A few things I’ve been checking out:

Graham Harman’s : The Prince of Networks, Bruno Latour and Metaphysics; Bernhard Stiegler’s Technics and Time (difficult to read); a short list of Simondon’s terminology at Fractal Ontology; and different text-editors for Mac, after reading Jacket’s styleguide, or spot-on long explanation of what the f— it means to edit a text in these times.

GEORGE DYSON
Science Historian; Author, Darwin Among the Machines

KAYAKS vs CANOES

“In the North Pacific ocean, there were two approaches to boatbuilding. The Aleuts (and their kayak-building relatives) lived on barren, treeless islands and built their vessels by piecing together skeletal frameworks from fragments of beach-combed wood. The Tlingit (and their dugout canoe-building relatives) built their vessels by selecting entire trees out of the rainforest and removing wood until there was nothing left but a canoe.

The Aleut and the Tlingit achieved similar results — maximum boat / minimum material — by opposite means. The flood of information unleashed by the Internet has produced a similar cultural split. We used to be kayak builders, collecting all available fragments of information to assemble the framework that kept us afloat. Now, we have to learn to become dugout-canoe builders, discarding unneccessary information to reveal the shape of knowledge hidden within.

I was a hardened kayak builder, trained to collect every available stick. I resent having to learn the new skills. But those who don’t will be left paddling logs, not canoes.”

Copypasted from Egde 2010

Edge 313. David Gelertner – the conservative – on taking the internet seriously. Follow links from there.

Keep yr browsers pointed here: Sonic Acts XIII The Poetics of Space. The programme will be online, finally, in a few days – or sooner. The book will be for sale from the 25th of February on.

And yes, I have been busy working on all this, together with the others (Nicky, Annette, Lucas, Gideon, Martijn etc.)

Therefore there were no updates here.

And btw, due to all the snow and the freezing I haven’t been able to get out on the bike for weeks now. I have even installed the old Tacx, for the first time in 5 years, to do a bit of riding inside. (I find that completely boring but my legs begin to ache from not riding).

Brief history of social media, yes, and starting with the phone phreaks. Sure one could go before that? Conference calls? Chatboxes on landlines? As this is an American history Minitel isn’t mentioned either. I can think of a few things more even. Yet, good as an overview: http://socialmediarockstar.com/history-of-social-media.

Btw: I’m blogging live at the Print / Pixel conference at the Piet Zwart, in Rotterdam: http://blog.wdka.nl/communication-in-a-digital-age/.

My last 4 “tweets”:

ariealt going thru my rss-feeds, seeing i havent looked at most of them since november 16th (2008), excepting those of friends &c. less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt the website that’s not updated since january 2006! less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt first a second big coffee. hmm twitter-spam. have to finish listing my publications of 2008, then update the website less than 5 seconds ago from web

ariealt home (after a’dam-r’dam-enschede-almelo-r’dam-a’dam for an evening on digital poetry in enschede), dishes done, back to work or cycling? 8 minutes ago from web

Yeah, I know, plugins do exist to stream twitter-updates straight to wordpress. I won’t use it, I guess

A call for contribution for Video Vortex 4 is up (ah, since the 2nd of december): http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/videovortex/archives/108. Also a a pdf of the reader covering Video Vortex 3: http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/publications/inc-readers/videovortex//.

Reading through Lev Manovich new book Software Studies, which is downloadable here: http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2008/11/softbook.html.

Being massively jealous of course (“hey,I could’ve easily written part 3, that’s my research”), I wonder if what Manovich is doing in this book — which at first quick reading through seems to be great as a summary, and very teachable — is in fact first “interface studies” and secondly software studies. Shouldn’t way peel off one more layer, open one more black box to reach at — well, how software is made to function so it makes us function? Or is this criticism due to my fascination for programming — not being a programmer myself?

Naturally their are many smaller issues on which I’m tempted to take issue with Manovich, or where I think he might have missed something. (German media theory?). I wonder if remixability is as central as he claims it to be. Yet, exactly making such a claim — remix as dominant form of cultural production — produces clarity too.

Just as Language of New Media this could be a book that one simply cannot go around / escape, when doing software studies. Even if one’s own approach would be different. (Manovich focussed mainly at American and Americanized culture, less at more marginal software cultures, et cetera et cetera).

Well, this is all very very preliminary, having read Part One, skimmed through Part Two, and read diagonally across Part Three. But I couldn’t resist…

And well, this is a great quote: “In the era of Web 2.0, we can state that information wants to be ASCII.”

There is so much to say about this little book by cyclist, writer, publisher and OULIPO-member Paul Fournel, that I do not know where to begin. It is perfect. It captures what riding the bike is about, in just a few works, a few sentences he describes the essential.

Why, you ask, gather all these data about rides, how far and how fast, measured by computers and GPS-devices, when you need just a few well chosen words that condense the reality of it. (Ezra Pound: ‘Dichten’ is condensare).

I recognize almost everything in Fournel’s ‘need for the bike’. Which, I guess, is a way to say I am a cyclist like him. (Only I think he’s way faster, more competitive, I never did any sports prior to buying a racing bike when I was 30, I am a late-comer).

Just a few quotes — in English (the translation is by Allan Stoekl, the book is published by the University of Nebraska Press):

“Bike speed requires you to be selective about what you see, you reconstruct what you sense, In that way you get to the essential. Your gaze brushes over the title of a book or a cover, a newspaper catches your eye, you glimpse a potential gift in a window, a new bread in a bakery. That’s the proper speed of my gaze. It’s a writer’s speed, a speed that filters and does a preliminary selection.” (p. 44/45)

“As soon as I knew how to ride I grasped the idea of a greater world. When I left tot do a circuit, everything inside the circuit was ‘home’.” (p. 63)

“Road maps for me are dream machines. I like to read them as if they’re adventure stories. When I drive my car I use them to find the shortest route, to find the long roads where cities join, roads that don’t go through the country. As a bike rider I use them for everything else. If I know an area, every centimeter on the map is a landscape laid out for me. If I don’t know it yet, every centimeter is an imagined landscape that I will explore.” (p. 79)

For me maps are dream machines too. And there is the reason why I still use maps, and do not have a GPS device — though I am fascinated by how these technologies change one’s relation toward space, landscape and dreaming. I find it impossible to dream while staring at Google maps and Google Earth.

Should I write an essay on that?

(Btw: thanks to Alex Myers for bringing this book to my attention)

Paul Fournel is here: http://www.paulfournel.com/.