optimizing it for resale will require maybe six dedicated months, maximum, before moving on. The real estate market will be in better stead next year, barring civil conflict or another irruption of the Gaian system. Expatriation now the first choice. The extremities of Babylon’s current incarnation—hardly imagined by even the most cynical internal critic, well-known to those looking on from the outside—are a grinding black hole.
I arrived at this working/living situation having prioritized human connection over a stable and lucrative career (in the extractives industry where I started, or elsewhere). Unlike a lot of folks who follow a specific, planned trajectory, honing their talents in a particular field, gaining seniority and capital, I bounced around. Partly to maintain face-to-face contact with a widely dispersed human network, but also to sustain a flexibility that allowed for spontaneous participation in particular creative situations appearing along the way. Some, once trusted, have decided to label that as opportunism. I’ll deal with that hurtful critique in another posting. My general trajectory, though, despite that label, in other ways, was a mistake even with the rich array of participatory experiences it brought me into. Prioritizing stability, the known, the familiar rhythms of regular and predictable employment (and cash flow), ensuring (insuring!) future viability: this is the leitmotif of survival in the capitalist system, the rewards for a reliable prole. I prioritized change, instability, serendipity, spontaneity, and am paying the price of that. The time value of the abstracted instrument of social viability—money—requires long-term dependence and living-for-the-future. Well, the future has arrived: viability and life is emphatically transitory, there’s only one go-round. As Richard Pryor extolled: “I don’t give a FUCK!”
And what of Art? and Creativity?
whispered:
It all started a 17th of January, one million years ago.
a man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water.
who that man was is not important.
he is dead, but art is alive.
I mean, let’s keep names out of this.
as I was saying, at about 10 o’clock, a 17th of January. one million
years ago, a man sat alone by the side of a running stream.
he thought to himself :
where do streams run to, and why?
meaning why do they run.
or why do they run where they run.
that sort of thing.
personally, once I observed a baker at work.
then a blacksmith and a shoemaker.
at work.
and I noticed that the use of water was essential to their work.
but perhaps what I have noticed is not important. normal voice:
anyway the 17th goes into the 18th
then the 19th then the 20th
the 21st the 22d the 23d the 24th the 25th the 26th the 27th
the 28th the 29th the 30th the
31st.
of January.
thus time goes by.
[ED: a decidedly gendered, old-school statement from a Fluxus founder … there are contemporary, open, and ongoing events that arose around this text, establishing 17 January as Art’s Birthday. I used to participate, but haven’t lately. The last major Fluxus-related happening was Fluxus Akademie discussion/lunch at Mary‘s in Rösrath in 2013. And in the incommunicado haze of the past few months, I discover Mary’s gone, back in March. Yet another remembrance to craft, reminding: no time to lose.]
Calmness accompanies the whole. Fear accompanies the part. Intuition goes beyond the figure-ground focus of conscious perception.
Finally done with the primary phase of an onerous rollover from GoDaddy hosting to ReClaim hosting, a mellow outfit which I hope survives and thrives. ReClaim provides hosting solutions for folks in educational contexts. After 20 fraught years dealing with GoDaddy’s abuse, I’d had it. In the (almost) thirty years of neoscenes web existence there have been many technological changes which have made the long-term survival of the site a shaky proposition at best, and at worst, it has come crashing down: offline on occasion. Many turns of angst and frustration at the forced change of specs, formats, codices, platforms, and protocols. I just wanna post audio-video-text-image material, along with hosting content from a few other folks (at this point, Anthony Zega (RIP my friend), and Rod Summers, aka vec world service).
Not having the platform secure and stable as a place to spontaneously create content is always disturbing. During those intervening thirty years, so many head-banging technical issues, ugh, not good to recall. Onwards and upwards … into the AI wilderness.
Now to repair all the collateral GoDaddy damage to various aspects of the site content and performance …
The punitive assignment of a couple of external ‘management communication’ workshops is the latest folly imposed by a hapless ‘management’ that has no clue I’ve been teaching and facilitating such things across 20 countries. Deeply cynical and utterly oblivious to its own gaping flaws regarding humane and engaged leadership, its days are self-numbered. Trump-like, this ‘manager’ is a fount of narcissistic tendencies that reflect on Others the most self-possessed of gaping flaws.
My days there are self-numbered as well. What to do to maximize? meh. That’s the wrong question. Simply occupying the transitory instance of Life provides a low-frequency drone that accompanies the blood-pulse in ear: always there until it is not. Easy to be so distracted by the vicissitudes of existence that the pulse falls away from consciousness, bringing it back to the fore even while fully immersed in any activity. Burning up days that are never to be retrieved is the original sin. But it’s not about maximizing, it’s about be-ing within every moment. Every second.
I’ve segued into a state of mind that sees its own limits, looming, in reflections that now, seen close-up, fill the eyes with impending blindness. These are limits that Life imposes. Spirit might forefend them temporarily, then transcend or perhaps succumb to another line of existence. Or not. The expansive intentions that drove earlier Life have transformed into mere survival, seeing daily cycles as hurdles to overcome, all the while, watching evidence of life flicker, inverted on scarlet retina. Listening for blood-pulse.
Complex tasks are avoided because that meditative listening falls too far away. And Life becomes mere mechanical functioning: fixing this, buying that, eating food prepared by machines, not watching the stars, silently, motionfull within cosmic chaos.
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I got onto this track while observing how others live in relation to the stuff that they ‘have’. A few additional thoughts coalesced between the annual moving of house, the monthly payments for a storage unit 800 miles away, and the effects of having too much stuff myself.
The personal nature of this dialectic rests within the character of an individual’s relation to reality, to the world, and to the perceived structural manifestations of that world. A worldview of flow acknowledges that change drives all conditions, that ‘things’ are temporary configurations of energy flow. A worldview rooted in the hard structures of materialism sees ‘things’ as mutable in their immediate usefulness, based on their potential to persist, if that characteristic is acknowledged at all. Both views stand in deep relationship as to how life is lived, moment-to-moment. Both are forced to acknowledge the transitory nature of be-ing.
Using suggests a consumption of a limited resource, something that is recognized or at least assumed to have a finite material life. And, when ‘finished’ or ‘used up’ the object is discarded, after being rendered use-less. But isn’t it such that everything gets used up? Sure, but there seems to be an inherent level of violence correlated to the rate at which something is used up. Laboriously accumulated or meticulously assembled things may be destined or actually created to be destroyed in a single usage: the explosive weapon. Although time is often measured relative to human perception and human life-span; this metric applies an anthropocentric stance that seems reasonable, given that many of the things used up are human fabrications. However, the speed question suggests that a slow dissolution is a constant background condition. If you don’t use me up, I will be used up anyway.
Taking-care-of suggests a stewardship that is governed by a continuity of interaction and attention meant to project the usability, the use, perhaps into a long future, perhaps a passing from person-to-person, beyond the individual’s life-time. In a way transcending the limitless hubris of the anthropocentric: it will last longer that I. However, to maintain usability an object needs to maintain its ordered existence: this requires energy and attentive care. Life-time and life-energy are drawn upon. Living is compromised. And, in the end, nothing will stop the dissolution that entropy enforces. You may be taking care of me, but I will be used up eventually.
Turns out, a majority of the ‘things I own’ are use-less to begin with: The Archive. Well, perhaps not completely bereft of function, but certainly not when in a survival mode. The Archive is the carrying of a story, of stories, forward in time. The use-full-ness of the story is directly correlated to how it augments survival—how it carries us through. The propagation of information forward in time is the core value in this. Whatever the form, information represents an ordered configuration of energized matter. However, value is relative. Information, energetically carried forward in time, compromises the viability of the carrier in a direct way. Without the compensating augmentation, it is not a good idea to participate in such a process as an organism. Use-full-ness is relative and changeable depending on circumstances, what was once useless may later become a valuable source in another context.
Using suggests a recognition that the end game is ever-present. Nothing is forever. Order cannot be maintained indefinitely. Energy runs out. We leave only the dissipating measure of our transitory presence: ripples radiating from that short cosmological pulse: use it, or lose it.
Taking-care-of suggests a refusal to recognize our impotence. Resisting the inevitable. Gentle raging at the dying of the Light. A refusal of the commonly assumed nature of reality: that caring is somehow an eternal value.
In the end, perhaps neither style of engagement with stuff really … matters. pffff!
Musing about a muse: brings the indeterminate back directly into life, though the effect is, by nature, disturbing to any pre-established [dynamic] equilibrium. Was there ever any in life thus far? Then there are the simple images that arise from encounter, a hand, a shoulder, a torso, seen best in the resonant allowance to look beyond, through, and simply at the sanctioned. Life transitions from dry-throated mental rasp to fluid inflected neural fire — no pleural effusion — but simply the life-lubricating properties of water re-entering the body. For the thirsty, this is eau de source. Catalysis of seen and unseen, spoken and unspoken things brings conflagration to the chakras. But who needs overheated chakras? Burning up life is not really something needed when it burns up, readily fast. Energies may be bound up with lived presence, while life depends upon an unleashing of those same energies. Élan vital. It’s the unleashing that is the source of most anxiety. Pent-up energies traveling along the well-worn pathways of former be-ing end up re-circulating ad nauseum, subsequently causing pathologies in the embodied system. Stressed, sparking contact needs to find flow pathways that are … open … or needs to make openings, spontaneously. for survival.
Though it may seem far-fetched to claim that social rejection can actually “hurt,” an overlap in the distress associated with physical and social pain makes good sense from an evolutionary perspective. As a mammalian species, humans are born relatively immature, unable to feed or fend for themselves. Because of this, infants, in order to survive, must stay close to a caregiver to get the necessary nourishment and protection. Later on, connection to a social group becomes critical to survival; its members benefit from shared responsibility for gathering food, thwarting predators, and caring for offspring. Given that being socially disconnected is so detrimental to survival, it has been suggested that in the course of our evolutionary history the social attachment system — which ensures social closeness — piggybacked onto the physical-pain system, borrowing the pain signal to cue instances of social separation. Social connection may have been so important for survival that the painful feelings associated with physical injury were co-opted to ensure that social separation was equally distressing — that individuals would be motivated by such feelings to avoid social disconnection and maintain closeness with others. Research with animal and human subjects alike has indicated that physical and social pain processes overlap. Specifically, two brain regions — the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and to a lesser extent the anterior insula — seem to contribute both to the distress of physical pain and to behaviors indicative of separation distress in nonhuman mammals.
Eisenberger, N., 2011. Future science: essays from the cutting edge, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
In this time, the number of those who make peace is dwindling. But the number, sheer number of those who feel compelled to make war: many of the young men, part of the burgeoning global population, are girded for battle. Heads full of glory, honor, and celestial virgins. No peace is possible under the seductive regime of testosterone, greed, power, and a Machiavellian competition for survival.
In response to yet another call for papers at an academic conference on the fibreculture list (this, unsent as I thought it too in-your-face).
fibrecultists:
I’m making the contrary assumption that fibrecult is not merely an announcement list these days … I could be wrong, but …
3D printed goods, cryptocurrencies, digital sharing – just some of the disruptive online practices and technologies that are transforming and reshaping our economy. These innovative technologies have impacted the market, enabling new business models, evolving market conditions and transforming economic and social landscapes. However, the commodification and commercial adoption of these disruptive technologies has also raised concerns and questions in terms of access, control and sustainability. How can we develop these practices to not only support a digital commons, but also to support more equitable and sustainable worlds?
The three items at the beginning of the paragraph above could very well be replaced by practically any ‘communications/fill-in-the-blank-here’ technology of the last 150 years. A materialist approach to technology, one that is hypnotized by each new and glittering object, its form, even its ‘potential’, seems never to learn any principled lessons on what is going on through technological ‘innovation’ and how to deal with it across the techno-social system. It’s as though there is a constant expression of surprise on the face of critical academic thinkers, “Oh look at this new toy coming from the ‘clouds’ today.” I can’t count the number of conference announcements from the academic-cultural-industrial complex of the last 20 years that read the same as this one, with only the names of the currently in-vogue technologies changed.
If there are no readily available and powerful answers *already in place* and *operational as a lived practice* for the issues and questions suggested by the rest of the paragraph, then there is absolutely no hope that an academic discourse will have any effect on the processes being commented upon. The gathering becomes simply another career notch of sessions, papers, panel discussions, talks, after-parties, meals, meet-n-greets, and, literally, insider trading in the currencies of academic ‘success’ (or survival, in the contemporary world of add-junk-tified edutainment). I understand there is always the need to propagate good ideas, and there are younger people who have to hash these things out in the face of a lack of historical perspective in their education, but it begins to resemble a treadmill that in no way serves to solve the problems.
I have no issues with the actual empowered coming-together of people, regardless of the reason, but it seems there is an inexorable evolution of academia towards a point where it is simply bankrupt of ideas *and lived practices* to deal with the current world. Where are the TAZs supporting change?
Metadata is structured information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or manage an information resource. Metadata is often called data about data or information about information.
[…]
Metadata is key to ensuring that resources will survive and continue to be accessible into the future.
Well, there you have it. The last point guarantees the energy-intensity of creating and propagating metadata. Metadata is a feedback mechanism for rendering information or data flows useful. It is precisely in the process of acquiring, designating, or interacting with metadata that the energy consumption occurs. When the metadata ‘volume’ approaches the ‘volume’ of the original data, social sclerosis becomes complete. Too much data or metadata flow will destroy a system by depleting its energy capacity for propagation or simple survival.
Metadata is also crucial to identifying the energy ‘content’ and availability of a primary resource (think seismic maps of sub-surface geology in hydrocarbon exploration and reservoir mapping).
And, thank god:
Metadata work is ongoing across a number of standards development organizations. In the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a subcommittee of Technical Committee (TC) 46 (Information and documentation), is addressing metadata development for bibliographic applications. ISO TC 211 (Geographic information / Geomatics) is developing metadata standards for applications in geographic information systems. The Data management and interchange subcommittee of ISO-IEC JTC1 (Information technology) is developing standards for the specification and management of metadata and has recently issued a technical report on Procedures for achieving metadata registry content consistency (ISO/IEC 20943).
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Brian Holmes, who runs “Continental Drift” responded to that article on AI grading of college essays as follows:
> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
> written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution
[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes…]
LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) — just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue … (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to ‘facilitating open encounter and engagement’…
The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We are so “free” that power is walking all over us. The capitalist democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation’s sake. The university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for the human-capital needs of corporations. That’s endgame, because without a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we’re all reduced to a cinder. Isn’t that kinda obvious now? What’s the next step?
At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of ‘use less’ (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated über-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph.
That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression.
This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times.
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2 Abstract: This text is a meditation on the concept of hybridity and hybridization as a construct of our techno-social system that attempts to safely frame (chaotic change) at the same time as to be a creative source.
4.1 What happens when two things come together? What happens when two energies come together? In certain situations there can be a catalytic response which allows the two disparate systems or impulses to encounter and change each other with gusto. In other situations the two systems retain their essential character and apparently do not mix, merely coming into separate relation or juxtaposition with one another. Why do humans bring things together? Why is life combinatorial and synergistic? Recognizing the expanse of territory posed by these questions, as well as the main thematic question proposed at the Hybrid Space workshop “How does art create, visualize and network hybrid spaces,” this essay will not attempt to provide answers, but rather will plot a simple course through some ideas and reflections on what may be the foundations that the questions rest upon. more “The Hybrid: This and/or That”
Perhaps an ECM study would be useful. It could be based on some of the ideas in Schlesinger’s book “Principles of ECM,” where he defines “4 Basic Steps.”
1) Evaluate the electronic environment, i.e., the intelligence situation.
2) Select an ECM tactic.
3) Employ the tactic.
4) Evaluate the results.
He also shows a trace-off graph, plotting payoff against the ratio of ECM gear weight to weight of explosives. His payoff function is (Prob. of Survival) x % damage from explosives carried.
It would be relatively easy to apply this analysis to the ICBM situation.
Aubyn Freed in with 4 GE docs. that contain lists of objectives, sensors, sample rates, etc., for the Mark 6 Mod 4 vehicle.
Wrote a status report with a little more in it that usual.
Overcast Medium Humidity
Paid Leo $11.74 and made arrangements to pick up a roll of 6″ x 36″ x 10 g. x 150′ reinforcing mesh which I did after dinner.
Found a place in Belmont where I hope I can get a mallet handle.
From our present vantage point, we can see that the inventors and controllers of the Megamachine, from the Pyramid Age onward, have in fact been haunted by delusions of omniscience and omnipotence — immediate or prospective. Those original delusions have not become less irrational, now that they have at their disposal the formidable resources of exact science and a high-energy technology. The Nuclear Age conceptions of absolute power, infallible computerized intelligence, limitless expanding productivity, all culminating in a system of total control exercised by a military-scientific-industrial elite, correspond to the Bronze Age conception of Divine Kingship. Such power, to succeed on its own terms, must destroy the symbiotic cooperations between all species and communities essential to man’s survival and development. Both ideologies belong to the same infantile magico-religious scheme as ritual human sacrifice. As with Captain Ahab’s pursuit of Moby Dick, the scientific and technical means are entirely rational, but the ultimate ends are mad.
Mumford, L., 1973. Technics and the Nature of Man. In C. Mitcham & R. Mackey, eds. Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the philosophical problems. New York, NY: The Free Press.
The sensual world is a phenomena apprehended imperfectly through our senses, as it suffuses through our entire being. Or is it received perfectly? As energy is characterized by radiant movement (from a source, from a concentration, to a sink), we are suffused with the radiant energy of the world that we are immersed in. We receive, and as a localized system of concentrated energy, we also radiate. In this two-way circulation of energy, we are constantly re-connecting with the larger world around us: inhaling energized particles that arrive in our immediate vicinity; drinking a certain fundamental energy source that we have named water; consuming other quantities of energy from the wider system around us. Reaching with hand, striving with foot to promote necessary and sufficient consumption for the maintenance of body and more than simple survival. We expend our life-energies in organizing the world around us, and for that, we eventually die. Before that instance of transformation, time is spent in seeking to realize procreative potentials so that life will continue in its unbroken line from primordial past to questionable future. And when that time is done, body implodes, trading order for disorder, until we become the radiant heat of interstellar plasma.
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
everything would appear to man as it is — infinite.
For man has closed himself up ’til he sees things
through narrow chinks of his cavern.
— William Blake
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Worked up a framework for AICBM as a basis for discussion with WLZ, which I used after showing him the masters for 22G-7017. He wants the Pen Sys distribution list used. He also wants me to keep a finger on the data produced at Ascension & PMR as inputs to the framework below.
Determine saturation tactics for: Deter – Tkg – TE – Tct Cont – Int – Kill
Gnd-based Systems: N-Z – Bomarc – Talos – New one
Space-based:
Forwarded to WLZ a slip for administrative approval for the trip to the IRE Mtg. in Baltimore on 23/25 October 1961.
Clear – cool
It was cool last night.
After some discussion with HS & looking at Dr. Rosenblum’s 6 cylinder SW, I concluded that the other two wires are to the overdrive and kickdown switch to permit torque removal when the kickdown switch is closed.
Reconnected the ignition coil leads and the engine almost started with towing; I didn’t replace the breaker points or condensor.
Took DCH to the BSA mtg. where I showed an RCAF film on survival after bailout in winter; this is one Col. Hale obtained at Hanscomb AFB; it was well-received.
The key program of a surviving pattern of nature and man is a subsystem of religious teaching which follows the laws of the energy ethic. … We can teach the energy truths through general science in the schools and teach the love of system and its requirements of us in the changing churches. System survival makes right and the energy commandments guide the system to survival.
Odum, H.T., 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century – The Hierarchy of Energy, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Hmmm, Odum outlines a radical take on the relationship between humans and the natural system of energy flows they are a part of. A bit dogmatic sounding, though, so, out of context in that dimension. But in the context of science and, for example, climate change, it might be worth it for humans to get some scientific religion. Then again, maybe it’s all dogma and the processes that thermodynamics seeks to circumscribe will be the ruling factor: they will be, unless there is an intervention by forces beyond anything that science has framed. This is possible at any time, but seems unlikely. Who wants to depend on the unlikely and the improbable as a policy driver?
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Morning air is diffuse and golden, a Light fog, perhaps from this event some 200 km away or so. Nothing like the Great Sydney Sandstorm of 2009, but nothing to trivialize either. If only humans would realize that the butterfly that made the storm is the self-same one that they startled from rest when ripping by on their ATV last weekend, celebrating hydrocarbon (inter)dependence in the desert.
… snip …
Movement ends up being a critical combination of idiosyncratic prognostication (what unknown lies ahead of me?) along with the repeated familiarity of bland acculturation (MacDonalds). The known and the unknown form a powerful dialectic in all life-trajectories, all movements. It is these two characteristics dominating individual presence in concert that carries us forward. Preparing to engage both change and the unknown relies on the clarity of present awareness, breadth of past experience, and the level of tolerance for existence in interstitial and autonomous zones. The preparations for movement include gathering enough knowledge and gathering enough things to ensure survival. The existence of known factors bolsters the potential for survival: otherwise questions like “where do we get gas?” and “where are we having dinner?” become overwhelming contraventions to even cursory local voyages of discovery. Not to mention “When are we going to get there?” This ranks very high along with “Where are we?” as being among the most problematic questions, raising high levels of existential angst in the Cartesian order. In the post-Cartesian it simply doesn’t matter!
“Post-capitalist” ??
I prefer to leave [capitalism] to itself:
self-consumption, auto-phagy, autotomy.
We do not need “historical” language to be present,
with memory, with imagination, with sleep;
relation(ship), community
are sufficient.
In too many instances, “story-telling”, “drama”,
“narrative”, and “discourse”
function as obstacles, occlusions—- not passages.
They remain within language.
Roland Barthes has a marvellous intelligence
about language and discourse: he sustains a vivid,
punctual awareness (vigilance) of what language
and discourse cannot do, of terrains (bodies) which
they cannot encounter (visit).
Language does not surround, control, encompass
vivid source, vivid encounter.
Language is exactly a fable.
“The legal profession” is entirely posthumous, mummified,
dead—-a necropolis, necrophagy, coprophagy.
No doubt: they censor Flaubert, Joyce, Faulkner.
Language is a dead (:definite, determined) process:
the “body” of Gregor Samsa, also the body of that “man”
who designs the Apparatus at the Penal Colony.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~ ~
Spermatic (sun).
Menstrual (moon).
Menses (thinking).
It impresses me that emotion draws an instantaneous
relation with
Emotion….one might say…..…..embraces
the body of thinking: thinking begins.
Do the Oglala Sioux have a word for “emotion” as distinct
from “being”—- perhaps not.
The Hopi have no “past” tense.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^
^^
I happened to see Werner Herzog’s <>……
it is decidedly interesting, yet it suffers from “photography”…….
Atmospheric vapor, tactile-aural resonances, scents, tissues of energies
do not come through the mesh.
He notes that within Chauvet cave they felt the potent range of a gaze
which emanated from the walls; at last, it was too much; they could
remain in the cave for just so long: the field of the energy propelled them
to leave.
571.203 Standard No. 203; Impact protection for the driver from the steering control system
S1. Purpose and scope. This standard specifies requirements for steering control systems that will minimize chest, neck, and facial injuries to the driver as a result of impact.
S2. Application. This standard applies to passenger cars and to multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks and buses with a GVWR of 10,000 pounds or less. However, it does not apply to vehicles that conform to the frontal barrier crash requirements (S5.1) of Standard No. 208 (49 CFR 571.208) by means of other than seat belt assemblies. It also does not apply to walk-in vans. more “anomia::punctilio”
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A techno-social system is predicated and constructed on a system of control exerted on the flows of energy that are antithetical to its ordered existence or that simply exist ‘out there.’ Within a techno-social system, at all scales, levels, and between all actors, there exists a constant, dynamic re-balancing of these energies (energy flows). With an input of external energy as the source, the overall techno-social system will exert varying levels of control over different spatio-temporal regions. Control is essentially the existence of prescribed pathways of flow which insure the desired persistence of stasis in a sea of chaotic flows. The degree that a techno-social system can proscribe un-controlled pathways is the degree of coherence that techno-social system will have. more “more on control and autonomy”
Continued to read the “TOC Concept” to see if some ideas on center simulation can be generated. (I put myself on this sub-committee). So far this isn’t easy to work out. Had a lengthy discussion with JH on this scheme for center simulation.
DCH’s report card for Nov & Dec is of the same total quality of that for the last previous interval; this time he got a C in Ancient History, down from a B. He has to make A’s or B’s in all major subjects to make the Honor Roll.
Went to Scout mtg; a Winter Survival overnight camp is planned for 1-14/15.
Went in to Cambridge to rent a tuxedo for the dinner party tomorrow night. Took JLV on down to MIT to get an Institute catalog. He expects to take at least one class for credit.
BS terminated his connection with the ad hoc Eval Committee.
In a discussion with JFN:
1) Made the point of frustration expressed on 12-29-60; suggested that he call a section mtg and outline what he conceives Phase II to consist of.
2) We have 2 sub-committees working:
a) Single thread use;
b) Simulation of a center.
Discussed with JLV the need for survival activities. It seems to me that in order for large scale survival to occur, a central authority must see that food & water are available again within weeks of the blasts. This in my opinion requires Presidential action.
JFN wants JH & I to go out to the TAG Board on 1-18/19/20 for discussions on Simplex.
Discussed with Bob Bergemann the need of FAA for an indicator on the radar scope to show the clear airspace/ok for safety reasons as well as the separation distances. He was lukewarm to the patent idea.
Rec’d letter from Mrs. Brennan wanting me to list the house again for sale at a commission of 6%; she pointed out that a house in the neighborhood with an unfinished basement and carport was FHA approved at $24,500.
I’ll try again to rent it; wrote this date to Martin Koenig, recommended by Mrs. Brennan.
Rec’d letter from Fairfax police agreeing to put on their daily check list.
What could better illustrate the instability of protocol-driven social control systems than the phenomenon of a leak? Springing a leak is an irruption through a human-constructed wall (hull) holding back the chaotic flows of the sea. Wikileaks is a reversal of that, where the leak is from the inside of the ship-of-State to the outside. Where inside there are protocol-defined pathways of State-driven communication flow filling a space of partially-stabilized human endeavor. Every so often, one of the nodes of State communication goes rogue, mad, AWOL, counter, and defies the standing protocols by whatever means possible. Opening the mouth and speaking, telling the secrets of State, a yawning vomit of bilge over the sides: merely seasick.
The hull of the ship of State exists across a multi-dimensional space of refined/defined energy flow. Defined energy flow resists change and promotes continuance. Regarding the State, protocol controls individual behavior through internalized patterns of embodied thought. The State seeks any possible way to apply these internal protocols, and is successful if those ways promote the existence of the necessary flow pathways that insure the continuance of the structure of the State. The more rigid the expectations of the State, the more necessary the adherence to prescribed protocols (and vice versa). The State also applies controls to patterns of energy flow external to the body. These two (internal and external) sets of controls are not separate but rather are united in the space of flow to effect more-or-less total control on the participant and the crew of the ship of State. more “the fluidity of leaking”
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)”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
… 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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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”
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
a much longer ramble with a heavy wind at my back until it’s time to turn around. the dunes are located here for a reason and that reason is the frequency of very intense winds being funneled across the valley into Medano Pass where the sand generated by the Rio Grande out-wash in the (west side of the) valley is dropped in large quantities against the Sangre de Christo mountains. it’s a marvelous phenomena. today, I follow the base of the dunes along Medano Creek which is flowing with copious quantities of chilly snow-melt. the intersection of the dunes with the creek and the mountain terrain is rich with variable riparian regimes and provides shelter from the wind which is carrying plenty of grit up to about 3 feet off the dune surface. the air is charged with particles, it is charged. more “Medano Pass”
Berlin, Kiel, Berlin, New York. place frames time. more-or-less. and what of it? multiplicity of options and possibilities frames the next phase of movement. and it is only a matter of survival.
Miga makes a plate of pancakes. with jam from his parents garden in rural Lithuania. nice!
creative production slows to small fragments of text, some images, and some sounds. no mental space to work on the numerous proposals which hang over the head. not interested in the green consumer revolution which is leading the media art world around, tugging on gold-ringed nostrils to keep the plod in acceptable directions. as with so many times before the engagement of science by art is naive and un-productive even in the simple critical sense of raising real issues and stimulating real dialogues. disappointing.
but conversation with Udo last night around aporee maps and some ideas come up along with possible information/collaboration sources that I already have in place from older networks.
[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”
in response to this question posed by Annick Bureaud on the [new media curating] list (in a discussion about access to digital information):
The question might be : how much do you (really) pay in order to get access to an online document, how much the people who have worked to provide the access to this document are paid, who (ultimately) pays for this service?
sotto voce: The cost (what you pay) is directly correlated to the depth of your embeddedness, your degree of participation in the techno-social system. For example, to simply ‘own’ a laptop, I calculated over the past 15 years I spend around USD 120 / month. This does not include cost of upgrades and peripherals, telecom, electrical, or other costs. This is only having the machine sitting on my lap. Of course, to participate in the techno-social system more “the price you pay”
Notes for a talk at the Migrating Realities Conference in Berlin, April 2008.
1
Window Weather: A Nomad’s View of Reality:
The history of the human use of glass, the chemical compound silicon dioxide (SiO2), prescribes a novel point of view on the nature of virtuality, and consequently, the nature of reality. This presentation will sketch a history of that attenuation on individual realities and offer some views on the techno-social system that we are migrating through.
Migrating Reality — commenting on the the term reality, rather than the migrating, though a short comment on the migrating concept — as a movement of point of view … and in that changing point of view, brings internal and external evolution or change. Reality (in juxtaposition to virtuality) … is the aim of this short exposition…
1.1
Introduction:
Change is movement or is movement as a shift of point of view …
We are looking for movements into a change of reality. Does reality change, or do we change?
Migration is perhaps only a change in point of view, as is movement.
What is movement? Cartesian displacement? The body situation changes in terms of gravity a little, and in Light a little, so, what else changes?
1.2
The condition of the world:
uneven distribution of energy and matter :: anisotropy
all is change, change is the movement of energies, is expressed by the movement, the flow of energy and matter from areas of concentration to areas of rarefaction
humans are immersed in a vast field of chaotic flows of energy. Life can be said to be a coherent self-organizing expression of energy driven by the uneven distribution of matter in the universe.
1.3
The human condition:
can change these flows, and DO, to increase material viability (for a time)
gather their life energy, gather energy, and begin to put that energy into transforming the flows that are immediately around them. They attenuate the energies that flow around them
1.4
Window weather — “Gluggar veðrinu”
1.5
What is glass:
SiO2 with a few added chemicals to change the characteristics
1.6
First used as a weapon to increase survival possibilities:
1.7
Optics, photography:
rays of Light attenuated, bent, re-formed, giving us a re-presentation of reality…
1.8
The automobile — enclosed driving:
driving across the desert, it’s hot, the air conditioning is on, the windows are rolled up, the scenery scrolls past the window…
1.9
CRT:
formed glass with rear-projected image via high-voltage radiation and phosphorus.
1.10
Quartz oscillator:
keeps accurate time via piezo-electric characteristics — quartz is keeping your time … you arrived here because a quartz oscillator was used to increase your possibilities of survival …
even atomic (cesium) clocks rely on optics and glass
1.11
The integrated circuit (IC) chip (amorphous silica):
inside the computer
1.12
Computer monitor:
When sitting motionless in front of a flat screen, we are not changing our point of view. We become static, completely unchanging. We cannot change.
1.13
No coincidence: “Windows” OS, but what are we looking at?
1.14
Virtuality, Virtual Reality is simply the condition where we seek to protect our material selves from the world with whatever arrangements of energy and matter that are easily available. Is virtuality changing? Is reality changing? It always is, best to step outside to find out how!
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Art, at its social core, is the trace of an engaged and immersive pathway. A pathway that conducts the circulation and exchange of creative human energies as they are attenuated and directed by a vast range of mediative (materialized) carriers. The artist is that person who opens and offers the Self in a humane seeking: to engage in a dialogue of energies with an Other. Finding a proper pathway for those energies—transmitting: simultaneously receiving the expressions of the Other—this is the moving act of creativity. Creativity is the charged flow of energies between and through the Self and the Other over relative spaces and times.
what could be more banal and even demeaning than receiving a gift of cash?
huh, what are you talking about? sheesh, what’s wrong with cash?
okay, that’s a gut response as I formulate the core of an essay The Regime of Amplification, exploring the dynamics of social exchange.
this is simply an attempt to frame a fundamental principle — to point out a perceived weakness in the social system. money, as an abstracted social re-presentation of life-energy, is not the thing itself, it is not life-energy. giving money is the substitution of an abstraction for the thing itself. that thing being life-energy or life-time. life-time, defined by the irreversible plunging arrow of time, is a limited commodity. life-energy is the quantity of time convolved with what it takes to stay alive for that time. it takes energy to maintain life for a certain amount of time. a gift is an infusion of life-energy (in some form!) from the Self to the Other. when the Self pays attention to the Other, the Self spends life-time and consequently, life-energy on the Other. the Self then comprehends certain forms of energy that the Other would, could need in their life. an auspicious gift is the providing of this apprehended needful energy to the Other when it is needed. money enters the picture — this abstraction of life-energy and attention — and is substituted for both of those. the Other, receiving money, has to decide how to convert this abstraction back into a source of energy. it is a lonely and life-time-consuming process. it demands of attention and and is void of directed life-energy. it is the converting process that exerts the most seductive appeal. with money one can do anything. can’t one? even to saving life-energy and life-time? not sure about that. giving money to fight poverty places the Self in a quandary.
having noted this, it is clear that operating on this principle would place the Self-Other dynamic in a certain place within the social system, whatever the exchange is. but the dependence on the abstracted sets up the least auspicious form of gift. or is it the most auspicious? uff. another hack job as the corrupt idealist, eh?
it’s probably better to make enough of the stuff on one’s own, then engaged presence can proceed on the basis of … presence alone, with the proper infusion of life-energy. and subsequently give all ones money away…
only after the last tree has been cut down
only after the last river has been poisoned
only after the last fish has been caught
only then will you find that money cannot be eaten
— possible Cree prophesy
or
There was an old lady, from the Cree tribe, named Eyes of Fire, who prophesied that one day, because of the white mans’ or Yo-ne-gis’ greed, there would come a time, when the fish would die in the streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, and the trees would no longer be, mankind as we would know it would all but cease to exist. There would come a time when the keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all the Ancient Tribal Customs would be needed to restore us to health. They would be mankind’s key to survival, they were the Warriors of the Rainbow. — Lelanie Stone
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This was a night of the full moon, and the eclipse which takes place here in the early morning, well before sunrise, deeply affects the character of sleep. noting the next total lunar eclipse to be seen in North America is on the winter solstice 2010. I’m there!
And, I still haven’t found a vessel to pour milk from for my tea. I bought a small tea thermos a couple weeks ago in Kreutzberg, one that holds four cups or so. I take this to the desk with a small clear glass to drink from. but as I have to have my tea with milk, I need a small vessel of milk. so far, I’ve tried every option available in the flat. everything spills or dribbles! I may have to buy some small milk decanter. maybe a special antique if it leaps across my path. this reminds me of a previous long-term search a decade or more ago for a decent letter-opener. I had a nice hand-carved wooden one from Ghana, but it split, and I was never able to find another which fit my demands — good design, sharp, safe, efficient, nice material.
I just want to drink my tea while writing in concentrated peace and not leave blobs of drying milk on the desk.
anyway, the writing process. uff. this morning I have yet another stupid realization about my own process (doh!). the writing can be a script, a prescription to action, a narrative about possible action. and my narrow thoughts around a substantive text as a necessity for personal viability in the social system is a phantasm. actions based in the ideas that are danced around in the text can generate that viability as well. actions are often promoters of ‘better’ viability. (what is viability anyway? survival, thriving, materially, spiritually?) I always imagined myself as a person of action, but there is at least some tendency to talk and to words. what is done as action is often in the passive mode (observing, recording). actions that grow from that process are of ambient character — that is, they take the form of atmospheric presences, not active stances, positions, opinions. opinion was not accepted as a child. yes, interesting. so now, the last word is important. teaching allows for last words, although I consciously ask, in a classroom, for someone else to make the last word(s).
sotto voce (to brainstorms): A quick thought popped up as I struggle with some texts, sitting here in my sublet flat in east Berlin. As a person, I like to have the last word. What a lousy habit! In the learning situation, I consciously ask for someone, at the end of a class, to have the last word. I am thinking I will incorporate this more formally — to the degree that I pose the question (either to a volunteer or not) “S_, How about if you make a short (one minute) statement that you consider to be the last words for our session?”
When I’ve been doing this very informally, the reactions are quite interesting, with people vying for a last word a bit (people being anxious to leave and such), and then suddenly a consensus forms and the class ends. I think I’ll have to play with that idea/dynamic. I have the feeling it could be a powerful tool to impress (literally) the learning session into the self.
so, one conclusion is that, yes, the creation of a performance/exhibition situation that illustrates the idea (the script) is just as good as writing a text about it. the only difference is the social scale of audience.
of course, the dialogue, the one-to-one, as I define and act upon it, is a powerful (socially?) transformative process. but the relation of that action to social viability is highly … disconnected? I mean, there is the direct connection between the vital process of creating and sustaining a human community around ones-Self, or of embedding ones-Self in an extended community and ones survival, but this definition of survival seems to be somehow oblique to that of larger scale social viability. am I missing something obvious?
Amplification is a primary function of molecular cascades (selective reduction of environmental cues—which are essentially electromagnetic energy impinging on sensory receptors). The process requires that an organism has a consistent surplus of energy to provide the necessary amplification of signal. Often amplification factors are in excess of 1000x in the case of optic nerve stimulation by a single photon and the subsequent processes unleashed in the nerve cell. An organism needs consistently and readily available energy source(s) to improve the possibility of survival-to-reproduction. But why does reproduction play such a big role in a discrete/single organism’s existence?—to simply continue life—or is life a continuum within which all organisms are connected by nature?
It is by avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of ‘equilibrium’ that an organism appears so enigmatic… What an organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or, to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in metabolism is that the organism succeeds in freeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help producing while alive.
Schrödinger, Erwin. What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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Architectures of Participation is a compelling phrase that attempts literally to frame a deeper fundamental of human existence. This text is a preliminary meditation on that existence and aspects of its profound presence.
On the immediate surface, the phrase suggests the grandiose, the monumental, and the static and rigid hegemony of brick-and-mortar — a suggestion that appears to contravene the deeply dynamic nature of the broader continuum of human relation. This continuum, generated in part through participatory actions, is a far more fundamental space that circumscribes much of our passing presence in this world. We will have to dig deep to find the foundations.
Participation is one reductive descriptor that applies to the infinite range of personal energies expressed and shared during our lived be-ing. Participation is a condition that does not leave our lives until we leave our lives. Participation starts when life starts with the participatory synergy of reproduction. This prototypical participatory act is phenomenal in that the energies of two human beings combine to create the presence of a third human being. Participation is the root of life. Participation follows life in the synergies of parent with child, friend with friend, partner with partner, colleague with colleague, stranger with stranger. We participate in life, in living, every moment.
in the days preceding the material frenzy that so characterizes the holiday in the consuming world, I ponder my own relation to the holiday. what could be nicer than receiving a gift? something usable in the course of survival or something completely use-less except for the aesthetic energy it slow-releases to the eye or ear over time. or something that touches on the architecture of the relationship of giver to receiver.
for me the highest gift in the sped-up road-warrior world of 21st century amurika would be the gift of attention. now, I’m not talking about the obsessively sought attention of media-to-star, the ego-centric attraction of appearances, of shiny and slick surfaces, of painted-over cardboard facades, of glimmering particles that exert the false-attraction of material desires. nor the gloming and needy self-centered-ness that requires vampiric sustenance.
but more the binary and reciprocated exchange of attentive presence where the floating self might turn full-faced to the other and in Light and in Gravity — making Light, making Gravity — the two beings take up temporary residence in each others field-of-attraction and field-of-reflection. this is the gift of life, lived life-time shared. attentively shared, focused, concentrated. a gift without value, except for the value of life-time passed. a commodity in limited supply for each, such as the Moirae decree. no higher value of gift except for the giving of life to save a life.
but what is the essence of this gift of attention? in the exchange, sharing of life-time, the self is open, and in that open-ness, adsorbs the be-ing of the other. in this, the self is changed, evolves, realizes the absolute character of other-ness, and what a precious gift it is — to provide the opportunity of change. and between this change, and the apprehension of difference, occurring in an unstable space of the not-knowing, creative spark flashes. and we become more than we previously were.
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Everything depended on geology. Any damn fool could see that the vegetation was directly responsive to the bedrock. Hence birds and wildlife were responsive to it. We were responsive to it. In winter, our life was governed by where the wind blew, where snow accumulated. We could see that these natural phenomena were not random — that they were controlled, that there was a system. The processes of erosion and deposition were things that we grew up with. An insulated society does not see how important terrain is to someone who has to understand it in order to live with it. Much of it meant life or death for the animals, and therefore survival for us. If there was one thing we learned, it was that you don’t fight nature. You live with it. And you make accommodations — because nature does not accommodate. — David Love, to John McPhee in Rising from the Plains
sotto voce: A model is reductionist. A model will never be the thing itself. (A map is not the territory).
Consider an isolated individual — he/she looks at the world, receives energy into his/her body system. Recognizes patterns of flow, and behaves according to such patterns (over time)… (Learning). Building a model by which to interact ‘successfully’ with the flows around him/her.
OR, an individual is told the parameters of the model (non-experiential learning), accepting what an Other tells (because of the position of power-relation where the Other is more powerful in that social relation).
Science is a collective phenomena at the cusp between these two situations.
Which do we trust most? Our own analysis of the energy flows impinging on our body-system, or the system of the Other?
I believe that over-socialization — a global trend perhaps based on the simple facts of growing population and lessening room — is an inexorable force which demands the second condition to the exclusion of the first. The first is dangerous (to the social): unpredictable, unstable, and requires one to be living at the very front of experience, to learn in the moment, to exist in the momentary flow of being. The second allows leisure, taking the word of an Other about survival parameters, ‘good enough at this time.’
As a teacher I facilitate confidence in the first — trust in ones own sensory input — at the same time as acknowledging that we are products of the second system (more and more) which has interfered with the first process of immediate feedback from body system — embodied learning.
Technology is the means for a social system to codify and implement the (scientific) model such that it may be literally im-pressed on the sensory system of the individual (the collective hallucination). Thus, to counteract this process and to have embodied learning, the im-pressions of technology and of surrounding social system need to be removed (for at least a moment) to allow the individual to feel their socially un-encumbered body, and the flows of life that are impinging on it — without the intervention of non-experiential, second-hand socialized models.
Based on this description, technology is very problematic in that it socially codifies a point-of-view (worldview) which is then applied to the individual who is participating in that social system.
You can chose to trust the momentary sensory input to your system (and be marginalized by that same social system), or you can choose to assimilate into the social system and take on the collective worldview instead.
It’s a sliding scale of participation and reciprocal marginalization, but I believe we are sliding ever towards the second end of the scale. This slide precipitates the long-term denial of embodied and creative life in the stead of socially mandated ‘solutions for living’ like Songdo City.
Uff…
So, coming back to Situated Technologies — they seem to be the result of an (continuous) evolution of the social system — which is now intricate enough to apply/deliver these im-pression systems at an ever more individual/granular level to insure socially ‘proper’ worldviews…
Kate Armstrong and I try out urbantells.net as their first guinea pigs. tech problems start everything off. and seem nearly as ubiquitous as the number of devices deployed at the exhibition.
the polar/solar brunch ends up with Ed, Ken, and I talking over lunch for several hours — nice, catching up — mapping the network, teaching, working, net-working. we then wander over to the CRUMB project run by Sarah Cook and Beryl Graham to have some tea and cakes and some interesting conversation on strategies for survival in the culture sphere.
yeah, isea ’06. stories begin to accumulate as to failures of the local infrastructure in support of the program of incoming artists and their projects.
later, doing the gallery crawl with Ken, run into Mathias. catch some interesting work and good food.
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counterpointing Bateson’s eclectic digressions with Ronald Burt’s social systemics seems to point to a schizophrenic day of reading. Bateson clearly saw the dangers of the flows that power social systems, where Burt sees opportunity for command-and-control through semi-distributed systems. His view on ‘social capital’ is a mapping of positions for maximizing influence that this form of capital offers. Bordieu suggested the trinity of economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital, it is the latter that seemed to popularly circumscribe the most influential aspects of human relations. And as a way of mapping power, it floats to the surface of social consciousness.
The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it… But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster… If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; élite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure…
The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way. — Gregory Bateson
another oracle, or madman?
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Starting off the month with reading more from and about David Bohm, the quantum physicist and researcher into the nature of human relation (in the form of his defined term, dialogue). He maintained a suspicion about language, that it formed a mechanism which reified that-which-was-being-talked-about as it was (being) manifest in language. The idea that thought tends to impress a static order on the world outside. (And meanwhile, accepting the premise that all reality is a dynamic procession, thought included.) However, there is an inexorable process — as thought creates knowledge from reality (experience) — that seeks to lock in a fragmentary (incomplete) view excised from reality. This is one general characteristic of linguistic representation of dynamic reality. In a similar vein, Walter Ong (2002) maintained that the transition from aural to written to printed language defined deep shifts in the relation of the Self to the Other and to reality. He compiled a set of characteristics of expressed/expressive thought (=spoken word) that supports the necessary salience of aurally transmitted information (as there were no other ways to catch / statify information in aural cultures):
expression is additive rather than subordinate;
it is aggregate rather than analytic;
it tends to be redundant or “copious;”
the process tends to be conservative;
out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close references to lived reality;
expression is agonistically toned;
it is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced;
it is homeostatic;
it is situational rather than abstract
The key to most of these characteristics is that they directly relate to embodied presence versus the absence (and abstractedness!) of a (printed) text. So that here, in this blog, there is a long sequence of absences, separations — which together accumulate as disembodied virtuality. Ong elsewhere hints about the cumulative effect of this movement from embodied connection with language to the abstractions of mediation introduced by printed texts. And on into the further mediation in telephony (all ‘tele’ or attenuated/virtual realities I would suggest). Socialization is that process of abstraction and reification of what were once active and dynamic processes happening at a granular level of human-to-human. The process moving from dialogue to incontrovertible law (protocol) is a mapping of the ‘advance’ of a social system. Yet, social order is dependent on that dynamic of that granular ground state of the system — at least if a society wishes to retain a vital edge on evolutionary survival. It is precisely this reification process that spells the doom of a social system — though often not before that system has attained a temporary advantage over other systems (by being more efficient in a materialist way), and caused great suffering and alienation.
the [microsound] list is discussing what some judge to be a severe lack of quality among those who write reviews of electronic art endeavors (in this case, sonic/music things), following are some comments:
sotto voce: I think there are several ways to go with the concept of reviewing (speaking as someone who once had a music column AGES ago in my university paper — mostly to get back-stage concert passes with the local promoter in Denver)… :-\\
— reviewing is a process of reducing the energy of a performance into a linguistic re-presentation for others to read and presumably ‘get something’ of the original performance.
— the principle behind this is to take evolutionary advantage of the experience of an Other in order to optimize Self-survival. relying on Other’s eyes and ears so as not to become hopelessly obsolete or even lunch meat. to remain viable in a social system one is forced more-or-less to heed this second-hand info as a part of socialization. more “[microsound]”
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