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imitationjewelleryshop · 3 months ago

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Victorian Jewellery Designs – A Journey Through Time That Still Feels Fresh

Jewellery has always been more than just decoration. For centuries, it has spoken of identity, love, power, and history. One particular style that’s stood the test of time and continues to find space in modern wardrobes is Victorian jewellery.

If you’ve ever looked at a Victorian pendant, brooch, or ring, you’ll know what I mean. There’s a story there—layers of meaning and craftsmanship that make each piece feel like a little treasure.

As someone who works closely with digital platforms and content, I get excited when traditional designs like these start making a comeback, especially online. And trust me, Victorian jewellery designs are more than just vintage—they're timeless, personal, and perfect for people who love jewellery with depth and character.

Let’s walk through the world of Victorian jewellery together. I’ll keep it real, no over-the-top words—just the story of how these designs were born, why they matter, and how we can wear them today.

What is Victorian Jewellery?

Victorian jewellery gets its name from Queen Victoria, who ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901. Her personal taste had a huge impact on jewellery trends of the time.

In simple terms, Victorian jewellery refers to the styles and techniques used during her reign. Over these six decades, fashion and jewellery design went through major shifts. We usually break the Victorian era into three parts:

Early Victorian (Romantic period)

Mid-Victorian (Grand period)

Late Victorian (Aesthetic period)

Each period had its own flavour, but all three gave birth to designs that still inspire us today.

Why We Still Love Victorian Jewellery Designs

We live in a fast-moving digital world, but there’s something grounding about older design forms. Victorian jewellery reminds us of slower times, hand-crafted beauty, and real emotional value.

Here’s why I think these designs still matter:

1. They're Full of Story

A Victorian brooch or necklace isn’t just “pretty.” It often has symbols—like hearts, flowers, snakes (yes, snakes), or initials—that carry meaning. It makes wearing them feel more personal.

2. They Blend Well With Modern Outfits

We’ve styled Victorian earrings with denim jackets and a cocktail ring with a simple black dress. They just work. That’s the beauty of timeless design.

3. There's Something for Everyone

Whether you love minimal jewellery or bold pieces, there’s a Victorian design that fits your vibe. And you don’t need to own antique pieces—today’s designers create modern jewellery inspired by Victorian details.

Key Features of Victorian Jewellery Designs

If you're like me and enjoy noticing design details, here are the key elements you’ll often see in Victorian jewellery:

🔹 Floral and Nature Motifs

Flowers, leaves, vines, and birds were everywhere in early Victorian jewellery. These designs symbolised love, growth, and beauty.

🔹 Hair Jewellery

Yes, actual hair—Victorian mourning jewellery sometimes included locks of hair from a loved one. Sounds strange now, but it was a way to keep someone close, especially after they passed away.

🔹 Lockets and Cameos

These were super popular. Lockets held photos or small messages. Cameos were carvings of faces or scenes, usually on shell or stone.

🔹 Snake Motifs

This may surprise you, but snakes were seen as symbols of eternity and love. Queen Victoria’s engagement ring had a snake with an emerald!

🔹 Jet and Mourning Jewellery

After Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria wore black for years. Jet (a type of fossilised wood) became popular for mourning jewellery. These pieces were elegant, deep black, and meaningful.

Types of Victorian Jewellery You’ll Find

There’s a wide range of pieces in Victorian style, and each comes with its own appeal. Let me walk you through a few:

1. Victorian Necklaces

These include chokers, long chains with lockets, and drop necklaces. Often, they’re gold or gold-plated, sometimes with enamel or pearls.

We’ve styled some Victorian-style necklaces on casual outfits for shoots, and the contrast actually enhances the modern look.

2. Victorian Rings

From gemstone cluster rings to snake bands, Victorian rings are full of character. If you’re into rings with a vintage soul, this is the style to explore.

3. Brooches and Pins

I know brooches aren’t the first thing people search for today, but a good Victorian brooch can transform a jacket, saree, or even a bag. Trust me—it’s a hidden styling weapon.

4. Earrings and Ear Drops

Long, drop-style earrings with pearls, rubies, and floral designs. Victorian earrings are great for formal events, and I’ve even seen brides wear them with lehengas and gowns.

5. Bracelets and Bangles

Intricate bangles with enamel work or engraved messages were very common during the Victorian era. Today’s versions have the same charm with a bit more comfort.

Materials Used in Victorian Jewellery

Victorian jewellery wasn’t about flashy diamonds alone. A lot of different materials were used based on emotions, status, and occasions.

Gold and Silver – Mostly used for everyday and wedding jewellery.

Enamel – Used to add colour and design details.

Pearls – Often a symbol of purity and used in romantic or bridal jewellery.

Garnet, Emerald, Ruby – Precious and semi-precious stones added colour and value.

Jet and Onyx – Especially used in mourning jewellery.

Ivory and Shell – Used in cameos or carvings.

If you’re buying a Victorian-inspired piece today, you’ll find a mix of these materials or similar alternatives that make them more affordable and durable.

Victorian Jewellery in Indian Weddings

Here’s something interesting I’ve noticed in the past few years. More and more Indian brides are choosing Victorian jewellery sets for their weddings. The designs work beautifully with lehengas, especially those in pastel shades, ivory, or deep jewel tones.

Even in pre-wedding functions like engagement or reception, I’ve seen brides wear Victorian chokers or earrings instead of traditional gold or kundan. It gives a royal yet personal feel—like bringing two worlds together.

At Dench Infotech, where we work closely with brands and creatives, we’ve had clients in the jewellery business who are now including Victorian-inspired collections on their websites. And the best part? These designs are getting lots of clicks and even more love on social media.

How to Style Victorian Jewellery Today

You don’t have to be a vintage collector or a bride to enjoy Victorian jewellery. Here are a few simple tips from what we’ve tried with our own team and projects:

✅ Pair It With Modern Wear

Try a Victorian locket with a plain shirt or a gemstone ring with jeans. The contrast adds character.

✅ Mix Old with New

You can wear a Victorian necklace with contemporary earrings or layer it with minimalist chains. There’s no rulebook—just trust your instinct.

✅ Keep the Focus

If you’re wearing a statement Victorian brooch or earrings, keep the rest of the outfit simple. Let the piece shine.

✅ Go for Reproductions

Not everyone can afford antique jewellery. Luckily, many brands offer affordable, Victorian-inspired pieces that look just as great.

Where to Buy Victorian Jewellery Designs Online

We’ve seen a rise in brands offering Victorian jewellery in India. You can check out:

Instagram jewellery stores – Great for unique handmade options.

Jewellery brands like Tanishq, Tribe by Amrapali, or Kalyan Jewellers – Many now offer vintage-inspired collections.

Etsy, Amazon, and Flipkart – Perfect for imitation or lightweight Victorian-style pieces.

Custom jewellers – If you want something specific, reach out to a local jeweller and ask if they can recreate a Victorian design.

Before buying, I always suggest checking reviews, zooming into product photos, and asking for videos when possible.

Final Thoughts – Why Victorian Jewellery Still Matters

Victorian jewellery designs are not just about history. They’re about emotion. About meaning. About slowing down and choosing pieces that actually speak to us.

Whether you’re looking to add depth to your collection or just want something different for an event, Victorian jewellery offers something that modern designs sometimes lack—soul.

At Dench Infotech, while we live and breathe technology, content, and digital campaigns, we also love watching how traditional designs like these evolve in the online world. And we’re here to help businesses bring that magic to their digital platforms too.

So if you’ve never worn Victorian jewellery before, give it a shot. You might just find a piece that becomes your favourite, not because it’s trendy—but because it feels right.

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pratham-blog-post · 10 months ago

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Tiranga Prediction Exploring the Unique Appeal of Color Forecasting

In the vast landscape of mobile gaming and interactive apps, Tiranga Prediction emerges as a distinctive and engaging experience that combines elements of chance, strategy, and cultural significance. This app centers around the concept of predicting outcomes based on color patterns, with a thematic nod to the Indian national flag, the Tiranga. This article delves into what Tiranga Prediction entails, how it operates, its cultural implications, and why it offers a compelling experience for users.

What is Tiranga Prediction?

Tiranga Prediction is a mobile application designed to challenge players’ skills in forecasting colors. The game’s mechanics typically involve predicting which colors will appear in various scenarios, such as spinning wheels, color-changing sequences, or random color generators. The app is named after the Tiranga, which is the Indian tricolor flag, symbolizing unity and pride. This cultural reference adds a layer of depth and significance to the gameplay, setting it apart from more generic color prediction games.

How Does Tiranga Prediction Work?

Color Forecasting Mechanics: The core of Tiranga Prediction revolves around forecasting the colors that will be displayed in a given scenario. Players may face challenges such as predicting the result of a spinning wheel divided into different color segments, or guessing the outcome of a randomized color generator. The accuracy of these predictions determines the player’s success and progression in the game.

Levels and Difficulty: The game generally features multiple levels, each with increasing complexity. Early levels may present simpler color patterns and slower speeds, while advanced levels introduce more intricate designs and faster-paced scenarios. This progressive difficulty keeps the game engaging and ensures that players continually refine their predictive skills.

Cultural Integration: Reflecting its name, Tiranga Prediction incorporates elements of Indian culture, particularly the colors of the Tiranga flag—saffron, white, and green. The inclusion of these colors not only enhances the visual appeal of the game but also provides a cultural context that enriches the overall experience.

Rewards and Incentives: To motivate players, Tiranga Prediction typically includes a rewards system. Players earn points, badges, or virtual currency based on their performance. These rewards can be used to unlock new features, access customization options, or gain advantages in the game. The inclusion of leaderboards also adds a competitive element, allowing players to compare their scores with others globally.

User Experience: The app is designed with a user-friendly interface that ensures a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience. Clear instructions, intuitive controls, and vibrant graphics make it accessible to players of all ages and skill levels.

Cultural Significance of Tiranga Prediction

Tiranga Prediction holds cultural significance due to its incorporation of the Tiranga flag’s colors and themes. The Tiranga, which represents India’s national identity, stands for unity, peace, and patriotism. By embedding these elements into the game, Tiranga Prediction not only celebrates Indian heritage but also fosters a sense of connection and pride among players. This cultural aspect adds depth to the gameplay, transforming it from a simple color prediction game into a meaningful and engaging experience.

Why Play Tiranga Prediction?

Unique Gameplay: Tiranga Prediction offers a refreshing take on color-based games, combining prediction skills with cultural elements. This unique blend sets it apart from other games in the genre.

Cultural Education: Players gain exposure to Indian culture and symbolism, enhancing their understanding and appreciation of the Tiranga and its significance.

Skill Development: The game challenges players to develop their color forecasting skills, strategic thinking, and reaction times. The progressive difficulty ensures that players are continually engaged and improving.

Community and Competition: Leaderboards and rewards foster a sense of community and friendly competition, allowing players to connect with others and strive for top positions.

Entertainment and Engagement: With its vibrant graphics, intuitive controls, and challenging gameplay, Tiranga Prediction provides a fun and engaging experience that keeps players coming back for more.

How to Get Started with Tiranga Prediction

Download the App: Find Tiranga Prediction on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and download it to your device. Ensure you are downloading the official version to avoid potential security risks.

Launch and Explore: Open the app and familiarize yourself with the interface. You may start with a tutorial or introductory levels to understand the basic mechanics.

Start Playing: Engage in the color prediction challenges, track your progress, and work towards achieving high scores and rewards.

Participate in Community Features: Check out leaderboards, participate in community events, and connect with other players to enhance your gaming experience.

Conclusion

Tiranga Prediction stands out as a vibrant and culturally enriched color forecasting game. By combining predictive challenges with elements of Indian heritage, the app offers a unique and engaging experience that appeals to a broad audience. Whether you’re interested in testing your color prediction skills or exploring cultural themes through gaming, Tiranga Prediction provides an entertaining and meaningful platform for players to enjoy.

#tiranga game

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meirmakesstuff · 4 years ago

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Hello! My group of Wayfarers has now built themselves a building which serves as a general meeting place, as a prayer space, and a last resort retreat in case of monster attacks. Which, if wikipedia didn't lie to me, is not unlike a Synagogue. So I was wondering if men would wear a kipah/other hat inside even if they're just gathering to eat. There're also strangers regularly entering the same space to eat. Would that make a difference?

Oh, spectacular. I love this question because it has so many different layers to it. Once again you’ve asked a deceptively simple question that’s going to take me several paragraphs of background to address, and I’m going to expand it to include Jewish head covering practices other than men wearing kippot while we’re at it, as well as touching on the nature of Jewish sacred spaces.

First of all, congratulations on naming your Jewish-coded culture! Wayfarers is a fascinating name and opens interesting implications about your world. I remain incredibly curious about the story you’re telling.

Second of all, my usual 2J3O (Two Jews, three opinions) disclaimer applies, especially this time, because I’m going to be talking about a lot of different Jewish practices with regard to head coverings, and while I’ve spent some time in a wide variety of different Jewish spaces and movements, I’m not deeply immersed in all of them, so for Jewish readers, if I make an incorrect generalization about practices in your movement I’d love to read your corrections. I’d also like to point anyone reading this toward Kermab’s previous ask for context on this conversation.

As it happens, two years ago I conducted a series of interviews across denominations about head covering practices and feelings for a book I used in my fourth through sixth grade classroom. While I don’t have legal permissions to share those interviews for any purpose other than classroom teaching, I’ll be referencing them as we go along here.

The first and most basic question is who covers their heads, and when. Your ask shows some basic and reasonable assumptions: men cover their heads in the synagogue. That’s not untrue, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

You might remember from the other ask that rabbinic Judaism, which most of us practice today, didn’t develop until the sacrificial system was becoming unfeasible and eventually impossible to maintain. At that point, it seems that a cultural convention was for men and women to cover their heads at all times, with the similar explanation of modesty. Modesty seems to take on a different connotation when we’re discussing men or women--avoiding self-aggrandizement for men, sexual rectitude for women--but in essence covering one’s head was universal. I haven’t made a particular study of the shifts in this custom over time, but I can note that many examples of historic Jewish women’s costume from different regions includes one or another type of head covering--as did the non-Jewish women’s fashions of many of those places. At some point it became accepted that only married women needed to cover their hair, that since a woman’s hair was to be understood as a symbol of her sexuality, an unmarried woman’s visible hair was a way of communicating her availability. Men’s headwear meanwhile shifted as well, as did other religious wear such as tzitzit and tefillin. Tefillin settled into a tradition of being only worn during weekday morning prayer. Tzitzit developed into two garments: a tallit katan worn under a boy’s or man’s clothing at all times, and a tallit gadol worn over the clothing only during the morning prayer service. In communities where it was becoming uncommon for non-Jewish men to cover their heads, especially in places where the Christian convention was to remove one’s hat upon entering their houses of worship, it became expected in a synagogue that men might need to be told that the convention was to cover their heads, and kippot began to be provided to them there.

However, the convention isn’t actually to cover one’s head out of respect for the building. As you learned in your research, a synagogue building isn’t a locus of holiness but a location where holy activities take place. The expectation that developed was that men should cover their heads when engaging in religious activities. What are religious activities? Prayer, certainly, but also any activity that includes prayer, such as lifecycle occasions, home rituals, and eating.

There’s a memorable scene in George Eliot’s famously well-researched novel Daniel Deronda in which Daniel sits down to a Shabbat meal with a Jewish family. Eliot describes the family and their guests pausing before they ate, the men putting on their hats, and a benediction Eliot and her character do not understand taking place before the meal is eaten. From my perspective as a modern American, it was notable to me that they didn’t put on kippot but resumed the hats any Victorian man would take off upon entering their home, which these men had apparently also taken off, but put back on for the brachot before eating (Eliot doesn’t specify, as far as I can remember, whether they kept them on through the meal).

Daniel Deronda makes passing reference to the split that was already underway at the time in European Jewry, the development of the Reform movement. Early Reform practice developed out of a desire to be as little distinguished from the surrounding Christian culture as possible without actually worshipping a tripartite deity. Changes included, among others, abandoning all unique cultural garments, including tefillin, tzitzit, and any indoor covering of heads. At the time Eliot was writing, “Reformed” and “Rabbinic”--now Reform and Orthodox--were the only two distinct movements of European Judaism, though Hasidic groups, under the heading of Rabbinic Judaism but each having developed unique traditions, were many. My knowledge of what non-European Jews were doing, sartorially, at the time is very slight and I would welcome knowledgeable input.

The development of the Conservative movement is generally credited to the 1880s, when a disagreement within the Reform movement about how far to assimilate and which traditions to abandon culminated in the famed “Trefa Banquet” at which those who wanted to conserve practices such as keeping kosher are said to have walked out due to the flagrantly non-kosher menu. The symbolic incident speaks to the differences in practice between the movements: Reform Judaism in the 19th and early 20th centuries might have been indistinguishable from Christianity in all but theology, while Conservative Judaism would have been indistinguishable from Orthodox Judaism in all but a few liturgical and practical leniencies. Today, Conservative Judaism is dwindling due to a lack of clear leadership or identity, while the Reform movement rediscovers practices they had once abandoned, and certain Orthodox communities make motions of various kinds toward the center as well; nothing is simple in the story of Jewish life, and nothing is ever finished developing.

Here’s where the gender thing complicates, because in the mid to late 20th century Jewish practice began to egalitarianize in Reform and Conservative Judaism. I won’t go into the step-by-step development of women’s prayer attire and the path to women’s ordination and full inclusion from a historical perspective, but my own experiences are pretty illustrative about the development of practices from the 1990s until today:

I grew up in an Orthodox congregation, a university Hillel, a Conservative congregation, and a Conservative parochial school. The Conservative congregation was the only one of these that owned its own building; the school rented the top floor of the JCC and both the Hillel and the Orthodox congregation met on Saturdays and holidays in all-purpose rooms on the university campus, and when those were unavailable in whatever spaces they could secure. In all of these communities, boys were required to be wearing kippot at all times; in the Orthodox congregation men sometimes wore hats, while in the school there was a clear distinction between hats, which were impolite to wear indoors as a function of 20th century American culture, and kippot, which boys were required to be wearing at all times on school property; a boy who forgot to bring his own kipa had to walk to the office, deposit 25 cents in the tzedakah box, and take a plasticky black kipa to wear for the rest of the day. In the conservative synagogue, men were required to wear kipot, and women who were taking an active role in the service of any kind were required to cover their heads as well, with a kipa, a hat, or a provided lace doily. Women in the pews were permitted to make that choice themselves.

As a girl*, I was and remain uncomfortable with that dichotomy, in a way that is separate from the fact that I turned out not to be a girl after all. An Orthodox adult offered the paltry reasoning that women were simply closer to God than men, and that being thus not required to take part equally they were therefore barred from doing so, which at eleven already read to me as Victorian essentialist nonsense. As an adult I know women for whom that reasoning or a softened version of it is spiritually meaningful but I have also known many, so many women for whom that logic was a source of frustration and hurt. 2J3O.

I began wearing a kipa at the age of eleven, at first only as a form of protest against the principal’s daily “We will begin; all boys put on your kippot,” and later because wearing it became meaningful to me in ways I still struggle to put into words. I began to wear my kippot at all times that a boy was expected to do so: at all times on and around the JCC where the school was, on school field trips, at the synagogue (we had by that time tapered off participation as a family in the Orthodox congregation and were splitting our attendance between the Hillel and the Conservative synagogue: I later learned that this was because my mother was concerned that my brother would adopt the sexist attitudes she had overheard from men in the campus Orthodox group; all I knew at the time was that the communities I was in were struggling with how much and in what contexts to adopt egalitarian practice.

I was not the only girl* who formed our small brigade of kipa-wearing heritors of our mothers’ feminist battles, but we were not many. At school, the principal still opened the prayer service with a reminder that all boys were required to put on their kipa--and as we moved up into middle school, tallit and tefillin--and every day I stood up with the crowd of grumbling boys and wrapped myself in the tallit I had sewed and tied with my mother’s assistance and the tefillin my parents had bought me at my request. Once or twice I forgot my bag at home and went without, and the principal said nothing, though boys would have copped a lunch detention. Once I lost my kipa somehow on the bus to school and marched myself to the office to put my quarter in the tzedaka box and take my shameful plasticky kipa; the office manager watched me and said nothing. Boys struggling to put on their tefillin began to ask me for help rather than other boys or the principal; I was the only one in my grade clearly doing this by choice; I got an early taste of what it is like to teach and began to learn to lead without judgement or blame.

My bat* mitzvah celebration took place on a Sunday rather than a Saturday. I wore my tefillin with a fluffy floral, crinolined Easter dress and a kipa my mother decorated with fabric flowers. I spoke in my sermon about feminism, about equality, about arguments for a gender essentialist practice that I had heard and rejected already as I took the traditional first steps into Jewish adulthood. Besides me, men and women participated equally in the service: the Hillel rabbi shopped around among the Jewish professors in my parents’ social circle and created a breakdown that satisfied us all. A few of my father’s cousins declined their invitations, but no one I was actually acquainted with.

I went to public high school and for the first time was spending my every day in a context where boys’ heads--and therefore mine--were uncovered and Jewish topics rarely came up in conversation. I made close friends, I dated Jewish boys my friends recommended, that I should have instead made friends with, and I wondered who I was. The summer before Sophomore year I came back from a week at Jewish teen camp and did not take my kipa off. I have worn it every day since then, for more than twenty years.

My mother, who had been my model and cheerleader in exploring my Jewish, feminist development was initially uncomfortable. I remember a morning when her discomfort escaped in the form of snark: “[Meir] thinks she’s* going to a religious occasion.” I snarked back, adopting a theatrically pious tone for my “Life is a religious occasion,” but snark aside that’s actually the way I experience it. Wearing the kipa every day, whether I’m teaching Hebrew or taking out the trash, is a way of expressing that my religious life is not compartmentalized in certain actions and locations: I am the same Jewish, trans, complicated me, wherever I am and whatever I do.

In graduate school I worked in a Reconstructionist synagogue, and I do again now, and the practice in the school I taught in then was to require all students to wear kippot at all times in the synagogue: that’s been the case when I’ve taught in Reform congregations as well. When I taught in a Conservative congregation I was permitted to encourage but not to require girls to wear kipot, but I was asked to require the boys to do so. Since that wasn’t a community where I felt I could be transparent about my trans identity, I wasn’t able to bring my personal experiences to use there, and that’s what set me on the road to creating my book of interviews with as many different kinds of Jews as I could gather.

My interviews with other Jews about their head covering choices revealed a wide diversity of feelings. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi/professor tell me he only covers his head when he is specifically teaching on religious subjects (he also teaches history, I believe), and that when he was a child in an Orthodox parochial school his rabbi advised the boys to wear baseball caps to cover their heads on the subway so that if they misbehaved it wouldn’t reflect badly on the Jewish community. I had the son of the same rabbi tell me he wore his kipa at all times as a matter of habit, but his fiancee had asked him to pocket it or wear a hat if they were going to a restaurant on Shabbat, because that was contrary to the practice of both of their youth (traditional Shabbat practice forbids using money and cooking or instructing someone to cook for you). I had a cis male Reform rabbi tell me that he wore a kipa at all times because, although he didn’t keep kosher and didn’t refrain from going out to restaurants on Shabbat, he wanted to make the point that those too were legitimate practices of legitimate Jews. I had a cis male Conservative rabbi tell me that he preferred to wear a bandana rather than a kipa unless the occasion was too formal to allow it. I had a Lubavicher woman talk to me about the deep and the practical meanings she found in different methods of covering her hair and why she had shifted those practices throughout her lifetime; I had a non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox woman say almost identical things, and I had a third Orthodox woman tell me she had worn hats that covered most of her hair when her children were young so that they would be able to fit in, but now that they were adults she wore the smallest hats she could find without actually being a kipa, to the mild agitation of her community. I had a hospital chaplain, not a rabbi, tell me that he used his kipa with a team logo on it to connect with patients, but that he rarely wore it outside of work situations. I had a gender-fluid person talk to me about different ways she has covered her head, or her hair, at various times in her shifting personal identity, to fit in with various different communities. I had so many women clergy and lay people tell me about harassment they had experienced from ultra-Orthodox men and non-Jews for wearing a kipa in public that I couldn’t use all of them. Some of the women talked about having given up covering their heads except in the synagogue or Jewish holiday meals. Some talked about wearing hats to look more like Orthodox women, or wearing beaded kippot that could pass as hair accessories. Some talked about defiantly wearing their kippot despite the aggression of Orthodox men demanding that they conform to Orthodox proscribed gender performance or non-Jews demanding that they engage in discussions of Israel politics while grocery shopping, or using public transportation. I had a Black Lubavicher woman tell me that when she wore a tichel (headwrap) she was frequently mistaken for Muslim, but that when she wore a shaitel (wig) she was frequently mistaken for Christian. In particular my students were moved by that tension: for so many of the interviewees in the book, the benefit and the drawback of their head covering choices was being identifiable as Jews, and here was someone covering in extremely mainstream ways and going unrecognized even within her own community.

Every single person I interviewed who was in any way a parent, teacher, or community leader talked about the hope that, whatever their practice was, it would inspire children who look to them to do the same.

Among interviewees who wore a kipa as part of their practice but not all the time, there was a general agreement along the lines of “I wear it when I engage in prayer, learn or teach Jewish subjects, or eat with a Jewish group.” The practice isn’t tied to the location but the activity. However, there are some locations that are so strongly associated with those activities that one might be expected to cover one’s head there regardless of the specific activity.

Looking specifically at the Wayfarers’ gathering-house (a literal translation both of the English term “Synagogue” and the Hebrew “Beit Knesset”), I would certainly say yes that they would cover their heads in one way or another when sitting down to eat; you can make a call about whether they would do so to engage in community politics or conduct diplomacy, and I would imagine there might be other priorities on their mind in the event of a monster attack. I will say that the border between religious practice and cultural practice, when it comes to Judaism, is not really meaningful, so if the community comes together for, say, a wedding or a holiday party, modern Jews who wear kipot would almost universally put on a kipa for such an occasion. It’s your call as to whether the gender divide is a meaningful factor in your imaginary culture; I will say that from Rashi’s daughters wearing tefillin to Rabbi Regina Jonas tending to her community in Nazi Germany to the ordinations or admissions into rabbinical school in the past few years of openly nonbinary clergy or prospective clergy in the Reform and Conservative movements, it has never been truly black and white. The choices you make in that regard will tell a story about who the Wayfarers are and how they fit into the larger history of your world.

*A note on gender: like Jews, trans people have a wide diversity of opinions and attitudes, including toward their childhood selves. What is comfortable for me is not necessarily comfortable for other trans people. Referring to myself as having been a girl is honest with regard to the way I experienced things then; referring to me as a woman now would be an aggressive act of rudeness. Referring to someone as their assigned gender when speaking about their childhood is not and should not be the norm unless the person has specified that it’s their preference: I only do it in certain contexts and do not prefer that others talk about me as having been a girl. I chose to do it in this context because I was discussing choices I made at a time when I would have described myself as a girl. Today my pronouns are exclusively He/Him and it is not my practice to reveal my previous name.

#Meir makes stuff #Meir Makes Long Posts #kermab #answered ask #Judaism #jewish representation #Jewish fantasy writing #Fantasy Writing #fantasy fiction

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angeltriestoblog · 5 years ago

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I figured out what I want to do with my life! And made a vision board!

It came to me in a flash, really. One minute, I was watching a handpainted narration of the life and death of one of the greatest painters of all time, and next thing you know, I've abandoned it completely and started furiously typing away at my laptop about what I envisioned myself to be in five years' time. And I know I've had my fair share of false alarms in life: I thought I had what it takes to be a lawyer after seeing Legally Blonde for the first time while on my way to a school field trip, and seriously considered pursuing a career as a fashion blogger or MTV VJ because I was kind of fed up with school.

But this one just makes sense. Advising and assisting clients in producing content, collaterals, and campaigns according to their business objectives and based on collected data! It marries my love for writing, my knack for snooping around (the academic term is research!), and the specialty in technology and management my university ensures I'll have at the end of my four-year degree. i have yet to see how it’ll allow me to give back to society since that’s also a factor I want to consider in looking for a dream job but I’ll make it work. I found it hard to sleep that night, thanks to this nerdy, giddy kind of adrenaline rush I had. I broke down this big idea into smaller and smaller action steps until all I had left was a refined list of ideas and intentions, and a splitting headache.

I needed to make sure I was constantly reminded of their existence so all my choices and decisions would serve as a step closer to reaching all of them. So I caved in to the wishes of the "law of attraction" side of the Internet, and created my very own vision board! Simply put, this act of visualization is a powerful technique that can be used to manifest desires and reach goals. Our subconscious minds mainly recognize symbols and images: by merely looking at our vision boards everyday, subliminal messages are being sent to our brains, which will encourage them to work tirelessly to achieve the statements we are feeding to them. I can't find any explanation for this that's less abstract but since many people seem to swear on it and I have a lot of free time and printer ink, I figured why not, right?

It was convenient that I had this small corkboard from Daiso already stuck to one corner of my bedroom wall with several layers of double-sided tape. It used to be a year-long calendar of birthdays but I realized that I've never referred to it and often have to rely on either Facebook reminders or stock knowledge--there is no in between. All I had to do was to look at my list of goals, and compile photos that correspond to each of them, cut them up and arrange them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. You'll see below that I lacked the stereotypical luxury car and beachfront mansion with a walk-in closet and that's because I decided to focus on my goals for the next five years so it looks even a little bit more achievable.

Here's the finished product, along with explanations for each picture, to make this how-to more personal and to also hold myself accountable.

Make my girl Jenna Rink and everybody at Poise proud by writing for a magazine | I had listed a specific one at the time, and if you follow me on Twitter and Instagram, you already know what it is and how this endeavor turned out - but on this blog, I'll shroud it in a little cloud of mystery for now and talk about it more in a future post. I'm very happy producing content for this space of mine and have no intention of stopping any time soon. But at the same time I know that I'd be missing out if I didn't take the chance to be part of a community that leads me to like-minded individuals, allows me to grow even more in my craft, and "gives creators a space to speak their minds and push the limits of their artistry, without imposing any restrictions or expectations", as I stated in my application form.

Be active in three organizations next school year | (I had to blur one of them out because I'm not a member yet and I don't want to jinx it.) I know it's bold of me to assume that we'll be returning to school any time soon, but if we are ever lucky enough, I want to outdo myself when it comes to the orgs I'm a part of. I have been a good follower throughout my first two years of college but now I believe it's my time to try my hand at leading a group of people and being more involved in the conceptualization and execution of projects.

Go on a trip to Europe | Not even just a specific group of countries anymore (I used to be a France, Italy, Spain supremacist)--I mean the entire continent! (But then again, with its rich history and culture, picturesque tourist spots, diverse cuisines... even the sheer adrenaline rush that comes with being in a land completely different from the one you come from, how could anyone not want to go?

and 12. Get the job of my dreams | I actually nicked these photos from the website of a cooperative I want to work for once I graduate from college. I know that I can't plan out the rest of my career trajectory as early as now: things are bound to change at some point, but I hope that I stay in a field that combines creativity and business strategy to craft campaigns, create meaningful content, and market solutions to brands.

Expand my network | I acknowledge how knowing people who know people who know people can open windows of opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to have anywhere else. But I also look forward to building genuine connections with people from all sorts of industries. Talking to the same circle of friends can sometimes feel like you're trapped in an echo chamber: there is certainly much to learn from others' viewpoints.

Volunteer to teach kids | I don't think the written word could have changed my life as much as it did, had it not been for the presence of English teachers who believed in the power of the language to shape the minds of the youth. I guess this is just me trying to give back and help the next generation express their ideas and bring them to life by channeling my inner John Keating.

Maintain a clean workspace that is conducive to productivity | Especially during these days, I spend a solid 18 out of 24 hours sat at my desk, trying my best to make magic happen. It's very important that I keep it a constant and active source of inspiration, free from any distractions, and at the right level of comfort. Although it's not as minimalist as I hoped it would be and my table is about an inch too high for my liking, I'm still pretty satisfied!

Document memories consistently, be it through a physical or online journal | Speaking of clearing out my room, I recently found around 20 notebooks I had filled up over the years. Though maintaining them must have been such a hassle especially as I got older and reading through them was a distraction from completing the task at hand, I am thankful I painstakingly chronicled everything going on in my life and kept them in good condition. Seeing the goals I had set for myself all those years ago and how I achieved most of them without making a conscious effort has inspired me to do my older self a favor by putting in the work now so she can reap the rewards. (While I'm on this note, can anyone recommend a good app for journaling? I keep all my current entries in my Mac's Notes app because even though I am more of an analog person, I seemed to have lost the patience and persistence required to keep a physical journal. But at the same time, I'm scared of my laptop suddenly cr*shing and wiping out everything I had stored)

Stay focused on my work always | I didn't know how to show this without having to spell it out in words so I Photoshopped my face onto the head of a woman working in a cafe because those who study in coffee shops along Katip always look like they're getting stuff done.

Keep learning about the world even when I'm outside of the classroom | And this is not limited to frequenting the nearby museum, although that does sound like a great idea right now. This could also mean attending seminars, workshops, and talks, buying books and binge-watching documentaries or YouTube videos about a topic that I find interesting, engaging in discourse with someone (plus points if they have a different viewpoint!)

Write my own book | Before I even found out that humans were destined to pick a career and work until they died, I already knew that I wanted to spend my days as a writer. Specifically, I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book: By Angel Martinez. (Please refer to the 4:32 of this video and look at how far this dream actually goes back.) But once I realized that I wanted to enter the world of business, I thought I would have to give this up altogether. Thankfully, I now know that one's ability to get published is not reliant on their career--I mean, even beauty gurus get book deals these days. I'm not really sure what it's going to be about but I'd honestly be down for anything: even if it's just a compilation of my best entries on this blog.

13. Go all out when I take myself on self-care dates | I'm talking about picnics at the beach, with a basket full of fruits, a posh looking hat, and a good piece of classic literature! Or fancy dinners for one complete with as many glasses of red wine as I can down! People watching at Downtown Disneyland like my paternal grandmother in hand, with a plastic bag of souvenirs on one hand and a cream cheese pretzel on the other! (The possibilities are endless and I'm already mapping most of them out.)

14. Be financially stable enough to re-enact that one scene in Pretty Woman where Vivian Ward struts down the streets of Beverly Hills in a chic white dress and black hat, an endless number of shopping bags in tow | The part where I humiliate a sales lady who snubbed me the day before because she didn't think I could afford what she was selling by saying, "You work on commission, right? That's right. Big mistake, big, huge." is entirely optional.

I also included some two inspirational sayings that were originally laptop wallpapers from The Everygirl. I feel like they perfectly sum up the attitude I want to have as I forge my own path and accomplish everything I have set out for myself. If I was somehow able to convince you that this activity serves as the perfect springboard for all your dreams and aspirations, here are a couple of tips that could hopefully help you make yours!

Be ready for some intense introspection | Though it may look like a simple arts and crafts activity at the surface, making an effective vision board simply cannot be achieved if you're not willing to do some much needed reflection and watch it balloon into a full-on existential crisis. Identify which areas of your life are most important to you and how you would like to see them evolve over a period of time.

Specificity is key | The trick is to make your goals as concrete as possible, then translate them into visual elements. I know some people who wanted to get into particular universities, who have Photoshopped their names onto acceptance letters and pinned those to their corkboards. As stupid as that may sound in retrospect, I reckon it's an elaborate way of claiming something that's right within your reach.

Design it any way you want | Don't feel pressured to make it look like it's worthy to be on someone else's Pinterest because that's exactly how you lose sight of why you're doing it in the first place. The only person your final output has to resonate with is you.

Don't get discouraged | Although a vision board can attract positive energy and manifest your intentions to the universe, one thing it isn't capable of doing is granting your wishes in an instant. Don't be upset if what you have cut out and stuck on has yet to happen: I truly believe in the saying that the more you look for something, the more it seems to avoid you. Instead, continue to work hard and focus on the progress that you have already made.

Have you made a vision board of your own already? How has it turned out, and how many of the things you had put up have come true? I know you may be a complete stranger from the other side of the world but I'd be happy to hear from you anyway! Wishing you love and light always, especially during trying times such as this. Wash your hands, pray for our frontliners, and check your privilege!

#recs #personal #quarantingz #angeltriestoblog #vision board #goal setting

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everytimemyheartbeats · 6 years ago

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“Will I get to you a little faster if I was the snow in the air?”

“Spring Day” is a song that stands out from BTS’ title track discography for various reasons: it has commonly been described as one of the group’s most beautiful songs and music videos, and its sound is softer than most title tracks that the group releases and promotes. The dance, too, leans towards contemporary style rather than hip hop or k-pop.

The effects of this combination can be seen clearly. As of February 25, 2019, the song was still charting on the Melon Weekly Chart with 106 weeks and still counting. It officially became the longest charting song by an idol or idol group.

But what makes “Spring Day” so special, even among BTS’ discography? Why is its longevity so stable?

youtube

At first glance, the music video and song are seemingly aimed towards the concept of “aesthetic”. Over or under-saturated scenes with strong color schemes. A nostalgic, yearning melody. A serenade about how the sorrow of missing someone is a personal winter, a plea for a loved one to wait a little longer until spring joins them again.

This simple message is meaningful for those of us who take meaning in it. However, there are more layers to the music, and that brings us to the symbolism and references in the video, which may connect to the Sewol Ferry Disaster of South Korea.

(Read more about the disaster here.)

Omelas

We start off with a reference (1:08, scene) to Omelas, the fictional town in the story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula LeGuin. In this story, Omelas is a utopia where everything is perfect and the people are happy. However, in order for everyone to be happy, one child must be kept in darkness and misery - similar to how the captain of the ferry told nothing to the group of passengers (which included about 250 high school students and thus children) about the status of the ferry; instead, the captain told everyone to stay put as he abandoned ship as the ferry was capsizing. Almost everyone who stayed died as a result.

Snowpiercer

The next reference is to the Snowpiercer train from the 2013 film of the same name. In this movie, the Earth is in an ice age and the only survivors are the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer. SPOILER: the survivors learn that children are being used as fuel, and at the end, the survivors leave the train, realizing that life exists outside. The lyrics (1:12, lyrics) send a message of being alone on a train that is constantly moving yet never going anywhere. This is much like how the passengers on the ferry were trapped in a sinking boat - it was moving, but they could not leave. Similarly, the relatives who were waiting on news of the trapped passengers must have felt stuck and unable to do anything.

The train itself can be interpreted as a vehicle for reaching the afterlife. A common theory in the music video is that the members of BTS are dead and ultimately reach the afterlife together after some separation.

“Passing by the edge of the cold winter, until the days of spring, until the flowers blossom. Please stay, please stay there a little longer.”

In the passage above, winter can mean the transition to the afterlife, or the time that the members had to wait to be together again.

However, the train can also stand for the concept of growing up and saying goodbye to one’s youth. Here is an excellent article that breaks down that interpretation.

Regardless of interpretation (of which the correct interpretation could possibly be all three simultaneously), we see the last of the train when the member emerge (4:39, scene). Depending on the interpretation you choose, this can mean emerging into acceptance of grief, the afterlife, or adulthood.

Yellow Ribbons

A possible symbol in the music video is the yellow ribbons tied to the carousel (3:12, scene). Yellow ribbons are used to bring awareness to suicide in South Korea, and they were also used as symbols of protest and solidarity regarding the Sewol Ferry Disaster. This support can be seen when the carousel is revealed to have the words “YOU NEVER WALK ALONE” written across the top.

In addition, the concept photo for this specific comeback/era of BTS used yellow.

Laundry and Clothing

Another symbol and reference is the laundry (and consequent clothing involved) shown in the video (2:25, scene). The clothing pile is based on the exhibit Personnes by Boltanski, with the meaning that clothing is all that’s left behind when someone dies. Lots of clothing means lots of deaths, like the deaths of the passengers of the ferry disaster. The clothing stacks up, and is impossible to clean all at once. You have to pay to launder a small load at a time, similar to how the government can never fully repay the relatives of those lost in the incident. Even today, not all bodies have been recovered.

Shoes, the Ocean, and the Tree

In Korea, it’s common for people to remove their shoes before committing suicide. The shoes in the video are first picked up in front of the ocean (2:19, scene). This is significant because it can be a direct reference to the lives lost to the ocean from the ferry disaster. In the aftermath of the incident, shoes of the victims of the sinking were placed by the harbor with messages written on and around them; shoes signify a person’s journey, so the relatives of those who died left the shoes where the victims’ journeys ended.

However, at the end of the video, we can see that the shoes are hung up in a tree (5:18, scene). This symbolizes death, because the shoes are placed high so that the owner can find them again after death (and possibly continue their journey in the afterlife). This can also mean that the owner of the shoes is in a higher place, once again referring to the afterlife and the sense of moving on.

Ultimate Takeaway

A song of missing someone and meeting them again, a song of growing up, a song of grieving, a song of criticism against the government - “Spring Day” is all this, and more. It will always have layers upon layers of meaning that we can’t hope to untangle completely, but this brief overview hopefully covered most of them.

This was the first song from BTS that I ever heard. It’s my favorite and most cherished song of all time, because I stumbled across this song during a time I was grieving lost family and friends. It’s a song about loss, and about healing and acceptance. It’s a song about hope. It’s a song about carrying on.

“아침은 다시 올 거야. 어떤 어둠도 어떤 계절도 영원할 순 없으니까 .”

“The morning will come again. No darkness, no season is eternal.”

#bts #bangtan #bangtan sonyeondan #방타소년단 #kim namjoon #kim seokjin #min yoongi #jung hoseok #park jimin #kim taehyung #jeon jungkook #rm #suga #jhope #v #army #my post #spring day #you never walk alone

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junsojung-text · 4 years ago

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Standing before dazzling novelty Ahn Soyeon

Sojung Jun’s oeuvre imbues a sense of unraveling a single ‘universe’ each time. The reason why her video running for several to a few dozens of minutes gives an impression that it configures a universe – without being confined to dealing with some scenes or incidences – would be because it has led us into a life of somebody. Facets of daily banalities shown by characters of nothing extraordinary used to immerse the audience as if to confront their life. Such transference is made possible because their life exists in a temporal flow which is nothing like ours. Unlike us that are being swirled in the ‘contemporariness’ by being consciousness of somebody’s stride in the middle of the common time slots that are huge, abstract and undoubtable, they maintain a single ‘universe’ because they live through their own solitary time.

The image of an old man fasting a fishing rod in the glittering sea under the sunlight is attuned to the slow speed of Mother Nature to the point of being described to catch the years (The Old Man and the Sea, 2009). Those that tacitly fulfill their given roles despite being out of spotlight for long – laborers in a kimchi factory (Something Red, 2010), a mechanical embroiderer (A Day of A Tailor, 2012), the last theater signboard painter of the kind (Time Regained, 2012), a clown doing tightrope walking (Last Pleasure, 2012), a taxidermist (Angel of Death, 2014), a haenyeo (a female diver who dives into the sea without any equipment to harvest seafood) (Treasure Island, 2014), and an earthenware artisan (The Poem of Fire, 2015) – are people that have sublimated their career out of the spotlight into a domain of art through repetition and skillfulness.

Sometimes, those that are exiled into a different tempo-spatiality from us by being trapped in unexpected restraints in life are on Jun’s radar. They are a foreign immigrant worker that has a lot to say about their life (Story of Dream: Suni 2008), an overseas adoptee (Interval Recess Pause, 2017), a refugee or a blind (The Ship of Fools, 2016) or those that are distinguished or excluded due to the race (Specters, 2017).

That their life is sublimated as an exclusively meaningful shelter – instead of a shabby wasteland – is attributable to Jun’s endeavors to step closer to the meaningful moments that only exist in their dreams and memories. Efforts to step into somebody’s time and space by mobilizing all possible media and senses connect us to their world – albeit temporarily – although complete restoration and sharing are impossible. They become the main characters in their own play on the stage that is sophisticatedly set by the artist.

Jun’s act of art paying attention to those that are pushed out of the contemporary movement in today’s world replete with novelty and change is an act of resistance to show her will of not being swirled by the entire and violent flow in the fancy name of ‘progress.’ Unstoppable curiosity over discovery of novelty seems to take us to innovation and a better future, but a rosy future is inevitably the stage of capitalism behind which remain the voices of those that are excluded from the history as well as endless ruins that are no longer new. It is the reason why we expect the view of ‘Angelus Novus’[1] from artists despite the storm pushing us to the future.

Her interest in a forgotten domain has been supplemented by literary reference, but recently, she has further deeply contemplated over the point where modernity and avant-garde dreams disrupt before capitalism in the era of colonization through her research over early-day poetry of genius poet Yi Sang (1910-1937), the icon of the modern avant-gardism of Korea. By encountering multinational researchers of Yi Sang during her stay in Paris, the breeding ground of the modern culture, she searched for possibilities of hypothesis with Yi Sang in mind by escaping from the present through intersection of heterogeneous axes of time and space.

The starting point of her research and exhibition is Yi Sang’s poem <AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES>. It is a title piece among poetry series titled <Architecture Infinite Hexahedron> (1932) first released by literati and architect Kim Hae gyong in the penname of Yi Sang. It is also an enigmatic poem under the French title with combination of Japanese, classical Chinese characters, Chinese and English. The 22-line avant-garde poem translated as <A New Store> is full of knowledge and imagination over the concepts of physics and figures, and hatred towards cultural colonialism in the modern times and harsh criticism against consumptive capitalism.

The motif of the poem as a contemplative place is Mitsukoshi Department Store opened in Gyeongseong (the original name for Seoul) in 1930. Yi Sang conjured up ‘Architecture Infinite Hexahedron’[2]where squares are endlessly repeated as he encountered a flashy and complicated structure of the space. The new five-story store had numerous square-shaped showcases, and people realized a space of infinite repetition by repeatedly ‘going up and down’ on escalators/elevators. It is expressed as a recreational place in a rooftop garden – a modern architectural dream - for shopping-loving mademoiselles, which is filled up with the scent of a French Coty perfume.

Yet, most of the poetry is written to reveal that a department store representing novelty is a symbol of colonial ideas and is nothing more than an imitation of the Western modernity. A department store is not only an abnormal place to arouse Joseon (the former name of Korea) not equipped with modern production technologies to consume more but also a place to transplant the Japanese culture. Even Japan as its subject prioritizes the West, and points out a paradox of ‘self-colonialization’ as a cultural translator. A fad that starts in spring in France reaches the Eastern world in autumn, and even the main branch of Mitsukoshi Department Store in Tokyo – like a globe as a ball-shaped miniature of the earth and mademoiselles as mimicking monkeys in the rooftop garden – is just a copy of Bon Marche Department Store built in Paris in the 1850s.

Japanese’ craze over Germany’s renowned aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin[3] known as then largest of its kind was strong enough to be applied to various ads including that of an anthelmintic drug. The poet pinpointed a phenomenon where even the victory of a technology that frees up humans ends up being dissolved in capitalism. Violence hidden behind the charm of novelty in modern times strides on the street like ‘military boots’, sweeping away precious small stuffs of the past. The poet compares himself to a helpless canary in a multilayered cage of mockery, confessing that there is nothing he can do to the horrific reality, simply saying ‘Ggood Bye’ pitifully.

Poetry acts as a source of inspiration for flexibly forming reasoning as a means of empathy and imagination despite the time gap of almost about one century. Yi Sang’s universe of poetry being indefinite, temporary and subject to a broad range of interpretation must have been an intriguing motif for Jun that takes an interest in the relationship between avant-garde aesthetic experimentation and political practices. The exhibition unfolds in multiple layers including a video where documentaries of the past and movie clips are montaged with the present moment in Seoul, Tokyo and Paris where sounds & texts, sculptures & publication of research paper, and spatial structures strike a harmony. Each piece of work is mutually interlinked, yet detached, which in turn exchanges a serial impact to one another. The process of repetition and a sort of violation amongst works is a methodology that is closely aligned with Jun’s goal of seeking for a runway from obsession with novelty.

A 25 minute-long video titled <Despair to be Reborn>(2020) as a center of the entire exhibition uses <AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES> as a prism to reflect the journey of an amplified light. Contemplative tempo-spatiality derived from the department store is expanded into the day and night of the past and the present, and also into skylines, subways, parks and back alleys in Seoul, Tokyo and Paris. The structure of the video is vaguely divided into such paragraphs as “In my dream where I was absent”, “In your dream where you were absent”, and “In our dream where we were absent.” Each of them brings in the present, past and some future. Yet, it’s not clear because – as the word ‘absent’ suggests – of the absence of a memory substituted with imagination and omission of a subject. A narration that is out of sync with each scene – just like the nonlinear spatial movement – and usage of Korean, Japanese and French is out of context with the subjects along with cacophony of a harp and gayageum (a traditional Korean zither-like string instrument with 12 strings) heightening the tension. Such an incidental encounter with inconsistency causes a chasm between images and words, which in turn approaches Jun as a chasm of a precious possibility who is to re-write the memory.

That the video is involved with a commercial space of <AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES> is reminded through an advertisement that opens up the work, yet cutting out middle parts. The unfamiliar voice of a narrator informing on “product information” presents Seon-bawi, Inwang Mountain's holy Immortal Meditation Rocks (or maybe some other similar looking rocks) as an item for sale. The voice also promotes new usages of the rocks as decorative gardening item or a storage space for one’s house keys. Just like how aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin – as the amalgam of science and technology of the humankind – being appropriated as a capital on the signboard for an anthelmintic drug, the video jokingly predicts a formidable future of capitalism where even treasure-like mountains of the people of Korea could be traded as garden decorations. Yet, mentioning of a ‘storage place for hiding keys’ is conveyed as a secretive command. Jun recalls Yi Sang’s message to be awakened again in a new aspect through the arousal of despair by appropriating some phrases[4] from the work of Yi Sang: “Be in despair people, Be reborn people, Be reborn people, Be in despair people.” The artist seems to find a hope in ‘Child of the Night’[5] and this child does Parkour by traversing the contour lines of a city, denying a predictable future and seeking to inscribe his presence.

Her publication project <ㅁ> is directly derived from a repeated square as the key image in the poem, but it comprehensively indicates such signs as Korean Alphabet consonant ㅁ (mieum), Chinese character ㅁ (Ip Gu), a square screen and four dimensions to deal with the issues of space, language and image. An ad-hoc publication gathering was formed with her suggestion, engaging 11 specialists in various fields – architecture, art history, mathematics, film, music and language – and explored the past and the present, and Asia and Europe with a focus on the 1930s when Yi Sang was active along with his poetry. They have broadened up the possibilities of interpretation by using multi-languages and irregular meanings – features of a poem - and frequently utilizing signs. The participants suggested various outcome ranging from critical research to creative fiction and new ideation by using their own mother languages or special languages in each field – drawing and score, etc. Discussed were the following topics: the history of Passage, department stores, and the World’s Fair, aesthetics of avant-garde montage, irregular language usage and translation of literature during the Japanese colonial rule, political features of post-colonial and East Asian avant-garde poetry, surrealism and strategies of strolling, leaps and resistance of science and technology, dichotomy in the modern times and reasoning of reverse perspectives.

In a chapter among them all, Jun released <Diagrammed Robot>(2020) in a new format of a critical fiction. It is an interpretation of Yi Sang’s poetry and a handbook on her own video works where she suggests a method deviating from a newly established code system or a perspective view: an anatomical map of a robot in the name of a ‘drawing in a reverse perspective.’ While her prior works were dominated by a perspective view in the form of a scenery, this time, she reversed it to suggest an anatomical map of a robot with limbs and organs. The robot as a scrap metal and chunk of meat is a surrealistic monster as a result of ‘ad-hoc cross-breeding of the past and the future.’ And surrealistic reasoning is the artist’s authority to make a crack in the reality.

The first part of the video embodies a peculiar image of Seon-bawi rocks in Inwang Mountain and Guksadang Shrine as a religious furnace that embraces all sorts of beliefs within. It is considered as a ‘head or a mass.’ The movement of escalators in a department store or in a subway in Paris is revealed as the ‘torso or chest.’ The ‘eyes or nose’ would reject a single view, and the ‘ears or mouth’ connected in Mobius strip is based on the reference of Ritronello which follows the disorder in chaos. Graf Zeppelin in modern times and drones in the contemporary period are compared to the ‘legs or toe nails’ realizing the magic art of shortening distances and warp, while ‘arms or hands’ establish a temporary pathway as a tactile sense of identifying the world of night. Hypothesizing a runway by combining the ironical and connecting time and space is what the ‘genitals or pelvis’ related to the reproduction of robots is to do. Lastly, the duty of redefining the perception of time and memories to ‘multiplicate a single one’ and ‘delete what is fixed’ is imposed on the ‘heart or viscera.’[6]

Jun reintroduced the medium of sculpture, which she has not used for long, to this exhibition, further diversifying and giving a volume to the layers within. She explored the primate form of sculpture as a chuck being reminiscent of stones or rocks. These were made out of melted plastics – PET bottles, globes, straws and disposable cups – and plastic sheets. They are suggested as dissolved consumptive capital and scenes of a destroyed city, reflecting Yi Sang’s dream world: he imagined a city where everything would boil and melt down when sirens ring at noon, dreaming of wings to grow under armpits. Visualized is a world that has been converted into the world of pure and transparent chunks after the existing values and systems break down by embodying the lines reminding of globe fragments or roads and remains of daily living. It could also be a pathway connecting the time from the past to the future – from one end to the opposite end in space. Moreover, this primitive chunk derived from a scenery – interestingly enough – is reorganized into <ORGAN> of heart, knees, hips and eyes, moving forward as a dynamis of new birth while forming a fragmented body.

Yet, would the sign of this birth be realized? Would there be a valid key hidden in Seonbawi rocks in Inwang Mountain – the center of modern Seoul, yet the epicenter of irrational and premodern beliefs – to reverse the historical flow after the modern period? Jun made <Storage>(2020) resembling a miniaturized Inwang Mountain with precious silver, under which she hid a suspicious key inscribed with <AU MAGASIN DE NOUVEAUTES>. Silver is a capital that flew in from the Orient enabling the modernization in the West, thus is an ironical historic evidence. While the operability of the key is unidentifiable, the small mountain plays a role being ‘disguised’ as a precious product on the shelf in a showroom resembling either a temporary scaffold or a new store.

[1] Walter Benjamin that owned Paul Klee’s printmaking work of <Angelus Novus> (1920) called it the ‘angel of history,’ diagnosing the historical scene driven by a storm of progressiveness.

[2] It is the name of a spatial diagram used in architecture. The diagram called ‘tessère’ in French was first suggested by Dutch artist and architect Theo van Doesburg in 1925. It is a theory where the internal and external parts in a space are determined by the shape of a square, and the shape is infinitely expandable in all dimensions. A similar idea is found in paintings of Mondrian engaged in De Still movement. Kim Jiwoo, Lee Soojong, ‘Intellectuals who diagnoses modern society including himself’, Journal of the Korean Poetics Studies, no.57 p.174

[3] LZ No.127 sailing out for a world travel in August 1929 departed from Germany, and arrived at Tokyo, Japan as a stopover site before crossing the Pacific Ocean after travelling the Eastern Europe and Russia. It achieved a travel time which was 22 hours faster than expected by finishing off the sail in 102 hours for 6,600 miles. It is said that the Japanese were utterly shocked and overwhelmed by the dominant science and technology of the West, and acclaimed for a narrower geographical gap between the East and the West.

[4] Last line in <Notes to the Lines 2> in Yi Sang’s poem series <The Third Angle Design> (1931)

[5] “Topologists are children of night. Algebraists deal with the knife of strictness with absolute clarity.” It is a comment of French mathematician and philosopher René Frédéric Thom(1923-2002) pinning hopes on topologists that imagined connection of tempo-spatial continuums and organisms, instead of algebra as the basis of modern technological development through absolute clarity. Emmanuel Ferrand, “Child of the Night”, <ㅁ>, organpress, 2020, p.284

[6] Sojung Jun, “Diagrammed Robot” <ㅁ>, organpress, 2020, pp.305-315 ⬅︎

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electricviiibrations · 4 years ago

Link

ARKeTYPE//HYPERMIND was a very spontaneous but deeply meaningful experience for me. I found myself one night in the early hours in front of the mirror, viewing my physical body from a kind of multidimensional state of consciousness that seemed to dissolve the boundaries between my mind and the edges of space and time. When I closed my eyes I saw the whole universe as a perfectly symmetrical glistening mirrored diamond, each point fractalized into many corners of space and time, like a tiny portion contained millennia of cosmic history and vast expanses of space, and I had somehow found myself looking down upon it all as if it was all a paperweight on a desk. The experience of the body was very much like in a video game character customisation screen, where you view your avatar from the observer perspective and can move it around at will like a digital puppet. As I deepened my breath to the rhythm of computer fans whirring tin the background, I found an ecstatic level of symmetry in my bio-organism machine, it was like I was breathing light. Very powerful ritualistic experience. The name ARKeTYPE is embedded with a few layers of meaning, the first being the archetypal symbols that collectively form the human psyche, the myths and legends that form the basis of most all stories and programs we run, ‘nothing new under the sun’, ‘the game stays the same, only the medium changes’. Also there is the idea of Noah’s Ark, touching on humanity’s relationship to a creator or Prime Programmer, if indeed this is all some very highly advanced simulation. “e” may refer to electricity, electronic or more generally energy, even emotion or E-motion (energy in motion). Finally, Type has a number of inflections, potentially referring to type of people or things sharing common characteristics, something or someone exemplifying ideal characteristics, a work of art serving as a model or ideal for other artists, a person or event in the Old Testament foreshadowing something or someone in the New Testament, an organism chosen as having the defining characteristics of its group, characters or letters printed or shown on a screen, the action of typing out words/code, a design on either side of the same coin, an abstract class of linguistic item, or the determination of a group to which a person’s blood or tissue belongs. The semantic undercurrent here indeed has its own ‘ type’, a message of a singularity or unity that permeates energetically through all life, organic and artificial, through the vast landscape of language in all its forms.

Even though I see ARKeTYPE//HYPERMIND as a Yogic exploration of bodily and non-bodily forms of consciousness, this is just the most fitting way to describe what’s happening and I wouldn’t say it belongs to any particular religious, spiritual or even cultural practice/program. It’s more natural than that, more universal. It arose out of my cells naturally and without the need for dogma. I feel that as the world evolves into a more global community, we will see more and more dissolution of boundaries, and ultimately the realisation that all religious traditions point to the same universal truth of being. The same light that enlightened the Buddha is the same light that enshrines Krishna is the same in the halo of Jesus Christ, is the same bared by Prometheus or Lucifer.

The same God/Source/Consciousness plays in many masks in many times and many places.

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suzanneshannon · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 1: Birth

Tim Berners-Lee is fascinated with information. It has been his life’s work. For over four decades, he has sought to understand how it is mapped and stored and transmitted. How it passes from person to person. How the seeds of information become the roots of dramatic change. It is so fundamental to the work that he has done that when he wrote the proposal for what would eventually become the World Wide Web, he called it “Information Management, a Proposal.”

Information is the web’s core function. A series of bytes stream across the world and at the end of it is knowledge. The mechanism for this transfer — what we know as the web — was created by the intersection of two things. The first is the Internet, the technology that makes it all possible. The second is hypertext, the concept that grounds its use. They were brought together by Tim Berners-Lee. And when he was done he did something truly spectacular. He gave it away to everyone to use for free.

When Berners-Lee submitted “Information Management, a Proposal” to his superiors, they returned it with a comment on the top that read simply:

Vague, but exciting…

The web wasn’t a sure thing. Without the hindsight of today it looked far too simple to be effective. In other words, it was a hard sell. Berners-Lee was proficient at many things, but he was never a great salesman. He loved his idea for the web. But he had to convince everybody else to love it too.

Tim Berners-Lee has a mind that races. He has been known — based on interviews and public appearances — to jump from one idea to the next. He is almost always several steps ahead of what he is saying, which is often quite profound. Until recently, he only gave a rare interview here and there, and masked his greatest achievements with humility and a wry British wit.

What is immediately apparent is that Tim Berners-Lee is curious. Curious about everything. It has led him to explore some truly revolutionary ideas before they became truly revolutionary. But it also means that his focus is typically split. It makes it hard for him to hold on to things in his memory. “I’m certainly terrible at names and faces,” he once said in an interview. His original fascination with the elements for the web came from a very personal need to organize his own thoughts and connect them together, disparate and unconnected as they are. It is not at all unusual that when he reached for a metaphor for that organization, he came up with a web.

As a young boy, his curiosity was encouraged. His parents, Conway Berners-Lee and Mary Lee Woods, were mathematicians. They worked on the Ferranti Mark I, the world’s first commercially available computer, in the 1950s. They fondly speak of Berners-Lee as a child, taking things apart, experimenting with amateur engineering projects. There was nothing that he didn’t seek to understand further. Electronics — and computers specifically — were particularly enchanting.

Berners-Lee sometimes tells the story of a conversation he had with his with father as a young boy about the limitations of computers making associations between information that was not intrinsically linked. “The idea stayed with me that computers could be much more powerful,” Berners-Lee recalls, “if they could be programmed to link otherwise unconnected information. In an extreme view, the world can been seen as only connections.” He didn’t know it yet, but Berners-Lee had stumbled upon the idea of hypertext at a very early age. It would be several years before he would come back to it.

History is filled with attempts to organize knowledge. An oft-cited example is the Library of Alexandria, a fabled library of Ancient Greece that was thought to have had tens of thousands of meticulously organized texts.

Photo via

At the turn of the century, Paul Otlet tried something similar in Belgium. His project was called the Répertoire Bibliographique Universel (Universal Bibliography). Otlet and a team of researchers created a library of over 15 million index cards, each with a discrete and small piece of information in topics ranging from science to geography. Otlet devised a sophisticated numbering system that allowed him to link one index card to another. He fielded requests from researchers around the world via mail or telegram, and Otlet’s researchers could follow a trail of linked index cards to find an answer. Once properly linked, information becomes infinitely more useful.

A sudden surge of scientific research in the wake of World War II prompted Vanneaver Bush to propose another idea. In his groundbreaking essay in The Atlantic in 1945 entitled “As We May Think,” Bush imagined a mechanical library called a Memex. Like Otlet’s Universal Bibliography, the Memex stored bits of information. But instead of index cards, everything was stored on compact microfilm. Through the process of what he called “associative indexing,” users of the Memex could follow trails of related information through an intricate web of links.

The list of attempts goes on. But it was Ted Neslon who finally gave the concept a name in 1968, two decades after Bush’s article in The Atlantic. He called it hypertext.

Hypertext is, essentially, linked text. Nelson observed that in the real world, we often give meaning to the connections between concepts; it helps us grasp their importance and remember them for later. The proximity of a Post-It to your computer, the orientation of ingredients in your refrigerator, the order of books on your bookshelf. Invisible though they may seem, each of these signifiers hold meaning, whether consciously or subconsciously, and they are only fully realized when taking a step back. Hypertext was a way to bring those same kinds of meaningful connections to the digital world.

Nelson’s primary contribution to hypertext is a number of influential theories and a decades-long project still in progress known as Xanadu. Much like the web, Xanadau uses the power of a network to create a global system of links and pages. However, Xanadu puts a far greater emphasis on the ability to trace text to its original author for monetization and attribution purposes. This distinction, known as transculsion, has been a near impossible technological problem to solve.

Nelson’s interest in hypertext stems from the same issue with memory and recall as Berners-Lee. He refers to it is as his hummingbird mind. Nelson finds it hard to hold on to associations he creates in the real world. Hypertext offers a way for him to map associations digitally, so that he can call on them later. Berners-Lee and Nelson met for the first time a couple of years after the web was invented. They exchanged ideas and philosophies, and Berners-Lee was able to thank Nelson for his influential thinking. At the end of the meeting, Berners-Lee asked if he could take a picture. Nelson, in turn, asked for a short video recording. Each was commemorating the moment they knew they would eventually forget. And each turned to technology for a solution.

By the mid-80s, on the wave of innovation in personal computing, there were several hypertext applications out in the wild. The hypertext community — a dedicated group of software engineers that believed in the promise of hypertext – created programs for researchers, academics, and even off-the-shelf personal computers. Every research lab worth their weight in salt had a hypertext project. Together they built entirely new paradigms into their software, processes and concepts that feel wonderfully familiar today but were completely outside the realm of possibilities just a few years earlier.

At Brown University, the very place where Ted Nelson was studying when he coined the term hypertext, Norman Meyrowitz, Nancy Garrett, and Karen Catlin were the first to breathe life into the hyperlink, which was introduced in their program Intermedia. At Symbolics, Janet Walker was toying with the idea of saving links for later, a kind of speed dial for the digital world – something she was calling a bookmark. At the University of Maryland, Ben Schneiderman sought to compile and link the world’s largest source of information with his Interactive Encyclopedia System.

Dame Wendy Hall, at the University of Southhampton, sought to extend the life of the link further in her own program, Microcosm. Each link made by the user was stored in a linkbase, a database apart from the main text specifically designed to store metadata about connections. In Microcosm, links could never die, never rot away. If their connection was severed they could point elsewhere since links weren’t directly tied to text. You could even write a bit of text alongside links, expanding a bit on why the link was important, or add to a document separate layers of links, one, for instance, a tailored set of carefully curated references for experts on a given topic, the other a more laid back set of links for the casual audience.

There were mailing lists and conferences and an entire community that was small, friendly, fiercely competitive and locked in an arms race to find the next big thing. It was impossible not to get swept up in the fervor. Hypertext enabled a new way to store actual, tangible knowledge; with every innovation the digital world became more intricate and expansive and all-encompassing.

Then came the heavy hitters. Under a shroud of mystery, researchers and programmers at the legendary Xerox PARC were building NoteCards. Apple caught wind of the idea and found it so compelling that they shipped their own hypertext application called Hypercard, bundled right into the Mac operating system. If you were a late Apple II user, you likely have fond memories of Hypercard, an interface that allowed you to create a card, and quickly link it to another. Cards could be anything, a recipe maybe, or the prototype of a latest project. And, one by one, you could link those cards up, visually and with no friction, until you had a digital reflection of your ideas.

Towards the end of the 80s, it was clear that hypertext had a bright future. In just a few short years, the software had advanced in leaps and bounds.

After a brief stint studying physics at The Queen’s College, Oxford, Tim Berners-Lee returned to his first love: computers. He eventually found a short-term, six-month contract at the particle physics lab Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), or simply, CERN.

CERN is responsible for a long line of particle physics breakthroughs. Most recently, they built the Large Hadron Collider, which led to the confirmation of the Higgs Boson particle, a.k.a. the “God particle.”

CERN doesn’t operate like most research labs. Its internal staff makes up only a small percentage of the people that use the lab. Any research team from around the world can come and use the CERN facilities, provided that they are able to prove their research fits within the stated goals of the institution. A majority of CERN occupants are from these research teams. CERN is a dynamic, sprawling campus of researchers, ferrying from location to location on bicycles or mine-carts, working on the secrets of the universe. Each team is expected to bring their own equipment and expertise. That includes computers.

Berners-Lee was hired to assist with software on an earlier version of the particle accelerator called the Proton Synchrotron. When he arrived, he was blown away by the amount of pure, unfiltered information that flowed through CERN. It was nearly impossible to keep track of it all and equally impossible to find what you were looking for. Berners-Lee wanted to capture that information and organize it.

His mind flashed back to that conversation with his father all those years ago. What if it were possible to create a computer program that allowed you to make random associations between bits of information? What if you could, in other words, link one thing to another? He began working on a software project on the side for himself. Years later, that would be the same way he built the web. He called this project ENQUIRE, named for a Victorian handbook he had read as a child.

Using a simple prompt, ENQUIRE users could create a block of info, something like Otlet’s index cards all those years ago. And just like the Universal Bibliography, ENQUIRE allowed you to link one block to another. Tools were bundled in to make it easier to zoom back and see the connections between the links. For Berners-Lee this filled a simple need: it replaced the part of his memory that made it impossible for him to remember names and faces with a digital tool.

Compared to the software being actively developed at the University of Southampton or at Xerox or Apple, ENQUIRE was unsophisticated. It lacked a visual interface, and its format was rudimentary. A program like Hypercard supported rich-media and advanced two-way connections. But ENQUIRE was only Berners-Lee’s first experiment with hypertext. He would drop the project when his contract was up at CERN.

Berners-Lee would go and work for himself for several years before returning to CERN. By the time he came back, there would be something much more interesting for him to experiment with. Just around the corner was the Internet.

Packet switching is the single most important invention in the history of the Internet. It is how messages are transmitted over a globally decentralized network. It was discovered almost simultaneously in the late-60s by two different computer scientists, Donald Davies and Paul Baran. Both were interested in the way in which it made networks resilient.

Traditional telecommunications at the time were managed by what is known as circuit switching. With circuit switching, a direct connection is open between the sender and receiver, and the message is sent in its entirety between the two. That connection needs to be persistent and each channel can only carry a single message at a time. That line stays open for the duration of a message and everything is run through a centralized switch.

If you’re searching for an example of circuit switching, you don’t have to look far. That’s how telephones work (or used to, at least). If you’ve ever seen an old film (or even a TV show like Mad Men) where an operator pulls a plug out of a wall and plugs it back in to connect a telephone call, that’s circuit switching (though that was all eventually automated). Circuit switching works because everything is sent over the wire all at once and through a centralized switch. That’s what the operators are connecting.

Packet switching works differently. Messages are divided into smaller bits, or packets, and sent over the wire a little at a time. They can be sent in any order because each packet has just enough information to know where in the order it belongs. Packets are sent through until the message is complete, and then re-assembled on the other side. There are a few advantages to a packet-switched network. Multiple messages can be sent at the same time over the same connection, split up into little packets. And crucially, the network doesn’t need centralization. Each node in the network can pass around packets to any other node without a central routing system. This made it ideal in a situation that requires extreme adaptability, like in the fallout of an atomic war, Paul Baran’s original reason for devising the concept.

When Davies began shopping around his idea for packet switching to the telecommunications industry, he was shown the door. “I went along to Siemens once and talked to them, and they actually used the words, they accused me of technical — they were really saying that I was being impertinent by suggesting anything like packet switching. I can’t remember the exact words, but it amounted to that, that I was challenging the whole of their authority.” Traditional telephone companies were not at all interested in packet switching. But ARPA was.

ARPA, later known as DARPA, was a research agency embedded in the United States Department of Defense. It was created in the throes of the Cold War — a reaction to the launch of the Sputnik satellite by Russia — but without a core focus. (It was created at the same time as NASA, so launching things into space was already taken.) To adapt to their situation, ARPA recruited research teams from colleges around the country. They acted as a coordinator and mediator between several active university research projects with a military focus.

ARPA’s organization had one surprising and crucial side effect. It was comprised mostly of professors and graduate students who were working at its partner universities. The general attitude was that as long as you could prove some sort of modest relation to a military application, you could pitch your project for funding. As a result, ARPA was filled with lots of ambitious and free-thinking individuals working inside of a buttoned-up government agency, with little oversight, coming up with the craziest and most world-changing ideas they could. “We expected that a professional crew would show up eventually to take over the problems we were dealing with,” recalls Bob Kahn, an ARPA programmer critical to the invention of the Internet. The “professionals” never showed up.

One of those professors was Leonard Kleinrock at UCLA. He was involved in the first stages of ARPANET, the network that would eventually become the Internet. His job was to help implement the most controversial part of the project, the still theoretical concept known as packet switching, which enabled a decentralized and efficient design for the ARPANET network. It is likely that the Internet would not have taken shape without it. Once packet switching was implemented, everything came together quickly. By the early 1980s, it was simply called the Internet. By the end of the 1980s, the Internet went commercial and global, including a node at CERN.

Once packet switching was implemented, everything came together quickly. By the early 1980s, it was simply called the Internet.

The first applications of the Internet are still in use today. FTP, used for transferring files over the network, was one of the first things built. Email is another one. It had been around for a couple of decades on a closed system already. When the Internet began to spread, email became networked and infinitely more useful.

Other projects were aimed at making the Internet more accessible. They had names like Archie, Gopher, and WAIS, and have largely been forgotten. They were united by a common goal of bringing some order to the chaos of a decentralized system. WAIS and Archie did so by indexing the documents put on the Internet to make them searchable and findable by users. Gopher did so with a structured, hierarchical system.

Kleinrock was there when the first message was ever sent over the Internet. He was supervising that part of the project, and even then, he knew what a revolutionary moment it was. However, he is quick to note that not everybody shared that feeling in the beginning. He recalls the sentiment held by the titans of the telecommunications industry like the Bell Telephone Company. “They said, ‘Little boy, go away,’ so we went away.” Most felt that the project would go nowhere, nothing more than a technological fad.

In other words, no one was paying much attention to what was going on and no one saw the Internet as much of a threat. So when that group of professors and graduate students tried to convince their higher-ups to let the whole thing be free — to let anyone implement the protocols of the Internet without a need for licenses or license fees — they didn’t get much pushback. The Internet slipped into public use and only the true technocratic dreamers of the late 20th century could have predicted what would happen next.

Berners-Lee returned to CERN in a fellowship position in 1984. It was four years after he had left. A lot had changed. CERN had developed their own network, known as CERNET, but by 1989, they arrived and hooked up to the new, internationally standard Internet. “In 1989, I thought,” he recalls, “look, it would be so much easier if everybody asking me questions all the time could just read my database, and it would be so much nicer if I could find out what these guys are doing by just jumping into a similar database of information for them.” Put another way, he wanted to share his own homepage, and get a link to everyone else’s.

What he needed was a way for researchers to share these “databases” without having to think much about how it all works. His way in with management was operating systems. CERN’s research teams all bring their own equipment, including computers, and there’s no way to guarantee they’re all running the same OS. Interoperability between operating systems is a difficult problem by design — generally speaking — the goal of an OS is to lock you in. Among its many other uses, a globally networked hypertext system like the web was a wonderful way for researchers to share notes between computers using different operating systems.

However, Berners-Lee had a bit of trouble explaining his idea. He’s never exactly been concise. By 1989, when he wrote “Information Management, a Proposal,” Berners-Lee already had worldwide ambitions. The document is thousands of words, filled with diagrams and charts. It jumps energetically from one idea to the next without fully explaining what’s just been said. Much of what would eventually become the web was included in the document, but it was just too big of an idea. It was met with a lukewarm response — that “Vague, but exciting” comment scrawled across the top.

A year later, in May of 1990, at the encouragement of his boss Mike Sendall (the author of that comment), Beners-Lee circulated the proposal again. This time it was enough to buy him a bit of time internally to work on it. He got lucky. Sendall understood his ambition and aptitude. He wouldn’t always get that kind of chance. The web needed to be marketed internally as an invaluable tool. CERN needed to need it. Taking complex ideas and boiling them down to their most salient, marketable points, however, was not Berners-Lee’s strength. For that, he was going to need a partner. He found one in Robert Cailliau.

Cailliau was a CERN veteran. By 1989, he’d worked there as a programmer for over 15 years. He’d embedded himself in the company culture, proving a useful resource helping teams organize their informational toolset and knowledge-sharing systems. He had helped several teams at CERN do exactly the kind of thing Berners-Lee was proposing, though at a smaller scale.

Temperamentally, Cailliau was about as different from Berners-Lee as you could get. He was hyper-organized and fastidious. He knew how to sell things internally, and he had made plenty of political inroads at CERN. What he shared with Berners-Lee was an almost insatiable curiosity. During his time as a nurse in the Belgian military, he got fidgety. “When there was slack at work, rather than sit in the infirmary twiddling my thumbs, I went and got myself some time on the computer there.” He ended up as a programmer in the military, working on war games and computerized models. He couldn’t help but look for the next big thing.

In the late 80s, Cailliau had a strong interest in hypertext. He was taking a look at Apple’s Hypercard as a potential internal documentation system at CERN when he caught wind of Berners-Lee’s proposal. He immediately recognized its potential.

Working alongside Berners-Lee, Cailliau pieced together a new proposal. Something more concise, more understandable, and more marketable. While Berners-Lee began putting together the technologies that would ultimately become the web, Cailliau began trying to sell the idea to interested parties inside of CERN.

The web, in all of its modern uses and ubiquity can be difficult to define as just one thing — we have the web on our refrigerators now. In the beginning, however, the web was made up of only a few essential features.

There was the web server, a computer wired to the Internet that can transmit documents and media (webpages) to other computers. Webpages are served via HTTP, a protocol designed by Berners-Lee in the earliest iterations of the web. HTTP is a layer on top of the Internet, and was designed to make things as simple, and resilient, as possible. HTTP is so simple that it forgets a request as soon as it has made it. It has no memory of the webpages its served in the past. The only thing HTTP is concerned with is the request it’s currently making. That makes it magnificently easy to use.

These webpages are sent to browsers, the software that you’re using to read this article. Browsers can read documents handed to them by server because they understand HTML, another early invention of Tim Berners-Lee. HTML is a markup language, it allows programmers to give meaning to their documents so that they can be understood. The “H” in HTML stands for Hypertext. Like HTTP, HTML — all of the building blocks programmers can use to structure a document — wasn’t all that complex, especially when compared to other hypertext applications at the time. HTML comes from a long line of other, similar markup languages, but Berners-Lee expanded it to include the link, in the form of an anchor tag. The <a> tag is the most important piece of HTML because it serves the web’s greatest function: to link together information.

The hyperlink was made possible by the Universal Resource Identifier (URI) later renamed to the Uniform Resource Indicator after the IETF found the word “universal” a bit too substantial. But for Berners-Lee, that was exactly the point. “Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished,” he wrote in his personal history of the web. Of all the original technologies that made up the web, Berners-Lee — and several others — have noted that the URL was the most important.

By Christmas of 1990, Tim Berners-Lee had all of that built. A full prototype of the web was ready to go.

Cailliau, meanwhile, had had a bit of success trying to sell the idea to his bosses. He had hoped that his revised proposal would give him a team and some time. Instead he got six months and a single staff member, intern Nicola Pellow. Pellow was new to CERN, on placement for her mathematics degree. But her work on the Line Mode Browser, which enabled people from around the world using any operating system to browse the web, proved a crucial element in the web’s early success. Berners-Lee’s work, combined with the Line Mode Browser, became the web’s first set of tools. It was ready to show to the world.

When the team at CERN submitted a paper on the World Wide Web to the San Antonio Hypertext Conference in 1991, it was soundly rejected. They went anyway, and set up a table with a computer to demo it to conference attendees. One attendee remarked:

They have chutzpah calling that the World Wide Web!

The highlight of the web is that it was not at all sophisticated. Its use of hypertext was elementary, allowing for only simplistic text based links. And without two-way links, pretty much a given in hypertext applications, links could go dead at any minute. There was no linkbase, or sophisticated metadata assigned to links. There was just the anchor tag. The protocols that ran on top of the Internet were similarly basic. HTTP only allowed for a handful of actions, and alternatives like Gopher or WAIS offered far more options for advanced connections through the Internet network.

It was hard to explain, difficult to demo, and had overly lofty ambition. It was created by a man who didn’t have much interest in marketing his ideas. Even the name was somewhat absurd. “WWW” is one of only a handful of acronyms that actually takes longer to say than the full “World Wide Web.”

We know how this story ends. The web won. It’s used by billions of people and runs through everything we do. It is among the most remarkable technological achievements of the 20th century.

It had a few advantages, of course. It was instantly global and widely accessible thanks to the Internet. And the URL — and its uniqueness — is one of the more clever concepts to come from networked computing.

But if you want to truly understand why the web succeeded we have to come back to information. One of Berners-Lee’s deepest held beliefs is that information is incredibly powerful, and that it deserves to be free. He believed that the Web could deliver on that promise. For it to do that, the web would need to spread.

Berners-Lee looked to his successors for inspiration: the Internet. The Internet succeeded, in part, because they gave it away to everyone. After considering several licensing options, he lobbied CERN to release the web unlicensed to the general public. CERN, an organization far more interested in particle physics breakthroughs than hypertext, agreed. In 1993, the web officially entered the public domain.

And that was the turning point. They didn’t know it then, but that was the moment the web succeeded. When Berners-Lee was able to make globally available information truly free.

In an interview some years ago, Berners-Lee recalled how it was that the web came to be.

I had the idea for it. I defined how it would work. But it was actually created by people.

That may sound like humility from one of the world’s great thinkers — and it is that a little — but it is also the truth. The web was Berners-Lee’s gift to the world. He gave it to us, and we made it what it was. He and his team fought hard at CERN to make that happen.

Berners-Lee knew that with the resources available to him he would never be able to spread the web sufficiently outside of the hallways of CERN. Instead, he packaged up all the code that was needed to build a browser into a library called libwww and posted it to a Usenet group. That was enough for some people to get interested in browsers. But before browsers would be useful, you needed something to browse.

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imkerf-uffle-d · 8 years ago

Note

The introduce to someone meaningful in muse's life for whoever you like (I can't seem to make the symbol)

((This isn’t quite what the meme was going for, but it’s what came out when I started writing. Also there’s a tiny reference to @fluffynexu‘s kickass tomato worldbuilding near the end.))

“Cethric. C’mon, it’s your birthday! You’re supposed to be out having fun, not moping around all alone,” Vette insisted, unsuccessfully trying to shake the much larger man out of his chair. When that didn’t work, she planted her back against his side, braced her feet against the wall beside him, and kicked with all her might, making exaggerated grunting noises for extra effect.

The chair scooched two centimeters to the right, but Cethric didn’t budge. Vette gave up and collapsed to the floor.

Cethric continued staring forlornly into the bottle of scotch in his hand as Vette picked herself back up. The only evidence that he’d paid any attention to her at all was a slight smile that didn’t quite reach past his mouth. She sighed, dropping the joking attitude to just watch him for a moment.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, “Really. And don’t give me any of your usual bantha shit; you’re obviously not fine.”

For a while, Cethric didn’t answer, and Vette thought he was choosing to ignore her. Just when she was ready to give up and leave him alone to work through his problems, he tore his gaze away from the scotch.

“I’m twenty-two today,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Vette leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms. “Is that supposed to be some sort of milestone for Sith?”

Cethric shook his head. “I’m now officially older than my brother ever got to be.”

“Oh.” Vette’s arms fell to her sides, and her expression softened in sympathy. Cethric, she suddenly realized, didn’t just look sad or tired. He looked like a man trying to peel back the layers of time with only the strength of his thousand-meter stare. Vette had enough experience with the feeling herself that she should have caught it right away. “I… I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said softly.

“His name was Osarric.” Cethric nodded, beginning to search his pocket for something. “I was only nine when he died.”

“How did–?”

“Wild tuk’atas. Or that’s how they found him, at least. Odds are it was set up,” Cethric said before she could even finish the question, “He’s why my parents waited so long to send me to Korriban, actually. Why they pushed me so hard in my training. They didn’t want me to… fail. Like he did.”

He removed his hand from his pocket and held it out to her. In his palm was a silver, disk-shaped holoprojector with a stylized star of Ahmum engraved in its lid. He flipped it open, and the slowly rotating bust of a man who looked to be about Cethric’s age appeared above it.

Vette could see the family resemblance almost immediately. Like Cethric, he had the same dark skin, the same nose, the same wide shoulders. His hair was buzzed short, and his head was more rectangular. He looked like he weighed less. But other than that, she could be looking at a holo of Cethric himself.

“This was taken right before he left for Korriban,” Cethric whispered, “He never came back.”

All Vette could think of to do was wrap her arms around Cethric and hold him tight.

#answered #oc: cethric #my writing #ivy plays swtor

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tipofthemoon · 6 years ago

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The Practice of Magic

"Watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." -Roald Dahl

Magic is a layered and transformative act. Its power lies in taking the mundane and imbuing it with spirit. Where someone else might see a candle, you see a focal point of power. They see a table covered in various objects, you see an altar of worship. It is this constant internal process of re-framing the world at large that lets us re-enchant it. By using symbolic thinking, you transform iron into gold. A sigil attracts love and devotion, a pentagram drawn in the air banishes bad luck and a spoken word calls in a spirit guide. We give the universe meaning with our thoughts and will. This is the foundation of magic.

Magic is both an act of will and an act of submission. You must open up trust the universe.

Sometimes the practice of magic is something done quietly and internally. Or sometimes it's done during a rite or ceremony. But the underlying process is the same. If you ask a witch when they do magic, most will answer that they do it all the time. That might sound odd. You might envision someone walking around all day muttering spells and incantations. But magic is so much more than casting spells. Magic is changing the world and changing the world is a lot of work.

Magic is both an act of will and an act of submission. You must open up and trust the universe. Much of what is below will seem like common self-help advice. In older grimoires and magical texts, magic is all about creating change in the physical world with your will alone. That is a big part of it. And to be honest it's why we are all here, but you don't light a candle and suddenly get a bank account full of money. Magic is a real and subtle force. Our thoughts change our reality in more ways than one. But none of it is easy. It is a life-long practice. And it starts with a foundation of simple exercises.

Finding your path – Following your gut

You won't find a rule book or a single person to tell you exactly how to practice. Even this article can be thrown out. In all cases, you must follow your gut. You may learn a ritual or spell that rings true but in the middle of performing it feel the impulse to improvise or change things. Always, always, always, follow that instinct.

Honing your instinct is one of the most vital aspects of your craft. There are many names for your instinctual self. Some refer to it as their higher self, subconscious, guardian angels, or holy daimons. Whatever you choose to call this guiding force the more comfortable you become with it, the better you will be.

You are the creator of your own journey. Follow your spark, curate your desires, and hone your instincts. Magic can be found everywhere if you trust yourself. Finding alignment with the universe means you can sense the underlying energies and tap into them to manifest your will.

Introspection and Contemplation - Creating truth from chaos.

Witchcraft is a religion of work, and much of it is self-work. We experience life through the lens of self. We are the center of every experience. Since the day you were born you've only seen things from your perspective, and through your eyes. Thus, self-work will always be the foundation of your craft.

If you want love or a relationship, the first step of that spell is to love yourself. If you feel unlovable, other people will pick up on that. This doesn't mean that you ARE unlovable, or that you need to change yourself completely. It most likely means you need to take a hard look in the mirror and discover the beauty that is already there.

This applies to every spell you do. You always start with yourself. Paying attention to how your own thoughts and actions affect the world around you. And removing things that do not serve you in both your outer and inner worlds will have a profound change.

Many religions touch on rules or ethical codes to follow. Witchcraft asks you to find those rules yourself and to embody them in full. It is one thing to abstain from what someone else defines as sin. It's wholly another to discover your darker self and fight the battle there. To wage war on your home turf takes dedication.

Rituals & Rites – Celebrating the divine

Rites, ceremonies, and rituals are at the heart of witchcraft. Embracing the changing seasons, or the phases of the moon helps aligns us with the earth. You don't have to honor the Sabbats as written in any book. You could create your own meaningful rites. I live in the northeastern part of the united states and winters are long. Observing the seasons helps me find light when the days are short.

The moon cycles are a perfect time to perform a ritual. These times feel ripe with power. You can look up into the sky and see the source. You can look around you and observe the subtle shift in the people around. Imbuing the world with magic means noticing the small things. Maybe it's a full moon in Sagittarius. Instead of going to work and sitting dully at our desks, we watch the world sing with the Sagittarian power and spontaneity. When we are tapped into these energies, we can keep our balance in our hectic lives.

Rituals can be as elaborate or as simple as you like. You probably have little everyday routines already. Using what we already know, we can enchant them with magic. A facial care regime can become a beauty ritual. A morning cup of tea turns into an invigorating rite.

Combined together these practices help sharpen your senses, align you with the universe, and create a foundation of magical thinking.

source https://tipofthemoon.store/blog/2019/2/28/the-practice-of-magic

#witchcraft #witchblr

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sincerelybluevase · 8 years ago

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Sunday Symbolism: meaningful names, part 2: the nuns, part 1

I am back with the nuns this time. Well, part of them, anyway. I have looked at saints/Christian entities when trying to determine the meaning of the names, which I think is appropriate since we are dealing with Anglican nuns; they will have chosen their names with religious context in mind. However, I’ve also looked at the words their names are derived from to see whether those can add an extra layer to this analysis.

Sister Monica-Joan –Antonia

Sister Monica-Joan is a really interesting character to analyse with regard to name symbolism, not in the least because she actually has three names: her religious name (consisting of two separate ones) and her Christian name. Let’s start with her religious name. The original meaning of ‘Monica’ is unknown, though it has been suggested that it may derive from the Latin ‘moneo’, which means ‘advisor’, or the Greek word ‘monos’, ‘one’. Seeing as Sister Monica-Joan gives some of the best advice of all the characters in CtM, from medical knowledge (the baby with cystic fibrosis) to practicalities (‘put down the bananas, they’re superfluous to the situation’ comes to mind), it seems very fitting. However, Sister Monica-Joan probably picked it because of Saint Monica, the patron saint of wives and abuse victims. I believe that this is never fully developed in the TV-series (correct me if I am wrong), but in the books, Sister Monica-Joan came from a noble and very affluent family. This did not mean that she was happy. In fact, she explains that the controlling and abusive behaviour of men, in particular of her father towards her mother and her uncle towards her aunt, was part of her reasons for wanting to stay unmarried. She abhorred the idea that a husband would have complete power over her, like her father did over her mother, because this power was abused too often (there is a particular horrible scene in which she explains that her aunt got locked up in an insane asylum because this suited her uncle, as well as another scene in which all of her mother’s teeth were pulled on advice of the male doctor). It was marital abuse that made Sister Monica-Joan become a nun, so what could be a more fitting name than that of the patron saint for those of marital abuse?

The second part of her religious name derives from ‘Joanna’, which is the feminine form of ‘Johannus’. ‘Johannus’ derives from the Hebrew ‘Yochanan’, which means ‘Yahweh is gracious’. Not much to add to that; it seems fitting for a nun to think God gracious. Saint John (of which there are several) may have influenced Sister Monica-Joan’s choice, but I think that Joan of Arc may have been a greater influence. This is pure speculation, but I think that a peasant girl blessed with revelations who stayed unmarried and showed a male-dominated world exactly how much a woman could do must have been a great comfort to Sister Monica-Joan.

Now, what about Sister Monica-Joan’s Christian name? ‘Antonia’ is the feminine form of ‘Antonius’. The meaning of this name is, again, unknown. I guess this is somewhat of a pattern and can be seen as symbolical in its own sense: after all, Sister Monica-Joan suffers from dementia and has trouble to collect important information at times, too. Now, back to her name: Antonia can also refer to Saint Anthony. Again, there are multiple Saint Anthonies. I think that the most interesting may be Saint Anthony of Padua. Like Sister Monica-Joan, he came from a wealthy family but swore to lead a life in the service of God and thus in poverty instead.

Sister Julienne– Louise

‘Julienne’ is the feminine form of the French ‘Julian’, which is in turn derived from the Latin ‘Julius’, which means ‘downy-bearded’. Jup. This leads me to believe that we will not find much symbolism in the literal meaning of Sister Julienne’s name, but rather in other people who shared her name. Sister Julienne has probably chosen her name because of Saint Julian the Hospitaler (though it must be said that there are more early saints who have this name). This saint started out as a hot-headed guy who committed quite some crimes. Repentant, he travelled to Rome and later made a hospital and inn for the poor. I think Sister Julienne may have picked this particular saint because he tried the help the poor by giving them shelter as well as medical aid. And, just like Saint Julian the Poor, she has made vows of poverty.

EDIT: @like-an-officer-and-a-sergeant pointed out that it is highly probably that Sister Julienne was named after Saint Julian of Norwhich, who is mentioned several times in the show. She wrote the book ‘revelations of divine love’, which is very important to Sister Julienne: she even keeps a photograph of herself and Charles in there. However, like Saint Julian, her religious calling was stronger than her love for an earthly man. I imagine that ‘revelations of divine love’ gave Sister Julienne a lot of comfort when she struggled with her calling and her feelings for Charles.

Now, on to her Christian name, which is Louise. This is the French feminine form of ‘Louis’, which is derived from ‘Ludwig’, which, in turn, derives from ‘Chlodovech’. The name ‘Chlodovech’ is composed of the words ‘hlud’, which means famous, and ‘wig’, which means ‘war’ or ‘battle’. If we take the meaning of this name not too literally, it could mean that Sister Julienne becomes famous in her battle against poverty and disease. Indeed, she seems to be a well-loved, well-respected and well-known figure in the community of Poplar.

I have to admit that Sister Julienne’s name symbolism remains a bit of an enigma to me. Though I can see some symbolism, it does not seem to fit her personality entirely. Also, how come that both her names are French? Let me know what you guys think!

Sister Evangelina– Enid

Evangelina means ‘good news’ and is derived from two Greek words. This does not mean that it is an old name; quite the opposite, in fact! It was first used by an American poet in 1847 in the epic poem ‘Evangeline’, which is about a girl looking for her lost love Gabriel. I think this is a funny addition to the character of Sister Evangelina, because, unlike what her name implies, she is really rather traditional. I guess that she, as a nurse and midwife, can bring both good and bad news (though, hopefully, mainly good news). In this sense, her name highlights part of what undoubtedly makes the career of midwife so appealing to Sister Evangelina.

Now, the name ‘Enid’ is derived from the Welsh ‘enaid’, meaning ‘soul’ or ‘life’. Sister Evangelina knew from a young age that she wanted to become a nun. Her name signifies this part of her life: ‘soul’ is a very important concept in Christianity and definitely something that Sister Evangelina will have pondered about a lot. On the other hand, she is also a midwife, which is again signified by her name meaning ‘life’: she literally helps bring new life into the world.

Next week I’ll be back with the other nuns. That post will probably be a little less well-rounded, because we don’t know all the Christian names of the nuns+ Cynthia was a real person, meaning her name will not be chosen bearing CtM symbolism in mind. I’m going to see how I’m going to work around that. I may do some of the nurses just to make a proper post, but we’ll see.

#call the midwife #sister julienne #sister monica-joan #sister evangelina

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wolfflowers · 4 years ago

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Hmmrrr I should look into dream dictionaries and what the witchy world has to say on dream interpretations. Twice now it felt like a spirit visited me or acknowledged me by being present in the dream and its story.

Those two (despite being very different) felt important and it felt like an honor to see them so close to me, and that they liked or acknowledged something in me. But I have no idea who they are! And I'm not sure how to research them or who to ask.

For my own reference I'm talking about:

1 ) The electric or lightning monkey with a long tail in a "fighting house" (for training? Like martial arts?) which was also a big home/ apartment for the homeless or travelers (maybe kids? Orphans or neglected).

He fought a lot in anger, but not because he enjoyed violence. Maybe for justice? Righteous anger? Had a 1×1 or 2×2 square tapestry made old beige-white material (not paper, it was flexible in the wind).

His image was a stylised monkey with his long limbs and tail forming a circle around his body, the ink was green or red.

The last scene was me walking past it after observing it (was being shown around the place) and yellow electricity sparked within the ink for a moment, and something invisible made the tapestry ripple as if in the wind. I think his deep voice resonated from somewhere quietly.

2 ) The second walked up to me (was it twice the same man in 2 diff dreams, or 2 diff ppl but somehow related, or maybe not related at all???)

First sequence was in a wides, warm and sunny canyon of yellow stone and sand with ppl walking about. I saw a few shallow holes (looking for something or testing the ground?), and a line of ppl digging at the ground one layer at a time towards the canyon wall with really solid rods (like it was their job?) I tried not to get in anyone's way but there were so many ppl!

In another area a large group were playing a sport. I walked passed a few players while keeping myself out of their game and in the shade to join a line of spectators. I was nearly on the end of the line on the far right.

The game (or now it felt like a dance and music performance?) finished, and a proud muscular man with yellow and blue (beaded? and leather cords?) accessories on his arms and chest walked up to me, or I was passing him and I ask,

"Excuse me, I liked your performance." And here I'm worried on how to phrase my sentence because WHITE GUILT DON'T SAY SOMETHING RACIST OR IGNORANT. "An instrument that played in your music sounded like one I heard that was from Peru. Are you perhaps from that region? Like from..."

And here I couldn't remember the name of the country, think it started with a V and had and A somewhere? He let out a happy bark of laughter and smiled, extending his right arm with the elbow bent down and his open hand up for me to clasp.

"I am from A..v...z..a(?), and yes we did use that/a similar instrument!"

I look at his extended hand and I'm like huh? Me?? We clasp hands and he holds my elbow or shoulder with his left hand. I'm not sure what to do so I hold my left hand over my chest, a bit shy, and he talks to me in his native tongue.

I'm looking at him in the eyes and I don't know what he's saying but I respectfully let him continue. He seems to have finished with one clap on my elbow/shoulder, then repeats what he said in English so I could understand! Then claps me on the left shoulder with a calmer smile.

It felt like a series of small blessings for the coming future that I'm not used to say, like "may the rivers in your path let you pass", all nature-based. It felt so kind??

And just... why me? Why this much kindness for asking a question? Is it because of my interest/curiosity? Because he felt like it? Or he really enjoys helping others? It felt nice because it sounded like he meant it. ((Think this dream was because I watched a Japanese man giving his tips as a comic book/manga artist and he had a translator repeat in English.))

3 ) This dream was far longer an elaborate, involved being in an English town with stones for roads and old houses huddled closely to each other along the way. Apparently it was normal to see actors dressed in their roles and cosplayers (acting or just enjoying themselves) walking about in the busy town.

Pro actors sometimes started reenacting scenes or would improvise, sometimes even with the cosplayers (crossover galore!) and the public for the fun of it.

I was walking and saw ppl standing on the side of the road looking and smiling at an actor, I think it was HP based (not my decision lol), it was a melancholic Mad-eye Moody or Mr Filch sitting down in the shadows on the road, looking up at the sky and singing something he was upset about.

But it was all comedy for the audience because he's dramatic and often a sour character who causes problems to others.

I watched as I kept walking and grinned, noticing a few other actors and cosplayers in the surrounding audience.

I'm in a different area with just as many ppl, and it seems like a improvised scene had just ended and ppl started to amble away. I noticed a very tall mechanical Horrortale Papyrus and exclaimed something, they heard me and turned around with a grin.

They used (or painted) rusted metal for the exposed bones and mechanical joints (because the cosplayer, like most humans, was shorter than horror!Papyrus). Even the nails, screws and bolts had rust trails. They did a very good job, despite his character's sad story.

Then several other Papyruses (all UT or HT) and ppl walk up so we gather a small group going "Hey I love this guy!" "I love this guy too!"

Then the scene changes and all the Papyrus cosplayers are standing in a line extending to my right.) One at a time stands in front of me, and they automatically get swiped to the left so the next one in line faces me.

I don't do any swiping motion; it feels like a character select screen, and they're kind of floating a few inches off the ground. Yet they're still the cosplayers!

So I just. Tell every individual what I personally think and like about their costume. Some react like Paps would which is always fun to see at conventions (STARS I MISS CONS!) ((Not sure why I'm doing this tho. Maybe because I like commenting on ppl's art online?))

But the last in line is a man that just sticks out from the rest, and it feels like he came specifically to see me or to tell me something.

I think he's Native American: has tan skin, in shape, tall, has something dangling from his neck in a wide U over his chest, made with natural things/objects? (WHAT ARE WORDS)

But what makes him feel different than just a plain human was a tall square or rectangular bag/sack over his head. The bag was beige-brown, looked worn, stood upright, and it looked as if something solid and rectangular stood over his head under the sack to give this square shape.

The bag had something painted on it in black red n blue, but I can't remember what it was; was it a symbol, words, a face, like a depiction of a mask (of a spirit, deity, or a curse?)

So he stood there floating a few inches off the ground and told me something in a... sort of sad/solemn tone. I think his voice was muffled.

And I'm not sure if this was one whole person, or a spirit/deity/something using this man's body to speak to me through him.

And I can't remember what he said. Sad news? A warning? And ancestor just reaching out?

Now that I'm awake, I'm wondering if it was the spirit of someone who was killed with a sack over their head or had their head cut off in an execution, with something offensive painted on the sack (because my known families lived, and I currently live, on the lands of Native Americans, where white ppl caused a genocide).

Or, maybe, the man had passed away naturally and they covered his head so ppl could visit? Or he had a nasty head wound, or deformity, or lesions, so they covered his head with the sack and painted something meaningful before he was burried/burned? That would be a bit nicer.

#dreams

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babbleuk · 6 years ago

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Voices in AI – Episode 89: A Conversation with Doug Lenat

[voices_in_ai_byline]

About this Episode

Episode 89 of Voices in AI features Byron speaking with Cycorp CEO Douglas Lenat on developing AI and the very nature of intelligence.

Listen to this episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

Transcript Excerpt

Byron Reese: This is Voices in AI brought to you by GigaOm, and I’m Byron Reese. I couldn’t be more excited today. My guest is Douglas Lenat. He is the CEO of Cycorp of Austin, Texas where GigaOm is based, and he’s been a prominent researcher in AI for a long time. He’s been awarded the biannual IJCAI computer and thought award in 1976. He created the machine learning program AM. He worked on (symbolic, not statistical) machine learning with his AM and Eurisko programs, knowledge representation, cognitive economy, blackboard systems and what he dubbed in 1984 as “ontological engineering.”

He’s worked in military simulations, numerous projects for the government for intelligence, with scientific organizations. In 1980 he published a critique of conventional random mutation Darwinism. He authored a series of articles in The Journal of Artificial Intelligence exploring the nature of heuristic rules. But that’s not all: he was one of the original Fellows of the Triple AI. And he’s the only individual to observe on the scientific advisory board of both Apple and Microsoft. He is a Fellow of the Triple AI and the cognitive science society, one of the original founders of TTI/ Vanguard in 1991. And on and on and on… and he was named one of the WIRED 25. Welcome to the show!

Douglas Lenat: Thank you very much Byron, my pleasure.

I have been so looking forward to our chat and I would just love, I mean I always start off asking what artificial intelligence is and what intelligence is. And I would just like to kind of jump straight into it with you and ask you to explain, to bring my listeners up to speed with what you’re trying to do with the question of common sense and artificial intelligence.

I think that the main thing to say about intelligence is that it’s one of those things that you recognize it when you see it, or you recognize it in hindsight. So intelligence to me is not just knowing things, not just having information and knowledge but knowing when and how to apply it, and actually successfully applying it in those cases. And what that means is that it’s all well and good to store millions or billions of facts.

But intelligence really involves knowing the rules of thumb, the rules of good judgment, the rules of good guessing that we all almost take for granted in our everyday life in common sense, and that we may learn painfully and slowly in some field where we’ve studied and practiced professionally, like petroleum engineering or cardiothoracic surgery or something like that. And so common sense rules like: bigger things can’t fit into smaller things. And if you think about it, every time that we say anything or write anything to other people, we are constantly injecting into our sentences pronouns and ambiguous words and metaphors and so on. We expect the reader or the listener has that knowledge, has that intelligence, has that common sense to decode, to disambiguate what we’re saying.

So if I say something like “Fred couldn’t put the gift in the suitcase because it was too big,” I don’t mean the suitcase was too big, I must mean that the gift was too big. In fact if I had said “Fred can’t put the gift in the suitcase because it’s too small” then obviously it would be referring to the suitcase. And there are millions, actually tens of millions of very general principles about how the world works: like big things can’t fit into smaller things, that we all assume that everybody has and uses all the time. And it’s the absence of that layer of knowledge which has made artificial intelligence programs so brittle for the last 40 or 50 years.

My number one question I ask every [AI is a] Turing test sort of thing, [which] is: what’s bigger a nickel or the sun? And there’s never been one that’s been able to answer it. And that’s the problem you’re trying to solve.

Right. And I think that there’s really two sorts of phenomena going on here. One is understanding the question and knowing the sense in which you’re talking about ‘bigger.’ One in the sense of perception if you’re holding up a nickel in front of your eye and so on and the other of course, is objectively knowing that the sun is actually quite a bit larger than a typical nickel and so on.

And so one of the things that we have to bring to bear, in addition to everything I already said, are Grice’s rules of communicating between human beings where we have to assume that the person is asking us something which is meaningful. And so we have to decide what meaningful question would they really possibly be having in mind like if someone says “Do you know what time it is?” It’s fairly juvenile and jerky to say “yes” because obviously what they mean is: please tell me the time and so on. And so in the case of the nickel and the sun, you have to disambiguate whether the person is talking about a perceptual phenomenon or an actual unstated physical reality.

So I wrote an article that I put a lot of time and effort into and I really liked it. I ran it on GigaOm and it was 10 questions that Alexa and Google Home answered differently but objectively. They should have been identical, and in every one I kind of tried to dissect what went wrong.

And so I’m going to give you two of them and my guess is you’ll probably be able to intuit in both of them what the answer, what the problem was. The first one was: who designed the American flag? And they gave me different answers. One said “Betsy Ross,” and one said “Robert Heft,” so why do you think that happened?

All right so in some sense, both of them are doing what you might call an ‘animal level intelligence’ of not really understanding what you’re asking at all. But in fact doing the equivalent of (I won’t even call it natural language processing), let’s call it ‘string processing,’ looking at processed web pages, looking for the confluence, and preferably in the same order, of some of the words and phrases that were in your question and looking for essentially sentences of the form: X designed the U.S. flag or something.

And it’s really no different than if you ask, “How tall is the Eiffel Tower?” and you get two different answers: one based on answering from the one in Paris and one based on the one in Las Vegas. And so it’s all well and good to have that kind of superficial understanding of what it is you’re actually asking, as long as the person who’s interacting with the system realizes that the system isn’t really understanding them.

It’s sort of like your dog fetching a newspaper for you. It’s something which is you know wagging its tail and getting things to put in front of you, and then you as the person who has intelligence has to look at it and disambiguate what does this answer actually imply about what it thought the question was, as it were, or what question is it actually answering and so on.

But this is one of the problems that we experienced about 40 years ago in artificial intelligence in the in the 1970s. We built AI systems using what today would be very clearly a neural net technology. Maybe there’s been one small tweak in that field that’s worth mentioning involving additional hidden layers and convolution, and we built a AIs using symbolic reasoning that used logic much like our Cyc system does today.

And again the actual representation looks very similar to what it does today and there had to be a bunch of engineering breakthroughs along the way to make that happen. But essentially in the 1970s we built AIs that were powered by the same two sources of power you find today, but they were extremely brittle and they were brittle because they didn’t have common sense. They didn’t have that kind of knowledge that was necessary in order to understand the context in which things were said, in order to understand the full meaning of what was said. They were just superficially reasoning. They had the veneer of intelligence.

We might have a system which was the world’s expert at deciding what kind of meningitis a patient might be suffering from. But if you told it about your rusted out old car or you told it about someone who is dead, the system would blithely tell you what kind of meningitis they probably were suffering from because it simply didn’t understand things like inanimate objects don’t get human diseases and so on.

And so it was clear that somehow we had to pull the mattress out of the road in order to let traffic toward real AI proceed. Someone had to codify the tens of millions of general principles like non humans don’t get human diseases, and causes don’t happen before their effects, and large things don’t fit into smaller things, and so on, and that it was very important that somebody do this project.

We thought we were actually going to have a chance to do it with Alan Kay at the Atari research lab and he assembled a great team. I was a professor at Stanford in computer science at the time, so I was consulting on that, but that was about the time that Atari peaked and then essentially had financial troubles as did everyone in the video game industry at that time, and so that project splintered into several pieces. But that was the core of the idea that somehow someone needed to collect all this common sense and represent it and make it available to make our AIs less brittle.

And then an interesting thing happened: right at that point in time when I was beating my chest and saying ‘hey someone please do this,’ which was America was frightened to hear that the Japanese had announced something they called the ‘fifth generation computing effort.’ Japan basically threatened to do in computing hardware and software and AI what they had just finished doing in consumer electronics, and in the automotive industry: namely wresting leadership away from the West. And so America was very scared.

Congress passed something that’s how you can tell it was many decades ago. Congress quickly passed something, which was called the National Cooperative Research Act, which basically said ‘hey all you large American companies: normally if you colluded on R & D, we would prosecute you for antitrust violations, but for the next 10 years, we promise we won’t do that.’ And so around 1981 a few research consortia sprang up in the United States for the first time in computing and hardware and artificial intelligence and the first one of those was right here in Austin. It was called MCC, the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation. Twenty five large American companies each contributed a small number of millions of dollars a year to fund high risk, high payoff, long term R & D projects, projects that might take 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years to reach fruition, but which, if they succeeded, could help keep America competitive.

And Admiral Bob Inman who’s also an Austin resident, one of my favorite people, one of the smartest and nicest people I’ve ever met, was the head of MCC and he came and visited me at Stanford and said “Hey look Professor, you’re making all this noise about what somebody ought to do. You have six or seven graduate students. If you do that here if it’s going to take you a few thousand person years. That means it’s going to take you a few hundred years to do that project. If you move to the wilds of Austin, Texas and we put in ten times that effort, then you’ll just barely live to see the end of it a few decades from now.”

And that was a pretty convincing argument, and in some sense that is the summary of what I’ve been doing for the last 35 years here is taking time off from research to do an engineering project, a massive engineering project called Cycorp, which is collecting that information and representing it formally, putting it all in one place for the first time.

And the good news is since you’ve waited thirty five years to talk to me Byron, is that we’re nearing completion which is a very exciting phase to be in. And so most of our funding these days at Cycorp doesn’t come from the government anymore, doesn’t come from just a few companies anymore, it comes from a large number of very large companies that are actually putting our technology into practice, not just funding it for research reasons.

So that’s big news. So when you have it all, and to be clear, just to summarize all of that: you’ve spent the last 35 years working on a system of getting all of these rules of thumb like ‘big things can’t go in small things,’ and to list them all out every one of them (dark things are darker than light things). And then not just list them like in an Excel spreadsheet, but to learn how to express them all in ways that they can be programmatically used.

So what do you have in the end when you have all of that? Like when you turn it on, will it tell me which is bigger: a nickel or the sun?

Sure. And in fact most of the questions that you might ask that you might think of as any one ought to be able to answer this question, Cyc is actually able to do a pretty good job of. It doesn’t understand that unrestricted natural language, so sometimes we’ll have to encode the question in logic in a formal language, but the language is pretty big. In fact the language has about a million and a half words and of those, about 43,000 are what you might think of as relationship type words: like ‘bigger than’ and so on and so by representing all of the knowledge in that logical language instead of say just collecting all of that in English, what you’re able to do is to have the system do automatic mechanical inference, logical deduction, so that if there is something which logically follows from one or two or 2,000 statements, then Cyc (our system) will grind through automatically and mechanically come up with that entailment.

And so this is really the place where we diverge from everyone else in AI who’s either satisfied with machine learning representation, which is sort of very shallow, almost stimulus response pair-type representation of knowledge; or people who are working in knowledge graphs and triple and quad stores and what people call ontology is these days, and so on which really are almost, you can think of them like three or four word English sentences and there are an awful lot of problems you can solve, just with machine learning. T

There is an even larger set of problems you can solve with machine learning, plus that kind of taxonomic knowledge representation and reasoning. But in order to really capture the full meaning, you really need an expressive logic: something that is as expressive as English. And think in terms of taking one of your podcasts and forcing it to be rewritten as a series of three word sentences. It would be a nightmare. Or imagine taking something like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and trying to rewrite that as a set of three or four word sentences. It probably could theoretically be done, but it wouldn’t be any fun to do and it certainly wouldn’t be any fun to read or listen to, if people did that. And yet that’s the tradeoff that people are making. The tradeoff is that if you use that limited a logical representation, then it’s very easy and well understood to efficiently, very efficiently, do the mechanical inference that’s needed.

So if you represent a set is a type of relationships, you can combine them and chain them together and conclude that a nickel is a type of coin or something like that. But there really is this difference between the expressive logics that have been understood by philosophers for over 100 years starting with Frege, and Whitehead and Russell and so on and and others, and the limited logics that others in AI are using today.

And so we essentially started digging this tunnel from the other side and said “We’re going to be as expressive as we have to and we’ll find ways to make it efficient,” and that’s what we’ve done. That’s really the secret of what we’ve done is not just be massive on codification and formalization of all of that common sense knowledge, but finding what turned out to be about 1100 tricks and techniques for speeding up the inferring, the deducing process so that we could get answers in real time instead of involving thousands of years of computation.

Listen to this episode or read the full transcript at www.VoicesinAI.com

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Byron explores issues around artificial intelligence and conscious computers in his new book The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity.

from Gigaom https://gigaom.com/2019/06/13/voices-in-ai-episode-89-a-conversation-with-doug-lenat/

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