What people are contemplating on their word-processor screens is the operation of their own brains. It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch it operating like a video-game. All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected – far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord. But we should not worry too much about this: it is all much less scientific, less functional than is ordinarily thought. All that fascinates us is the spectacle of the brain and its workings. What we are wanting here is to see our thoughts unfolding before us – and this itself is a superstition.

Hence, the academic grappling with his computer, ceaselessly correcting, reworking, and complexifying, turning the exercise into a kind of interminable psychoanalysis, memorizing everything in an effort to escape the final outcome, to delay the day of reckoning of death, and that other—fatal—moment of reckoning that is writing, by forming an endless feed-back loop with the machine. This is a marvelous instrument of exoteric magic. In fact all these interactions come down in the end to endless exchanges with a machine. Just look at the child sitting in front of his computer at school; do you think he has been made interactive, opened up to the world? Child and machine have merely been joined together in an integrated circuit. As for the intellectual, he has at last found the equivalent of what the teenager gets from his stereo and his walkman: a spectacular desublimation of thought, his concepts as images on a screen. — Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard, J., 2000. America, London, England: Verso.

This article/essay by Michael Pollan is an extremely well-framed case-in-point about how a techno-social system (TSS) will — with science leading the way — reconfigure the energy flows (FOOD!) that we are immersed within. And how evolved sub-systems with a Machiavellian stake in the distribution of power in the TSS will fall all over themselves to retain the power they already have, or will develop new ways to siphon the power away from individuals participating in the system. Individual participants, aggregated as “the population” are still the main source of accumulated hierarchic power in the system. Anyone hoping to accumulate a power-base has to, at some level, attract the attention (life-energy/life-time) of that base. The food industry (and its constituent sub-industries) is no exception, nor is the ‘big science’ sector (which has to justify its existence through churning out ‘sensible’ information (nutrition research: always filtered, dumbed-down, by intercessory media voices)) — and neither of these ‘players’ are willing to be ‘regulated’ by the government which subsidizes their existence. Remember all those “drink milk” ads some years back? All the subsidies have gone underground, so is mostly invisible to the undiscerning eye. The consumer only sees the contents of the grocery-store shelves.
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But we are up against a curious paradox. Something of immense importance to all of us does not find expression in the literary arts. The rational side of man, with its scientific and technological expressions, gets little literary space. It is curious that science and technology have always occupied so small a place in literature. What important literary figure, except Diderot, seriously occupied himself with the problems of technology? This is all the more extraordinary when one considers that literature is supposed to hold the mirror up to life. In life people spend a great deal of time involved in the technology of the period in which they live. They work, and their jobs are connected with technology and the organizations technology engenders. Yet one sees little evidence of this in literature. — Aldous Huxley

I have a little hope to somehow tap into a solution, or, an attack on this issue. The issue did come into my awareness this past spring, in Melbourne, following some conversations with different ‘humanists’ where I realized how poorly they understand the operational paradigms of technology. And, how they look at the world through a literal or metaphoric lens which effects an almost-complete disjunction between the ‘realities’ of the (techno-)social system that they are fully embedded within, and how they imagine that social system operates.

So, today I have to forge a short footnote on the ideas behind “systems theory” for a general and likely unwitting audience. Not easy.

But did turn in a final draft a couple days ago. One hurdle, now 120 days of writerly hell ahead.

This putters through my Inbox:

The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.

The Critical Engineer considers any technology depended upon to be both a challenge and a threat. The greater the dependence on a technology the greater the need to study and expose its inner workings, regardless of ownership or legal provision.
…

more at http://criticalengineering.org/

Yes, engineering is a package of protocols which guide much of the social energies of the present and recent (long!) past. Raising the topic is quite important as a precursor to altering the influence that it imposes (or that we submit to). The nature of the threat includes death as an outcome, the nature of the seduction is life. The challenge is first to bring such ideas as this to the surface for dialogue, and then comes the task of mapping the connections between ‘everyday life’ and the dependencies on (the) engineering (mentality).

David invites me to take over for him while he is away to Europe for a media festival in Kracow. He’s teaching a course in the Atlas / TAM (Technology, Art, and Media) program called “Meaning of Information Technology.”

The Meaning of Information Technology (MIT) is the introductory course for the Technology, Arts and Media (TAM) program at the ATLAS Institute. MIT provides an introduction to a range of topics in information technology, new media, and digital culture. The goal of this course is to enable you to think critically about the impact of technology on society, industry, and government. This course considers what it means to be active citizens in a networked digital age. It will consider historical case studies in past IT adoption, unintended consequences and futuristic predictions. It will examine the search for authentic information, whether in digital imagery, search engines, viral video, or sound formats and IT’s modification of our social behavior, and of our means of gathering, interacting with, displaying and using information. We will consider who we are and who we become in social networks, online games and in virtual worlds. Most fundamentally, the class explore the question of what it means to be human in a rapidly-changing world. This question will lead us to examining the writings of theorists, the observations of those on the “bleeding edge,” and view-points ranging from neo-Luddite to Utopian enthusiast. We will draw our own educated and thoughtful conclusions, based on a wide range of evidence, and each of you will emerge from the class with an understanding of and agency in your relationship with Information Technologies. By the end of the course, you will have acquired an awareness of the rapid expansion of new technology, and you will have begun to think critically about the implications and impacts of new technologies.

Short seminar sessions, large classes make it tough to stimulate discussion, but I think they did fine in rising to the occasion. I did put out a tremendous range of concepts in that brief time, but… Not knowing names or not knowing individuals feels like a handicap, but the ending vibe is good.

I started the second session with a single projector showing a blank BBEdit file and at the beginning of class I started typing in the file with my back to the class. I slowly generated the following text:

Silence gradually increased while I slowly composed each sentence, correcting spelling errors and such. When I was done, I turned around to kick-start what turned out to be a good discussion (although I talked far too much for my liking — as I tend to do in a time-limited situation). Last week, I had David ask them to pose five questions about the assigned text (which was the clunky Regime of Amplification text as the primary input for the week. Unfortunately the class wiki (deployed on the goingon.com platform) is not public, as I fielded and answered most of the proposed questions. They ran a stimulating and largely thoughtful gamut and did reveal some weaknesses in the text (the overall one being the density!).

“If the profession of an engineer were not based upon exact science,” he said, “I might tremble for the result, in view of the immensely of the interests dependent on my success. But every atom that moves onward in the river, from the moment it leaves its home among the crystal springs or mountain snows, throughout the fifteen hundred leagues of its devious pathway, until it is finally lost in the vast waters of the Gulf, is controlled by laws as fixed and certain as those which direct the majestic march of the heavenly spheres. Every phenomenon and apparent eccentricity of the river — its scouring and depositing action, its caving banks, the formation of the bars at its mouth, the effect of the waves and tides of the sea upon its currents and deposits — is controlled by law as immutable as the Creator, and the engineer need only to be insured that he does not ignore the existence of any of these laws, to feel positively certain of the results he aims at.” James B. Eads, engineer, quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee

versus

“One who knows the Mississippi will promptly aver — not aloud but to himself — that ten thousand River Commissions, with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, ‘Go here,’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey; cannot save a shore which it has sentenced; cannot bar its path with an obstruction which it will not tear down, dance over, and laugh at. But a discreet man will not put these things into spoken words; for the West Point engineers have not their superiors anywhere; they know all that can be known of their abstruse science; and so, since they conceive that they can fetter and handcuff that river and boss him, it is but wisdom for the unscientific man to keep still, lie low, and wait till they do it. Captain Eads, with his jetties, has done a work at the mouth of the Mississippi which seemed clearly impossible; so we do not feel full confidence now to prophesy against like impossibilities. Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.” — Mark Twain in “Life on the Mississippi” quoted in “Atchafalaya” by John McPhee

from The Control of Nature: Atchafalaya — John McPhee, 23 February 1987 in The New Yorker.

and this from Bill Gammage in a precursor of his recent book “The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia” (Allen & Unwin, 2011)

I suggest that people turned to crops, herds and stores to protect them from other people. The reason farmers stepped onto the road to civilisation was military.

Aborigines ensured that usually they had plenty of food by controlling their population and by maximizing their resources. But their truly great achievement lay in how they protected their resources — not by military force, but by religious sanction. Even under extreme duress Aborigines rarely took food that was not theirs. That may have been so in early Europe and elsewhere too — most societies attempt to sanctify property. If so, it broke down. Farmers were led to protect their food, thus lost the predictability and security that widely dispersed resources gave hunter-gatherers, and thus had to work hard and make hard work a virtue. Work, sedentism and storing generate individual and collective strivings for surplus, for wealth. That is the road Europeans took, and Aborigines avoided. In August 1770 James Cook could not have known whether Aborigines were ‘far more happier’ than Europeans, but he was right to see that they were content in ‘all the necessarys of Life’, which we Europeans, ever restless for more, can never be. — Bill Gammage, 2005

Groggy. Rolling over historical entries, slowly whittling down the 1900-plus entries from the original travelog. This is the fourth incarnation of some of the earliest posts. The original form of the travelog was single long html pages, added incrementally over time. The second form was using frames for navigation. The third form was (is) the hybrid html/php blog platform that was implemented in 2004. Now, finally (!?!) this migration to this WordPress platform. Maybe this will be the last, eh? The site here is due for a more or less continuous expansion of content, following the completion of scans of 30 years of negatives, and other archival threads of audio, video, text, and image content. How life gets tied into this process is something of a mystery. So it goes.

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!

In January, investors were said to have put a value of about $50 billion on Facebook, the social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg. If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of Facebook, Mr. Moglen said, the revolutionaries will have to count on individuals who have huge stakes in keeping the powerful happy.

“It is not hard, when everybody is just in one big database controlled by Mr. Zuckerberg, to decapitate a revolution by sending an order to Mr. Zuckerberg that he cannot afford to refuse,” Mr. Moglen said.

By contrast, with tens of thousands of individual encrypted servers, there would be no one place where a repressive government could find out who was publishing or reading “subversive” material. — Jim Dwyer, NYT article

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 official blurb for the workshop:

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

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

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

Julian, Gregers , Heidi, and I do the drive up to New Plymouth to check out the Puke Ariki exhibition/library and museum complex in New Plymouth, on the north west coast. There is a street festival and some electronic media installations as well.

We meet Ian Clothier eventually for a beer and a tour of the data-installation connected to one of the Museum installations in Pukekura Park. He’s teaching at the Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki

On the way back, Mount Taranaki is wreathed in a morphing cloud hat. We take a bit of time to drive to the Egmont National Park visitor’s center halfway up the east flank, and take a short walk into the forest. Marvelous vibe under the trees. The exotic feel comes from the strange vegetation.

The drive crosses mostly land that was originally forested, but is now stripped dairy farm land, the product of which is shipped to China and elsewhere. There are milk-trains crossing the land every few minutes. The Fonterra dairy factory is reputed to be the largest of its kind in the world.

I’ll be back to Taranaki, someday.

The desire to transcend distance and separation has accompanied the history of media technology for many centuries. Various attempts to realize the demand for a presence from a distance have produced beautiful imaginaries such as those of tele-presence and ubiquity, the electronic cottage and the re-invigoration of the oikos, and certainly not least among them the reduction of physical mobility in favor of an ecologically more sustainable connected life style. As current systems of hyper-mobility are confronted with an unfolding energy crisis and collide with severe ecological limits – most prominently in the intense debate on global warming – citizens and organizations in advanced and emerging economies alike are forced to reconsider one of the most daring projects of the information age: that a radical reduction of physical mobility is possible through the use of advanced tele-presence technologies.

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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…!).

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.

After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!

This is the jacket blurb I wrote in ten minutes — the day Lina was sending the book to the printers!

We’ll be providing a pdf file of the book at some future date, after the final symposium and exhibition in Berlin (coming up this week! see info below), and when any sales of the existing print run are over and done with.

Presented by The European School of Visual Arts (EESI), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA)

Migrating:Art:Academies:

Conference – 15-16 October 2010, 13:00 – 18:00
Exhibition opening – 14 October 2010, 19:00
Exhibition – 14-16 October 2010
Opening times – daily between 10:00 – 19:00

Collegium Hungaricum, Dorotheenstrasse 12, Berlin

The two-year project Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) comes to a close with its Laboratory V Migrating:Art:Academies:. This exhibition and conference, organized in cooperation with Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, will map the territory around an ensemble of new and innovative forms of creative practice. During MigAA students from the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE), and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT) traveled in Media RVs (recreational camping vehicles) throughout Europe, engaging the local cultural and environmental milieu, and creating art works “on the road.”

“The wealth of Migrating Art Academies was unanimously proclaimed by both the participants and by those who they encountered in the course of the project. This creative experiment was also an excellent educational laboratory and such laboratories undoubtedly play a critical role in a time of European-wide reforms in art education.” says Sabrina Grassi-Fossier, the MigAA coordinator and director of European School of Visual Arts, Angouleme/Poitiers.

The combined MigAA exhibition and conference does not claim to be a full picture but rather a presentation of life-sketches, fragmentary practices, and evolving processes. These active threads together chart a new territory for learning that turns away from most traditional academic strategies. This open event is meant to critically address this new approach and to open it up for public dialogue.

On Thursday, 14 October, Migrating:Art:Academies: will open with an exhibition of works by more than thirty students from the three European art academies at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. The selected projects, developed during the four consecutive MigAA laboratories in Berlin, Vilnius, Linz, and Royan, range from drawings and maps to installations and interactive works.

The laboratory will also present a 300+ page reader as a summary of the two years of distributed and mobile research. The book, divided into three essential parts – Migrating:, Art:, and Academies: – serves as a navigation supplement for the exhibition and the conference as well as the overall project.

The conference will take place on Friday and Saturday, 15 – 16 October and is divided into four panels: Migration, Education, Technology, and a final Round Table session with the participating students.

Friday, 15 October
13.00 : Migration panel
16.00 : Education panel

Saturday, 16 October
13.00 : Technology panel
16.00 : Final Round Table

About Migrating Art Academies

Migrating Art Academies is an ongoing joint educational project of three European higher education institutions: the European School of Visual Arts (EESI, FR), the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne (KHM, DE) and the Vilnius Academy of Arts (VDA, LT). Its primary purpose was to research and develop a progressive model of education that combines new and innovative forms of creative practice, collaboration, cooperation, and production. For the duration of the project, students had the possibility to work in an autonomous zone situated between virtual and real worlds, as well as between their normal home environment and new, unfamiliar places. The students investigated and engaged the local environment at the same time as developing creative projects in response to their experiences. The MigAA project is financed by the European Commission Culture Program 2007-2013. For more detailed information, please visit: http://www.migaa.eu/.

The conference language is English. Admission is free.

Migrating Art Academies team:

Mindaugas Gapsevicius (top e.V.), Sabrina Grassi-Fossier (Coordinator, EESI), Jonas Hansen (KHM), Zilvinas Lilas (KHM), Alvydas Lukys (VDA), Sylvie Marchand (EESI), Vaclovas Nevcesauskas (VDA), Martin Rumori (KHM).

Understanding this from being aware of my own movements (and instances of compromised balance), and watching locals, I noticed several major differences between their gait and mine. The primary feature of the local walk was that both feet never really left the ground and contact was flat-footed and somewhat stiff-legged. There was a substantial time when the full sole of the shoe was flat on the ice, and it was during that time when forward acceleration was made.

If you try this yourself, you will immediately see that the glutes are not the site of any muscular effort for locomotion as opposed to when accelerating off the big toe and Achilles tendon. Could this be the source of the predominance of flat arses in Iceland?

Aside from the glare-ice technique, there was another endearing and embodied gait by farmers when walking their fields. A thousand years of overgrazing sheep has seriously compromised most of Iceland’s grasslands. As the land was overgrazed, this exposed the underlying volcanic soil directly to powerful aeolian erosion which could strip meters away down to a gravelly bedrock surface in no time. When life again attempts to establish itself on that surface, after sheep are removed from the picture, it first starts as miniscule moss colonies which grow in the shelter of a small cobble or so. The moss begins to capture wind-borne soil which gradually increases the colony size which increases the turbulent capture of airborne sediment. Over a period of decades these moss colonies form a hummocky surface with a relief of perhaps 50 cm (18 inches) and a horizontal frequency of a meter or so. To walk across such a surface is absolutely exhausting unless you conform your body in a particular way. The Icelandic farmers gait consists of the following: hands clasped behind the back, an exaggerated forward hunch of the upper body, and the knees bent dramatically. Leaning forward, and using the bend in the knees to essentially level out the distance between the upper body and the average ground height of the bottom of the hummocks, one takes long strides where the torso never goes up and down, but rather the level changes of the hummocks are compensated by different extensions of the knees. It’s humorous to watch, but is highly effective and a very rapid gait. If one tries ‘normal’ walking, climbing up and down the hummocks, it is slow and absolutely exhausting.

long cycle ride with Bill first down the Ark which was partly over the bike path at one point. that made for a challenge going back up against the current in a foot or more of fast moving water — the river is definitely at spring flood stage! Then all the way back upstream to the Pueblo Dam which was open and blasting snow-melt downstream. pretty damn hot, but along the river in the shade of the huge cottonwood trees, all is chill. at the end of the ride, I was tuckered, but also impressed with the urban green-space development that Pueblo is undertaking.

Transit of Utah. From west to east, along a winding trajectory from desert to forest to desert, oil drilling, wind power, gas stations, Mormon farms, gold mines, high-security military bases, municipal alarm towers scattered across the landscape — for warning the population surrounding the bases where testing of bio- and chemical-warfare devices is ongoing — warning them of impending disaster. Continuing on the isolated Pony Express Trail, then descending into populated areas. Calling ahead to Dinosaur to see about road conditions. Plenty of snow on the Uintahs, plenty! At the last minute after checking out the Green River campground on the Utah side, I get word that the Echo Park road is open. So, gas up, including the extra tank, and head in from Jensen. Excellent weather, and finally arriving, no one else around, very good. Get the pick of the few camp spaces, #5, 7, and 9 are the best for shade, seclusion, and access to firewood — though shade is not the issue at this time of year, more important would be the access to morning sunshine to warm up — but since there’s no one else around, I can use the #6 picnic table in full sun in the morning for breakfast. So, I take #7 and offload/set-up quickly: already charged at being here once again…

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

There is a large (black) raven (Corvus corax) who is in residence in the Enola Gay Hangar. There are some major areas of the roof and sides of the hangar where the corrugated sheeting has (surely!)been blown off over the years, so the interior is exposed to the elements and to natural energies. This raven (or two) is in residence somewhere high in the iron girders. Much of each day, especially during morning and evening, the raven is seen flying very purposefully between the hangar and a spot some 200 meters east of the hangar where there are some low scrubby bushes and open ground. (S)he flies back and forth not far from the window that I look out from on occasion as I work when inside the residency unit. Movement out the window catches my attention and about half the time it is the raven making this low and very determinate transit between the hangar and this spot. Occasionally the movement will be from the ground squirrel couple who has taken up residence in the underbelly of the Airstream, and otherwise, the few lizards will do their peculiar dances across the gravelly yard when it is warm; and lately, a handful of very small birds will spend the early evening hours, before sunset, picking aphids off the salt brush bush growing in the yard. But it is the raven who is most compelling. Back and forth. Before I leave, I want to hang out in the watch-tower and simply observe the flight cycle. I reckon (s)he’s gathering sticks for a nest, but I haven’t clearly seen anything in his/her beak on the flights back to the hangar, so it’s a question: what’s ‘e doin’? Actually it could be a pair of them, they are know to find a partner and mate for life. Hmmm, novel idea…

The ground squirrel pair is another matter. They’re gaining access to the otherwise pretty solid and gapless lower framework of the Airstream via the fold-out step area below the front door. There are also areas for critters to enter via the electrical and water hookup doors. One of those has a broken latch, so I think I will tap and screw that one down semi-permanently as the vehicle isn’t going to be moved anytime soon.

Neal and I head out to the Bonneville Flats towards evening. I want to cycle and he has some filming to do. Amazing Light. I cycle for about an hour, going about 8-10 miles out and then back. Hard to tell, dimensions are reduced to time alone (and body metrics). About five miles out there is a cluster of vehicles, apparently a photo shoot happening. Cycling down the ‘main drag’ of the speed-test area is a singular experience. Speed becomes necessary to overcome the lack of Cartesian cues, no pathway. Got to get somewhere. Got to approach those little specks in the distance. Oh, those are cars, sure takes a long time to get closer. Hit some areas where the salt is wet and there are loose crystals which splatter all over me. It mostly appears like ice, so brain is thinking danger! slick!, but it is quite the opposite, sticky like climbing on limestone.

The accompanying images are suffering from more digital camera woes — dust on the CCD. Absolutely disgusting. I don’t have a proper removal kit, and this Nikon model doesn’t have one of the vibrating sensors that can dislodge that extremely irritating blobs that end up on the sensor despite me never taking the lens off. Yet another disappointment with this Nikon (D200) — for the price paid it is real garbage compared to the old analog F2as and even Nikkormats from the 1970′s. I never had dust-on-film problems like this, ever! Neal has a nice Canon SLR system from his university, along with a HD 3-CCD chip DV cam. I’m jealous.

Flat Light. Cycling perhaps ten, twelve miles out. Parallel with the huge trenches of the salt/potash mining, eventually towards Blue Lake. A bit nervous about unexploded ordnance, but there are plenty of old vehicle tracks in the playa to follow. The berms, canals, and drainage engineering has completely off-balanced the system here. In its original condition, as it still the case north of I-80, there is a thick layer of very hard and relatively pure salt overlying the extremely fine-grained mud that accumulates as the ranges surrounding the playa slowly erode. It’s this same very fine-grained sediment that comprises the nasty dust in the frequent and rather violent wind storms kicks up high into the atmosphere. When wet it becomes a gooey mess that is at the same time, slick and very dense. The very reason that it costs USD 600 if you get your vehicle stuck somewhere in the local playa — usually when the salt ‘ice’ breaks through — it takes a snow-cat to tow it out. And, as the basins between the ranges are being formed as a result of wide-scale extensional tectonics, that stuff is deep, thousands of feet deep! Nothing like the feeling of being out in the back country here with a vehicle that is stuck or has broken down. Cell phones usually don’t work, and it’s a long walk anywhere. I carry plenty of water (10 gallons), a shovel, tow cable, full tool kit, flash-Lights, some food, sleeping gear, signaling mirror, and other bits of paraphernalia to at least make it a comfortable wait. And most of the time, I have my mountain bike which would make a 50-mile exit a possibility.

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.

Aim for the nearest topological features to the south, some small intrusives, an isolated fault block, likely, rhyolitic basalts of some sort (with some peridotites or greenstones possibly?). Lake Bonneville paleo-shorelines are visible, with a prominent one slicing the hills like a poorly-made isometric topo model. The hills are technically on the Air Force test range, but I disregard the signs (parking behind some low hills across the road in order not to attract attention).

Definitely a different regime than, say, the Sonoran desert. Here, the land seems more sterile and has only very low scrub, most less than a foot high. Low or black sagebrush (Artemisia), salt brush (Atriplex), rabbit brush, black brush, tumbleweed (Salsola pestifera), and a handful of other species are thinly scattered, with either desert varnish, pebbly sand, or the occasional small colony of cryptobiotic soil. Can’t really tell if this lack is a direct result from severe overgrazing (this is, after all, BLM land) or just a harsh (colder, drier!) regime here compared to the relatively abundant biota of the Sonoran.

Plenty of evidence of other human intrusions on top of the igneous stuff that these hills are made of. Bullet casings, scraps of glass and metal everywhere, bullet holes in anything worth shooting at. Two mines have burrowed into the earth, leaving debris, holes, and mounds, a refrigerator with major firearm damage, a twisted bike frame, and the shattered glass crunching underfoot.

The hills are much larger than they initially appear, a frequent phenomena in a landscape without the normal metrics for scale (trees and human structures). A great view in all directions from the top.

A lake shore sand deposit in the form of a light tan mudflat attracts my attention on the talus-skiing descent, as it is bisected by the old roadbed which exhibits the typical roadbed riparian affect — with visibly larger brush on either side of the eroding pavement — the direct affect of the slight concentration of runoff precipitation. Walking here in the flats one feels … exposed … as the occasional mining truck speeds by a mile or so away. The only relief among short sage brush are the holes dug by coyotes into smaller varmit holes, now that would be something to watch! Good for spraining an ankle if step is not watched closely. The only other difference are the widely scattered aluminum beer cans, mostly effaced of any markings by the brutal sun, sitting pell-mell in the sand.

I notice later that the Nikon has more crap on the CCD, about which nothing can be done — you can see two spots in the lower left center of the images. My irritation with this camera system increases as the years go by. I am constantly astonished at the poor quality of the lens, along with the dirt accumulation on the CCD — it’s a closed system, for god’s sake, how does it keep getting dirty? I don’t even take the lens off, ever! I think the Canon system is superior both optically and technologically. But nothing to be done about it, unless I decide against getting a new laptop and instead get a new camera. Ach, I get tired of technology!

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

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

Today, mulling the difference between technological determinism (as a self-propagating system on its own immutable trajectory) and the reciprocal idea that human social systems selectively construct the systems of technology they ‘desire’ (subject to all the variability of the particular social system within which the technology is embedded). Then, within that selection process, thinking about the process of development and the general trend towards greater complexity. Do these processes ever trend generally to greater simplicity? Does desire ever, on a wide social scale, ever become directed to less material abundance? Is material security predicated with amassing more-than-sufficient material wealth? Or do society-wide technological systems collapse towards simplicity only in cases of ‘natural’ disaster.

[Complexity and simplicity are used here as general indicators of the depth and breadth of the techno-social system's process of provision and production that leads to services, situations, or products deemed necessary for participants. Metrics of complexity would include geographic proximity, ease of access, energy density, and the number of substantive steps required to produce a product or create a desired energy flow. The relative necessity of a product is highly subjective and varies widely between different systems. Necessity is a cultural construct (complementing, say, Maslow's needful ranking). Complexity may be indicated by the number of discrete steps that can be described that a process passes through -- steps/degrees of flow alteration.]

When examining a production system, the primary question would have to be, “does this process end with a net gain of energy that can be subsequently utilized for the evolutionary advantage of the social system?” This question itself would suggest the inevitable rise of an elite subgroup when the wider population reaches certain environmental carrying thresholds — where that (evolutionarily optimal) subgroup is carried by the energy-providing activities of a wider group. But this is another issue to look at later.

The existence of (the) ‘natural disaster’ suggests that the state of a particular techno-social system may be seen essentially as the (ordered) organization of flows to keep back natural chaotic forces or to push those natural forces along certain (technologically-defined) pathways. Does this make the system merely at the affect of natural laws, and thus binding it into a materially deterministic framework? Nah, that ignores quantum, with its statistically indeterminate outcomes. Although obviously, any techno-social system is bound to thermodynamics and all other prescribed or yet unknown ‘natural laws.’

System collapse to simplicity is obviously a result of the ‘natural’ disaster precipitated by war (as an extension of human survival mechanisms?). War is the impingement of one techno-socially organized and directed expression of ordered energy onto another — with one set of system pathways disrupted to greater simplicity. Loss could be defined by the destruction of the internal structure for the directing of cumulative energy of participants in that social system. Winning is essentially acquiring access to the total (or partial) energy sources of the losing social system. This includes individuals, and all the pathways of energy flow that they have constructed — these are then directed, incorporated, into the winning system.

The whole deterministic model seems to focus on material interpretations — that is, metrics of ‘advance’ that will happen along an apparently calculable technological trajectory. Rather, as outlined here, there are conditions of technological advance and retreat that are framed by other factors which make the prediction of a trajectory highly inaccurate. The first being the level of complexity of the techno-social systems, the second, the efficiency of that system, and the third, the stability. All of these factors fluctuate over time and are deeply embedded in a milieu of human and, indeed, cosmological factors. The general trend, however, looking at the broad arc of the history of technology is to increasing complexity, variable-yet-generally-increasing control by social systems of a wider range of ‘natural’ energy flows. Is it deterministic to say that there will be an increase in complexity of any techno-social system unless interrupted by natural disaster? [Clearly, the complexity of a (the!) techno-social system is limited, as the energy basis for the system is not infinite: what does that imply?]

What motivates this evolution to increasing complexity? The short answer could be the drive to reproductive advantage — evolutionary motivations for life to not just continue, but continue with advantage over the competition. It is easy to see that the affect of this drive could be interpreted as having its own character and endless source of ‘forward’ motivation. But clearly the ultimate source for that is, again, the impelling force of life-systems to simply continue and continue with ever-greater complexity (creating an ever-widening ring of increasing entropy). So, the ‘explanation’ for technological change, as a social phenomena, ultimately rests, as do all social systems, on the fundamentals of living systems.

Vastly complex systems obscure the actual and perceived level of reproductive advantage — for example, while modern Western medical advances have increased overall abilities for successful propagation of the species, the wider technological system on which that (medical)sub-system depends generates substances (and situations) toxic to reproductive viability and life in general. One would then have to argue that the reproductive viability increase is for a limited number of the total population. Those remaining after the cull benefit from technologically augmented survival, while the biologically and energetically compromised remainder are ‘used up’ in supporting the few. The increase of complexity may be directly correlated to the larger absolute number of people, combined with the drive to absolutely optimize reproductive capabilities of those in the positions of power at the same time as the elimination of all actual or potential competing life-forces.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The latch handles on both the driver- and passenger-side door are broken. There is a certain geometry on the plastic lever-arm which, over time of repeated lifting motions, fails. So I have to replace them. The truck is relatively old, compared to the average age of vehicles on the road. I call the Toyota dealer nearby, and they want almost USD100 for each replacement handle. This is called an OEM part — Original Equipment Manufactured — a part which carries some of the branded weight of the maker and its record of quality along with a premium price (including a substantial markup to underwrite the existence of the dealer distribution system). Too much! I knew this would be the case before I called, but I wanted to set a ceiling price before looking elsewhere, online. This particular vehicle model was globally a widely-distributed frame, body, and engine combination and so there turns out to be a substantial non-OEM parts market. The only question is one of quality. Non-OEM parts online appear to be both Mainland Chinese- and Taiwanese-made with what seems to be a substantial US distribution presence in the form of highly discounted warehouses designed for online mail-order sales (with Ebay, Amazon, and their own web sales presence). I find the parts, in several styles (chromed plastic and black) for a small fraction of the OEM cost, USD 20 with free shipping.

Next, before ordering, I have to ascertain whether or not there are ‘issues’ that will prevent me from replacing the units myself. This might mean lacking special tools, or some unusual glitch of construction geometry that will nullify my amateur (but extensive) mechanical skills. I pick up a copy of a non-OEM repair manual for the vehicle at the public library and review the procedures before assembling the tools that I will likely need for the task. On a warm and sunny day I do a test strip-down of the door — memories of helping my father repair his cars on bitter-cold winter days still haunts my fingers. It looks like it is possible, and perhaps even easy to do the job (keeping in mind Murphy’s Law). It takes about 45 minutes with some fine-tuning of process, location and selection of appropriate tools, and such. In the process, I am dismayed to discover that a previous owner has made a modification in the form of two slices in the interior door-frame steel, creating a tab which was apparently bent out to access something, though I don’t see what or why this has been done. And to do that, they cut through the sheet plastic dust liner leaving no direct weather seal between the exterior of the door and the interior. This handiwork I read as a brute-force repair methodology. I don’t approve, one reason is that in the process of cutting the steel, the jerk has exposed edges which are a serious threat to my body wall: hands will require constant attention to avoid a potentially bloody intersection. The other reason is that the two cuts likely affect the structural integrity of the door frame itself, although not under normal use, rather in an impact situation. That and it just isn’t elegant. ach!

I go back online to hunt for the range of prices and to see if I can ascertain the relative qualities of the non-OEM parts. There are photos, but they are not large enough to see the difference between, for example, cast and stamped metal fittings, a big indicator of potential life-time of the parts. I decide to order one for the driver’s side door first to see what I get. The drivers-side handle hasn’t completely failed yet, but if it does, I would be in trouble — the door could not be opened from the outside! The replacement arrives a few days later. The distributor is in California which makes sense in proximity to the supplier in Asia and the market in that vehicle-rich state.

I compare the original (failed) part with the new replacement. It appears that they are of roughly comparable quality — given that both originals have failed. Apparently there is a convergence of a design flaw in the injection-molded lift-handle which then fails under repeat stressing (lifting of the handle to release the door-latch and opening the door). I doubt that I will still have the vehicle when or if the new unit fails. It is possible to learn other details by closely examining the entire mechanism — I can see that there is no objective gain to the functioning of the handle unit if I pull hard on it or if I pull out rather than up. This is a critical observation — cranking hard on the handle will not improve the operation or improve the potential functioning of a proper outcome, that is, opening the door. Noting this, I can see that too much force has likely been used, over time, to lift the handle, and finally stressing the plastic to failure. This is retrospective evidence of a user not being aware of the optimal or correct operation of the tool (the handle being a device for opening the door, as well as perhaps the entire vehicle as a tool to move oneself around).

It takes about an hour of twiddling and futzing for the installation, including some dropped bolts, and contortions required for the hard-to-handle geometries of parts-plus-fasteners-plus-limited-access. This is where experience becomes a desired quality. Each repair process may be optimized through repetition and experimentation.

For example, when almost completely done, ready to attach the inner door release handle only to find that I have not made sure the release arm is accessible in the handle hole in the door panel. Instead, it has dropped down while I was fastening the door panel snaps, so I have to remove the whole door panel again to set the release arm in a place rendering it accessible later. Many lesser and greater details make up points for optimization along the process. Usually the third or fourth time one undertakes such a task, it is quite refined compared to the tentative first round — nothing like the lesson of barked-knuckles on a cold day — embodied memory!

Lost fasteners are a familiar bane, though this time, with a specific twist. I am always careful where I place any removed nut, bolt, c-ring, shim, washer, whatever, and before I get to that point, I look carefully to see their configuration in situ for potential places where they might fall and be lost or inaccessible.

The instructions for removing the c-rings on the window cranks include a novel technique which I immediately wonder if it is a designed solution — another words, whether the original designers anticipated the removal concept and incorporated it into the precise construction technique — or is it an after-thought, arrived at by some clever mechanic who had done the process so many times that s/he stumbled on a quick solution. The instructions call for a shop rag to be slid between the window crank handle and the door panel and worked side to side to unsnap the c-ring holding the handle over the knurled crank-post. It works. But in my in-experience with the technique, I am not holding the rag completely correct. I put too much tension into it, and when I am disassembling the door panel the second time (to retrieve the release arm!), the rag snaps from my fingers and the c-ring flies off into some leaves on the ground. I hear it land, but cannot place the sound very accurately. Small, metal, somewhere in a circle perhaps 2.5-meters in diameter of messy vegetation. Forget it. Gone. I make a cursory look around, but it’s hopeless.

Otherwise, the process seems doable and, at a fraction of the cost of having the dealership do it, why not? It is satisfying and enjoyable through a combination of saving money and decent weather. Now, if it had been an electric door lock? The cost would have been minimum an order of magnitude greater, and probably would have taken five times longer to do by the complexity of the task. Basic user-fixable technology on cars is rare these days, and that evolution is a clear example of a loss of autonomy as tasks are surrendered to more and more highly trained technician/mechanics and digital diagnostic devices.

Gotta change the spark plugs and cables next. A thought which immediately jogs memory of stripping the plug threads by over-torquing a plug on my old 1966 VW engine, requiring a major dis-assembly of the engine block for putting replacement threaded inserts in. uff.

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.

In the contemporary framework of human encounter — dominated by instances of hyper-commerce and of tele-mediated presence — life changes to fit the mediation (it does not evolve in the same sense that Darwin’s idea of the process; instead it simply fits the technology), and the character of encounter with(in) life alters for each shift in the techno-social milieu that collectively generates the allowed pathways of exchange. Freedom is not a question in this situation. Nor is autonomy. Those are absolutes of the abstract: virginal conceptions not directly related to the contingencies of be-ing in and of the world. Absolutes and abstractions do not prepare the Self for the shifting potentialities of collective human encounter which proceed by degree and layered complexity. And indeed, when abstractions govern encounter, the full field of possibility of human encounter is quickly limited to a much-less-than-finite set of conditions, processes, and outcomes. There arises the alienation of emotive loss in this limitation, but that is another issue to raise elsewhere. Or perhaps this alienation is the reciprocal experience of the (unfulfilled) possibilities of creative encounter.

Or is all this just about losing or gaining procreative (evolutionary) advantage for the species (via technological augmentation), and nothing more?

The fact that the strongest, most beautiful, most intelligent are, overall, given social reward when compared to the least. (Recognizing this, the revolutionary community organizer, Jesus, said (as interpolated by Mathew) “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” to invert the perception of this evolutionary order, and the alternative fact that following his lead will actually alter the order. Was this a miraculous strike at limited potentialities? Or mere agitprop for political expediency?

(but wait a minute, LIFE is, by definition, a redirecting of the flows of energy in a natural system — a redirecting that is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of living systems — according to basic non-equilibrium thermodynamics of living systems.)

However, there is a scalar difference between humans and other living entities where some humans attempt this kind of control on wide scales, with others re-directing those same energies to completely different configurations, some only images of what their ‘original’ pattern of flow once were. (it’s a question of degree?)

The juxtaposition: humans re-organizing the ‘natural’ flows around them (as technology), and humans re-organizing the flows which are human — other humans (as society).

These processes are indistinguishable in their application and only express some difference in the materialized extremity of their results. Humans are simply an other expression of the natural system. It is only in the degree or scale of re-organization of flows that they extend that distinguishes them from other expressions of life. One could argue that earlier Archean life on the planet, utilizing the energy available in certain chemical bonds over eons, completely transformed the composition of the atmosphere in a process of dynamic equilibrium — something we humans are apparently doing yet again in a vastly shorter time. Life, via evolutionary developments, integrally tapped into an available energy source/flow with gusto until the source was depleted or another ‘easier’ source was encountered. Life based on photosynthetic processes of energy utilization is a example that has a long and continuing evolutionary history.

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, explores this process of (the human) redirection of flows as the idea of “fabrication” — as a god-like means to artificially re-create and temporarily reify natural systems. She squarely positions this energy exertion as part of the “external subjectivization of the modern world.” This condition of externalization is a necessary precedent condition for the social and represents the ‘mechanism’ which draws granular and embodied human power from the individual into the social system (for cumulative and disgressionary use by that system). This energy consequently becomes unavailable to the individual, although the pathways that the social system constructs for the expression of its energy may be utilized by the individual, depending on their particular positioning within the system.

(Working at a job for “The Man,” that vaguely persistent image that arose in the times of African-American slavery, frames this dynamic. While most individuals in the middle- and upper-class would consider that their work in the service of someone else is merely a fact of existence and that the convertible and abstracted instrumental returns (money) more than suffice as a reward for the life-time and life-energy expended in this way. It is this collective faith in the abstracted social instrument of money (and other codes) (see Code and Money), expressed as a crucial social adhesive, which gives the social system a form for the expression of the cumulative energy of individual participants.)

Within the life process itself, of which laboring remains an integral part and which it never transcends, it is idle to ask questions that presuppose the category of means and end, such as whether men live and consume in order to have the strength to labor or whether they labor in order to have the means of consumption.

If we consider this loss of the faculty to distinguish clearly between means and end in terms of human behavior, we can say that the free disposition and use of tools for a specific end product is replaced by rhythmic unification of the laboring body with its implement, the movement of laboring itself acting as the unifying force. Labor but not work requires for best result a rhythmically ordered performance and, in so far as many laborers gang together, needs rhythmic co-ordination of all individual movements. In this motion, the tools lose their instrumental character, and the clear distinction between man and his implements, as well as his ends, becomes blurred. What dominates the labor process and all work processes which are performed in the mode of laboring is neither man’s purposeful effort nor the product he may desire, but the motion of the process itself and the rhythm it imposes upon the laborers. Labor implements are drawn into this rhythm until the body and tool swing in the same repetitive movement, that is, until, in the use of machines, which of all implements are best suited to the performance of the animal laborans, it is not longer the body’s movement that determines the implement’s movement but the machine’s movement which enforces the movements of the body. — Hannah Arendt, “The Human Condition”

Morning reading, sparking off Jacques Ellul’s classic, The Technological Society, where he attempts the first comprehensive definition and discussion of technology as something that pervades and underlies social formation(s). He also discusses a distinct relationship between the machine and technology, where the machine is the most important and obvious aspect of technology; where mechanization “transforms everything it touches into a machine;” but where technology is a cumulative way (perhaps expression?) of integration of the machinic into the social fabric, it is represented by a continuous re-formation of the (human) life-form(s) to the techno-social system. Without this impelling force, humans, as simply another evolutionary life-form expression, would not have arrived at where they are in this moment.

The distinction of human and machinic was a product of materialist thinking which detached the human being from the system of applied flows that the machinic imposes on the world. It is thus easier, mentally, for humans to imagine that there was a master/slave relationship between themselves and that ‘other’ world of technology: that they controlled the technology. This is clearly demonstrated to be a fallacious historical and contemporary view of that relation. Instead the relation is immersive, affective, and it is especially distortive of human-to-human relation. By distortive, going back to basic assumptions about technology, I mean that each expression of technology (which can more-or-less easily be seen as separate for the purposes of analysis of this affect), is seen to apply a set of conditioned flows of power (energy) in its genesis, operation, action, existence, and dissolution. These conditioned flows are formative of ‘natural’ energy flows which occur any/everywhere including between humans.

Right off, Ellul attacks the commonly held belief that there is a particular boundary between technology and science which, though historically indistinct and presently contentious is a fabrication. He contends that the domain of science, beyond “hypothesis and theory” cannot exist without technology. This is at least one small step in realizing that human presences and actions should not divided into arbitrary categories, but considered holistically and in concert with all other fields/flows that are present.

Neither science nor technology can exist without an originary research which is the process of experiencing and re-membering the flows that exist around us. That is, science and technology both rely on the basic functions of the human experiencing of the world, the reception of sensual energies that supply a psychical representation of that world. Science looks for the initial repetition of pattern, relying on memory (in some form) to overlay repeated patterns of flow. When there is a correspondence of flow re-membered, this is duly noted in resonant neural energy patterns in mind. Technology relies on this same re-membering of the flows that surround the social species, but, critically, moves one step ahead (affecting fundamental structures to the social): it applies the (collective) memory of those flows to alter those flows in congruence or consequence to those observed patterns. This is a critical difference, and one that easily circumscribes the relationship of the two ‘fields’ which are framed as distinct but inter-related, rendering them as simply two terms distinguishing similar patterns of human activity. Ellul calls them an “ensemble of means.”

This application of alteration and affectation, along with its resultant refined patterns of energy flow, become, as an cumulative expression of the presence of the human, the fabric of sociality itself.

My approach to technology is not about a return to Nature in that romantic or even Luddite sensibility, but instead, it is a wider understanding or impression of first what the cost is of the totality of altered flows that we as a life-form have imposed on the world, and then, more deeply, what does it mean that we, as simply another expression of life on the earth, have come to where we are as that life-form. Consequent decisions may then be made — to participate or not in certain of these defined energy flows. (more on that later!)

Discussion of the technological cannot exist simply in the realm of the technical or scientific, as the applied alterations to flows of energy as well as their affectations on the wider milieu cannot be completely (or accurately) circumscribed through numeracy.

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…

Establish (via dancing around) the fundamentals of the cosmos; establish (by chanting a framework for apprehending those fundamentals) what individual presence seems to be; establish (by tracing lived experience) what the dynamic of interactions of human engagement are; situate (humanely) those encounters in the wider social system (or continuum of relation); examine the impact/role of technology on/in all of this; frame a creative praxis that might transcend the limits of those impacts while taking into account an energized world view, and, indeed, lessen those impacts in a sustainable way; open an empowered pathway to decode what is happening along this moment in history. These are the primary goals of the work.

(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 …)

The idea comes that I can place different narratives and sonifications in the aporee context, making a global mapping of ideas mixed with sounds mixed with voices. But somehow this seems flat. Not that the platform lacks some aesthetic appeal, but the tendency would be to continue the same old process of archive-building (with the same old criteria of acquisition of material). Or, I thought about making a performative series in the Speakers Corner in the Domain. Still, the best idea to this moment is the one where I would simply engage with this material with one Other, expanding on it, presenting it in a dialogic setting, and reproducing that. Or this dialogic situation as a live performative undertaking with an audience.

[and there is always the wrestling between the tendency to overly-formalize the potential outcomes rather than going with my intuition. This arises from that historic/sporadic lack of confidence in the execution of 'public' works. Although ultimately the more spontaneous the production, the less pre-tension, the better and more energizing the outcome for the audience/participants. If only creative action came as easily as teaching (which, of course, is a subset of that creative action)].

Then there is this idea that technology impresses itself on the individual (a form of techno-determinism). I can remember working on the graveyard shift at Rockville Crushed Stone, an open-pit quarry in a greenschist facies area mined for concrete aggregate. It supplied the entire Washington, D.C. area with aggregate until the year after I was working there, the whole short-fiber asbestos scandal broke — the aggregate was found to be full of it! That’s another story. At the end of a ten hour shift of mucking (shoveling), clearing random piles of spilled rock from the monstrous crushing machines and the conveyor systems between them, my hands would start to lock around the shovel handle. To this day, if I spend an afternoon with a shovel, this still happens. Embodied presence re-configured at the effect of technology. One of my offices at UTS is on the 16th floor of the building reputed to be the ugliest building in Sydney. I decided a number of years ago that if I had the possibility of skipping the elevator and taking the stairs, I would do that. Some of my colleagues think this is a amusing quirk. It is, but it is rationalized by the idea that using or relying on the elevator to get there is re-forming my body in a certain way that I’d rather it not do. Or perhaps, I’d rather challenge my legs to get some exercise else they wither away, as they sit lifelessly propped on the desk chair below my torso as body is only engaged in finger-twitch typing-at-screen in this moment.

Is there any instance that a technology does not re-form the embodied presence of the user? If one is using the field/flow model of the cosmos, the answer is definitively, NO! Even at great (Cartesian) distance: even as subsumed by tele-presence. Then affect merely becomes an issue of what, how, and how much. Hypothesis? Yeah, okay, it is a hypothesis, but there is abundant evidence to let it lie for the moment as a principle. What would be counter examples? A human-constructed technology is a temporalized shift in the ordering of ambient matter/energy in a localized/distributed region. A negentropic ordering along anisotropic fall lines (thermal, chemical, or simply difference gradients). (Just as the body is the same shift or change or difference in the order of a region — and the body is a primary technology).

[One way of looking at technology is that it is a subset of the alterations that self-organizing life systems apply to the flows that they are immersed in. Uff, mouthful, when working from zero acronyms... Well, it's not really a subset, but it would apply, as the traditional definition of technology does, to a certain limited number of tool-wielding species. What is the difference between the air being a tool that a bird utilizes, shaping it, albeit in very a limited temporal framework, to allow the (necessary) utility of flight? Technology-as-means to re-form the flow of energy in the active system. Perhaps too basic a definition. It certainly then would include all life, which then suggests that life itself has, as one characteristic function: as a system for altering the flow of energy in the system.]

Georgescu-Roegen critiques the mechanistic basis for much economic theory (which predominantly focuses on the movement of goods — a state which, thermodynamically, appears as a reversible process — and one which leads, at least conceptually if not in fact to the infinite cycle from production to consumption). It would appear that our current situation is the result of that infinite cycle occurring in a locally finite system.

This book leads to:

and ends up at this reflection from Borges:

It is useless to answer that reality is also orderly. Perhaps it is, but in accordance with divine laws — I translate: inhuman laws — which we never quite grasp. Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.

In the introduction Mirowski inspires as he details his struggle to build a conceptual and actual bridge between physics and economics. Understanding that economics is an important dimensional descriptor of the techno-social system is a nice advance. Although the number of economists who have made this connection are few, and the bulk of the discipline are still mired in juggling abstractions. It’s important to realize that the abstracted metrices of economy are abstracted from something and that something is energized matter. He extends the argument, marking the parallel between the terms value in economics and energy in physics. And later, he develops the concept of energy as one critical to understanding economics, period. This is a good find indeed! And it might end up, by studying the principles of the conservation of energy too much and I will end up a conservative. (No chance of that, as no one ends up as anything but energy anyway…) Actually, bringing thermodynamics into the picture would radically change the nature and theories of market economics both on the right and on the left.

On pages 56-57 there is a symmetric coffee-colored ring, a primitive of a Rorschach test, and on 58-59, some bits of roll-your-own tobacco. The last record of being checked out was 1998. More than a decade ago. Not too much interest in these approaches within the traditional canon.

And later, on to the indeterminacy of human tendencies towards abstracted (but sometimes brilliant) reason, in describing his ideas on electromagnetic fields:

The substance here treated must not be assumed to possess any of the properties of ordinary fluids except those of freedom of movement and resistance to compression. It is not even a hypothetical fluid which is introduced to explain actual phenomena. It is merely a collection of imaginary properties which may be employed for establishing certain theorems in pure mathematics in a way more intelligible for many minds … I wish merely to direct the mind of the reader to mechanical phenomena which will assist him in understanding the electrical ones. All such phrases in the present paper are to be considered as illustrative, not explanatory. In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. — James Clerk Maxwell

got to weigh in on health care. so sick(!) of the toxic blather going on within the US, although it might just be that it is a spent nation-state, in the throes of becoming less relevant in the world. clearly it is becoming less functional internally which eventually (already) will have an effect on external relations. morally it is tearing itself apart by those who, strangely call themselves Christian but who seem to have zero compassion and limitless zeal for defending against the stranger and killing preemptively when that stranger seems strange. period. I have some understanding of the fear of governmental authority. the media in the US has certainly inculcated so many other nation-states with the blight of the dictator and illustrated that to the US citizens, a situation that reinforces some traditional/historical fear of the government. fine. but why is there almost zero fear of the corporation? how can this be? (a belief that the government will effectively control the corporation?? or what?) it is irrational. but then again, fear usually is, especially the fear exuding from an under-class which is very poorly educated (a result of a very stratified anti-Federal education situation, but that’s another whole story). This under-class seems not to understand the dynamics of power as it happens to be expressed in the particular system they live under — global capitalism — despite being locked into that servile under-class by those same dynamics of power. a dynamics that is expressed in the same way as it is expressed in any other system of power — the elite rule that under-class. whether it is elite politicians-for-life (the Senate) or corporate boards or whatever arrangement of power, it’s all Machiavellian in both intention and execution. doh!

I have had wide experience in numerous socialist (gasp!) countries and with some of their medical systems. I have also had several encounters with fragments of the US system. in different situations I have been either uninsured or insured. I am alive/walking today because of the quality of the US system, a system that took care of me after an accident when I was in an uninsured gap in time. the system (which really isn’t a system, but more a hodge-podge of competing, conflicting, and discontinuous sub-systems), without any paperwork, without even a ID (I’m white), the local hospital ER took me in and diagnosed my severe injury — a shattered vertebra and sent me on for major surgery and hospitalization at a top neurological center a couple hours away in Phoenix, Arizona. a week in post-op ICU and I was sent home (to my sister’s place where she cared for me for some weeks until I could be moderately ambulatory). later, after three months of heavy physical therapy and a deep focus on my part, I am once again healthy and mobile. without that level of technology and expertise I would be either a paraplegic or simply dead.

this particular experience doesn’t preclude any of the criticisms of the overall system which is bleeding people for far more cash than is necessary even when factoring in bureaucratic inefficiencies that might be introduced by governmental oversight.

I didn’t have insurance at that time because it was prohibitively expensive for me as an individual free-lance educator to underwrite, an entrepreneur. surely many potential and practicing entrepreneurs are faced with problem, to what extent does this impede them? I took the calculated risk when visiting the US that nothing would happen to me. I was insured (by the State) when teaching in Finland and in Iceland and that insurance extended by reciprocity to any European state. I would have been covered anywhere in Europe had that same accident occurred there. The ultimate level of care may not have been the same in many less developed Euro-states, but in Scandinavia and most of the states I operated in, the intervention and care would have equaled or exceeded what I got in Arizona.

another prior encounter with the US system, because of a running injury during a period where I was first uninsured then insured saw mis-diagnosis for fractured sesamoid bones in my left foot. on five occasions over a four-year period I had x-rays and a variety of examinations in the US, none of which identified the problem correctly. after I moved to Iceland, my first encounter with that socialist (gasp!) system (never mind the stupid insurance company ploy of pre-existing conditions in the US), the (Swedish-trained) doctor did a focused exam of the foot and without even an x-ray, diagnosed the injury correctly, and scheduled a surgical intervention shortly thereafter. I had several other encounters with the system up there including the complicated birth of my son which was taken care of completely, my wife staying comfortably in the hospital for ten days (and having the option to take off either six months at full pay or one year at half pay from her job for maternity leave; I got to take off the second year at half-pay too). a number of emergency interventions were expertly taken care of as well. all for free. my cumulative tax rate as a university educator there was the same as I paid in the US when you added up all the local, state, and federal rates.

in Finland I had some minor encounters with the system which were expert and professional. and free.

now here in Australia, I paid all of USD 270 per annum for private (state regulated) insurance. I have not tested it out yet, but do plan to explore it for some minor chronic issues.

once, in a meeting with some executives from Ericsson in Stockholm some years back, the conversation turned to health care and I heard them agree that the high taxes that they paid as members of the upper-middle-class were worth it to have a stable society where all were cared for. uff, that sounds like (gasp!) socialism! curses! never mind what the Bible says about the sin of empathy.

although my eating habits are a bit skewed in the direction of consuming too many carbos and dairy than I should, I exercise at a level that most people my age think is extreme. six or seven days a week, I engage in some combination of cardio, strength, or centering exercises for a couple hours. swimming, cycling, yoga, tai chi, weight lifting, resistance exercise, and such. I walk stairs rather than take elevators or escalators. I am walking after that accident partly because I was in better-than-average condition to begin with and I don’t intend that to change radically.

with universal health care in the US I can see one argument against it — who wants to pay the bill via taxes for the HUGE number of morbidly obese over-consuming Amurikans, many who are the same thought-less, compassion-less christian folks righteously ‘defending the constitution’ and their fat slice of pie with weapons? gah.

Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.

(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)

Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.

He does perhaps miss a point where he attaches the energy advantage of a rising mercantile-class in Europe in the 16-1700′s to the energy of sail. I would suggest that it was not the energy of sail, but the potential energy brought about by the technologies necessary to take advantage of this naturally-available store of energy (flows). That is, the social structure (organization of individuals) necessary to construct boats, the availability of the resources necessary for their proper construction — tall trees, steel tools (not merely iron) for working the wood, enough to build numerous boats to maintain a sufficient flow of trade (read: energy). And finally, of course, the existence of suitable natural resource reservoir, ultimately driven by the sun, wind.

He introduces the term high-energy technology which is essentially a set of technologies that have a high rate-of-return relative to the input (read: hydrocarbons, nuclear, large-scale hydro). In contrast with low-energy converters which would include plants and animals (as a food/energy converter for human consumption).

Buber’s story illustrating that Silence is communication opens a certain mediatory path. especially that of listening, a critical reciprocal of expression, the act of open impression. a kind of inversion equivalent with Simon Weil’s framing of human obligations versus the traditional (and often violent) struggle for human rights. this inversion also maps into the qualities of presence and absence implicit in the mediated technological space. that scripted and centered Silence is necessary for balanced expression. (both the silence of meditation and the silence of listening).

Kittler, in Grammaphone, Film, Typewriter: plowing through his expansive, eclectic interwoven threads examining the development of technology and the ensuing affectations on social systems, on people, perhaps haven’t given him credit previously that he deserves, although I always found his presentations to be too dense to follow (simultaneous translation probably didn’t help — native speakers surely had to focus to follow his thinking). and this book didn’t come out in English until 1999, so wasn’t available when I was crossing his path. he makes clear points on the connection between technological development and war, the contingencies of warfare which don’t merely draw technological systems into a problem-solving process, but actually arise purely out of the need to more effectively, efficiently kill the Other. optimization of defense, primacy of offense, protection of home-lands. via reducing the potential for the Other to accomplish the same. natural selection. is this what drives the techno-social system?

Kittler holds a fascination for these mechanisms, a boyish focus on the tool and on the technological ground of war without once making any moral approbation or moral critique of the way it goes. has he given up? does he care? is he a techno-determinist? does the intellectual fascination not accept moral argument? or is the disinterested contemporary academic not allowed to take a moral stance?

University of Technology – Sydney
Ways of Listening
July – November 2009
students :: Karen Banks, Sally Hill, Golam Mostafa, Nishant Singh, Marko West, Ricky Pannowitz, Oliver Pieterse

tea and concrete in the morning and off for a full day of meetings and paperwork, prepping for teaching and research.

a visit to the library is disappointing, many books are in terrible condition, shabby, out-dated. hmmmm. what’s with that? evidence of zealous and active use? or small library budgets. in the technology section, so many were completely outdated and should have been consigned to basement stacks long ago.

profiling. black clad, stylishly-coiffed young Asian students with thick-rimmed Dior specs dominate the downtown city streets that I’ve frequented so far. haven’t gotten to the regular business district and will likely not unless there is a compelling reason.

bureaucracy. and catch-22′s loom out of the composition of days spent meeting people. technological infrastructure is problematic as well. regular network access simply does not work, and the help desk could not help. yet I can access a new WPA network constructed for iPhones and such.

month swings into May seeming. no May Day celebrations here. the Red Scare still too enfolded in natal-national psyches. no bonfires like in dark-less high-latitude white nights.

sotto voce: Being fixated on the material aspects and ‘things’ that spin off from our activated and energized presence in this world is probably where you are going wrong in pondering the “art-or-not” question. Experiencing the energies that arise from creative action — they may come ‘packaged’ in a practically infinite range of forms — it’s more a question whether you (as an individual made up of the accumulated life-pathway that you have experienced) have any opening to the energies that are carried by that form. Technology mediates the expression of creative energies (technology is the accumulated set of mediatory pathways for the expression of creative energies). So, it’s ‘merely’ a question of what paths of expression and reception are open between you and some Other with whom you are in creative exchange.