Psyberspace

CMC Magazine: Technology as a Psychic Phenomenon
“Nevertheless, there are relationships, significant but covert, between the psychic and the technological. The key to this relationship lies in McLuhan’s idea of the “extensions of man.” The psychic and the technological represent two forms of the human attempt to abolish the constraints of time and space. We can, in fact, say with reason that technology represents the material expression or analogue of certain alleged psychic powers.”

In this 1997 article Grosso, in the end, dismisses the thesis. It seems to me that the trouble with techno-spiritual thesis like most religions is that it is taken all too literally. When that happens, as in this item, the essence of insight is lost. Resurrection is a potent notion – taken too literally it becomes the debate about ontology and the miracle is lost.

Michael Grosso in
Soulmaker

“Great dreams contain inexhaustible truths, and orient us, like runes, toward our futures. One hesitates to try to explain them; one wants to dance them, act them out in living gestures. The more we put ourselves into a great dream, the more we get back. Great dreams are wells that never run dry.”

A nice quote from Michael Grosso – who has cropped up in my weblog before. The soul boost site has other nice quotes too for all its new age spiritual feel.

Wired 10.05: Beat Manifestos

“I can plug my microphone straight into my laptop, and it’s got the best recording quality there is.”

“A gorgeous thing is happening now as technology becomes more common. It’s like years ago, when there was a piano or guitar in everyone’s home and everybody would know how to use them. It’s excellent, because if one’s human spirit wants to write a song, it’s more likely to be captured now. Good music always wins.”

Björk from the current issue of Wired. Björk’s comment here is interesting… the laptop becoming a sort of comly ubiquitous thing that somehow destroyes the power of the elite.

Wired 4.10

Derrick de Kerckhove, the man who occupies the same swivel chair as mass media’s philosopher king, ruminates on how the Web is creating a newly tribalized society.

By Kevin Kelly

The Web is a new guise of language

From the same old Wired mag.

Wired 4.10: Universal Personality
By Gerben de Graaf

“The terrestrial sphere we live on is wrapped in thousands of invisible strands of data, endlessly pouring from its surface. All of these strings of data are parts of who we are, and who we seem to be.

When you create a homepage on the Web, that page becomes part of your “universal personality,” a personality made up of all representations of you in any actual, virtual, or other worlds – and of the different ways everyone has perceived you.

Image-building is precarious. Once someone observes a virtual – or actual – part of you, it is inextricably part of you. It doesn’t matter whether this part is truly representative of your being.

For now, the only solution is to present yourself as completely as possible. Presenting your data well is presenting yourself well.

Gerben de Graaf (www.euronet.nl/users/gdegraaf) is editor of the online publication News from the Field.”

The item above is a complete “Idees Fortes” from WiReD while it still had strong ideas… this one from October 1996 The great thing is you can click through all the old issues.

“Presenting your data well is presenting yourself well.”

Interesting on the theme of identity that has run through this blog and my mind over the last few weeks. Of course my cyber explorations of ID relate to my personal life. I am getting more set in my ways, more able to stick with the lines of my character which like the wrinkles in my face wont go away but will only get deeper and mor clearly defined. What choice do have but to accept these lines – ruts even – but with grace?

Linux Magazine | Spring 1999 | FEATURES | The Linux Interview

“Torvalds: I think that’s a great advantage. There are a lot of people who own copyrights on their own drivers or file systems. I happen to be the main copyright owner and I am a copyright holder on a lot of other people’s code too. It’s a double-bind situation. Say I wanted to be the next Bill Gates, and I thought the way to become the next Bill Gates would be to say, “Linux 2.2 may be out, but I am working on Linux 3.0, and by the way it will cost you $150.” I can’t do that, because I’m not the only copyright holder. And no one else can do it either. The only way to do it would be to get everyone with their hands in the kernel to agree, and that’s not going to happen. This actually makes some commercial companies happier about Linux because they know that I can’t be a competitor to them.”

This is social ownership by those who produce. This has political/social importance of a major kind – or am I being too romantic?

Appendix I: Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange

And is the Iliad possible at all when the printing press and even printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable that with the emergence of the press bar the singing and the telling and the muse cease, that is the conditions necessary for epic poetry disappear?

Marx on art and rel to technology and society. Of course the possibilities of new forms also arise and he did not know the notion that new media transforms the old… people can still make their Illiad thier oral history in a new way… he net is more oral some have said. Who?