Friday, January 31, 2003

A Patron Saint for the Internet

(washingtonpost.com)

ROME -- The Archangel Gabriel is one of Christianity's great communicators -- it was he who brought word to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus, the Bible says. So it was only natural that when a search began for a patron saint for the Internet, Gabriel's name arose.

According to a poll being conducted by a Roman Catholic organization in northern Italy, he is now in sixth place behind a 20th century martyr, an educator and a publisher born in the 19th century, an 18th century evangelizer and a 13th century nun who saw visions projected on a wall.

The web site, www.santiebeati.it, is soliciting votes with the aim of having an Internet patron saint named by Easter. "We had lots of requests for a patron, so we decided the Internet was the best tool for finding one," said Roberto Diani, an Internet adviser for Italy's Conference of Bishops. The official choice will be made by the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Cult and Discipline of Sacrament.

More here The Seattle Times: Web site searches for patron saint for Internet

This is not unlike looking for the archetypes of cybersapce and the discussions might well be useful!

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Plato by Eric Voegelin

amazon



The Amazon page has a particularly interesting review by B Terence Harwick explicating the metaxy.

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Monday, January 27, 2003

Mercury Retrograde

Astrology

Mercury Retro Time Table

September 15, 2002 - October 7, 2002
January 3, 2003 - January 24, 2003
April 27, 2003 - May 21, 2003
August 29, 2003 - September 21, 2003
December 18, 2003 - January 7, 2004
April 7, 2004 - May 1, 2004
August 11, 2004 - September 3, 2004
December 1 - December 21, 2004

As we are now just coming out of the retro phase writing about cyberspace should be a whole lot easier!

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Mercury

Weboteric Astrology

It represents the power of communication (even the Internet), interpretation and self-expression, intelligence and reason. Its action is to quicken and enliven whilst adding mobility and fluidity. The symbol illustrates receptivity resulting from the exaltation of spirit over matter.

I have been reading quite complex stuff about Hermes and cyberspace... but it is all put very simply in Astrology.

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Sunday, January 26, 2003

Seattle University: Imagination and Its Discontents - a talk by Dr. Glen Arbery

isi.org ~ PNW Faculty Seminar

Linking here because was impressed by his essay cited below, also because I added a link to his book, which has the introduction on line in a pdf file.

Across town Seattle University played host on Tuesday night to Dr. Glen Arbery of the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture. Arbery, who is author of the recent ISI Books' title Why Literature Matters, delivered a talk to a crowd of over 75 students and faculty entitled "Measure and Freedom: Imagination and its discontents."

In the forty-five minute lecture, Arbery lamented the abysmal state of literary knowledge on standardized testing. After reading a sample passage from a recent Texas state standardized test, Arbey showed how what counts as literature today does not take stock of what is real, but instead tries to provoke the same response from its entire audience, regardless of their differences. Literature, in other words, has become tantamount to propaganda. Drawing on work by John Crowe Ransom and Allan Tate, Arbery showed how great literature comes into being by taking measure of reality, what he called "reality's extra-textual roughness." Similarly he said that freedom, like literature, flows not from liberation but from limitations: "a boundary is not where something stops, but where a thing begins to realize itself, where it comes into being."

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A Transdisciplinary Approach to Science and Astrology by Alain Nègre

A Transdisciplinary Approach to Science and Astrology by Alain Nègre

In an attempt to sort through the conflicts between science and astrology, this article explores the unconscious foundations which gave birth to astrology. It draws from what C.G. Jung called the symbolic function and originates in the " place " of the soul where mind and matter may potentially reunite.

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Here and Everywhere: the Icons of Global Consciousness

Dallas Institute - but penetrate the "frames" to get to:

Here and Everywhere: the Icons of Global Consciousness, by Glenn Arbery, Ph.D.

A very thorough essay with much to digest on cyberspace.

If, as we have seen, the telos and meaning of the opus of maximizing profit is to render people redundant, does this moment of the symbolic life not serve as our initiation into what I call the 'psychological difference', the difference between human and soul? Do we not have to acknowledge it as our psychopomp guiding us out of the anthropological or ontological fallacy dominating the present consciousness and into a new form of consciousness?

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Interview with Michael Meade

Mosaic Voices -- Watering the Seeds of the Future A January, 2002 three part interview with Michael Meade by Earthlight magazine.

What happens if they’re not shown the recognition of that seed?

Now, we’re back to death. William Blake said that the garden of the soul is already planted and is waiting for the water of life. Call it the water of attention. There are innate ideas, dreams, stories, buried in people. When we don’t water those seeds, culture loses ideas. It loses imagination. It loses the capacity to dream itself forward. I mean that literally.

I have a tape by Micheal Mead - which I liked a lot!

This article appeals right now because of the "to dream itself forward" idea. I am interested. This is somewhat Chardinian, somehow there is a pull -- see item below on afford. I am also interested because of story. What is the difference between travel and journey: story. How does this relate to "surfing" and the cyber part of cyberspace?

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Joseph Campbell and the Skywalker: Meetings with George Lucas

Pacifica Graduate Institute | Campbell & Gimbutas Library by Richard Buchen

Lucas had read The Hero with a Thousand Faces while working on the script of the first of the Star Wars movies, and had gone on to read the Masks of God and other writings. When Star Wars debuted in 1977, it followed the Hero very closely. Lucas said at an award ceremony in 1985, "It is possible that if I hadn't run across him I'd still be writing Star Wars today."

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An Interview with James Hillman

Insight & Outlook

Hillman: Well, some reviewers has a scientistic ax to grind. To them, my book had to be either science or new age mush. It's very hard in our adversarial society to find a third view. Take journalism, where everything is always presented as one person against another: "Now we're going to hear the opposing view." There is never a third view.

My book is about a third view. It says, yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well. So if you come at my book from the side of science, you see it as "new age." If you come at the book from the side of the new age, you say it doesn't go far enough -- it's too rational.

Another interview, this one by Scott London 1998.

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Wednesday, January 22, 2003

James Hillman Interview: "I'm Red!"

Worldguide

This is a 1996 or so interview, very interesting in 2003!

So I see much more -- I mean this sounds ridiculous for a Jungian psychologist to be talking this way -- but I see the way of looking at a lot that goes on today -- it would be good to put back on a pair of Marxist glasses.

Another reason for this is the Marxist idea that capitalism can only survive by its last phases, which is through war material. Producing. Having wars and producing useless goods, which are not good for the people. That's what we're doing. The biggest part of the budget is still the defense budget. We've got no enemies anywhere. And it's still space shots. The spin-off of the trickle-down from them is so remote, but it keeps all the constituencies voting, because they've got a little piece of the defense industry, everywhere in the country. Look at that through Marxist glasses.

This was all said fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, the way we are -- the way the country is functioning was predictable according to Marx's view of capitalism.

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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Fly UI

maddog weblog

affords being peed on

Wonderful, and I am thinking what else affords? Doorknobs afford being grasped. The mouse is more affording than the touchpad or the little keyboard thingy. The world speaks to us, some things ask to be touched, others scream to be put down, killed off. Tim Berners-Lee's aim was right when he invented the http protocol because cyberspace was affording it. The roots of the word afford seem to lie in carrying forward, a sort of "aforward". Some things are screaming out to be invented.

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Monday, January 20, 2003

Mickey interview

Poster Reason - Interview
Disney's cartoon rodent speaks out on the Eldred decision. By Jesse Walker. Mickey manages to answer some questions just before "three Disney bounty hunters entered the bar and seized Mickey."

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Friendship's Death

I was taken by the moment in Peter Wollen's Film Friendship's Death, where the visitor, a robot speaks about being a machine. Yes the image below is the robot, superbly played by Tilda Swinton. It seems the 2002 Teknolust film continues a theme that began in 1987 - 15 years earlier - with this movie. We have had other moments of machines talking about what it is like to be a machine, this one must rank with Hal in 2001. I snapped the image off my TV and transcribed the dialogue from the video.

"What will happen when your machines have intelligence? When they become autonomous, when they have private thoughts?

"You humans look down on your machines because they are manmade, they are a product of your skills and labour. They were not even tamed or domesticated like animals were. You see them simply as extensions of yourself, of your own will. I can't accept that!

"I cant accept sub-human status simply because I am a machine based on silicon rather than carbon, electronic rather than biological."

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Sunday, January 19, 2003

Teknolust

While looking for images to put in my next post I found this... I'd like to see the movie, written and directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson (Not in Alice's).

SIFF 2002-- reel review: Review by Jennifer Albert:

Tilda Swinton stars in TEKNOLUST as Dr. Rosetta Stone, a biogeneticist who has lost her entire family to a mysterious disease and copes with her lonely life by infusing her DNA into her computer.

slant // magazine.com: Teknolust Review by Ed Gonzalez:

Hershman's all-neon-like cyber-philosophy is not only muddled but it also sounds as if it was penned by Bj?rk herself (Ruby tells Rosetta via the cyber-geek's microwave: "Feel my luminous halo. Think of me as part of your cyborgian spine.").

Review for Teknolust (2002) by Harvey Karten (this is the a sympathetic and thorough review):

"Teknolust" is itself the creation of Lynn Hershman-Lesson, whose "Conceiving Ada" four years ago is a more complex fantasy contrasting the lives of a modern computer geek named Emmy with that of Lord Byron's daughter, Ada the 19th century woman who developed the forerunning of today's computer. Ada was played by the remarkable Tilda Swinton, a good choice not only for that pic but for computer-lover Lesson's current project, in that along with her beauty comes the vague feeling that she is herself an alien.

Later:

There is more and more to explore about this movie:

Dan Epstein interviews Lynn Hershman-Leeson
www.teknolustthemovie.com
Palm Ruby
Conceiving Ada (1997): Tilda Swinton, Francesca Faridany, Karen Black, Lynn Hershmann-Leeson

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Some thorough but easy to read entries, for example: Harriet Taylor Mill, I hope they keep up the work and complete what is started there.

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Saturday, January 18, 2003

Successful No To War demonstration in Christchurch

This was the biggest march I have seen in Christchurch for a long time. The sense of unity and purpose was strong. There must have been 2000 people at any one time in the three hours I was involved, with people all ages. The clear message was NO WAR, and for NZ to be out of the Gulf. It was great to see such a broad range of participation - churches etc. and also Labour Party. The Labour Party had a speaker and he was applauded for his anti-war statements but the otherwise polite gathering had no time at all for his idea that the UN could sanction this war.

I found Green Party Keith Locke's speech clear, forceful and uplifting. I had a sense that this war could be stopped.

TV ONE News

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Friday, January 17, 2003

Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal

Dan Gillmor reports well on the sad loss of our heritage.

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Thursday, January 16, 2003

Content Is Crap

TCS: Tech

The image of content as sewer is unpleasant but in a way, not too bad. Alchemically prima materia, base matter, lead or shit has to be worked with to get the gold. But Arnold Kling is muddling a few categories here. The nature of the ownership of the copyright and the licences for its re-distribution have nothing much to do with the filtering work needed to get the stuff you want. I don't really care if an item I read is owned by the Times or by the author, the important thing is that it is credible to me and is about something of interest to me.

Categories involved:

• Ownership - copyright
• Licence & terms of use.
• Relevance to my interests
• Credibility relative to my values & beliefs

When it cost a lot to publish selection was needed to get it out there and there was value added in the selection of what to produce. Sometimes the way of paying for that function was for the producers to take ownership od the content. That function, on the net and for music is gone. Dead. Laws maintaining that system must die. Getting stuff out there and distributing it is free.

The essentials of the filtering process are already here - 1. Word of mouth which is constantly enhanced by all sorts of software. 2. Search engines.

How did I get Arnold Kling's item in the first place? Daypop. That is automated word of mouth. And Kling acknowledges it. What on earth has his copyright note to do with anything? What is still to come is the killer collaborative filtering ap. which will filter everthing for me, not on features but on the basis of sociometry.

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Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text

Configuring Mail Clients to Send Plain ASCII Text

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Sunday, January 12, 2003

The American Administration Is A Bloodthirsty Wild Animal

ZNet

An article by Harold Pinter - puts well the dreadful plight the world is in... I go on as if life is much the same, but there is a beast that is becoming ever more dangerous and it has our own NZ politics under its influence in an alarming way.

There will be a rally here in Christchurch:

SAT, 18 January - 'People are dying in Iraq - no more war!’, anti-war march - speak out to ensure NZ supports peace, not war, against Iraq; leaves 1-30pm from the Museum. For more info contact email ach66@student.canterbury.ac.nz.

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The privacy of consciousness

From Techne & Psyche - Dolores Brien - on 13 Dec 2002 - a review of David Lodge's novel, Thinks. Here is a quote, hilighting the themes of consciousness, soul and self and the loss of soul:

To demonstrate her point, she gives a dazzling interpretation of some verses from Andrew Marvell's poem "The Garden" which, to her, affirm the inseparability of consciousness with soul, that is, with the self, the center of personal identity. This self, unfortunately, is under attack today, not only by scientists, but by humanists. Helen is of course speaking for Lodge and the conclusions he has come to in his own research into the consciousness controversy. Better yet, Thinks. . . is in itself Lodge's wonderfully successful "thought experiment."

Also by David Lodge: Consciousness & the Novel: Connected Essays

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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Soul & body - psyche and world

Psychology can leads to a realisation where the psyche is not "inner" as we thought it was. As we shed that view of the soul as an inner thing at the same time we ensoul the world. Just as I was reflecting on this I came across this:

American Society for Cybernetics - Home Visual

This image of two beings, one biological, one mythical, is based on the notion of recursion, and like the mediaeval ourubori, it refers to two domains. However, this new double ouruborus does not place an underworld below an upper one, but rather puts the domain of the biological, the bodyhood of living, in a continuous mutually modulating recursion with the domain of cognition, the virtual world of human imagination. Or if one likes, it is the harmonious relationship between art and science. Or between a generative process and the arising phenomena.

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Monday, January 06, 2003

Thomas Merton


Thomas Merton Internet Bibliography

Links to a huge range of his writing here. Inspired to search him out after listening to THOMAS MERTON: ACTIVISM OF THE SPIRIT with Jonathan Montaldo - which is program of the week right now on New Dimension. The image is from here.

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Sunday, January 05, 2003

365.mp3

otisfodder.com

Another take on a daily update. Interesting tracks and history.

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Fine Art Photographers Pinhole Photography

Thomas Hudson Reeve

This photo is made from a pin-hole camera using the photo paper itself! I love it!

---

I am enjoying photographic minimalism, having my 2002 version of a box brownie on my tramping trip. Probably lighter than 26 sheets of 6x4 photo paper it would take to print the shots! My camp site is a sort of antithesis to the WTC.

[10:16 PM | wl | permalink

Microsoft Treachery on the Net

Create

Some people may even create good things with this insidious technology. This is all too scary, they will swamp the Net with this ugly stuff. Start a Counternet? Or will we just rout around the pollution?

DRM, deceptive rip-off manipulation.

[8:49 PM | wl | permalink