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Cliff Gerrish on Economies, Language, Culture and the Network

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    Pina Bausch: Poet of Performance (1940 – 2009) started by cgerrish
    The difference I suppose is one of presence—of the energy field that envelopes the performers and the audience for the duration of the performance. It must be felt directly, it can’t be translated into video or text and transported for decoding and consumption at a remote en
    NY Times started by cgerrish
    Buddhist Economics, Cool Enough To Touch started by cgerrish
    The light and heat generated during the late 60s and early 70s was the result of challenging boundaries, and to some extent testing the possibility of actually setting up a tent and living on a boundary. Living an everyday life in that high intensity environment proved untenable, but the arti
    The End of Architecture started by cgerrish
    It was when the web site entered its Baroque era that the job description of the information architect seemed to crystallize. The ornamentation decorating the dizzying heights, the complex taxonomies of categories, and various drawers into which content was stuffed, all this required the
    Fair Use And Remixing Post-Literate Thought started by cgerrish
    There will be no laughter. No enjoyment of any kind. As Laurie Anderson once said, “sit bolt upright in your straight-backed chair, and button that top button,” the words, images and videos assembled on this page are for the purpose of either commentary, criticis
    Ink, Trust and the Electronic Vote started by cgerrish
    It probably passed unnoticed by most, but an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times contained this phrase:
    Electronic voting machines that do not produce a paper record of every vote cast cannot be trusted.
    The Times stated its support for Representative Rush Holt’%3
    Her Explicit Intention Was a Signal Of Something Else Entirely… started by cgerrish
    Listening to John Cage talk about music, sound and silence causes me to think about data. We talk about data in similar terms, we think of it as structured, semi-structured and unstructured.
    I don’t need sound to talk to me…
    - John Cage
    We often talk of trying
    Real-Time Writing: A Transvaluation of All Values started by cgerrish
    Writing, when it is professional, is constructed like sculpture. Whereas speech, is the medium of real time. What writing is has been formed by the technical practices developed around typography and printing. The idea of real-time writing is a contradiction, it violates the standards of
    Before A Word Is Spoken started by cgerrish
    Richard Foreman, of the Ontologico-Hysteric Theater talks about the quest to lose context. So much of the work currently going on in the Network has to do with identifying the context of some artifact of text, sound or image. We look to machines to identify the contexts floating around our sp
    A Radiant Node, A Cluster… started by cgerrish
    Ezra Pound discussing the work of Wyndham Lewis: “The image is not an idea. It is a radiant node or cluster; it is what I can, and must perforce, call a VORTEX, from which, and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.”
    Imagining forms of stati
    The Numbing Violence of the Firehose of Messages started by cgerrish
    Midway through a series of thoughts on gluttony, violence, numbness and the Network, I found myself leafing through Robert Pinsky’s verse translation of The Inferno of Dante:
    Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself
    in dark woods, the right road lost. T
    Climate Change: The Temperature of the Network started by cgerrish
    We seemed to first learn about this framework for understanding media when talking about the Kennedy/Nixon debates of 1960. It was said that Nixon won the debate on the radio, and that Kennedy won on television. Television, it was said, was a “cool medium,” while
    The Crowd Settles and Focuses on the Performance started by cgerrish
    An opera house holds around 4 or 5 thousand people. When the performance is ready to begin there are a number cues to the audience. The lighting changes, the conductor enters, the ushers take their places, the crowd organizes itself, shows appreciation to the performers through applause%2
    Digital Identity, Like Putting on your Sunday Best started by cgerrish
    When we talk about internet identity, it seems as though we’re only speaking of consenting adults. We discuss women and men of free will accepting or rejecting products from the open market place of identity. The user of identity products is a consumer, shopping for the best deal
    Twilight of the Brontoscopist started by cgerrish
    In the early light of morning, thunder rolled across the landscape. A strong clap, and then a rumbling that continued for some time. Last night the rain woke me, first a few drops, then a strong downpour. This isolated sound of thunder seemed directly connected to last night’s
    The Bit Salesman’s Lament started by cgerrish
    He’d lugged his case back and forth, up and down that long dusty road. It’d become a lot lighter once some of the atoms were exchanged for bits. But for a long time various sequences of atoms were still used to encase the bits. Every few years, they’d come
    Time Tunnel Interview: McLuhan on Real Time, Twitter and the Digital Body started by cgerrish
    The interface emerged in a SemioText(e) edition of Baudrillard’s Simulations, it was a reference to Marshall McLuhan. The pointer was unexpected and lead me to engage in more in-depth inquires. And so, of course, my first stop was YouTube. The Mechanics Institute Library yie
    !Kung: Banking Social Relationships started by cgerrish
    As social networks emerge as the dominant framework for message traffic on the Network, the question of “monetization” is repeated again and again like a drum beat. There seems to be an expectation that someone will figure out how to bind the advertising subsidized broad
    Selectors: The Corpus of Identity started by cgerrish
    The 8th Internet Identity Workshop came to a close last Wednesday afternoon. Although, one could easily make the case the workshop is continuous with the semi-annual events simply marking a swarm of activity that enables the network of both people and technologies to become increasingly connect
    The Edifice of the Bank: Connecting Streams of Capital started by cgerrish
    On a recent road trip through the wine country of Northern California, I passed through Petaluma, Calistoga and Healdsburg. In the small downtown areas of these cities you’ll find large bank buildings. Sometimes more than one, but often just a single building anchoring the busin
    Marshall McLuhan: RSS is No Longer King started by cgerrish
    A small thought experiment: The video above was made on May 18, 1960 and features Marshall McLuhan. The subject is ‘literary man’ and ‘electronic man.’ It’s a description of the transition from the solitary world of the book to th
    Identity and The Orders of Simulacra started by cgerrish
    A few thoughts that need to be captured before they return from whence they came. I’ve been re-reading Baudrillard’s Simulations– thinking about it in light of the possibility of Internet Identity. Online identity is already a concept that’s overloa
    Forms of Life: Stream Culture, the Finite and the Infinite started by cgerrish
    Thinking, for a moment, about a particularly difficult human-computer interface problem with a dynamic set of requirements… which I suppose in any problem of this kind. The problem itself points the limitations of representation; as the solution forms, life moves on. The probl
    Cluetrain: Any Dream That Ships Without A Mouse, Ships Broken started by cgerrish
    On the tenth anniversary of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Doc Searls had some thoughts about clue number 71. Click the link and read them yourself, it’s worth the effort. My takeaway was that we have lived in a world where we have to subscribe to vendors, but vendors don’
    Adam Smith, Power Laws and the Social Networks of the Ant Colony started by cgerrish
    To support a conjecture in the world of humans, we often point to the natural world as some kind of final arbiter. “You see, this the way it works in nature, therefore this is the way it is.” Aesop’s fable about the Ant and the Grasshopper has been used i
    Unknown And No Longer Optional started by cgerrish
    In his first address to Congress, our new President said that a college education was no longer optional. Education is a high priority and an important driver for the recovery of our economy. When we talk about a “college education,” we seem to know exactly what we&%
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