Microsoft’s new mixed reality headset, the HoloLens 2, was featured in a commercial and campaign starring artist Marina Abramović, who is known for promoting and practicing arts such as Spirit Cooking.
Microsoft’s new mixed reality headset, the HoloLens 2, was featured in a commercial and campaign starring artist Marina Abramović, who is known for promoting and practicing arts such as Spirit Cooking.
As the
corona virus crisis unfolds, an army of conspiracy theorists has emerged, producing a dizzying amount of colourful viral narratives. The mainstream media is responding aggressively, with an onslaught of critical coverage about how "the alternative media and crazy conspiracy theorists are putting all our health in danger". Yet on closer examination, the mainstream's responds is as primitive and manipulative as the narratives of conspiracy theorist they critique.
While they might appear like enemies engaged in a war over the sovereignty of interpretation of reality, in actuality the mainstream media and conspiracy theorists have a complex, interdependent relationship. Regardless of who's "truth" is "righter", both are in effect collaboratively poisoning an already highly in-transparent media and communications environment, contributing to a global narrative breakdown.
Currently billions of peoples are assaulted with overwhelming amounts of "information", "truths" and "opinions", presented by experts, politicians, oligarchs and conspiracy theorists. In such an environment, where all signals are lost in an ocean of noise, shared narratives (right/wrong, etc.) quickly collapse and large-scale developments can happen silently, unnoticed by most.
A global narrative collapse is especially dangerous in a time where there is no shortage of actual"conspiracy facts", mostly ignored in the public discourse. For examples: How the USA and EU are pumping uncounted trillions into the world economy (mostly reaching super elites, cementing totalitarian control structures) - or the accelerating global oil crash (oil is in 85% of stuff we consume) - or the bifurcation of global infrastructure (china/russia are launching their own internet and digital currencies) - or the ongoing collapse of capitalism and rebirth as the "fourth industrial rei...volution" - or the radical expansion of computational surveillance and policing (Dictators with A.I's don't care if you "have nothing to hide", they care about power) and the creation of global DNA databases.
In the shadow of the the corona virus dominating the global media cycle for month, such projects ("conspiracy facts") are accelerating and reaching maturity. Its effect will be felt for decades to come (unlike this virus). Yet instead of informing the public about such urgent matters, who does the global mainstream media choose to constantly ridicule and critique? A wide range of incoherent conspiracy theorists - mixing up everything from biowarfare, killer beams, space aliens and Jesus Christ into one crazy story.
What is at play here are political attack tactics, known at least since Machiavelli: "Gaslighting", "Fog of war" and "Flooding the zone": Providing experts, idiots, crazies and disinfo agents a megaphone, so they can pump out wast amounts of confusing and contradictory information, frequently attacking the integrity of those making counter-claims, and occasionally injecting conspiracy theories. Within such a media environment, all serious discussion about "conspiracy facts" will be inevitably confused with far-out garbage - to be disagreed by any half way thinking person. We now have a global media environment in which very large-scale developments ("conspiracy facts") can happen silently, unnoticed by most.
But hey, back to the program: Switch off your brain immediately and just PANIC! So that nobody dears to even ask critical question when conspiratorial scenarios like the post-democratic police state emerges in full force. Now smile, go wash your hands and enjoy the breakdown of the global narrative and rise of the global grid.
#Media #Narrative #InfoSec #Health #Cryptocracy #Ideas #fnord #Comment
The War of the Worlds - 1938 radio drama by Orson Welles
"The War of the Worlds" is an episode of the American radio drama anthology series directed and narrated by actor and future filmmaker Orson Welles as an adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds (1898).The episode became famous for causing panic among its listening audience.
The Second Golden Age of Blogging (otherlife)
Blogging was then diffused into social media, but now social media is so tribal and algo-regulated that anybody with a real message today needs their own property. At the same time, professional institutions are increasingly suffocated by older, rent-seeking incumbents and politically-correct upstarts using moralism as a career strategy. In such a context, blogging — if it is intelligent, courageous, and consistent — is currently one of the most reliable methods for intellectually sophisticated individuals to accrue social and cultural capital outside of institutions. (Youtube for the videographic, Instagram for the photographic, podcasting for the loquacious, but writing and therefore blogging for the most intellectually sophisticated.
If the First Golden Age of Blogging saw the blog as a public amplifier of creative, intellectual talent ensconced in professional careers, today we are living through a Second Golden Age of Blogging, where the blog is now a vehicle for starting and exiting careers.
The Media
Image2StyleGAN++: How to Edit the Embedded Images? (CVPR 2020)
D3S - A Discriminative Single Shot Segmentation Tracker (CVPR 2020)
Zooming Slow-Mo: Fast and Accurate One-Stage Space-Time Video Super-Resolution (CVPR-2020) (code)
IGNOR: Image-guided Neural Object Rendering (ICLR 2020)
Conversation with Victor Riparbelli - CEO of Synthesia, a player in the Synthetic Media space
#Comment: Shallow bullshit aiming at gluing people even more to their little glowing rectangles, to further accelerate late capitalist hyper consumerism. See my talk on the topic here.
Reuters Uses AI To Prototype First Ever Automated Video Reports
Developed in collaboration with London-based AI startup Synthesia, the new system harnesses AI in order to synthesize pre-recorded footage of a news presenter into entirely new reports. It works in a similar way to deepfake videos, although its current prototype combines with incoming data on English Premier League football matches to report on things that have actually happened.
Ted Nelson VS The MIT Media Lab
"From that moment i figured he (Nicholas Negroponte, lab founder) was really a con man [...] The whole point of the Media Lab is "we know something that you don't know!" - to have strange projects no one could understand. [...] Negroponte is a politician, exchanging favours. [..] One day i asked Negroponte for his definition of media and he finally said 'Media is like Air!'. Con men and politicians aren't necessarily held to telling the truth at all." - Ted Nelson
"For over thirty years, the MIT Media Lab has done strange and mysterious things, using hype and hokum to impress the unwary and raise ever more money. Whereas the principles of interaction and media, as far as I'm concerned, are and always have been simple and powerful, with human creativity at the centre. The creative mentality of the film director is exactly what is needed in software - anticipating the user's understandings and expectations, and fulfilling them elegantly." - Ted Nelson
#Comment: It's worth adding that besides the (ongoing) onslaught of "strange projects know one could understand" (aka "Bullshit", as defined by Harry Frankfurt in his essay "On Bullshit" (PDF) ), the Media Lab (and the wider MIT) has been a premier "think tank" for the US military industrial complex. And thus, the media lab has proven the marvellous fact that fictitious techno-utopian bullshit pushed by con man politicians, is highly capable of killing a great many people in the real world.
I Tried Listening to Podcasts at 3x and Broke My Brain - by Steve Rousseau (medium)
At 2x, the experience of listening to audio began to change: Though I could understand the words, they seemed to have less emotional resonance. At these high speeds, my brain seemed to shift away from assessing people's feelings towards baseline comprehension. At the end of each sentence, I'd feel a little twinge of joy, not because of anything happening in the podcast, but just because I had understood the words.
"Through Fields" Animation Created using GauGAN (via)
Moving from Documents to Models - Presentation by Dr. Darius Silingas (2016)
"Electronics as E.S.P." - Marshall McLuhan in Explorations Magazine, Volume 8 (1957):
"Synesthesia, the new sin of the nineteenth century, roused as much misunderstanding as E.S.P. today. Extra sensory perception is normal perception. Today electronics are extra sensory, Gallup polls and motivation research are also. Therefore, people get all steamed up about E.S.P. as something for the future. It is already past and present."
MCLUHAN: Let me help you. Tribal man is tightly sealed in an integral collective awareness that transcends conventional boundaries of time and space. As such, the new society will be one mythic integration, a resonating world akin to the old tribal echo chamber where magic will live again: a world of ESP. The current interest of youth in astrology, clairvoyance and the occult is no coincidence. Electric technology, you see, does not require words any more than a digital computer requires numbers. Electricity makes possible--and not in the distant future, either--an amplification of human consciousness on a world scale, without any verbalization at all.
PLAYBOY: Are you talking about global telepathy?
MCLUHAN: Precisely. Already, computers offer the potential of instantaneous translation of any code or language into any other code or language. If a data feedback is possible through the computer, why not a feed-forward of thought whereby a world consciousness links into a world computer? Via the computer, we could logically proceed from translating languages to bypassing them entirely in favor of an integral cosmic unconsciousness somewhat similar to the collective unconscious envisioned by Bergson. The computer thus holds out the promise of a technologically engendered state of universal understanding and unity, a state of absorption in the logos that could knit mankind into one family and create a perpetuity of collective harmony and peace. This is the real use of the computer, not to expedite marketing or solve technical problems but to speed the process of discovery and orchestrate terrestrial--and eventually galactic--environments and energies. Psychic communal integration, made possible at last by the electronic media, could create the universality of consciousness foreseen by Dante when he predicted that men would continue as no more than broken fragments until they were unified into an inclusive consciousness. In a Christian sense, this is merely a new interpretation of the mystical body of Christ; and Christ, after all, is the ultimate extension of man.
PLAYBOY: Isn't this projection of an electronically induced world consciousness more mystical than technological?
MCLUHAN: Yes--as mystical as the most advanced theories of modern nuclear physics. Mysticism is just tomorrow's science dreamed today.
"Mere electric speed-up makes X-ray awareness natural." - Marshal McLuhan
Found via mycanvassesaresurrealist
"Connecting with Specific Publics: Treating Communication Communicatively" - talk by Brenda Dervin, professor at The Ohio State University's School of Communications (2011)
Biographical Information: Brenda L. Dervin was born on November 20, 1938 . Dr. Dervin currently is Professor of Communication, and Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellow in Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Communication at Ohio State University. She has previously held posts on the communications faculty of Syracuse University and the University of Washington.
Education: Dr. Dervin received her BA in journalism and home economics from Cornell University in 1960. She went on to earn both a MA (1968) and a PhD (1971) in Communications Research from University of Michigan. Dervin was also awarded an honorary PhD in social sciences from the University of Helsinki in 2000.
Contribution to Reference: Dr. Dervin’s background in the field of communications has provided a unique vantage point at which to view the work of reference librarians. She has made significant contributions to the field of reference, specifically to the nature of the reference interview. Her research and writing focus on various aspects of how people make sense of their environments. Dr. Dervin’s development of a Sense-Making Methodology has been applied to numerous disciplines, including health communication (Teekman, 2000), understanding deaf culture (Linderman, 1996), feminist studies (Clark, 1999) and workplace processes (W-Y Cheuk, 1998).
Within the reference transaction, the Sense-Making Methodology frames the interaction between user and librarian as one in which the goal is to “bridge the gap.” Dervin’s research in this area explores the idea that people generally come to the reference transaction (or another instance of communication) with an obstacle or gap in understanding that serves as a fundamental block. The role of the reference librarian, Dervin argues, is to approach the reference transaction with a goal of understanding the “gap” from the user’s perspective. Through a series of query negotiations, the librarian attempts to paraphrase the information problem, and understand the context in which the question is being asked. The librarian must also determine the depth and scope of answer that is required, and elicits any relevant constraints. Such an approach may employ a mixture of Open Questions and Closed Ended Questions; though Dervin argues that a series of Neutral Questions ought to guide the interview, with the librarian careful to avoid imposing judgments or assumptions on the information need or the potential uses for the information.
Text via https://fsulis3267.fandom.com/wiki/Brenda_Dervin
Sense-Making Definition: According the homepage of the Sense-Making Methodology Site:
“Sense-Making is an approach to thinking about and implementing communication research and practice and the design of communication-based systems and activities. It consists of a set of philosophical assumptions, substantive propositions, methodological framings, and methods. It has been applied in myriad settings (e.g., libraries, information systems, media systems, web sites, public information campaigns, classrooms, counseling services, and so on), at myriad levels (e.g., intrapersonal, interpersonal, small group, organizational, mass, national, global), and within myriad perspectives (e.g., constructivist, critical, cultural, feminist, postmodern, communitarian).”(2005)
This extensive description explains the robust nature of this methodology. This definition is qualified by: “On this site, Sense-Making (capitalized) refers to the methodology; sense-making (not capitalized) refers to the phenomena of making and unmaking of sense. ” As Dervin notes in the Sense-Making Methodology Reader, the definition is continually in flux and adapts to accommodate new research. (Dervin, 1999).
Origins: Growing from Dervin’s post-doctoral research in communication, Sense-Making developed as an attempt to bridge the distance between the polarized camps of communications theory. Indebted to the work of communications theorist Richard F. Carter, University of Washington Professor Emeritus of Communication and his work in applying communication approaches to the communications field, this methodlogy is applicable across a wide range of disciplines.
Text via http://ucla245.pbworks.com/w/page/8751501/Sense-Making
"Complexity favoured increasing control under a monopoly of priests and the confinement of knowledge to special classes" - Harold Innis, in "Empire and Communication" (1950)
"Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change" - by Neil Postman (1998)
"Conclusion: And so, these are my five ideas about technological change. First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us.
I will close with this thought. In the past, we experienced technological change in the manner of sleep-walkers. Our unspoken slogan has been “technology über alles,” and we have been willing to shape our lives to fit the requirements of technology, not the requirements of culture. This is a form of stupidity, especially in an age of vast technological change. We need to proceed with our eyes wide open so that we many use technology rather than be used by it."
Presentation: Neil Postman's Five Ideas to Technological Change
"The Surrender of Culture to Technology" - talk by Neil Postman
Notes on the Historical Division between "Logical thinking" and "Visuals"
Rudolf Arnheim suggested a historical division between "Logical thinking" and "Visuals" in his ground-breaking book, Visual Thinking (1969).
He pointed out that philosophers in ancient Greek credited the direct vision as the start and end source of wisdom although they also learned possible distortion in human’s visual perception (Arnheim, 1969. pp. 12). However, hundreds of years later, the potential of using sketching in creative problem solving are still paid less attention. Sketching is often not considered as a form of thinking. (found via viz-up-the-world)
In his book, Arnheim (1969. pp. 2-3) reflected on the issue as the followed:
“Today, the prejudicial discrimination between perception and thinking is still with us. We shall find it in examples from philosophy and psychology. Our entire educational system continues to be based on the study of words and numbers … More and more the arts are considered as a training in agreeable skills, as entertainment and mental release."
"As the ruling disciplines stress more rigorously the study of words and numbers, their kinship with the arts is increasingly obscured, and the arts are reduced to a desirable supplement…. The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought. In fact, educators and administrators cannot justify giving the arts an important position in the curriculum unless they understand that the arts are the most powerful means of strengthening the perceptual component without which productive thinking is impossible in any field of endeavor. The neglect of the arts is only the most tangible symptom of the widespread unemployment of the senses….”
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." - Rudolf Arnheim
Mind map: Rudolf Arnheim - Visual Thinking & The Intelligence of Visual Perception.
Simplicity, clarity, balance: A tribute to Rudolf Arnheim - by David Bordwell (2007):
"My teachers Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler were laying the theoretical and practical foundations of gestalt theory at the Psychological Institute of the Uni of Berlin, and I found myself fastening on to what may be called a Kantian turn of the new doctrine, according to which even the most elementary processes of vision do not produce mechanical recordings of the outer world but organize the sensory raw material according to principles of simplicity, regularity, and balance, which govern the receptor mechanism. This discovery of the gestalt school fitted the notion that the work of art, too, is not simply an imitation or selective duplication of reality but a translation of observed characteristics into the forms of a given medium" (from Film as Art)
"We have been trained to think of perception as the recording of shapes, distances, hues, motions. The awareness of these measurable characteristics is really a fairly late accomplishment of the human mind. Even in the Western man of the twentieth century it presupposes special conditions. It is the attitude of the scientist and the engineer or of the salesman who estimates the size of a customer’s waist, the shade of a lipstick, the weight of a suitcase. But if I sit in front of a fireplace and watch the flames, I do not normally register certain shades of red, various degrees of brightness, geometrically defined shapes moving at such and such a speed. I see the graceful play of aggressive tongues, flexible striving, lively color. The face of a person is more readily perceived and remembered as being alert, tense, concentrated rather than being triangularly shaped, having slanted eyebrows, straight lips, and so on" (from Art and Visual Perception, first ed., 430).
"Without the flourishing of visual expression no culture can function productively" - Rudolf Arnheim
Related: What Is Visual Thinking? - by xplane (2019)
Related: Perceptual Psychology (wikipedia)
#KM #Design #Media #Book #Creativity #Education #HCI #Philosophy
Brian Taylor to Adapt Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! as TV Show
The classic, genius, post-modern sci-fi satire, the Illuminatus! trilogy is slated to become a TV series. Given Hivemind's association with Amazon Prime & Netflix, one of these outlets is a likely bet. I have very mixed feelings about this, wait and see. In the meantime: Hail Eris! and..
"In psychology, a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant, becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot control the situation. Developed by American psychologist Martin Seligman starting in 1967."
#RTM #NeuroScience #Military #Media #Health #Therapy #Experience #Ethics