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What is Data?

June 20, 2015 by un1crom

From within the strange loop of self-reference the question “What is Data?” emerges.  Ok, maybe more practically the question arises from our technologically advancing world where data is everywhere, spouting from everything.  We claim to have a “data science” and now operate “big data” and have evolving laws about data collection and data use.   Quite an intellectual infrastructure for something that lacks identity or even a remotely robust and reliable definition.  Should we entrust our understanding and experience of the world to this infrastructure?   This question seems stupid and ignorant.  However, we have taken up a confused approach in all aspects of our lives by putting data ontologically on the same level as real, physical, actual stuff.    So now the question must be asked and must be answered and its implications drawn out.

Data is and Data is not.   Data is not data.   Data is not the thing the data represents or is attached to.   Data is but a ephemeral puff of exhaust from an limitless, unknowable universe of things and their relations. Let us explore.

Observe a few definitions and usage patterns:

Data According to Google

Data According to Google

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1CAZZAD_enUS639US640&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=data+definition

The latin roots point to the looming mystery.  “Give” -> “Something Given”.   Even back in history data was “something”.   Almost an anti-definition.

Perhaps we can find clues from clues:

Crossword Puzzle Clues for

Crossword Puzzle Clues for “Data”

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=data&a=*C.data-_*Word-

Has there been a crossword puzzle word with broader or more ambiguity than that?   “Food for thought?”  seems to hit the nail on the head.   The clues boil down to data is: numbers, holdings, information, facts, figures, fodder, food, grist, bits.   Sometimes crunched and processed, sometimes raw.  Food for thoughts, disks, banks, charts and computers.

????????????????????????

Youtube usually can tell us anything, here’s a video directly answering What Is Data:

Strong start in that video, Qualitative and Quantitative… and then by the end the video unwinds the definitions to include basically everything.

Maybe a technical lesson on data types will help elucidate the situation:

Data Types

Perhaps sticking to computers as a frame of reference helps us.   Data is stuff stored in a database specified by data types.  What exactly is stored?   Bits on a magnetic or electric device (hard drive or memory chip) are arranged according to structure defined by this “data” which is defined or created or detected by sensors and programs…   So is the data the bit?  the electric symbol?  the magnetic structures on the disk?  a pure idea regardless of physical substrate?

The confusing self-referential nature of the situation is wonderfully exploited by Tupper’s formula:

Tupper's formula

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuppersSelf-ReferentialFormula.html

What exactly is that?  it’s a pixel rendering (bits in memory turned into electrons shot a screen or LED excitations) of a formula (which is a collection of symbols) that when fed through a brain or a computer programmed by a brain end up producing a picture of a formula….

The further we dig the less convergence we seem to have.   Yet we have a “data science” in the world and employ “data scientists” and we tell each other to “look at the data” to figure out “the truth.”

Sometimes philosophy is useful in such confusing situations:

Information is notoriously a polymorphic phenomenon and a polysemantic concept so, as an explicandum, it can be associated with several explanations, depending on the level of abstraction adopted and the cluster of requirements and desiderata orientating a theory.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/information-semantic/

Er, that doesn’t seem like a convergence.  By all means we should read that entire essay, it’s certainly full of data.

Ok, maybe someone can define Data Science and in that we can figure out what is being studied:

https://beta.oreilly.com/ideas/what-is-data-science

That’s a really long article that points to data science as a duct taped loosely linked set of tools, processes, disciplines, activities to turn data into products and tell stories.   There’s clearly no simple definition or identification of the actual substance of data found there or in any other description of data science readily available.

There’s a certain impossibility of definition and identification looming.   Data isn’t something concrete.  It’s “of” everything.  It appears to be a shadowy representational trace of phenomena and relations and objects that is itself encoded in phenomena and relations and objects.

There’s a wonderful aside in the great book “Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension” by Matt Parker

Finite Nature of Data

Finite Nature of Data

https://books.google.com/books?id=wK2MAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=fourth%20dimension%20math&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=fourth%20dimension%20math&f=false

Data seems to have a finite, discrete property to it and yet is still very slippery.  It is reductive – a compression of the infinite patterns in the universe, it is also a pattern. Compressed traces of actual things.   Data is wisps of existence, a subset of existence.   Data is an optical and sensory illusion that is an artifact of the limitedness of the sensor and irreducibility of connections between things.

Data is not a thing.   It is of things, about things, traces of things, made up of things.

There can be no data science.   There is no scientific method possible.   Science is done with data, but cannot be done on data.  One doesn’t do experiments on data, experiments emit and transcode data, but data itself cannot be experimental.

Data is art.   Data is an interpretive literature.  It is a mathematics – an infinite regress of finite compressions.

Data is undefined and belongs in the set of unexplainables: art, infinity, time, being, event.

Data = Art Data = Art

Posted in computer science, data mining, philosophy, science, science fiction | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Tree (a very short story)

June 13, 2015 by un1crom

She stood at the tree waiting.   Rain had softened the ground overnight so her feet sank a little as time passed mud creeping up.   Long ago the childish message carved in the tree disappeared as new layers of bark did what they do – cover up the years.   She kept her hand where the message used to be.   She did not move even as sweat matted her hair and tears streaked her face.  The bugs didn’t care about her situation.  They swarmed and nipped at their motionless meal.

The Tree

She Waited Here

~~~~~~~~~

He never made it to the tree.  Three years ago on a trip overseas he fell ill and with barely any notice slipped away.  He was traveling alone and had not noticed the severity of his illness when he fell into a deep sleep one afternoon.  He never awoke.

His body was removed from his temporary dwelling after finally being noticed by the housekeeper who had been away.   He had paid cash up front and left no useful information behind for the housekeeper nor anyone else to contact anyone.  The housekeeper had him buried in a slightly marked grave and buried his meager personal belongings, a journal and wallet, with him.  She kept a description of him on hand in the house in case a future visitor inquired.

Years passed.

~~~~~~~~~

When the search party found her she was still attached to the tree.   Drenched from several nights of rain and a near perpetual sweat rashes covered her bitten and weakened body.  She rarely blinked and her face was flush white.   At some point during the waiting it occurred to her he wasn’t coming and she wasn’t going to leave.

“Are you ok? Are you ok,” they repeated over and over.

No response.

“Let go of the tree.  Come with us.  You’re going to be ok.   Let go,” the pleading continued until they finally forced her hands away and carried her to the vehicle.   A tear, so slight, crept from her left eye.

~~~~~~~~~

“Let’s find ourselves,” the note ended openly and without commitment.   One night she had written the note and hastily dropped it in the mail after a long week of anguished failed attempts to compose.  The writing was sloppy and rushed and the stamped was not flush with the corner.

~~~~~~~~~

“Let’s find ourselves,” he read trembling.   Normally the envelope would have been thicker with more words stuck inside of it, but this one had been impossibly thin.   It contained few words.  He packed his bag in haste taking a few clothes and his journal.  He left immediately on the next boat with no idea when he would come back other than to meet at the tree.

~~~~~~~~~
With a little knife they carved “our love grows” deeply into the tree that day.   The hugged when they were done and whispered their promises to return to that tree 15 years from then.  They hugged and hugged.   The wind was gentle and did not rush them.

~~~~~~~~~

Posted in nature, story, time | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Tomorrowland: The Unreal Dream of the Dreamers

May 31, 2015 by un1crom

Like most things Disney, Tomorrowland is a delicious snack of seeming subsistence. This movie is chock full of “I wanna believe” and “I must be a terrible person if I don’t believe” sentiments and relationships. “We are the future”, “I can make it work”, “Light and hope – the wolf you feed”, “You still have hope”, “Anything is possible” and “We make our destiny” – are just a few of the inspirational tugs. The story itself is cute, watchable and, by in large, moving. And herein lies The Problem.

Human Progress is Not A Thing

Human Progress is Not A Thing

In an ironic twist, if that’s even an American possibility anymore, Tomorrowland, violating its own story premise, espouses overly simplified, imagination-limiting Propaganda. The movie presents the future worth chasing as people standing in amber waves of grain aweing at a technological, automated city of industry and digitization out in the distance. Hard to be irritated by the vision all of us Americans have been sold since the nanosecond we were conceived. The irony of this vision in this movie is that the realization of this future, and the children sold into it, end up creating the technology that brainwashes the world into its own destruction.

The bigger philosophical, ethical issue is that humans by in large cannot imagine a future without humans at the center of it. And in America we can’t sincerely adopt a future without technology and industry made by humans. Americans, and most “developed” societies, mostly do not view non-human growth, creativity, and prosperity on the same level as human efforts. We justify our existence by our ability to continually re-wreak havoc on the world so our human solutions can prevail again! Us humans do have a remarkable ability to solve various issues, especially through technology. But is it remarkable enough to justify our existence, and more pressingly, our proliferation in time and space?

Tomorrowland and the millions of other political, cultural narratives will never be able to ask questions penetrating enough to even hint at a possible justification. These narratives survive and thrive by preying on cognitive bias – asking “is my existence justified?”, “is my worldview accurate?”, “is my limited perception sufficient for external imposition?” isn’t exactly the stuff of mega block buster movies, toy shelf marketing, school room pledges, company missions and political campaigns. And we as consumers and producers of these narratives will not be able to imagine, adopt and create a future worth having nor even a possible future if we can’t ask those questions. The future contemplated by this Dream of the Dreamers is not one that can exist – a perpetual recycle of humans at the center of everything isn’t really a thing has been clearly demonstrated by 13.5 billion years of the universe doing its thing.

Are there popular narratives and dialectics that seem to ask deeper questions – things like “Planet of the Apes” to “The Singularity” movement to posthumanism to mathematics to most philosophy books and departments? On the surface all these things all seem to contemplate non-human centrality but they still all have anthropomorphic aspirations at their core. Anthropomorphism is very hard, if down right impossible, to avoid.

The way forward may be not be forward at all. That is, progress is a very misguided, humanistic concept. Progress is at best a relative, self-serving concept, it is not a physical law or a feature of the universe. It is a misguided concept because it guides at all. The Dream of the Dreamers is always one of Progress, never one of restraint or contemplation or admission or apology or submission.

Inside of me there is a battle. All these questions well up and make me feel like a bad father for not wanting to pass on “wisdom” but only questions. I’m a bad capitalist for questioning the unending creative destructive power of markets. I’m a bad American for questioning The Dream of the Dreamers. I’m a bad creator of technology for anguishing over its ultimate value. I’m a bad person-person for not having an identify or a mission or end goal or a five year plan and question my own centrality to my own existence. I’m a bad artist and writer for lacking happy, hopeful endings and conclusions – never answer a question with a question! I’m a bad revolutionary for not fighting every fight. and I’m definitely a bad philosopher for having no particular philosophy at all. Right?!

The Dream of the Dreamers is potent because it certainly makes for pleasant sleep and a comfortable way to get out of bed and get on with the day’s work. But it is not reality it is marketing against reality. And it is more de-pressing than the struggle with unanswerable questions.

Posted in analysis of behavior, anthropology, criticism, life, Movie Reviews, philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Edge of Existence and Predictions Lost Cause

May 24, 2015 by un1crom

The edges of existence.

Everything is an edge – an edge of an edge – an edge of an edge of an edge. Existence is an infinite regress of edges encoding, decoding and recoding other infinite regressing edge networks. The explanations for the unexplained, even in their simplicity, are infinite regresses.

A dictionary is a book of words defining words. Where does a definition end?

Human language is a loose collection of rules to be excepted and exceptions to be ruled by effect. If a communication communicates it’s acceptable?

Sensory perceptions and the instruments of perception cannot be fully perceived. Are we to believe our eyes about our eyes?

Mathematics and its objects and relations are designed to perfectly articulate all that is the case and yet hiding with infinity are infinities and transcendentals that cannot be defined, systematically discovered, nor hardly described. (http://vihart.com/transcendental-darts/)

Our science modernized from the mystics (Kepler) and numerologists (Newton) and the faithful (Leibniz) strikes out, pathetically, against leaps of faith. This science likely has led to the heating of the planet via industry which now can only be reversed by more science?

Turing conceived computers to mirror the way humans thought – conceived when our collective knowledge of brains was rather small. Ironically, within a few lines of code computers (theoretical and physical) become nearly inscrutable in terms of what they might do. Are more inscrutable machines required to create and understand more inscrutable machines?

Currency is abstracted not just from physical objects but from any tangible value other than a sustained believe that this $ will be understood and honored by some anonymous entity beyond oneself. The beliefs sustained by what most label as “the dismal science” (economics) and its backer, the state.

The desired progress of all of the above can be summarized as “prediction”. If something is predictable it is controllable is the underlying point of most modern obsessions with science, technology and information. Even though our most precise and abstracted efforts have shown prediction, by in large, is impossible. Not just for complex systems of the natural world but the very simple mathematical objects we create. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHYFJByddl8

Despite all the empirical evidence over hundreds of thousands of years and the theoretical proofs of the 20th century as a whole, our culture – primarily in the US but spreading elsewhere – simply refuses to give up control through prediction. It persists, likely, because we are limited beings in energy and time and need whatever perceived advantage we can get. Right? Seeming identification of a pattern reinforces that identification when paired with the perception of reward or advantage. That is learning itself is an edge of an edge of an edge and fully infinitely regressive to its own contradiction.

Prediction and learning and control are all about probability. For a prediction to be useful it must tell us something about the probability of conditions coming to be. For us to do something based on a prediction we must believe that prediction to be as accurate at least as much as the probability of events it predicts. That is, our beliefs should only be as strong as the probability predicted. Or so logic would suggest. However, probability itself turns out, with no surprise here, to be an infinite regress. Probability is really a statement about lack of information. (Sure some people argue that chance/randomness is implicit to existence while others say it’s an artifact of our limited perceptions. In either case our ability to say anything about the existence of things comes down to ignorance and the infinite regress of existence.)

This information remains forever out of reach. It is both at the heart of everything and is the edge of everything. We cannot know. We can only play with these edges, find more of the edges, recode edges into edges. Our struggles philosophically, scientifically, spiritually and educationally come down to this straightforward non-fact. Should we continue our answer and prediction seeking efforts in spite of their impossible hope? That is a personal question that each will have to answer over and over for themselves. For me, I will, not so I can be right or in control, but because I enjoy the edge want to live outside of control. I paint to paint, not because the painting says something about reality. “The good life” is proportional to the number of edges explored, clanged to, jumped from, thrown away, revisited, and combined.

Posted in life, musings, philosophy | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

The Impossible Sacrifice – A Mother’s Day Note

May 10, 2015 by un1crom

In 2002 my wife and I decided having children might not be the worst possible decision we could make in life (turns out we got two amazing, intelligent, engaged daughters).   I pushed pretty hard for us to at least try, especially because we were relatively young and I had at least an inkling that parenting (not sleeping) couldn’t get easier as you aged. (I was almost 26 so I didn’t know that much mind you.)
What I really didn’t know, and probably didn’t really understand at all until this year with my mom’s own life hanging in the balance, is that I was pushing for an impossible sacrifice.   Asking a woman to have a child seems almost natural until you actually think about it.  Beyond the basic What To Expect When Your Expecting fluff the sacrifice is a total self-exchange of the woman for the child.  She will not only dramatically give her body over to the child for 10 months, she does so forever.  She gives over her career, spiritual life, social status, friends and pretty much everything else.   And we ask her to do in some sort of manifest destiny “of course this is what you always wanted” way.
In the end, it turns out ok. For the most part.  If she’s fortunate enough that the pregnancy and birth don’t kill her or diminish her.  And if her economic situation can afford it.  And if she has tremendous support around her, in her family in her community and her work.   And if her hormones and nervous system keep up to the task.  And if her body can withstand the adjustment to post-birth life.  And if the media and pop culture don’t twist her into self-loathing for failing to be good at everything AND have a kid.   I might turn out ok.
I have a tattoo on my left arm.  It’s a phrase in cuneiform, “Redeeming Sacrifice.”   I got it a couple of years ago with the idea that in life I could only possibly ever hope to scrape the surface of such a sacrifice by trying my best to do whatever it took to not only provide for my family and my community but actually help them thrive.  I fail most days, in my opinion. The sacrifice made by my mom and my wife and countless other women around me to give me life, give my children life, support me, somehow get themselves to an ok place is of a magnitude greater than anything I’ve ever done.   The tattoo isn’t meant as a signal of a one time event but instead as a life long, infinite commitment to try to even approach the impossible sacrifice that is being a mom and being a woman.
My wife is an amazing mother.   Whatever the criteria you have for that distinction I’m pretty sure you’ll rank pretty highly.   She has given everything to these children and to me.   And as far as I know her mom did the same for her kids and I know my mom did for her kids.
What have we given them, really, in return?  A life long wondering whether they’ve done enough.  Whether they are doing enough.  Whether there’s someone else they have left behind. Whether they deserve the vacation or money they get.  Whether they’ve earned out respect and love.  I’m as guilty as anyone on that front too.  I want to blame our culture, which is pretty blame-worthy, but I cannot. Maybe blame or responsibility isn’t the right phrasing, but again I do feel all of us, especially males, need to think really hard about our own existence and decide to sacrifice more to make the pressures of being a female go away. Pushed to my most honest position we need to relinquish our patriarchy totally because we have not even come close to this impossible sacrifice.  We’ll never make up for the past but we certainly can leave the future with a slightly better chance that if you’re a female you can be just as much of Homer Simpson as I am or a leading Dr. or cheating football player or a president or whatever you damn well please.   As long as you’re taking on the burden of existence of ALL OF HUMANKIND you can and should do whatever you damn well please.
Happy mother’s day.  And really happy women’s everyday.  I don’t deserve it but I hope all of you will keep letting me try to redeem the existence you give me through my own self-sacrifice.
much love.

Posted in holidays, human rights, mothers, patriarchy | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Programming Sucks

April 19, 2015 by un1crom

We have a problem.

As it stands now the present and near future of economic, social and cultural development primarily derives from computers and programming.   The algorithms already dominate our society – they run our politics, they run our financial system, they run our education, they run our entertainment, they run our healthcare.    The ubiquitous tracking of everything that can possible be tracked determined this current situation.   We must have programs to make things, to sell things, to exchange things.

punchcard

The problem is not necessarily the algorithms or the computers themselves but the fact that so few people can program.    And why?   Programming Sucks.

Oh sure, for those that do program and enjoy it, it doesn’t suck. As Much.   But for the 99%+ of the world’s population that doesn’t program a computer to earn a living it’s a terrible endeavour.

Programming involves a complete abstraction away from the world and all surroundings.  Programming is disembodied – it is mostly a thought exercise mixed with some of the worst aspects of engineering.   Mathematics, especially the higher order really crazy stuff was long ago unapproachable and completely disembodied requiring no physical engineering or representation at all.  Programming, in most of its modern instances, consequences very far away from its creative behavior.  That is, in most modern system it takes days, weeks, months years to personally feel the results deeply of what you’ve built.    Programming is ruthless.  It’s unpredictable.   It’s 95% or more reinventing the wheel and configuring environments to even run the most basic program.  It’s all set up, not a lot of creation.   So few others understand it they can’t appreciate the craft during the act (only the output is appreciated counted in users and downloads).

There are a couple of reasons why this is the case – a few theoretical/natural limits and a few self-imposed, engineering and cultural issues.

First the engineering and cultural issues.   Programming languages and computers evolved rather clumsily built mostly by programmers for other programmers – not for the majority of humans.    There’s never been a requirement to make programming itself more humanistic, more embodied.    Looking back on the history of computers computing was done always in support of something else, not for its own sake.   It was done to Solve Problems.   As long as the computing device and program solved the problem the objective was met.   Even the early computer companies famously thought it was silly to think everyone one day might actually use a personal computer.   And now we’re at a potentially more devastating standstill – it’s absurd to most people to think everyone might actually need to program.    I’ll return to these issues.

Second the natural limits of computation make for a very severe situation.   There are simply things that are non-computable.   That is, we can’t solve them.   Sometimes we can PROVE we can’t solve them but that doesn’t get us any closer to solving some things.    This is sometimes called the Halting Problem.  The idea is basically that for a sufficiently complex program you can’t predict whether the program will halt or not.   The implication is simply you must run the program and see if it halts.  Again, complexity is the key here.  If these are relatively small, fast programs with a less than infinite number of possible outcomes then you can simply run the program across all possible inputs and outputs.   Problem is… very few programs are that simple and certainly not any of the ones that recommend products to you, trade your money on wall street, or help doctors figure out what’s going on in your body.

STOP.

This is a VERY BIG DEAL.    Think about it.   We deploy millions of programs a day with completely non-deterministic, unpredictable outcomes.  Sure we do lots of quality assurance and we test everything we can and we simulate and we have lots of mathematics and experience that helps us grow confident… but when you get down to it, we simply don’t know if any given complex program has some horrible bug in it.

This issue rears its head an infinite number of times a day.   If you’ve ever been mad at MS Word for screwing up your bullet points or your browser stops rendering a page or your internet doesn’t work or your computer freezes… this is what’s going on.  All of these things are complex programs interacting with other programs and all of them have millions (give or take millions) of bugs in them.  Add to it that all of these things are mutable bits on your computer that viruses or hardware issues can manipulate (you can’t be sure the program you bought is the program you currently run) and you can see how things quickly escape our abilities to control.

This is devastating for the exercise of programming.  Computer scientists have invented a myriad of ways to temper the reality of the halting problem.   Most of these management techniques makes programming even more mysteries and challenging due to the imposition of even more rules that must be learned and maintained.   Unlike music and writing and art and furniture making and fashion we EXPECT and NEED computers to do exactly what we program them to do.   Most of the other stuff humans do and create is just fine if it sort of works.  It still has value.  Programs that are too erratic or worse, catastrophic, are not only not valuable we want to eliminate them from the earth.   We probably destroy some 95%+ of the programs we write.

The craft of programming is at odds with its natural limits.   Our expectations and thus the tools we craft to perform program conflict with the actuality.  Our use of programs exceeds their possibilities.

And this really isn’t due to computers or programming, but something more fundamental: complexity and prediction.    Even as our science shows us more and more that prediction is an illusion our demands of technology and business and media run counter.    This fundamental clash manifests itself in programming, programming languages, the hardware of computers, the culture of programming.  It is at odds with itself and in being so conflicted is unapproachable to those that don’t have ability to stare maddeningly into a screen flickering with millions of unknown rules and bugs.   Mastery is barely achievable except for a rare few.   And without mastery enjoyment rarely comes – the sort of enjoyment that can sustain someones attention long enough to do something significant.

I’ve thought long and hard about how to improve the craft of programming.   I’ve programmed a lot, lead a lot of programming efforts, delivered a lot of software, scrapped a lot more.  I’ve worked in 10+ languages.  I’ve studied mathematics and logic and computer science and philosophy.  I’ve worked with the greatest computer scientists.  I’ve worked with amazing business people and artists and mathematicians.   I’ve built systems large and small in many different categories.  In short, I’ve yet to find a situation in which programming wasn’t a major barrier to progress and thinking.

The solution isn’t in programming languages and in our computers.  It’s not about Code.org and trying to get more kids into our existing paradigm. This isn’t an awareness or interest problem.   The solution involves our goals and expectations.

We must stop trying to solve every problem perfectly.  We must stop trying to predict everything.   We must stop pursuing The Answer, as if it actually exists.  We must stop trying to optimize everything for speed and precision and accuracy. And we must stop applying computerized techniques to every single category of activity – at least in a way where we expect the computer to forever to the work.

We must create art.  Programming is art.  It is full of accidents and confusions and inconsistencies.   We must turn it back to an analog experience rather than a conflicted digital.    Use programming to explore and narrate and experiment rather than answer and define and calculate.

The tools that spring from those objectives will be more human.  More people will be able to participate.  We will make more approachable programs and languages and businesses.

In the end our problem with programming is one of relation – we’re either relating more or less to the world around us and as computers grow in numbers and integration we need to be able to commune, shape and relate to them.

Posted in art, computer science, Computers, prediction, programming | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Symbolic Theft

April 19, 2015 by un1crom

Shove all of the patterns and symbols into my head, whatever this head is, so that they might mix and match and sort and simmer.   Take these chapters – with their paragraphs and their sentences and their words and their letters and their strokes – all in. Ideas. Voices. Stories. Characters. Facts. Fictions.   Paint, o my minds brush, the landscape these words demand in their conflicted synchronization.

That which we call science and pagan folk mythology and mathematical logic of an intellectual minority and old short stories and poorly edited blog posts and every other means of description form the alternative reality of our reality.  We are at war.   We are in a dance.   Reality will not succumb.   Reality will always demand this love/war.

Symbols

Shout TRUTH! do peddlers of all these ideas.  Truth is always a future away.  Belief in that truth is always two futures and another book away.

The Truth Shall Set You Free.   They once wrote. They once said.  They once transcribed.  They once prescribed.   They never defined that truth.   The ancient scribes of pagan turned Christian history.

They.  Generations of idea burglars.  You are one too!  You thief of stories and ideas and biases.

But.

You will also give generously, gravely, gallantly every letter you steal as you inadvertently blather on your story of stories.   In your email I’ll read a Twain idea.   In an update out will come Buddha.   In a #hashtag, Kurt Cobain.   In that silly “Things Remembered” flask you’ll engrave a Steve Jobs quote.   Sometimes credit will be given, when the creditor is known and adds credibility.  Most times the debt goes unpaid and probably the originator will be all the more happy to not be associated with the missed context.

I read to never be myself.   I read to be everyone else.   I read for you.  I read about you.  I read because I am not you.   I read because I have no ideas of my own.

Ideas only emerge.   They emerge from the interaction of symbols exchanged between people.  Exchange is story.    Story is exchange.

Meaning isn’t in a thing, it’s beside a thing.   Meaning is the exchange of story sold down the river as it shouts to the banks of the onlookers.  What Is This?! They cry.

Pictures are symbols.   Letters are symbols.   Pictures are letters, letter are pictures.   While there is always this war of ideas and the promise that words are dead and pictures won, the word birthed the picture, the picture birthed the word. The songbird and the larynx and the hand birthed them both.  The mind them all.

Or wait.

The body in relation birthed the mind birthed the rest of it.   I thought Darwin explained this all.

Or was it Wittgenstein.

Suit the word to the action, the action to the word.  The bard of bards once might have said, written, drawn, acted.   And so we do.

Posted in books, linguistics | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

A Few Definitions

April 12, 2015 by un1crom

Culture

A collection of misrepresentations and generalizations about groups of people connected by the contingencies of localized time and space.

Knowledge

Repeatedly applied models of the world that fall apart less frequently than other models.

Data

Anything that isn’t the thing.

Color

A confusion of the senses.

Hope

A justification for doing nothing.

Possibility

A number close to zero.

Book

A device for clouding ideas in cryptic symbolism and convention.

School

A system for extreme procrastination and avoidance of real consequences.

Belief

A frequent denial of complexity.

Free Will

The best political slogan of all time.

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A morally disconnected accounting of destructive methods.

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Sensory landfill.

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These Are Strange Times

April 5, 2015 by un1crom

I often think, “these are strange times.”  As if I know what other times were like and as if they would be any less strange than now.   The thought is completely baseless.  Nonetheless, most days I drift off with a parallax feeling – something is somehow amiss.

Socrates Death

Socrates Death

Three days ago a healthy fever kept me prisoner in bed.  I turned on the TV to distract my burning brain.   For several hours I fell in and out of hysterical sleep as the MSNBC and CNN shows droned on. Finally my hand managed to dump me into the local news.   I managed to catch snippets and sound bytes on various political actions in Arkansas and Indiana and the emergence of movement on Iran Nuclear deals and the various drought issues in California.   Of course that little bit of content was sandwiched between erectile dysfunction ads, more news show promotions, political ads, and a bunch of other nonsense that was so nonsensical it didn’t register at all.

My fever provided an interesting kaleidoscope to consume all this “media.”   I barely recall the specific words, but I vividly recall lots of reddish pink faces, stunted vocal inflections, disjointed rejoinders all trying attempting to rile me out of my feverish funk and to take action – against anything.   I awoke the next morning remembering an angry opera where all the singers sing over each other and nothing makes sense but there’s a frenzy and certainly the frenzy means something because well it’s a frenzy.

This experience and any resulting thoughts aren’t really that enlightening or difficult to analyze.   We live in a cacophony of cacophonies.   We create them for each other, we consume them, we sell them to each other, we seek them out.   Media exists only as a cacophony.   Without the cacophony so many institutions and systems collapse.    Our identities and sense of almost being folds in on itself.   Without mass frenzy who needs a search engine?   Or curation tools? Or talking heads? Or journalists?   Or critics? Or pundits? Or experts? Or “likes”? Or vacations? Or spas? Or meditation centers? Or insurance? Or assurance? Or reputation management? Or pr? ….

The silence would obliterate an industrial turned digital world.  Our senses are now ill suited for the silence or slowness of a world without this recursive self generating cacophony.   The very senses so essential to our survival in what was likely a very competitive environment thousands and thousands of years ago reached what seems to me some bizarre threshold of sensation.  These every more acute senses and brains and bodies needed more than what the fabricated industrial world could deliver.  We needed media to put us back on edge.  Always keep us on the edge.  Something is out there to get me.

This is not the only way to fulfill and engage the senses and the brain and the body.  But by gosh is it the most efficient.   Thinking and engagement are costly efforts that cut into the means of production.   Philosophizing is hard to monetize.  Art shifts perspectives away from commoditization.   Walking is slow.   The mass of humankind should not engage in these activities for they lead to more of these activities.   No, listen to the cacophony and like a slot machine keep pushing the buttons (the handle is too slow), let the whistle sounds and cherry sights keep us in attention without engagement – next time, next time! The human capacity for repetitive motion and thought is nearly boundless if injected with just enough stimulation (throw in a little variation to throw the probability center off).

But it isn’t as Huxley thought it would be – habituation through pleasure – it’s more effective for production to a have a slightly disembodied sense of dread.   Pure pleasure would not keep the right chemicals flowing like dread and fear does.   Our fear of death is stronger than our desire for pleasure.

I contest that the pursuit of truth and knowledge is more powerful and sustaining than fleeing death or enjoying pleasure – but it is a hard practiced reward.  It takes a good deal of effort to get to a point where it sustains and grows.    It requires an upfront investment of the mind, body, and senses.   It forces one to give up the relentless pursuit of capital.

The human creature seeks the real – it can be trained and sustained on the near-real though.   It can hang on the edge of the real for as long as you can keep the cells alive.   But deep down the entirety of a given human seeks the real – the real world, the full view of a tree, the scent of the crisp night, the touch of another human, the lick of a dog, the view without glasses….   Without the real, we will take convincing substitutes and become sufficiently addicted until the senses have weakened and are no longer able to seek the real.

These are strange times.   They are strange because we seem to notice less and less than what the historical documents of the past suggest we were noticing previously.  Though we were ignorant then, as we are now, we seemed to appreciate that ignorance in some enlightened circles.  Instead of hiding from it, some went to their death because of their pursuit.   Now even the enlightened often seek the near-real or the unreal – the media, the virtual reality, the video games, the re-tweets, the parody news, the cable news, the ads as content, the representation vs the actual, the press statements vs a conversation, a political party vs a candidate with a feet on the ground.   That Edward Snowden didn’t cause mass uproar is only one of the main signs of this parallax situation.

We can no longer see the real.  I’m not even sure I can or ever could.

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I’m Home, Mom.

March 27, 2015 by un1crom

“Donna Smith Sucks!” some angered person shouted at me from behind a door.

I had put a political flyer on a door and knocked hoping to ask someone to consider voting for an upstart democratic candidate in a largely republican district.  She had progressive ideas and a relentless energy to fight for people who couldn’t always fight completely for themselves.  Some people weren’t ready for her ideas and her energy.   I ran away from that door, crushed.  I immediately rushed to the nearby creek and threw the rest of the flyers I had into the flowing water.  I just couldn’t stand to have my candidate’s name and mission violated.

I was ten.

Donna Smith is my mom.

She was my hero.

She still is my hero.   My mom has fought harder than anyone I know (or know of) for a better world – for everyone to have a more humane and peaceful existence.   Even when it clearly didn’t benefit her personally to stand up to a mad world she has done it.   Always.  For me, for anyone, for any injustice.  (yes, at one point she even tried to get an Odyssey of the Mind judge to understand the power outlet my team was assigned malfunctioned handicapping our competition team severely… she almost cost us vital points and I pleaded for her to stop even though she was absolutely right.)

Tonight she’s in the hospital.  She survived yet another surgery to remove some ill from her body.  She is fighting what I consider the ultimate injustice – a body horribly betraying such a beautiful person.   Her body has failed her.   The physical world has failed her. For one who has given so much, I am devastated seeing this play out.

My mom is a genius.  She has the gift of words and observation and empathy and everything the very best mother and politician and teacher should have.   She gives completely and has been doing that at least as long as I’ve been a concious being. She raised six children while attempting law school and paying the bills and writing… moving on to political ambitions… taking corporate positions to make sure me and my siblings were fed… freelance writing for newsweek and woman’s world…. completely engaged in our schooling and passions… and still remaining a community advocate.  She has reinvented herself endlessly from mom to writer to financial manager to politician to journalist to care worker to community organizer to wife to grandma to mentor to patient to listener…

And through it all with all of her siblings, her own parents, her other kids… she took every dream and idea and hurt I had seriously.  In 7th grade I had my first crush and was immediately crushed.  I remember crying horribly on my bed wailing to my mom about how much i wanted to be loved and that this was my dream, to have a girl love me.  She petted my head and hugged me and told me “Oh Russ, it will be ok.  There will be so many wonderful people that love you. This has nothing to do with you. You are loved and will always be loved as long as you look for it.”   I never ever forget that.   And she was right.

She’s never turned away my dreams.   in 1988 after I saw Brian Boitano win gold I was convinced the only way to be truly transcendent in life was to ice skate.  She immediately got me into ice skating lessons.  Years before that she somehow provided me private acting coaching after I fell in love with the theater as a 5th grader.   In 8th grade I begged for a weight bench to get in shape and that showed up one christmas.  Every book I ever wanted she found a way to get me.  I remember so many of these formative moments.  There’s not a single moment where I think, “man, mom let me down.”  She never did.

And she always trusted me.  Every bad idea she just let me have and execute – even when I told her I would be spending the night at a hotel after prom in highschool  She just never ever second guessed me. I suspect it was mutual respect.  She told a cop to go away when he tracked me home from skipping school.  She beat off reporters when I left a murder trial.   She’s been gentle when my heart breaks and been kind when I dated “the wrong person” and even supportive when I scored an 8% on a test.   She always fight for a better world and I always try to live up to that.  It all works out if that’s your approach, perhaps.

As I age I turn more to my mom, not less, in the most confusing situations and darkest moments and highest highs.  I make sure to call or text from anywhere I think is new or interesting.  I have called her from every city I’ve visited.  She has always done the same.   She passed onto me a basic love of life.   Just live!

I do not have enough bits in this computer to articulate all of her engagements with the world and with me.   The memories are too lucid and the love too big for words to do it justice.

My mom has never required anything in return.

And to that asshole behind the door, you were so incredibly wrong.  My mom is the best.  I’m home mom.  I just arrived.

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