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!

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:

http://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…)

I don’t think it is echoing, except as a media construct, but, really, it’s at least a bit offensive to characterize a whole country as full of fat sleeping slobs, although there are those who are precisely that here (and elsewhere in the corpulent world vs the thin world). There are conscious people here now and in the past. There have been multi-million-person marches in the streets, police rounding up tens of thousands of protesters in JFK Memorial Stadium in Washington, tear gas, shootings, bombings, and so on. While, yes, many in the present population are anesthetized by over-consumption and economic ruin, there remain those who will march and confront the despots in power. It may not be so long before you witness a scale of internecine violence in the US that makes satrap rulers and their suppression of impoverished populations look like a walk in the park. I’d explore the history of this Empire if I were you (or simply reference Tacitus’ “Annals of Imperial Rome” for a start.) This present Empire is fraught with any and all of the possible irruptions known to any comparably-scaled nation-state unit. It was only three generations ago that three percent of the population died in a major internecine war.

Empire does not mimic the provinces, it corrodes from the center out…

sotto voce: Strategic positioning relates to local, regional and global power flows and offensive/defensive weapon systems (among other factors). The US military left Iceland because it no longer represented a strategic advantage to be there (precisely because of weapon systems like submarine-launched ICBM’s, not to mention the very real shifts of global power that have come about since the Cold War ended). During WWII, because of the limits on aircraft range, Iceland was crucial to the Allied (US-supported) efforts in Europe. But gradually, again, with changing weapon systems and different constellations of global power, Iceland is no longer ‘strategic.’ Might be hard for some folks to swallow, pride-wise, not being ‘important’ in some global scheme, but that’s the way things go — they change. Iceland has few if any unique marketable/strategic resources as measured in the present world order. And on the other hand, they have liabilities according to globalist interests (for example, a quaint nationalism which is completely redundant in global market systems, no longer strategic travel/transport location (no need for Keflavík re-fueling!), no significant energy resources that are fiscally develop-able to the scale necessary for global competition, an education system that includes 100% literacy but is, on its own, entrenched and lacking innovative threads (and reinforcing the same naivete that gave rise to the recent disastrous foray into the global market system) … and so on…

sotto voce: Presumably, though, the powers of the office of the president are circumscribed in the constitution, and, as such, are available to the person occupying the office. As happened in the US during the Bush regime, massive powers not explicitly outlined in the constitution were gathered by that regime, strengthening the office of president dramatically (powers that Obama has not relinquished at all — those at the top love extra power)… Any government or national political power structure goes through fluid shifts in concentration & location of power almost constantly, but some more precipitous than others. I’d suggest a close reading of The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus, for a good outline on shifting power structures in a nation-state.

sotto voce: Standardization is inexorable as long as the Techno-social system has the energy input to expend on maintaining and propagating ordered sub-systems.

That energy input is, at base, the attention paid to it by the individuals who populate its institutional sub-systems.

When the Techno-social system runs out of energy input, it will gradually gain in disorder and degrees of autonomous freedom.

Learning takes place everywhere all the time. It is a mistake that you expect a state institution, an integral part of the Techno-social system to be a free and open system. It’s best to pay it NO attention and instead take your education fully into your own hands. Take your attention and give it fully to your peers, and you will learn everything you need to know. And at the same time, you will see the Techno-social system weaken as it loses your energy/attention input…

Leaning on/into the State in opposition only strengthens the reified/reifying bulwarks of State.

Walk away on a new self-determinate path and the State falls flat, a crumbled edifice of artifice.

Liquidity and Flow (rather than Solidarity) from Sydney, where the #2 source of GNP to Australia is Corporate/International Education — it’s right behind #1 which is the Extractives/Mining Industries.

Not much difference between the two, somehow. One extracts concentrated energy from the earth, the other extracts concentrated energy from the attention and lives of young people.

I’d say this dialectic is a cultural construct relating to the West’s inability to philosophically cope with the constancy of change in the universe. So many arbitrary scalar frameworks (and labels, names, abstracted linguistic tags) are put onto (material) stuff to give us a(n artificial) sense of stability. Art in institutional white boxes (whose very institutional-ness is critical to the fostering of that sense of stability); stone sculptures in public spaces; art market metrics. The very object-ness with which we frame the discussion here is embedded in the language of Newtonian fixity and precision of tracking the trajectories of Things. Along with the categorization process which allows a ‘safe’ social shorthand for circumscribing those things (which, in other world views are merely phenomenal events or flows of potential energy), a circumscribing of which has as primary intent the rendering as safe that phenomenal event to a nervous bystander who wants to believe in the monumental fixity of his/her social system.

sotto voce: another short point (belch) I would risk making — I think there is a real danger in this stage of Empire to focus on personalities rather than structural relations of power. That is, the “Office of the Presidency” has changed greatly during the Bush regime, mostly not as a result of Bush himself but because a convergence of forces (okay, Cheney, Rove, embody the forces perhaps.. etc etc) — a convergence of forces that are structurally evolving at this moment in the Empire. Of course, those concentrations of power may simply wane during the Obama regime, or, more likely in my mind, is that they will increase, given the intense desires and energies and attentions projected at (the) Presidency. Given Obama’s awareness of media, this will be a ‘natural.’ But this evolution, whatever happens, will not be THAT closely tied to Obama, IMHO, but simply the trajectory of Empire… I am hopeful for a kinder and more intelligent Empire, but what else is a kinder Empire than one which is on the way down, unable to brutally control the sources of it’s power; add intelligence to kindness, and is that akin to beautifully playing the fiddle while Rome burns? Or simply more intricate and obscured warfare on less suspecting victims? Watch for some interesting machinations of power in the next 4 years… I have decided, personally, that I will have lived during the (first) peak and subsequent decline of the (first) American Empire. All’s to do is to document that life and find some humor among humans.

doh…!

sotto voce: Speaking as someone who first majored in mining engineering and ended up in geophysical engineering for a major oil company… (my profuse apologies in retrospect :-\\

I am very doubtful that “new” technologies will solve the problem — as what would be termed higher technologies require more intensive usage of the pre-existing techno-social system or infrastructure to develop those technologies. Things like nano-technologies, because of the consequent need for greater precision and so on, require that much more energy to maintain highly precise infrastructures. Not to mention another couple layers of machines (made by machines made by machines) all which ultimately sit on the extractive minerals industry. The greater the order/precision/complexity of a system the more inflow of energy you need to maintain that order. This is simple thermodynamics. The only way you can deal with this problem is to look for incrementally system-wise LESS complex solutions. This is the key weakness of forward-looking Utopian technological-development horizons. If it requires a greater degree of complexity, it will have a consequently larger foot-print related to primary industrial processes like mining, refining, and extraction..

And, the consequent human price is paid — as we drain energy resources OUT of a social system — it is thermodynamically no surprise there are larger degrees of social disorder in those systems (Nigeria, Middle East, Brazil, Appalachia, the Rheingebiet — actually EVERYWHERE that these extractive processes take place!)

I’m starting to have the belief that we will simply go through a peak of consumptive civilization and as energy sources are depleted, the global techno-social system will not be able to maintain the globe-spanning order (try driving tanks on vegetable oil…) it has now, things will become more local.

Imagine that it could very well be that in our life times, that the prospect of one of us visiting from Europe to Brazil will be as difficult and time-consuming as it was 200 years ago… or more! (200 years ago, there were still some trees in the world large enough to construct robust ocean-going vessels)…

Okay, so what to do in the mean time? I believe lowering complexity in our lives by avoiding higher-technologies when we have a choice — in eating, working, living, playing — complexity generated by participating in distant extensions in the food cycle, the communications cycle, any technology cycles, by higher precision devices and systems, by globally standardized systems of all sorts…

should I give up email and talk to my neighbors instead? yes, most likely… at least that way, if war breaks out, I will at least know something about my neighbor…

sotto voce (posted to brainstorms on back-channel communication and surfing in the wired classroom): I think one of the elephants in the room is the question of relevance. By this I mean — yes, the network provides channels to access information about the apparent subject of the learning experience. But what about the learning approach where a group simply maps their own understanding of a ‘knowledge’ space, and extends that space with their OWN ideas, relevant to their situation, rather than the constant referencing to what is becoming the standard (knowledge) ‘out there’ in the (socially-defined, dominantly-positioned) network. I believe this loss of autonomy of the local group of learners will have DEEP repercussions in the future. Indeed, it represents a loss of idiosyncrasy and autonomy of the learning process AND a deep dislocation of local relevance. It also represents a deep loss of diversity in the dominant social system. (a deep gain in conformity!) This might explain how students are finding ‘public’ education as a real learning situation ever more irrelevant and in need of being avoided or dis-engaged from at all costs.

People will pay attention to information relevant to their situation.

sotto voce: A metric is a standard, and a standard is the fundamental building-block of a (our) techno-social system. We cannot have a techno-social system without standards, so the question becomes how many, how expansive, and how standard? Whenever standards are applied to a system, the system decreases in its degree of freedom and complexity, and increases internal control-ability for the duration of the time that the system has those standards applied (which is for how long that system has the excess energy to maintain the order that is required to apply standards).

If we seek for a ‘global’ standard when we have only, say, a national standard, our system will be poorer in its potential for creative innovation, period. As standards are applied on larger and larger systems (thinking of the development of global standards (for example, telephone plugs)) idiosyncrasy decreases and the opportunities within which we encounter the un-expected decreases (oh, as techno-road-warrior I can plug my modem in where-ever I travel, that’s cool — to maintain my position in the techno-social system I need this ability!). When (fewer) standards of a more local sense are applied, there are more opportunities for interstitial (TAZ’s) to arise simply because there are more interstitial gaps between standardized systems.

I vote for less standards, more idiosyncrasy.

Even if it means I am completely excluded from a standardized system of educational production, thank you… I will somewhat happily forgo the rewards that go along with standardization to maintain an autonomous situation for myself (and the students I encounter). Standards are about conformity, social harmony, control, power, and ultimately about stasis and death. A system with a too-high degree of standardization cannot innovate or deal with change. And, if all is change, well, that is something to deal with. (for example, the long-term effect of the Bologna Accord will be wider-scale reification of the educational system in Europe, no doubt!)

Now I realize the discussion here is proceeding based on the idea that we face a previously reified and unresponsive system of standards imposed by a techno-social system that was responding to other degrees of uncertainty that it felt were unbearable (to social stability). But I think it is problematic to think that another set of standards will function any differently. Truly open systems suggest a lack of standards which then stimulates the direct negotiation and exchange process at the granular human level — this process of exchange arises from difference itself.

sotto voce: The cost 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 that ‘allows’ me to make a posting to this list, or to receive incoming postings, requires much more than that single expense. There are ways of minimizing or reducing the relative level of participation, but in a developed country, there are absolute minimums which, if I slide under, I remove myself from any ability to participate. Things like a fixed address, a bank account, a national ID number, a passport — each of which demands a certain set of other fixity/stability in regard to the system (which demands this to support its continued viability).

I ‘pay’ for the privilege primarily by spending some of my life-time in the service of propping up that techno-social system. Spending life-time in participating in system-sanctioned interaction with others who are also seeking legitimacy within the system. When I spend that life-time, it’s gone, I don’t get it back. I convert some of that resource, life-time, life-energy into an abstracted currency which allows me the ‘freedom’ to convert my life-energy into other sanctioned expressions of the techno-social system for my perusal and consumption. Through participating I lend my life-energy as a signature of legitimacy of the entire techno-social system that I am helping to prop up as a participant. What a system ‘sanctions’ is not always clear, but in the long-term, it is anything that promotes my participation in the system in such a way that the system profits in using my submitted energies in expressions that it deems necessary to its survival (not mine!)…

The ultimate payee in any social system are the individuals who participate in the system, at whatever level — through the spending of life-time (think, for example, ‘paying attention’) into that system. There are relative ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ depending on how you judge the relative punishments and rewards meted out by the system as it seeks your optimal participation.

I think that refusing participation at the degree of whether or not to publish based on an ideological detail within the system is a very small incremental shift in paying slightly attention to the ‘dominant’ system and slightly more to a subset of that dominant system. I use the word subset because the dominant system includes the entire globalized techno-social infrastructure of telecommunications and digital devices upon which in both cases we are totally dependent.

In order to participate in this forum here (as one possible niche, TAZ, where we can play for a time, before going back to paying attention to the dominant system …) or to write about these subjects or to circulate at all, we are dependent. I can understand the refusal as a statement against the hegemonic power of that system, and BRAVO for that. But what about a refusal to use tele-communications and instead only transmit orally the ideas to one person at a time. (Yeah, why not — what is it about numbers and spatial reach that so seduces us to believe in our own ‘influence’ on others..?) Imagine that, if everyone on every mailing list in the world would instead take the same amount of time they spend in eye-lid-locked paralyzed point-of-view gazing at the screen and instead engaged with those humans which were immediately around them…

some musings…

sotto voce (to brainstorms on the XO laptop deployment): And there is the entirely OTHER issue — that of autonomy. The techno-social system (in this example, the entire combined system that is providing the XO) deploys a device, it is not a simple movement of material items or even socio-cultural values (although that is the lever of most of the critique IMHO). It is also the tying in of that distant Other into that larger techno-social system — as soon as they begin using that device. The tying-in has a complex range of affects on the individual using the device. (Alluding to the attention issue, Howard) When that remote other begins to pay attention to the device (spending life-time which equals life-energy) they are removing that attention from a more local framework, and giving that attention/energy to the larger techno-social system. One consequence is that they become dependent on that system, another is that the system consumes that life energy in order to maintain itself (by the nature of a techno-social system). The distant Other is more-or-less bound into this relationship simply by using the device (independent of ideology or purpose!). The dependency expresses itself in an incremental loss in personal autonomy. If the device, now incorporated in the Other’s life, does not function, the Other is in immediate and critical dependency on that larger system. This fact alone is directly counter to the idea, for example, of locally relevant use of the device and goes a long way to suppress the construction of locally relevant learning ‘solutions’ as this deep nature of the device is very ‘corrupting’ (brings in all the values of that larger techno-social system)…

Prior to the introduction of such a device, there are greater possibilities (not necessarily happening, though, I will admit) of locally/individually relevant knowledge-building.

I am probably way too cynical at this point in life, based on experiential observation, though, to think that anything can ‘stop’ this globalized spread of the techno-social system. No political agenda has much power, no national government, no special-interest groups… it seems to be a bulldozer of humanity rolling ahead.

So, what to do? The only solution that I see is the reminding that all this system is built on the fundamental of granular f-2-f encounters of humans and we have to pay deep attention to the local Other first and foremost and definitely BEFORE engaging in the highly mediated techno-social dance of engaging the distant Other.

I apologize, I am sitting alone in a small flat in Berlin typing to you. I do not know my neighbors. I do not, in the moment, practice what I preach. We are already far down the road, soon (I see this in my students) we will forget where we came from. I will continue to remind them and myself. I’ll go meet a friend in a cafe in a couple hours…

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.

sotto voce (posted to Brainstorms): Isn’t it such that rather than looking at this helicoptering as a totally new development — it would seem to me that a possible baseline is the extended but specifically located family. I was based in Iceland for 6 years, married to an Icelander, and it was strange — as a typical ‘nuclear’ American (father an engineer for the gov’t, dislocated several times during my upbringing, not living in close proximity to relatives) — it was strange to suddenly be in an extended and local family of around 150 people. You don’t need to helicopter as people are simply around, but you do need to set up a cooperative but not intrusive set of relations with that family. I think the example of girls calling their mothers is simply the deep-seated desire to return to that level of relation with family. Parents desiring to be related to their children’s lives. It seems natural! The pathology of ‘helicoptering’ comes as a result the more wide-scaled pathologies that the ‘advanced’ social system applies to that granular scale of human relation. Arbitrary dislocation, hyper-mobility, and, especially, technological substitution of f2f, one-to-one family communications with (hyper!)-social centralized media applies a mortal stress on what we appear to yearn for. Facebook represents a desperate attempt to return to that earlier state of relation. But is, in itself yet another implementation of further-alienating technological intervention… seems to be a vicious circle where helicoptering parents are just another pathetic pathological spin-off…

sotto voce: In the 1:1 dialogs it’s usually a volunteer student, but, of course, a volunteer is never really a volunteer unless the power relation in the classroom is fully devolved into a truly distributed system. Which is never the case until the class is completely over and grades are posted — then the teacher can come into a more human-to-human relationship with the student in our traditional system. This is one reason I have maintained an autonomous nomadic status as educator. I can more easily set up a (more) balanced relationship with the students as I have no particular position in the local institutional hierarchy. Of course, there is the more difficult issue of my status as the teacher (which has to be devolved) … but I do devolve that as much as they and my own personality would allow … it is always a sliding scale, and I’d like to go further than I allow myself … in this, the fear of the unknown is a significant resistive force among the students and in myself.

Ideally, a class could consist of going around the group manifesting all possible dialog relationships between everyone, not just between the teacher and student — more accurately, there is no need of the teacher in this scenario anyway. In this situation, all are teachers and students both. In any case, this is a radical pathway which is a direct threat to business-as-normal educators/institutions because it makes them directly redundant, or, at most, facilitators.

These techniques are not specifically limited to f2f either — I will sometimes mandate a text-based 2-hour ‘dialog’ or phone call or other more heavily mediated type of connection to explore ‘virtuality’ and the attenuative affects of technological intervention.

Sometimes when I am lecturing, I do so with my back to the students.

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…

yikes!

sotto voce: Some comments (on the nettime post from Lev Manovich, Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:22:03 -0800 – his text snips in yellow)…

but we have agreed on standards via political hegemony, pressure of dominant ideas, and participating in the easy consumption of ‘whatever works’. And since standards underlie the concept of modularity, I’m afraid that I disagree unless you are talking about another collective “we” that is represented by the demographic you are addressing and are member of.

And it is worth mentioning that none of those ideas are remotely sourced in digital technologies — they are constructed on the entire precursor socio-technical infrastructure of engineering in general. digital technologies are a ‘final’ product of a long and continuous development process of standardization that started when Empire was born.

From an engineering point of view, modularity is a subsequent process result following the necessary precursor: the development of standards.

As a simple anecdote, I recall traveling across Europe in the early 80′s. When crossing a border, say, between Italy and Germany, or France and Germany, aside from the ritual rubber-stamping of the passport (and occasional body searches, but that’s another story), one was aware that suddenly, when before the streets were full of Renaults, Citroens, and Peugeots, they were now filled with VWs, Mercedes, and BMWs. To such a degree that if you saw a Citroen Deux Cheveaux puttering around in Bavaria — a car I occasionally had in those days — you would invariably honk and wave (at the ‘hippies’). The currency changed, the language changed (obviously), the places for money exchange shifted, the electric plugs morphed, the telephone rings, cables, and plugs changed. Distance didn’t unless one crossed the Channel where temperature, length, weight, currency divisions, and volume changed to absurdly baffling non-decimal fractions. The socio-political history of the EU (and globalization as well) is mapped over the development of international standards that (have) effectively wiped out those prior social differences.

The history underlying any and all movements towards a pervasive technology (regardless of the geographic extent) is the history of standards development. This precedes any (modular) engineering deployments. (A wonderful USD350 million glitch on a NASA Mars project — when an engineer (collaborating with ESA) forgot to convert between metric and US measurements). Of course, economic (military) hegemony is absolutely connected to this process of standards development. You join in a military alliance and if you are the minor partner, you have to re-bore your cannons to take his caliber of projectile, lest, in the heat of battle, you run out of usable ammunition.

I think a discussion of standardization supersedes the discussion of modularity as most (all!?) characteristics that arise in a description of modularity and its impacts are derived from the ‘textures’ of the socio-technical landscape that are determined by standardization. In a way, collective knowledge as a very broad and general social product is a result of standardization, especially if you are considering, for example, knowledge that spans disparate physical locations. Even with the existence of the basic technology of the Internet, no collective knowledge may be derived without a standardization that transcends the physical restraints on the digital system — a primary one being calibration of time scales, but there are many other calibrations that must take place as well. In the Paul Edwards article quoted below, he points out that there are heavy consequences for detecting global warming because the propagation of measurement standard differences between national and international organizations. An example of the fragility of knowledge building and the importance of standards in collective action.

Strip Latin from biological nomenclature, and international collaboration in the entire discipline is immediately snuffed.

It would seem that the larger the social span of an institution, the greater the built-in desire to establish and propagate standards among its constituents. Maybe remix is the ultimate surrender of the individual to the collective. Standardized idiosyncrasy. Lovely end result.

And at the other extreme, some of the more powerful expressions of artistic creativity take place in a landscape where there is some freedom to deliberately ignore standards (and modularity) and filter lived experience through the idiosyncratic filter of self — re-presenting that lived experience rather than an obsession with filtering someone else’s signal…

I think your mention of musicians sampling published music points to something perhaps more tiresome — related to the instance when rock stars sing about life as a rock star. A simulation of a simulation. TeeVee shows about teevee producers. Escher’s lizard consuming itself. Maybe remix culture will turn out to be so efficient that it will come to that — annihilation by self-consumption of its own mediated worldview…

sotto voce: Although, as a University educator — I agree with John’s appraisal of the condition of the contemporary educational institution (having taught in around 50 institutions in Europe and the US), there is this critical area to consider: yes, the classroom has not undergone a physical re-design, but perhaps it doesn’t need one. When the door closes, it has the potential to be a space for transcendent encounters between the participants IF the oppressive effects of the fear that is instilled by the dominant educational system in both student and teacher — the fear of nonconformity, the fear of personal idiosyncrasies, and the fear of the unknown — if the fear is mitigated. I believe this fear is a result of the accumulation of pathological (unbalanced) relationships that are mandated between humans when operating in hierarchic situations. If, as a facilitator, I can make even a small breathing space by establishing a trusting relationship among the participants, a space that allows at least a consideration of the powers that cause the fear to begin with, I feel that I have been successful. Of course, it is important to go beyond an awareness of the effects of oppressive social relations, and move into a radical praxis that opens all possibilities, especially the possibility of fearless encounters between the Self and the Other. This, I believe is the essence of learning — the fearless opening of the Self to the unknown Other, the willingness to empathetically share a point of view with that Other.

The physical/material nature of the room itself does indeed have built-in to it the accouterments and arrangements of power and control. But it is possible to do simple things like re-arrange the furniture. this simple act alone cracks open the situation. Sometimes, for example, I take all the furniture in a space and before class I pile it all up in a corner. Watching the reactions when people come in the door, and in the instant that there is a the registering that the situation is anomalous, the participant facing an unknown. It is in that moment where something can happen. It’s also nice to have participants “curate” changes of venue where everyone can meet. Having a ‘class’ in someone’s living room is sure to shift things. It is called a Living room for a reason…

Too often I have seen “new media” curricula that miss the crucial ramifications of what “new media” has inflicted on the social structure — where there is the teacher and the students, interacting in the same old form of power relation. Yes, the subject of inquiry is ‘radical’ and suggests other ‘radical’ ways of behavior within the greater social system, but often the dynamic of classroom relationships do not reflect the suggested realities of the subject of inquiry. I have found that it is of paramount importance to facilitate (and participate in) a evolutionary set of relationships that may start from the traditional teacher:student model, but transitions to a distributed human network during the course of studying “new media.”

Furthermore, without establishing a lived praxis, the radical possibilities of personal and social transformation are largely missed. I think this is a fundamental weakness of the vast majority of academic programs that seek to engage “new media”: That within the classroom, it IS business-as-usual. Of course, there are exceptions which usually are a result of the efforts of individual teachers. It is rare for an institution to move itself into a space which denies the efficacy of its institutional structure. It does happen, but it is rare.

I have found crucial to my own praxis is my position within the local hierarchy — for the last ten-plus years I have maintained connections to institutions through personal relationships of people in those institutions. From this, come invitations to conduct workshops or seminars, where I am able to maintain a degree of independence from the local politic. This independence has great value as my relationship with the students can be much more frank and open in most cases. Often, the workshops include in-depth critics of the hierarchic situation that the students are in — discussions that evolve openly from the content of the workshop (for example – networking and creative action) — and discussions that lead to practical awareness and actions that are immediately relevant to actual situation of their lives.

Of course, I personally pay for this independence in the lack of economic security that the social system mandates for people who follow non-traditional behaviors… Sometimes the price seems too much, and a “permanent” position seems attractive, but usually I can dispel that illusion with a phone call to tenure-track friends. ;-)

speaking of modern, post-modern, along with avant-garde, and such terms… some very abstract musings:

I am wondering if there is a connection between the concept of being ‘avant garde’ or ‘modern’ with a basic concept of being: where confronting the unknown is a test of the embodied self (the full set of abilities to deal with the unknown). Certain kinds of people can deal with the unknown better than others. Fear is a definite factor, but so is basic psychic ability.

Of course there are many facets of the unknown, but it can be defined as the sensual/sensory apprehension of any previously un-experienced energy flow. For example, in a materialist/physical sense, someone with a strong body constitution is better able to confront the unknown (unpredictable enemy, new viral infection, can move further in order to ‘find’ the unknown more easily).
(more …)

sotto voce: “You know, I have a deep unease about the re-posting of MSNBC articles on nettime, especially in their entirety. I can understand editorial excerpting for the purposes of making a point or presenting information, but to presume that the repetition of such writing on the nettime listserv somehow strengthens our community, I just don’t know.”

“I have spent much time and concentration to arrange certain types of filters for incoming information: applying single-frequency filters like *allow anything from Tapio in and read it*, or *check out most things on nettime* or *talk to certain friends on the phone and ponder what they say to me* and as well, MANUAL filtration techniques like *don’t read the Wall Street Journal* (I made this rule after living some years in the Belly of the Multinational Beast (an engineer for a large oil company) consuming the BUSINESS NEWS of the DAY when I was flying First Class to countries where my own operations were to help get the oil, at whatever the local cost)…”

I started writing the preceding to nettime a couple weeks ago, noticing that suddenly almost every posting appearing on the list had been lifted from what I would term mainstream media, I never finished, and have since noticed the continuing string of articles. While, granted, I trust the nettime filter system implicitly, I wonder what has occurred with nettime — has anyone else been affected by this shift? Am I paranoid? Has anything really changed? What is going on? Don’t we have voices? Isn’t silence better? (speaking as a networker who only rarely contributes to the listserv side of nettime, but who more often is in individual communications with many of you). I feel like something has slipped, has been lost, some momentum drained. Does Bill Gates’ invitation to us have anything to do with this?