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Flexing the Blur

Adventures in Multiplicity

It occurs to me relationships are momentary lapses. Pet a dog, and it shifts my alert self. Watch a cat loll in my lap, as I am right now, with a dribble of drool on her lip, and the alert self fogs. Happens all the time.

I see these simple examples of relationships as a sense of space within empathy. It’s not an oxytocin cloud; it’s alive — life as multiple, a living blur, as in “I am all ablur.” What is that? (more at Medium)

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Hello World

David Weinberger is a senior researcher at the Berkman Center and “writes on the effect of technology on ideas.” He has several interesting books. Too Big to Know is one. I like it for a number of reasons, but primarily because it implies an ethics at the crossroads of media and world. In response to this book I wrote to him:

That the world as too big to know presents a "ruffle" on the edge of knowledge, and that ruffle is interconnectedness, something bigger than knowledge. I’m drawn to write you because, on first blush, your thinking has profound implications for ethics, identity, democracy and justice. It also has profound implications for how we act ‘where we are’ — because we must adopt this new consciousness in order to act well.

The ruffle at the edge of knowledge is not only composed of collaboration, of the proposal that to be human in this world is to be in snippets and to be comfortable as pieces of a bigger puzzle. The ruffle is also evidence of interaction. It’s the between-space in two walls of facing mirrors; comfort in our relationship to multiplicity. (read more on Medium)

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Dispatch from Creator Culture

The Personal & Creative Power of Daily Life

(This note was spawned from an email exchange with Damien Walter. Thank you, Damien.)

I’m not surprised that the idea of Creator Culture is surfacing. A decade of massive wealth extraction has been brutally destructive in terms of local vitality, jobs, school funding — general public wealth has greatly suffered. In the same stretch of time, an equally massive distributed social communication has occurred. Through distributed communication something has happened. In the sharing of ideas, processes and production people’s lives as creators is made more widely evident and loosely joined. (Read more on Medium.)

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Speed Data

In his essay on the limits of judgement George Miller, a founder of cognitive science, writes:

We expect that, as we increase the amount of input information, the observer will begin to make more and more errors; we can test the limits of accuracy of his absolute judgments.

On first reading this seems evident. However, I think Miller makes a series of great cases for what I’ll call the benefits of fuzzy reality that can have direct impact on how we view the onrush of data. Comfort with fuzzy reality can increase our capacity to deal with increased information that seems to glut judgement and stymie communication... (Read more on Medium.)

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Applying ‘wearable tech’ to Levis, as Google/Levis has done, has begun the popularization of a kind of ‘google particle.’ A tech-marketing which tugs at the concept of “we”, ‘the last humans’, makes it ductile, pulls it from our nature roots onto a second, transmissive skin of us. Applying ‘tattoos’ to our skin, as the University of Illinois has done, is a kind of Shelly-like (Frankenstein) mastery, a trans-materialization of the ‘skin-effect’ in electronics onto the white skin of its models. But, it’s the research into transmissive nano-particles, research done at University of Basel ,which will become the ‘undoing’ of us.  ‘God knows’, I am no luddite. But, I am what was once called a socialist. For my conceptual and physical reality to stir, to connect with other beings and things, for my ‘self’ to be connected with all things, equity must continually stir at the root of all beings and things. Soon, the substrate of all electronics will not only be flexible, wavy, super-stretchy, woven, stylish, it will be drinkable, edible, sub-dermal. Once drunk, what is there to say to someone you meet on a bridge or on a path who refuses such potions, other than “I don’t know you.” Or, “You’re so unique!” Or, “I feel sorry for you . . .”

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"Exactly!"

Nick Mauss nervous system, 2014

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Structure(s).

Kansuke Yamamoto c.1935

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Things which move in space (and that’s lots of things) vary instant to instant and they do things which are made up of massive variability, innately — be it an asteroid or a pelican. People too (as in the case above, 3 philosophers dining.) In terms of designing things, a state-space of a device should result in or enable a kind of flow-state... there should be continuity, ease, transparency — a balance between discovery and usefulness. I suppose there could be, and often is, an imbalance. Purposeful imbalance leads to surprise. Imbalance which lacks purpose or flow-state just breeds confusion — such devices are ‘broken.’  A tool shouldn’t fail. Getting to useful tools is a process of failure. The above ‘map’ is not sequential. Tapping into state-spaces (understanding the multiplicity in them) is hard in that a temptation is to read the map as 0,1,2,3,4 . . . This reading would be akin to sequencing out a design or creative or eating process — something we innately know would be just plain wrong. That we know it is wrong is something to tap into — or just go with.

Instead: 

The screenshot [above] shows the state space for 3 philosophers as visualized in the state space explorer.

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Grant Custer is a seer. Seems to put things through processes which enable them to be seen or to be transparent — be seen as in revealed through the right amount of simplification, be transparent as in through the ‘right’ levers of design. I like this quote, and his thinking, as they each reveal a sense of ‘state-spaces’ — i.e., ways of being we (people) are either confined by, bewildered by or freed of in everyday life. Seems we often see these ‘state-spaces’ as culture and so somehow it is seen as the independent expressions of people, not as quite dependent evidence of the State. And, if I follow Custer’s logic, this seems to be a gross oversimplification of an abstraction. If I follow his ‘will to simplicity’ the presence of our own state-spaces are constantly revealing The State. Through not only his logic, but his easy way of concepting, something clicks.

I have been slowly progressing through Seeing Like a State. The basic idea is that administering a state requires certain simplifying abstractions – so far it has focused on the implementation of land ownership for the purpose of collecting taxes – and that once in place these abstractions are...

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One girl walked the streets of London — yep everyone. 3milesanhour

In this world, there remains field proximity in the lone traveller. It is the stretch of the social metaphor, the loop of continuity, the sense that to walk on earth is a tie that binds — like it or not.

And, so it is with Noelle Poulson. She did this walk last year. As she says, curiosity lifts the veil of ‘need-to-know’ and simply propels — as it propels her. In this way, curiosity seems a ‘notation’ of (social) nature. One that doesn’t necessarily scribe, but it does create forms of sediment.

As she says: Hi, I'm Noelle. I think about stuff. I write about stuff. I do things then forget I’m doing them because I get curious about other things. I am me.

So, what is “me?” The only answer is to find out.

Her current site: http://anewstretchofroad.com/

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Dirt Track

M12 Hornet: Cultural, Kinetic Sculpture

Rural Colorado has 'mobile artifacts' of local culture in the M12 Hornet. Here's a video outlining the shape of that culture full of race cars, twelve-year-old racers. Imagine 200 years past and 200 years forward — all along a dirt track.

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Deforestation in Acre State

Mapping Land/People Conflicts

Yellow + Orange = Murder.

The map above (interactive here) pinpoints (green marker) the location of the murders in September of four local (indigenous) rural (remote) leaders by people who want to turn the entire map yellow.

Yellow marks deforested lands historically owned and 'managed' by a network of remote villages. Green is "protected". Orange acknowledged 'indigenous' lands. Yellow + Orange = high tensions between those who want to cut and sell timber (clear land of extraordinary number of animal and plant species and cultural history) and sell and/or farm it.

For another definition of rural, see Marjetica Potrč's art/work on this area from 2007. For current (presidential election level) context see this recent article in Americas Quarterly.

Thanks again to M12 Collective and "a Decade of Country Hits."

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Tactile Rural

"a Decade of Country Hits"

The Creative Democracy of Imagination

M12 Collective has gathered a book (a place) for understanding the permanence and transience of people on land. "Country Hits" presents 10 years of living, working and creating at the crossroads of imagination, place and being. Watch it help you redefine rural altogether . . . More here. 

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Visit Democracy OS: https://twitter.com/DemocracyOS

Become and create the conversation.

How to upgrade Democracy

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Almanac for Post Moderns

Language, Randomness & Independence

July 4

Beings seem to ride a long tail of evolution and whether heliotropic, bioluminescent or civilized are only really true to a leading edge of “curiosity”. Language exists in this edge. Getting out ahead of it too far is only so much religion…

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Almanac for Post Moderns

July 2— What Isn't

The 'random walk', Levy flight and course of life of a firefly.

Entry #50 in Almanac for Post Moderns.

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Local Arts Media

Arts & Ideas + Providence/RI

Arts & Ideas is partnering with Providence Arts, Culture + Tourism Dept. to bring Rhode Island its very own Arts & Ideas magazine! Stay tuned!

Photo of Providence by: Erik Gould