Doug,

Nice work. As a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), a denomination that is struggling mightily–as are all mainline protestant denominations, indeed all of western institutionalized religion–to negotiate that tension between the individual and the collective, I especially appreciated your nod to protestantism as a sort of technology that emerges from the enlightenment.

I’m interested in your thoughts about the Jewish image of covenant: how does that either participate in or work against the kind of participation you’re talking about?

Great work. Thanks for sharing this.

That was really good!

I’ve been pretty immersed in this line of thought right along w/ you, beneficially so, “Glory in the doing”, keep up the good work!

Programming…

I have an image in my head, which I put together while reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion a few years back. I envision the original Ainur, who joined Iluvatar in the song of the world. As these gods sang along with the Creator, they each added their own parts and harmonies, not yet realizing that the song they improvised would become the musical score on which all of Creation would base itself. One particular god, Morgoth, sang out in opposition to his brothers and sisters, adding discord and disharmony into the song. As the events of the Earth eventually played out, these discordant passages became the Great Wars, including the wars over the Rings in the more famous stories.

To recast this idea into some of the terminology from this Invocation Speech (I love that term, makes me think of Crowley or Grant Morrison), Morgoth got involved with the Programming, and inserted Malicious Code. Ages passed, and this code executed War, Death, Famine, Torture, and other unpleasantries.

What I wonder is this: Could an apocalyptically-minded individual with enough Programming talent theoretically involve himself in this next generation of ideas, and insinuate Malicious Code that could have a detrimental effect on the future of humanity itself? With all the talk these days about The Cloud, could one potentially cast some nam-shub, to be absorbed or spread memetically, and immanentize the eschaton?

Or, more frighteningly… has this already happened?

Wow – thanks Doug you rock, the logic seems valid to me ;p

How did your ideas go down?

Thanks for the kind words.

As for ‘covenant,’ well, I see that as a form of active participation rather than just a statement of faith. Who makes a “deal” with their god? Looked at in historical context, this was certainly a step up from passive obedience. The covenant is more like a pact with the universe.

The talk went over really well. They actually changed the name of the conference because of it, from Personal Democracy to Participatory Democracy. I wrote the talk up, too, for use on TheEdge website, but I’ll post it here once I have a second.

As for the apocalyptic evil hacker possibility, I guess I’d argue that the more kung fu we all know, the less any one evil person’s kung fu will screw it all up.

That was excellent.

I love the idea that as we step up to the next level we can also make sure that people understand they have the ability to help construct that platform through the tools of collaboration.

Great to see you on stage again

I’m still digging your arguments about actual civic participation a lot, but at the same time I’m wondering whether you’re not professing yet another kind of dualism, that of the decentralized/bottom-up *instead of* the centralized/top-down.

Isn’t the real gold to be found in the synergetic interplay between the two? Just like the two triangles in the Star of David? I say let’s go ahead and put ourselves in the position of ‘heck, let’s boot up a new country’, and then invite the old farts into it too. Surely that’s the kind of meta-revolution that the current timescape & widely distributed ICT infrastructure allows.

For sure. But most of *us* are the bottom up part. What I was talking about was our near-addiction to following the top-down branded leadership, and near-aversion to actually participating in bottom-up activity.

Maybe too obvious to your audience, but I was wanting a more explicit critique of media: text, printing, tv — we blew it each time and central authorities snatched em all up.

now with network via computing (typewriter + tv), how will we stop the same thing from happening? The digital divide is a bitch.

For example, I’d love to see micro-entrepreneurs on the interwebs doing their thing, but the ones I know dont even use email. One guy I met said the only thing he knew how to do on the computer was play solitaire. How tragic is that metaphor??

Thanks for posting this. Makes me think about Wendell Berry- I read this essay a few days ago and I think there’s a similar something there.

[quote]…The mentality that destroys a watershed and then panics at the threat of flood is the same mentality that gives institutionalized insult to black people and then panics at the prospect of race riots. It is the same mentality that can mount deliberate warfare against a civilian population and then express moral shock at the logical consequence of such warfare at My Lai. We would be fools to believe that we could solve any one of these problems without solving the others…[/quote]

Which is to say that to conquer our fear of engaging with one another, we’ll need to shift our thinking entirely away from brand relationships to human relationships (which are much messier).

Yeah Caroline, that’s the whole theme of my next book.

As for saying more about the media thing, Xanthe, I would have loved to. That’s my main area of thought. But I only had 12 minutes, and this wasn’t a “media” conference, exactly. I do have a chart I did for an Edge exhibition, though – it should be up on the Edge.org somewhere, that goes into this idea in greater detail.

Great speech Doug, seemed a bit unfocused but that’s overshadowed by your passion. Goodness knows, we need more of that sometimes.

I find it amusing to observe the effect that a shifting perspective has on reading (or hearing) Interesting Things.

For example, I stopped back here to read Comments after reading articles at Bruce Schneier’s blog.

Now I’m wondering… Of course we’re speaking of metaphysical Kung Fu as a defense against Evil Reality KungFu hackers, but how much of this metaphysical prowess comes in the form of good old Educated Thinking?

In a web full of fraud, those of us who understand basic security processes can immediately recognize password-phishing attempts on mockup MySpace or PayPal websites have the ability to avoid the danger therein. Only those who remain uneducated about such things continue to fall prey.

Will we learn to recognize, and therefore Decline To Execute such programming code as might prove malicious?

or

Will the general population remain ignorant, trusting in third-party “Anti-Sociological-Virus” programming to protect them from such memetics as are deemed dangerous?

That was pretty impresive performance Douglas, es would E.Goffman call it. I’m just wondering, aren’t you one of those top-down comunicators? How could you yourself contribute to the shif you are proposing, actualy standing on the other side?

Very good talk Doug.
PEACE!

Thanks again. Feel less alone in the world now with my thoughts.. I’ve been trying to convince all and sundry that we are actually on the cusp of a new Renaissance and not another Dark Ages (actually I termed it either the New- Old Age or the Olden Ages) and – I think you are right when you say that it comes down to our needing to go beyond even push-button publishing and the ‘net’ to find ways to integrate the entirety of the media landscape into our strategy, thus ensuring it’s comprehensive nature and our relative chances at success.

The personnel are already existent. We just need to keep connecting all of the dots up. Keep it up you are on the right page, friend.

KILLED BY THE MONOPOLY PRESS

Thankfully too there are already people out there implementing these new ‘channels’ of communication as you indicate we require. Though it would be nice to have a ‘TV or cable’ type channel/s all to ourselves like they do with their Faux “news” – with the concentration of ownership, etc., these days in the Cable Industry – I wouldn’t count on it any time soon. Trying to get these turkey’s to play ball with us won’t be any easy feat. Still, viral videos on the internet can indeed work their way up and out through the masses and even if we don’t have our own channel/s. We do still have sympathetic voices in the Media (Moyers, Maddow, Colbert, Stewart, Olberman, etc.) — Who will/can breach the divide if need be — if/when we have have created some good product which is effective, cogently presented, etc., … If we can make the videos.. in other words.. w/You Tube and everything already in place now – we can get it out into the public eye w/out TV or Cable Monopolies.

brilliant idea.

& THANKS AGAIN FOR ADDRESSING THIS ISSUE. THE ‘CONTROLS’ AGE IS USURPING THE ‘INFORMATION’ AGE AND IS TURNING OUR DEMOCRACY INTO A TOTALITARIAN STATE AS NEWSPEAK BECOMES THE NEW ORDER OF THE DAY, AND THE BROWN SHIRTS STONEWALL US AT EVERY TURN AND BULLY AND THREATEN AND BREAK THE LAW AS THEY SEE FIT.. AT WILL AND RANDOMLY EVEN AT TIME.. SO, THIS IS THE TYPE OF CONTEXT WHICH CAN REALLY SAVE THE DAY FOR US – thx.

The infrastructure for some of this is already in place -COOL- if only other people understood the situation and the solution better like you. Virtual Ad Agencies, Speech & Script Writers, Comedy Writers, Virtual Spin Doctors & Word-Smiths, etc. – ALL OF US WORKING TOGETHER we can help OUR candidates run their campaigns more efficiently and for little or less money than most pol’s would have ever dreamed possible even in the recent past. From our homes we can monitor the news cycles, rework and reframe issues as they appear and/or lend our sophistry skills to the matters at hand via push-button publishing and THE INTERWEB and as these new business models begin to find more/better/successful prototypes to work with, I think we will find that we can get rid of the traitorous blue dog Collaborationists, and we can make our elected officials accountable again. And we can actually stop the corporatist/fascist take-over of the planet. I think.

I hope.. Anyway. Again. Thx.

psuedo TV via internet:
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=1885

this is a good one w/Ray McGovern ex-CIA on Barack’s new world order speech from earlier in the week..

I like this guy alot too. He’s funny and smart and makes Political Advertisements – I really enjoyed working along side w/him on Edward’s campaign this year before Edwards imploded from the media blackout that surrounded him.

http://www.jedreport.com/

If you missed our efforts on that site.. you missed alot of testing ground there for some of your theories. Brother.

As far as blogging to save the world goes.. you are quite right in indicating that this is not enough. But the resources.. they are already there.. just nobody knows about them yet. Thank you for underlining this pivotal issue for your students and for other interested people online like myself.

(‘May be our only chance to get our Nation back!)
Yrs., B. Lamb

I liked Zephyr Teachout’s talk too. Her dichotomy of Industrial/Democratic modes may have some drawbacks, but fits well with your talk. Our concern is not merely the *distribution* of industrial tasks or political powers, is it? Nor is the moment merely about programming. Our own inner hackers are as dangerous as any malicious programmer’s. Throughout the ages of which you spoke, it has always been individual indifference or passivity towards technologies and the new choices and tasks they engender.

At Sinai Israel said we will do and hear. And fortunately many have done. Torah also has the fascinating story concerning the procedure for maintaining a Hebrew Slave who does not desire his (otherwise) requisite freedom.

“But if the slave declares, ‘I love my master…I do not wish to go free,’ his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door [or the doorpost; mezuzah, in Hebrew] and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl–and he shall then remain his slave for life.”

What Reading means, what Writing and Programming means, what Freedom itself means is joining a community, becoming a companion. For some this means an association for study or practice in social action or government. The most notable and arguably the most important and formative locus of association is the university. A place where some *do* and some *teach.* Being mindful of all the places and opportunities for association, media minded folks need to consider the Ear.

“This writing links you, like a leash in the form of an umbilical cord, to the paternal belly of the State. Your pen is its pen, you hold its teleprinter like one of those Bic ballpoints attached by a little chain in the post office—and all its movements are induced by the body of the father figuring as alma mater. How an umbilical cord can create a link to this cold monster that is a dead father or the State—this is what is uncanny. ”

Jacques Derrida from “The Ear of the Other”

For a more complete citation from this work see:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/media-squatters/message/16505

I meant to say: “Throughout the ages of which you spoke, it has always been individual indifference or passivity towards technologies and the new choices and tasks they engender which has caused a split between the elite and the masses.”

Come to think of it, this same lack of understanding makes many of the so called elite oblivious to or unanswering for the crippling consequences of abusing technology.

-mason

I’m not saying we get rid of top down communicators, or Obama for that matter. We simply can’t allow ourselves to believe that our receipt of their messages constitutes our response.

No. The top-down will always be playing catch up to us bottom-up types. We needn’t worry much about replacing them outright – they will be reborn anew just like the rest of us. It’s Societal and all inclusive. We don’t get to omit them just like they don’t get to brainwash us if we don’t want them to. It’s a personal choice and that’s still the essence of American Freedom to me. If it ever existed at all that is. Freedom. Skinner would say no such thing of course, and (as our pointed reader notes) so would state-slaving proto-fascists drug addled psuedo-intellectuals like Nietzsche. Loser APOLOGISTS. No need to dispense w/them entirely. They are amusing at times frankly and overly frank at times which is also useful when they get out of line – so why not.. as you say.. let their foolish tongues continue to wag. Are we seriously concerned that these 3rd and 458th rate minds (or whatever McCain placed in his class again).. might out-think us again?

Just because they are floating on a sea of money right now doesn’t make them smart. These clowns will topple like a house of cards soon enough – just you watch. Sans the village-people or not.

They (the trendy so-called ‘villagers’) will do whatever we tell them to once we regain control again. They are simple slaves who always do what is expected of them/what they are told to do. That’s the problem, now, sure enough but that’s only because we have ceded our ‘authorial’ response *and the ‘author_ity’ that that response commends to us.

Once we take up again our true mantle and begin to author our own lives again instead of trying to resemble 2d televised dorkuses and their half-hour story arc patheticism.. we will remember what it is like to be Men and Women again and then NOTHING WILL BE ABLE TO STOP US.

“It takes a gentleman to suffer ignorance and smile.
Be yourself no matter what they say..”
-Sting

Yrs. Sincerely & Stuff,
Billy

If you are responding to me, Douglas, I didn’t suggest you want to get rid of top down communicators.

I’m just trying to fill the existential gap between what the best and most wise individuals and communities are doing and what even the best politicians seem to be proposing. It is hard enough to teach call center operators how they function or don’t function in a corporate structure, let alone persuade a representative to advocate or effect fundamental changes in values or even political values for that matter.

I’ll see you at the margins where the companions gather drinking Torah and Derrida Ale and no one doubts one’s good response warrants anther’s beatific message.

I can see them coming down from the mountain top and there is Barak Obama with a gold recycling bin and he says, “i threw the lapel pins into the fire and out came this bin!”

Dudes, it’s about the advent of synergetic social engineering. Which is lovingly backwards compatible to the current systems of finance.

Every big change in history is accompanied by a change in the way money is distributed and perceived. Change that, using all the wonderful web tools we have at our disposal, and you have a blueprint for paranoia transcendence, on a massive scale. Life Game perception, Christ consciousness, the whole enchilada. I want my reborn society to rawk! Physically and Metaphysically.

The current system is left-hemisphere heavy; the new system is broad and in sync between our individual and collective selves. The problems of hyperrational culture is abundantly clear from Curtis’ Century of the Self; there is a hierarchical system of control on top of the irrational. Both could probably flourish much better when we see them as a quantum ‘pump’ that works optimally in tandem, as in Vernon Woolf’s holodynamics: left=rational/linear/literal/masculine, right=intuitive/nonlinear/figurative/feminine.

See also Jill Bolte Taylor’s impressive TED video/Oprah interview, and Alan Watts Prickles & Goo; ‘rationality is walking on one leg’.

It might not be true per se, but the list of interesting features you can list for both hemispheres does make thinking about these things a lot more integrative and useful. Especially when you consider the possibility of a ‘holodynamic’ currency: what if we added a feminine aspect to this obviously hypermasculine money system, and made it work really well. For us and everyone. It might even be fun, effortless: Ingrid Bacci would agree.

Could it be that our pervasive, virtual-reality money system as Douglas described so well in his Arthur Mag column turns out to be a blessing in disguise? If we really play with it, it will offer us it’s *huge* installed user base, and open up its APIs. Then we can party, *all of us*

Currency may just be the typical pivot point between philosophy and social engineering, and this too is now becoming a truly distributed phenomenon.

I wanna see if we can get The Netherlands to be a proving ground for something like this. Doug, how is your Huizinga thing coming along? Did you do your thesis on him already? I can’t remember.

Over and out, thank you very much for the collaboration impulse and space

Steven, Comrade!

So right your are. We must bring her forward. From the Derridian and so many other points of view, her absence or exile has been the reason all major social, religious and technological advances have failed to redeem humanity or harmonise it with nature.

“No woman or trace of woman, if I have read correctly—save the mother, that’s understood. But this is part of the system. The mother is the faceless figure of a figurant, an extra. She gives rise to all the figures by losing herself in the background of the scene like an anonymous persona. Everything comes back to her, beginning with life; everything addresses and destines itself to her. She survives on the condition of remaining at bottom.”

Final paragraph of Derrida’s “The Ear of the Other”

Thanks mason So nice to talk to you

This Derrida quote speaks volumes to me considering my own mother… I can more easily sympathize with her now, somehow. I learned this week that she used to teach Gym Class to now Royal Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer… Maybe that’s where this whole male/female energy crisis really got off into higher gear

I’d like to point your attention to David Wilcock’s latest blog post on the economy: http://twurl.nl/yhwqhu . He talks about how the system is now in a state of criticality that can lead to positive infrastructural changes in terms of social engineering. Rushkoff’s work resonates with it, I think.

Could the sandseed that starts the avalance be a Life Gaming OS, a piece of software that bridges the gap between personal productivity (GTD, lifehacking) and social interaction. Could a well & beautifully engineered personal planner become so good that it leads to peace.

And more. That’s my thought experiment of the moment.

I haven’t posted or written about this stuff much yet, but I have been giving it alot of thought. I’m quite grateful to have this space to find focussed & open attention for my intention, which I feel I share with guys and girls like you.

OK got to head off to Amsterdam, Jill Scott is playing at the Paradiso. Let’s see what she has to say about this whole femininity thing, hmm?

Have a nice Saturday!

Hi Billy Lamb,

No doubt the transition will be tough for all sorts of people. What matters most to me is maximum participation for the maximum amount of people in a new sustainable paradigm. Given that the current system “benefits” only the very few and diminishes the quality of life for nearly all, *any* real change would be a good thing.

Let’s hope the change is broad, popular and peaceful. What do you say?!

-mason