Changes to this weblog – Notes for myself

 

Thursday, 09 September 2021

I’ve been doing a lot.  Settling the blog into its old home at https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com

Today tried creating yet another full width template from here: https://gist.github.com/Netzberufler/792a74d63f24aadcad444f4c9d415c11

worked fine but I don’t need that. It was only for Pags and Default works fine.

Added a todo tag. On thing is to create a child theme. I’d hate it all to go to custard with a theme update.


21 May, 2020

This website url is now http://www.psyberspace.wordpress.com, just as it was about 20 years ago, before I began self hosting.  Hope everything works. (To hell with a custom domain!)

New Walter Logeman page: http://walterlogeman.co.nz

New home for Thousand Sketches: http://thousandsketches.com

It has been a lockdown project to close my Dreamhost server. It has served me well but it took management — that I have hopefully outsourced to WordPress.com

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More to do:

My email and some other people’s who have been on my Dreamhost.

Kate’s website & email.  http://katetapley.co.nz (coming)

My old Psybernet site??

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I think I’ll be happier to do more blogging — It has been hard with a site that came up with Viagra ads etc.

 

Folders for browsing, tags for search (or just search?)

It seems there is a debate about tags vs folders.  They are not mutually exclusive.  Here is a principle I adhered to for years:

Folders for browsing, tags for search.

So what really is the difference between the two?

Physical libraries have shelves and things are grouped (like folders).  Tags are really not possible.  So it might be good to brows the theatre section if you are into theatre.

Digitally the same applies you can’t browse one big pile, so put stuff into folders, but not too many (at least at the top level). Folders are there to facilitate browsing.  The Dewey decimal classification has 10 top levels, and that is about right.  They are rather beautiful:

000 – Computer science, information & general works
100 – Philosophy & psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social sciences
400 – Language
500 – Pure Science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts & recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History & geography

But what about ‘Karl Marx’?  Browse in Social sciences. But there would be stuff about him or by him in probably everyone of those groups!  Hard for librarians who are forced to chose one shelf for something like: Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society, An Approach to a New Political Orientation by J.L. Moreno, which also has a chapter on Marx.  Digitally it could be in many at once i.e. in three folders: Moreno, social science and politics. That is worth doing. Some one browsing might like finding it there.  But consider the power of tags.

Tagging that book with: Moreno, politics, social science would be useful, but imagine adding sociometry, Marx, psychodrama group work, philosophy, religion.

It would come up in a fairly short list with any two of those tags. Also be easy to see what other books come up with a search on any two of those tags.

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But what the hell!  Functionality for tags is lousy in most apps. They take time to add. Maybe search has outsmarted tags. Google does it all.

In Google Drive a file can be in many folders, that’s an an aid to browsing. No tags, and search works well.

 

iPad Pro – Pros and Cons

I would love it – for one thing: Drawing. iPads have never really done that well. But maybe this one, with its Pencil, beats the Wacom tablets.

BUT
Its not a computer. It drives me crazy on the iPad to add items to a calendar – to edit anything, it is such a pain to try to get the curser to go to the right place! I can’t see it replacing a Mac where the input options include a trackpad and a mouse. Touch screens that flop around laptop-style are so wrong – as Steve Jobs said “ergonomically terrible”!

But a Mac is no good for drawing.

I had a Toshiba M200 that was ok, it converted quite well – back in 2002! (Images) It went from vertical to horizontal.

Steve Jobs would not have succumbed to the vertical iPad. There has to be a better solution. An OSX device that incorporates touch, something like the new Surface Book (Images) is one possibility. I can’t bear the thought of going back to Windows & Microsoft, Surface Book reviews mention the crashes, the lack of attention to detail in the hardware design. Will convergence that allows conversion in hardware and software functions come to Apple?

In the meantime – and for a long time I imagine – in the Apple world we are stuck with the need for two devices, a Macbook and an iPad Pro. Probably three devices, I’d still want my iPad Mini for curling up with, the iPad Pro seems too big for that.

I hate seeing the iPad Pro used like a laptop, copying the ergonomically terrible Microsoft devices. As a horizontal drawing tool they look great.

Best advice for Apple: Create a touch/non-touch convertable OSX beta for the iPad pro. Maybe they are working on this?

Evernote killed my blog

I used to write more in this blog than I do now. I always said I was just writing for myself, that it was a sort of note taking.

I have become an avid user of Evernote – and it is all private.  Notes to myself.  This has taken the driving force out of my motivation, which, I’m sorry to say, dear reader, was not to inform or please you but more about me.

Of course blogging has lost its pride of place as a form of communication with the advent of social media.  I don’t do much of that, but some, and that will have had an impact as well.

The other thing that never worked well in this blog is that I am a multiple personality.  I have six.

Which one is writing this blog?  The psychophile, the technophile… those two do ok here, after all the blog is on the cusp of these two interests, but I also do art, and I am a bushwalker and then there is a passion for specifically psychodrama and imago.  And movies and books!  And I used to be a communist so there is that whole interest in politics.  I use the tag World for that.

No unified focus.  Does that matter?

My Evernote account is more than capable of containing wild diversity.  Tags.  

There are tags here too.  And “notebooks”  This one has the notebook Journal.  And a bunch of tags, but who would ever use them? I do, Psyberspace is a resource with all my ramblings for a couple of decades.

 

Photo

Evolution of emotional literacy

Kevin Kelly (What does Technology Want? p196) quotes George Lucas:

Evernote Snapshot 20121129 225558

Just maybe that is about to change (Perhaps on December 21?? 🙂

I think we are in a rapid change right now. It will be more visible soon. I think the feminist consciousness, the decline of religion, urbanisation, education are all leading to a shift in consciousness that means there will be ever more psychotherapists.

See also:

Evolution of consciousness

Evolution of consciousness

The book by Kevin Kelly “What does technology want continues stimulate my thinking.

He is eloquent on the evolution of tech. To make his case he draws on parallels in biological evolution. He comes up with principle after principle that are deep insights into any change process. He reminds me constantly of Frederick Engles and on the dialectics of nature. There are principles of change that go beyond one sphere.

Today it is this S curve that grabbed me.

Evernote Snapshot 20121119 133549

You would need to read the chapter to fully get it, but take the example of rail road air as the three levels of technology that work together to ensure that transport increased at a constant level, of say miles, speed and lower costs.

What I do is relate this to the evolution of psychotherapy. Or lets call it conscious intimate relationships. A mere 40 years ago there were about 10 therapists/counsellors in Christchurch, now it is more like 400. What is that curve about? The psyche is on the move!

I imagine the three technologies are:

Analytical psych
Humanistic Psych
And now still in the lower reaches of its s curve, relationship psych

Metaphor

My posting about skeuomorphism in the last post, and earlier this year, is not just because I’m an Apple user (I won’t say fan). It iOS because it is related to my long interest in metaphor. (You can see all my posts with this tag by clicking the Metaphor tag at the bottom of this post).

What I liked about the article in the previous post is that it makes a distinction between skeuomorphism that assists usability, when it assisted in the early days. and now when it might even obscure things.

The the tricky thing that a purist would face if they were to avoid skeuomorphism altogether is that it is impossible. Online it is ALL metaphor, all abstraction.

Buttons
Folders
Views
Posts
Commands
Pages
Desktops

There is very little if anything that is native to the digital world. Digits, for example.

This principle applies even to abstractions in ordinary language:

Root
Tree
Sea

These words can all go well beyond their literal meaning.

This is of interest as it has deep implications for psychological work.

The psyche, like cyberspace is immaterial and we use metaphors from the material world to talk about the invisible

What touched you?
have a heart.

The psyche is not the body. We use metaphase from the body to describe it.

The current wave of bring research is fascinating but it is not related to the psyche, there is a huge category mistake being foisted upon the psychotherapy world.

The question is of interest too in relation to creativity

We use brushes in digital art programs, and they can use watercolour or oils. Where is the native digital form? (there are some!) Light is used to create ‘depth’ backup creating fake shadows. The glossy icons apple uses are created using fake shine. (Will Jony Ives remove that?)

While we have electronic music it is mostly through skeuomorphic instruments that we create it.

Always, no sometimes, think it’s me, but you know I know when it’s a dream.
I think I know I mean a ‘Yes’ but it’s all wrong, that is I think I disagree.
Let me take you down, ‘cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hungabout.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Strawberry Fields forever.

Coevolution, invention, creation of the psyche – the relational paradigm

There is a flow in the evolution process.

Grass had to exist before grazing animals could evolve, they in turn had to precede carnivores.

These examples perhaps are best expressed in the principle of the “next adjacent possible”.

A brief digression: I recently ran across a novel way to think about this question. In evolutionary theory, there’s a concept called the “adjacent possible,” coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman.

From this blog.

The “adjacent possible” refers to the change that’s available to you — i.e. adjacent, next door – versus the change that’s not.

Screen Shot 2012 10 07 at 1 24 29 PM

From Stuart A. Kauffman — Reinventing The Sacred Amazon

The process is holistically connected to the mutual adaptations in each species. Grasses develop ways to survive grazing. Herbivores evolve capacity to run, and carnivores develop sharper teeth and claws.

This idea is sometimes captured with the phrase co-evolution (Wikipedia):

In biology, coevolution is “the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object.”[1] Coevolution can occur at many biological levels: it can be as microscopic as correlated mutations between amino acids in a protein, or as macroscopic as covarying traits between different species in an environment. Each party in a coevolutionary relationship exerts selective pressures on the other, thereby affecting each other’s evolution.

Earlier post exaptation, a related concept.

I’m imagining this whole process as envisage the world of the psyche. The changing nature of how we relate to our being. Everything from collective rituals, art, monks meditating in a cave, group therapy, psychoanalysis, conjoint family week and couple therapy.

The investigations above, summed up as:

  • Adjacent possible
  • Coevolution
  • Exaptation

Imagine how these apply to the coevolution/invention/creation of the psyche.

(Why I say evolution/invention/creation is evident from this post about psyche this post about the nature of the psyche, about how it is not a thing, yet not nothing either, is relevant.)

Freud was before Jung. The idea of an unconscious and a method of working with it that was possible in the world was available to Freud as a medical clinician.

Moreno was in part a reaction to Freud. Group therapy and conjoint therapy was possible.

Moreno and Buber had found or invented an idea about the nature of the person being in the relationship.

Hendrix is pioneering the ice that being is relationship.

The relational paradigm is the now a niche that has opened, a shift in the culture and new ways of attending the the psyche are possible.

Moreno’s idea that this could well transform science is also on the cards as an I-Thou relationship with things is also possible according to Buber.

States of consciousness

I’m interested in tagging.

I love the way that books can be on two shelves at once in cyberspace.

Pursuing this idea to see if I can tag better on the Mac has led me to

Default Folder x

Ironic software who make Deep & Leap — though I can’t tell which one I should use.

Noticing that Path Finder, that I already use has an option for OpenMeta tags (that all the above use as well)

And

More strangely to this site, which may or may not be related:

http://openmeta.livejournal.com/

Later — Sunday, 28 January, 2018 : https://psyberspace.walterlogeman.com/2012/rational-thinking-and-its-conceptual-content/

But has some interesting stuff about Gurdjief and states of consciousness

NewImage

And that led to a lovely entry on Gurdjief in SkepDic

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I doubt there is a connection with Gurdjief in any way, but tagging does do something to your consciousness…

This is about straight tagging:

http://code.google.com/p/openmeta/

Just as well I can tag this post!