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

Mark Stahlman writes in this thread:

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

I respond sotto voce, etc:
(more …)

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

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

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

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

Code of Federal Regulations

571.203 Standard No. 203; Impact protection for the driver from the steering control system

S1. Purpose and scope. This standard specifies requirements for steering control systems that will minimize chest, neck, and facial injuries to the driver as a result of impact.

S2. Application. This standard applies to passenger cars and to multipurpose passenger vehicles, trucks and buses with a GVWR of 10,000 pounds or less. However, it does not apply to vehicles that conform to the frontal barrier crash requirements (S5.1) of Standard No. 208 (49 CFR 571.208) by means of other than seat belt assemblies. It also does not apply to walk-in vans.
(more …)

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

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

> 2.What kind of different phases in your life have you experienced as an artist?
> Do you work as a full-time or part-time artist? Or do you, for instance, only
> occasionally engage in artistic activities or organize exhibitions?

> 3.How do you finance your work, career as an artist?

> 4.What do new technologies or digital technologies mean to you as an artist? How
> would you depict the role of technology in your artistic work – and in the art
> world in general?

> 5.You are an artist and work in the field of the arts, but do you also work or
> associate with other (closely related) fields? Do have difficulties in combining
> or reconciling these fields or areas with your work as an artist?

> 6.What does networking mean to you as an artist? Are you networking
> “electronically”? What kind of networks or forums are you involved in?

> 7.During the past ten years, have you noticed changes in those instances that
> you work and collaborate with (associates, partners)?

> 8.How much do you know about author’s/copy rights? Are you familiar with the
> contract practices relating to copy rights? How do you see the question of
> authorship in the context of new art forms and digital technologies? Are
> copyrights supporting and/or limiting artistic expression?

> 9.Do new technologies increase, extend or in some way limit the possibilities
> for aesthetic or artistic expression? From the artist’s point of view, what new
> or different do they bring to artistic work and practice?

> 10.How and what do you communicate or interact with the audience? What is the
> role of communication in artists’ work today? What does interactivity mean to you?

> 11.Are there other, even more relevant or topical, issues that should be asked
> about art and technology now in the year 2011? What are these?

> Any comments and criticism towards these questions are also welcome!

The Press, too, in my opinion, is increasingly becoming a purveyor of orthodoxy than an expression of individual views. The State which in a variety of ways, ranging between subtle pressure and persuasion and unabashed handouts, feeds it with ‘news’, is able more and more to call its tune. The Press…is in process of succumbing to the collectivist zeitgeist. At its obsequies (burials) the mutes are public relations officers, and the service is read by an ordained Minister of Information, with massed choirs provided by the British Broadcasting Corporation…It is in the passion for thinking in terms of categories that I detect the clearest and most ominous symptom of subordination of the individual to the collectivity. A voluntary uniformity, no less than an imposed one, prepares the way for servitude. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Emile writes to the point:

I left facebook last week
by EZ

tired of the mirrors, noise and eyes.

tired of prickly, intimate and fleshy human relationships being flattened into ‘friend’-nodes, the erasure of myth by constant visibility and exhausting availability.

what kind of network society do i want to support? a closed compound of willingly data-mined crayons or an open net of chance and unpredictability? more…

I am of the same mind, and had decided a couple months ago to do the same — at the end of February. I have found it most instructive that since I put this status up:

I’ve gotten all of four five responses in the last month and only one at the suggested email address — of around 500 ‘friends.’ It appears that the concept of ‘friend’ in the FaceBook space is quite completely divergent from that of my own conception of friend-ship. There is a bloated vacuity in the expressed presence that the applied protocol of FB requires as a condition of participation. I hate to pop your bubble.

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 …)

When approaching the edge of a protocol-driven projection of power, the first thing noted is that the edge is in flux, constantly. Depending on the metric flow of the power, and the metric flow of the countervailing chaos, the edge can shift at any temporal and spatial scale. The juxtaposition of controlled and un-controlled situations represents a more-or-less steep gradient from directed to random (or directed to countervailing directed) flows. A good example to consider is the two polarized and hegemonic forces of the Cold War compared to highly ordered (Imperial) military systems being projected into poorly organized social systems.

The edges of hegemonic Cold War projections of power were often located in social spaces of great chaos. But these points-of-contact generally did not impinge on the monumental and rigid structures (enabling ideological rigidity) at the core of Empire. Empire shielded itself with layers of decreasingly ordered spaces. The borders as projected closest to the two primary centers of power were defined by rigidly controlled edges across which there were few incursions or expressions of chaos. Natural borders represent a special case of intervening ‘natural’ chaotic systems which provide a temporary or long-term barrier to impingement. However, a power nexus has to deal with that chaotic border itself to maintain reasonable order there for its own population.

The space containing a vacuum of power is quickly filled whenever there is a localized energy source of a great enough magnitude to fill that space. It is more slowly filled when there is no localized concentrations of power. Again, the maintenance of an ‘edge’ is really about the maintenance of a gradient of order with a certain steepness.

An Imperial power will be more strongly be drawn into vacuums merely by the steep gradient between its highly organized (military) system and that vacuum.

The protocols of nation-statehood define geographic boundaries of power projections. However, it is clear that these boundaries are constantly in flux and themselves are finally defined by balances of power-projection on both sides. (Consider a con-federation versus a republic.) The border on chaos is a border that is under the greatest threat of alteration (because of that steep gradient mentioned previously).

Again, back to voice. Given the process of coalescing. In order to bind threads of disparate disciplines, different socio-cultural systems, and idiosyncratic paths, a voice which allows some transcendence of localized protocols of communication is necessary. That voice must needs to be poetic in a fundamental sense. It need not have a particular density or timbre, but it does need to be located somewhere within and without any and all those disciplinary spaces.

Is a poetic voice immediate or is it cumulative? It is supposed that the smallest increment of uttered language, the phoneme can hardly be a poetic vocalization. So, maybe language is generally cumulative, accretionary, in that geologic sense of layered erosional deposition, reification, burial, uplift, and consequent re-erosion. In this instance, it is then possible to find a shiny-smooth cobble of, say, cloudy quartz. Well-balanced, raising expectations of imminent knowledge of something when in the hand, pleasing to the eye. What are its origins since arising from the heart of stars: silicon, oxygen. At one point following the gravitational accretion of the planet, the silicon was oxidized by some environment rich in oxygen. Silicon dioxide. Under pressure, super-heated, igneous differentiation allowed masses of these molecules to collect and form crystalline agglomerations within a cooling batholith. Uplift and erosion brings that raw mass to the surface where it is shattered slowly, washed by waters, and dragged downwards by gravity. The cobble is smoothed with many others, and buried with all those, pressure cementing them all again into a single mass, a conglomerate. Another uplift and erosional cycle breaks the conglomerate cement and releases this smooth stone into a creek bed, into a river, where it is further polished. Holding it in the palm, what is its voice? What does it say? How does it speak to its temporary holder? What does it say other that the mute message of gravity to be let down, to be given back to the earth? If the holder knows, they might read signs in the surface, in the raw presence of the thing-ness of the cobble. The signs point to histories and pathways. The reader has to understand the basic elements of those signs in order to create their own understanding as to the origin of the object. But of its pure presence, nothing need be known, but only the immediate experience of the Self in juxtaposition with this thing. Naming all this is the root of language.

As the poetic, the transformed erosional product of language, the cobble might be heaved through the wall of the proverbial glass house of culture, period. Howl.

The amplifier/road difference would sound something like this:

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

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

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

Because protocol is a reductive articulation (the map is not the territory) of a ‘real’ phenomena, it is not whole, it is imperfect, and it is not 100% effective. Human systems are a constant struggle against inefficiency and the raw effects of entropy.

Human systems accumulate layer after layer of detailed protocols based on accumulated observant life-experience. However, all these detailed systems of protocol are completely dependent on more basic principles (i.e., as articulated by the laws of thermodynamics).

A road is no exception. In its design and construction it is intended to resist the inevitable entropic processes, while facilitating easier passage of certain ‘types’ of energy. Approaching the road as a protocol-defined pathway, we may look within our own social understandings to circumscribe its actual functions to see how energies are concentrated along that right-of-way. Visualize the differences between crossing the road, driving along the road, or driving ‘off road.’ The end of the road. Middle of the road. One-way street. One’s orientation to the prescribed flow of the road is critical to how life unfolds. (these are obvious, but when looking at the extended concept, protocol, upon which the road is predicated on, these maxims become mapped across all facets of life.) A glancing blow. indirect, roundabout, circuitous, wandering, meandering, serpentine, winding, tortuous, zigzag.

We may observe that the road is an essential element of an amplification system. It is embedded in a wider system of flows, and one might ‘zoom back’ as far as one likes to see this essential embeddedness of the flows — immediate physical, local geographic, nation-state, geologic, cosmological — they are by nature continuous, pervasive, and the essence of reality.

Protocol defines a temporary edge — a fine transition zone — between one energy state and another. When a particular energy state becomes necessary to the continuance of life, a protocol must be applied to the ambient flows in order that they become suitable to that necessary purpose. For example, when a State would change its allegiance from one confederation to another, it will likely have to change some (many!) protocols in order to ‘fit’ into the new league. This might include, in the instance of contemporary war, changing ammunition standards and communications protocol systems — to thus synchronize its energy expressions with that of the confederation. The application of these new protocols will shift the defined limits of energy flow from one case to an other. This shifting of protocollary ‘edges’ and the ‘locus’ of the existing flows requires energy input. Switching protocols repeatedly is a process which depletes and redirects energy flows.

Directed energy flows have inertia. Undirected, ‘random’ flows have a zero-sum inertia (as in a system at equilibrium). Techno-social systems — comprised of a plethora of specifically directed flows — face a considerable challenge to change because of this inertial imperative. The more forceful the expressive output of the TSS, the more difficult it is to change the ‘culture’ of the system. (think – a military junta transforming into a democracy).

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Can’t wait to get another dose of NZ!

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

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

The erection of class/caste protocols (another harsh historical judgment in the midst of the industrial age):

Entrance into the leisure class lies through the pecuniary employments, and these employments, by selection and adaptation, act to admit to the upper levels only those lines of descent that are pecuniarily fit to survive under the predatory test. And so soon as a case of reversion to non-predatory human nature shows itself on these upper levels, it is commonly weeded out and thrown back to the lower pecuniary levels. In order to hold its place in the class, a stock must have the pecuniary temperament; otherwise its fortune would be dissipated and it would presently lose caste. Instances of this kind are sufficiently frequent. The constituency of the leisure class is kept up by a continual selective process, whereby the individuals and lines of descent that are eminently fitted for an aggressive pecuniary competition are withdraw from the lower classes. In order to reach the upper levels the aspirant must have, not only a fair average complement of the pecuniary aptitudes, but he must have these gifts in such an eminent degree as to overcome very material difficulties that stand in the way of his ascent. Barring accidents, the nouveaux arrivés are a picked body.

This process of selective admission has, of course, always been going on; ever since the fashion of pecuniary emulation set in–which is much the same as saying, ever since the institution of a leisure class was first installed. But the precise ground of selection has not always been the same, and the selective process has therefore not always given the same results. In the early barbarian, or predatory stage proper, the test of fitness was prowess, in the naive sense of the word. To gain entrance to the class, the candidate had to be gifted with clannishness, massiveness, ferocity, unscrupulousness, and tenacity of purpose. These were the qualities that counted toward the accumulation and continued tenure of wealth. The economic basis of the leisure class, then as later, was the possession of wealth; but the methods of accumulating wealth, and the gifts required for holding it, have changed in some degree since the early days of the predatory culture. In consequence of the selective process the dominant traits of the early barbarian leisure class were bold aggression, an alert sense of status, and a free resort to fraud. The members of the class held their place by tenure of prowess. In the later barbarian culture society attained settled methods of acquisition and possession under the quasi-peaceable regime of status. Simple aggression and unrestrained violence in great measure gave place to shrewd practice and chicanery, as the best approved method of accumulating wealth. A different range of aptitudes and propensities would then be conserved in the leisure class. Masterful aggression, and the correlative massiveness, together with a ruthlessly consistent sense of status, would still count among the most splendid traits of the class. These have remained in our traditions as the typical “aristocratic virtues.” But with these were associated an increasing complement of the less obtrusive pecuniary virtues; such as providence, prudence, and chicanery. As time has gone on, and the modern peaceable stage of pecuniary culture has been approached, the last-named range of aptitudes and habits has gained in relative effectiveness for pecuniary ends, and they have counted for relatively more in the selective process under which admission is gained and place is held in the leisure class. — Thorstein Veblen (2008, online)

When the body was the primary technology, physical fitness and strength-of-arms guided entry into the über class. This persisted until industrial times where the ability to collect social power rested on ones social engineering skills — how to forcefully facilitate the construction of widely distributed social structures with many participants — which took not physical aptitude but the ability to raise capital which consequently attracted the necessary participants.

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

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

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 …)

Abstract

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

Introduction

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

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

Freedom in the Cloud: Software Freedom, Privacy and Security for Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing

Absolutely brilliant talk by Eben Moglen — Professor of Law and Legal History at Columbia University, and founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center — at an Internet Society – New York Chapter event back in February of this year.

In these two videos he presents an image of what exactly happened in terms of the internet infrastructure, completely outside the purview of political or wide social awareness which presents extreme danger to the fundamentals of our civil society. Explicit, clear, concise insights into the situation presented by corporate ‘log aggregators’ like Google and Facebook as well as the issues underlying how they threaten YOUR freedom.

It’s a good example of the affect of mediation on socially-generated practices of any sort [this came into mind when I saw a poster advertising a IEEE conference here in Sydney. The posted contained all the recognized and standardized functions of conferences anywhere on any subject. The cocktail evening cruises on the ________ (fill in the blank) river/harbor/lake. The hospitality suites in the _________ (fill in the blank) hotel. The keynotes by famous personages. The plenaries, the break-outs, the posters, workshops, and seminars. yadda, yadda. Don't people get tired of this endless repetition of heavily coded social protocols?]

The following was downloaded from the UM (University of Minnesota) original Gopher online text retrieval system sometime in the winter of 1991-92. I think it’s the first document (extant) that I downloaded via that new networked document system — the direct precursor of the WWW. Coming around in a very long, very wide circle, from the roots of the digital coming-to-being in the last millennium, breathe deeply:

1. Sit on the forward third of a chair or cushion.

2. Arrange your legs in a position you can maintain comfortably. In the half-lotus position, place your left leg on your right thigh (or vice versa). In the full-lotus position , put your feet on opposite thighs. You may also sit simply with your legs tucked in close to your body, but be sure that your weight is distributed evenly on three points: Both of your knees on the ground and your buttocks on the round cushion. On a chair, keep your knees apart about the width of your shoulders, feet firmly planted on the floor.

3. Straighten and extend your spine, keeping it naturally upright, centering your balance in the lower abdomen. Push your lower back a little forward, open your chest, and tuck your chin in slightly, keeping the head upright, not leaning forward, or backward, or to the side. Sway your body gently from left to right, until you naturally come to a point of stillness on your cushion.

4. Keep your eyes cast on the floor about 3 to 4 feet in front of your body, eyes neither fully opened nor closed. If the eyes are closed, you might start to daydream or visualize things.

5. Keep your lips and teeth together with your tongue resting against the roof of your mouth.

6. Place your hands on your lap with the right palm up and your left hand (pal up) resting on your right hand, thumb-tips lightly touching, forming a horizontal oval. This is the mudra of zazen, in which all things are unified. Place the sides of the little fingers against your abdomen, a few inches below the navel, harmonizing your center of gravity with the mudra.

7. Take a few breaths, exhaling fully. Let your breath settle into its natural rhythm. With proper physical posture, your breathing will flow naturally into your lower abdomen.

8. Sit still and keep your attention on your breath. When your attention wanders, bring it back to the breath again and again — as many times as necessary!

9. Be fully, vitally present. Simply do your very best. At the end of your sitting period, gently sway your body from right to left. Stretch out your legs; be sure they have feeling before standing.

10. Practice every day for ten to fifteen minutes (or more) and you will discover the treasures of your life.

Got that one hurdle out of the way, though there is still the matter of the accompanying paper. I saw very clearly the interface between the institution and the wider world, where the protocol of the (semi-)ordered system imposes its particular form on the flow.

But, in the end, I may not be able to over-come the imposition of a protocol so polariz(ing)(able). The one person who coordinates the checking of unsatisfactory/satisfactory at this juncture did not seem to engage with my presentation at all. Except to point out that I satisfied precisely none of the assessment criteria. Were it a response that was nuanced, I could understand missing the mark, but with a complete rejection of the presentation, I find it a little over the top, and, well, disingenuous if the term intellectual engagement is being bandied about at the same time. If I didn’t have 20+ years of teaching with fifteen of it moving through this exact space of inquiry across tens of universities with hundreds of graduate students, I might be open to the idea that what I am articulating is not graspable or open to engagement, but in this case, I suspect some other mechanism was operating, what else can I do?

History: National Military Establishment (NME), headed by Secretary of Defense, created by the National Security Act of 1947 (61 Stat. 495), July 26, 1947, which divided the War Department into separate Department of the Air Force and Department of the Army and reduced the status of the three military departments (Army, Navy, Air Force) to that of constituent units. NME redesignated DOD by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 578), August 10, 1949.

Navy Predecessors

DCI established in the Department of the Navy under the Board of Navy Commissioners by order of the Secretary of the Navy, December 6, 1830. Initially responsible only for maintaining the navy’s stock of nautical charts and navigational instruments, DCI began chart production in 1835 and astronomical observations and other original hydrographic work by 1838. Upon the abolishment of the Board of Navy Commissioners and the establishment of the bureau system by an act of August 31, 1842 (5 Stat. 579), DCI was transferred to BuO&H. Known variously and informally, 1844-54, as the United States Naval Observatory, the Hydrographical Office, the Depot of Charts, the National Observatory, and the Washington Observatory. Formally designated the USNOHO by order of the Secretary of the Navy, December 1854. Transferred, effective August 31, 1862, to BuNav, established as successor (in part) to BuO&H by an act of July 5, 1862 (12 Stat. 510). Separate HO established in BuNav by an act of June 21, 1866 (14 Stat. 69), with responsibility for preparing and publishing maps, charts, and nautical books required in navigation. Transferred to the newly established BuE, June 30, 1889, as part of an exchange of functions between that bureau’s predecessor (Bureau of Equipment and Recruiting) and BuNav mandated by the departmental reorganization under General Order 372, Navy Department, June 25, 1889. HO restored to BuNav, 1892; transferred to BuE, 1898; and returned to BuNav, 1910. Transferred to OCNO by EO 9126, April 8, 1942. Transfer made permanent by Reorganization Plan No. III of 1946, effective July 16, 1946. Renamed USNOO by an act of July 10, 1962 (76 Stat. 154). USNOO mapping, charting, and geodetic production and distribution resources consolidated into DMA, July 1, 1972. See 456.1.

Army Predecessors

(1) War Department Map Collection

A division for the collection and compilation of military intelligence, the Military Information Division, was established in the Adjutant General’s Office (AGO) by order of the Secretary of War, April 12, 1889, and confirmed by General Order 23, War Department, March 18, 1892. Responsibility for collecting and maintaining the War Department’s strategic map collection was vested in the Section of the Northern Frontier, created in the divisional reorganization ordered by the Secretary of War, November 10, 1893. This unit was variously known as the Northern Frontier Section and Map Section by October 1895 and as the Frontiers and Maps Section by September 1897, with organizational references to a Map Section by April 1894. The Military Information Division was transferred by unnumbered memorandum of the Secretary of War, August 8, 1903, to the newly created WDGS, effective August 18, 1903, where it became the Second Division. Map Section established in Second Division by memorandum of Division Chief, October 20, 1903, pursuant to authority contained in General Order 120, War Department, August 14, 1903. WDGS reorganized pursuant to a memorandum of the Chief of Staff (COS), June 27, 1908. First Division redesignated First Section, and Second and Third Divisions consolidated as Second Section. Functions of old Second Division assigned to MIC by memorandum, Chief, Second Section, June 27, 1908, confirmed by General Order 128, War Department, August 12, 1908, and revisions to paragraph 762, Army Regulations (1908). Map Section established in MIC by order contained in memorandum from the Chief of Staff to the Chief, Second Section, September 28, 1908. First and Second Sections abolished and WDGS reorganized, with functions of MIC assigned to new WCD, pursuant to memorandum, Chief of Staff, September 26, 1910. Old MIC functions delegated to Committee on Military Information by memorandum, Chief, WCD, September 26, 1910, with Military Maps Sub-Committee in place by November 1, 1910. Committee on Military Information abolished and functions assigned to MIS, established by Changes No. 7, WCD Manual, May 3, 1917, implementing COS memorandum, April 28, 1917. WDGS Map Room and Photographic Gallery placed under immediate supervision of Chief, MIS. MIS transferred as the MIB to the new Executive Division in the WDGS reorganization under General Order 14, War Department, February 9, 1918. MIB separated from Executive Division by General Order 80, War Department, August 26, 1918, and designated the MID, with responsibility, assigned to Graphic Section, in Positive Branch (organized August 28, 1918), to “obtain, issue, and reproduce maps.” Graphic Section redesignated Maps and Photographs Section with numerical designator MI-7, October 1, 1918. MI-7, Map Section, separated from Positive Branch, April 24, 1919, and assigned, with Monograph Section, MI- 9, to newly created Geographic Branch. MID reorganized, effective December 1, 1922, into eight independent sections, including Map Section, MI-7. In reorganization announced in Memorandum 21, MID, August 21, 1926, Map Section assigned to Intelligence Branch, and numerical designators for MID units dropped. Redesignated as Geographic Section, December 15, 1928. Separated from Intelligence Branch and designated as Geographic Branch by Memorandum 4, MID, April 4, 1929. Redesignated Geographic Section and subordinated to Operations Branch by Memorandum 18, MID, June 6, 1938. WDGS map collection redesignated as War Department Map Collection and it and mapping functions of Geographic Section, Operations Branch, MID, transferred, effective April 1, 1939, to the Office of the Chief of Engineers, by order of the Secretary of War, transmitted by memorandum, Adjutant General to Chief of Engineers, February 9, 1939. Operated, under the supervision of the Engineer Reproduction Plant, as an OCE central office activity, 1939-42. Consolidated with the Engineer Reproduction Plant, 1942, to form Army Map Service. See (2)(a) below.

(2) Engineers

In a major reorganization of the War Department, effective March 9, 1942, under Circular 59, War Department, March 2, 1942, implementing EO 9082, February 28, 1942, the OCE was placed under the newly established SOS. Redesignated ASF by General Order 14, March 12, 1943. ASF abolished, effective June 11, 1946, by Circular 138, War Department, May 14, 1946, implementing EO 9722, May 13, 1946.

(2)(a) Army Map Service

A map reproduction unit and lithographic school, designated informally as the Map Printing Plant, was established at Washington Barracks as a component of the Engineer School, 1910. Redesignated the Central Map Reproduction Plant by General Order 58, War Department, October 31, 1916, and began operations in 1917. Consolidated with the Central Photographic Laboratory and the Engineer School Press, 1919, to form the Engineer Reproduction Plant, a designated field activity of OCE. ERP made responsible for supervision and maintenance of War Department Map Collection, 1939, with which it merged to form AMS, May 1942. AMS designated as an Engineer field activity, effective July 1, 1942, by General Order 22, OCE, June 19, 1942. AMS redesignated U.S. Army Topographic Command, September 1, 1968. Consolidated into DMA, July 1, 1972. See 456.1.

(2)(b) Engineer Intelligence Division

OCE central office administration of mapping, map production, and map supply initially vested in Intelligence Section, Military Division, OCE. Intelligence Branch established in the newly created Troops Division, OCE, as part of a reorganization under General Order 8, OCE, November 10, 1941, with staff and functions of predecessor IS transferred to Troops Division, effective December 1, 1941, by General Order 9, OCE, November 29, 1941. By December 1, 1942, mapping functions vested in IB Mapping Section. In a reorganization effective December 1, 1943, pursuant to General Order 23, OCE, November 22, 1943, Troops Division abolished, and former IB became MID under OACE (War Planning), with Geodetic Section redesignated Geodetic Branch, and functions of former Mapping Section divided between Topographic Branch and MPB, which had responsibility for administrative oversight of AMS. Geodetic Branch, MID, assigned to AMS by General Order 1, OCE, January 1, 1945. OACE (War Planning) redesignated Directorate of Military Operations, April 30, 1945. MID redesignated EID, and Directorate of Military Operations redesignated OACE (Military Operations), October 15, 1947, by Circular Letter 4389, OCE, October 16, 1947. MPB redesignated Mapping Branch. OACE (Military Operations) redesignated OACE (Troop Operations).

(2)(c) Engineer Strategic Intelligence Division, AMS

Engineer Research Office, North Atlantic Division, Corps of Engineers, transferred to the Technical Services Branch, Operations and Planning Staff, AMS, September 24, 1945, and redesignated Engineer Research Section, with responsibility for collection, collation, and compilation of engineer strategic intelligence data, and their subsequent dissemination in engineer intelligence publications. Redesignated Engineer Research Branch, Technical Services Division, AMS, in reorganization under General Order 13, AMS, May 4, 1948. Upgraded to division status as Engineer Research Division, March 7, 1949. Redesignated Engineer Strategic Intelligence Division, AMS, February 1950. Became Department of Engineer Intelligence, AMS, 1960. Consolidated, effective July 27, 1962, with Engineer area analysis intelligence components in the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors and the Beach Erosion Board, by General Order 15, OCE, July 25, 1962, to form the U.S. Army Area Analysis Intelligence Agency, an Engineer field activity. Transferred, effective March 5, 1963, to Defense Intelligence Agency, DOD, by General Order 4, OCE, March 1, 1963, where it became the Directorate for Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy. Transferred to Directorate of Plans as the Mapping, Charting, and Geodesy Division, April 1971. Consolidated into DMA, January 1, 1972. See 456.1.

(3) Inter-American Geodetic Survey

IAGS established within the CDC, War Department, April 20, 1946, by CDC directive, April 15, 1946, to meet army responsibilities under the Inter-American Mapping and Charting Program. Unified Caribbean Command established, effective November 1, 1947, by Department of the Army (DA) classified message WARX 89419, October 30, 1947, pursuant to Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) implementation, by JCS 1259/48, October 30, 1947, of relevant portions of Unified Command Plan, JCS 1259/27, approved by President Harry S. Truman, December 14, 1946. CDC redesignated USARCARIB, effective November 15, 1947, as the army component of the Caribbean Command, by DA unclassified message WCL 37942, November 14, 1947. IAGS attached directly to Caribbean Command by General Order 4, Caribbean Command, March 11, 1948. Returned to USARCARIB, effective July 21, 1948, by General Order 25, Caribbean Command, July 20, 1948. Caribbean Command redesignated U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), by General Order 1, Headquarters USSOUTHCOM, June 6, 1963, confirmed by JCS 1259/645, November 20, 1963. USARCARIB redesignated U.S. Army Forces Southern Command (USAFSC), by General Order 2, Headquarters, USSOUTHCOM, June 6, 1963. IAGS consolidated into DMA, July 1, 1972. See 456.1.

Air Force Predecessors

Air Service established in the War Department by EO 3066, March 19, 1919, and confirmed as a combat arm by the Army Reorganization Act (41 Stat. 759), June 4, 1920. Redesignated Air Corps by the Air Corps Act (44 Stat. 780), July 2, 1926. Air Corps placed under newly established Army Air Forces (AAF) by Army Regulation 95-5 (revised), June 20, 1941. Office of the Chief of the Air Corps (OCAC) abolished in AAF reorganization, effective March 9, 1942, under Circular 59, War Department, March 2, 1942, implementing provisions of EO 9082, February 28, 1942. Air Corps and AAF superseded by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) in the Department of the Air Force pursuant to Transfer Order 1, Office of the Secretary of Defense, September 26, 1947, implementing reorganization provisions of the National Security Act of 1947. (For an administrative history of AAF and its predecessors, see RG 18.)

Airways Section established under Training and War Plans Division, 1921, to acquire and produce air route maps suitable for military use. Abolished in reorganization of Air Corps pursuant to Air Corps Act, 1926. Information Division established by Office Memorandum 19, OCAC, December 14, 1926. Responsibility for procurement and distribution of maps assigned to subordinate Publications Section, effective December 4, 1926, by undated ID internal memorandum, and later to Library Section. Function vested in ID Map Unit, late 1928. Map procurement, preparation of tactical maps, and printing of aeronautical charts assigned to Section for Dissemination of Information, ID, by Office Memorandum 10-10, OCAC, January 2, 1937. Information Division redesignated Intelligence Division by Office Memorandum 10-10, OCAC, November 23, 1940. Map procurement and preparation assigned to newly established Map Section, 1941. Mapping and charting functions transferred to Office of the Assistant for Army Air Traffic Services, by Office Memorandum 10-10D, OCAC, December 24, 1941. Army Air Traffic Services abolished pursuant to reorganization of Army Air Forces, effective March 9, 1942. Map- Chart Division, functional successor to mapping unit in OAAATS, established in the Office of the Director of Photography, Maps, and Charts, Directorate of Technical Services, by Regulation 95- 1, HQAAF, May 19, 1942. M-CD redesignated Aeronautical Chart Division, effective January 30, 1943, by Regulation 95-4, HQAAF, February 15, 1943. ACD subordinated to Technical Services Operations Branch, Movement and Operations Division, OACAS/OC&R, pursuant to AAF reorganization of March 29, 1943. Technical Services Operations Branch redesignated Technical Services Division, OACAS/OC&R, by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-7, HQAAF, May 8, 1943, and ACD redesignated Aeronautical Chart Service Branch (ACSB), Technical Services Division. ACSB transferred from Technical Services Division to Reconnaissance Branch, Requirements Division, OACAS/OC&R, by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-30, HQAAF, January 8, 1944. ACSB redesignated Aeronautical Chart Service Section (ACSS) by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-30, January 24, 1944. Reconnaissance Branch redesignated Reconnaissance and Photo Branch, 1944. Reconnaissance and Photo Branch redesignated Photographic Aviation Branch by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-35, HQAAF, March 31, 1944. ACSS redesignated Aeronautical Service Branch (ASB). ASB redesignated as Aeronautical Chart Service (ACS) and made a field activity of HQAAF, under immediate supervision of Photographic Aviation Branch, Requirements Division, OACAS/OC&R, by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-30A, HQAAF, May 4, 1944. Photographic Aviation Branch redesignated Reconnaissance Branch by Headquarters Office Instruction 20-35, HQAAF, June 27, 1944.

Aeronautical Chart Service organized as 36th AAF Base Unit (ACS), effective January 1, 1945, by AAF Letter 20-62, HQAAF, December 16, 1944. Headquarters, Aeronautical Chart Service established with 36 AAFBU (ACS) as a component, effective March 13, 1946, by War Department Letter AG 322 (8 Mar 46) OB-I-AFCOR-(926(d))-M, March 13, 1946. Redesignated 36 AAFBU (HQACS) and transferred to ATC, effective April 1, 1946, by War Department Letter AG 322 (AFCOR 98l(d)), April 2, 1946. Transferred to Strategic Air Command (SAC), effective May 21, 1947, by General Order 21, ATC, May 26, 1947, with assignment to HQ, 311th Reconnaissance Wing, confirmed by General Order 55, SAC, May 26, 1947. Redesignated 36 AFBU (HQACS), effective September 26, 1947, by Circular 45, Department of the Army, November 14, 1947. 311th Reconnaissance Wing redesignated 311th Air Division (Reconnaissance), effective April 16, 1948, by AGAO-I 322 (31 Mar 48) (AFCOR 705e)-M, April 7, 1948. 36 AFBU (HQACS) redesignated HQACS, effective August 1, 1948, by General Order 37, SAC, July 21, 1948, confirmed by letter, SAC, August 26, 1948, and General Order 8, 311 AD (Reconnaissance), August 3, 1948. Transferred to Second Air Force, SAC, effective November 1, 1949, by General Order 64, SAC, October 19, 1949. Transferred to Air Materiel Command, effective March 1, 1950, by General Order 8, SAC, February 20, 1950. Redesignated Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron, USAF ACIS, effective February 1, 1951, by General Orders 11 and 12, AMC, February 14 and 23, 1951. Redesignated HQ, USAF ACIS, effective May 21, 1951, by General Order 34, AMC, May 11, 1951. Transferred to Military Air Transport Service (MATS), effective May 11, 1952, by AFOMO-A59183, Air Force Directorate of Manpower and Organization, May 9, 1952, confirmed by AFOMO 843g, June 10, 1952; and assigned to Air Photographic and Charting Service, MATS, by General Order 61, MATS, May 10, 1952. Redesignated USAF Aeronautical Chart and Information Center, MATS, effective August 1, 1952, by General Order 111, MATS, August 7, 1952. Redesignated Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC), effective September 20, 1954, by General Order 158, MATS, September 10, 1954. Redesignated Headquarters, ACIC, and assigned to Air Photographic and Charting Service, effective September 8, 1958, by General Order 130, MATS, September 2, 1958. Relieved from assignment to MATS and accorded separate operating agency status, effective July 1, 1960, by General Order 74, MATS, June 9, 1960. Inactivated, effective June 30, 1972, with mission and functions transferred to DMA, by Special Order G-9, HQ ACIC, June 27, 1972.

Advertising :: Congregatio de Propaganda Fide

The root vertere, to turn; Sanskrit vartayati he turns; advertere, to turn towards. Drawing the attention (attendere, to wait for). To wait to be turned towards the object of desire. Give it your attention, your life-time, your life-energy. And you shall be free! Ignore it at your distinct mortal peril. As goes advertising, so goes capitalism. Sex for goods.

The force behind adoption of protocols. If advertising is the nice side, what is the obverse? Coercion (sensory input), propaganda (sensory input), persuasion (language-based), peer pressure (sensory input), norms (sensory input) …

But what about the time where attention is paid to it — versus the time spent in actually following its advice (or promise of reward) — the suspended times of non-being?

A few notes on techno-social systems:

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

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

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

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

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

If everything now becomes about the Road: it all falls along that infinitely converging line, that pavement rising to the foot, hard, on occasion scraping the nose, the knees, or the palms; it is both that which is down-trodden, and the means to get there. A path for social flows, climbing, gathering, consuming, dispersing. Freedom, indeterminacy, hydrocarbon wastage, imperial protocols, signage, regulation, safety, danger, possibility, newness. On the road, carrying the old with oneSelf, in a worn knapsack, that which is old, known, important, very important.

So, three or four threads: 1) the Self on the road; 2) the encounter with the Other on the road; 3) the road as an expression of the techno-social context for human relation; 4) what to do on the road that cannot be done elsewhere or under other conditions — what the road proffers to life, how one gets there, that and imagining the end of the road (Oz! to meet the Wizard (or Sorceress) hehe, from the Yellowbrick Road to Oz, now ain’t that whacked!).

In that moment I was able, so to speak, to place myself in a future which may one day be realized. I saw not only what I might one day be able to do, but also I saw this — that the anticipation of the event was an augur of the deed itself. Suddenly I realized how it had been with the struggle to express myself in writing. I saw back to the period when I had the most intense, exalted visions of words written and spoken, but in fact could only mutter brokenly. Today I see that my steadfast desire was alone responsible for whatever progress or mastery I have made. The reality is always there, and it is preceded by vision. And if one keeps looking steadily the vision crystallizes into fact or deed. There is no escaping it. It doesn’t matter what route one travels — every route brings you eventually to the goal. “All roads lead to Heaven,” is the Chinese proverb. If one accepted that fully, one would get there so much more quickly. One should not be worrying about the degree of “success” obtained by each and every effort, but only concentrate on maintaining the vision, keeping it pure and steady. The rest is sleight-of-hand work in the dark, a genuine automatic process, no less somnambulistic because accompanied by pains and aches. — Henry Miller, “To Paint is to Love Again”

Writing on the road. The translation of movement and sensual input to text. Learning what filters to apply, what social protocols to apply, what protocols to transcend, what to hold, what to release. Discipline.

Selling individual vision to an Other: convincing, forming mental models that will allow compelling suasion; pressing opinions, argument, elegant frameworks; all constructed with language, words, characters, academic form, journalistic style, flaccid prose, basic text, with footnotes or hyperlinks; bibliographic references to other words, other texts: but where is a praxis? Praxis weakens to a barely-lived presence fighting to become in a dominant social structure of insipid spectacle that maintains the attentions of a vast majority of the population. Those being watched increase in number to challenge that of the passive watchers. In many cases the passive watchers are the watched, and vice-versa. The consumption of the passive watchers is expansive, limitless, a whorish gaping maw willing to not just taste, but to gorge on anything that is mediocre, maudlin, bland, and self-serving; safe, pre-digested, pureed, and acceptable. Worked over. ‘urrrrp’

Indigestible fodder, poison, anathema, bloating farce, and gaseous prophesy.

The world is drowning in verbiage.

All protocols lead to artifice.

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

and

Gazing out the window, not driving, watching the world pass, attenuated, virtual, transitory, and it’s gone.

How to transcend the rigidity of extant and defined protocol? Opposition is no cure. Poetry is emetic (of protocol); or poetic stretching, morphing of the protocol. Or simply turning away to create a new protocol. This is a critical issue as protocol underlies all techno-social deployments. All. And the affect of protocol, its genesis, its makers, its purview, all contribute to the formation of a (dominant) worldview that it imposes a(n arbitrary) frame of reference upon the participant in the particular techno-social system. On the other hand, life without protocols: an impossible situation for social animals (or any animal, for that matter — a protocol may be thought of as a way of going, whether self-directed or directed by innate sense and following the line of maximized entropy production).

This conundrum applies to all (socially) evolved protocols, no matter the genesis. It means that this pervades and saturates, all experiences of being (except perhaps for the pre-human, or over-human). On The Poetics of Protocol, a working title moving towards a core thematic. Using the metaphor of a sliding scale, at one end, chaotic ways of going, at the other, completely prescribed ways of going, life falls somewhere in between.

Having to jump between several points-of-view — the tremendous volume of applicable writing on the range of subjects; a strong, principled, and unifying overview tied to idiosyncratic personal experiences; and, finally, the mental focus required to tie all this jetsam together — the jump has to be transformed into a creatively complied micro-narrative. But looking around at the plethora of source materials is always discouraging — in form and content. The inability to structure my own content into a form consistent with the material that I consume is disturbing, though idiosyncratic expression is one of the goals for DCA research. (Inconsistency has potential to uncover innovative spaces and may be used as a strategic tool or approach.) So this can be viewed as a strategic advantage in the creative interpretation and packaging of the material. Content-wise, I am confident of the presence of something to say, as well as a subsequent pathway-of-action reflecting what is said. Daunting task none-the-less, from any vantage.

Seeing from more than one point-of-view requires motion or at least movement between points of stasis. Does the establishment of a point-of-view require a cessation of movement? (motion of course is completely relative regarding point-of-view: life is never static so point-of-view never absolutely static)

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.

Morning, mourning notes on encounter, in no particular order.

It is on a pathway, the pathway, in the mode of movement, in the shifting of unknown situations, where encounter occurs. These encounters are traced with the full presence of the body and all aspects where they occur.

There is the general rule on a hiking trail, uphill gets right-of-way: those struggling and straining to make it to the top of whatever heights that you’ve just been on should be given precedence. It’s always a question, though, what the precise character of the encounter will be. Whether you have seen (or heard) the approach of an Other, through dense forest, or whether you round a turn to be confronted by a gaggle of silent walkers. Encounter is a culturally specific regime overlying that of the embodied, the animal. On trails in the West the density of hikers is generally low, except in National Parks which can see crowds as dense any on Fifth Avenue in New York City at lunch-time. This is one criteria on which to judge a trail — not merely the views afforded, but the number of people encountered. Escaping from human presence is as prominent a thought as what other ‘natural’ phenomena might be encountered.

Silence, or the absence of human-created noise, relates to presence of other humans as well as other beasts. While walking in bear country complete silence is not a safe option, so encounters with other humans in bear country usually begin at a distance, either with bells or simply boisterous activity. Encounters with bears are sometimes at a distance, but sometimes not. I have found that the presence radiated by large hairy carnivores with big teeth usually precedes any sight.

Bush-whacking is a situation where encounter with an Other becomes so rare as to evoke a certain fear if only from the statistical improbability of encounter whilst specifically not on a trail. Sadly, it is a probability that rises as the global population increases. Too many folks out there! And one has to be aware of the timing of the off-trail experience: hunting season is not a good time to bush-whack!

Enroute, one suspends the closed-ness of daily routine. The sameness of daily regimen is upset and in its place is the jarring uncertainty of arrival in unknown, medial, places. In between here and there. Starting point, ending point. Suspended animation is an apt term. Animate, moving, but somehow suspended by the vagaries of being someplace in particular, some nameable place, some identifiable locus.

It is in this liminal space, on the thresh keld, thresh hold, the border between the space of known nutrition and the potentialities of the unknown, where all learning and change takes place. As a setting for the encounter with the Other, partaking food, sharing nutrition with a stranger is an exceptionally powerful meeting of ritual.

Of course, there is the argument that says movement can be only in mind, and such mental travel is as efficacious in bringing transcendence as any physical movement. But the movement I write of here is not a simple Cartesian transposition of body, of point-of-view, it is the processural space of encountering the unknown Other. This will precipitate something of a shift in point-of-view, no matter how small in that Cartesian sense — it is the principle of change that matters — and in an open encounter, change occurs. This demands embodied motion. Turning to face the Other.

Over the years, I observe that I take very few photographs in the place where I live. With a few exceptions of concentrated exercise to see the unknown within the known, it is on the road where sight opens and newness brings that rushing tension of encounter. That tension, when unchecked, concentrates in the shoulders and subsequently crawls up the gall-bladder channel to root behind the eyes, migraine. Gotta deal with that. Opening the shoulders, the channel, to allow the movement of difference, the tension of change to simply transit the body without leaving damage in its wake. This will be a theme of movement. To pass through and allow a passing through of the energies of encounter.

Further, deeper, wider, (more iconoclastic), what is research? Merely to search again? The broadening of a socially-sanctioned knowledge-base? A connecting-of-threads to historic tradition? A discovery of what’s been before? A following of a pre-existing trajectory (but with more fuel for a higher, further flight)? What about re-sensing instead of re-searching? Immersing senses in a situation again (related to German entgegen ‘opposite’). Sensually immersive: sensing difference again (from another situation), and reflecting on that. Or, better yet, riding the gradient of that difference, and using that potential, that power, that source, to express from.

Re-search — to circle again, more intensively — but to remain detached. Neither academic detachment nor technological objectivity are the way that is needed now. We need immersive, connected, aware, and sensual be-ing. In order to apprehend what the world needs of us. An empathetic engagement with all expressions of life-energy.

Creative action — as a descriptor of the wide field of human endeavor — sets up instances of resonance by configuring energies in novel ways. What does it mean to configure energies in novel ways? Assuming the universe is infinite, there are an infinite number of configurations of energy. Bringing energies in juxtaposition, resulting in the creation of difference: it is at the edge where resonant flows arise, along an expressive energy gradient. This juxtaposition of energy requires the Self to take on, generate, new pathways of flow. But how to initiate, how to self-start this process of potentially resonant expression?

One who speaks is such a path-maker. Gathering embodied energy, using the applied protocols of individual body merged with adopted social forms, we speak. Energy flows from one idiosyncratic body to the next. As energy flows, a gradient arises. From where there was undisturbed silence, an arrhythmic disturbance occurs. Within the modulations of energy applied by the body, within this applied difference and at the point where this intersects the presence of the Other, this is where change originates.

Change and difference? Dropping Cartesian temporal and spatial frameworks, what then is change? Can it be reduced to simple difference? Both can be traced back to the (apparently) anisotropic distribution of energy in the universe. This is a primary condition of life. Creation legends depend on the differentiation of energized matter from that-which-is-not, they depend on the creation of levels of being which exhibit difference. And it is along and within those differences, fundamental boundary conditions, where the creative, the unexpected, arises.

The road-as-pathway is a channel for the flow of energy. It is defined by socially-constructed standards and protocols: a web of socially-applied energies follow the limitations and directedness of those protocols. Roads are a human construct in response to the existence of natural blockages that divert from desired trajectories, that expend communal life-energies and threaten the control of energy resources.

The road is perhaps a synthesized mirror for the human-navigable river, that directed natural space of flow, or the ocean which is the cumulative and spatial confluence-of-all-rivers.

Practically all natural landscapes have some form of blockage as to cause a deviation to even slow and deliberate human passage. So, when there is a lack of free and easy passage, first a foot-path evolves, or is established through troddden effort. This is a trajectory for the body, with the foot leading. Seeking a pathway on foot requires vigilance and concentrated attention in many environments, though this condition is necessarily eliminated from daily life in the developed world — almost completely through the efforts to flatten, level, grade, and pave large swaths of the Terran surface.

When working in Colombia, in the eastern Llanos, for Big Oil, we hired trocha crews who would cut paths in the jungle for the geophone lines to be laid along. Armed with machetes they would hack a one-meter-wide swath along the surveyed lines, leaving short protruding sticks of vegetation cut at an angle — treacherous when struggling along the lines up steep slopes and down. One slip and you would be impaled, and in that country, any break in the protective skin could mean serious infection problems. Walking was never so high-risk: never fall down. It was a choice of absolutely impenetrable jungle on either side, or the possibility of forward/backward movement along these lines. Helipads for extraction were cut in the jungle every 5 clicks or so.

At any rate, the foot is connected to a membered body, so the whole embodied system is implicated in the formation of the pathway. With senses correlating from memorized resonance previous ways taken and the outcomes, choices are made what immediate and final trajectory the body takes. This trajectory is anchored with the planting of the foot and the establishment of balance on that foot. The four corners of the foot root momentarily with the earth. One foot following the other, and that embodied motion precisely driven by the flow of energy entering the senses. Breaking trail can be exhausting, making a way for someone else’s body to pass across the terrain. Following someone else’s path is easier.

Animals make pathways: I am following the cloven tracks of a deer, several of them. I can lope along the game trail at a fair clip, despite the altitude which stretches lungs to a pant, judging how fresh the tracks are by how they desiccate along the edges in the dry western air. But how many hours since passage does half-a-centimeter of crumbled track mean? What happens if I catch up with the deer, if they have stopped to rest or eat? What happens if there’s a mountain lion, an ambush predator, hanging around along this pathway, waiting for an easy mark? I don’t think about it, but keep running as fast as the uneven terrain allows, watching carefully for ankle-twisting roots and rocks. Hooves on a game trail tend to break up the damp soil into loose chunks which make high boots an ankle-saving necessity, though they slow me down, and don’t allow the foot to feel the ground as accurately. I run until I have to stop, sucking the air in with fast but controlled gasps. There they are, 200 yards ahead, traversing a steep slope of pi�on, upwind. Okay, today, with a bow, I would have survived a few more days with protein-stuffed belly. The path defined as an enriched flow of food energy.

from Kevin Hamilton on the iDC list:

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

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

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

reflections on neoscenes :: drift

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blurb for SNO gallery exhibition web site, November 2009, NSW, Australia:

blurb for SNO gallery wall, December 2009, NSW, Australia:

I wake up this morning remembering spatial plans for grocery stores in Prescott, Arizona, and then, one in Kiel and another two in Berlin, Germany. As I started to think about it, after a few minutes, I came up with (mental) spatial maps for more than 50 different food stores in ten countries. Small segments of an enormous set of spatially-framed memories of tens of thousands of situations passed through. Repetition of exposure is more likely to create and lock those memories into recall-ready be-ing. It is what structure and structured situations impress onto the embodied life. The access to these memories arises as a sequence of resonant flows across consciousness. As mindfulness scans a region of mind, resonances appear as bright spots of particular order in a dim background. Resonance is a fundamental indication of higher or concentrated energy states. Fundamental quantization of resonance will cause distributed peaks and troughs in the strength of resonance. The subtlety of resonance guides our movement through the flows around us.

(Who cares?)

Does it matter that dominant views exist? Does it matter that humans are faced with a decision to submit to those views or not? To matter is probably the wrong question, because matter locks us into one view to begin with.

How to transcend the rigidity of extant protocol? Opposition is no cure. Poetry is perhaps one pathway, poetic stretching, morphing of the protocol.

Poetry. The Prose Edda, especially the Skáldskaparmál comes to mind, Snorri’s guide to the forms and language of the Saga, and the process of kenning or naming the objects of that world. Imagine making such a device for covering the territory of inquiry. It brings up the text sketched, though later scrapped, for the Hybrid Spaces workshop: The Hybrid: This and/or That. Could be a useful source for later on…

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

When slipping into an unknown (participatory) situation, immersing, the senses are in full-open configuration to read potential threats, opportunities, and possible pathways of expression. A process of extremely rapid differential comparison of patterns of flow occurs. In the subset of those situations that may be defined as having socio-cultural frameworks present, there is an explicit search within the Self for existing protocols of behavior — an awareness of resonant regions where known protocols have been internalized previously as emphatic neural patterns, and an awareness of dissonant points where protocols are unrecognized, unformed, or, literally, without meaning. What the hell is going on here?

Participation is a crucial role in any social system. As the reciprocal action to the projection of structured (participatory) situations by an Other, participation is half of a whole. It is in relation to the applied and, by nature, limited (imposed, proffered) situation. Without participation, a participatory social framework is no source of energy/power to be projected outward in fulfillment of the goals of the wider social system. Participation, whether understood to be explicit or implicit, is a tacit acknowledgment that the goals of the social system are acceptable to the participant. It also provides the system with its primary energy source in the form of the (attentive) life-time/life-energy of the participant.

On a side note, this is one of the weakest points in the deployment of numerous online playgrounds. Much thought is put into user-interface design, and the protocols of participation, but little is given to the actuality of there needing to be a set of active participants available and willing to put their life-energy into that particular protocol. A well-designed system of protocols, one that resonates with participants at the same time as allowing sufficient degrees of expressive freedom (from those existing protocols) will attract users. It appears that the algorithm-hunters at FaceBook are quite adept and put their highest goal to simply keep the user in FaceBook, whatever it takes. Stripped of artifice and pretense, it is a Machiavellian strategy, but one that makes total sense. All roads lead to Rome: good for the Roman Empire.

Take, for example the idea of sharing a photograph online. If one examines the layered protocols that exist and, in a very real way, direct the flows of energy. First there is the scene to be photographed. There is a set of energy flows available within that situation — which actually constitute the situation. The eye receives a sub-set of those energies, based on the evolutionary protocols of the eye. The brain senses a range of resonances and dissonances of affect of that impinging energy. Based on those reactions, combined with the awareness of a pre-existing concept of taking a photograph, one picks up the techno-socially constructed device called a camera. A small room with a hole on one side. The room (in this era) is a small and complex compilation of energy pathways which allow control of the hole and of the Light energy entering the hole from the outside. The complexity of the cumulative pathways are defined by a tremendous range of interlocking protocols developed by the Techno-Social system. Industrial standards are an expression of one level of the protocols along with basic social standards (which are the substance of the social system!) which accrete as a system (of human relation) evolves. The Light energy entering the hole is convolved with this set of pathways (through the CCD at the back of the room and a data transmission/storage system, etc — one can breakdown the system into numerous sub-systems each with a related set of quite rigid protocols-of-production). It is useful to keep in mind that the originary energy apprehended from the phenomenal scene has initiated this entire process and though it is reduced through the action of the protocols, it is still present (in another form if you need that material metaphor).

Compressing the numerous iterations of the step-wise process for the sake of brevity, the image file is transferred to a server which is connected to other connected devices which allows for an Other to receive the reduced trace of that originary energy.

It cannot be underestimated the affect on the originary flow of energy phenomena that the complex layering of protocols applies by the time the final radiation reaches the eyes of the Other. Without doing an in-depth study of all the device(s) involved in the process, it may not seem so overwhelming, but indeed, each sub-system and sub-sub-system has an entire prescribed set of protocols which precisely define how that device reacts to the passage of energy through it. The protocols are the result of more and more finely refining the production processes and begin with the particular processes that are imposed on the concentration of materials as they are pulled from the ground (no to mention those necessary for finding where to look in the ground for the right materials to begin with). Production processes have protocols for dimensional tolerance, purity, electrical conductivity, and other parameters, as well as meta-protocols on protocols. (see organizations like ISO which coordinate some of the hundreds of thousands of standards which humans have applied within their Techno-Social systems.)

It would appear that large numbers of people living in the so-called developed world are increasingly willing to submit to deeper and deeper layers of (globally-applied) protocols in order to maintain connection with other members of their tribe. Each deployment of protocol is a directed flow which taps off life-energy for the system imposing the (dominant) protocol.

Back to the original idea of participation. It is precisely the arrangement of protocols, guiding the flows of energy through the complex systems which will allow or disallow for individual participation. If the complexity of the protocols are too much — where the individual cannot refine his or her particular embodied energy expressions to fit the reductive pathway — the protocol will either continue to exist as a limited (possibly elite) pathway of expression and impression, or it will pass away. The history of technology is littered with dead protocols: ones which, for a time, shunted vast quantities of human energy in the service of the system, others which were created and used once and discarded as not efficient enough to tap the energy required to maintain their own hegemonic existence.

(Early adopters represent no revolutionary vanguard, but rather a type of individual motivated to adopt newly-imposed protocols. This with the thought that the adoption of these imposed protocols will somehow give evolutionary advantage. But in this Light, adoption may be seen as an expression of conformity to (and explicit support for!) the ever-more dominant Techno-Social system.)

more on participation later…

If I could have written this DCA thing before, I would have. It is a question of style and form only. As I have already written reams (megabits) of pure (well, relatively pure) text already, megabits, not in Word, but in BBEdit, close to code, pure code; not to mention the reams of paper writing that preceded that. On an old portable manual typewriter. From picnic tables in the Great Sand Dunes on crisp winter mornings, to attic havens in the dark Icelandic winter. Drilling words out out out to the many Others. Printed direct onto papers from flat or slightly curvilinear screens to nine-pin printers. Usually, on the obverse, each sheet of that paper was already a xerographic work in itself, thanks to sometimes free access to photocopy machines in various places. Photocopy art. Nobody knows what that’s about anymore. And the postcards. The thousands of them, all silver-prints. Tight hand-written like the 4000+ pages of journal, with double-ought Rapidograph pen and permanent India inks. Sometimes exploding with the pressure shifts of flying too much. Is a remix in order, of all this life-energized output, a tracing of threads? Correlated with all the memorable human encounters — teaching, exhibitions, studios, happenstance, friends, friends-of-friends, shared meals, and strangers — what can be made from it? And how to proceed.

Big question. The difference between that lived praxis and the reflection on praxis. Or is there a difference, is a difference necessary? Or is the difference a construct itself, an artificial category, a social imprint? A remnant of Whorf’s linguistic framing which, simply stated, says that a language alters the way one thinks. Or, to go a bit further than Whorf, that a language is a particular set of (neural) pathways upon which energized thought follows along, passes through. The pathways form as the language portions of thinking form in ones embodied presence. This suggests that a multi-modality of expression is an attempt or penchant to explore different pathways of (neural) energy flow, each along its accustomed way. Life is multi-modal. And energy is the substrate that the modes are embossed in. Embossed patterns which fill with flow, or over-flow. When energy does not have a predetermined pattern to move within, how will it express? It will leak into other spaces, bleed over into other patterns, or simply build up in some corner of the body until it is expressed in pathology.

(extracted and edited from The Regime of Amplification)

The second example — though it is a much more complex combination of pathways in its geo-political and material deployments and in its interaction with the overall continuum of relation — is foundational to the TSS and is also a prototypical expression of amplification. It is even more a prototype than radio. Radio is merely one sub-system of what is ultimately a military organization.

A military system incorporates all the requisite patterns of an amplification system: input signal (the human population and other concentrated energy sources available to the TSS); amplification process (provisioning and equipping of the select grouping of people through the collective life-energies of the greater population of the TSS); the feedback system (communications, command, and control systems); and the output signal (the expression of amplified energy flow as a campaign to secure the viability of the TSS either by offense or defense).
(more …)

Latour’s network(s) of relations (in ANT) are complexifying descriptors for a multiplicity of flows where each actor in the network are the origin and recipient of various flows. Or, they are merely the nodal locales of concentrated flow (as conscripted by the social structures). Again, back to the observation that the structure of the social is the prescription that forces flows into rarefied and concentrated zones or pathways. Each attenuation (measured in relief to a ‘natural’ background flow) becomes an actor in full, constant, and distributed relation to at least some other points in the field. The theory, the image of a multiplicity of flows, taken to a near-infinite limit, a beyond-multiplicity, an infinity of nodes would then approximate “reality.” If the network is functioning properly — that is, constructing a plausible account of real social systems — the network will be “an expression to check how much energy, movement and specificity our own reports are able to capture.” (Latour) Those reports, though, are always reductive and incomplete. A map locating the nodes and noting the flows across each one is not the lived territory in time, nor does it accurately express the character of the flows, which in the end are more important than the nodal points.

Is this blog a report? If so, the question becomes how it might more accurately invoke the territory of inquiry. [indeterminacy, trans-disciplinary (discipline being "mortification by scourging oneself", yikes!), without genesis or terminus, and sampling as many strands of lived-impression (not just screen-mediated living) as possible.]

If network is an accurate description of a situation then a consideration of the order that the network imposes on the situation is called for. Network and order, (including Latour’s actor-network) is about the application of a decodable order applied to a diversity of actors within the object of study. It implies reduction, though hints at an ever-expanding point-of-view. It is couched in language (report, correspondance, academic paper, speech, communications) which is problematic, but this limit is applied to practically anything social. Order is rooted in the negentropic tendencies of life in opposition to the entropic character of all non-life. (Depends — is an accretionary disk of stellar matter, through gravity, rising as anisotropic presence of order as the star forms negentropic, or not — is there any fundamental (ordered) difference between varying (relative and Cartesian) densities of energized matter?) The biggest problem with most current usages of network is that very often the nodes are well-defined (to a fault), as are the geometries of connection, but not so much the qualities of the flows between. I’ll have to pay attention to that lack as I troll the literature. There is the (network) engineering efficiency approach which examines the issues around signal transmission and reception including power usage and signal/noise ratios — which are inextricably linked to amplification issues.. But the efficiency is determined after the fact of the signal being strictly defined by existing protocols.

ack! my usage plunges into a cesspool. the Jekyll and Hyde of free-style and efficient. faggeddabouddit!

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

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

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

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

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

Willie Wagtails (Rhipidura leucophrys), Minors (Manorina melanocephala) …

that entry stopped there. no time to observe and note things when constantly consuming texts and coping with the daily movements. it is highly inefficient to commute for this kind of work. research is 90% online, and moving between home and the office sucks up at least 1.5 hours a day. strange that it is able to absorb so much time when it’s just a short distance away. walking takes about 40 minutes each way, though, and waiting for the bus and the slow crawl down George Street is tedious. I find that the mind-space that I take on when in that mode is very unproductive and deadening. I observe, while hearing is constantly assaulted, occasionally some energizing encounters, but the locally dominant Asian sense of personal space I find deeply conflicting with my own. and the reflexive sensory protocols I developed through the time in the desert and mountains has been thoroughly destroyed — no stars to see, not even planets, and it is only in the 16th-floor office that its really possible to watch the weather develop albeit through heavy windows that cannot be opened and are filthy on the exterior (I cleaned the large inside pane of the window immediately over my desk, much to the amusement of several of the other grad students). optical clarity — if I’m forced to look at the world through a glass filter, it’s got to be clean!

the best situation would be the office/desk set-up in another room of the living place. productive work depends only on the network connection, the availability of a relatively unobtrusive sonic environment, and a way to make tea. the idea that (school) work and living are separate boxes, or boxes to be separated, is a traditional view which I find to be counter-productive to a holistic praxis. of course, having fun is necessary, and work can be quite fun, depending on the sustenance of a sense of humor about it all. it is an absurd process, after all, gazing at glowing screens, watching the colored Lights, entranced by the causal nature of keystroke and changing configuration of limited sight.

of course, the importance of social relation is key as well. I find that robust encounter: attentive, directed, relaxed, wide-ranging, inquisitive, and playful to be the most rewarding. I probably am lacking some of this here, without any close contacts, but the few folks who I share time with in the program are smart and engaging.

so what now?

it looks like this will work. settling in for the duration. more-or-less. but do have to focus on getting out away from town. I might sublet Nigel’s place about three hours out of town for part of next year. it doesn’t presently have broadband, though they might have that installed. anything to be outside the city. (walked over to Paddy’s Market yesterday afternoon, started down the steps to the fruit and vegetable stalls, and just turned around, the whole place was jam-packed with people elbowing each other over the goods). ach.

Looking at Foucault’s conception of discourse as a conflation of semiotics and postmodernism (gag on that stone-like term). Of course, the State (or, in my terms, the Techno-social system), when exercising power has to project power along more or less defined pathways. That is a fundamental characteristic of the TSS — its cumulative ability to (and process of) refining and ultimately reifying the pathways through which power (energy!) moves through the system. This power/energy ultimately and necessarily moves between human participants in the system and the pathways are, ultimately, sourced and targeted through the space of flows (between individual beings) to the individuals themselves, the Continuum of Relation. (see my comments on code in the previous posting, where code is a reified or institutionalized discourse pathway that carries energy between humans.) The expression of power, though, comes not from some externalized and monumental State. The concept of State is simply the active collectivization of individuals life-time/life-energy which dynamically coalesces into a relation or constellation which is a source of projected power. The force of projected power being the ability of a collective to gather excess energies, and organize them (negentropically) in such a way that they may be projected along a chosen pathway. This is where various levels of both subtle and overt control and coercion find their exercise — within individual lives as those lives are mapped into a collective space of more singular flow (vs flows).

Michael Bauwens on the iDC list: I think the important insight that travels from free software to money is this. Power lies in the code and in the invisible structures that enable or dis-enable actions and relationships, what Alexander Galloway calls ‘protocolary power.’ The great insight of the current age is that money has a code as well. But just as we do not have the power to change the code of microsoft, we do not have (yet) the power to change to code of political money, so the alternative world-constructing route is to peer produce our own, differently coded money.

sotto voce: This brings up the thought that code and money are both likewise abstracted representations of Power that have to be actualized through two processes: 1) a participatory social grouping who choose to believe (have faith) in the power of the abstraction to cause material change in their lived existence and 2) a means for the abstracted instrument to interface with a real (material) regime of existence. Power, in the end has to be or has to have available a way to apply itself to life, to an individual life, to be delivered (as that change).

For example, code describes what a device can or should do in theory. It needs the device to make that actually happen. Code without the physical transmission of power (kilo-calories, joules, megawatts, whatever) is a complete abstraction and is of no consequence. The machine or interface that actualizes the code is embedded in a specific field of power flows — i.e., the electrical generation and delivery system, manufacturing systems that depend on transportation networks which depend on hydrocarbon fuel power, etc. This larger techno-social infrastructure that is essentially a field of directed energy flows depends on a whole host of humans believing that the code will ultimately improve their lives on earth. If there arises a doubt that the code will do this, the whole system starts to unravel. If it becomes clear that the code is failing to bring power to the user, they will stop putting their life-energy into propping up that techno-social protocol and the infrastructure it is embedded within.

The code of religious teaching, the code of social behavior, the code of the machine, and the code of economic instrument all have the characteristic that they are completely dependent on being actualized this way, else they have NO power. In the end, the code is merely a socially prescribed pathway along which real energy is forced to flow.

Faith in code(d abstraction) produces a shared or centralized capital of potential power, but there always needs to be a tangible means for translation from code to be-ing. The body is the primary means for code to become lived action or the source of applied and energetic change. That would be the minimum device necessary, all other devices are simply amplifications of the body-as-energy source.

With the demonstration of faith as an applied and directed energy flow through a code comes the often terrifying expression of directed social power. On the other hand, when the individual participant in a social system seeks and finds/makes expression not according to The Code, the dominant collective immediately loses a fraction of its ability to direct energy as it wills.

The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world. — Wilhelm von Humboldt

Then the question of how to deal with all these books at once? Where to read them, how to take notes, how much to read in any one at a time, and such. Reading in the evening before sleeping isn’t very good, although restful. Mid-afternoon is optimal, but carving out several hours from the daily to-do grind makes that difficult. Having a space in the CMAI office is very helpful now, as there are more comfortable chairs. The collective grad offices are too noisy and busy. Dislocating to Bronte or a cafe elsewhere is possible, but not time-effective if only for reading. Ach!, the questions of methodology …

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

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

he suggests that two mechanisms for the establishment of ‘new’ forms of discourse — that of provenance and experiential meaning potential. the first providing memetic (not mimetic, btw) evolutionary input from other cultural sources, the second an internally generative source arising from lived experience.

multimodality clearly has an affect on the flow of energies (of expression) from the Self to the Other. the existence of socio-cultural value-systems as framed with and by abstracted linguistic (and semiotic) systems and protocols is a key formative element in the energy flow process. but again, it is not the thing itself, it merely forms a pathway for the expressive flow.

His use of terms articulation and interpretation would roughly correspond to transmission/expression and reception/impression.

In a materialistic model, the material is merely the means of semiotically-framed expression. In my model, the energy of expression is carried, in perhaps a poor metaphoric sense, through the pipe of linguistic/semiotic (and therefore social) protocol, but is another essence altogether from the pipe (which, again, is only a abstracted framework). As a social system builds up more and more complex pathways (which, in the end are blockages of open flows), it becomes more and more difficult for individuals operating within that system to find expressive pathways. This is especially apparent in social systems with sufficient or excessive energy resources. energy-poor social systems, those which are consequently, less stable, have more possibilities for less-defined actions, expressions.

It is in the consideration of the energy flow itself that many of the characteristics of formative social systems (ideologies, etc) become obvious, along with equally obvious solutions to the strictures that they apply to individual and collective human existence and consequent expression.

Understanding that my own task, to express an ideology, a weltanschauung, arises in the socio-cultural milieu that encourages certain expressions and discourages others. All social systems do this to one degree or another. And, as one key processural factor, I need for this expression to be idiosyncratic. As much so as is possible within this system. And if not within this system, then simply accept that it has to be done outside this system. eh?

But it is precisely at the edge of what a social system defines as acceptable or not is where transcendental change occurs both individually, and as a direct consequence, socio-culturally. Neither social or cultural systems are static entities which can be held or can hold to a particular standard protocol for expression indefinitely. Change is universal. And change occurs within liminal and undefined situations.

No individual person, no matter how great his stature, how powerful his will, how penetrating his intelligence, can breach the autonomous laws of the human network from which his actions arise and into which they are directed. — Norbert Elias

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

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

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

this issue along with structuring days and weeks in order to be the most productive and concentrated. the chill of the room makes morning writing a bit uncomfortable up there, so, perhaps writing through the morning in the kitchen as long as there are no real interruptions to focus. the desk in the room is good though, with a decent chair. back to the Berlin writing experience. the tea pot is a crucial question. wondering whether I should have Christian send me the excellent pot that I found in Kreuzberg. insulated to keep the tea hot, enough for three or four cups, and a slide-in screen for the tea. it was perfect for a three-hour writing fest. otherwise, brewed in a regular ceramic pot, it goes cold way too fast (at the rate I drink it), that and the problem of steeping too long when doing it the British way. but so far, I haven’t found the same kind of pot here. went into one cheap Made-in-China shop in Marrickville and was so overcome by the fumes of cheapness that I had to leave with watering eyes. made me nauseous. something akin to the smell of Walmart, but with no air circulation, add dust, and knock the cheapness factor down by a couple orders of magnitude — this not in cost, but in the absolute shoddiness of the manufacturing process which may mean anything from sloppy execution, and under-optimized production standards, to dangerous or even lethal ingredients. I didn’t find what I Was looking for, and haven’t yet.

back to modalities. where this frames the issues raised in the Ways of Listening course as well. how expressive pathways are never absolute (are entropic) and depend on the continual input of energy (from the social energy bank) to maintain their hegemonic order and control over interpersonal impression and expression. there are a class of individuals in every time and system who seek to renew, evolve, change, destroy the old modalities. Cage, Fluxus-folks, Bauhaus, anyone who seeks this process at whatever scalar effect.

(i.e., Norie is at the forefront of this process — a faculty-member advising in the fuzzy space of the DCA (Doctorate of Creative Arts) concept — they are, in general, functioning in a space of indeterminate protocols as are the candidates. making choices on what to accept or reject as possible (modal outputs) protocols within the social system (in the form of the educational institution as one specific modal expression of the wider social system). a formative space, the choices made in that space will determine the level of vitality or corruption in the unfolding/evolving social system.

modalities are independent of scale — that is, they cross many levels of a social system, of be-ing. (and, at this point, can I consider the intersection of the words modality and protocol?) modality seems to circumscribe a more material space (also discounting the phenomena of energy-transfer although it relates to sensory perception). modality, modal, mode, mood, modus (related to mete, mediate, mediation, meditation, measure, meet (met), (and in the Greek medesthai to care for, to be mindful of) — how some thing (quelque chose or process) is done, executed, performed, expressed. to take care for the expression of active be-ing. be here now. to care for being here, now. and it comes, translates to us within the social system as a measuring, circumscribing of ways of going. this seems a good example of the social system imposing its inevitable evolutionary impact on individual be-ing. from a qualitative, caring, contemplation of presence, here, now, to the quantifiable, conscripted, defined, the modal.

so the question comes back, how to circumscribe the theoretical of the work ahead? the immediate answer: with care. the only way to proceed!