2004-11-14


canals

pervasive computing following ethical rules

mobile phone form factor

zoos, botony

mud balls

process design

algorithmic walks

#

process for everyday life

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mike saw "crude stuffed animal made out of real fur, left on the street"

i wonder whether it was stuffed with meat.

localised etherpeg from phones

a thing which illuminates things which only perform as hinges

smooth -> striated -> building -> architecture
collection -> relatedness + valence -> ? -> ?

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canals in amsterdam are literally canalisation, wormholes.

circuits are really important. there are circuits through the city, the
self-reinforcing circuits. they are the attractor, the path. and there are many
circuits, but not millions, there are typologies.

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adam: stewart brand's diagram of different speeds is very influential on all of
us.

[i don't really like that diagram. the solid things in the world short-circuit
the layers, pinning commerce [agriculture and the defense of that] to human
nature [relationships, genetics] in order to make something really solid: the
stone tombs of norwich.]

#

so far politics has been a matter of building two solid towers and it's seeing
who can build taller. but now the web is a very oral place, despite its apparent
permanence, and politics has become a matter of defending on a 1000 different
fronts, and you have to either iterate/defend/restate the idea, or cede the
position (not a matter of losing, just a matter of letting go). like bao, not
like go.

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2004-11-14

Design Engaged, recommended books


3 books:

considered:

hoffmeyer

jj gibson, an ecological approach to visual perception

gregory bateson, steps to an ecology of mind


recommended:

cloud atlas, david mitchell

How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and
Informatics 
 by N. Katherine Hayles

le guin, always coming home