place: Cedaredge, Colorado

pulling plugs

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:

7 : July : 20247 : July : 2024

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

books and dark magic

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.”

18 : June : 202427 : June : 2024

place: Earth

mull on this

Year	World Population	Yearly Change	Net Change	Density (P/Km²)
2023	8,045,311,447	0.88 %	70,206,291	54
2022	7,975,105,156	0.83 %	65,810,005	54
2021	7,909,295,151	0.87 %	68,342,271	53
2020	7,840,952,880	0.98 %	76,001,848	53
2019	7,764,951,032	1.06 %	81,161,204	52
2018	7,683,789,828	1.10 %	83,967,424	52
2017	7,599,822,404	1.15 %	86,348,166	51
2016	7,513,474,238	1.17 %	86,876,701	50
2015	7,426,597,537	1.19 %	87,584,118	50
2014	7,339,013,419	1.22 %	88,420,049	49
2013	7,250,593,370	1.24 %	88,895,449	49
2012	7,161,697,921	1.25 %	88,572,496	48
2011	7,073,125,425	1.25 %	87,522,320	47
2010	6,985,603,105	1.27 %	87,297,197	47
2009	6,898,305,908	1.27 %	86,708,636	46
2008	6,811,597,272	1.27 %	85,648,728	46
2007	6,725,948,544	1.27 %	84,532,326	45
2006	6,641,416,218	1.27 %	83,240,099	45
2005	6,558,176,119	1.27 %	82,424,641	44
2004	6,475,751,478	1.28 %	81,853,113	43
2003	6,393,898,365	1.29 %	81,491,005	43
2002	6,312,407,360	1.31 %	81,660,378	42
2001	6,230,746,982	1.33 %	81,848,007	42

more “mull on this”

4 : May : 202219 : March : 2024

place: Cedaredge, Colorado

quick comment

sotto voce to brainstorms on the question of people’s music-listening habits: I reflected obliquely on this question in my dissertation, examining the concept of radio as a cultural ‘amplifier’ operated centrally (more or less) with the effect of inculcating cultural sameness and diminishing cultural idiosyncrasy — the technology aiding in the ‘formation’ of a collective social fabric. I find that, broadly speaking, there is a continuum along the axis of people who seek difference and those who avoid difference. I also have friends who are still listening to a narrow selection of music that they first were immersed in in high school. And others who are still hunting for new and interesting (to them) things to listen to. It’s a curious phenomena, but I believe related to those two basic factors — the imposition of the effects of a (variably)-centralized technology on a social system, and, again, individual capacities to accept or reject (or just be comfortable with) difference. (And, yes, Ari, it’s not about ‘better’ or ‘worse’, imho, just difference or sameness.)

(And, the over-riding question of capitalist profits on cultural production buried in the middle of the pile of “stars” that we are routinely presented with through those amplification machines) …

20 : July : 201917 : May : 2020

place: Golden, Colorado

Apollo 11 50 years later

1 : December : 20152 : January : 2020

place: Prescott, Arizona

workflow, capital, and creative action

Then there is the concept of “workflow” in digital production: it refers to the establishment of an input-processing-output sequence that navigates the many competing and conflicting variables introduced by the various hardwares/softwares involved. Some variables may be constrained with capital, others only with repetitive experience and feedback loops. Most variables are the effect of widely imposed standards introduced by corporate entities. more “workflow, capital, and creative action”

28 : October : 201511 : October : 2024

Mumford…

… the city owed its existence, and even more its enlargement, to concentrated attempts at mastering other men and dominating, with collective force, the whole environment. Thus the city became a power-trapping utility, designed by royal agents gathering the dispersed energies of little communities into a mighty reservoir, collectively regulating their accumulation and flow, and directing them into new channels — now favoring the smaller units by beneficently re-molding the landscape, but eventually hurling its energies outward in destructive assaults against other cities. Release and enslavement, freedom and compulsion, have been present from the beginning in urban culture.

Out of this inner tension some of the creative expressions of urban life have come forth: yet only in scattered and occasional instances do we discover political power well distributed in small communities, as in seventeenth-century Holland or Switzerland, or the ideals of life constantly regulating the eccentric manifestations of power. Our present civilization is a gigantic motor car moving_ along a one-way road at an ever- accelerating speed. Unfortunately as now constructed the car lacks both steering wheel and brakes, and the only form of control the driver exercises consists in making the car go faster, though in his fascination with the machine itself and his commitment to achieving the highest speed possible, he has quite forgotten the purpose of the journey. This state of helpless submission to the economic and technological mechanisms modern man has created is curiously disguised as progress, freedom, and the mastery of man over nature. As a result, every permission has become a morbid compulsion. Modern man has mastered every creature above the level of the viruses and bacteria-except himself.

Mumford, L. (2009). The city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects. San Diego, Calif, Harcourt.

9 : May : 201513 : June : 2024

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.

29 : November : 201429 : December : 2023

place: Prescott, Arizona

Posthuman Prospects

The desire to find short cuts and to invent technical solutions is indicative of the impatience of the present age. The utilization of fossil fuels that led to the creation of industrialized societies benefited from the fact that such fuels had accrued their energy potential over millions of years:

All the fossil fuels, in energy terms, are stored sunlight heaped up over geologic time. . . No human being had to put a single day’s work or a single gallon of diesel fuel into growing the tree ferns of the Carboniferous period that turned into Pennsylvanian coal beds, nor did they have to raise the Jurassic sea life that became the oil fields of Texas. The second half of Nature’s energy subsidy took the form of extreme temperatures and pressures deep within the Earth. Over millions of years more, these transformed the remains of prehistoric living things into coal, oil, and natural gas and, in the process, concentrated the energy they originally contained into a tiny fraction of their original size.

These resources, if they had been developed in more sustainable ways, and used to serve more balanced societies, could have benefited us for many years to come, but we have squandered them with our impatience and greed. In an analogous way, we are highly impatient with the technologies that we wish to invent. We are unsatisfied with the intelligence that has been bequeathed to us through millions of years of evolution and we wish to create a copy of it, as soon as possible.

What has been lost is a certain sense of balance, and a knowledge of natural limitations. Ambitious innovation is certainly a virtue but when it relies upon the false premise of unlimited natural resources, or the belief that we can short cut evolution by recreating intelligence at will, it becomes the vice of hubris. Undoubtedly, we will face challenges in the future provoked by advanced technologies. And, equally certain, as we run out of natural resources, governments will increasingly ring fence such resources for themselves to continue with unsustainable military research programs. In this sense, Faye’s two tier system will come to pass although it is unlikely to operate in the interests of European man. Instead, there will be a return to more sustainable, more rural, societies that will have to learn once again what it means to live in accord with natural limitations, and that will be forced to become reacquainted with the slow passing of the seasons.

Pankhurst, C, 2014. Posthuman Prospects: Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism, Counter-Currents Publishing blog, 23 May 23 2014, accessed 29.11.2014.

13 : May : 201430 : January : 2025

Pervasive Monitoring

Pervasive Monitoring (PM) is widespread (and often covert) surveillance through intrusive gathering of protocol artifacts, including application content, or protocol metadata such as headers. Active or passive wiretaps and traffic analysis, (e.g., correlation, timing or measuring packet sizes), or subverting the cryptographic keys used to secure protocols can also be used as part of pervasive monitoring. PM is distinguished by being indiscriminate and very large scale, rather than by introducing new types of technical compromise.

Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Request for Comments: 7258, ISSN: 2070-1721

26 : February : 20136 : April : 2023

place: Boulder, Colorado

The Energy of Archive

[Proposal to the Media Art Histories Conference 2013 in Riga, Latvia :: (section: Archiving, preserving and representing new media art) :: fast-forward, couldn’t make it to the conference in Riga, so had to wait to deliver the paper at Balance/UnBalance in 2015…]

Ordered systems require a more-or-less continuous influx of energy to maintain that order. This is the crucial issue embedded at the root of archive. Where does that energy come from and what is the cost? My paper is a brief reflection on this fundamental thermodynamic condition that applies to any ordered system. The archive is one such system. As there are no violations of the Laws of Thermodynamics in the observed universe, is the fate of the archive the same as the heat-death of the cosmos? Invoking an interpretation of living (general) systems theory, it is possible to demarcate the trajectory of the archive (as externally configured (social) memory); to calculate in the widest sense the cost of information storage and reproduction; and to predict the path that individual and collective knowledge takes into the future. In a space of energy flows, it is a relatively simple matter to understand the requirements for the propagation of information. Examining several scalar examples, I will explore the problematic costs of preserving the energized configurations of the past.

John Hopkins holds a transdisciplinary creative practices PhD from La Trobe University/University of Technology Sydney, an MFA from the University of Colorado Boulder, and a BSc in Geophysical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. His work and writings explore the role of energy in techno-social systems and explore the effects of technology on energized human encounter. He has taught in more than 20 countries and 60 higher education situations. He is currently teaching on the “Meaning of Information Technology” in the Technology, Arts, and Media program at the University of Colorado Boulder. You may track his process at https://neoscenes.net/blog/. His current CV is located at https://www.neoscenes.net/info/cv/index.php.

20 : February : 20138 : July : 2024

place: Boulder, Colorado

Backup Disposition [redundant]

1 jhopkins – 63 Gb MAMBO K
2 jhopkins – MORAL (Time Machine) K
T2 jhopkins – 63 Gb G4 MUTANT K
3 jhopkins – 63 Gb G4 MARVIN K
3 jhopkins – 63 Gb MORAL K

950 / 700 GB

1 sounds&musik – 800 Gb METHUSELAH K
2 sounds&musik – 800 Gb MOCKERY K
3 sounds&musik – 800 Gb K
4 sounds&musik – 800 Gb MALRAUX K

2 all_dv_tapes – 685 Gb MOOG K
3 all_dv_tapes – 685 Gb MERCY K
1 all_dv_tapes – 685 Gb MARXIST K
4 all_dv_tapes – 685 Gb MANDALAY X

466 GB

1 archive_jh – 440 Gb MALTESE K
1 archive_jh – 440 Gb MATANUSKA K
2 archive_jh – 440 Gb MADDOG K
3 archive_jh – 440 Gb MORPHEUS K
4 archive_jh – 440 Gb MORAL K

1 projects – 301 Gb MALTESE K
1 projects – 301 Gb MATANUSKA K
2 projects – 301 Gb MADDOG K
3 projects – 301 Gb MARBLE
T4 projects – 301 Gb MUTANT K

233 GB

1 full_rez_video_archive – 211 Gb K
1 full_rez_video_archive – 211 Gb MATANUSKA K
2 full_rez_video_archive – 211 Gb MALRAUX K
T3 full_rez_video_archive – 211 Gb MIXTURE K
4 full_rez_video_archive – 211 Gb NEOSCENES_6 K

1 archive_akm – 180 Gb MODESTY
2 archive_akm – 180 Gb MUFTIE K
3 archive_akm – 180 Gb NEOSCENES_4 K
4 archive_akm – 180 Gb NEOSCENES_5 K

1 Hi8 – 168 Gb MOOG K
2 Hi8 – 168 Gb MODESTY K
3 Hi8 – 168 Gb MUFTIE K
4 Hi8 – 168 Gb MORTAL K
3 Hi8 – 168 Gb MADDOG K

152 / 114 GB

1 JAH video – 150 Gb NEOSCENES_2 K
2 JAH video – 150 Gb K MAXWELL K
3 JAH video – 150 Gb MORAL K
4 JAH video – 150 Gb MORTAL K

1 performance_material – 77 Gb MORTAL K
1 performance_material – 77 Gb MUTANT K
2 performance_material – 77 Gb MODESTY K
3 performance_material – 77 Gb MARBLE K
4 performance_material – 77 Gb NEOSCENES_1 K

1 nv_trip – 43 Gb – MODESTY K
2 nv_trip – 43 Gb – MUFTIE K
3 nv_trip – 43 Gb – MANIAC
3 nv_trip – 43 Gb – MUTANT K

1 installer – 38 Gb MAXWELL K
2 installer – 38 Gb MARBLE K
2 installer – 38 Gb MAMBO K
3 installer – 38 Gb NEOSCENES_5 K
4 installer – 38 Gb NEOSCENES_1 K

1 pal – 33.5 Gb MIXTURE K
1 pal – 33.5 Gb MOOG K
2 pal – 33.5 Gb MARBLE K
3 pal – 33.5 Gb K
4 pal – 33.5 Gb NEOSCENES_4 K

1 in-progress file – 20 Gb MALTESE K
1 in-progress file – 20 Gb MATANUSKA K
2 in-progress file – 20 Gb MALRAUX K
3 in-progress file – 20 Gb MIXTURE K
4 in-progress file – 20 Gb NEOSCENES_6 K
5 in-progress file – 20 Gb NEOSCENES_5 K

T1 ntsc – 9.72 Gb MIXTURE K
1 ntsc – 9.72 Gb MOOG K
1 ntsc – 9.72 Gb MODESTY K
2 ntsc – 9.72 Gb MARXIST K
4 ntsc – 9.72 Gb MALRAUX K
4 ntsc – 9.72 Gb NEOSCENES_4 K

26 : January : 201317 : April : 2024

place: Hasselt, Belgium

The Hybrid: This and/or That

1 The Hybrid: This and/or That

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.

3 Keywords: bifurcation, schizophrenia, catalysis, difference, gradient, edge, reaction, culture, change, innovation, control, systems

4 Introduction:

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”

7 : December : 201217 : February : 2020

place: Boulder, Colorado

Archives in the Digital Era

Somaya passes this along, a year’s fruitful work. We had several long and interesting conversations over Chinese food in Ultimo/Sydney about the archive — a favorite topic of mine, as a media artist/archivist. The preservation of the digital is a fraught issue across the entire digitally-mediated techno-social system. Noting primarily the energy drain that an archive imposes on a system — the rubric: maintenance of information over time costs energy. period. The longer you hold onto information, the more of an energy drain it becomes. Or it emphasizes the break-even point where relevancy (energy advantage) of information is exceeded by the energy cost of maintaining it. (Connecting to Bertalanffy’s, Odum’s idea that negentropic life is information, or that “life is an informational phenomena.” [see next posting])

Hi Everyone,

You’re receiving this email as you contributed in some way to my research/writing of the Archives in the Digital Era scoping study report that I undertook for the Australia Council for the Arts from mid 2010 – mid 2011. This email is to say a massive thank you for all your contributions – large and small, direct and indirect. Without you or your organisation, this report would not have been possible.

After a considerable wait, last month the Australia Council made this report public. The full report, Australian case studies, glossary and links to international projects, licensed as a Creative Commons Australia Attribution 3.0 and all as downloadable PDFs, (as well as an online summary overview by Jackie Bailey) can be accessed via: https://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/digitalarchives

As part of the scoping study, I compiled a list of links that may be of use to this topic. I have continued to add to this list over the past year or so. These can be found at: https://www.delicious.com/criticalsenses/archivesdigitalera

Please distribute this report to your networks, colleagues and contacts where appropriate. I do hope that you find it useful in your work.

Many thanks,
Somaya Langley

18 : November : 20128 : April : 2018

yadda-yadda-yadda

The Call of the Bureaucrat:

Dear John

The Australian Higher Education Graduate Statement (AHEGS) process is to be implemented at La Trobe University and will provide students with a complimentary transcript, information on the degree completed and information about La Trobe University upon completion of their degree.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) require a 100 word abstract to be printed on the AHEGS statement.

To ensure we are able to include all relevant information would you please provide a 100 word abstract of your thesis by return e-mail – immediately.

The above is required before we can complete your degree and recommend you to the next Academic Board meeting and therefore, be invited to undertake Graduation in 2013.

Please treat this as a matter of urgency.

The Reply (gah, yet another hoop to jump through! Their sense of urgency does not reflect on their own reciprocal level of activity: it’ll be almost a year from the time I submitted and the time the degree will be awarded next February — and only a month of that delay is remotely related to my procrastination):

This creative research PhD is an innovative exploration of a media arts practice and the energy-based world-view that the practice is sourced within. It elaborates on that energy-based approach while suggesting potential ways of addressing crucial issues facing human systems. Using the amplifier as a prototypical model, it explores energy flows across a wide range of systems to aid in understanding the complexities of sustainable creative processes and practices in our current techno-social world. The dissertation text and the integral multi-media (b)log space (https://neoscenes.net/blog/) that accompanies it critically examine the dynamic of human presence, encounter, and relationship, techno-social systems, and creative action.

10 : August : 201210 : September : 2016

place: Gale Crater, Aeolis quadrangle, Mars

kudos to NASA

NASA does it again! The intensity and rigor of control necessary throughout the entire process of planning, fabricating, and executing such an expression of the techno-social system is remarkable. These expressions of directed and highly organized energy that a techno-social system makes may be seen as a metric correlated to the health of that system: the military-industrial-academic complex is alive and well. Not only that, NASA has successfully taken on the need to justify its existence to the population in their well-choreographed PR efforts: “Seven Minutes of Terror.”

7 : July : 201213 : October : 2015

Dialogue and Learning

My educational philosophy is built on the existence of a simple phenomena that I observe on a daily basis while moving through life. It is this — where two people can come together and have an encounter. If this encounter is at least somewhat free of conventional social strictures, and the two individuals are able to find an open path for the sharing of their life-times and energies, there arises a special situation. Following this encounter the two might step away from this encounter, both are inspired, both with an excess of energy circulating within themselves, both at a higher energy level than when they arrived an the instance of the encounter.

It is this excess of energy arising from the situation that becomes a source of creative action.

This is a fundamental in learning: To face the unknown Other, to find an open pathway for an exchange of energies, and experience the potential of energy exchange.

The degree of openness in the encounter is heavily influenced by the techno-social system that the two individuals are embedded within and the meta-conditions of their encounter.

Moving away to a wider perspective, a classroom is a multiplicity of these dialogues that have the potential to generate absolutely relevant knowledge and experience sets for/among all participants in the encounter process.

As an educator and facilitator, it is my role to change the characteristic of the space/conditions for the encounter such that there are more possibilities for it to find or create open pathways. One primary task is to be aware of and push back at least a subset of the imposed social relations/protocols that govern the encounter in order to uncover possible alternative pathways for creative collaboration.

15 : June : 201229 : December : 2023

The Welfare Model

In America as in Europe, Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations. Meanwhile, the current model shifts resources away from the innovative sectors of the economy and into the bloated state-supported ones, like health care and education. Successive presidents have layered on regulations and loopholes, creating a form of state capitalism in which big businesses thrive because they have political connections and small businesses struggle.

The welfare model favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation. Money that could go to schools and innovation must now go to pensions and health care. This model, which once offered insurance from the disasters inherent in capitalism, has now become a giant machine for redistributing money from the future to the elderly.

This is the source of Republican extremism: the conviction that the governing model is obsolete. It needs replacing. — David Brooks editorial, NYT 15.06.2012

I would propose that the relative abundance of the historically recent welfare state is a direct result of the ‘easy’ availability of hydrocarbons. ANY abundance of energy will allow/encourage a species to expand the controlling complexity of its ‘social’ system. In the human case, it is not only the ‘welfare’ state, but the ‘defense’ state, the ‘agri’ state, the ‘industrial’ state, the ‘education’ state, and so on — the entire cumulative fabric of inter-related social systems. One single aspect (that welfare state) of the cumulative complexity cannot be blamed for our ‘problems.’ Actually, the human species, overall, with the development of its hydrocarbon energy source is wildly successful in its expansion and dominance of the globe in its entirety. The current ‘problems’ are a result of the species reaching the limits of the ability of the hydrocarbon energy source to provide structural organizing advantage and the ensuing stability of expansion/control that all living memory is accustomed to. The growing socio-economic instability of the West is a direct result of competition from other social systems for that once-easily accessible glutted energy source (that the West monopolized!). (Underscoring that the instability is not ‘just’ economic — the instability is a ‘real’ (thermodynamic) feature and a deep characteristic of the entire system — in just the same way that the initial ramping-up of the energy glut affected the entire system’s (negentropic) character of complexity and control of previously un-controlled flows — things like viral infections, the impact of ‘natural’ catastrophes on populations, and the stability of agricultural production, etc.)
more “The Welfare Model”

1 : February : 201223 : June : 2014

All Roads Lead to Rome :: Transportation, Energy, and Creative Action

Fragment of an un-submitted proposal for ISEA 2012 in Albuquerque:

Exploring the concept of movement as a feature of the contemporary Techno-Social System:

What is it to move? What is the relationship between movement and energy consumption? Is it possible to move and not increase the entropy of the cosmos? When we move we generate waste heat energy. Entropic motion, then is part of what we are, and is integral to our experience of lived life.

How does motion affect the creative? Is motion integral to creative activity? What is the role of stasis in life?

9 : December : 20112 : February : 2016

place: Arvada, Colorado

Unhappy Meals

This article/essay by Michael Pollan is an extremely well-framed case-in-point about how a techno-social system (TSS) will — with science leading the way — reconfigure the energy flows (FOOD!) that we are immersed within. And how evolved sub-systems with a Machiavellian stake in the distribution of power in the TSS will fall all over themselves to retain the power they already have, or will develop new ways to siphon the power away from individuals participating in the system. Individual participants, aggregated as “the population” are still the main source of accumulated hierarchic power in the system. Anyone hoping to accumulate a power-base has to, at some level, attract the attention (life-energy/life-time) of that base. The food industry (and its constituent sub-industries) is no exception, nor is the ‘big science’ sector (which has to justify its existence through churning out ‘sensible’ information (nutrition research: always filtered, dumbed-down, by intercessory media voices)) — and neither of these ‘players’ are willing to be ‘regulated’ by the government which subsidizes their existence. Remember all those “drink milk” ads some years back? All the subsidies have gone underground, so is mostly invisible to the undiscerning eye. The consumer only sees the contents of the grocery-store shelves.
more “Unhappy Meals”

21 : November : 20117 : April : 2023

place: Boulder, Colorado

cranking up the heat…

more nettime volleys, feels a bit easier to be pointed and precise, but the problem of establishing a set of base assumptions about reality still dogs the process — with the dominant Cartesian separation needing to be convincingly rejected for a more sane continuous and implicate cosmos…

Mark Stahlman writes in this thread:

So, give up your plans for “radical change of the system we live under” and *just* STOP living under that system (at least for the better half of your life)!

I respond sotto voce, etc:
more “cranking up the heat…”

22 : October : 201122 : August : 2015

place: Arvada, Colorado

Let them eat cake?

Framing (of) the Flow: re-distribution and the occupation of Wall Street.

A closer look at protocol and flow: the guiding of energies that is applied by protocol, how protocol affects flow, and, finally, how flow affects the distribution of energy and power in a system.

Re-distribution arrives: a media blurb in the face of the ruling class, framing their stupid public squabbles that now merely parrot vacuous resonances of “Let them eat cake.”

Any techno-social system (TSS) is fundamentally comprised of a set of pathways along which ‘naturally’ occurring energy (re)sources are directed ostensibly for the overall good of that system. (note: not necessarily for the good of each individual participant in that system!) The imposition of these directed pathways suggests that the resulting distribution of the energies flowing from those sources is not uniform: there are concentrations of energy (power!) and consequently there are regions of energy (order!) deficit. (note: the flows are not merely defined by spatial and temporal frames of reference!) These inequities are present from the moment that ‘naturally’ occurring flows are re-directed in service of the techno-social system. It is largely because of the specific nature of the imposed protocols which (re)direct the flows that the distributions of energy are consequently imbalanced. (At the same time it is important to remember that energy/power is not distributed evenly at any scale!)
more “Let them eat cake?”

21 : October : 201114 : November : 2015

Energy for the Warfighter

In speaking about the US military, I’ve often used the simplified example that it has only six weeks of strategic petroleum reserves (of sweet and sour crude) that it can reliably deploy in the short-term. When that oil runs out the military machine largely grinds to a halt. I decided I needed to fill out the nuances of the situation by tapping into some CSIS briefings on Operational Energy Strategy looking at optimization, reduction of consumption, and implementation of systems that make the logistical problems of fuel access and dependence mission-neutral. There is a government site documenting some of the issues. And there is the DOD Energy Blog. These sources provide a number of in-depth explorations which illustrate the vulnerability of the overall techno-social system to energy deprivation and the current rising crisis which dominoes behind greater world energy demand.
more “Energy for the Warfighter”

3 : October : 201111 : October : 2024

place: Arvada, Colorado

we’re stuffed

Again in a situation with a friend, helping purge and order an overwhelming abundance of stuff. The developed world is drowning in its own excess accumulation of stuff. Between direct body consumption as manifest in the wide-spread epidemic of obesity and the external accumulation of stuff, there is little room for living. A moment spent managing stuff is a moment of life lost forever.

To maintain a system of stuff takes energy. Else disorder of all that vibrating stuff become a field of chaos for the embodied human to simply sink into the midst of. Life becomes dominated by either the life-time required to maintain the order of the stuff, or the increased disorder that becomes a distorting filter enveloping the once-clear senses.

Purge some and apply order to the remaining stuff. Mostly purge — duplicate stuff, triplicate stuff, quadruplicate stuff — less stuff is more life. Stuff impedes our full experience of life, it drags us down into lackluster, overwhelmed, and subordinate be-ing (or even less to mere consumer). Finding a balance is tough when immersed in the (absolutely pathological) ‘normative’ behavior of the developed world.

Having made that ideological pronouncement, it’s clear that some folks can manage to get others to manage their stuff. They accumulate enough social power to control vast fields of stuff — stuff of great complexity that is distributed widely. Of course, some of this power, in this moment of history in this techno-social system (TSS), relies on the existence of that black-gold mine of highly concentrated non-renewable stuff: hydrocarbons. Without that massive (re)source, none of this accumulation of stuff and the consequent control of it would have ever been possible. When it runs low or runs out, the abilities of people to keep their stuff in order will decrease, markedly.

22 : September : 20117 : February : 2022

place: Arvada, Colorado

greets — more on energy…

responding to Brian Holmes on the iDC list:

> Universities are indeed overblown–just like post offices, trade unions, governments, etc.

With H. T. Odum’s conceptual support, I would opine that these conditions can only arise in a system which has a glut of energy (at all levels of structure) which is illustrated (at one level) by the increase of obesity in the oil-glutted ‘developed’ world. There is one thing that creates wealth and that is access to energy to maintain the ordered structure of a complex social system or to maintain a position towards the top of a social hierarchy. And while cash is convertible to energy when the social system issuing the abstracted fiscal instrument holds the trust of its participants, when the s**t comes down, cash doesn’t help, only access to power/energy in supra-concentrated units (weapons!) will save.

Most of us are in such positions or situations, relatively, and are communicating here through a techo-social system which is absolutely dependent on that energy glut for its coherent order and in a situation when the energy glut tightens to an energy lack, you can be sure that we all will be sliding down, relatively, to a lesser state. Personally I believe that the current ‘economic’ situation happening is because we have reached a point where the hydrocarbon-fired social order is coming to an end. (This partly caused in the West by the rise of China’s demand for hydrocarbons, but globally by the condition of use equaling production, and new reserves being less than any predicted future use.)

No techno-social system is free from this thermodynamic reality, ever, and furthermore, energy availability is the foundation upon which all ideological, political, economic, security, and other realities play out.

And, as I was going to say in response to Brian’s recent reply — To be sure, collapse, contraction, stability, or other characteristics of (social, ‘natural,’ cosmological, all!) structures are primarily determined by their access to usable energy input, so it is, again, important to understand this first, and that the ‘economic’ is merely an abstracted social construct which, at root, may be quite disconnected from the energy reality of a system. The fiscal obscures the actuality, and this can lead to incredible errors in judgment by entire social systems as well as individuals.

Thinking in the moment, it occurs to me that an explanation of the mortgage ‘crisis’ in the US could be that, given the conversion rate between the embodied life-energy/life-time of an individual (home buyer) and their relative economic ‘power’ there was a substantial gap. Another words, an individual could not, given their own energy sources, bring together the energy to create a house of, say, 4000 ft2 (400 m2). In an system where there is a glut of energy, that excess of energy can plug the gaps in an individuals energy lack, and allow them to exceed what would be their normal status without the glut. This same argument would hold for all scales — where, say, the US military is in the exact same situation. W/o the oil glut there simply would be no US military (of the magnitude that it is)! The gap between a ‘normal’ military appendage and an obscenely bloated and aggressive one is excess energy… (in this case, the energy availability has a parallel mapping: testosterone::individual aggressivity — oil::techno-social aggressivity).

(speaking as a former explorationist for a major US oil company … )

(By oil glut, I mean the entire history of hydrocarbon usage which concentrated in (created!) the ‘developed’ world during the last 200 years)

Watching the Tao is better than watching the Dow!

29 : May : 201131 : December : 2023

place: Preston, VIC, Australia

perturbation

I sit in a room in a one hundred year old storefront property on High Street. I am 12,422 kilometers south-south-west of the point where I entered the world. That’s less than a third of the way around the globe. It’s the furthest as I’ve been, I think, unless North Africa, the Mauritanian coast is further, or perhaps Hong Kong, but I don’t think so. I have the tools to calculate whether it is or not, but I don’t have the time. Too busy trying to write or to work up the courage to continue writing. Or to decide upon the language to use whilst writing. Or to read instead, or to just stare at the wall, or sky.
more “perturbation”

4 : May : 201117 : April : 2024

anomia::punctilio

Code of Federal Regulations

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”

20 : April : 20117 : February : 2022

place: Preston, VIC, Australia

hmmm?

Responding to Felipe’s thread on the bricolabs list:

Obviously, I’m not asking how serious lixoeletronico.org people are, because I’m one of them :P I meant the companies who say they are not using gold, coltan, tungsten etc any more.

sotto voce: If you want to dig (no pun intended) into this more, I’d highly recommend this audio/video panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

https://csis.org/event/rare-earth-elements

It’s a good in-depth intro to this issue by a panel of three experts who look at the contemporary situation with rare earth elements (which do not include niobium and tantalum from coltan deposits). But it is basically the same idea/situation — in the sense of there being a rare resource, in demand by a multiplicity of large forces/powers, in places where local people are considered to be disposable commodities.

(I am not promoting their opinions, but they do describe the situation well from their point of view, both historical and today’s view)…

I believe it is worth it to consider the principle, not the details, in these areas of activism, as EVERY material that the techno-social system uses for re-forming matter causes a similar distortion of localized systems: That is, look around your home, what’s made out of metal, plastic, chemicals, paper, wood… etc etc, it all requires machines to make which require more metals, plastics, chemicals, etc. etc… which make necessary the entire range of the global extractives industry which is closely allied to WAR (of every kind — both aggressive overt weapons war as well as slow and equally deadly environmental degradation warfare).

Humans do this. It is not avoidable. The only factor that we have the power to influence is *how much* we use — of course, this *how much* does imply choosing one type of device over another. It also places the choice directly in our power. We can make choices, we can influence others to make choices. But as long as this discussion proceeds here on this (telecom-based) mailing list, we are being somewhat hypocritical. Of course, educating each other is paramount, but the best teaching methodology is to ‘practice what one preaches.’ Which puts us squarely in a very problematic position of having to implement radical change in our tele- lived lives or else continue to support large portions of this global system.

If you want to stop mining, then you have to stop telecommunications. You have to go back to an industrial base before rare earths and coltan were discovered and rendered fit for use. (1800 were the first discoveries, but little use came before the beginning of the 20th Century).

Otherwise, this process will simply continue and expand, along with demand, and along with all the horrific effects that the human struggle for control of resources entails everywhere…

hmmm. god that sounds bleak. sorry, but from this materialist approach to global problems, there are no solutions. It would seem that a Buddhist approach which posits that *all is change* and to try to grasp and manipulate or put off change is a futile process. We must simply move through this incarnation and while treating each other as best as we can, not get caught up in the grasping at illusion…

I don’t know. (I type on my laptop and stare at the letters string themselves across the screen…)

18 : March : 201111 : October : 2024

place: Preston, VIC, Australia

interview with Niina: art & technology

Niina has been researching art and technology for some years now. We met when I was teaching my old netculture class at the Media Lab in the University of Art and Design Helsinki back in 2000. I participated in her research for her PhD then, and … now

Ei Niina — this is all I could manage, it’s impromptu, but honest, with a bit of humor mixed in… a little complicated, as there’s no time to write an essay about what world-view lies behind the answers. You might want to reference https://www.neoscenes.net/hyper-text/text/pixel.html an article I wrote for Pixelache in Helsinki in 2007 — the same year I did a workshop there too https://www.neoscenes.net/projects/pixel/index.php

you could also check out:

https://neoscenes.net/blog/ and search on
https://neoscenes.net/blog/?s=network
or so…
even
https://neoscenes.net/blog/date/2001/11

> 1.What changes have happened in your work and practices as an artist during the
> last ten years? Do you think your relationship with technology / or the way you
> use technology /has changed during this time?

My practice has widened intensively to take on a tough challenge of the entire techno-social system we are embedded within, are part of. Yes, this includes my relationship AND my understanding of the relationship between all flows that are the substance of technology. This also includes all aspects of life governed by techno-social protocol. When I use (a) technology I understand what I will both lose and gain when using that particular protocol. Using a technology is in fact, a changing of flows of energy that we are embedded in, part of. We are not separate in any way from everything else!

more “interview with Niina: art & technology”

30 : January : 201117 : April : 2024

place: Prescott, Arizona

more on control and autonomy

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”

4 : January : 201128 : February : 2022

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?)

3 : January : 20118 : October : 2014

indices of control

The issues around the control of techno-social systems, the projection of protocol across spatial and temporal regions, directly relates to thermodynamics, but what are the implications of that relationship? Is it simply the direct connection between order and the energy required to maintain order? Or are there more subtle and complex? Of course the fundamentals of thermo cannot be ignored, and therefore any discussion of these issues has to be rooted in those basics. But are there, for example, psycho-social factors that will influence control?

I would argue (at present with only intuition supporting me) that all factors will be traced to the fundamentals. This is because life is at base a counter-intuitive phenomena when thermo is considered.

12 : December : 201011 : June : 2023

place: Whanganui, New Zealand

endings – Day 11 – eNZed

I join the panel Social Energy with Zita Joyce, Caro McCaw, and Sally McIntyre along with a Skype from Eric (Kluitenberg) from late nite NL, half-way around the globe. It’s funny to cross paths with him here, but appropriate in the sense of the networking practice.

There was one point in his presentation that I had a serious disagreement with — when he posited that the remote half of a connection (in this case, a tele-presence ‘wall’ in a working environment), was ‘fantasy’ in the sense that it wasn’t ‘real.’ If I understood this correctly, I would totally disagree. It is rather a situation of sensory attenuation — the ‘presence’ of the remote Other is real, but attenuated (by the communications protocols between here and there). And it is in this attenuation where the loss and alienation from remoteness (and ultimately the frequent dysfunction of online events like ElectroSmog) arises. We didn’t get into it too far as there were other issues to talk about in the panel, but this one really was problematic. When assigning a ‘fantastical’ label to a real techno-social deployment we remove any (human) agency from it and push it into a phenomenal realm where it does not rightly fit. What is implemented is an expression of a human techno-social system — manifestations of this system are never fantasy.

Many good presentations, especially the comments from Mike Poa, the founder of the One River project with the waka on the Whanganui River. It’s hard to hear of yet another river suffering from the typical exploitation/development which ends up wasting the life of the entire watershed and its people. But then the efforts to revive the river culture seem to be pretty successful. The Maori are by no means quitters, and their cultural strength is significant. A couple days ago I spent part of an afternoon talking with a group of Maori women who were reviving/continuing the tradition of weaving baskets, they said that there was a very positive engagement from the young people.

It’s over, so, cleaning up the space and trucking everything back to the Green Bench or the house at the end of the afternoon.

The day closes with another delicious barbie at Don and Ana’s place, with the slow and mild twiLight falling.

Can’t wait to get another dose of NZ!

10 : December : 201031 : December : 2023

place: Whanganui, New Zealand

workshop – Day 9 – eNZed

Workshop day begins: first the waka time on the river. Morning cycle down the river to the Putiki boat ramp, get there a little early, and feel the nerves as to what is possible with the workshop. There have been numerous anticipatory conversations in the last days about what I will be doing. I take a small paper with thought-notes and put it in my life-jacket pocket.

I am fighting with the impression that there is a superfluity of input for the participants — some have not been on a river or so. My dilemma becomes a question of when to jump in and alter the flow of events and protocols which accompany the waka and the enveloping and powerful Maori cultural scenario. It makes no sense to do anything other than participate. Where full participation is a position, an approach to an eventuality of contingent life-flow. I am observing the processes and vibes that are coalescing, seeing if there is a auspicious moment to intervene, but I see none. Back to participating. Enjoying it all. The newness, but also the familiarity and comfort which the Maori protocol applies to that (community-facing) unknown, and The River. more “workshop – Day 9 – eNZed”

9 : December : 201012 : October : 2024

place: Whanganui, New Zealand

Energy, Creative Action, and Sustainable Systems Workshop – Day 8 – eNZed

The official blurb for the workshop:

This workshop will draw on Hopkins’ international experience in facilitating creative encounters in the context of the Temporary Autonomous Zone. With an open structure for engaged and focused dialogue, the workshop will explore a powerful energy-based worldview that can open up new awareness of social, cultural, and natural systems. The dynamics of collaborative human relations confined within an attentive space is guaranteed** to generate provocative and inspiring outcomes. Creativity is, by definition, about the formative flow of energy between living organisms. We will move through a variety of environments (including on the river by waka) as we share life-time in the workshop. The workshop will augment the processes of any creative practitioner with a profound, situated, and practice-oriented conceptual toolbox that address the following areas and more:

(Keywords in no particular order): energy, creativity, thermodynamics, technology and techno-social systems, art, attention, entropy, learning, media, networks, participation, process, virtuality, creative action, human presence, Light, human encounter, mediation, concentration, optimization, pathways, meals, sustainability, simplicity, synchronicity, auspiciousness, and serendipity.

**on the condition that you bring along your entire Self, not merely your body, mind, and spirit

3 : November : 201011 : October : 2024

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.

13 : October : 201011 : June : 2023

place: Millers Point, NSW, Australia

connections

A user or consumer, in the cumulative techno-social system of the developed world, will not see and cannot imagine the ultimate sources of what they consume and use. What is required to make these connections clear, position them as consequent indicators, and as compelling drivers of behavior modification?

12 : October : 201030 : January : 2025

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”

7 : May : 201024 : October : 2024

place: Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

arrival and meditation

Have an incredibly erotic dream with Jennifer D., back from the Culture Capitals 2000 project in Prague. Will have to email her. Otherwise watery squint-eyed perusal of the rotating stellar field in ma’ face.

This morning, a raptor circles a hundred meters away with its mate hidden in the trees along Pool Creek, making a creeeewing sound. It’s the same noise it made when I wandered over to the creek earlier in the morning. All the birds are noisy—it makes a multi-dimensional flow which lies on the ear with pleasing insistence. No need to move the head, as the sources are in motion and occasionally in sight.
more “arrival and meditation”

6 : May : 201011 : October : 2024

place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI residency — Energy of Situation

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than producing new material configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were: the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).

Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)-situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief).
more “CLUI residency — Energy of Situation”

25 : April : 201023 : November : 2015

CLUI: Day Twenty-Three

The choppers take off in formation at 09:00 to the west, towards the Toano Range. No decent audio of that as the H4-Zoom is completely worthless recording anything in the wind, a constant feature of life here in Wendover (Wind-over). Really a drag, so that no decent outdoor recordings can be made, period. I just can’t justify the USD 75.00 wind sock, although if the effort is being made to do all this recording to begin with, what’s the point having lousy equipment? Of course, there’s always a higher-end regarding tools. And access to various steps on that sliding scale of quality is largely determined by affiliation to various levels of participation in the techno-social system. Consumer, pro-sumer, employee of a national broadcasting service. And the level of use of archive material depends strongly on the relative quality of the equipment used in the recording process. ach. It comes back to the issue of controlling natural energy flows through technology. The more energy I can exert (read: deploying more expensive systems), the more order I can apply to the system. More signal, less noise.

24 : April : 201022 : August : 2015

CLUI: Day Twenty-Two — battalion-strength

Today, a group of large Winnebago’s towing large trailers descend around the Enola Gay hangar, spread their leveling legs, expand their living-room sides, deploy external camping chairs, and unfurl their shade awnings. In the large trailers are a range of amateur racing vehicles. Mostly stock cars with over-amped engines. A huge course is set up on the near taxi-way.

Meanwhile, at South Base, a contingent of active Army troops is engaged in a live-fire exercise, complete with fire-finding radar systems and a half-dozen porta-potties, everything obscured in form through the ripple of heat-waves coming from runway one and two and the old taxiways between here and there. In early evening, a contingent of UH-60 Blackhawks come in to land along with a handful MH-6 Little Bird Special Ops ‘choppers.

When a highly-ordered techno-social system meets a disordered system, what are the results? Is it similar to an osmotic membrane with more and less salty water on either side, the fresher water is drawn through the membrane to dilute the salty water? Is the energy-based order diluted and lessened through the contact? A combat situation is, itself, a hybrid sequence of events transitioning between order and disorder at many scales over time– with the different actors intent on maintaining an in-flow of energy in order to maintain their order. It is the ordered expression of collective techno-social energies with the goal of decreasing the order of the opponents system — whether at the single body scale, or at the scale of the wider techno-social infrastructure.

In the case of Afghanistan, the points at which the advanced ordered system (US) can apply weapons to increase the disorder of the opposing system (Taliban) are so limited to be almost point-less. The Afghani society has so minimal an ordered social infrastructure to be destroyed and the relation of individuals to the destruction of their own body-systems (in the case of the martyr), makes the conflict literally sense-less and not win-able in any classic way — where winning is the imposition of a critical level of disorder on the capabilities of the opposition to express concentrated energies that will disrupt the order of ones own system.

10 : April : 201022 : August : 2015

place: Wendover, Utah

CLUI: Day Eight

A few notes on techno-social systems:

In analyzing the affect of technology on a social system it is critical to identify and understand 1) what actors or protocols are determining the pathways of energy flow, 2) ultimately how individuals in the system interact with the pathway(s), 3) the resulting benefit and who receives it, 4) the mechanisms by which benefit (energy) is accumulated by those controlling the protocols. Prior to this it is probably necessary to map the general sources of energy that are being re-purposed (directed) by the techno-social system.

By tracing in detail 1) the relations of power, 2) the pathways along which energy and power flow, 3) the sources and destinations of the flows, the entirety of human relation may be positioned at both a macro scale and a granular (that is, human-to-human) scale: with the implicit understanding that all relation is permeated by the affects of the wider system.

For a techno-social system to be successful, by definition, it has to capture a certain minimum of the life-time/life-energy of participants in the system: this is a technology’s ultimate function within its social system/context. What is deterministic is the absolute need for life (human and elsewise) to continue, and in this continuance, to refine pathways of energy flow to aid in that continuance via the collective augmentation of the techno-social system.

(Are there technologies which do not concentrate energy within a certain subset of individuals to increase their ultimate life-extending pro-creativity? Are there systems which re-distribute widely their concentrated sources?) What about the struggle of certain individuals for a greater level of personal autonomy — those who would seek to either not participate in prescribed flow pathways or would seek to alter those pathways to suit individual desires? The inertia of the techno-social affects the personal trajectories of adoption or imposition.

In a wide social system, a techno-social system, technology is generally used as a means for concentrating energy for a subset of elites of the system. The balance of the participants, the drones, the prolls, the slaves, are inculcated from birth with the fiction that they are receiving more than they actually surrender to the social system. In the case of slaves, this balance reads: your life for your embodied labor.

8 : April : 201029 : August : 2014

CLUI: Day Six — intention

The psychical framing of intention within the making/creating of a reductive tracing of the phenomenal world would seem to be critical. What is the intention of an image, for example? Is it as fundamental as the intention of God in the creation of the world? Or can it be explained away as merely an artifactual process of the techno-social system that one happens to be embedded within? Clearly one intention is to use the artifact to say “Look what I saw!” And, so, the process should never be undertaken when there are others around, as they are already experiencing the phenomenal world, albeit from another point of view. Although this suggests that the artifact is used in the presentation and validation of one point of view with an other. (This presentation process and its outcome may also fast-forward root into the resonances arising from the juxtaposition of those two differing POV’s). Is this the sole, core reason? Or is there something else? Is there more to it? This juxtaposition (though more complex and intertwined than that word suggests) is a form of dialogue in that extended sense of the energized interaction of the Self and the Other. hmmm.

12 : February : 201031 : December : 2023

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.

5 : February : 201029 : December : 2023

network power

Ran across this book a few days ago, and it imbued me with a sense of urgency in the effort to get more succinct ideas on paper. Grewal begins to make a connection between social systems, protocols (standards), and individual human participation in those social systems. He does not approach it from an energy/flow point-of-view, but rather a traditional materialist one.

Using the examples of the gold standard and the English language to drive his argument, he frames in detail the relation between the individual and the inevitable social network (system) that the individual is embedded in, looking at the dynamic feedback mechanism that occurs between the evolving social system (and the protocols which are its substrate) and human choice.

His analysis of intrinsic and extrinsic values for protocols (and standards) that define network power flows are spot on — along with direct and indirect forces which motivate the adoption of a standard — his framework goes a long way in circumscribing the dynamic between individual and collective and the politics of globalization. Network power arises through the concentrating affect that protocols apply to the various energy flows available to the techno-social system

Grewal, D. S., 2008. Network Power: The Social Dynamics of Globalization, Yale University Press, New Haven.