The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in coordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject — but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit — the habit of inferiority to our full self — that is bad. — William James

Is this a condition merely of imperfect incarnate be-ing? The insensibility towards full experience and peripheral awareness? We are not what we could be? How does this fit with the image that Life is in a constant evolutionary optimizing process. Is our potential only an artifact of our too-rapid increase in intelligence — where apparent possibility far outpaces the actual possibilities — we count more than we think, we think more than we know, and know more than we can find any wisdom within. To accede to our potential, we need to test the limits of our viability, but more than that, we must change our energy state. (or simply let our ordered existence sink to a less complex state!)

A techno-social system is predicated and constructed on a system of control exerted on the flows of energy which are antithetical to its 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 controlled pathways is the degree of coherence that techno-social system will have. (more …)

Okay, so in the process of simplifying last week’s posting — 08 Jan — I’ve got to take yet another look at how control is projected by an organism. Or maybe that should be a question — does an organism exert control over its environment? Or does it merely synergize with the flows that are available to it? What affect does the neurophysiological field of action of a particular organism exert on the localized situation? Primitive neuro-systems read gradients or difference that ‘matter’ to their existence. Quantifying these existing gradients of energy relates to an organism’s ability to find the energy sources through which it survives to prolong its life and procreate. This is the fundamental means by which life has prolonged itself on the planet continuously since it began. The existence and control of thermal (heat) energy gradients are also extremely important in the regulation of internal physiological systems through direct biochemical reaction-rate regulation. The surface or edge of an organism is clearly ‘signified’ in thermodynamic and physical terms; the maintenance of internal gradients might be called ‘control’ where the control is a function of defining the primary limit of the organism’s field of action. hmmm.

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.

What could better illustrate the instability of protocol-driven social control systems than the phenomenon of a leak? Springing a leak is an irruption through a human-constructed wall (hull) holding back the chaotic flows of the sea. Wikileaks is a reversal of that, where the leak is from the inside of the ship-of-State to the outside. Where inside there are protocol-defined pathways of State-driven communication flow filling a space of partially-stabilized human endeavor. Every so often, one of the nodes of State communication goes rogue, mad, AWOL, counter, and defies the standing protocols by whatever means possible. Opening the mouth and speaking, telling the secrets of State, a yawning vomit of bilge over the sides: merely seasick.

The hull of the ship of State exists across a multi-dimensional space of refined/defined energy flow. Defined energy flow resists change and promotes continuance. Regarding the State, protocol controls individual behavior through internalized patterns of embodied thought. The State seeks any possible way to apply these internal protocols, and is successful if those ways promote the existence of the necessary flow pathways that insure the continuance of the structure of the State. The more rigid the expectations of the State, the more necessary the adherence to prescribed protocols (and vice versa). The State also applies controls to patterns of energy flow external to the body. These two (internal and external) sets of controls are not separate but rather are united in the space of flow to effect more-or-less total control on the participant and the crew of the ship of State. (more …)

It is the emergence of mass media which makes possible the use of propaganda techniques on a societal scale. The orchestration of press, radio and television to create a continuous, lasting and total environment renders the influence of propaganda virtually unnoticed precisely because it creates a constant environment. Mass media provides the essential link between the individual and the demands of the technological society. — (Ellul, 1967)

What would poor Jacques think about the ubiquitous constancy of FaceBook and Google and mobile telephony and locative media and RFID chips and biometrics?

Some final words on the residency period:

Energy of Situation

Rather than the production of new 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).
(more …)

Today, upon waking, there are two buses parked to the west of the hangar, a bit later, numerous SUV’s begin to pull up along with several official SWAT command vehicles and their teams from Winnemucca, Elko, and Wendover. It’s SWAT play. How to deal with a bus-load of terrorists/hostages or so. Several squads are lectured and engage in practice drills for the morning. I had originally been told by the airport management folks that there were going to be live-fire exercises at South Base, so we were surprised when this began to unfold in the back yard.

There is the fascination of playing Army, recalled from early days in the Maryland woods beyond the pond, beyond the corn fields, into unknown territories of abandoned farmhouses and hunting camps. Learning to make the sound of a gun and of explosions. And here, older boys, men, with very fancy toys, playing for their lives and the lives of their charges. Learning to stay alive, to save life. Learning to kill, or be killed. Learning to protect the innocent and kill the profane.

Leaving aside the refined mapping of experience-once-removed. And instead, gathering experience first hand, in the moment, where circumspection is wistful, wasteful, or even dangerous.

Music on the road. Traveling minstrels, buskers, harmonica-playing hobos. playing for people on the road, or playing whilst on the road. Meeting at the roadhouse. Beyond the city limits. What goes down when humans engage beyond the control of the proper social order. What goes on outside the ordered flows of town. Interstitial in the sense that between towns lie the open roads. bandits, women and men of loose moral fortitude, and wild animals. The space of chaotic flow.

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

As a matter of fact, we don’t just “suspect” it. We know it. We know there exists an art of travel. — Hakim Bey, Overcoming Tourism

What is the nature of what is feared outside the purview of human controlled flows? Is it merely nature? It is the presence of (or the risk of) death — that singular element that lies completely beyond human control, for ever? It cannot be erased from the wild kernel of being. Some seek the thrill of facing it, some hide in states of paranoid control to keep it as far away as possible, backing away only to fall over a precipice unseen behind. Religion is the construct that irrationally rationalizes the presence of the unknown, of death, and of corrupt social order.

… back to the road …

The body of speed. (hunt and/or be hunted). Movement is the first escape from death. Running to safety, to the nearest tree. Running to fetch the weapon that you left at home. Running for the crowd so that the odds of getting eaten are marginally lowered. Running fast. Running to change places. Running to make a moving target. Running for help! Running to the Library!

The Book as fuel for keeping warm and The Book as weapon: dictionaries and encyclopedias work best for both purposes. Book as pillow. Book as door-stop. Book as object sensed orbiting centers of cultural gravity. Textual asteroids and debris. Escape that field.

The Book as tool for enhancing procreative potential and staving off death. Rather, Books on how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading about how to enhance procreative potential and how to stave off death. Reading-while-driving. Speed. And then it comes. uuuuuhhh.

nah. gotcha, I’m outta here, step on it, hit the gas, burn some rubber, spray some gravel in ‘is face…

The condition of virtuality arises when humans create a situation which attenuates the flows that are impinging on their sensual and embodied presence. When technology is defined as a way to alter the paths of energy flow: virtuality is a subset condition of the altered flows such that the flows that are obviously (or not!) entering the body system are attenuated. The obvious (materialist!) subset of the widest set is that grouping which attenuates the classical sensory-input spectra. These may be ‘scientifically’ framed based on typical wave-based mechanical and electro-magnetic physics: the EM frequency band of visible Light, the pressure-induced electricity of touch, and so on. In a holistic approach to presence, the affectations of flow are continuous, complete, and substantive.

Alluding to yet a further subset is the use of glass as a specific form of energized matter which is placed between the eye and the ‘world out there.’ This is a fundamental form of virtuality, where silicon dioxide is introduced as an attenuating filter of flows between embodied presence and the cosmos. (this is a short intro to a longer text on the history of glass that’s cooking on the back burner.)

2. Maintaining identity of product

a. Each field must be identified with a number or other designation on the field application form and other pertinent documents.
b. Maps showing field identities and locations must be maintained and furnished to crop inspectors.
c. Field inspected product must be positively identified at all times.
d. A bin or lot number must identify all bins.
e. If product is bagged, bags must be identified with a stenciled lot number or a tag securely fastened to the bag.

3. Record requirements

The following records must be maintained:

a. Field number
b. Amount of product harvested
c. Assigned bin number
d. Record of any product transfers
e. Assigned lot numbers
f. Copies of all completed agency documents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I heartily agree with his explicit suggestion that an issue central to the balance between the individual and the State lies in the strength of faith in centralized authority, and the concomitant surrender of personal autonomy, obligation, and responsibility. The question of larger or smaller (more-or-less pervasive) government is embedded in the larger question of the presence and operation of all (centralizing) social structures — ones which are making inexorable advances in dominating the fabric of the techno-social structure of the country and the globe. As has always been the case, there is no monumental State or any other structure of social organization that can be everything to all people all the time forever. He is very correct to suggest that the great moral issue relates to the taking of personal responsibility — as an expression of autonomy from, not dependence on, any wider social system, (and I emphasize here, not only the State — it is only one particular label for social organization).

The purveyors of technology market their goods to the participants of various techno-social systems as a means to instill control and thus order on the chaotic and threatening world ‘out there.’ The marketing plan, now in its 2.500010 millionth year, promises that if you surrender some of your life-energy to us, we will guarantee that you will live longer. The explicit reward for purchasing is a few extra moments to procreate successfully. There is no mention whether this extra length of life is more or less than the time surrendered to the system — you have to calculate that yourself. The system is hierarchical with many (dis)functional) layers, with some surrendering more time, others using more or less time to manage that time surrendered by thousands. The point is — the same that Brooks makes — that the surrendering process, the giving away of personal responsibility in the process of confronting the Unknown, is where maturity fails. All the complex protocols of the advanced techno-social system that we participate in will not alter the fundamental characteristic of the cosmos: in archaic lingo things happen, have happed, are happing. And, as I remind students and others whenever I have the chance, technology fails.

Maturity comes from facing what is not yet known, learning from it, that and the presumed development of wisdom that experience brings over time. Learning is a process that arises in the embodied interaction of the Self with the unknown (or the Unknown — it is an elemental feature of the (human-sensed) cosmos). This interaction may exhibit different levels of maturity. A mature being, having experienced numerous encounters with different aspects of this Unknown will realize that this is how it goes — there is little or no chance that a new encounter will be any different — so, a degree of stoicism, with a calculated strategy to do what is individually possible would seem best. Immature encounters with that Unknown give rise to the anger of being affronted, snubbed, or even snuffed by the cosmos itself. The effrontery of the Unknown knows no limit. And when the Unknown is conjugated with the infinite, human anger is shown to be what it is, a destructive and ultimately pointless diversion of life itself.

Learning is also a shared process, or can be. Where the autonomous individual connects with those others around and compares notes. Collective experience does sometimes (conditionally) improve on individual experience. Completely ignoring the wisdom garnered from others makes for a very unstable existence, one that is counter to any organized social system. It may be fun, but it is risky and a bit mad.

(Back to one of the core questions) — why does technology fail? It fails because humans, those who form technology do not have access to infinite amounts of energy with which they might control all the rest of the chaotic energy of the cosmos. It takes energy to impose order on chaotic flows. No matter the height of energy-tapping techno-hubris, there is always a bigger flow of energy out there, waiting to obliterate the set of carefully organized protocols of power of puny humans. Things happen, have happed, are happing. All the time. At all scales, every where. Statistics are for reductive hindsight rumination, not prediction, as prediction is merely part of that marketing strategy. Buy into this now and you will gain a procreative edge. Your technology will not fail. But keep in mind, things happen, have happed, are happing. Of course, more things will happen when there is more autonomy. Hmmm. This is the problem.

And anyway, is death really vanquished when it temporarily disappears from the artifice of this ultimately short-term effort to control the cosmos? Of course, length of life is correlated with improved ability to ensure that life goes on into a future: that basal of all paybacks, continuance. But is there a correlation between clock-timed length of life and quality?

He had a good life.
or
He had a long life.
or
He had a bad life.
or
He had a short life.

or a combination of the above…

We face a choice in every moment: where to place our individual and collective lives on a sliding scale between a complete and dulling surrender to the creations of human artifice as brought about at some level in any social structures and the high-intensity madness of pure autonomy.

The need for criticism to include the framework for a new, alternate pathway to travel upon shows up when I find myself focusing too much on circumscribing the problems. This is the same as opposition politics that gets too mired in opposition (doh!) and forgetting that an alternative vision is necessary as well. How to find autonomous spaces when on the road, moving along the lines of power drawn by the dominant social system? How to find or facilitate interstitial spaces that are not under the control of that system. Do these spaces have a set of characteristics that makes them immediately identifiable? Or are they only identified by the precise instances of (uncontrolled) energy flow that occur within them? (chicken-and-egg situation!) For every unit of human-controlled flow of energy, there are countless flows of energy of many orders greater magnitude that are not controlled. Humans are capable of controlling a certain, very limited range of flows. This range has increased in time from those expressions of embodied reach to those far beyond the direct impact of that body. By collecting the energy of many bodies, humans are able to express and project the reach of their control over vast regions. Ultimately, this reach is limited by the number of bodies at the disposal of the regime and the efficiency with which that granular energy is harnessed (through those controlled pathways).

Ran across a couple (excerpted) essays by Ivan Illich, a radical critic of techno-social consumerist systems.

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down, because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed. — Ivan Illich, Silence is a Commons

The demands made by tools on people become increasingly costly. This rising cost of fitting man to the service of his tools is reflected in the ongoing shift from goods to services in over-all production. Increasing manipulation of man becomes necessary to overcome the resistance of his vital equilibrium to the dynamic of growing industries; it takes the form of educational, medical, and administrative therapies. Education turns out competitive consumers; medicine keeps them alive in the engineered environment they have come to require; bureaucracy reflects the necessity of exercising social control over people to do meaningless work. The parallel increase in the cost of the defense of new levels of privilege through military, police, and insurance measures reflects the fact that in a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. — Ivan illich, Tools for Conviviality

Starting with the immediate body as a field-of-action to release control (versus the control-at-a-distance regime we are immersed within now):

Bushwhacking is a method to relinquish control of the trajectory of the body. By exposing the body to the unknown, one has to respond in real time, in the present. This present invites the presence of be-here-now and within that state of be-ing, the embodied self yields to the edge that divides the controlled from un-controlled. Precisely at that edge is the locus of active transformation and change. Making the next step into the unknown is, literally, an act of trust in the body, in a belief that entering the unknown will present possibility. Whether or not this possibility is merely the chance of the continuance of the species (in a biological framework), the projection of life into the not-now, the future, or whether it is an operative pre-condition for a transcendent state I cannot at this moment comment on. Somehow, this is a question that each individuated being self-wise has to make in each of those moments.

Human-controlled flows — those that are apparently known, defined, located, standardized, measured — are merely thin veneers on an un-controlled cosmos which dwarfs all. Or does it? Are we not energized elements, expressions of that cosmos, as much as any else? Does the scalar really matter when space and time are suspended (along with the artifice of Cartesian models and all other abstracted human frameworks)?

Go to your edge. This phrase comes up in Westernized yogic teachings. It suggests a shaky physical state where muscles struggle to maintain some configuration that they are barely fit to do. Of course, that meaning may deepen as a practice becomes more holistic and not limited to the mere physical (think pilates). Moving further into the image — what would it mean to an animal to go to its edge? The edge would be the dividing line between living and losing control over all body systems (organismic death). A tad over that edge precipitates a very different outcome than a tad under: a basic sensitivity fo initial conditions. Can it be that non-human systems exist at that edge at all times and at all scales — that this is the condition of non-equilibrium states? And that edge is what degenerates into wildly different outcomes (life vs death) as a result of small perturbations — essentially a chaotic system. Or can this be the condition of the cosmos at all scales all the time? But it would seem that human systems exist at this edge as well, except that the human species has abstracted/constructed numerous illusions suggesting that it is not subject to the same razor-edge condition. (The illusion of control of future trajectories.)

And it occurs to me later that our retreat from that edge is in our deep desire for physical body to be maintained, for risk to be lowered, for future to be statistically more attainable. This state-of-being perhaps arose through our stepping away from simple (animal) living, and into the future-tension of linguistically-mediated half-lives.

How to translate this image into a practice? Go to your edge.

month over and out. blue sky above. short views of the stars. brief perambulations. trip-wires to step over and toxic states of being to avoid. and liberation.

another month, noting whether or not it has passed or seems to pass.

cut down a tree, dead birch, with an only-partly sharp axe. sharpened a bit on a chunk of sandstone. the birch is about sixteen inches in diameter. some serious cardio-upper-body work. with safety in mind (it’s a double-bladed axe). and the thoughts of the techno-social system roiling through mind. making small stories which illustrate the relationships.

the primary of which is the counter-balanced movement between autonomy and control; ability to project power and to survive with the available tools, and the avoidance of losing the autonomy of the body to project energies of its own making.

imagine the relationship of the contemporary person to artificial Lighting. Light switches are conveniently located at the door of a room to avoid any need to move in the dark. do we lose the capabilities of seeing in the dark? of augmenting memory-based embodied navigation and balance skills, tactile senses, located hearing. of slow motion, of eyes-wide-open proceeding. heightened muscle coordination? or just suffer an evolutionary set-back when shins hit the frame of the bed.

en route. heavy security gauntlet, got picked for extra testing twice — once at Tegel in Berlin and once in Heathrow. sheesh… now immersed in the media and the seamless advertising of all places of transit and transport. in this fear-full new world of old ways. secure and safe in the knowledge that life in Under Control. now where’s the friggin’ baggage claim?

there are ways of movement that smooth the soul, and other ways which bring turbulence. turbulent systems are a product of the god within, rioting for, or simply bored with the offerings of the social system.

the lady in the next row reads Becoming Best Friends with God, what does this mean? can life be so transitory that anything (thing, why thing? any action?) potentially is transcendent. any event, instance, pattern of movement, Light refracted through the small round door portal shifts through all the visible colors. and we see. I must choose to obey God in faith. the book exhorts.

whilst Marx and Engels look on, Berlin goes about it’s business…

at home, watching NASA teevee. people on the point, at the peak of collective human expression into regions where life is not sustainable without complete protection. what does it take to make that expression? considering the sequence of flows which lead to the ISS, I am struck by the precision first of the activities of the EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activities). the level of controlled choreography going on between Ground Control and the astronauts. large catalogs of instructions are compiled to guide the Ground Controllers as they talk the astronauts through the precise sequence of every task. the degrees of freedom are extremely limited. precisely because of the fact that to make this kind of extreme (energy-consumptive) expression of the TSS (techno-social system), the flows of energy have to be on tightly-defined pathways, else they become diffused before reaching their goals. the more extreme the goal, the more control necessary to be applied to the pathway: a more rigidly defined pathway. is it possible to have an extreme expressive goal and not to need focused energy to get there? only where there is unlimited incremental energy sources available. focus seems a necessary constituent. and that is lacking in certain circumstances. focus. to reach extreme goals, or even mean ones…

across Berlin-Mitte and the Tiergarten to Charlottenburg and to the UdK seminar.

responding to Roger Malina on metrics on the New-Media-Curating list:

finding the wall. on a stroll with Jim and MH for a splendid afternoon, cloudless sky, 20C in the shade. not bad, well, to be honest, pretty damn nice weather after all the cold crap in the preceding weeks. find the wall, The Wall, wandering through Friedhof der Sophiengemeinde, and there it is, a preserved section, along with a pile of grave markers, and a row of stacked pieces of The Wall, crumbling away slowly, rebar showing. head home after dinner. tired in the relative heat.

Dialogic relations have a specific nature: they can be reduced neither to the purely logical (even if dialectical) nor to the purely linguistic (compositional – syntactic). They are possible only between complete utterances of various speaking subjects … Where there is no word and no language, there can be no dialogic relations; they cannot exist among objects or logical quantities (concepts, judgments, and so forth). Dialogic relations presuppose a language, but they do not reside within the system of language. They are impossible among elements of a language. — Mikhail Bakhtin

Inane story on NPR, dancing around the hype of ubiquitous computing (still?) — With the installation of a network of sensors on house plants that will send wifi info to their owner about their condition.

Who sets up this network? Who maintains it? Who interacts with it? When and why is it interacted with? Under what conditions is it necessary to interact with it? Or is it ever necessary to interact with it? Those people who are so interested in spreading digital networks somehow forget the necessity of manufacturing, deployment, installation, configuration, and, especially, maintenance. Not to mention the actual (life-)time necessary to interact with the data being gathered, tweaking it if necessary (or even possible) into a form that is understandable and usable to the idiosyncratic self, NOT the generic Everyman (who is the Grail of the data collectors).

These questions point back to the cultural (d)evolution which mandates a rolling over of systems from localized individual control to a centralized social command-and-control. Now, a big argument used by the ubicomp community is that the existence of these networks liberates the localized Everyman from the drudgery of some localized chore or another. Watering house plants, in this case. But there is a hidden factor — the subsequent reliance of the individual on the centralized system of production and (standardized control) — which creates and deploys these devices. It costs money to have these devices. And the greater the deployment, the larger the social infrastructure necessary to produce and deploy these devices and systems. Think, for example, of the mining and basic industry that provides the raw materials that go into the construction of the machines used to make and deliver the devices. The individual consequently must be participating in this larger system in order to receive the device. To participate in that system requires a payment of (life-)time (converted in the grind of social production to cash). So the (life-)time freed-up by the device is more than consumed by the (life-)time drawn from the individual in this general participatory process. Think of working at a long-term job so that you have the long-term income to pay for the apartment where you have the house plants. Stability is a core value here to consider here as well — without long-term stability (a stable environment), exotic house plants are imperiled. To have house plants assumes this long-term stability (which the social system relies on!). So not only is this further reliance on the deployed ubicomp system NOT about liberation — it is the opposite — it is about a subtle enslavement to a greater social system for which instability is anathema. The drawing-off of the lifetime (and life energy) of the individual into that social system is the primary source of power for the centralized social system.

All of this is on a sliding scale. But assuming that condition, there likely is a certain tipping point where one might go too far and not have the possibility of retrieving individual autonomy. Where is this point? Have we reached it? Clearly it is different in different social systems, despite the healthy state of global systems which draw their energy from widely-dispersed humans. Tolerance for autonomy is different in different socio-cultural systems. Intolerance for instability is generally higher in more organized systems (which came first, the need for organization or the intolerance for instability and dis-order?)

well, what else, the month is over, notes here few and far between (trying to get an article done for the pixelache2007 publication). and simply trying to keep the logistical complexities under some level of control. but the time between now and the end of March is pretty much locked in regarding the where, of course, the contents of the where are largely indeterminate. a good state of conditions, IMHO, to have the intact vessel for living in hand, and only the action of filling it with human connections.

Was ich suche,
ist immer um mich.
Was ich suche
ist immer in mir.
– das Buddha Natur

full days and nights. at the airport, feeling quite good, back not a problem. with a week off exercise. when the architecture of social relations break down. flight 473 waits for a part coming from Washington. some passengers become irate even though the flight isn’t technically late yet. one shouts really loud when the gate attendant is making a public announcement describing the situation. he does it again during the next announcement, with a stentorian voice that drowns out the announcement, so she storms over to him and they exchange words, he demanding to see a supervisor. she goes back to her desk and calls security. making connections. I should be in line to change my Denver – Phoenix flight, but what’s the point? the line is at least 30 minutes long at this point. later, security finally comes. they take him away. he broke the accepted relational barriers that exist in a public place — or the accepted protocols of relation, projecting his stored (pent-up) bio-energy into the space and at the agent. she, a spokes-person for the social institution of the airlines. an individual speaking for a mass.

a look back into the 1960′s with some Peter-Max-like artwork from Loki. groovin’! now about playing two copies of the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd on two turntables (yes, vinyl!), and playing with the calibration speeds. now that’s a trip…

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave the kids alone
Hey teacher leave us kids alone

George (Saunders) leap-frogging a parking meter somewhere on Sunset Boulevard, sometime in the year that Orwell’s O’Brien tagged when the lesser shall have a future controlled by the greater, thus:

How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?
…
By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.
…
And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. — George Orwell

George Orwell I did not know, but George (Saunders) was a friend in some distant past until I had a téte-a-téte with an ex-girlfriend of his. he doesn’t think of me anymore, nor I of him, except hearing a cryptic review on NPR of his first novel The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil that made its way to shelves recently. I’d buy a copy, but I don’t spare cash for material things that I would just have to carry around. I’ll wait until it’s online with the Gutenberg Project or so. maybe somewhen else I’ll resurrect some visual histories of other days that were shared. why George was leaping over the parking meter I no longer recall. why I made an image, I only know that I have been taking images of friends in various stages of living at various ground coordinates for more years than i can remember why. certainly not for nostalgic reasons because when I took them, there was no future, only a present that skittered along, like the rocks I sometimes spin across bodies of water, or the rocks that I have held in hand, drawing lines on another’s body, or those same rocks, smooth in their repeated collisions with other rocks, now in my jean’s watch pocket, getting warm from expended body heat, and grounding one side of my body to the body of the earth. humans have life collisions. I collided with George, numerous times, it wore down some sharp edges, maybe. maybe not. I still have sharp edges, George perhaps not.

mowing lawns, in the expanse of time that is the summer of childhood. the noise, wonder deafness isn’t a factor these days, the smell, well, the smell of cut grass. it is the smell of summer. that and watermelon in the lightning-bug twiLight. but the mowing, the lawn. this projection on nature, this habitus of class, measure of English rectitude. social status determined by the status of greenery around the house. manor or tract suburbia. essence of control. and with this control of the landscape comes subtle and not-so-subtle shifts. consider, for example, as environments shift to ever more homogeneous conceptualized ideals, species which are more adaptable to that particular ideal explode in number, while more specialized species are squeezed out. this is why there is a proliferation of ‘pest’ species — deer, raccoons, starlings, Canada geese — the so-called “Wal-Mart” effect. all the fuel, time, and effort used in primping lawns would be better used for (at least) simply defining (controlling) a small area of the total available land used for housing clusters, with the rest used as natural environmental buffers. developers generally hate this concept. rather using 1-2 acre lot grids evenly spaced over the entire available land. ah well, seems there is no limit to the greed and avarice of said developers, so, what to do? so far, if what I have seen in the West in the last 30 years is any measure. it’s hopeless. more humans, more pressure on the environment. period.

back from another dentist’s office. more work, some drugs, this time, to curb an infection. making the perhaps chronic instability of the immune system, due to sugar consumption, an important object of scrutiny. made it to hot and humid Florida yesterday afternoon, and collapsed, exhausted in the hotel near Aunt Mary’s flat in the Shell Point retirement complex. the week in New Jersey seemed to blaze by, mostly because of the cotton-headed-ness of my senses on simple 2×200 milligrams of ibuprophen daily. remarkably over-sensitive to even basic pain-killers and anti-inflammatories like that. seems to affect my whole being. but, lumbering around, trying to avoid the mosquitoes and the rain, making the system-jarring transitions from outside to inside environments. that’s the hardest. small air-conditioned interior spaces at maybe 22C, forty percent humidity, and exteriors at 35C and ninety-five percent humidity. the body reels from switching on and off of body temperature-regulation mechanisms. sweating to chill, skin clammy with condensing water immediately on exiting to open air. stays cool for a few moments, then the real heat takes over and the body withers. I’d much rather be in the heat all the time and acclimate to the ambient environment. but in this age, humans make the re-engineering of the world the paramount aim. to conform it to a narrow band of temperate, un-threatening, and benign artificial living situations. not recognizing that this makes the species soft, vulnerable, and ultimately unable to deal with the real environment. it makes, among other class structures, a split society — those who function mainly outdoors, and those who stay primarily indoors in a steady climate regime. this class structure is often delineated along education and class lines, but can be crossed by yacht-owners, boat-racers, and hotel maids.

Floridada. as Paul named it. thin sliver of earth between swamp and sea, tangled vegetation, voracious insects, carnivorous reptiles, strip malls, developers, and snow birds. not to mention the German tourists — signs in German signify that, though the real bodies are not much in evidence, at least I haven’t heard them around. prolly too bloody hot for ‘em.

go swimming and listen and look.

moments. wind rattling windows. a monotone voice forms opinions and reveals information on nature. but is the language natural? back to burnished sleepy skin. as the Finnish chapter rapidly comes to a close. sleeping and waking up, and the connected-disconnectedness. after jazz.

this week’s workshop in Media Lab, in the fourth day, seems to bring different energies into play, following in the steps of the explosive catalysis of last week, where students are now taking their education into their own hands, resisting the command-and-control structures and rules of the school in Tampere. last week’s workshop was the most difficult I have ever done, and, in a way, the most successful, traveling through conflict arising from the polar clash of distributed structures and hierarchical structures: resolution and dialogue brings an incredible energy source streaming.

crisis. hard constructed hierarchy hits distributed system…

only one month into the post-equinox decline. below freezing last night, well below. the downed leaves now curl. differently for each variety of tree, some rolling into a tight cylinder, some curling on each side of their taper, reacting to the chill, whatever moisture left in them turning into hard sharp crystals. desiccating. it is one of those dry clear days. where the indoor humidity plunges to Mojave percentages. nothing like deep winter when the outside temps are 20-30 C below zero, the interiors become arid and suffocating bunkers. triple-glazing and complete weather-stripping keeping everything out. everything.

over and out. there from Sredniy Prospekt 25, near the Metro Vasilevstrovskaya, on Vasilyevsky Island not far from the central campus of St. Petersburg University. the last evening of the lecture. walking around the city this morning, the KunstCamera of Peter the Great. what an individual he was. doing everything, insatiable appetite for life. building material monuments to Empire. now it is post-empire. infrastructure only just barely maintaining the massive and ubiquitous monuments, streets, palaces, museums, and cathedrals. what comes after Empire? is that decay the inevitable result when the inflow of energy sources dries up, when command and control weakens, when chaos descends bit by bit?

critical look at the workshop. the dynamic lost in the busy-ness of the institution (a little piqued that my workshop is not so important to the students) but understanding it is a greater question and not something that results from any particular structuring of the situation. probably the simple lack of structuring — which, in fact, is a cool aspect of this academy. the idea of structure/control and the lack of both those factors is a grinding fight for me. within the act of entering a space I am predestined to experience a strong motivation to modify the material layout. it seems nothing is in the proper alignment. like, what is the proper arrangement of elements? is there a single penultimate constellation of objects in a room? is there a proper use for every object? if so, how do we experience the knowledge of what that use is? are there useless or purposeless objects in the world? what is it about an object that communicates its proper function? seems like too relative a criteria to drive such obsessive rearrangement of THINGS around me. who cares? Odd loans me his cycle. immediately I identify that it needs the bottom-bracket bearings re-packed with grease and tightening — as well, the handlebar headset also needs repacking and tightening. the seat doesn’t go high enough, and so on. (that is the second level of awareness of the gift — purely as object and its inherent functionality). the first level is being psyched that I have wheels! cool, takk, Odd! it brings an immediate feeling of liberation. never was a walker. bipedal transport is boooooooooring. except for climbing mountains where I am a wimpy mountain-biker anyways unlike some of my thrash-out hardcore friends. wheels. groovin’. immediately cycle up to some fort on the hill overlooking much of the city. people are there hanging out in the late afternoon hazy sunshine. green ramparts, a stiff wind brings a smoky haze off the unseen open ocean that lies west over a smallish mountain. on the fjord itself to the north this smoky skin hovers against the hills at the far side. they are only silhouettes.

here for a couple days. visiting Kaisu who has an artist-in-residence atelier here for some months. yesterday we take a day trip to Köln. unusually clear and warm for this time of year. it is strange to be in that city again, with all the personal history that has happened there for me. a visit to the Ultimate Akademie finds Hans-Jürgen and Lisa, I speak with Rolf on the phone and find out that Volker is indeed around, but has a disconnected telephone, a group of them had been in Chaing Mai, Thailand for some weeks, and Volker had not paid his telephone bill. so, I will probably see him when I return to Köln later in this month. circles draw tight. smaller circles, and every time I look at Works of Art, I am repressed, not depressed, but re-pressed. they repress me in the way of a reminder of the drives that exist around us in the world, the drives to control the world, maybe only to make sense of things, der dinge. needing strong touches of being. impressions of materiality. impressions on body. simple burdens of. intersections of material and body. no, it is not the intersection of body and material, but more the exercise of control. not making any ideas here. no ideas are better than formations of being that are simple and forward. Hans-Jürgen says I should do another performance at the Ultimate Akademie when I am back in Köln — he jokes about the other performance a bit, and seems a bit impressed that I am STILL traveling! meeting so many different people constantly. it begins to strike me that I am also now moving through spaces that I moved through when I started this mnemonic device two years ago. so there is introduced a reflexive element to my ramblings, being some place again. a cycle of memory, what do I recall? a dinner-party with several artists living locally, telephone calls from Claudia, who I missed by only a couple days in Finland, I haven’t seen her since 1989 in Köln when she had an exhibition there and in Roma also in that same year. I introduced Kaisu to her remotely a few years back when Kaisu was staying at the Finnish atelier in Roma, and they have since become good friends which is nice. Claudia’s new catalog which Kaisu shows me illustrates her strong and evolving works — now using photography. all things cease in mind, I am a receptacle for liquid experience, and not more, a vessel. even consuming experience. biting air, and chewing a stick of words that issue from mind to mouth. fiber. chewed and flayed like papyrus, bound together in bundles, dipped in wax, lit, they become torches carried by those who search darkness for the meaning of being. Kersten is home when I call there to say hallo, she is going out on a date and is in a hurry; I will see her also later in the month. Still no contact with Hubertus about the teaching in Kiel. catch Adele in Budapest, but she will leave for the weekend, and I will probably not cross her path. too bloody complex, these arrangements, even with email. telephone is easier. why? and sitting face-to-face better still. Samu and I talked about that. incontrovertible that Presence is the base to build on. writing through time.

Driving across Colorado yesterday, a very short visit to the Center of the Universe, car full of possessions. Burden-bearer. Arriving at Lenny and Mel’s place in late afternoon. The drive threatened to be under winter-storm conditions but ended up being accompanied by blue sky, dry roads, and sunshine. So much for the Weather Channel on cable teevee. Eye-in-sky-sees-all mentality just fails to bring anything more than another illusion of control to life. There is no such thing as control, control is an oppressing concept of those who wish to oppress. First they teach that oppression is part of life, then they oppress, then they teach the impressionable to oppress.

Blue Spotted Horse said that we all walk two roads in our life. One is the Red Road of spirit that begins in the place where the sun lives. It runs across the world to the place where the Great White Giant lives. The other road is the Black Road of life, the hard road of difficulty, that begins in the place where the sun rises and all the days of people begin, and runs across the world to the place where the Black Thunder Beings live and all the days of people end. Blue Spotted Horse said that the Tree of Life grows in the place where the roads cross. That is the tree we must find and water, so that it will bloom and fill with singing birds. — Eagle Walking Turtle

Life walks many strange passages. Here in Durango. Moving into new worlds, old worlds. Always straddling two roads. Spirit and Life. Loki being a trooper, dealing with changing beds, changing altitudes, changing weather, changing houses, bathrooms, kitchens, people. Names, toys, rules. The constants are a small bag of toys that he accumulates through gifts from people he visits… Mary Ellen offered to do an acupuncture treatment late in the afternoon of the 20th. Lenny and Loki and I with some of their friends with kids spent awhile at the Trimble Hot Springs soaking in the hot waters there.

here it is. the now that I wasn’t thinking about anyways is here. a few hours away from 1997. just another year. looking back on this travel log. began thinking that maybe I should quit with this writing and move onto something else. seems like … well … a long time ago, I promised to myself I would stop using the word “some” in my writing. who cares? (I do, occasionally). things are out of control.

My time here is drawing to a close. Another period of hectic travel begins. And still I am unemployed. I do not know how this is happening. Obviously I am not in control. I even listened to a “How to make money at home with a Computer” self-help tape while driving back from Phoenix. I do have the computer, although it is getting old and a bit cranky, but as I have no home, I cannot grab a hold of these concepts. Instead I float on the very skin of being. Ignoring the future, forgetting the past. Floating. Waiting for weather. A storm. Waiting for the next movement with a bit more apprehension than previous travel, after the TWA incident. So it goes. Head down to the outdoor YMCA pool, thankfully, I have gotten myself up to 1200 yards a day (when the pool is open — the afternoon thunderstorms do tend to close the place frequently). There was a good storm late this afternoon, thankfully after I had finished a good workout. Lightning was exploding all around while Bob Dolt was making his acceptance speech for the Republicans. I am really sick of these media events, yet another one, following the Olympics, and next week, the Demagogues, I mean Democrats put on their show. They are sterile, hysterical, and so heavily controlled that it is foolish to use the word democracy in the same paragraph — on anywhere in distant juxtaposition with these spectacles. Buffoonery and frightening nationalism.