Categories
literature

Mnemosyne

Mnemosyne, the Titaness of Memory, stands as one of the most profound figures in Greek mythology, embodying the living thread of memory that weaves the past into the present and propels it into the future. She is the daughter of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), representing a primordial force whose power shapes not only individual […]

Categories
Philosophy

Cosmological Oblivion

…of course, falling through what may itself have been emergent logical, statistical and/or combinatorial self-regulation into the potential/stored energy of configuration states that generate and sustain complexity may have in some sense been the Universe’s necessary, if fatal, error. Sure, it’s kind of cool to be able to exist, experience and adaptively reflect back upon […]

Categories
Philosophy

Consolation

The consolation of philosophy lies in that language allows us to adaptively reinterpret a commonly (as historically) inequitable and unnecessarily adversarial world as hopeful, meaningful and just. A (related) tragedy of communicative dissonance and conflict seems to be that it is precisely the most competitively frictive and absurdly futile of narratives that tend to percolate […]

Categories
Philosophy

Absurdity

A thing being as equally and oppositely defined by that which it is not as much as by what it provably is (or consensually appears to be), the absence of its opposite is the simultaneous presence of its psychological, cultural and technologically-mediated self. Facilitated by conveniences of Gestalt illusion, familiar enough to student artists but […]

Categories
environment

Metastatic Autonomy

Are autonomous vehicles solving the correct problem? Under any well-informed definition, urban sprawl is environmentally costly. Should we be moving people to places or  in some as yet unrealised and aspirationally renewable sense, might we also be moving places to people?

Categories
Alien Anthropology

Probability

Engaging whole and holistic systems is a little like trying to orchestrate and sustain the infinitely complex requisite variety of a universal remote control. 𝘈𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯/𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘪𝘦𝘭𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘯𝘢𝘳𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘴: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘴𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 (𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘺) 𝘪𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘥 – […]

Categories
cybernetics

Generative Introspection

Having widely now gained access to this effectively unbounded as relationally networked complexity in generative computational representation, what are the odds that many if not most of the images and texts produced are used to directly or indirectly embellish, validate and incentivise the development of yet more generative and/or (other, as) downstream communications technology?

Categories
Philosophy

Crowdstrike

We have been building a global communications network and irreversible technological dependency on foundationally insecure technologies. It’s not wilfully stupid or cynically opportunistic entrepreneurialism, the logic itself is working as much against as for us. A big shout-out to sleep-deprived system support and cybersecurity teams everywhere. Not a good day to be working on an […]

Categories
cybernetics history Philosophy

Aggressive Insecurity

Humanity has, at scale and en masse, a profoundly insecure dependency on aggressive self-determination. This is the great unaddressed issue of our historical moment, perhaps of history more generally, and may indeed be an undecidable problem. We may not be able to unambiguously determine causal factors or clarify many of the things we really could […]

Categories
Philosophy

Signal to noise?

Signal to noise?  The primary signal is noise. Most of the partisan #insecurity and frictive #political tribalism we are currently experiencing represents convergence towards the regenerative bonding and binding turbulence of high probability, low-energy system macrostates. (Gossip? Tabloid news? Best Practice? Doctrine? Belief? Ideology? Ethics? The underlying dynamics are considerably less flattering or reassuring than […]

Categories
Philosophy

Mind the Gap

Theory of Mind represents the ingestion, curated entrainment and epistemological event horizon of an essentially inarticulable metaphysical Otherness. Much is made of commercial opportunity and/or existential threat represented by artificial intelligence. I’m not sure we should be so concerned about the potential arrival of unregulated superintelligence, if indeed this does ever occur. We will remain […]

Categories
politics

Presidential Debate

Nothing quite so succinctly captures the cultural spectacle and general media Zeitgeist of jousting ideological anachronisms than does the symbolic Greco-Roman wrestling match of a contemporary Presidential political debate. Quite agnostic of personal political and/or philosophical systems of belief, I am worried by the vacuum of integrity and character on display. Having an opinion has […]