#thomas kuhn do not interact etc etc

[astriiformes]

Fucked up that Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium and Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica were published the same year. 1543 was just like. Hey what if all of science changed so much forever.

[nzenuniverse-blog]

At What Time Do Black Lives Matter?

At what time do Black Lives Matter? Is it at 7:05 pm on April 4, 1968 when MLK Jr is pronounced dead from the bullet of his assassination? Is it at noon on August 28,1963 when the “I Have A Dream” speech came into being? Is it Saturday, June 6, 2015 at 12:15 pm when Kalief Browder lynches himself in the Bronx? Is it at 2:53 in the afternoon when Michelle Obama announces the Global Girls Alliance? Is it at 3:30 during an Alamo siesta on February 5, 2016 when Tidal X: 10/20 makes its proclamation of a 1.5 million dollar donation to the Black Lives Matter movement to commemorate Trayvon Martin?

Black faces like those mutilated like Emmett Till. Black voices that guide us through the depths of Inner City Blues. Black is the color of her kinky hair.

So when in this time where Black-ish breathes new life into the family Huxtable, where we are little more than one week a way from seeing a renewal in fervor over this generations’ question of the Ballot or the Bullet, do Black Lives Matter?

It has been 54 years since Malcolm X spoke the words “We have made a greater sacrifice than anybody who’s standing up in America today.” to the congregation wedged in the dusty pews of Cory Methodist Church in Cleveland, Ohio. Within those five decades since, the shift in societal behavior in regards to the thought constructs of race and how those thoughts manifest outwardly, in policy, in economics, in daily interactions has been radical. Though, to anyone of moral conscience, this notion of radicalism belies the nascent complexity of the problem. The idea that black business, black  leaders, black excellence of any cultural vanguard is novel, should have always been. So, the question as to at what point do Black Lives Matter is inherent to the insult that at any point they did not matter.

The fact that it is no longer novel to have a black face like that of Frederick Douglass or Van Jones deliver commentary on the state of our culture on our television screens and mobile devices is essential to the progress of global societal consciousness. To think of ourselves as one human race. This maybe one reason why acclaimed civil rights activist, DeRay McKesson, describes how the Black Lives Matter movement is leaderless by design to prolific comic and tv host Sarah Silverman in an interview from her television program “I Love You America” dated from October of last year. When the black face becomes commonplace in the world of business, arts, and politics it allows for the disassociation of ideas of individuals from the colors of their skins. This maybe one reason why Kanye West has chosen this moment to stage several media events to challenge and provoke the conversation of how and why Black Lives Matter through incendiary commentary and planned promotional campaigns.

For example, maybe Ye in his recent visit on October 14 to meet with the Ugandan President Museveni was making allusion to the hip hop song by Brother Ali “Forest Whitaker” and The Last King Of Scotland. Do those Black Lives lost in the genocide Matter ? Could it be that in his infamous repugnant statements made on TMZ in May of 2018, where he claimed that slavery was a choice, that he is inviting deeper thought as to the obviousness of how it was not a choice and the psychology of clickbait tactics? If, as according to physicist James Joule writing in the 19th century, how by the Law of Conservation of Energy, that energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it transforms from one form to another, then where does all the hatred of Bull Connor and George Wallace go? Maybe that is what Kanye was referring to when he claimed to have the balls to where a hat in a recent luncheon with President Trump and Jim Brown. Could it be that Kanye was provoking deeper thought as to what it means to be wearing hatred like blacks did daily. Is it still done daily?

Maybe in an age where it’s increasingly difficult to do anything radical unless you are tackling the most deeply entrenched societal taboos like sex work, West is proving the physical manifestation of clickbait marketing culture; proving himself a savvy entrepreneur in the branding battles of the internet and influencer economies. These questions as to the talented tenth of intent weren’t possible in the sixties because the idea of black leadership, business, arts and culture was so “novel” to racist society. It is important to remember that when thinking about the variety of thoughts currently circulating in the Black Lives Matter and black excellence conversations.

In thinking again about correlations to the transference of emotional energy and the Law of Conservation of Energy, it is possible that West is influenced by having watched the excellent Serious Jibber Jabber talk from August of 2014 between heralded author Michael Lewis and legendary late night tv host Conan O’Brien. When Michael Lewis, author of “Flashboys” and “Moneyball”, references “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn in stating “a disruptive entrepreneur is inherently insulting” it is similar to things West discusses in his nearly two hour interview held on April 18, 2018 with popular radio host Charlamagne tha God, where he states that people will take something enlightened out of context and call it crazy to diminish its impact. In both talks, the men reiterate points about how when there are those who are the first to see things in a new way and pioneer a view that is threatening to the status quo, the surrounding industry reacts with great hostility. Dave Chappelle, who recently received the WEB du Bois award from Harvard University, made similar comments in his famous Inside the Actors Studio interview with James Lipton nearly a decade earlier.

If the Wall Street system is rigged as Lewis so brilliantly lays out in his treatise, then all colors are disenfranchised in the war against class. And West is right to point out the hypocrisy of the black community to be automatically anti-Republican. It is possible that West is taking a page from his wife’s book here as she has brilliantly embodied the Republican tenets of family first, the creation of generational wealth and rugged individualism. I think in an indirect way her genius as an entrepreneur is progress in the war against sexism in challenging the deeply held taboos against sex work. The manner in which she annually compounds her wealth through successfully monetizing and marketing her beauty is testament to her vast business savvy, instinct and skill, so much so that it renders irrelevant the tarnish of a tape, which by any means of an abstract, rational moral philosophy is hypocritical to judge if she is meeting the laissez-faire of demand meeting supply.  

Furthermore, in her advocacy for prison reform and the freedom of Alice Marie Johnson, I think she is finding her own way to participate in the concept of a “noblesse oblige”, an idea Lewis offers as an antidote to what he labels as the “vice of meritocracy.” The vice of meritocracy being a problem of modernity in the stratification of the classes as a function relative to the notion of effort, whereas in previous times, he argues, those born of privilege came into their wealth with a sense of that duality of advantage and a need to pass those advantages on to others. I think Republicans are good at communicating to its constituents “Focus your energy on the problem you want to solve and do it.” I think this is the reason why, despite the moral repugnancy of what he is seemingly corroborating in his meeting with Trump, etc., that ultimately, it is a good thing for West to highlight the dangers of limitation in maintaining a sense of automatic anti-Republicanism in the black community.

In closing, as the Ballot or the Bullet of the 2018 midterms approach, I question if anything continues to be more segregationist than a seeming conspiracy of consensus towards the segregation of intellectual class by means of coding and lexicon in promoting systemic ignorance. That silence of the methods of the money changers is a taboo I’d like to see change in 2019. And so time marches on. The first time I saw the black excellence of “sky is the limit” music video in my early teens, I thought how sweet, how cute, the children of hip hop running through their fantasy of everything they dream they can be and become. It was only in my late 20s that I began to recognize that maybe Spike Jonze was having a conversation with Biggie Smalls, Puff Daddy and 112 about some of the tougher issues limiting the growth of black culture: the historic infantilization of blacks as a means of degrading their intelligence, the over-commercialization of rap as a means to foster mental pollution through vapid consumerism, and the thought that for hip hop to survive as a musical movement it has to grow from adolescence but since, well since a long time, America has been like a drunk seventeen year old racing around in the world’s Mercedes Benz while we all just wait for the inevitable crash.

[bct1305722paulchan-blog]

‘Continuous Partial Attention’ in using smartphone technology and Creative Integrated Practice

This title sounds baffling ! What the hell is ‘Continuous Partial Attention”? and how on earth is this relevant to Creative Integrated Practice ?....Let me give it a shot.

I read the ‘The Guardian’s Weekend technology special report by Paul Lewis this morning, in a title of “Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia”. In simple wording, “Continuous Partial Attention” referred to using smartphone is a mental cause for an additive behaviour of touching and swiping it up to 2,617 times daily {1} , such as only for summoning or reading followers’ like of your post, blog, tweet and ect.. for a fake excitement and enjoyment. 

Ironically,  according to the report, “Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet.” Frankly to say, they are ditching to use the ‘technology’ they invented. 

“Justin Rosenstein purchased a new iPhone and instructed his assistant to set up a parental-control feature to prevent him from downloading any apps. He was particularly aware of the allure of Facebook “likes”, which he describes as “bright dings of pseudo-pleasure” that can be as hollow as they are seductive. And he should know: he was the Facebook engineer who created the ‘LIKE’ button in the first place” in 2009.

So, what could these tech geeks’s quitting of using these ‘online hooks’ means to some creative minds, like me :) ? 

First of all, let me raise some questions and find out the answers.

1, A Paradigm ?

I would have to go back to my early learning of the concept of Paradigm Shift by Thomas Kuhn who defines a scientific paradigm, provides model problems and solutions for a community of practitioners. 

The question here is, could that become a trend that many smart minds (a certain scientific community) will follow suite ? Should I join this trend? and more importantly, does this suggest or factor a ‘‘Paradigm shift’ ?{2}

Kuhn “used the term of paradigm{2} in two meanings:1, It refers to what is in common that shared by a certain scientific community, eg, techniques, pattens and values; 2, It also refers to single model, element, example of a whole for such community, eg, a scientific law, a rule, a standard. From here, he comes to a thought that “rule can be derived from these paradigms” that has accepted as ‘gospels’ to follow, where a model of thinking becomes unchallengeable.Yet, when critical abnormality, or some uncommon ideas, and or new theory kick in, ‘Paradigm shift’ can happen to change the pattern of those rules.” 

So, the magic ding of ‘like’ initiated by Facebook starts and establishes a paradigm shared and copied by all social media networking platforms and beyond in the last 8 years. No APPs that users can download from APP store does come with a magic ding of ‘like’ and similar. It in reality has become a norm/rule to follow by APP developers.

2, But could the dystopia attitude by the Geeks for using APPs an implication of a Paradigm Shift too ?

Thomas Kuhn comes to a thought that “rule can be derived from these paradigms” that has accepted as ‘gospels’ to follow, where a model of thinking becomes unchallengeable.Yet, when critical abnormality, or some uncommon ideas, and or new theory kick in, ‘Paradigm shift’ can happen to change the pattern of those rules.” {3} What affect such shift is the Paradigm paralysis—“ the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking of this community. 

Kuhn uses this picture to explain about the ‘Paradigm shift’ demonstrates a ‘Paradigm paralysis’ that a scientific community would encounter in seeing the true world of their own by following their own pattern of ‘rules’.

3, What does the tech geeks’s quitting of using these ‘online hooks’ mean to creative technology practitioners like us ?

In my learning with this paper (Ctec 500), I believe the answer goes into Integrated Practice research with Transdisciplinarity.

“Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach.” {4}

In Jean Piaget’s words, it is:”Finally, we hope to see succeeding to the stage of interdisciplinary relations a superior stage, which should be “transdisciplinary”, i.e. which will not be limited to recognise the interactions and or reciprocities between the specialised researches, but which will locate these links inside a total system without stable boundaries between the disciplines”{5}. 

In justifying a paradigm shift, it is arguably difficult to “locate the links inside a total system without stable boundaries between the disciplines”, where, in such a paradigm shift, a creative technology practitioner would need to research across the boundaries between the disciplines to pinpoint the links between the identify such disciplines for an answer, and or results and even solution, by using these trans-disciplinary approaches.

3-1, What did I see in applying transdisciplinarity?----telling a rabbit from the look of a duck 

Here, does the move by the tech geeks from FB, Googles from using online social media to avoid addictive behaviour suggests a doom of the popularity of using the ‘magic ding’ ? I personally doubt that. To get a simple idea to compare the hollow and pseudo-pleasure of enjoying ‘like’, the magic ding, to heroine, I would have to say, somebody, or, even all drug takers are to quit, or to receive treatments for such quit will not ever end the use of drug. That is obvious.

However, to look into the drug issues of How it generates detrimental effects on user’s life?  Why the success rate of quit is low? What can we do ? and so on, so much, is far too complicate and difficult to give a satisfactory answer. 

Likewise, dealing with the ‘like’ of magic ding is the same. It is more of a mission than a challenge for these tech geeks to “locate the links inside a total system without stable boundaries between the disciplines” for unlocking the myth of smartphone dystopia and drug like addicts. This invites transdisciplinary practices.

Let me take this opportunity to walk in their shoes, even just for a few ‘steps’ to look for some solutions.

(1) Understanding the human nature...the Phycology

 We like ourselves as much as being to like to be liked. That is part of our selfhood.“Probably, the best account of the origins of selfhood is that the self comes into being at the interface between the inner biological processes of the human body and the sociocultural network to which the person belongs."{6}

“One of the most basic facts about the human condition is that we know ourselves from the inside, but know others only from what they choose or are able to tell us, a far more limited and edited set of data.” {7}

So we definitely LIKE to be liked and polished. If so, on the back of realising how the ‘like’ relate to the acts by people, a creative technology practitioner would know how to go beyond the ‘Like’-mania on smartphone use. 

Solution: Therefor, my responding approaches may include how to manipulate people into habitual use of their products as compared to how often the swipe their smartphone. Preferably,  creative technology practitioner would have to be a behavioural psychologist too!

(2) Identifying the unintended consequence. The overwhelmingly additive of the ‘Like’ by hundreds of millions users is really one of the best showcase of intention having an unintended, negative consequences.

The story in the book of ‘Defending the free market of giving the poor’ tells about how ‘free lunch’ for the poor who are not required any commitment consequently shrinks the ‘Fish & Chips’ store’s customer base. 

Robert A. Sirico says in his book: “But we can’t just throw money at people and expect them to come out of poverty.” because Sometimes, Good Intentions may have Negative Consequences. {8}

Here I suddenly realise being a creative tech practitioner may be entailing more of social studies, rather than just going into the ivory tower of high tech. This reminds me of an incident that I used to question about one our teachers of the Studio 2 class (CTEC503) for his Blog account name of “Social Computing” ! This incident tells how ignorant I was in the beginning of my attendance to his class.

Solution: I can refer the sending and receiving ‘like’ to going for a free lunch. Therefor, How about creating a ‘Reality Check Button’ for both sender and receiver? The idea is to insert a voluntary ‘give back of money’ function linked to the APPs, wherein, such functionality is bonded by user’s money account (such as credit card, bank account, Paypal, Push-Pay & etc) as a complimentary feedback;  and the sender of like can ask for the same when he sends the ding of ‘Like’ as well, where the account activity would need to be defined and monitored to avoid any ‘Negative Consequences’ of abuse.

(3) Understanding the ethnics and social responsibility.

According to the report, social media network is facing a big challenge on the success of their own for creating such humongous platforms of billions of actively additive users worldwide. 

Source:2017-06 {9}

People now “contend that digital forces have completely upended the political system and, left unchecked, could even render democracy as we know it obsolete.”{10} or a dystopia, and a total hate by their users.

This is reflected by a critic of the tech industry, Tristan Harris’s comments: “A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies, through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today,” {11}

So, ‘It’s changing our democracy, and it's changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships we want” Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google.{10} 

People are now questioning the ethical responsibility by these social media network for the ‘loophole’ in their advertising models for accidentally spreading officially uncensored fake news. This is yet to blame on the huge behemoths of the monopoly built by such business model by the biggest platform, such as of Google’s search engine. “The EU recently penalised Google $2.42bn for anti-monopoly violations”{12} 

Solution: Justin Rosenstein, the magic ding of “LIKE’ creator may have pointed to a solution: "there may be a case for state regulation of “psychologically manipulative advertising”....“If we only care about profit maximisation,” he says, “we will go rapidly into dystopia.”

This does refresh my thinking in my last two blogs of going into a little finding  about how a business with social innovative architecture or gene may survive and sustain the unpredictable movements in tech applications and the society. These movements, in my understanding, are referred to the “Paradigm Shift”.

Allow me to use Chris Cox of Facebook Chief Product Officer’s remarks to end this blog: 

“We’re getting to a size where it’s worth really taking a careful look at what are all the things that we can do to make social media the most positive force for good possible.”

Reference:

{1}Putting a finger on our phone obsession--Mobile touches: A study on humans and their tech. https://blog.dscout.com/mobile-touches {2}https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn

{3}ParadigmShift://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shifthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

{4}https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transdisciplinarity

{5}Ref 3: Piaget, 1972, p. 144.basarab-nicolescu.fr/Docs_articles/Worldviews2006.htm#_ftn3

{6}Baumeister, Roy F., and Brad J. Bushman. "The Self." Social Psychology and Human Nature. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2011. 57–96. Print.

{7}http://www.thebookoflife.org/the-problem-of-psychological-asymmetry/

{8}http://www.defendingthefreemarket.com/

{9}https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/facebook-2-billion-users

{10}https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia

{11}How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every daywww.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention

{12}Google fined record €2.4bn by EU over search engine resultshttps://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-braces-for-record-breaking-1bn-fine-from-eu