Re: Dyson at Google + Cathedral down due to author's negligence

> i had a quick look around. The guy just has a lyrical
> temperament, i guess. No immediate evidence of googlish
> paycheques. Wrote a book on what he suggests here: the emergence
> of the web as a global sentient being.

Web as global sentient being eh. Yeah maybe. Does it sound like this:
http://lecielestbleu.com/html/pateason.html ? Goes round and round, through
the network, comes out different places but one music/mind?

> Time machines, creating time, is that what you meant?

When we create stuff, we are (usually) less aware of the time machine
dimension of the work than when we see it a few years later. Then the time
machine is sometimes a portal back to the time it was created. Sometimes it
is a portal to the future. Sometimes it has multiple temporal locations.
Sometimes the machine doesn't work anymore…

But yes, it could also mean 'creating time', as you say. And other things.

I am doing a project involving some older digital poetry (from the eighties)
and the time machine is quite prominent there.

ja
http://vispo.com

> Time machines, creating time, is that what you meant?

When we create stuff, we are (usually) less aware of the time machine
dimension of the work than when we see it a few years later. Then the time
machine is sometimes a portal back to the time it was created. Sometimes it
is a portal to the future. Sometimes it has multiple temporal locations.
Sometimes the machine doesn't work anymore…

But yes, it could also mean 'creating time', as you say. And other things.

I am doing a project involving some older digital poetry (from the eighties)
and the time machine is quite prominent there.

ja
http://vispo.com


The difference with traditional writing here being that each work is
essentially part of it's timeframe due to the techniques/software-hardware
being used in creating it? Making its timeframe more general-less personal
than is the case with an ordinary poem? Using Director 6.0 frames it in a
different time than using Director 8.5? The problematic part being that we
are not aware of how much of the current state-of-the-art in computing goes
into creating these pieces of digital writing, while with ordinary writing
we needn't bother?

I don't get the portal to the future bit, though. Digital writing going
metaphorical by pretending what it could be if current techniques evolved
beyond their present state, showing directions for the future perhaps? Or
when talking concrete poetry creating virtualities for future
'materialisations'?

In traditional, structuralist narrative theory you got the distinction
narration time/narrated time. A theory that is more towards reception of the
literary work adds 'reading time' to those time dimensions, as a required
condition for the existence of the other two. Those theories generally lead
to a historic, procedural interpretation of a text, making for a different
Shakespeare sonnet depending on when one reads it.

A piece of digital writing would add runtime to that, effectively including
the hardware into its timeframe and expanding the reading experience beyond
the visual at the cost of binding it to the hardware it was written for. I
see you taking a turn for the positive here, claiming a magical HG Wells
quality for digital writing because of its fragility. Runtime as a future
actualisation of creation time, making a sort of handler for a reverse
engeneering process to get back there. Restoring the place, as it were.

In my Cathedral i start from places, because in spite of some very
convincing believers in the discrete universe, i maintain the time-place
continuum in its Leibnizian sense. Consequently there's a fifth time-place
dimension there, namely global network time. Without referring to the Dyson
book (i haven't read it) or the man himself, that's where the dysonian
horseshit kicks in. I think you're right in being very sceptical towards
such thinking (its crappy because it mixes up the fictional timeframes with
realtime), but perhaps you're underestimating Mrs Hayles argument on this:
in a world with a science of simulation, companies act on the power of their
own make-believe. Which brings us back to some very real dangers on the
print-to-digital market.


dv@ Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
http://www.vilt.net/nkdee

> The difference with traditional writing here being that each work is
> essentially part of it's timeframe due to the techniques/software-hardware
> being used in creating it?

Any programming is time-based insofar as there is a very carefully
constructed control flow. That is not to a particular time but to a general
time (like a clock). But while any clock is concerned with time in general,
it is anchored in its own age/time by its look and design and concept of
time. A clock is a time machine that reminds us of its time and can do many
other things, like a work of art can, such as embody a notion of eternity
(or not, such as the case may be).

> Making its timeframe more general-less personal
> than is the case with an ordinary poem? Using Director 6.0 frames it in a
> different time than using Director 8.5?

Am working on a project with some other poets to publish some kinetic work
by bp Nichol, a Canadian poet, from the eighties. Some computer poems done
with Apple Basic on an Apple IIe. I have viewed these works through an Apple
IIe emulator (for the PC) that is freely downloadable. Very Atari. Green
text, no anti-aliasing, blips and bleeps, command line, no visual menus,
etc. Kind of exciting to view this work on the emulator. Fullscreen. Very
time machine to that time. Making a Director or Flash version of those works
would take some doing to get it right. When we fire up Director or Flash
work, there are expectations, and they aren't the same as concern work from
the eighties.

> The problematic part being that we
> are not aware of how much of the current state-of-the-art in
> computing goes
> into creating these pieces of digital writing, while with ordinary writing
> we needn't bother?

Well, the state of language and the world certainly colors ordinary writing.
Reading Chaucer or Shakespeare or the Romantics, for instance, is very time
machine and of all that language in mood and tongue that still is ours. Time
machine back to that time and language and world, and also of 'eternal'
experience. But, yes, in computer art, not only the language and the world,
but the OS and working within doable contemporary possibilities for kinetic
aspects, visual aspects, sonic, etc. Something of a challenge to rise above
that 'language'. 'Rise above' in the sense that it doesn't dominate your
work, doesn't speak more prominently than whatever you're saying.

> I don't get the portal to the future bit, though. Digital writing going
> metaphorical by pretending what it could be if current techniques evolved
> beyond their present state, showing directions for the future perhaps? Or
> when talking concrete poetry creating virtualities for future
> 'materialisations'?

Well, for instance, when I was reading Lionel Kearns's work from the
sixties-through-eighties, it struck me that some of the work was speculative
about futures that could still happen but haven't. It is forward-looking
writing. 'On Lionel Kearns' is a look back at a forward-looking poet; we see
him looking at us and into the future. Yet the poems are anchored in the
sixties-through-eighties via all sorts of details belonging to that time.

> In traditional, structuralist narrative theory you got the distinction
> narration time/narrated time. A theory that is more towards
> reception of the
> literary work adds 'reading time' to those time dimensions, as a required
> condition for the existence of the other two. Those theories
> generally lead
> to a historic, procedural interpretation of a text, making for a different
> Shakespeare sonnet depending on when one reads it.

Sure. Meaning is constructed by us, so that will change, over time.

> A piece of digital writing would add runtime to that, effectively
> including
> the hardware into its timeframe and expanding the reading
> experience beyond
> the visual at the cost of binding it to the hardware it was written for. I
> see you taking a turn for the positive here, claiming a magical HG Wells
> quality for digital writing because of its fragility. Runtime as a future
> actualisation of creation time, making a sort of handler for a reverse
> engeneering process to get back there. Restoring the place, as it were.

I wasn't thinking specifically of digital literature, actually, as time
machines. When I studied literature of previous eras, time portals there
too. Mediated via the book material but more generally through the language.
My experience of previous eras is mostly through books (and of course the
magical mythic outlines of my own past (in my head)). Though my visit to
England was wonderful in that sense of history not only via the book but the
museum, for instance, and some of the architecture. As is commmonly noted,
Europeans have a different sense of history than in North America. Where I
live, *evident* history is the land, the forests, the environment, and the
indigenous cultures. Not western culture/history. That is sort of who I am,
but it is a mere blip on the land here, impermanent and slated for disaster.

Computer art is time-based, but not linear time. The timeline versus the
flowchart. I talked with a guy recently who is working with others on a
project "to kill Max", to make a better Max. He says at the heart of the
program is concern with time, with timing, with synchronization, etc.
Thinking about what he said, it seems the same could be said of Director,
for instance. At the heart of Director is a way of carving up time into
"frames" in the "Score" (timeline) and assigning processing times/order to
any code that is run and any screen updates.

I think the "magical HG Wells quality…of digital writing" is yours, Dirk.
We are always in the moment but we have memory and imagination, and need to
refer to the past and imagine the future.

> In my Cathedral i start from places, because in spite of some very
> convincing believers in the discrete universe, i maintain the time-place
> continuum in its Leibnizian sense. Consequently there's a fifth time-place
> dimension there, namely global network time. Without referring to
> the Dyson
> book (i haven't read it) or the man himself, that's where the dysonian
> horseshit kicks in. I think you're right in being very sceptical towards
> such thinking (its crappy because it mixes up the fictional
> timeframes with
> realtime), but perhaps you're underestimating Mrs Hayles argument on this:
> in a world with a science of simulation, companies act on the
> power of their
> own make-believe. Which brings us back to some very real dangers on the
> print-to-digital market.

I think we will develop impressive artificial intelligence. We already have,
actually, in chess and other specific tasks. But I mean more comprehensive
intelligence. I see no reason why not except time. The mind is amazing
software wired into amazing bodies. We don't understand the half of it. But
we will (if we don't kill ourselves off first). I am hopeful that the Net
will continue to evolve as something that assists humanity in its better
aspirations and as a source of both information and inspiration to billions
of people.

But I am skeptical about the notion of the Net as a single intelligence. To
me, it is its plurality yet connectivity amongst pluralities that describes
its potential. Artificial intelligence can–and already is–useful in
facilitating the connectivity amongst pluralities, in gathering and
arranging and relating information. Weizenbaum (author of ELIZA) argued that
there are some decisions computers should not be allowed to make: those that
require wisdom. As long as we are wise enough to know what questions those
are, we might muddle through OK.

ja
http://vispo.com