by Yohan J. John

We are routinely told that we live in a brave new Information Age. Every aspect of human life — commerce, entertainment, education, and perhaps even the shape of consciousness itself — seems to be undergoing an information-driven revolution. The tools for storing and sharing information are becoming faster, more ubiquitous, and less visible. Meanwhile, we are increasingly employing information as an explanation of phenomena outside the world of culture and technology — as the central metaphor with which to talk about the nature of life and mind. Molecular biology, for instance, tells us how genetic information is transferred from one generation to the next, and from one cell to the next. And neuroscience is trying to tell us how information from the external world and the body percolates through the brain, influencing behavior and giving rise to conscious experience.

But do we really know what information is in the first place? And is it really a helpful way to think about biological phenomena? I'd like to argue that explanations of natural phenomena that involve information make inappropriate use of our latent, unexamined intuitions about inter-personal communication, blurring the line between what we understand and what we don't quite have a grip on yet.

People who use information technologies presumably have a working definition of information. We often see it as synonymous with data: whatever can be stored on a hard drive, or downloaded from the internet. This covers text, images, sound, and video — anything that can be represented in bits and bytes. Vision and hearing are the senses we seem to rely on most often for communication, so it's easy to forget that there are still experiences that we cannot really communicate yet, like textures, odors or tastes. (Smellevision still seems a long way off.)

The data-centric conception of information is little over half a century old, and sits alongside an older sense of information. The word 'information' comes from the verb 'inform', which is from the Old French word informer, which means 'instruct' or 'teach'. This word in turn derives from Latin informare, which means 'to shape, form'. The concept of form is closely linked to this sense of information. When something is informative, it creates a specific form or structure in the mind of the receiver — one that is presumably useful.

But there is a tension between seeing information as a unit of communication, and seeing it as something that allows a sender to create a desired result in the mind of a receiver. And this tension goes back to the origins of information theory. Claude Shannon introduced the modern technical notion of information in 1948, in a paper called A Mathematical Theory of Communication. He framed his theory in terms of a transmitter, a channel, and a receiver. The mathematical results he derived showed how any signal could be coded as a series of discrete symbols, and transmitted with perfect fidelity between sender and receiver, even if the channel is noisy. But for the purposes of the theory, the meaning or content of the information was irrelevant. The theory explained how to efficiently send symbols between point A and point B, but had nothing to say about what was actually done with these symbols. All that mattered was that the sender and receiver agree on a system of encoding and decoding. Information theory, and all the technologies that emerged in its wake, allows us to communicate more and communicate faster, but it doesn't really tell us everything we would like to know about communication.

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by Brooks Riley

In the beginning was the story. It was a manuscript deeply embedded in the genes and it was all about survival, when instinct was the sole purveyor of instructions. It may be hard to conceive of a biological primer as an example of narrative, but getting by was, until then, the greatest story ever told, especially for the ones who got by. And if the story itself was somewhat schematic, didactic, too utilitarian, that too was necessary to the plan.

Then along came ‘show and tell’, as cleverer animals and Homo sapiens showed their young how things are done. With digital dexterity came ‘draw and tell’: Cave drawings were the first examples of what we now recognize as narrative—no longer so concerned with ‘how it’s done’, but more with ‘what he did’, what he encountered, what actually happened—history, his story, her story. And finally, when words were uttered, ‘speak and tell’. From then on, the story blossomed, thanks to the most astonishing technology ever achieved by a species: language (which eventually extended storytelling into ‘write and tell’ and last but not least ‘film and tell.’)

We know all this. What we may not know, is whether the need for narrative is still imbedded in our genes. It’s important to our conscious minds as distraction, as entertainment, but is it also a basic need that must be attended to, like eating, sleeping, dreaming?

The first thing a child wants after it learns to speak is to be told a story. If it’s truth or fantasy hardly matters, as long as it is outside the child’s range of experience. If the child is not told a story, it will eventually invent one on its own (a biological necessity?). Fairy tales have certain imbedded markers specifically aimed at children–an underlying morality, or recognizable patterns of living. For a child, fairy tales are the welcome mat to the human race with its complicated procedures and arrangements. But at the same time, fairy tales address the impossible, the improbable, and the ideal. They can reduce time itself to a plaything, a toy to be manipulated at will, whether it is the instantaneous transformation of a frog to a prince, the 100 years of Sleeping Beauty, the 900 years of Methuselah, or the creation of the world in six days.

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by Justin E. H. Smith

Imagine that the French chapter of some international organization decided to give a prize of some sort to the New Yorker. Imagine a dissident faction of this French chapter, plus some Québécois, some Belgians, some Malians, protested this decision, pointing to New Yorker covers such as the one below, and claiming that this American magazine perpetuates racial stereotypes and political slurs. Suppose some Americans then tried to explain that the cover is not intended to perpetuate these stereotypes and slurs, but to comment on them, and to compel Americans to reflect on them, by exaggerating them and distilling them into a single image. Imagine, next, that in response the same French dissenters let that clarifying point fly right past them, and insisted that Americans should really not be fanning the flames of racial discord, given, e.g., the grave problem of police brutality, the current conflict in Baltimore, etc.

At this point, Americans would be right to say to those French dissenters: You ignorant fools, why don't you actually *learn* something about what this cover means, about who it is targeting and why? This is, mutatis mutandis, just what we are seeing now with the American PEN dissenters and their refusal to absorb any new information about Charlie Hebdo. We hear over and over again variations on the non-sequitur claim that PEN is honoring the “cultural arrogance of the French nation” (Peter Carey's words). How? By extending honors to a magazine whose primary function, as is clear to anyone who actually knows how to read and interpret it, is to satirize that nation's cultural arrogance? Again, this makes no more sense than to take the New Yorker cover as a symptom of, rather than a comment on, injustice and inequality in American society.

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by Thomas R. Wells

The persistence of monarchy in modern Europe, even in weakened form, is astonishing and disappointing. How can it be that in the 21st century Dutch, British, even Canadian citizens must still describe ourselves as mere subjects? What does that medieval term even mean anyway, and who gets to decide? When are we going to get around to finishing the republican project and making a final separation of state and royal bodies?

I

The citizens of constitutional monarchies like Britain and other Western European countries are in an equivocal position, at once politically and legally equal members of the sovereign body and its feudal vassal. Functionally, most of the time we live in a democracy, but symbolically we still live in Saudi Arabia. We are so used to this that it feels normal.

But there are some moments when the contradiction is particularly hard to avoid.

Such as when an anti-racism protestor in the Netherlands – not Thailand – is arrested and hauled off a podium for shouting “Fuck the king, fuck the queen, fuck the monarchy”. He is still facing charges for Lèse-majesté. (Coverage, in Dutch.)

Or when new British citizens are charged £80 to swear an absurd oath of allegiance, originating in the Magna Carta, and updated in 1868, promising to be both subject and citizen:

“I (name) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law.”

Who could promise such a thing? What could it even mean?

Apparently the British government recognises the absurdity too. In the very same ceremony new citizens are also required to swear a more conventional republican pledge of citizenship.

“I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen.”

But this hardly solves the problem. Which Britain are they promising loyalty to? Autocratic dynasty or democracy? How can someone who believes in ‘democratic values' also believe in hereditary monarchy? Obviously they can't, without corrupting the meaning of one or both. All we can say for sure is that anyone who swears to two such contradictory statements within 5 minutes must be lying and that this particular lie is imposed on them by Britain's naturalisation law. It seems to me that forcing new citizens to begin their official membership of your society by lying solemnly in public is a particularly repulsive and stupid thing to do.

Of course most British people – aside from police, priests, judges, MPs, and soldiers – are never confronted with the oath of allegiance in this way. But I suspect that many citizens who say they love their royals would nevertheless object to having to swear solemn allegiance to them. Then they would have to admit that officially the royals don't belong to us but we to them.

This puts the lie to the ‘democratic' argument for constitutional monarchy – that by being outside the domain of grubby political competition the monarchy is somehow above it, able to represent everyone by representing no one. You can't claim democratic support if you aren't willing to accept the sovereignty of the people by letting them choose. The monarchy is not a democratic institution but a popular one. Like a celebrity franchise it is sustained by the equivalent of Facebook likes – people who like it can express that, but people who don't like it have no opportunity to vote against it. The fact that the monarchy never takes a stand on anything is a sign of its democratic weakness not its strength – its public support is wider but also much shallower than that of the grubby politicians. The monarchy's only popular mandate is to look pretty and reproduce.

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The height of the curve is an indicator of where the greatest probability densities are. Most arrivals happen in quick succession (the curve is tall when t is small), but there will be occasions when a long time elapses before the next arrival happens. At t=0, when the last customer just left, if you calculated the probability of the next customer arriving within 5 minutes (0 < t < 5) you would get the value 0.283. Equivalently you could say that the probability you will wait 5 minutes or more is (1 - 0.283) = 0.717.

Now here's the interesting part. Suppose twenty minutes have now passed and the next customer still hasn't arrived. You are starting to get a little impatient; after all you don't want your productive time to be idle. So at t=20, you again calculate the probability of a customer arriving in the next 5 minutes (20 < t < 25), given that no one has come so far. You would think this new probability, based on how much time has elapsed, should be higher than 0.283. But, surprisingly, the probability that a customer will arrive in the next 5 minutes, given that twenty idle minutes have passed, is still 0.283! And the probability that you will wait 5 minutes or more is still 0.717.

This is precisely the Memoryless property of the Exponential: the past has been forgotten; the probability of when the next event will happen remains unconditioned by when the last event happened. Fast forward even more: let's say you've waited for half an hour. No one has shown up so far. Frustrated, you recalculate the probability of someone arriving in the next 5 minutes (30 < t < 35). Still 0.283!

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by Charlie Huenemann

“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” – Daniel 12:4

London in the early 1640s

London was an exciting place to be in 1641. The political uncertainty was both thrilling and terrifying: many Puritans, convinced that their suspected crypto-catholic king, Charles I, was in league with the Anti-Christ, were pushing back against his high-handed policies. Their frustration was to lead to civil war within a year. A small circle of London intellectuals, led by Samuel Hartlib, seized the uncertainty of the time to push for what they hoped would be a middle way: a tolerant and enlightened Protestantism that could serve as a foundation for a pan-European utopia.

Hartlib had come to London in 1628 as a refugee from war-torn Poland. He was inspired by Francis Bacon’s vision of an enlightened society built around the pursuit of knowledge, and he saw that such a society could emerge only if education was completely reformed. He maintained an extensive correspondence with savants across Europe, introducing intellectuals with one another and promoting new works of scholarship. He eventually fell into company with John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, who shared his ideals and moreover had access to both money and Parliament. They hatched a plan.

The plan was to invite to London two intellectuals Hartlib knew from his days in Poland: John Dury and John Amos Comenius. Both men shared Hartlib’s zeal for reforming education and for uniting Protestants into common cause against the Catholics. With their energizing presence in London, it was thought that a new vision forward would spread throughout the land, and Parliament would seize upon a model that was more Calvinist than the king would like but less severe than the Puritanism of the would-be rebels: a just compromise.

There was more at stake than mere political stability. Many in Hartlib’s circle believed that the thousand-year rule of the Roman Anti-Christ (aka the Pope) was finally coming to an end, and the new thousand-year rule of Christ was coming into being. Unlike his dour counterparts, Hartlib believed that God rewarded human efforts to come to know the world through natural philosophy, and that piety and natural curiosity could go hand in hand.

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by Carl Pierer

A question related to Zeno's famous paradoxes is the following: “Is it possible to complete an infinite sequence of tasks in a finite amount of times?” There seems to be something odd about supposing that an infinite amount of tasks, per definition without last task, should have been completed.

In a beautiful article, Max Black[i] argued that supertasks are logically impossible. Very eloquently, he attempts to show that to think otherwise leads to a contradiction. The first step in his argument is to suggest that if it is possible that one infinity machine exists, then it is possible that two exist. An infinity machine, simply, is a machine able to finish an infinite sequence of tasks in a finite amount of time. He continues to demonstrate that if two infinity machines should be set up to work against each other, it is impossible that both should finish their task.

Suppose we have an infinity machine, Beta. Beta is a feat of engineering, or rather, a feat of imagination. Beta is beyond the limits imposed by physics, engineering or any other subject that pays taxes to the real world. Beta is a subject of what is conceivable. There seems to be no problem involved in thinking that such a machine should exist, let us claim. Now, Beta is put between two bowls, one containing a marble, the other empty. Beta's task is to take the marble and move it from the one (right, say) bowl into the other (left). After Beta has done so, it rests for a little while. Now, take a different infinity machine, Gamma, whose task is to transfers the marble back (from left to right) whenever Beta is resting. Of course, this is an infinite task. Suppose, however, that Beta & Gamma are working ever faster. For the first ball, Beta takes half a minute to move it, then rests for half a minute. In the meantime, Gamma starts to work, taking half a minute, then resting for half a minute. For the second ball, Beta takes a quarter of a minute to move it, then rests for a quarter of a minute. For the third ball, Beta takes an eighth of a minute to move it, then rests for an eighth of a minute. For the fourth ball, you get the idea…

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by Maniza Naqvi

At the end of Manhattan, across the Atlantic breakwaters, or at the beginning, swim fish from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. Those bodies which, appeared, of water, almost touched each other, on account of Plates moving, shifting, rocking; Rift Valley you know. But there they are, these fish, here. Go figure. At the end of Manhattan or at its beginning. To and fro, to and fro—Wearing expressions of ‘Who cares bro' or of worry, the more you stare, some anxious. Some not so much. Like it's hard to find your feet here. You know? Some look like they're happy. Yes. Like fish in water. Like this is exactly where they want to be. Aye? Others, eh it's not a bad place to end up, as places go. Some not so much…Blue with bulging foreheads. Yellow too. Colors for which I don't know names yet. Even. Wide eyed, aware, not a muscle twitching—just the fins or are they wings—swishing, wishing, shimmering. It's easy to see how fish out of water, might be us. Me. In a glass aquarium in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Now as I wrap my arm around the pole on a swaying speeding 2 train wondering if I should switch to the R or stay on this one—or maybe take the Shuttle to the 6 or move to the M and the E train. I'm on my way to City Hall, Not used to going to work here. To talk to folks, about how they care for those who haven't been born yet, for those on their way to growing up. For those done growing, for those in between all this, the work and the emotions, the business of living. In between good and bad days and limbs. In need of a helping hand, a fair shake, I'm on my way to exchange with the good folks there, cross pollinate. We are birds of a feather, same kettle of fish, they'll tell me and I'll tell them what in the World we are up to elsewhere. In this city they spend 9.7 billion—that's dollars, on such care. On 3 million—good people here. Elsewhere, whole countries, on billions not so much is spent….I wonder how the Cichlids got here. Fully formed and born already? Brought across the salty oceans in jars sloshing fresh water or what? Or, did they arrive as eggs here? I look around me at the morning commuters. This car is quiet, heads mostly down, dangling ear plugs, some sleeping, some reading novels or staring at IPhones. I glance at possible subjects; that face there, should be painted with gold leaf or silver. Maybe. Suddenly a man, beyond my vision on the other side of this thicket of passengers screams out ‘Aargh, Death squad, Stop!'—Some bite; Glance over— No one flinches, Some shrug. I nonplussed, smile and exchange glances with a fellow straphanger–a strapper I guess–who says reassuringly, unimpressed—‘He's just trying to get attention. That's all'. In silence the car hurtles on. Three stops later, with each periodic outburst, the car load leans towards the scream, glances become compassionate. The load here on this car understands. All these faces, from other places, on their way to fixing life, understand. Hurtling through the city, this life blood of the city in this vein—the artery—flowing, flying, moving fast from one end to the other, now leaning, now bumping, now brushing, jostling, jolting— now rocking against each other. Towards, a better life. This car load, understands. Train stops, doors open, a fresh pack loads on. And I resolve to return to the Ferry Terminal, take a photograph—wondering, still, about those colors, what shape they arrived in here, hatched or waiting to be. To spend their life—to live it watching commuters go by.

Painting by: Esma Djutovic

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” —Carl Sagan on a photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system
.

Pale Blue Dot

pale blue
dot

in the dark of a well,
spot on the mirror sent years ago
into a depth stiller than hell

reflecting our lonely circumstance
home glows tenuous
small as the period
at this sentence end.

◦

vague lucent
point

a place of cruel, small thoughts
as well as those sublime enough
to catch light from billions of years back
closed only by a shortfall of time,
a breadth of scarcity we can’t imagine,
which might require something as
short as an instant’s instant to reveal
if only light were quicker,
the laws of physics fully peeled
and god were not so much a
silent ruthless tricker

.

by Jim Culleny
4/23/15

by Misha Lepetic

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia
is not worth even glancing at.”
~Oscar Wilde

I've recently become obsessed with a TV show, which is rather unusual for me. I like to tell people that, after HBO wrapped The Wire, I went ahead and sold my TV. Perhaps more melodramatic than true, but this is nevertheless close enough for essayistic purposes. The present show, however, could not be more different than the gritty realism of David Simon's character-driven creation. Created by Dennis Kelly and broadcast by Channel 4, the UK's fourth public service broadcaster, Utopia had a short run – only two seasons of six episodes each. Late in 2014, it was decisively announced that the series would not be renewed for a third season, but I think this was for the best. My grandfather once related an old Arab proverb to me: “One should always stop eating when it tastes the sweetest”. I don't know if this is really an old Arab proverb, but there are certain things one just isn't inclined to Google.

At any rate, one thing that is certainly true for Utopia and shows like it: if you thrive on massively complex, increasingly far-fetched scenarios, the longer you go on, the more likely you are to trip over your own plotlines, and all hopes for a tightly orchestrated dramatic tension eventually evaporate. The most instructive recent example, which still rankles with fans, is how Lost wrecked itself on reefs of its own devising, despite the impressive hermeneutical gymnastics deployed by some in its defense. I would imagine that few producers and executives enjoy contemplating a similar fate for their own endeavors.

The hazard for Utopia's genre – the paranoid thriller – is especially acute. And settling on the proverbial ‘shadowy international conspiracy' as the principal plot mechanism only doubles down on the risk, since it is tempting to mop up any inconveniences using said conspiracy. Nevertheless, I have always had great faith in the British when it comes to the respect required to make conspiracies, erm, plausible. That's right – a conspiracy needs to be treated respectfully if it is to have any currency.

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by Leanne Ogasawara

He was one of the most famous art connoisseurs in Chinese history. And he was also known for walking the streets of Hangzhou dressed in the fashions of 500 years earlier. When asked why he did it, he replied, “Because I like the styles from back then.” But, in fact, everyone knew there was more to it than that. Madman Mi, as Mi Fu was also lovingly known to people of his time, served for a brief time at the court of Emperor Huizong, just prior to the fall of the Empire. Believed to be of Sogdian blood, it was through his mother’s connections at Court as a Lady-in-Waiting and Consort of Emperor Shenzong that he was able to enter the official bureaucracy without ever having had to take any of the official examinations.

But –alas– despite his excellent connections, Mi Fu was never particularly “career-oriented” –as he remained till the very end devoted to the creation, study and collection of art. His passion started while he was still quite young, and he has described in his writings how his mother more than once sold her ornamental hair combs in order to fund his collecting while he was still only a child.

To call him an eccentric would only be an understatement.

For not only did he walk the streets dressed in clothes from the Tang dynasty, but he was also known for introducing himself and bowing to especially fine specimens of garden rocks, which were of the type he collected; often addressing them politely as “elder brother.” Greatly admired by Emperor Huizong for his knowledge and style, he was appointed Director of the Calligraphy and Painting Institute at Court, where the Prime Minister was said to have observed, “Mi Fu is the kind of person we must have one of, but cannot afford to have two of!” Even though his knowledge was formidable, his personality was such that he didn’t last long at Court.

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by Bill Benzon

On Saturday April 25, 2015, some 20-30 graffiti writers and street artists converged on the now empty Newport Pep Boys store in Jersey City, New Jersey. What were they there for? To “get up” as the lingo has it. To spray paint on walls.

That activity is vandalism in Jersey City, as in most other cities America (though, like a number of cities, Jersey City also has a public mural program). And a number of these artists have police records for committing such vandalism. For that matter, I once got a summons for “aggravated trespassing” for taking photographs of graffiti on posted land belong to CSX, the large railroad conglomerate.

But it’s not vandalism if you have permission. And these writers had permission. The permission was arranged by Greg Edgell, proprietor of Green Villain, “a small group of social entrepreneurs and creatives that in the past few years have developed a diverse portfolio of projects and partnerships.” Those projects include a number of mural projects in Jersey City, where Edgell lives, and across the Hudson River in New York City.

Disclosure: I’ve known Edgell for several years and collaborate with him on projects.

In the Fall of 2014 Edgell had contacted the owner of Pep Boys about putting art on the rear wall. Why? Because it is very visible, facing the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail where it is seen by thousands of commuters everyday. He got permission and by the end of November the wall had been covered.

Winter rolled on through, gave way to Spring, and Edgell learned that that Pep Boys building was going to be torn down to make way for new construction. This wasn’t a big surprise, as he already knew the building would be coming down. But not so soon.

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