Re: [-empyre-] nodes of transgression?

[ben syverson <ben@bensyverson.com>]

Hi Barbara,

Fascinating questions. Let me address them in-line.


On May 9, 2004, at 9:58 PM, Barbara Lattanzi wrote:

> Why do computers get to have all the fun (of "forging new 
> connections", of "acting" with a "mind of [its] own", of making 
> "fascinating decisions")?

Ooh, they don't! In liken, it is a truly collaborative process. It's 
true, when a new comment is posted, liken uses pattern matching to 
suggest a few links. Of course, all of these seemingly-creative link 
suggestions are the pure result of a statistical analysis that I set 
up. But this is the only time that liken gets to "create" anything.

The more interesting aspects of liken are that these suggested links 
grow stronger or fade away based on use, which is a direct result of 
our users, not computers. Also, humans in liken have the ability to add 
new [paths/connections] at any time by clicking on a word within a 
text; if a path is not already established between the current node and 
the word you clicked on, a new path will transparently be set up. Those 
paths are actually the majority of liken's connections, so humans are 
directly responsible for most of the pathways in liken.

<snip>
> When you replied
> quote:
> > liken was conceived of as a tool for performing exactly these tasks
</snip>

But check out what I say after that sentence. I really do believe liken 
has a mind of its own, but I have to make a crucial distinction here; 
when I talk about liken, I'm not referring to a computer application, 
and I don't think it's fruitful for people to view it as such. Liken is 
an emergent biomechanical neural network in which 90% of the 
calculations are done by human brains during the course of 
[navigating/contributing to] a body of information. Liken is a 
metaorganism that draws on the minds of all of its users. This is what 
I mean when I say it has a mind of its own; not that the server it sits 
on is somehow intelligent and autonomous, but rather that our users 
form a kind of collective mind that sometimes seems to have its own 
personality. Which I think it downright common when groups of people 
get together.


> this statement makes me wonder how can transgression possibly figure 
> into liken?  Is it accurate to say, instead, that liken aspires to be 
> scalable enough to swallow in one gulp any critique necessary for 
> "disruption"?

Absolutely not. Instead, think of liken as scalable enough to allow for 
almost any level of criticism. The ability to handle critique was 
actually a core goal of the system. Using the XML description of 
liken's resources, you can create an entirely new interface or 
representation of liken without any help whatsoever from us. 
criticalartware looks forward to the day when someone creates a 
critical liken interface as a way to express their concerns.

In addition, we decided early on to avoid any kind of peer-based 
"moderation," which in my view always creates a certain idea of what's 
"acceptable," and quickly extinguishes most dissenting views or 
creative critiques. So as a result, you're free to post your critique, 
"disruptive" or not, anywhere on liken.

However, we do take measures to make sure that the site remains usable. 
For example, recently a user created two nodes, "and" and "ing" which 
meant that any time the letters "and" or "ing" appeared anywhere in 
liken, they would link to those nodes. The nodes themselves were 
freely-editable likis contained dictionary entries for "and" and "ing." 
Clearly this was a sort of "test" and possibly critique of our 
linking/naming system. After thinking about it for a while, I left 
"and" because "and" is a binary logical operator that has at least some 
bearing on our discussion, and shortened the dictionary entry. I 
changed "ing" to "ing (suffix)" because for the time being, ing is just 
a word ending.


> Isn't your desire to make liken "have its own unique creativity" 
> problematic in relation to those who see software as 
> ideologically-inflected as any human artifact?  (I am thinking of Matt 
> Fuller's writings about software, for example).
>
> If software acts with a mind of its own and I am simply feeding it raw 
> material for its generative state, is there any point beyond Ludditism 
> to be made if I go and grab a hammer?

I think if you reexamine these sentiments with the idea of liken as a 
social computer rather than a silicon computer, you'll have different 
feelings about it. From my perspective, liken is not in any way 
generative; it operates only on material entered into it by humans, and 
its only output is a record of how humans interact with that material.

That being said, liken could operate as the foundation for any number 
of 3rd party generative applications; as Ken Fields demonstrated, its 
output can easily generate a soundscape. What makes these possibilities 
interesting to me is that rather than using random numbers or arbitrary 
data as their input, liken-aware generative programs would be using 
relevant critical discourse as their input. This conceptual shift -- 
from viewing generative apps as "working on their own" to the idea that 
generative apps could serve as both a topic of discussion and a novel 
lens through which to [view/comment on/critique] the discussion -- at 
least peaks my interest.

I have absolutely no personal interest in random numbers generating 
pretty [pictures/sounds]. It seems retro.


> Dan Sandin's Image Processor was developed at a historical moment that 
> made its politics as legible as its aesthetics to those who used it.  
> Correspondingly, I would like to hear how you and the criticalartware 
> team might characterise the contemporary political dimension of your 
> project.

Absolutely! I don't want to become the spokesman for criticalartware, 
but I think we try to make our collective politics pretty clear -- if 
you look at our "ReadMe,"  I think our own particular politics come 
through. That being said, we stay fairly agnostic on a lot of 
technological politics to avoid coloring the discourse too heavily. I 
think in the current context, it's rather radical to tell [new 
media/artware] artists that what they're doing has precedent, history 
and existing discussion. A lot of artists are under the delusion that 
what they're doing is so groundbreaking and fundamentally different 
that we have to come up with new language to even talk about it, which 
gets us fighting mad.

jonCates is fond of the Lenin quote, "Everything is connected" (or the 
longer "Everything is connected to everything else"), and I think that 
describes perhaps the most radical political aspect of liken itself 
(and perhaps criticalartware as a whole). That may not sound very 
radical in those terms, but the implications that total and automatic 
interconnection has are astounding.

As an example, anyone who has spent any time in the United States can 
easily see how reality is warped in the news media (particularly TV 
news). Important stories go undiscussed in favor of sensationalist 
moments in less-important stories, certain questionable ways of 
[thinking/reasoning] are now codified as ideal, claims are made about 
being "unbiased" or "balanced" while clear opinions are taken and 
stated implicitly, and short-term memory always wins out over long-term 
memory of the larger context. If these organizations were subject to 
total and automatic interconnection, they would not be able to so 
easily bend the truth to fit an entertainment format. Incorrect or 
incomplete information is hard to get away with in a scenario like 
that.

Imagine I post a message to liken that says "Dan Sandin never published 
his plans for the Image Processor." False statements of this nature are 
often made by the press and individuals, and they're sometimes honest 
oversights due to insufficient research or outright mistakes. However, 
in liken, you can easily click on Dan Sandin, click on the link to the 
Image Processor, and go straight to his distribution philosophy (and 
maybe even the plans themselves) to see that he did indeed 
publish/distribute the plans. Seeing that, you can comment on the 
original message.

liken provides a hostile climate for [mis/dis]information, while 
simultaneously providing a fertile climate for informed 
[debate/discourse/expression], and that is truly radical.

- ben