User:Ssstephen/Reading
oh this one?
Scripts, Grooves and Writing Machines, Lisa Gitelman
Print culture and non print media evolve in mutual inextricability. The phonograph and contemporary inscriptive forms were deeply dependent upon reworkings of the social and economic relations of textuality, of print culture and print capitalism. They engaged literacy practices in toto, the cognitive and the somatic, the semiotic and the social. They helped question authors and readers as subjects and modify the experienced subjectivities of speakers, performers, publishers, and literates. In doing so they kept intervening into dynamic constructions of private and public, community and difference. p13
"Our copyright laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to the fair protection of the public; they are difficult for the courts to interpret and impossible for the Copyright Office to administer with satisfaction to the public." [1]
Calligraphy for Computers, AV Hershey
User:Ssstephen/Reading/Calligraphy for Computers
The power of language in Jewish Kabbalah and magic: how to do and undo things with words, Agata Paluch
Literary Machines, Ted Nelson
(reading method note: read chapters 1 & 2 with no writing/notetaking, now re-scanning and writing these notes)
TN shows a diagram of "Ordinary" Hypertext which he proposes is a simplification of a (his) bigger more unifying idea. But surely there are more "Weird" Hypertexts? "Different" Hypertexts, "Strange" Hypertexts, "Outside" Hypertexts.
Check out Douglas Engelbart's NLS at Stanford Research Institute.
The reason that it (Project Xanadu) has taken so long is that all of its ultimate features are part of the design
Again this seems super prescriptive to me, not sure if I like that. No room for adaptation of structure, this is apparently the ultimate superstructure. ("unified structure to handle it all", "clean design", etc etc words that start warning signals for me)
TN seems to me to have some hidden/unaddressed desires to make this a corporate or commercial structure, in particular on page 0/6 where he compares Xanadu to Xerox Corporation (even the name dude), and page 0/13 where he offers new recruits "a small chance of fame and fortune".
THE BOOK STOPS HERE.
Ex TOT DAG: Expanding Tissue of Text, Data and Graphics (p. 0/9)
And publishing--ah consider what publishing will become
I like the optimistic rhetoric though and definitely exciting to read.
Check out The Problems of Hypertext (Chapter 3 of this book?)
This book too is hardly everybody's cup of tea[quote added], since there is not much choice among its sequences
p.1/14 Note: I added the link, it there a protocol for this? I have adapted the more traditional [emphasis added]
Hypertext referred to as "nonsequence". In my experience it is more a multitude of sequences, this is what I assumed the hyper- part meant. p.1/15
"Colored links" p.1/15: Interesting contrast to my interpretation of p.0/2 "Ordinary" Hypertext as part of a prescriptive system.
"Compound hypertext" p.1/16: In general the tone of this chapter sits with me better. I think TN is presenting the same ideas but without the intense rhetoric of the start.
Pictures and diagrams are intrinsically nonsequential
p.16 (mkay)
Talmud as hypertext p.1/16: a body of accumulated comment and controversy
Admitting hypertext is not from the future, I'm into this.
It is my belief that this new ability to represent ideas in the fullness of their interconnectedness will lead to easier and better writing, easier and better learning, and a far greater ability to share and communicate the interconnections among tomorrows ideas and problems
p.1/19. Again with the uber-optimistic futuristic rhetoric imo. I get this is still chapter one of the book but I see no space in his language for considering the potential issues of this new system. Where's my hoverboard?
Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski
P63 In Praise of the Cross-Reference
Index card system as authors assistant when cross referencing is used, or communication partner
Conscious and unconscious cross referencing
Clarifying creative prompts
Intentional (re conscious unconscious?) incorrect references can stimulate. Like Denis Diderot in Encyclopedia
Index cards as stars
Index cards as neurons
Index cards as stock prices
Index cards as sex in the city characters
Mapping
Scope/accuracy of a reference... Reference to mathematics vs reference to godels incompleteness theorem. Focus
“ Every note is only one element"
Claude Shannon Entropy
Nikolas Luhmann physical index cards in the late twentieth century (Anonymous . 1929c . “ Kartei ” als Warenzeichen gelöscht! Rationelle Betriebsführung, n.p.) ( Vogt , Victor . 1922 . Die Kartei: Ihre Anlage und Führung. Vol. 5 of Orga-Schriften. 2nd edition , revised by Dr. Porstmann. Berlin : Organisation Verlagsanstalt)
n.p.
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P65 On the Gradual Manufacturing of Thoughts in Storage
poetological - to do with the knowledge of creation? Don't have a dictionary right now
Konrad Gessner possible inventor of index cards
"the production of innovations is always based on the fortifi ed recombination of the existing."
Heinrich von Kliest midwifery of thought (On the Gradual Produc-tion of Thoughts Whilst Speaking 1805) borrowed from Kant
analects --- what is this?
Conversation creates ideas
The Text claims index cards are a valid substitute for the new connections and perspectives offered by a human in conversation. To me this implies the humans creativity is the same as the connections offered by the references; surprising, useful, inspiring, but also predetermined?
Index cards as "precise" "infallible", generally true compared to humans but a) has limits and b) has negative results as well as positive
Kliest - knowledge as a "condition" or state rather than a property
Recombinatory power comes from material nature of cards shuffling juxtaposing etc
"born from the spirit of sloth" index cards as laziness
Index cards as boredom
Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account, Niklas Luhmann
Thinking of the index cards as someone to be communicated with
"One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. "
Information can only be generated through comparison, OR (insert other logical operators here? Combination as information, XOR as information)
Different goals can lead to better mode informative communication
"The fixed filing place needs no system. It is sufficient that we give every slip a number which is easily seen and that we never change this number and thus the fixed place of the slip"
order is a system though, even chronology? Doesn't take relativity into account, implies some observer with a privileged frame of reference
This isn't just a hypothetical or theoretical limit, consider two authors editing the same wiki page
Multiverse library or multiverse wiki - if someone is already editing the page (or the entire wiki) and a second editor appears (or second observer), the new wiki "timeline" splinters from the last. (options in brackets would splinter much more frequently)
How does version history look in this system?
Could be experimented with a small simple system, maybe a single bit of content and two editors, with metadata for edit/version history
Secondary memory
Long term project, how to retain and enable access, preserve information, allow for expansion in future
Order should be purely formal, does this even makes sense? Can form be isolated?
"Every note is only an element which receives its quality only from the network of links and back-links within the system. " One billion Christians can't be wrong, one billion Muslims cant be wrong, one billion hyperlinks can't be wrong
Combination of order and disorder can (?) arise from formally ordered system
Examine supposedly formal orders, my instinct says they're not
Bookmarks
Bookmark sharing, bookmark searching, bookmark exchange, bookmark folders and structuring
Tags vs links, tags offer bidirectionality and multiple end points, links are just vectors while tags are fields
Accidents are the driving force for evolution
"to isolate these two aspects [ order and disorder] from each other is neither possible nor methodologically meaningful" <-- I like this
"tha accidents of reading"
What unread books can teach us, Oliver Burkeman
how to write a thesis don't have internet right now to find a readable version.
how-the-internet-makes-you-think-youre-smarter-than-you-really-are Another One to check out when I get internet connection
"Start with the title, Introduction and table of contents." Useful for reading and writing I think.
"the line wasn’t there" the blank web page, the imagined memory
Fugitive Libraries, Shannon Mattern
Melissa Adler, study of the politics of library classification
Joy Buolamwini, Timnit Gebru, and Safiya Noble
BlackLivesMatter Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
Should a library be neutral? Neutrality justifies disengagement
Catherine Allen Latimer, Nella Larsen, Regina Anderson Andrews, and Pura Belpré
"Carrollton, Georgia, librarian Edith Foster marked the spines of African-Americans’ books with a triangle, so readers of all races would know which texts were meant for whom"
Patterson Toby Graham, in his history of the struggle to integrate Alabama’s libraries, asks questions that are still pertinent today: “What is the role of a library and a librarian in an intolerant and fearful society? Have librarians been active agents or just passive observers in the ebb and flow of social change and social conscience?”
I am a Strange Loop, Douglas Hofstadter
to varying degrees, we human beings live inside other human beings already, even in a totally nontechnological world. the interpenetration of souls is an inevitable consequence of the power of the representationally universal machines that our brains are. that is the true meaning of the word 'empathy'.
He's not great with words (penetration, universal machines, true) but moving past that this is a beautiful idea. The idea of a soul or identity as distributed and modular. The possibility to at very least simulate eachother. He mentions coarse and fine grained a lot which makes me think of renormalisation, and in a good way. A mathematical approach that doesnt require division to reach truth. Accepting that truth can be found on different scales at different times. The night of the 10th of November 1619.
the myth of watertight boundaries between souls is something whose falsity we all have slight tastes of all the time, but since it is so convenient and so conventional to associate one body with precisely one soul, since it is so deeply tempting and so deeply ingrained to see a body and a soul as being in perfect alignment, we choose to downplay or totally ignored the implications of the everyday manifestations of the [intercirclusion] of souls.
Volumetric Regimes, Possible Bodies
The So-called Lookalike
read it here A letter Manetta Barends wrote as the so-called designer of this book to a designer, such as the designer of the template used for the entire series, and made me think of a conversation we started to have in Methods yesterday about style.
The series editors insisted that we could take the design of the book into our own hands, as long as we would “follow the template”. They did not specify what this would mean exactly, but made clear that it was important for them that we honored the original design.
I am wondering how to reconnect your template and aesthetics to the way this book is being made?
We found a slab serif font that aligned with the one in your template and we figured out how to replicate the layout’s dynamics and overall structuration.
(emphasis added in all three above)
Aligned in what way, and why? As a fun misunderstanding Manetta then starts to talk about the "face on the cover" by which I thought she meant typeface. When she mentioned this slab-serif face I was already thinking about the implications of honouring the design choices in the template, and this made me think about the implications of using faces based on those from the early ninteenth century (in this book but also generally). If the face is aligned with the template, can it also be aligned with the contributors? Does everything have to be lined up? The spanish for 'line them up' is 'alinearlos' which is a useful term to know if you are trying to work with a designer whose communicates in spanish.
Yesterday (20221005) xpub1 were discussing style briefly while working together as a group. Myself and Bobi had attempted to not put our own formatting onto some texts we were comparing ('designing' and 'editing' respectively). But then when discussing the compared texts as a group, Cara immediately noticed them to be "very xpub". Brought up some thoughts about styles emerging from process and tools, individual and collective styles, and the implied next thought for me would be 'so what?', does it have any effect?
We Have Always Been GeoHackers
read it here Weird coincidence that I read this the day before learning to use the 3D printer. Although it first seemed like something not directly relevant some ties came up even in naming (gcode and gplates), but more interesting was looking at their process as a case study. 'Disobedient bug reporting and disobedient action research' seem like useful tools to me, and maybe are also interesting in relation to Manetta's letter above. I thought this was a good critique of a software environment and environment software.
body of the earth
This essay also references 'Yusoff, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None' a few times which seems worth looking into.
From Work to Text[ to Sound], Roland Barthes
The title makes it clear already that text good work bad no work me text. When i first got a mobile phone it cost 9c to send a text. This steadily grew to 13c, although never cost as much as an MMS (up to 25c). Presumably the multi media message involved more work than the text, and hence the higher cost. Certainly an MMS usually involves the transfer of much more data than an SMS. Nasdaq defines information cost as
Transactions costs that include the assessment of the investment merits of a financial asset. Related: Search costs.
These days texts dont work in the same way as they used to, messaging has become over the top. An internet connection is required to go over the top, although a cellular network is not.
On B-dog's comparisons with music:
"to play" and "to listen" constituted a virtually undifferentiated activity
Barthes maybe saying that listening without playing is passive, spectating society? The text made me think of the word 'action' a lot, until Roro finally offers it in the cadence 'deferred action', the signifier as the beat that never drops. At sonic acts yesterday i found myself listening and also hearing. Trying hard not to see or read, which is difficult but Very Important Participation. Also attempting to keep silent, which is certainly easier but still a challenge (run through a forest with your hair tied in a braid without breaking a single branch). Sound good text bad because a sound is always part of an environment. You can't hear any thing except the mechanotransduction of your hair follicles, which your body is overcoding to stop you from overfalling and to give you spatial orientation. Sound is space or at very least they are signified in the same text.
Exploratory Programming, Nick Montford
1.7 Free Software and No-Cost Software
Free as in free beer, free speech, free love, free money, free palestine, freebird, free education, free ride, freefall, free willy, freesound.org, free facebook, free Tom Mooney, free your mind, free your mind arnhem, free music, free movies, free movies online, free movies watch now.
Further reading from this section: Free Texts Free Verse Free Software Free Software
America, Allen Ginsberg
America why are your libraries full of tears?
I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
Nuestra Herencia: Senior Legacy Project at El Paseo Community Garden, On the Real Film
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An Invitation for Wildness, Happen Films
Non-action as a forest-gardener, sun tzu sort of thing
As a forest gardener one of the things that you do come to realise is that you're a bit-player, you're not the main driver out there, and that really your responsibility becomes learning more about how that works, stepping back, being a bit more relaxed about the whole thing and just watching those processes. And even changing the way that you think about harvest and about what you eat or what you need from your garden and so your diet could change as ours has, and rather than looking to eat lettuces we might each alexanders or a perrenial french sorrel.
The more intervention you make, the more mistakes you're likely to make
time-code for story about weed management
The opportunities that need people, its the opposite of industrialisation or intensification where you need hardly any people because machines are doing it, herbicides are doing it. Putting people back into an environment, help them to make it worthwhile and healthy
Writing Machines, N. Katherine Hayles
Material Metaphors p18
Research in Experimental Documents (RED) team at Xerox PARC, including Anne Balsamo and Richard Gold.
Where is this https://www.academia.edu/9759064/the_what_of_XFR_eXperiments_in_the_future_of_reading (found this one)
Where is this https://www.academia.edu/9759063/The_methods_of_our_madness_research_on_experimental_documents
It aint what you do it's the way that you do it
Technotexts p25
Further reading mentioned in this:
Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, Milorad Pavic
Always Coming Home, Ursula LeGuin
High Tension, Paul Zimmerman
Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, Espen Aarseth
Cent Mille Milliards, Raymond Queneau
Afternoon, a story, Michael Joyce (where?)
Hypertext has at a minimum the three characteristics of MULTIPLE READING PATHS, CHUNKED TEXT, and some kind of LINKING MECHANISM
What about a text with only two of these characteristics, or just one? Multiple reading paths and chunked text, but no links? Chunked text and links, but only one reading path? Links without chunked text?
Reflexive Loops
N Kate includes the phrase reflexive loops
in her definition of technotexts which is v interesting. A text that creates a feedback loop by connecting the nodes of materiality and inscribed constructions (avoiding the words form and content? which is great if that's what she's doing) necessarily can achieve more than a text that doesn't. Feedback of information at the moment makes me think of emergent complexity, eg video feedback as described by Douglas Hofstadter in I Am A Strange Loop, example here and here. Or in the audio world, Karplus Strong synthesis or other techniques that use feedback to an extent that the initial inputs become irrelevant, the emergent sound (or video, or text) having its own properties. Also the recording surface of the body without organs. How can the process of recording and inscribing be creative and what is created or emerges from it? Why does a self-referencing iframe not infinitely loop and crash my machine?
The true difference in nature is not between the Symbolic and the Imaginary, but between the real machinic element, which constitutes desiring-production, and the structural whole of the Imaginary and the Symbolic, which merely forms a myth and its variants
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus p.102
The Future of Writing, Vilem Flusser
image
space
linear
the grass
text
[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm#link2H_4_0087 eternal return]
sound
[[#eternalreturn |eternal return]]
‘Well! Once more!’
music
‘Was THAT—life?’ will I say unto death.
[[#eternalreturn |eternal return]]
As We May Think, Vannevar Bush
(from the Life magazine reproduction, September 1945)
- Image: The scientist recording an experiment with a "universal-focus lens" in 1945 was presumably an optimistic or hopeful one, and the title and subtitle seem to follow along with this but for me the idea of "universal-focus" is terrifying and presumably for many people today at least unrealistic. A jpeg (which this article probably isnt, but most likely uses a similar compression format) does not have a universal focus but rather makes compromises (thinking or cognition?) on how much to represent, the resolution and also the frequency of information to represent. Like the human eye it was designed for, the compression algorhythm ignores high frequency data. Alias, the "universal-focus lens" seems to me an unrealistic and unwanted dream.
Witness the humble typewriter, or the movie camera, or the automobile.
Who should witness them? What is witnessing? When you witness a document you write your name on it. "Witness" comes from wit as in knowledge.
Electrical contacts have ceased to stick when thoroughly understood.
Does understanding (observing) affect the world? Is reading a form of writing?
- Image: A scientist smoking a pipe and holding a large cylindrical flask half full of liquid. They are looking into the flask and attempting to keep a serious face while trying desperately to remember if it is the top or the bottom of the meniscus that should be read. The pipe greatly assists in this attempt as it forces the scientist to keep their lips tightly pursed. This image shows, much more clearly that the previous one, the artefacts of fourier space compression; a splash of high frequency here, a dab of low frequency there, the algorithm's fingerprints poured into its work.
Under [Vannevar Bush's] direction 6,000 scientists worked on such projects as the development of radar and the atomic bomb.
Between the original publishing of this article in the Atlantic July 1945 and this version in September 1945 there was one month which was called August 1945 and it had thirty one days including the 6th of August 1945 and the 9th of August 1945. From here Im finished with the opinions of this Little Boy, but I kept reading the images.
- Images: Ex-lax is presented as the goldilocks zone laxative through three images and accompanying text, not like those "fright!" strong laxatives or "sissy" weak laxatives. Just stay centrist and no-one will get spanked!
- Image: The "supersecretary of the coming age" has a big smiley head on it. The line drawing style of the illustration reminds me of operating manuals and assembly instructions. The supersecretary is a tool (hence the big smiley head).
- Image: The Mifflin ad is quite frightening. Perhaps this isnt from the original, but this compressed version of the image looks like the woman has a very intense stare. Maybe this is in relation to the poem she recites to herself (to me?) and her intense body rubbing which seems to contradict the slogan "Rub and relax with Mifflin".
- Image: An eagle in a circle.
- Image: A right foot with three corns.
- Image: Coins I thought but then I read they are awards for watchcraft.
- Image: Sir Walter Raleigh.
- Image: Automobile User's Guide.
- Image: Mechanical pencil.
- Image: Server room with controller which has pressure gauges and VU meters.
- Image: A boy cycles away from his dad, both wave.
- Image: A magazine with a picture of a girl on a bike (the boy's bike?)
- Image: A bag of Richardson's After Dinner Mints.
- Image: Ceci c'est un pipe.
- Image: A girl drinking orange juice, and a bottle of orange juice.
- Image: A tube of paste called Glider.
- Image: A woman smoking indoors.
- Image: A person in their underwear.
- Image: Fudge.
- Image: Robinson Reminders, a pocket memory system (to be used with the mechanical pen?).
- Image: A dog wrappen in a suspender.edit: no a sock garter.
- Image: A shoe that transforms soldiers into businessmen.
- Image: A board game that appears to be a combination of scrabble and pictionary.
- Image: Cute puppies.
- Image: Another woman smoking (location not specified visually).
Near Print and Beyond Paper: Knowing by *.pdf, Lisa Gitelman
PDfs variously partake of the form and fixity of print that other digital text formats frequently do not.
The “look of printedness,” as I have called it, has been separated from paper and mobilized online, even in the process of producing printed books.
[PDFs] render
Its just a normal PDF.
Finally, and at Adobe’s instigation, PDf 1.7 was adopted as an open standard by the International Standards Organization in 2008
This would be interesting to study further as an event, what is the context, who were the actors, what were their motivations.
The fixity of print
the New York Times Information Bank—another fascinating, short-lived experiment—tried the same kind of thing, but fiche retrieval proved so unreliable that eventually “a person wearing white gloves pulled fiche on demand” and positioned it in front of a video camera.
Tabs opened while reading
WYSIWYG WYS>WYG WYS<WYG WYS%WYG WYS&WYG WYS|WYG
folding, smelling, tearing, crumpling, shuffling, and wiping
PDfs are indi-vidually bounded and distinct.
Can a PDF be in itself?
<iframe src="https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/images/9/9b/Response_to_Lisa_Gitelman_Near_Print_and_Beyond_Paper.pdf" />
If it is a common-place today that words and images and sounds are closer together than they have ever been before—now that all of them come as data strings, in bits and bytes—nonetheless there are important ways that “as compu-tational data structures, images differ radically and fundamentally from electronic text.”85 The big difference, as Kirschenbaum explains, is that unlike digital text, “images remain largely opaque to the algorithmic eyes of the machine.”
9 Not quite text (from a reader’s standpoint) and not entirely image (at the scanner), barcodes like these require a fixity that makes them perfect content for PDfs as well as for paper. So the document persists.
What is the difference between "Portable Document Format Reference Manual" by Adobe Systems and "Beyond Paper: The Official Guide to Adobe Acrobat" by Patrick Ames?
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An Archive of Words, Daniel Rosenberg
This reminds me of Vuk Cosic's File Extinguisher (which seems to be most easily accessed through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine ironically). The File Extinguisher used to also have a map which unfortunately doesn't seem to be archived. The map as an archive is an interesting document as it primarily locates things in relation to eachother. Where do you put something in the archive, what is beside it, what is it far away from?
It will be the foundation for the history of the epistemol-ogy of our contemporary era.
How does "the epistimology of our contemporary era" have a history? I can only understand this as part of a more general history of epistemology, maybe I'm missing the point.
Thomas Aquinas in Roberto Busa Mallet topic modeling software, can this be used to make a Zipfian distribution? Try on John Dee's Liber Loagaeth for example or some of Hildegard's Lingua Ignota
a feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by
the a the a the the the the a the the a a the a a the the a a the a the a a a the the a a the the the the a a a a a the a the a the the a the the the the the a a the a a a a a the a a a the a a the the the a a the a a a the the a a a a a a a the a the a the the the a a a the a a the a a the a a the a a a a a a a a a the a the a a the a a the the the a a a a a a a a the the the a a a the a the a the a the the a a the a a a a the a a a a a a a a the a the a a the a the the the the the a a the a the a a the the a a a a a the the a a the a the the the the the the the a the a a the a a a the the a a a the a the a the the the a a the the the a the a a the a the a a the the the a a the a the a a a a a a a the a a a the the a the a the a the the a a the a a the a the a the the the the a a the the the a the a a a a a a the a the a a a a the a the the the the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the a the the the the the a a a the a the a the a the the the a the a a the a the a the the the a the a a the a the the the a a a the the the the a a a a the the the the a the a a a a a a the the a a a a a the the the the a a the a the a the the
the Microfiche Concordance to Old English: The High- Frequency Words.11 This marks a no-table development in the history of computer- generated concordances
No-table lol.
Ability of Google Search et al to understand or interpret natural language is super interesting. A search algorithm doesn't have the same logic of interpretation as a human, it finds meaning in other places and finds other meanings. Presumably corporate aims are to make this logic emulate human meaninging as much as possible to make it an efficient tool, but it's interesting to think about the alternative knowledge a meaning-making machine could find.
Concordance of indeclinables, John of Segovia
It was a forest of words
Strongs Concordance and other concordances of the Bible are aggregated here. A concordance is an external text which creates links within it's target text. This site as an aggregated concordance then creates links between the entries of different concordances, referring to the same target text.
Further reading
Paul Tasman, “Literary Data Processing,” IBM Journal of Research and Development 1, no. 3 1957
Franco Moretti, Distant Reading;
Steven Best and Sharon Marcus, “Surface Reading: An Introduction,” Representations 108, no. 1 (November 1, 2009): 1– 21;
Heather Love, “Close but Not Deep: Literary Ethics and the Descriptive Turn,” New Literary History 41, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 371– 91;
New Ways of Reading
Lev Manovich, “The Database as Symbolic Form,” Convergence5, no. 2 (June 1999): 80– 99;
Geoffrey C. Bowker, Memory Practices in the Sciences (Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005)
An Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present
Barbara Flood, Historical note: The start of a stop list at biological abstracts
Biological Abstracts’ Subject in Context (BASIC) 1961 BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) 1964
The Internet may feel like a universal archive. In fact, it is more like a textual archipelago.
Universality in Elementary Cellular Automata, Matthew Cook
Because a system is universal, some of its properties are undecidable (will it become periodic, will a particular sequence occur)
Because Turing machines are universal, if a compiler exists that can compile any data and program from a turing machine to another computer, then that computer is also universal
Tag systems are universal ACDABBE --> DABBECCDD
Cyclic tag systems can only have a two letter alphabet {Y,N}, but they can emulate tag systems so are also universal.
A glider system (see image) is a system of moving particles called gliders. In the image you can see diagonal lines which interact with vertical lines (the tape head or data) in the centre, emulating a cyclic tag system. The glider system is running an emulation of the cyclic tag system, which is running an emulation of the tag system. In a way this looks like a vector system to me, of interacting vectors rather than flipping bits.
Lastly you run an emulation of the glider system inside rule 110.
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Fabric version of this could be really interesting. If you got a round loom with 14n pins (a flat loom maybe would be more flexible, to decide different sizes), you could knit a hat or sock program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOTIAmg0Iow Or does it need to be woven? No idea.
The piece should be a ring so the ends more obviously loop back on themselves. Re: slow computing, computation as labour, This Work of Body / This Body of Work, Meghan Clarke https://www.designacademy.nl/p/study-at-dae/graduation-show/graduation-projects/meghan-clarke Talk to Daniela about double sided knitting, re binary knitting and ternary knitting. So the knitting is the computation; knit the first line of the program then knit further to get the output. A little similar to a quipu, although probably a less efficient system. Are quipus universal?
What can you compute on rule 110 (apart from everything)? Can you write a hello world script on a rule 110 computer? Can you add 2+2? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKnSRw_X2w4
First attempts here at coding in the p5.js version of 110 with a few A gliders of increasing widths. Even experimenting on the javascript version of this is so slow, doing this in playing cards or knitting would be incredibly slow. But if it's a statement about computational labour the slowness reveals that.
Stopped at page 13 for now.
The Future Looms, Sadie Plant
Characters in this paper in order of appearance:
- Sadie Plant
- Mallory
- Ada Byron ("the Queen of Engines")
- The Prime Minister
- William Gibson
- Bruce Sterling
- Ada Lovelace ("the Queen of Engines")
- The Difference Engine
- Luce Irigaray
- The computer
- The loom
- The patriarchal present
- The end of human history
- Freud
- Woman
- Man
- Charles Babbage
- Lady Byron ("the Princess of Parallelograms")
- Sophia Frend
- Moore
- Mary Somerville
- Dr Dionysus Lardner
- The Mechanics Institute
- Menabrea
- The Analytical Engine
- That Brain of mine
- William Carpenter
- The Devil
- Babbage's fairy
- Her three children
- Her husband
- Her mother
- A Snail-Shell
- A Molecular Laboratory
- A.K.
- Morrison
- Morrison
- Jacquard
- Jacquard's cards
- the Jacquard loom
- Weaving
- the drawloom
- the China of 1000BC
- the complex designs common in the silks of this period
- one historian
- half the threads of the warp
- the other
- the hands
- the shuttle
- the thread
- the woof
- Fernand Bruadel
- the Middle Ages
- the artificial memories of the printed page
- Basyle Bouchon
- Falcon, inventor of the punch card
- the relentless drive to perfect the punch card system
- the Second World War
- the Allied military machine
- Howard Aiken
- Mark 1 ("the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator")
- Konrad Zuse
- the Z-3
- the Z-11
- Captain Grace Murray Hopper ("the 'Ada Lovelace' of Mark 1")
- her husband
- the war
- the first high-computer language COBOL
- the term "bug"
- Norbert Wiener
- the governor
- the cybernetic system
- the Turing Machine
- Turing
- Manuel de Landa
- the decentralized flow of control
- Allan Newell
- "demons"
- "Pandemonium"
- Alan Kay
- Neith, the Egyptian divinity of weaving
- Lucie Lamy
- the fate of cottage industries in the Midlands and North of England
- Lord Byron
- the Frame-Work Bill
- the processes which relocated and redefined control
- Athena
- Isis
- the wife
- her husband
- Margaret Mead
- The disruption of family relations caused by the introduction of mechanics
- the mother
- the strange fluidities of the material
- Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche
- his/the mother
- the appearance and the possibility of simulation
- the screen, the interface, the messenger
- Marshall McLuhan
- Quentin Fiore
- the patrilineal demand for the reproduction of the same
- Thom Jurek
- Larry McCaffrey
- the materiality of the data space
- this actual space
- the disguises
- Neuromancer's cowboy, Case
- a vast thing, beyond knowing
- the mimic
- herself
- the faults of Nature
- her own veils ("her camouflage")
- the terrifying virtuality of the natural
- Michael Heim
- Helsel
- Roth
- the 'subject'
- science, machine, woman
- Misogyny and technophobia
- the end of the twentieth century
- a proliferation of screens, lines of communication, media, interfaces, and simulations
- Cybernetic feminism
- "her own"
- the interface
- another woman
- Darwin
- Footnotes ("the marginal zones")
- "A.A.L."
- the United States Defence Department
- ADA
- her own name
Ada Lovelace often described her strange intimacy with death... it was no wonder that she was so attracted to the unfamiliar expanses of mathematical worlds.
This story starts mostly with a character assessment of Ada Lovelace as sadgirl.
There is no finite line of demarcation which limits the powers of the Analytical Engine. These powers are co-extensive with our knowledge of the laws of analysis itself, and need be bounded only by our acquaintance with the latter.
Quote from Ada Lovelace. Quite utopian, but I see where the excitement comes from. Outside of a mathematical definition of "limits", there are plenty of limits on the Analytical Engine like quantity of punchcards, computation speed, weight, location, networking capabilities, no USB-C ports, it never existed, etc.
the Analytical Engine weaves Agebraical patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
Quote from Ada Lovelace. Interesting that she says the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves, as opposed to thread and yarn. Are all machines running simulations? Certainly these two early examples look like they are.
Basyle Bouchon and Jacques de Vaucanson were two other inventors in the 18éme siecle who invented punched paper roll and the lathe and le Canard Digérateur.
the punch card gave the Analytical Engine foresight
the Analytical Engine will possess a library of its own
Grace Hopper introduced the term "bug" after she found a dead moth interrupting the smooth circuits of Mark 1.
Only after the introduction of silicon in the 1960s did the decentralized flow of control become an issue, eventually allowing for systems in which "control is always captured by whatever production happens to have its conditions satisfied by the current workspace contents."
How does this distribution of control work in other situations?
Pandemonium is the realm of the self-organising system, the self-arousing machine: systems of control and synthetic intellegence... only with the cybernetic system does self-control no longer entail being placed beneath or under something: there is no "self" to control man#, machine or any other system... the possibility of activity without centralised control, an acency, of sorts, which has no need of a subject position
I guess that answers my question.
"Mechanisation saves time and labour" how does this relate to the labour (and time) of craft, the labour of decoration re Marian Bantjes and William Morris? If artists are not the decorators, who will they be? Re: crappy print.
Who are the women? Those who weave.
A computer that passes the Turning test is always more than a human intelligence, simulation always takes the mimic over the brink.
permacomputing/ Principles
Available https://permacomputing.net/Principles/
There are a lot of individual principles in this booklet I agree with (shortened below):
- "Avoid pseudosimplicity"
- "Low complexity is beautiful"
- "Abundance thinking". I have some reservations about the post-scarcity reference in this context but mostly this seems like a good spin on that idea.
- "Design for descent". This feels a little like a prepper thing to say, which I think may be veering towards conspiracy theories (and also not in my opinion a healthy attitude towards how to solve urgent existential threats in our ecosystem). On the other hand the anti-economic message this might be suggesting is a great idea, and maybe a more specific idea I would agree with is design for deflation.
- "Keep it flexible". This entire section I agree with strongly. "In an ideal and elegant system, the three factors (smallness, simplicity and flexibility) support each other." This modularity idea is shown best by (some) computer systems, and I think in fact could be implemented in other aspects of society/permaculture to good effect. Of course this also makes we want to make more modular synths.
- "Grow roots to a solid ground". This is a much nicer phrasing than "build on a solid ground", showing the work put in by the organism to reach the solid ground. And also the way it integrates itself into the ecosystem (roots binding the soil are part of what makes the ground solid).
- "Amplify awareness".
- "You dont need to twiddle with everything in order to understand it".
- "Nothing is 'universal'. Even computers, 'universal calculators' that can be readapted to any task, are full of quirks that stem from the cultures that created them. Don't take them as the only way things can be, or as the most 'rational' or 'advanced' way."
- "Strict utilitarianism impoverishes. Uselessness also has an important place, so appreciate it".
- "Think about technology as a rhizome rather than a highway of progress and constant obsolescence".
-
On the other hand I wonder about the overall implication of this shift in approach to computing. Presumably this change in principles is intended to have an effect on computing, the earth and people (the biosphere?). Some of the thoughts in these principles sound anti-progress or anti-learning. Of course a part of this is necessary to achieve sustainability (anti-growth, anti-capitalism, anti-inflation), but to me there also seems to be a risk of stagnation in this idea. "Intelligence amplification was a good goal", are they suggesting we should give up on this goal, that there is enough intelligence in the ecosystem? Or maybe it is not anti-progress but they are suggesting it didnt work? Either way I disagree and think computers have more to offer as intelligence-amplifiers.
-
Some individual principles that may be problematic:
- "Planned longevity". I get that this is as opposed to planned obsolescence, but other things that we have created recently with long life spans (and half-lives) are proving to be quite problematic, so I think this should be approached with caution.
- "Dependencies should be kept low". This is not how an ecosystem works. Maybe a more useful idea would be to keep dependencies small and modular, or to keep dependencies flexible (through standardised interfaces and interactions, and clear, translatable communication).
- "Human scale: A reasonable level of complexity for a computing system is that it can be entirely understood by a single person." This seems like an arbitrary measurement at best, and more likely an applied anthropocentric limit. There are plenty of things in the ecosystem that are too complicated for one human to understand (or care for).
- "Dont take anything for granted. Especially don't expect the infrastructure such as the power grid and global networking to continue working indefinitely." Again sounding a bit like preppers here. I get that the condition of the earth is in decline and on a disastrous course but should there be a space for that thought in a list of principles for permaculture/permacomputing? From another point of view, the idea of not taking anything for granted brings me back to my point about dependencies, surely a healthy ecosystem should be full of them.
Defense of crappy print, Clara Balaguer and Florian Cramer and Marc van Elburg
User:Ssstephen/Reading/Defense of crappy print
Computing is Reading, Daniel Punday
E-books, Libraries and Feelies
Topography and book design in e books. What is currently possible? What should be possible?
Jonathan Franzen claims that if books are not permanent there can be no justice system or responsible self government. This seems like an outrageous claim to me, what does he mean by that? Interested to understand.
"The link between the individual book and the larger body of text": Is this an interface? What connects the book to the larger body? Is it an interspace? What is between books and libraries? What's between a webpage and a website? What's between a codex and the project Xanadu? "books are independent of libraries" how does this relate to their interspace?
Alberto Manguel, a history of reading: "rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned"
Programming languages depend on their libraries; if they change or disappear the program can become erratic or fail. Does this happen to hypertexts? These dependancies happen whenever the institution or mechanism achieves a critical mass of acceptance.
Is there an argument for discrete autonomous action? Individuality and individuals?
This paper seems to be correlating modular libraries with closed software, that doesn't seem like a necessary path to follow although it does sound like reality.
Robert Filieu ample food for stupid thought: Book as collection of postcards (is this a book or a library?)
The monster at the end of this book - sesame Street as meta fiction
design innovation is not a modernist tangent to the history of the book but rather a fundamental part of publication
"It is the nature of modular libraries to insist on the uniformity of its members" this seems to contracting the image example previously given off iTunes, which clearly shows music, movies, mobile applications, artwork. Do all modular systems insist on uniformity? a modular synthesiser insists on a shared language such as cv or audio, and usually shared physical dimension (eg 3u height in eueorack). But often rules are broken, and modules from one system can even interact with those from another. So if a shared language or methods of interaction can be used, the modules can become more free while retaining the ability to collaborate. Communication allows for the expression (and fulfilment) of needs and desires.
"people who are really serious about software should invent their own hardware" Alan Kay (inventor of the dynabook)
Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror as an example of the text in collaboration with the modular library: Netflix used additional features not usually seen (were these ever used elsewhere?) to provide a unique experience for a single episode. Are all institutions evil all the time?
Emulation is mentioned as a powerful tool against modular systems becoming redundant: Because it is a system, one emulator can let me play all Nintendo64 games
'reading’— even the reading of a first paragraph—is always reading as
Above quoted from Peter Rabinowitz. I like this term reading as. I think sweet pete means "reading as fiction" or "reading as a magazine", but there is also "reading as a machine", "reading as my mother when she was a young girl" and "reading as sport". But essentially the same thing, how much of the information is in the context, whether it is genre, format or collection (both library categories?) or other implications from systems like assumed or implied intentions of the author, or other extra-textual (extrabiblical? is this still in the text?) information. There is in fact a word for this now that I think about it. Con-text.
In their introduction to Cultures of Collecting, John Elsner and Roger Cardinal assert, “Classification precedes collection.
Is this always true? The opposite seems more obvious to me, collect then classify. Is classifying things you dont have a type of desire? I name it and categorise it in order to objectify it, and ultimately collect it. This sounds a little scary. If you already own things (can people own things?) then it makes more sense to classify them. I classify all my stuff so I can know what is where, it facilitates navigation.
"People want to own their music."
Quote from Steve Jobs. True though, everyone wants to own the music. Who owns Let's Get it On? Who owns chord progressions? Culturally collected knowledge is part of a library which should be accessible to everyone and functional as a reference tool, but that doesn't mean plagiarism is ok (A. Neely, 2022). But is plagiarism ok? Sometimes in music I want you to work out the reference yourself instead of telling you, it's part of the experience. If you told me a joke, explicitly showing the reference might make it not funny anymore. Imagine Gravity's Rainbow had footnotes. Not funny anymore.
But we need to keep alive the ability for books— even in an electronic environment— to break the design rules that the library might impose on them.
I feel that danny boy is implying that this responsibility is on the shoulders of the library designer, the corporation that makes kindles, the software developers. But surely the whole idea of breaking the rules is always something that emerges from the individual? It's the individual book that makes a choice not to follow, not to fit into the library shelves. Otherwise no rules are being broken and that doesn't sound very fun. The system has changed an revolution is no longer possible sounds like an illusion to me. This makes me think of some of the actions published by Vulfpeck against Spotify.
In this model, an e- book would actually be a combination of two different elements: a general data file (say, in the EPub or some other open format) and a designed interface for reading that data file.
This sounds sort of impractical to me. Every book has a "designed interface", but not everyone wants to design an interface for their books. Also the idea that the library structure (eg Kindle) can choose to ignore this interface seems to me to completely negate the point of the interface in the first place, why would Amazon choose to use the interface in that case? There are already more flexible formats (pdf for exaxmple) that Kindles have chosen not to use. Perhaps Dano is thinking of a CSS sort of model, where two things happen: the client device can ignore the stylesheets (and make mistakes) and also media queries allow the server to suggest adaptations for different devices, and also acknowledge that reading situations are different. Sure the author or typographer might have some wild ideas about how to render the text to get the fully integrated experience with layers of meaning, but are they taking into account that one of their readers is a dog with a dot matrix printer? Doom is a great example of this done well, because you can play Doom on anything.
Pearson argues for “books beyond texts”— that is, we should separate the physical object of the book and the text that it contains
Sounds like dreaming of content without form? Is this essay maybe struggling a little with the more abstract forms of digital files? Just because something is on a computer doesn't mean it is possible to extract an essence from it and remove the structures around it. This seems completely impossible to me, and I would question whether there is even such a thing as platonic ideals (no reference given here because I made this up completely by myself).
I see no reason to insist on standardization for the designed elements of reader experience
Ok here are a few reasons of the top of my head:
- to encourage increased legibility and usability for readers with impaired reading abilities (eg NALA Guidelines).
- to avoid harm to readers who could be negatively affected by certain design choices such as those with photosensitive epilepsy (eg The Harding Test)
- to discourage design strategies that are exclusive of or cause damage to (explicitly or otherwise) a specific ethnicity, gender, religion, etc.
Again this line seems to be missing a crucial point for me, you cant separate form from content.
Once libraries lose their connection to these physical objects and the accidental life history that Manguel describes, it may be that the idea of the library itself may cease to have its same cultural meaning.
The library as a trophy. Is a trophy a tool? Some sort of status symbol that perpetuates or maybe even generates power? I understand that this is the use of some library tools but it seems to me that Dan is implying it is the main use. What about research and discovery, and sharing? He also says a (personal) library is for books you have already read. I have never added a book to my library that I have already read, and if someone gave me a book I had already read I would give it away, not add it to my library. Anyway at very least he seems to think this "idea of the library" is possibly doomed, hopefully he is right.
FullControl GCode Designer, Andrew Gleadall
fullcontrolgcode.com main site
and also fullcontrol.xyz parametric models
Python version coming soon too apparently.
In contrast to design approaches that provide design freedom by excluding manufacturing considerations, this study presents a generic framework for users to explore the design space for structures that can only be achieved by coupling the designed geometry with the manufacturing procedure.
This is an interesting philosophy.
the approach presented here is the first generic framework (i.e. it is not limited to a particular type of print-path or print procedure) developed for the unconstrained design of print-paths and associated printing parameters
Well that sounds cool right? Generic framework, small sharp tools? Definitely sounds sharp anyway but will read on and see how small it is.
In the FullControl design approach, a practical framework has been developed which allows the print-path to be explicitly defined along with all parameters for each individual segment of the print-path, including: • Direction • Print speed • Extrusion rate (controlling extrudate height/width) or set as a non-extruding ‘travel’ movement • Material choice (or print head/tool number) • Other relevant parameters (e.g. acceleration/jerk, nozzle temperature, bed temperature, fan speed)
Jerk is a hilarious name for a physical rate. This is the change in acceleration with respect to time, or the third derivative of position (measured in metres per second per second per second). In case anyone is wondering the next three derivatives of position are called snap, crackle and pop. More information on jerk in relation to manufacturing from Wikipedia:
Jerk is an important consideration in manufacturing processes. Rapid changes in acceleration of a cutting tool can lead to premature tool wear and result in uneven cuts; consequently, modern motion controllers include jerk limitation features. In mechanical engineering, jerk, in addition to velocity and acceleration, is considered in the development of cam profiles because of tribological implications and the ability of the actuated body to follow the cam profile without chatter. Jerk is often considered when vibration is a concern. A device that measures jerk is called a "jerkmeter".
Is it possible to define acceleration or jerk in a gcode command? That's cool if true, I thought GCode could only do speed. If the GCode is sending such complicated derivatives, how is the printer converting these to actual movements? I feel like there must be an a2d conversion somewhere.
the potential to also include non-geometric GCode text strings
This paper is so cheeky. What are non-geometric GCode text strings? I have been sucked in to the narrative and am eagerly anticipating its resolution. Does non-geometric mean non-Euclidian? Or just outside the realms of geometry, like nozzle temperature?
The FullControl design approach also enables freedom beyond geometric print-path design. Extrusion rate and speed were continuously varied in a recent study [31] to achieve five different graded lattice geometries for an identical print-path (Figure 1E). In the FullControl design approach, it is also possible to parametrically vary retraction, temperature, acceleration and any other parameter that can be controlled with GCode. The GCode is generated in the same format as that produced by slicers and it is possible including advanced firmware algorithms and associated settings for compatible printers (e.g. by inserting an “M900 K0.18” command to adjust ‘linear advance’ settings).
Wowwahweewah
Stopped at page 5 for today.
Jane Austen on Python, Lacey Williams Henschel
A lot of interesting things in this about writing style. It might be interesting to also compare Robert Bringhurst's 'Elements of Typographic Style' to the English and Python style guides mentioned in this.
Links from this article that seem interesting:
https://peps.python.org/pep-0008/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure#Freytag's_pyramid
https://peps.python.org/pep-0257/
https://www.worldshakesbib.org/
https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/
The Shape of Things, Vilém Flusser
The Non-Thing 1 (p85)
immaterial information
Again with the separating content from form, when will you learn? When will you learn that your thoughts have consequences? Lady Anne Conway said (The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.):
Creatures were in one sence from Eternity, and in another sence not from Eternity
For me it can be useful to think of information on its own but to fundamentally separate it from matter makes no sense imo. I am therefore I think, Plato existed and then thought about things.
This throw-away material, all those lighters, razors, pens, plastic bottles, are not true things; one cannot hold on to them... All things will lose their value, and all values will be transformed into information.
This dismissal of the physical world seems really dangerous to me, and not very realistic. Again makes me think of Anne Conway and the pain she physically felt:
Moreover, Why is the Spirit or Soul so passible in corporal Pains? For if when it is united with the Body, it hath nothing of Corporeity, or a bodily Nature, Why is it grieved or wounded when the Body is wounded, which is quite of a different Nature? For seeing the Soul can so easily penetrate the Body, How can any Corporeal Thing hurt it?
If you keep throwing away all your lighters, razors, pens, plastic bottles, someone is going to get hurt.
The only things left of his hands are the tips of his fingers, which he uses to tap on keys so as to play with symbols. The new human being is not a man of action anymore but a player: homo ludens as opposed to homo faber. Life is no longer a drama for him but a performance.
What is the difference between a drama and a performance? And if you only have fingers what connects them to your wrists?
The Non-Thing 2 (p90)
The liberation of software from hardware
Maybe I need to read Hermann Hesse's Glass Bead Game to understand this, but from my point of view just because you can move software from one piece of hardware to another doesn't mean that software can exist outside of hardware. If the future is full of non-things, what are the humans pressing with their fingertips?
This future everyone keeps talking about sounds incredible.
Carpets (p95)
The cave, the womb of the mountains, is our dwelling.
What troglodytes still believe this nonsense, why is it still in the stories. Linnaeus and his damn categories again. My ancestors lived in tents and sometimes I go to the beach and don't write down anything I did there.
Nothing human is natural. That which is natural about us is inhuman.
Ugg
Knotting itself is not a fluid process but a jerky one
Snap, I thought threads were vector. Just because something has jerk doesnt mean it is discontinuous. The finished carpet has the appearance of edges and boundaries but the knots (and the hidden warp) can still be followed back along their paths. Particles are just a simplified way of explaining the vibration and paths of strings.
The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges
in the Library nonsense is the norm
Also Borges dj name: dhcmrlcht-dj
To speak is to fall into tautology
Vade mecum: (Latin for "go with me") has long been used of manuals or guidebooks sufficiently compact to be carried in a deep pocket, and it would sometimes appear in the title of such works, as with one of the earliest known uses of the phrase in the title of the 1629 volume Vade Mecum: A Manuall of Essayes Morrall, Theologicall. From the beginning, it has also been used for constant companions that are carried about by a person, such as gold, medications, and memorized gems of wisdom. But these days, vade mecum is primarily encountered in reference to works which are intended to serve as one-stop references or guides to a particular subject, whether or not such a work can actually be carried in one's pocket (a moot distinction, perhaps, in an age when such works can easily reside in a smartphone's memory). (Mirriam Webster)
Concrete Poems, Nick Montfort
Why 160 character limit (SMS, Twitter, etc)? Based on 80 column line length of telex, selectrix, vt100, and even 1928 IBM punch cards. Maybe based on the size of the dollar bill in the late 19th century. Tests with postcards also revealed most were within 160 characters.
Why gridded typography? From tabular lining numerals, early 1800s? What about older examples of gridded writing like Liber Loageath in 1583? Sumerian cuneiform often in seperate boxes (not gridded though), possibly relating to enumeration as well?
And the throne of his glory was established in it, this one on which his unrevealable name is inscribed, on the tablet [...] one is the word, the Father of the light of everything, he who came forth from the silence, while he rests in the silence, he whose name is in an invisible symbol. A hidden, invisible mystery came forth: iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE oooooooooooooooooooooo uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
From the Gospel of the Egyptians in Nag Hammadi Library, metaphysical power and mystery of repetition. Nicky credits the typewriter as the most important fixed width type machine or interface, as an influence on the monospace grid on the computer (screen). On proportional type "You could do this in the 15th century, it's not new!".
NM talking about his computer generated poetry:
I think of that text as material, sometimes its an interesting material not just to see and to scroll by, but sometimes its an interesting material to comprehend, to see in a mass, but also to sample and to look at... its not always my goal to create something that's worth reading.
Etymology of the work "Network", Keith Briggs
A work taking the form of a net. A network is a work.
Not anie damzell, which her vaunteth most In skilfull knitting of soft silken twyne; Nor anie skil'd in workmanship embost; Nor anie skil'd in loupes of fingring fine, Might in their diuers cunning euer dare, With this so curious networke to compare.
from Muiopotmos, or The Fate of the Butterflie, by Edmund Spenser
opus reticulatum
Brickwork pattern.
Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici
Introduction
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming, The clouds me thought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked I cried to dream again.
(Caliban in The Tempest, William Shakespeare)
Obeah: an ancestral, inherited tradition of Akan witches of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo and their descendants in the African diaspora of the Caribbean. (from Wikipedia)
Further reading from this chapter: Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly The Death of Nature Carolyn Merchant LArcano della Riproduzione Leopoldina Fortunati The moon, the sun and the witches Irene Silverblatt Natural Rebels Hilary Beckles Patriarchy and Accumulation on a world scale Maria Mies
Michel Foucault and the body
To revalorise the body [taking the form of] the quest for non dualistic forms of knowledge
Capitalism, as a social-economic system, is necessarily committed to racism and sexism
If capitalism has been able to reproduce itself it is only because of the web of inequalities that it has built into the body of the world proletariat, and because of its capacity to globalize exploitation.
All the World Needs a Jolt p.13
The manifold, invisible forms of resistance, for which subjugated peasants have been famous in all times and places: 'foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, feigned ignorance, desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching...'
everyday forms of resistance
‡ This reminds me of the stories of French resistance during WWII, which involved sabotage, strike, and general nuisancery. These form of anti-productive resistance are obviously great tools against economically driven capitalism but in these two instances show they can be used against any power structure controlling (or even benefiting from) production.
The difficulty of enforcing the medieval 'social contract,' and the the variety of battlefields available to a combative tenant or village
The Bare Facts of Ritual, Jonathan Z. Smith
The scholar lives in the void (sic) that the poet, Borges, has described.
My brain misread this because someone gave me "a void" as a christmas present. It should say "world". This plays fun with the Kafka references later though. The world as a void, a random group of events, things, actions, rules occuring with apparent meaning.
The temple serves as a focusing lens, marking and revealing significance.
epiphantic: of or having the character of an epiphany
The ordinary becomes significant, becomes sacred, simply by being there.
.
signals and noise: musical intervals BitSuite Some old questions: Which intervals are musical and which are noise? Is there a line between consnance and dissonance?
ritual is an exercise in the strategy of choice
The coffee ritual: I need my coffee to start the day right. I use ritual tools like a moka pot and specially prepared beans to ground myself before the daily grind. It is a personal ritual where I ignore the coffee farms of Colombia and the aluminium manufacturing in Brescia. I make coffee for me. The beans are already roasted mystically and the focus is on extracting.
the religious symbolism of hunting is that of overcoming the beast who frequently represents either chaos or death.
nature in rituals: nature as chaos
the Fate of Bones:
Bones endure; they are the source of rebirth after death. The bones are a reservoir of life; they require only to be refleshed.
Further reading The Rings of Saturn W. G. Sebald
And we will be required, if society is held to have any sanity at all, to explain it all away.
Or maybe society does not have any sanity at all and that is the explanation? What is sanity? Some sort of objective relationship between thought and the external world, a "correct" way of perceiving nature?
some means of overcoming [the] contradition between 'word and deed.' This, I believe, is one major function of ritual.
Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled, course of things.
It provides the means for demonstrating that we know what ought to have been done.
These pages are making me think about art (mostly graphic/plastic arts but also performance and music, even writing I suppose) and how they often involve "representations" not of the world as it is but as it could be. For example Malevitch, the idea that pure artistic expression or geometric shapes are somehow more ideal than representation of reality. There's that old ideal/real dualism thing again that keeps getting everyone in trouble. Schoenberg once said "I have made a discovery which will ensure the supremacy of German music for the next hundred years". There seems to be an idea that the world of thought is more ideal than the external world. I have thought this idea myself from time to time, or at least my mind has. I wonder what Spinoza would have thought of serialism?
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things...God’s power of thinking is equal to God’s power of acting.
Spinoza , Ethics II. Pr.7
So if the ritual or art "demonstrates" it is through acting what ought to be the case, acting in the sense of performing, creating, or simply bringing into being. There is no thinking without acting and a ritual is an obvious case of acting according to our thoughts.
Ritual gains its force where incongruency is perceived.
But this article is about the difference between the action of the ritual and actions at other times.
I would also assume that, at some point, he reflects on the difference between his actual killing and the perfection represented by the ceremonial killing.
Why assume that the hunter reflects? Do we reflect on our rituals? Do football fans discuss applying the social relations represented in the match to their own lives as they sit around in the pub afterwards? Do classical music lovers go home from a concert with Beethoven stuck in their head and also the question of why 17th century upper class European music is so globally loved hundreds of years later? People a long time ago were probably just as dumb as people are today.
Further reading James George Frazer (mythology, comparative religion)
The ceremony performed before undertaking an actual hunt demonstrates that the hunter knows full well what ought to transpire if he were in control; the fact that the ceremony is held is eloquent testimony that the hunter knows full well that it will not transpire, that he is not in control.
The phrase "focusing lens" works best for me from this text, the ritual is a perfected version of what will actually happen, an idealised representation of our aspirations for the reality of human life.
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Chapter 7: Defining Games
formal game, by definition, has a winner; and winning is the "end"... It has an agreed set of equipment and of procedural "rules" by which the equipment is manipulated to produce a winning situation.
From David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games. The "rules" and even equipment part of this make sense to me, although sometimes the equipment might be very minimal or nothing (is the 100m sprint a game? or hide and seek?). On the other hand the winner/winning part seems a little constrictive to me. While many games involve (and end with) winning, this seems to be missing the point of most games in a broader sense to me. If only one person or team wins, why would so many people want to play games when the odds of losing are so high? Perhaps the possible reward makes it worthwhile but I suspect in most games there is something else to gain for the players than simply winning. However where Parlett is trying to distinguish games and informal play I think this is a useful point as long as it is not over emphasised in other contexts.
Reduced to its formal essence, a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context.
From Serious Games, Clark C. Abt. As discussed in this section, this definition allows elections, international relations and arguments to be considered games. I think this is missing the same basic point as Dave's definition in that it assumes the objectives of the game are the players' actual main objectives. "It's just a game", "I'm just playing with you". Gameplay implies on some level this is not real life, this might be consequential but it's not the goal. Serious games do exist but I think there is still an understanding that all games are minigames within life, not the main quest. They may be rewarding or satisfying, but the "end" of the game is not an ultimate end.
[play] promotes the formation of social groupings, which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.
From Homo Ludens, Johann Huizinga. Jo seems to be getting closer to the point than the previous two in my opinion, looking at the important social consequences of play. It is maybe important that he is talking about play, not games. There are other consequences or outcomes to play and games that I think he is not mentioning, play as learning, play for money (eg. gambling and professional sports), and maybe play as personal (non-social) therapy. JHuiz implies games are artificial, but if they have consequences IRL then they must at least relate to real life some how, and in my opinion are a part of it even if they are constructed (it's all a game).
[games are] uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player's initiative.
From Man, Play, and Games, Roger Caillois. The uncertainty element seems true to me, and is a good distinction from or comparison to ritual. What happens if you plot different activities/actions on a chart of gameness vs ritualness? Rodge says games are unproductive but I would suggest that they can actually use up resources (especially labour and time), just as rituals often do. "Is there a make-believe element to Tic-Tac-Toe?" Yes of course there is, three x's or o's in a row do not make me win outside of that game, real life is not turn based, etc.
Do all games allow the participants to be playful?
playing a game is the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
From Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia, Bernard Suits. I think Benny is missing the point that the grasshopper is making in the story. Words like "less efficient" and "unnecessary" seem to be implying there is a more efficient way to achieve what making music achieves, or worse maybe even implies it is not needed at all. Maybe this is true in the sense that life is absurd and nothing happens for a reason re:Camus, but I don't think this is what B is getting at. "Lusory attitude": this is a nice idea. "Suits is actually pointing to the way that games create meaning as players accept these rules, goals, and obstacles in order to play."
The Ants & the Grasshopper One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat. "What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?" "I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone." The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust. "Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.
From Aesop's Fables.
A game is a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality. By "closed" I mean that the game is complete and self-sufficient as a structure... A game creates a subjective and deliberately simplified representation of emotional reality... The player is actively pursuing some goal. Obstacles prevent him from easily achieving this goal. Conflict is an intrinsic element of all games... Conflict implies danger; danger means risk of harm; harm is undesirable. Therefore, a game is an artifice for providing the psychological experiences of conflict and danger while excluding their physical realizations.
From The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford. Mmm complete universal games. The simplified representation of emotional reality is an interesting one especially in relation to music or theater; there is certainly a simplified representation of reality but traditionally people consider these ways to explore emotional truths in ways that "reality" cant. The simplifying of reality can in fact draw attention to certain elements and make them more clearly expressed. Lots of parts of this definition make me think of games and (participatory) art as the same or similar things, eg the contrived conflict and obstacles which are a part of lots of formal artistic systems like western harmony. What happens when games lie to you, when you don't feel safe playing a game?
A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.
From I Have No Words and I Must Design, Greg Costikyan. I think Greg's throwing around of the a-word is what the other definitions were missing for me, and could be a useful way to explore a game's role for the individuals, groups and societies that play it. This also makes me think of the rules of games in general; when I play a board game I not only follow the rules in the rule book, but also more general rules that I know about board games. When I read the rules for a specific card game, there are plenty of words like "tricks" or "suits", terminology and metarules that I need to know in order to play that specific game.
Games are an exercise of voluntary control systems, in which there is a contest between powers, confined by rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.
From The Study of Games, Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith. This definition again is really missing why games are played for me, which is ok I guess but I am really interested in that.
A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.
The definition of these authors, sounds pretty good to me except the quantifiable outcome part. I get that games often have a quantifiable outcome but I'm not sure it is an essential part of being a game. The Game with Michael Douglas, what a film. "Conflict is central to games". But sometimes the conflict is so artificial and inconsequential in real life that it does not feel like conflict is the right word at all. Overcooked can be very stressful but that is because of the conflict it creates between players attempting to collaborate, does that fit the way the word is being used here? What is the conflict in solitaire or in Tony Hawk's?
Thinking about a game as a puzzle, a game with a correct answer or set of answers, can be a useful way to frame a game. For example, is your 3D adventure game lacking a sense of play? Perhaps it is too puzzle-like
Nice. What is the difference between an adventure game and an RPG? Whether or not the outcome is an ultimate accomplishment, or a clear end point? Sometimes a game can still be played after you complete it, does it shift mode at that point from adventure to role-play?
The terrain along the borders of more rigid definitions offers fertile ground for insight and investigation. In these playful and liminal spaces, assumptions are challenged, ideas evolve, and definitions change.
Further reading Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois.
Get Lamp, Jason Scott
Typing an adventure game from a program written in a magazine: but you have read the entire thing already this seems so strange! Players drawing maps: rooms and tunnels.
It's like a funhouse ride, youre on rails
The player and the author have an illusion of interacting, it is just an illusion, but when we go to the movies and we watch a movie we dont think we're really in the place the movie was set.
the more I played text adventures the more effective I was at navigating a strange place
Comment from blind player. Text adventure games can (should) be screen scraper friendly. So should websites! Interactive fiction as an educational tool: improves reading comprehension, fluency, and problem solving. Jeremy Douglass (new media). Mary Ann Buckles (video game aesthetics PhD). When you're typing (in a text adventure), the output and input are both words "its the same environment, it's all words, its all thoughts, its all the imagination". Text adventures in the era of ChatGPT: why bother? It can make the world more expansive with less writing. It can leave more elements of the story to "chance". Do I want to play a game written by AI? Is it worth doing?
Can a game look like a text adventure but not be? Could a game be a concrete poetry text adventure? The Hollow by Greg Jackson. This would be such a cool text adventure, a quest that never gets solved. What happens if the text adventure is tiny and leaves questions unanswered.
Puzzles in IF are sort of an outgrowth of previous challenges between people" eg riddles, chess puzzles, crosswords. Systems of thinking that are slightly off from the everyday
For me the ideal IF game is one which is winnable on the first turn but you dont know what the command is to win it until you've gone all the way through the game and solved it
The quest, Gilgamesh Steve Meretzky (Infocom)
Some IF:
Colossal Cave Adventure Zork Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the game Planetfall Robert Pinsky - Mindwheel
Tools for developing IF:
Build a text adventure in a Telegram bot, or any chat app.
Text adventure games never died
Hardcore never dies. Why do these people talk in the past tense. 17th century "automaton lounges" are mentioned, what is this? The phrase only has four google results.
The xyzzy awards for interactive fiction
And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas: How the Hegelian Conception of the Domination of the Spirit in History Arose.
This essay is an Idea about the primacy of Materialism which is a little ironic. So I think it is important to look at the "material" context this was written in, which is efficient machines and blighted potatoes. There was no food and no work. If these material conditions change, are these ideas still valuable?
In the full title and towards the end of the essay it also claims to be a rebuke of Hegel and German Ideology, in particular the authors seem to be claiming that the domination of the spirit is in fact the domination of the hegemonic ideas of the ruling class, through their presentation as being in the common interest. Does there have to be a common interest?
Also if you do a search for "domination of the spirit" you get lots of interesting results about dominating (evil) spirits. The idea of control in demonology and the history of witches has a lot to say about domination and spirits.
Freedom is the ideal of the free market.
Well Played, Vicky Osterweil
Read it here.
More articles in this series here.
teens doing the floss while they wait at crosswalks
Does this sentence rhyme?
[Video games] have superseded cinema and TV to be the dominant visual medium of our time.
...video games specifically and culture more generally as a reproductive technology. That means that their major role in capitalist society is not simply to produce profit — although of course they must do that — but also to re-create the order required for this society’s perpetuation.
Media as reproductive or re-creative: This article doesn't seem to be concerned with the productive and creative aspects of media, games can create or communicate new or different ideas, and can change the balance or composition of ideology in a society. Ideas need to spread and be talked about or exercised in order to be believed, and media are (in a competely literal sense) the way this is done, they mediate.
Where once perhaps mythology, indigenous relationships to habitat or tightly knit communities provided that rationale, under capitalism, mass media — alongside forms of political participation, law, and ownership — have played the role of legitimation.
Mass media is presented here as separate or different to other forms of cultural reproduction, I don't think this is absolutely the case.
Vic seems to be saying cinema -> tv -> games, as par tof the collapse of the 20th century middle class and the attempt of the modenr worker to "try to stay one step ahead of automation and obsolescence". The word entrepreneur could have evolved differently to mean "undertaker", "under" or "entre" seem to imply that the actor is controlled by the action, they are "under" the domination of the taking.
Video games emerge as workers need to engage creatively in the most mundane of tasks to get an edge over fellow workers, glamorizing the violence of competition and the otherwise mundane process of learning arbitrary information and gestures through play. The arc of most games involves getting better and better at recognizing a particular set of patterns and deploying a particular set of skills — activated by button presses — to the point where the actual controls become second nature and the player experiences the fantasy of seamlessly inhabiting the character or scenario she plays with.
How does this fit with the music of the 21st century? Does it have the same ideals? What about 21st century film/tv shows, art, books? The bit about inhabiting the character is certainly an obviously strong aspect of games that possibly other media dont have. This description really fits speed running. This description really fits learning an instrument or musicking in general. Also learning a sport. In this aspect games seem to be more similar to these actions than the passive media of the 20th century. Was passive media an anomaly, did it exist before the novel?
Workers also need to constantly manage their increasingly anxious and fractured mental health. For this, video games provide a soothing domain of control, power, guaranteed progress, order, and orderly narrative in a world of work and daily life where such guarantees are in short supply.
What about scary games? Or fallout? Maybe they fit this description too I'm not sure.
Video games, then, are the (highly profitable) media of consolation specific to neoliberalism
Media of consolation, nice. If games are all about competition why are there team games, squads? I think the view of capitalism as being synonymous with competition is a bit to simple, there has been competition in plenty of other societies. If the argument is for collaboration over competition (which is a good argument), these might be more useful terms to use directly.