The Strange Times

[Triple Zero]

the zooming out is for showing the hyperpersonal structures that are present in today's world, these are getting stranger, because of information flow.

zooming in, you find humans, brains and cells. these haven't changed.

the medium is still the same, but the information written on it has taken on a life of its own.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

the zooming out is for showing the hyperpersonal structures that are present in today's world, these are getting stranger, because of information flow.

zooming in, you find humans, brains and cells. these haven't changed.

the medium is still the same, but the information written on it has taken on a life of its own.

That is a beautiful statement.

[Roo]

the zooming out is for showing the hyperpersonal structures that are present in today's world, these are getting stranger, because of information flow.

zooming in, you find humans, brains and cells. these haven't changed.

the medium is still the same, but the information written on it has taken on a life of its own.

Perhaps we are changing more than we realize. But even if we aren't, isn't that a little strange too?

[Golden Applesauce]

For me, the strangeness of the world is exemplified in the internet.  It's just people talking to each other, which seems mundane until you realize that until now, you pretty much had to live within walking distance of someone.  Now you just need to share a language.  I suspect the Next Big Thing, the thing that will firmly set us in the information age, will be an automatic translator program that works and can handle conversation.

Look at us.  Never in the history of the world could people from the US, UK, the Netherlands, etc all hand out in the same coffee shop and chat.  Never before in the history of the world could I, sitting in my room in Ohio, play an after dinner game with someone from San Fransisco and someone from Brazil - maybe Korea too if I do it at the right time.

Individuals are just as unique as they've always been, but instant communications to anywhere allows the adopting of any subculture, rather that being limited to those that were present in your village.  Like Cram said about the Beetles - they were The Band in the US and UK not so long ago.  Not so long before that, before faster overseas communication, and transportation, no one in the US could have heard of them.  Now anyone who with a connection can compile music folders that represent music from every continent.  If the local American styles of television shows don't interest me, I'll just watch British and Japanese ones.

Impressive, right?  But the same thing goes for thinking.  Ideas get inbred too.  Now you can learn any philosophy, any worldview, any meme from your home.  And you can find discussion partners to hone your ideas with.  I don't think humans today are any more creative that humans of ages past, but good ideas frequently died for lack of improvement.  How many stories of scientific advances include the line, "And then he discovered a paper published in an obscure foreign journal..."?  Before then, the two ideas never would have come into contact with each other at all, never combined to form the revolutionary discovery.  Now the two scientists or philosophers or artists, where they would have formerly been relegated to distant towns, distant countries, distant continents, can come together to the same public bath, the same university, the same coffee house, the same forum online - and work together and build off each other.  An idea that might have died in an Indian peasant can kindle to life in an Indian foreign exchange student.

Have you heard of a series of anthologies called Flight?  It's the result of a bunch of authors of internet comics who got together and published a book - and the authors of the first one hail from France, Pittsburgh, Brazil, British Columbia, California, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom.  They weren't trying to be multicultural.  They just couldn't help it.

Now imagine how much stranger this is going to get when co collaborators can speak disparately different languages.

[Telarus]

Very Nice Cram!

Here's a little rant I wrote as a "Profile" for an occultist group that tried to get started on LJ, then stalled. Kinda of the same line of thought. Keep in mind this was written for a specific audience, rip from it what you will:

WARNING: This reality subject to change. No warnings will be given.

One of the most mundane, yet perhaps one of the most mystical aspects of our existence, the ability to effect change, manipulating chaotic "raw data" into an ordered idea, appears to be rarely examined by most humans. It seems often taken for granted, marginalized and ignored.

From the simple act of summoning a soda from the fridge when thirsty, to invoking god-forms as a way of changing behavioral patterns. From clearing away the constant, cluttered, cramped confusion that our minds tend to dwell in daily with the techniques of Zen and other “no-mind” practices, to the ever frantic ordering and disordering of things physical and mental.

WE EFFECT CHANGE.

How conscious are we, the children of the human race, as to the influence we have over ourselves and our environments? Some may seek introspection, but many seem preoccupied with the everyday bureaucracy of life, wandering through their perception of reality in a half-awake daze. Various movements throughout history have recognized this. Some have leveraged this into large scale organizations bent on manipulating dazed followers. These organizations promised that if the followers just change a little, just align themselves with the GROUP, just this once....then EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, and they'll never have to change again. Instead of encouraging independent thought, each question that betrays a spark of consciousness is chased off by the barking of Dogma.

“Don't believe them for a moment
For a second, do not believe, my friend
When you are down, them are not coming
With a helping hand
Of course there is no US and THEM
But THEM, they do not think the same...”
-Illumination, Gogol Bordello

Others have formed small esoteric or mystical societies to explore the possibilities of Awaking the individual in some sense. They aspired to cast off the drowsy slumber of the majority and coming to terms with the life altering realizations which that Awakening brings. Of forming communities of Awakened individuals. Many developments have occurred within this movement which seem almost parallel in concept. Some societies encoded their discoveries and techniques with symbols and metaphors local to the culture that incubated them. Ambassadors from one society approached others with trembling trepidation, curious as to the parallels they saw in others' works, confused by the unfamiliar symbols and foreign god-forms.

Then, suddenly, EVERYTHING CHANGED. With the introduction of telecommunications and the world-wide web, you could approach a strange subject in the manner that made you comfortable. With a simple evocation of “the Google” one could find overwhelming information on any esoteric subject imaginable. You could find many people with many, many opinions about even the most esoteric knowledge. This too caused problems. Information overload. How do you tell which information has value, and which does not? Who do you Believe?

“V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads.“
-5th Commandment of the Pentabarf, Principia Discordia

[NeophyteNihilist]

First of all, excellent work!
I'll be including this essay on my dorm room door next year.

Humans are exposed to more information on a daily basis than they have in all of history. There is an overwhelming amount of information that is being fired at you, and you have to make very rapid choices about it (see also: thesis, antithesis, synthesis).

I think you are missing a key component of the madness of the present.  Not only are we being bombarded by amazing amounts of new information everyday, but that information is often completely decontextualized.  Just look at the average television news broadcast.  They present sensational stories on a variety of topics in short segments usually not much longer than 45 seconds.  There is no relevance to previous stories and little background information is given on each subject.  The information is not put into any sort of context, preventing the viewer from gaining an authentic understanding of any subject or even being particularly concerned with what has been shown to them.  Any opinions gained from such small bits of information are essentially subjective as the event is only inadequately shown from one point of view.  The result is that everyone ends up with a clusterfuck of fragmented "Trivial Pursuit" information with no way to create a meaningful worldview using all (or even most) of it.  Its no wonder our culture is made of "bits of shrapnel" juxtaposed in weird ways when our values, opinions, and beliefs are exactly the same, strange arrangements of decontextualized psuedo-knowledge. 

I probably shouldn't have written this at 2:30, I apologize if it makes no sense.  And yes, I have been reading "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

[hooplala]

I thought I already responded to this, but yes... MITTENS all around.


Funnily enough, a friend and I were just talking about something sort of similar the other night... my friend is a professional illustrator, whereas I just draw, but not well enough for anyone to want to pay me... but the crux of the conversation was that 100 years ago (or maybe even just 30-40 years ago) my talent would have been in high demand... but those were the days when you were only exposed to people within maybe 50 miles of where you lived.  In those days you usually only had a few people who could do any one thing... but today, I literally have to compete with the ENTIRE WORLD.

If someone wants an illustration, they can use my friend here in Toronto, or they can use Suu in Rhode Island, or some asshole from France or Japan...

I could compete with Jimmy the Fuckwad from Lobo Ontario, but all the other people?  NO WAY.

[AFK]

So, I posted the OP over at the SJGAMES forums the other day (giving Cram credit of course).  Today, the site appears to have crashed. We found their weakness!!!  Seriously though, before it did, there were good reviews from a couple of the users.   

[Triple Zero]

a friend of mine, she studies literary and cultural studies, said about this article:

"it's space-time compression, baby", which is a quote by Harvey The post-modern condition (except for the "baby", bit)

apparently, what she learns about has a lot of parallels with the stuff that is discussed in the Art of Memetics, and also in the Black Iron Prison concept.
i'll get her to read the BIP next

and now we're going to watch that video about memes on ted.com (memetic warfare thread in TFYS)

i hope to get some interesting references, papers and ideas from this.