Being exposed to the most extreme culture of tech worship in SF Bay area and really studying it at length at UC Berkeley (including some natural language processing and sound resonance modeling), I promise with the bottom of my heart, digital tech and the 'magic' it promises is quite constrained even when created by nuanced practitioners. Why are we trying to replicate the extremely complex characteristics of life (in my particular field, acoustic instruments)? Perhaps digital is best at probabilistic reduction down to simpler artifacts, but the use of digital must stem first from a specific application in mind or we risk glorifying tech arbitrarily. I suppose I should be more positive or open, but I feel very strongly that our work with digital tools is leading to a dead end or at least diminishing returns. I've given up my career in higher ed being honest about my position here, so I don't say it lightly. Perhaps learning about natural systems and our own bodies would be more helpful (beyond capital). Much love and warm regards despite our difficult times.
Wow, having listened to a few of your podcasts now, I can see you circling around the thornier parts of these narratives. I follow the true insight of the luddites, that technology is neither inevitable or uncontrollable, that it should be in service to the joyful continuation of the living world. I am deeply sceptical of narratives to emiliorate the nihilism of outright capitalism. Unfortunately, art is one of those tools, and has long been the advertising/propoganda arm of various murderous regimes.
It is a great insight that Maggie's most moving moments took place in her own body, immersed in the natural world and in indigenous ways of being. The networked world that as you say, is an integral element of any locality will more than likely take the form of physical gifts and ceremonial festivals between communities.
As a stone carver, I understand the embodied knowledge of craft, and its astonishing interactions with the material world as a pathway through our multiple crisis. This coupled with a land base can offer the healing, through an intersufficient provisioning of our livelihoods, that is required. If we are looking to create a power base we will have to grow our food and fibre and provision our needs from a mostly local bioregion. This is where a deep respect for the natural world, its multiplicity and plurality, and our enmeshed place in it, will be found. Not in AI.
So glad to have Donna Haraway's interspecies work brought to our attention. For years her nonanthropocentric perspective has been an inspiration for artists and environmentalists alike, providing concrete evidence that our Western, intellect- and technology-heavy, commodity-driven mindset is far from being the only effective perspective on reality, and may in fact be one of the least viable, lacking as it is in awareness of the natural world itself as revealed by embodied intelligence -- aka, tacit understanding (Michael Polanyi), ecology of mind (Gregory Bateson), Goethean Science (Lawrence Edwards et al), and the all-so-many other perceptions and perspectives available through indigenous traditions, experiential psychology, and interspecies intelligence. research like that of Haraway and Roberts.
Being exposed to the most extreme culture of tech worship in SF Bay area and really studying it at length at UC Berkeley (including some natural language processing and sound resonance modeling), I promise with the bottom of my heart, digital tech and the 'magic' it promises is quite constrained even when created by nuanced practitioners. Why are we trying to replicate the extremely complex characteristics of life (in my particular field, acoustic instruments)? Perhaps digital is best at probabilistic reduction down to simpler artifacts, but the use of digital must stem first from a specific application in mind or we risk glorifying tech arbitrarily. I suppose I should be more positive or open, but I feel very strongly that our work with digital tools is leading to a dead end or at least diminishing returns. I've given up my career in higher ed being honest about my position here, so I don't say it lightly. Perhaps learning about natural systems and our own bodies would be more helpful (beyond capital). Much love and warm regards despite our difficult times.
Wow, having listened to a few of your podcasts now, I can see you circling around the thornier parts of these narratives. I follow the true insight of the luddites, that technology is neither inevitable or uncontrollable, that it should be in service to the joyful continuation of the living world. I am deeply sceptical of narratives to emiliorate the nihilism of outright capitalism. Unfortunately, art is one of those tools, and has long been the advertising/propoganda arm of various murderous regimes.
It is a great insight that Maggie's most moving moments took place in her own body, immersed in the natural world and in indigenous ways of being. The networked world that as you say, is an integral element of any locality will more than likely take the form of physical gifts and ceremonial festivals between communities.
As a stone carver, I understand the embodied knowledge of craft, and its astonishing interactions with the material world as a pathway through our multiple crisis. This coupled with a land base can offer the healing, through an intersufficient provisioning of our livelihoods, that is required. If we are looking to create a power base we will have to grow our food and fibre and provision our needs from a mostly local bioregion. This is where a deep respect for the natural world, its multiplicity and plurality, and our enmeshed place in it, will be found. Not in AI.
HP Lovecraft's octopus contemplates white privilege in the comfort of obliviousness.
NRM Roshak explores a gentler side of alien cephalopods
https://zooscape-zine.com/a-bitter-thing/
So glad to have Donna Haraway's interspecies work brought to our attention. For years her nonanthropocentric perspective has been an inspiration for artists and environmentalists alike, providing concrete evidence that our Western, intellect- and technology-heavy, commodity-driven mindset is far from being the only effective perspective on reality, and may in fact be one of the least viable, lacking as it is in awareness of the natural world itself as revealed by embodied intelligence -- aka, tacit understanding (Michael Polanyi), ecology of mind (Gregory Bateson), Goethean Science (Lawrence Edwards et al), and the all-so-many other perceptions and perspectives available through indigenous traditions, experiential psychology, and interspecies intelligence. research like that of Haraway and Roberts.
Very interesting, these ideas should be at the forefront of new technologies a true model to encode into AI. Thankyou