Author: Walter

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What was all that about?

I was wondering if the web is still interesting, after reading about Cool Site of the Day boredom (see link below).

I searched Google on: “meaningful hidden sources” and picked the items of most interest to me. I can get engrossed in all of this and find it (synchronistically!) magical.

Magic has been quite word lately as I read “True Names”. But that is another story. Knowing the right word is to do magic. And that is what I’d say to Mr. Davies – what are you typing in your search engine?

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Catholic Enc. on Albertus

“Like his contemporary, Roger Bacon (1214-94), Albert was an indefatigable student of nature, and applied himself energetically to the experimental sciences with such remarkable success that he has been accused of neglecting the sacred sciences (Henry of Ghent, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, II, x). Indeed, many legends have been circulated which attribute to him the power of a magician or sorcerer. Dr. Sighart (Albertus Magnus) examined these legends, and endeavoured to sift the truth from false or exaggerated stories. Other biographers content themselves with noting the fact that Albert’s proficiency in the physical sciences was the foundation on which the fables were constructed. The truth lies between the two extremes. Albert was assiduous in cultivating the natural sciences; he was an authority on physics, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry (alchimia), zoölogy, physiology, and even phrenology. On all these subjects his erudition was vast, and many of his observations are of permanent value. Humboldt pays a high tribute to his knowledge of physical geography (Cosmos, II, vi). Meyer writes (Gesch. der Botanik): “No botanist who lived before Albert can be compared with him, unless it be Theophrastus, with whom he was not acquainted; and after him none has painted nature in such living colours, or studied it so profoundly, until the time of Conrad, Gesner, and Cesalpini.”

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Fall into a great excess!

Synchronicity

The medieval “magician” Albertus Magnus wrote:

“A certain power to alter things indwells in the human soul and subordinates the other things to her, particularly when she is swept into a great excess of love of hate or the like. When therefore the [human soul] falls into a great excess of any passion, it can be proved by experiment that the [excess] binds things together [magically] and alters them in the way it wants. Whoever would learn the secret of doing and undoing these things must know that everyone can influence everything magically if [s/he] falls into a great excess.”

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Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa . [dead] . Now http://web.archive.org/web/20010222162001/http://studiolo.org:80/Mona/MONASV12.htm

“Most probably it was Sigmund Freud’s influential essay on Leonardo’s homosexuality and Freud’s consequential analysis of the Mona Lisa which was the direct or proximate impetus for Duchamp’s image. But, whereas Duchamp seems to imply that the picture fuses artist and sitter, male and female, Freud suggests that the Mona Lisa (specifically her smile) is a manifestation of Leonardo’s submerged memory of the birth mother from whom he was estranged at age four and who Freud theorizes expressed an unnatural affection toward her young son. In fact, Freud refutes the notion that there is a physiognomic similarity between the artist and the sitter, but goes on to suggest that the device of the smile was obviously so meaningful to the artist, using it frequently in his works of the time, it must have repressed significance. The person behind the Mona Lisa, Freud suggests, may have had such a smile, a smile that evoked long ago suppressed memories of his mother. Indeed, as Freud is quick to point out, this seems to have been a persistent theme: Vasari even noted that at the earliest age Leonardo was known for having created images of smiling women:

Let us leave the physiognomic riddle of Mona Lisa unsolved, and let us note the unequivocal fact that her smile fascinated the artist no less than all spectators for these 400 years. This captivating smile had thereafter returned in all of his pictures and in those of his pupils. As Leonardo’s Mona Lisa was a portrait, we cannot assume that he has added to her face a trait of his own, so difficult to express, which she herself did not possess. It seems, we cannot help but believe, that he found this smile in his model and became so charmed by it that from now on he endowed it on all the free creations of his phantasy.

“(Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci: A study in psychosexuality. tr. A.A. Brill. New York, Vintage Books, [1955] Originally published by Freud in 1910, p. 79.)”

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Cool site man on NYT

“He started Cool Site in 1994, after discovering the thrill of happening upon an especially interesting Web site and telling his friends what he had found. Within a year, more than 20,000 people a day were visiting the site, and Mr. Davis became a Web celebrity, giving interviews to online magazines and fending off gifts from Webmasters who were desperately seeking his recommendation of their sites. ”

“Today, Mr. Davis has not only kicked his Web habit but also almost completely given up the medium. The Cool Site of the Day still exists, but it is no longer run by Mr. Davis, who has also lost his enthusiasm for trolling for new pages.”

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Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil

“A comprehensive archive of works written by Editor-in-Chief Raymond C. Kurzweil. Also, a directory of selected articles about Kurzweil or the Kurzweil companies.”

“After the Singularity: A Talk with Ray Kurzweil By Raymond Kurzweil

John Brockman, editor of Edge.org, recently interviewed Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity and its ramifications. According to Ray, “We are entering a new era. I call it ‘the Singularity.’ It’s a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself. It’s the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it’s actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there’s no indication that it’s occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about. It is part of our destiny and part of the destiny of evolution to continue to progress ever faster, and to grow the power of intelligence exponentially. To contemplate stopping that–to think human beings are fine the way they are–is a misplaced fond remembrance of what human beings used to be. What human beings are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it’s the nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and that’s what we’re talking about. The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our technology.” (Added March 27th 2002)”

Plenty more there along those lines…

The Singularity – interesting – originates with Vinge and links cyber c with the romantics?

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CyberPsychology

CyberPsychology

“This page has links to a number of papers by Hugh Miller and Jill Arnold, of the Department of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University, about identity and Web pages.
We’ve also included links to a number of other sites that we’ve found useful and interesting.
We’re keen to make contact with other people who are interested in this area, so feel free to email Hugh or Jill, especially if you’re thinking of linking to this page or to any of our papers: we’d probably like to see your site.
Jill has a questionnaire (and an opportunity to contact her for an interview) about identity and personal home pages.”

This is a site worth having as it identifies something very vital – web pages and identity. Virtual life does not require the paraphernalia of The Matrix, just the Net as we know it.

Later: Friday, 6 June, 2008

The link is now behind a password, but here are some related ones:

Jill Arnold

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