Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
#88 "in that sense I'm the wrong person to be posting in this topic"

Actually, Paulina, you are the perfect person to be posting here...I
think we are going to come to the realization that Good Old Mother
Earth is where it is all really happening ...  "with people and
places and..." --  what's the title of that song?? Oh, yeah, In My
Life!

Digital "life", what we experience in cyberspace is mostly a dodge. 
Except for fine salons like the WELL of course :)
  

    
Ted:  Yup, I'm all for EARTH (and "mothers" too), which, of course,
includes all those *imperfect* humans (that the mothers make) . . .
<g>

DODGE is a good word to use for this.  At times, Marshall McLuhan
was hopeful that the "new media" of his day (i.e. 1960s television)
would, by virtue of "information speedup," cause us to significantly
increase our capacity for what he called Pattern Recognition.  Yes,
he got that term from the people at IBM (who funded his Centre for
Culture and Technology) and re-purposed it back onto the humans from
A.I.  He even rewrote the introduction to Understanding Media to get
that term included and featured it in most of his mid-60s speeches.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Man-Critical/dp/158423073
8/

Alas, that doesn't seem to have happened.  Instead, by virtue of the
fact that his "new media" technology itself (the details of which
wasn't a strong-suit for McLuhan) was designed to produce
*illusions* (i.e. there are no actual pictures on an analog TV set),
we wound up with even more confusion and out-of-touch-with-reality
behaviors and attitudes.

What we have been DODGING throughout all this has been our
responsibilities.  The ANTHROPOCENE is a direct result of this
irresponsibility.  And that irresponsibility is caused by our
clueless interactions with the technologies we use (which, alas,
many who discuss the Anthropocene refuse to even consider, dooming
their anxious tirades to more illusions) . . . !!

As McLuhan put it in a letter to Thomist philosopher Jacques
Maritain in 1969, "There is a deep-seated repugnance in the human
breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved.
Such understanding implies far too much responsibility for our
actions." (p. 370)

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0195405943/

Want to "save the planet"?  Want to "end war"?  Then you are going
to have to try to overcome that *repugnance* and, at least for some
people, cultivate a deep understanding of these processes. No more
"dodging" allowed . . . !!

In the 1990s I re-coined the term NEW MEDIA to mean *digital*
technologies -- which was a subject that McLuhan, who died in 1980,
didn't know much about.  I took AOL public and got the address
"newmedia@aol.com" on the roadshow.  Then I co-founded the New York
New Media Association.  Yes, the deeper meaning of my "new media"
wasn't one that many asked me about.

Unlike TELEVISION (and all of its cast of supporting media) which
drives us towards *hallucinations*, DIGITAL media is constructed
from *memories* and, as we all know, that is what we experience when
we use them.  Yes, this W.E.L.L. conversation is an *archive*
allowing people who don't want to bother to participate and those
who might want to check it out years from now to "remember" what I'm
typing right now.

It was a starting hypothesis of the Center that immersion in a world
of MEMORY (i.e. digital) is likely to produce different "wiring" in
our heads than immersion in a world of ILLUSION (i.e. electric
media).  McLuhan *failed* in his task of leading a parade of those
with increased "pattern recognition."  I suspect that we will fail
also but hopefully in a different way . . . <g>
  

    
Ted:  Yup, I'm all for EARTH (and "mothers" too), which, of course,
includes all those *imperfect* humans (that the mothers make) . . .
<g>

DODGE is a good word to use for this.  At times, Marshall McLuhan
was hopeful that the "new media" of his day (i.e. 1960s television)
would, by virtue of "information speedup," cause us to significantly
increase our capacity for what he called Pattern Recognition.  Yes,
he got that term from the people at IBM (who funded his Centre for
Culture and Technology) and re-purposed it back onto the humans from
A.I.  He even rewrote the introduction to Understanding Media to get
that term included and featured it in most of his mid-60s speeches.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Man-Critical/dp/158423073
8/

Alas, that doesn't seem to have happened.  Instead, by virtue of the
fact that his "new media" technology itself (the details of which
wasn't a strong-suit for McLuhan) was designed to produce
*illusions* (i.e. there are no actual pictures on an analog TV set),
we wound up with even more confusion and out-of-touch-with-reality
behaviors and attitudes.

What we have been DODGING throughout all this has been our
responsibilities.  The ANTHROPOCENE is a direct result of this
irresponsibility.  And that irresponsibility is caused by our
clueless interactions with the technologies we use (which, alas,
many who discuss the Anthropocene refuse to even consider, dooming
their anxious tirades to more illusions) . . . !!

As McLuhan put it in a letter to Thomist philosopher Jacques
Maritain in 1969, "There is a deep-seated repugnance in the human
breast against understanding the processes in which we are involved.
Such understanding implies far too much responsibility for our
actions." (p. 370)

http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0195405943/

Want to "save the planet"?  Want to "end war"?  Then you are going
to have to try to overcome that *repugnance* and, at least for some
people, cultivate a deep understanding of these processes. No more
"dodging" allowed . . . !!

In the 1990s I re-coined the term NEW MEDIA to mean *digital*
technologies -- which was a subject that McLuhan, who died in 1980,
didn't know much about.  I took AOL public and got the address
"newmedia@aol.com" on the roadshow.  Then I co-founded the New York
New Media Association.  Yes, the deeper meaning of my "new media"
wasn't one that many asked me about.

Unlike TELEVISION (and all of its cast of supporting media) which
drives us towards *hallucinations*, DIGITAL media is constructed
from *memories* and, as we all know, that is what we experience when
we use them.  Yes, this W.E.L.L. conversation is an *archive*
allowing people who don't want to bother to participate and those
who might want to check it out years from now to "remember" what I'm
typing right now.

It was a starting hypothesis of the Center that immersion in a world
of MEMORY (i.e. digital) is likely to produce different "wiring" in
our heads than immersion in a world of ILLUSION (i.e. electric
media).  McLuhan *failed* in his task of leading a parade of those
with increased "pattern recognition."  I suspect that we will fail
also but hopefully in a different way . . . <g>
  

    
My engineering orientation has me struggling a bit here to see the
distinction you are making between TELEVISION and DIGITAL media. TV
has now gone digital, of course, but I'm pretty sure that's not what
you are talking about.

I think you are saying something important about the character of the
different subcultures that gave rise to televised media (at it's peak?)
and that which is behind internet media generation today.

Hallucination vs memories is not revealing itself to me. Can you unpack
the distinctions a bit more?
  

    
Back in Columbia Blue:  No, it's not just you . . . <g>

We are, according to Frankfurt-Schooler Jurgen Habermas (and many
others), now we are all "Post-Secular" (although they mostly don't
know why this has happened).

http://www.amazon.com/Awareness-What-Missing-Reason-Post-secular/dp/0745647219
/

And, as my friend John Horgan puts it:

"Let's face it. The Singularity is a religious rather than a
scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed
it “the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time prophesied
in the Bible, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us
sinners behind.

"Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or
technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as
a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism,
nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine,
environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and
epidemics such as AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping
us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than
indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the
Singularity."

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-singularity-and-the-neural
-code/

The "singularity" is, of course, where "We are as Gods" tends to
take you.  It is the cul-de-sac that McLuhan anticipated in his 1978
interview titled "Angels to Robots." In fact, both the ANGEL and the
ROBOT share some important qualities.  They don't have human bodies,
so they can't die or suffer all the other human imperfections.

http://www.amazon.com/Global-Village-Transformations-World-Century/dp/01950791
08/

IBM, which funded McLuhan in the 1960s, was once a "business
machine" company (and now faint shadow of that former self) but is
now a ROBOT company.  Last August, Doug Rushkoff moderated a
*bizarre* panel discussion at the WATSON headquarters across the
street from Cooper Union.  Here's the email I got:

"You have been invited to

"Virtually Human: A Panel Discussion on the Future of Cognitive
Machines

"Dear Mark Stahlman,

"You have been invited by Douglas Rushkoff to join Dr. Martine
Rothblatt, Dr. Dan O'Hara, Professor Steve Fuller and a panelist
from IBM Watson (TBC) for a closed-door panel discussion moderated
by Professor Douglas Rushkoff and hosted by IBM Watson.

"This panel will explore some of the latest perspectives on how
human and non-human agents relate to one another, and assess the
Future Life Institute’s highly publicized Open Letter on Research
Priorities for Robuse and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence. 

"Will we ever create machines that match or even surpass the
distinctive traits and achievements that make us human? How can we
develop a discourse to better articulate the fundamental differences
between artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, software
agents, and machine intelligences?

While the IBMers in the room refused to be drawn into human-machine
comparisons, since the "company line" is that IBM isn't replacing
humans but only making them more productive, the panelists (who IBM
invited) weren't so inhibited.  

Martine Rothblatt, crediting with inventing Sirius Radio (as Ken
should know), is a particularly interesting person, likened by some
to a modern version of Dr. Moreau of H.G. Wells fame.  Bruce
Sterling has closely identified himself with Wells, so it would be
fascinating to hear what he thinks about the "digital" version of
the arch-vivisectionalist . . . <g>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martine_Rothblatt
  

    
Craig:  Okay let's do this GANGNAM *engineering* style . . . !!

What is the basic "architecture" of a *digital* system?  And, what
is the corresponding structure of a *television* system?

As you know, when you build a computer, you are most concerned with
a hierarchy of MEMORIES.  From the ALU out, you (or whoever did if
for you) has to worry about registers, caches, RAM/ROM, storage and,
ultimately, network resources (typically tagged with a URL --
Uniform Resource Locator) etc.  Everything is supposed to be in the
right place, so that it can be correctly interpreted -- by the
machine.

The whole thing breaks down if it can't *remember* (and find and
manipulate/execute) its data, programming etc.  Even when
"randomized," all this data has *meaning* -- for the digital system
-- or else the entire operation will be threatened.

But that's not the point of TELEVISION at all.  Instead, that is a
system that is *engineered* to fool those watching.  Depending on
our psychological "fusion flicker frequency," it is designed to
efficiently transmit *meaningless* information (in digital terms)
which is intended to operate on the human "subconscious" to trigger
various reactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold 

Teams of very skilled people concoct ADVERTISING that takes
"illusion" to creative extremes -- ultimately intending to "trick"
people into buying things they don't need.  Here the "engineering"
becomes *social* and the overall goal of the system is to manipulate
humans.

Two very different *engineering* problems.  One is organized to keep
its MEMORIES straight, while the other has been constructed to cause
its users to IMAGINE something that isn't even there. 

Yes, of course, *digital* technology can also be used for
television, as happened aggressively starting in the 1990s. 
However, in addition to this presenting us with a case of one
"older" medium being contained in a "newer" one (which McLuhan was
already talking about in the 1950s), it also undermines the
integrity of that older medium.

When RADIO shows moved onto *television* -- like Ed Sullivan, Grocho
Marx etc -- they weren't quite the same anymore.  And when the
computer industry overwhelmed Japan Inc with its *digital* HDTV, the
effects on the previous television industry were profound.

But, in terms of *effects* on the HUMANS, these systems --
corresponding to their basic engineering designs -- produce
something quite different.  One we use for *hallucinations* and the
other for *memory* -- resulting in quite different behaviors and
attitudes as a result . . . !! 
  

    

lord (and mark) know i am not an intellectual and my brains are made of
fluff (even if i did suffer through some aquinas and aristotle, way back
when) --- but it sure seems to me we are living in the era of 'every day,
computers are making people easier to use". 'processed world' talked about
all of this 20-30 yrs ago.

what i see is the robot aesthetic; if you look at movies from the 1960s and
older compared to now, the actors/actresses then, while still lithe and
lovely, look softer/more mammalian + human than their equiv now. perhaps
it's the workouts on machines and the plastic surgery --- but even our
screenstars look more like cyborgs (nod to donna harroway). many younger ppl
remind me of highly burnished androids --- they've been taught to the test
and gamefied their entire lives --- and have no other way to think about
anything other than hacks and algos. and if you are always on and tied to
your screens, how much space have you had to develop an inner life? a
private one?

i snarked to a friend that it seems to me the entire culture seems to be on
the autism spectrum these days (pace, good <digaman>). the brain isnt a
computer and and it's not even true that 'if you cant measure it you cant
manage it'.

cant remark on television as opposed to radio; radio called for certain kind
of active imaginative listening whereas TV is visual. but beyond that...

scuttling away furtively...
  

    
and oh, a favorite: meditation + mindfulness as productivity tools.
there's an app for that!
  

    
> Okay let's do this GANGNAM *engineering* style . . . !!

Yes! I think I've got it now. I'm not far from UCSD where this would
be engineering as taught by Dr. Seuss!

Flicker-fusion is indeed an important aspect of the visual system that
we've learned to exploit. Certainly television does this on a massive
scale. Obviously so do motion picture projection systems, whose
engineering, naturally, predates the TV. Earlier still must be uses
in the design of spinning toys -- for example, the top whose painted
decorative seem to reverse direction as the top slows. And then there's
the use by magicians involving slight-of-hand or certain mechanical
devices. But this is me being pedantic.

Television certainly afforded a level of exploitation, or human
manipulation, far beyond what had previously been seen. But do the
different engineering origins of the internet lead us to think it is
any *less* a vehicle for exploitation or manipulation?

My sense is *more* because of cost at scale.
  

    
"Ted:  Yup, I'm all for EARTH (and "mothers" too), which, of course,
includes all those *imperfect* humans (that the mothers make) . . ."

Yup, me too.


"Instead, by virtue of the
fact that his "new media" technology itself (the details of which
wasn't a strong-suit for McLuhan) was designed to produce
*illusions* (i.e. there are no actual pictures on an analog TV set),
we wound up with even more confusion and out-of-touch-with-reality
behaviors and attitudes."

I've been thinking today that that probably explains the runaway 
rise of Donald Trump, who now is suddenly and strangely seeming to
be more pro wrestling than politics to me.



"What we have been DODGING throughout all this has been our
responsibilities.  The ANTHROPOCENE is a direct result of this
irresponsibility.  And that irresponsibility is caused by our
clueless interactions with the technologies we use (which, alas,
many who discuss the Anthropocene refuse to even consider, dooming
their anxious tirades to more illusions) . . . !!"

See the global 1%.


"And, as my friend John Horgan puts it:

'Let's face it. The Singularity is a religious rather than a
scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed
it “the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time prophesied
in the Bible, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us
sinners behind.

'Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or
technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as
a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism,
nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine,
environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and
epidemics such as AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping
us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than
indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the
Singularity.'"

Hey, why even be concerned abut any of these problems when, if
you're one of the elect, you're going to escape anyway?  And if
these problems do destroy the planet and all life upon it, that's
THEIR problem (never mind that such an attitude goes against Jesus'
words in Matthew 25).  Which is an effect I can see (an entirely
unintended effect, I am sure) of a Pre-Tribulationist Rapture
theology, which is probably the religious view that the persons who
have dome the most to lead us all to the threshold of complete
extinction due to global warming/climate change, resource depletion,
greed and economic exploitation, etc. adhered to, if any religious
view at all.



"what i see is the robot aesthetic; if you look at movies from the
1960s and older compared to now, the actors/actresses then, while
still lithe and lovely, look softer/more mammalian + human than
their equiv now. perhaps it's the workouts on machines and the
plastic surgery --- but even our screenstars look more like cyborgs
(nod to donna harroway). many younger ppl remind me of highly
burnished androids --- they've been taught to the test and gamefied
their entire lives --- and have no other way to think about
anything other than hacks and algos. and if you are always on and
tied to your screens, how much space have you had to develop an
inner life? a private one?"

Hmmm, come to think of it, I think I've been noticing that also.  At
times it does look more like a post-human world we are moving into. 
Just do not confuse "post-human" with "perfect."
  

    

Strangely, I found Henry Kissinger's 'World Order' had a 
good explanation for Trump, and Kissinger assigns blame to
digital communication technologies.  He had a lot of help
from Eric Schmidt on those chapters.

Trump isn't named, but the rise of unexpected populists 
is predicted, based on trad political parties lack of
appreciation for recent technology.  
  

    
That may be true, (dgault), but Trump trained on television back in
the 1980s and '90s, just like we all did.
  

    
Mark, to date, where has the Center had its most success?

And where are the areas of greatest frustration or room for
improvement?
  

    
Y'all:  We were told over-and-over that DIGITAL technology would
*disrupt* our lives, so it's good to hear that Henry Kissinger has
finally been paying attention . . . <g>

"The degree to which humanity will be manipulated will be *exactly*
the degree to which humanity "needs" to be manipulated" -- Margaret
Mead (1940)

No, that's not an actual quote but, when you read what she and her
then-husband Gregory Bateson were saying in the 1940s -- while
working on WW II psychological warfare and "morale" -- it might as
well be.

http://www.amazon.com/Steps-Ecology-Mind-Anthropology-Epistemology/dp/02260390
56/

In the 1930s, there was a widespread concern that Western
civilization was heading for collapse, driven in part by Spengler's
1918/22 "Decline of the West," to which Arnold Toynbee replied with
what ultimately became the 12-volume "A Study of History."  For
many, the end looked like it was near.  Yes, Hilter's election also
played a part.

http://www.amazon.com/Decline-West-Volumes-1-2-ebook/dp/B00O0YNYNW/

At first, efforts were made to try to "revive" the *original* WEST
but that was soon overtaken by plans to "engineer" an even better
world.  Psychological "adjustment" techniques, aided by technologies
and drugs, became the dominant theme in the 1950s.  The result was
what Fred Turner calls the "Democratic Surround" and, as we all
know, an explosion of let-them-eat-cake consumption never before
seen in history.

http://www.amazon.com/Democratic-Surround-Multimedia-Liberalism-Psychedelic/dp
/022632589X/

And, as Fred has also documented, that "social engineering" fed
directly into the 60s "counter-culture," which then gave us our 
CYBERCULTURE -- throughout promoted by people with the "best
intentions" but little capacity for actually taking responsibility
for their *utopian* actions.

http://www.amazon.com/Counterculture-Cyberculture-Stewart-Network-Utopianism/d
p/0226817423/

But that is all over now.  Yes, Hollywood can try to get us to go
see their movies -- in which the "human" *stars* look like they are
cartoon characters -- and hope that we will fall for all this
VR/AR/MR silliness but I don't think it's going to work this time. 
We have indeed been *disrupted* and don't quite NEED to be
manipulated like that anymore.  Sorry, Maggie.

The Center is very new so we haven't had a chance to get all that
frustrated yet.  What I'm most impressed with is the way that
researchers have been responding.  The collapse of the social
sciences over the past 40+ years is well known inside
sociology/anthropology etc and, fortunately, there are many who want
to do something about it (which might actually cheer Maggie up) . .
. !!
  

    
Paulina et al:

Today's DOODLE is for Jane Jacobs, who was a friend/neighbor of the
McLuhans in Toronto and also someone I knew a little.  In 1994, I
was running the original Cybersalon (from which Sylvia Paul then
borrowed the name for her Berkeley events) and we decided to invite
guest speakers.  I got in contact with Jane but she couldn't commit
and then I invited Doug Rushkoff.  Yes, all that has something to do
with why I'm the "jest-of-honor" in this discussion . . . <g>

Jane told me that she had a "crisis" over the lack of MORAL clarity
in her *urban planning* work.  There was no way, based on what she
had written, to distinguish between a neighborhood that was run by
the *mob* and one that was organized on more healthy principles, she
told me. So, she wrote "Systems of Survival" and the rest of her
life's work turned to trying to tackle these fundamental problems.

http://www.amazon.com/Systems-Survival-Dialogue-Foundations-Commerce/dp/067974
8164/

Her last book -- examining the results of all the *social
engineering* which took over in her lifetime -- is "The Dark Age
Ahead" and, based on what she could see, the outcome was bleak. 
Unfortunately, I never had a chance to discuss how *digital* might
produce some different outcomes with her. May she Rest In Peace.

*Dark Age Ahead* [from Wikipedia]
Main article: Dark Age Ahead

Published in 2004 by Random House, in Dark Age Ahead Jacobs argued
that "North American" civilization showed signs of spiral of decline
comparable to the collapse of the Roman empire. Her thesis focused
on "five pillars of our culture that we depend on to stand firm,"
which can be summarized as the nuclear family (but also community),
education, science, representational government and taxes, and
corporate and professional accountability. As the title suggests,
her outlook was far more pessimistic than in her previous books.
However, in the conclusion she wrote that, "At a given time it is
hard to tell whether forces of cultural life or death are in the
ascendancy. Is suburban sprawl, with its murders of communities and
wastes of land, time, and energy, a sign of decay? Or is rising
interest in means of overcoming sprawl a sign of vigor and
adaptability in North American culture? Arguably, either could turn
out to be true." As suggested by the title, Jacobs was not
optimistic about the future when writing this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Age-Ahead-Jane-Jacobs/dp/1400076706/

When asked if he was an "optimist" or a "pessimist," Marshall
famously said, "Neither, I'm an APOCALYPTIST."  That has confused
many, since they presume that "apocalypse" means the
end-of-the-world (as described in the last chapter of the New
Testament), when, in fact, it simply means "to reveal."  That is
also our attitude at the Center . . . <g>
  

    

mark, i know yr center is also looking at culture: i think the single best
thing i ever read on east vs. west was gore vidal's somewhat forgotten novel
'creation', set at the time when socrates, the buddha, and confucious were
alive (a traveler visits all three). really summed up some eternal cultural
somethings (everything i know i have learned from fiction).
  

    
yup, one of my favorite yearly re-reads...
  

    
ah, you;ve read it! you are the 1st person i have ever encountered who has
actually read it! yay!
  

    
Found out about it years ago in the Books topic here on the
WELL...one of my top10 all time books, along with The London Times
Complete History of the World...
  

    
Archaeology of the Future:
https://www.newscientist.com//article/dn20395-digital-legacy-archaeology-of-th
e-future

"Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK
also strikes a cautionary note. “Digital memory only captures
digital artefacts,” he says. “The more we depend on it, the more
tempted we are to attribute qualities to it that it doesn’t actually
have, like authenticity and comprehensiveness."

Digital Legacy: The Fate of Your Online Soul:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028091.400-digital-legacy-the-fate-of
-your-online-soul/

"We are creating digital legacies for ourselves every day – even,
increasingly, every minute. More than a quarter of a million
Facebook users will die this year alone. The information about
ourselves that we record online is the sum of our relationships,
interests and beliefs. It’s who we are. Hans-Peter Brondmo, head of
social software and services at Nokia in San Francisco, calls this
collection of data our “digital soul”."

Disconnecting the Dots: How are devices are divisive:
http://roychristopher.com/disconnecting-the-dots-how-our-devices-are-divisive

"“The Machine is not the environment for the person; the person is
the environment for the machine.” — Aviv Bergman

“The long-range question is not so much what sort of environment we
want, but what sort of people we want.” — Robert Sommer

We have to think cumulatively about what we design. Technology
curates culture. Technology is a part of our nature. How will we
control it? The same way we do our lawns or our weight: Sometimes we
will; sometimes we won’t, but we have to remember that we’re not
designing machines. We’re designing ourselves."

Grist for the mill :)
  

    
"Grist for the mill"

One of the reasons why I love The WELL so much. :)
  

    
Paulina: Just bought a copy of "Creation" (hardcover for $0.01) --
thanks . . . !!

I started my adventures in China in 1997.  An old high-school friend
of mine was exploring building an eco-resort in a massive park there
and he introduced me to the wider family involved (yes, that's how
it works) and then I was invited to a conference in Wuhan.  The
Center's co-founder, Phil Midland, is the one who arranged that
invitation.

One of the most missed commonly details about China seems to be
Daoism.  As Joseph Needham (and many others) noticed, the Chinese
who have been inventing everything from gunpowder to spaghetti over
the past millennia have tended to be Daoists -- not Confucians.

http://www.amazon.com/Science-Civilisation-China-Introductory-Orientations/dp/
052105799X

Likewise, when you get into a conversation with some who are
thinking about how today's China "retrieves" an earlier *peak* in
their Dynastic cycle, the TANG (pronounced "tong") period often
comes up.  The TANG emperors were known for their deep engagement
with Daoism -- in fact the "founder" managed to get his family
traced back to Laozi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_dynasty

I suspect that this relationship between *technology* and Daoism
(but not Confucianism) stems from Chinese ALCHEMY -- which tended
towards "elixirs" of immortality as much as transmuting metals.  As
in the WEST, the "hidden" goal of *alchemy* was often transforming
humans, not materials.

http://www.amazon.com/Seal-Unity-Three-Translation-Cantong/dp/0984308288/

This, of course, is what we are also dealing with today.  Among
other things, the infamous "We are as Gods" means that we believe we
can *design* better people -- chemically speaking.  The role that
LSD played in the lead-in to the Whole Earth was not a casual one. 
The fact that it came from the KGB (not the CIA) only makes things
that much more "alchemical."  Yes, Michael Hollingshead's 5000 hits
with which he established the World Psychedelic Center in 1965
London came from Prague.  And, according to "Bear" Owsley, in my
interview with him, so did the LSD in the "Acid Tests."  And, Prague
was run by the KGB.

http://www.psychedelic-library.org/hollings.htm

And, let's not forget the KGB's fascinating engagement with Esalen
(raising questions about the fuller meaning of what's included in a
"Whole Earth") . . . <g>

http://www.esalen.org/ctr/pioneering-accomplishments-citizen-diplomacy

When John Markoff titled his book on the early PC days (and Stewart
Brand et al) "What the Dormouse Said," he was, of course, hoping
that we would complete the lyric with "feed your head."  That's
Californian "alchemy" and, of course, really couldn't lead to
anything other than the Californian" *Singularity* . . . <g>

http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Personal/dp/0143036769
/

Perhaps it is no surprise that the group who seems to take the
SINGULARITY most seriously today are the "same" Russians who gave us
all that LSD (no it is not the Californians, many of whom seem to
think Kurzweil is an embarrassment).  Quite a few of these
modern-day Russians think of what they are doing today as a
continuation of the Cosmist plans to achieve "immortality" in the
19th century (which, in turn, represents the enduring influence of
the Rosicrucians in Russian Orthodoxy).

www.2045.com

The Buddha was an *alphabetic* man (i.e. the Sutras were written in
Sanskrit), making him a WESTERNER (as was Socrates).  I'm looking
forward to seeing if Gore Vidal grasps that Confucius wasn't WEST at
all, or if he tries to "translate" him into Western tropes (as have
many, including Ezra Pound etc).  And, maybe more importantly,
whether he has any clues about Chinese Alchemy and its relationship
to its Western PURITAN "rose is a rose" (i.e. precious bodily
fluids) counterpart . . . !!

http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-History-Rosicrucians-Mysterious-Society/dp/159
477255X/
  

    
[From the nettime mailing-list, where they worry about things like
"accelerationism" etc]

Re: <nettime> Accelerationism, Prometheanism, and Posthumans
Sent: 5/5/2016 5:42:47 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time

Frederic:
 
> The quest of Homo Sapiens toward expansion beyond the
> limitations of the earth and our immediate bodily forms.
 
Yes, this is the "Californian Ideology" (i.e. the Singularity etc)
-- except, just like the earlier one that Richard and Andy commented
on (helping to launch nettime), its origins aren't in California.
 
This is *alchemy* of an early (mostly Northern) European variety. 
Thus, Florian's reference to "Frankenstein."  This is Rosicrucianism
-- which set out, as its initial manifesto informed us, to "Reform
the whole world" (or was that the "Whole Earth" <g>).
 
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fama_Fraternitatis
 
Unhappy that the Lutherans weren't really any different from the
Catholics, the German Rosicrucians spread out, adopting many names
along the way, including the estimable "Perfectibalists" (aka
"Illuminati").  Along the way, they found a home in Czarist Russia,
initially with the support of the fascinating Catherine the Great.
 
Today, many Russians are among the most committed supporters of
"acceleration," which some of them consider to be a continuation of
the COSMIST movement of the 19th century (while imagining that the
Soviet period was just an interlude.)  They even have a well-funded
effort to "accelerate" humanity into ROBOTIC carapaces.
 
www.2045.com
 
At the Center for the Study of Digital Life, we just call this the
DIGITAL Sphere . . . !!
 
Mark Stahlman
Jersey City Heights
  

    
#122 <One of the most missed commonly details about China seems to
be
Daoism.>

And I don't know why...I have been practicing Tai Chi for the past
20 years...and keep my Tao Box next to my computer...it's not like
Lao Tse is a secret or anything...All of us from the 60's picked up
on him, the I Ching, and my mom's personal favorite Parmahansa
Yogananda and his little blue book.

What, is it only us funky granola's that have been groking this?
  

    
<When John Markoff titled his book on the early PC days (and Stewart
Brand et al) "What the Dormouse Said," he was, of course, hoping
that we would complete the lyric with "feed your head."  That's
Californian "alchemy" and, of course, really couldn't lead to
anything other than the Californian" *Singularity* . . . >

Ooh, you're treading on holy ground there..and I'm not so sure I
agree...at least that was never my take on it all...when Leary said,
"Drop in, drop out" at the same time McLuhan was saying the 'Message
is the Medium", and Thom Gunn was leading us at the UofW to the
"Great Leap Somewhere", I, and my friends, took it as an opportunity
to go beyond all our boundaries and fly solo and in groups anywhere
in the cosmos...it was a spiritual trip in the sense that we were
discovering ourselves and the wider world of cultures around us,
and, yes there were a lot of people running around with Messiah
complexes...but they only served as warnings away from that
craziness. 

I never go into Acid, but I liked the Trip...didn't get to Southern
California until 1973 and by then it was Jesus Freaks - translate
that as dopers finding faith. And there was a lot about Jesus is
coming next week and the apocalypse is around the corner, but anyone
with a sense of history knew that movie had been played 100 times
before. And most of the people I knew were coming out of their
'hangovers' from the 60's, early 70's.

I was aware that weird things were going on in San Francisco, gurus
and new age everything, but thought they were all nuts to begin
with....

When looking back on this part of history I tend to wonder if those
people who were in the San Francisco scene don't see it a bit like
New Yorkers see New York...their the only people who know anything
and have are all cosmo suave; 'cosmic suave' for the Friscans.

My only point here is that there were/are a whole lot of us who just
never bought into that scene and have been quietly going along our
own paths...I'll still eat granola and read a Whole Earth Catalog or
CoEvolution Quarterly from time to time, but for nostalgic reasons
only, and I'm shaking my head most of the time, going "what were we
all smoking"?  

That era all ended with Altamont and Charles Manson...think the
writing on the wall was pretty clear to all.