November 2008
1 post
next steps
In the past six weeks:
I’ve been quarantined for ReDS observation;
my academic reputation has been griefed, still being sorted out;
my primary computer was hacked and I’ve been limping along on my mobile;
I finally added up how much I was spending on black-market produce, and was finally horrified into looking at the inherent ethical problems;
I’ve lost a good friend and...
October 2008
50 posts
superstruct mindmap project
I think using mindmaps. Sometimes they are messy and fast, other times they are crafted. The latter are midway between an essay and a piece of visual art: It is non-fiction thinking, presented using association and visual pun and color and codes.
I’ve decided to publish my superstruct mindmaps. I have set up a collection of them offsite, and this blog will update as I post new ones....
Superstruct discussion: Silver buckshot →
(Who coined this term?) In this discussion I present my vision of superstructures as plankton in a cooperative sea. (Me? Use nonlinearity-enhancing drugs? Heaven forfend.)
Wikitecture: Radical Collaboration in Architecture... →
Amazing in and of itself, but check this: “Collaboration benefits from a clear structure to facilitate results. The wiki tree works in much the same way that Wikipedia does in setting specific rules up front that drive a successful outcome and allow many people to contribute harmoniously.” It’s all about showing people how to play.
Growing lunch - FOODday - Oregonlive.com →
Man, Portland was always ahead of the curve.
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Fantastic. I just got my academic reputation griefed.
Somehow I’ve been flagged as a falsifier of data, despite the fact that I DON’T USE DATA FOR F(*&%&(^*(&^’S SAKE
My home institution realizes this is nuts, but I’m guessing my research revstream is frozen for a few days while this gets sorted out. Great, like I need more to do right now.
Twitter / projectsagricul →
I wistfully remember a time when spambots were only this sophisticated. A couple of years ago I struck up a brief but confusing online flirtation with someone who turned out to be, in fact, a penis-enhancing drug advertisement.
m2m fragmentation
I think that the crisis has finally allowed me to fragment enough to get to where I was promised in the Invisibles. If you are a go player, a SEHI, or both, I would like to suggest for your contemplation: “When in doubt, tenuki” and “Tenuki is always an option.”
The Complaints Department
Any research organization announcing the upcoming collapse of civilization and/or the extinction of Homo sapiens was bound to be the target of severe griefing, as well as possible bioweaponry. We at Super-infra-struct are doing all we can to decentralize the work of GEAS and SEHIs to supporting superstructures. Please visit the Complaints Department with your problems, frustrations, and creative...
Artur Żmijewski: The Social Studio - we make money... →
addendum
Forgot to mention what I’ve never liked about revstreaming: people tucking mini-advertisements every time they correspond with anyone. Some people are elegant and give real and useful information, or give information in a form that they are experts in. But some other people—totally ham-handed! I’d like to think I’m one of the former when I frequently update my blog,...
As above, so below
Today I was feeling as though I could actually, physically feel myself mutating in the shifting evolutionary pressure. No matter that this is not how biology, mutation, or natural selection works, it’s just what I felt like.
I changed a lot about myself when revenue-streaming went live. I realized that I really did have all sorts of interesting skills that were not quite up to paying the...
Why did I just remember this?
Many years ago, I played a game called HyperHull, in which the players roleplayed pirates who had to work together in a massively collaborative way in order to build ships, then larger ships, and larger ships still to create an armada sworn to defeat the Five Hypermenaces (Ninja Doctors, Ninja Chefs, n1nj4 h4x0r5, Ninja Robots, and Generation Ninja).
I dunno why it suddenly came to mind.
Superstructing Lesson of the Day
Day 3: Signal-Noise Management
For me, this is not a fun superpower. It’s the one where you say NO to things!
However, it’s also sculpting attention—removing all that is not-for-you so you are left with the experience that you want. For me this meant a major restructuring of my datastreams. There are new problems to think about, in new ways. So this was not the day that I...
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Superstructing Lesson of the Day
The post title suggests that I’ll be far more regimented about this than is entirely likely. But, keeping my mind on rewards is keeping me focused, so I want to throw out some of my strategizing.
Day 1: Protovation
This is an easy lesson to adhere to on the first day. Everyone ran around poking everything and everyone with a stick. This is right and proper, and at the end of the first...
voluntary extinction
A group in my classroom sounded a little too heated to be talking about voting theory. I came over and intervened. (All variables below, other than “I”, refer to student names.)
“I’m not working with Y,” X said.
“How come?” I asked.
“He wants us all to die.”
I asked her to unpack that a bit. Turns out that Y is in favor of voluntary human...
Warning - Habits May Be Good for You - NYTimes.com →
I’m trying to catch up on the history of social habit engineering—-here’s the earliest related article the archive delivered.
the abstract and the concrete
I love my job. I get to do research, and I get to teach. More to the point, I get to research like I want to, and teach like I want to.
Most people seem to believe mathematicians are basically accountants, only more prone to mental illness. Only physicists know the horrible truth: we are hippie artistes. We make it all up! We may as well be unicorn anatomists. It is only because the things that...
WatchSuperstruct - Generation Exile on Vimeo (via Vimeo)
“We used to call headblogs ‘personalities’…”
“The challenge of environmentalism has always been that individuals do not feel...”
– What is the Global Swadeshi Network (personal perspectives) - Global Swadeshi
“Waste equals food, whether it’s food for the earth, or for a closed...”
– William McDonough
Metropolis Mag: Think Green: http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_0801/mcd/index.html
Casa Segura - we make money not art →
“Inside the small solar-powered structure migrants can find water, some food and a touch screen. Drawing upon traveler graffiti, pictograms, and the Mexican tradition of ex-voto painting, migrants are invited to use the interface and share something about themselves and their journey with the homeowner and anyone who’s interested. Migrants can either draw, write messages, or make a...
I am attempting to balance the library and the laboratory sides of my brains. Big ideas, defineable actions.
Watchsuperstruct-theguptaoption:
Superstruct field report from DCAR - the Democratic Central African Republic, a self-governing conurbation of refugee camps and transient resettlement areas running on a mix of high and low technology.
We are having some problems down here. “Technological solutions for social problems” is harder than it looks some times.
hacking
The definition of hacking I got from a friend was, “Using what things actually are, rather than what they are supposed to do, to accomplish goals.”
Proposed: The human is the only animal that hacks itself.
What I want to locate are those primate levers which can be hacked to get us through this. I originally started thinking about this from beginning to read about behavioral...
infrarad needs botanists!
Restating my assumptions:
Much of our happiness depends on how well we are eating, in two senses of ‘well’;
We have a responsibility to ourselves to eat to maximize health, pleasure, and time spent with our family (be that family traditional or tribal);
We are morally accountable for how the food we eat moves from chloroplast to plate.
Now, I won’t be surprised if it’s...
good eating
I may be extra bitchy because today was my first day off of coffee. Yes, I’m a bourgeoius connoisseur specialty product consumer, but $25/lb?!? I’m not insane.
I am a white person in an industrialized nation in an academic/intellectual position. This means that I am one of the last people who society is going to allow hunger to affect. This allows me to shallowly fret about the...
avoiding head-up-ass-itis
I just realized that by having my blog read my twitter account, and by following a twitter feed that follows my blog, I am getting updates on twitter about my blog being updated by twitter containing the same information as the original twitter I sent.
If I had the audio handy—and I hated you—I would play a clip of an old school microphone feedback squeal by way of metaphor.
Besides,...
#2013 Planning a series of mindmap pieces for the blog. Those are always good for blurring art and practicality.
#2019 …and, apparently, a mental checklist on how to become a better person and thus save humanity thru pure virtue. Stupid insomnia.
#2013 Now blogging from infrarad2013.tumblr.com. The dial is currently set to gallows humor but we hope to turn it soon.
Realizing I managed to avoid stepping outside today. It did wonders for my productivity.
#2019 When the twin towers were hit back in 2001 I stayed up thinking much later than this. But I’m a lot older and a lot more tired.
#2019 Heard a rumor there’s a GEAS badge or pin or some other marker.Haven’t had a good secret society signifier since the Invisibles.Yay!
#2019 Signed up with GEAS. What can I say, I need to talk with some optimists. It beats another “Secede with Calif. or not?” discussion.
ETA: You can sign up with GEAS at superstructgame.org. The more the merrier, and like many commodities, ‘merry’ is in short supply.
disturbing game theory realization followed by...
There are two kinds of repeated prisoner’s dilemma. In the infinite horizon version, no one knows how long you’ll be playing prisoner’s dilemma. So, it ends up paying to play Tit for Tat. In the finite horizon version, everyone knows how long you’ll be playing prisoner’s dilemma. So on the last play, you should be nasty. But that means that on the second to last play,...
BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 629 | 629 | State of... →
More evidence of obviousness. Back to getting depressed.
#2013 It’s a weird time to start a blog, but it’s weird times. I want to start writing manifestos or I’ll have to start writing eulogies.
Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R.... →
You saw it first, ladies and gentleman: Tom experiences the stages of grief upon hearing his planet is dying. Stage 1: Blogging. Stage 2: Optimism. Stage 3: Ruing not having read more Buckminster Fuller as a young man.
More reaction
I am guilty of not paying attention to where my food comes from. I remember that when I moved to Portland I sort of noticed when food was marked ‘local’. Sometimes. If the print was big enough. Not that I avoided buying produce from Chile, of course. It just influence whatever subcategory of produce I picked out. Not apples vs. oranges, merely what kind of apple.
This is what I began...