[-empyre-] resistance is shiftless\ "In its current state now it's a weapon, " said Ms. Law. "Do I want it to get in the hands of the Syrian Electric Army? No!" /futility is the paradigm

Mon Jul 8 20:37:22 EST 2013

Well - I guess this will be my last post for a bit:

I am interested in Terry Flaxton's new, "incoming" or "developing" paradigm. I'm surprised that it requires behavioural adjustment, the end of theory and careful attendance to that learnt trick of the mind where clarity of thinking is preferred over obscurity of intuition, or enlightenment.

Paradigms are in development all the time. Some have long leads, some long tails, some short. My use of the word paradigm is from a love of the idea developed when I was a child in a high  chair - I thought to myself: 'What will I say when I am able to talk?'. No doubt this memory has changed and massaged from one thing to another but the issue is: How will it be when it is different. Mainly because we know ourselves through 'what is'.

Did I say it requires behavioural adjustment? I think really that I said that what we actually are as human beings is sentience in a continuos state of adjustment in relation to what we envisage for ourselves. The science fiction writers of the middle of the last century articulated what it is we are now developing as technical developments. AT my last university matter was moved from one location to another instantaneously - the beginnings of Star Treks Matter Transmitter. They also are working on quantum computers that have 4 logic gates - or rather two logic gates and two illogical gates (which brings them in alignment to higher levels of Tibetan Buddhist Philospohical logic. Meanwhile, some argue, like gnostic Christians, or the Eternalists of Southern California, that we must first visualise a reality and then matter will follow suit.

WHichever narrative you follow or subscribe to, the cognitive neuroscientists say that in that image we will make ourselves. This is not a behavioural change this is an ontological change. We are not required to do it - that is what we are, a relative sentient continuum. Again I am not proscribing, just relating the narratives of others with interest in the formulation of the concepts.

As for the end of theory - that just 'logically' follows suit. If you leave ratiocination behind as your medium of contemplation, then you enter a different terrain of contemplation/reflection (these words are not going to work of course) but fundamentally the point is that if theory is the behaviour of the prior paradigm - you wouldn't want to use a bicycle in the Indie 500 would you?

Lastly: The obscurity of Intuition. Well, if you haven't exercised Intuition then it will appear as obscure, if you've spent a life practicing the language of intuition then you'll know the 'discourse'. What I'm saying is the terminology does not serve, the functionality of standard theorising cannot suffice, that if we're serious we'll put the energy in to becoming subtle in our internal sensitivities to functionalities of the mind that are always present, yet barely noticed.

bad abstractions are inadequate critically or analytically. They are not up to the task in hand and, even as we experience them falling short, we identify the failure with a further and more distant layer of abstraction or false problem, language, theory, cognitive habit, bourgeois individualism, the body, the mind, technoscience, marketing - or we identify with it ourselves, closing a circuit of personal fantasy and fictionalising the results - rather, their lack - through reflexivity: that's my story. A fantasy of traversal without encounter.

Well perhaps. But perhaps not. It depends if you are practised in other languages. A poor grasp of French could take poetry and turn it into 'bad' poetry.

I'm not a fan of metaphor. It's from a past paradigm. It's a ratiocinatory practice which talks about one thing in terms of another and always falls short of task. It seeks to be objective by an actor sharing and agreement as to meaning, it is utilised at the highest levels and yet it can enact false logic, suffers category mistakes, conflation, bad arguments. So one wonders - what is good abstraction. An this becomes highly subjective and an be charged with being: A fantasy of traversal without encounter.

WHen I was first asked to do something with the Empyre list I wondered at this behaviour. My experience of online discussions is that it is replete with huge understandings, that for instance, academic language and referencing comes completely unstuck here, that exceptions can be taken because vested interests are ruffled, that egos somehow get uglier than they actually are in real life.

Not following on from this comment at all:

Reading your latest post, Terry, there seems to be foregrounded what was behind "distributive cognition" from the start: networks. Glastonbury arises "out of the alternative networks of the 60's, where Buckminster Fuller, Stafford Beer, Edmund Carpenter, McLuhan etc were leading thought and early user generated ecological and cybernetics oriented ideas were networked at early festivals such as this." From a colonial perspective that it become emblematic of an ideal Albion and embody Arthurian virtue sounds a sour and quaintly nationalistic note. But resistance or liking different types of network to me links the Borg, Big Data and the observation in mass events of an emergent political will, again, either resisted or liked. Unless the last is mere projection.

Networks which use ratiocination are not cognitive distributive networks - so no they're not the same thing at all, ratiocination might be an element in the carrier frequency, but it is only partially the medium. Whatever something arises from does not necessarily mean the thing itself has not transmuted, or is a carrier frequency for things other than what they may have arisen from. I should have thought that a possibility? Yes? Albion and Avalon has everything and nothing to do with nationalism. The Grail legends were cross-boundary in Europe arising from Arabic and Hebrew sources (depending on who you read) and reached more deeply onto cognitive expressions of distributed ideas from deep within species consciousness (which is why they have staying power). And that's the thing - vested interest is as much a demolishing force for the Governments and Intelligence Agencies as it is for the individual position that is fixed. I can only maintain and keep saying the same thing in different ways really - - but I would say that Bid Data, Borg - all that stuff is fashionable - and passing, and not in any way real - unless you speak of them as real. Remember the major academic project of the years of convergence was to see data as immaterial - now we're flipping our position - like scientists in relation to dark matter.

Big Data has, however, no self-organising characteristics. Algorithms are blind to describe it. Consultants invoke it as a shibboleth to inflate their fees. Big Data is generated not generative and companies invested in its problem ramify by extending the graph functions from which it is derived.

I don't recognise the existence of big data. If you want to know what's going on: Follow the money.

Is the Social Graph productive of Social Capital? and isn't this a newly emergent form of networked capitalism? Isn't this a new money because it is a new measure of human sociality?

I don't accept the rhetoric here because it is an 'argument' in support of no change at all in thinking/feeling/intuiting - developing past this place. Again: Follow the money that supports the argument (or its inverse).

If this is the case, then there is neuroscientific 'hard' evidence to support the idea that networking is 'hard-wired' into human behaviour - here<http://www.sott.net/article/263639-We-are-wired-to-network-with-others-How-the-brain-creates-the-buzz-that-helps-ideas-spread>.

Well, you better tell our cognitive scientific colleagues. I'm feeling a little bit like Swift here - I bring stories from afar :)

Is their hard evidence for anything - ontologically speaking: Even if I hit the table and hurt my hand I have doubts about calling that hard evidence. Is what I mentioned a false problem? Of course, everything is. Is there such a thing as empirical evidence, yes if you accept the materiality of the world outside of the critique provided by so many practices they cannot be listed with worth - but you will know what I argue when I say: To the pickpocket, the world is full of pockets, to the person that wears shoes, the world is covered in leather. I know: quaint.

Sorry - work calls, I'll check in to see how this goes, maybe the discussion will veer to standard theoretical positions and we can furiously argue like scribes and scholars again.

With Best wishes for tolerating my jet-lagged but recovering state of mind….

Terry Flaxton

On 8 Jul 2013, at 00:13, simon <swht at clear.net.nz<mailto:swht at clear.net.nz>> wrote:

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Dear empyreans,

by happy accident - twitchy trackpad - the quotation pasted itself into the subject. It comes from an article about a cookie fishing game, developed by Rachel Law, which exploits the fluidity of online identity to confuse trackers, potentially hiding player's behaviour both within and without the game: "It acts like a translator…. It basically fucks up algorithims." It 'weaponises' identity presumably by anonymity. And who wants their algorithms fucked up? Not Mozilla, evidently, neither can one imagine the NSA nor, here in New Zealand, the GCSB endorsing the product if it does make it to beta. (Not that either GCSB or NSA have their proprietary algorithms, rather use contractual than ownership of patents - a liability of outsourcing.) [here<http://adage.com/article/privacy-and-regulation/student-project-kill-digital-ad-targeting/242955/>]

In addition, "Vortex" - name of game - automatically assigns the location Narnia to players hiding geolocative information, whether for reasons nefarious or playful. The comments that follow the item discuss the relative merits of Vortex  concerning themselves less with cyber warfare and surveillance than the question of whether we really want irrelevant ads.

I am interested in Terry Flaxton's new, "incoming" or "developing" paradigm. I'm surprised that it requires behavioural adjustment, the end of theory and careful attendance to that learnt trick of the mind where clarity of thinking is preferred over obscurity of intuition, or enlightenment.

And I felt the need to apologise by expanding a little on my last note, the point of which was not clear: bad abstractions are inadequate critically or analytically. They are not up to the task in hand and, even as we experience them falling short, we identify the failure with a further and more distant layer of abstraction or false problem, language, theory, cognitive habit, bourgeois individualism, the body, the mind, technoscience, marketing - or we identify with it ourselves, closing a circuit of personal fantasy and fictionalising the results - rather, their lack - through reflexivity: that's my story. A fantasy of traversal without encounter.

Is there a link between the Borg Complex, brilliantly exposed by Michael Saracas (via Simon Biggs), and Big Data and the "distributive cognition" of next paradigm sociality described by Terry at Glastonbury or the "physical shared event, a kind of dance, but also expression of political will" described by Johannes in Houston?

Reading your latest post, Terry, there seems to be foregrounded what was behind "distributive cognition" from the start: networks. Glastonbury arises "out of the alternative networks of the 60's, where Buckminster Fuller, Stafford Beer, Edmund Carpenter, McLuhan etc were leading thought and early user generated ecological and cybernetics oriented ideas were networked at early festivals such as this." From a colonial perspective that it become emblematic of an ideal Albion and embody Arthurian virtue sounds a sour and quaintly nationalistic note. But resistance or liking different types of network to me links the Borg, Big Data and the observation in mass events of an emergent political will, again, either resisted or liked. Unless the last is mere projection.

As to the requirement that this emergence - welcomed as a new paradigm or resisted - ring also the death of theory, I think the refusal of encounter or enclosing theory kills it more effectively than opening it on to an outside which this phase-shift in networked phenomena, whether human, molecular, or geophysical instantiates.

Big Data has, however, no self-organising characteristics. Algorithms are blind to describe it. Consultants invoke it as a shibboleth to inflate their fees. Big Data is generated not generative and companies invested in its problem ramify by extending the graph functions from which it is derived.

Is the Social Graph productive of Social Capital? and isn't this a newly emergent form of networked capitalism? Isn't this a new money because it is a new measure of human sociality?

If this is the case, then there is neuroscientific 'hard' evidence to support the idea that networking is 'hard-wired' into human behaviour - here<http://www.sott.net/article/263639-We-are-wired-to-network-with-others-How-the-brain-creates-the-buzz-that-helps-ideas-spread>.

Or, having abstracted from a false problem to an abstraction layer of enclosed and calcified theory - called code - is the convention that resistance to capitalism is futile only being amplified?

I would add that a bad abstraction is one which not only is not empirical - open on to an outside - but also not transcendental - drawing a line one may add to, making a new connection. The revolution is elsewhere.

Best,
Simon Taylor

www.squarewhiteworld.com<http://www.squarewhiteworld.com/>
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au<mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

Terry Flaxton
Professor of Cinematography and Lens Based Media
University of West of England
http://www.visualfields.co.uk/flaxtonpage1.htm
+ 44 (0) 117 328 7149
+44 (0) 7976 370 984

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