Contingent
I wonder if I exist
the world’s replete it’s
full of stuff but where does I fit in
where to set the sheath of skin
at what point do I resist
absolute belonging and say
I am
which can only be true
in a vacuum, a noplace
where nothing is contingent
Jim Culleny
2/23/18
"A grandes problemas,
¡grandes soluciones!"
~ Nicolás Maduro
Similarly, when proponents of bitcoin, blockchain and distributed technologies advocate for a wave of technologically-driven decentralization, it's rarely described in terms less than messianic. Unintended consequences seem to have gotten only so far as admitting an overenthusiastic consumption of electricity. Now, one of the principal targets of this revolution is the perceived tyranny of the nation-state itself. Janina Lowisz, the (alleged) first holder of an ID that is written into the blockchain, said in an interview with Vice that:
The technology allows for a lot of new possibilities for replacing what the state provides—like, one option would be to offer government services in packages so people can pay for whatever services they're going to use. That's how government should work: Instead of paying taxes that get wasted on things you don't even want, this way you can have a free choice and see exactly where your money is going.
I'll graciously pass over the heartstopping naïveté of this sentiment, but it's worth noting that this model of 'government as a cable TV package subscription' has deep roots. It is a direct ideological descendant of the ur-text of techno-libertarianism, John Perry Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, the charismatic and hopelessly romantic 1996 manifesto that Barlow delivered in Davos, of all places. For the purposes of this essay, I have pulled out the following bits:
Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours…You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces…We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
Blockchain technologies pretty much take dead aim at fulfilling this mandate. Bitcoin's fair face, and the 1,518 ships that it has thus far launched, revel in the notion of decentralized authority. Political vicissitudes cannot devalue these aspiring currencies, and, in their purest forms, transacting in them means immunity from censorship or any other regulatory or even geopolitical restrictions. Except, no one has really thought to ask the nation-states what they think about this.
Peter Williams. Special K Standing, 2017.
Oil on canvas.
"… Titled With So Little To Be Sure Of, the exhibition features a series of oil paintings, drawings, and a mixed-media installation that confronts viewers with the traumatic reality of systemic violence towards African Americans. Ossei-Mensah writes, “Commenting on the concepts of race, representation, white supremacy, oppressive social structures, humanity and grace, the works…proselytize their audience with narratives of social surrealism.”"
More here and here.
Thanks to Laura Raicovich for alerting me to this work.
by Jalees Rehman
One of the cornerstones of scientific research is the reproducibility of findings. Novel scientific observations need to be validated by subsequent studies in order to be considered robust. This has proven to be somewhat of a challenge for many biomedical research areas, including high impact studies in cancer research and stem cell research. The fact that an initial scientific finding of a research group cannot be confirmed by other researchers does not mean that the initial finding was wrong or that there was any foul play involved. The most likely explanation in biomedical research is that there is tremendous biological variability. Human subjects and patients examined in one research study may differ substantially from those in follow-up studies. Biological cell lines and tools used in basic science studies can vary widely, depending on so many details such as the medium in which cells are kept in a culture dish. The variability in findings is not a weakness of biomedical research, in fact it is a testimony to the complexity of biological systems. Therefore, initial findings need to always be treated with caution and presented with the inherent uncertainty. Once subsequent studies – often with larger sample sizes – confirm the initial observations, they are then viewed as being more robust and gradually become accepted by the wider scientific community.
Even though most scientists become aware of the scientific uncertainty associated with an initial observation as their career progresses, non-scientists may be puzzled by shifting scientific narratives. People often complain that "scientists cannot make up their minds" – citing examples of newspaper reports such as those which state drinking coffee may be harmful only to be subsequently contradicted by reports which laud the beneficial health effects of coffee drinking. Accurately communicating scientific findings as well as the inherent uncertainty of such initial findings is a hallmark of critical science journalism.
by Daniel Ranard
We're surrounded by algorithms. Facebook uses an algorithm to curate your newsfeed, credit agencies use an algorithm to compute your credit score, and soon an algorithm may replace you in the driver's seat. As algorithms come to dictate larger swaths of life, it's important to understand exactly what they are, and especially how they're drastically changing.
On one hand, algorithms are nothing new. An algorithm is just a precise set of instructions for carrying out a task. Any chef with a cookbook already follows the written algorithms within: add two cups of water, mix until smooth. Unlike computer algorithms, these instructions are written in a language meant for humans, so they still retain some ambiguity: how should you go about lifting the cup, and what does it mean to mix until smooth? While most of us have the know-how to surmount these ambiguities, computers are designed to follow much more precise instructions. And unlike cookbook recipes, computer algorithms don't concern the manipulation of physical objects like cups and bowls, but rather the manipulation of abstract objects like numbers and bits. A computer algorithm might say: "Take two numbers as inputs, multiply the larger one by seven, then add them," and so on. Though a modern computer is designed to convert these instructions into physical manipulations of the electricity within, one might also use an abacus, or pen and paper. Indeed, some of today's algorithms have been around for centuries: the way a computer calculates square roots is not so different from the method prescribed by Hero of Alexandria.
So while we built bigger and better equipment to execute our algorithms in the 20th century, the central idea of the algorithm had remained unchanged for millenia. What would algorithms of the future hold? First, let's take a diversion and explain where we thought the most advanced algorithms were likely headed, decades ago. Then, we'll see how the recent success of machine learning methods has changed that vision for many, even posing new questions about the nature of knowledge and explanation.
by Brooks Riley
by Dwight Furrow
Unfortunately, traditional ways of drawing the distinction between craft and the fine arts are inadequate. In fact, a too sharply drawn distinction between art and craft will mischaracterize both. Nevertheless, I think there is a distinction to be made between art and craft and at least some wines and culinary preparations are best viewed as works of art.
As Larry Shiner has pointed out, both the term "fine art" and the term "craft" are relatively recent inventions. ""Craft" as the name of a category of disciplines only goes back to the late nineteenth century when it emerged partly in reaction to machine production, and partly in reaction to the fine art academies' exclusion of the "minor," "decorative," or "applied" arts." Fine art, according to Shiner, was a phrase used to market works of art to the emerging middle class marking off craftwork, works that are merely useful, from works that were "the appropriate object of refined taste."
In the past we might have used the type of material being worked on to distinguish art from craft. Paint on canvas, words on a page, notes played by instruments were candidates for works of art. The transformation of wood, clay, metals or fabric was craft. But since the birth of installations and the expansion of materials used for artistic expression, artists today work in media such as textiles, plastics, metals and wood. So the type of material will no longer suffice to mark the distinction. Why then not food or wine as candidates for artistic expression?
by Katrin Trüstedt
The title of this film The Rest I Make Up seems to perfectly capture a feature of her art essential to this relation. It points to a making up of stories and theater worlds that was the work of this writer, as well as to a practice as part of her now dealing with dementia: If she can't remember, she makes it up. Behind the charm and nonchalance with which she graces the screen, one senses an abyss of an unknown, terrifying darkness. It makes its presence felt in silences, glances, or the state that her kitchen is in. When Michelle and Irene return from their visit in Cuba, they stop in Miami to see Irene's sister; Irene cannot tell her about having just visited their family. She does not remember. But the title also seems to address the way Fornes's avant-garde theater used to work in the niche of the Off-Off-Broadway scene (and "Off-Off-MoMA," if you will): improvised and without support, institutionally or financially, it was experimentally "made up" as the productions moved along. Besides writing and directing the plays, Fornes would, for instance, also often do the costumes, with whatever happened to be there. And ultimately, the title also seems to speak to the filmmaking project itself. When I first met Michelle in Berlin about 15 years ago, she was not sure what exactly to do with her life. How to make money. Where to go. What to make. But she knew she was captivated by this playwright Irene Fornes (it was how I learned about her), and wanted to, in some way, do something with her, about her, for her. The rest she was going to make up "as we went along". It turned out to be this film, and she turned out to be a filmmaker in the process.
by Paul Braterman
More recent strata lie on top of older strata, except when they lie beneath them. Radiometric dates obtained by different methods always agree, except when they differ. And the planets in their courses obey Newton's laws of gravity and motion, except when they depart from them.
As Isaac Asimov reportedly said, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' [I have found it], but 'That's funny …' " And there is nothing that distinguishes so clearly between the scientific and the dogmatic mindset as the response to anomalies. For the dogmatist, the anomaly is a "gotcha", proof that the theory under consideration is, quite simply, wrong. For the scientist, it is an opportunity. If an idea is generally useful, but occasionally breaks down, something unusual is going on and it's worth finding out what. The dogmatist wants to see questions closed, where the scientist wants to keep them open. This is perhaps why the creationist denial of science can often be found among those professions that seek decision and closure, such as law and theology.
The rights and wrongs of falsification
Dogmatists regularly invoke the name of Karl Popper, and the work he did in the 1930s. Popper placed heavy emphasis on falsifiability, denouncing as unscientific any doctrine that could not be falsified. Freud's theories, for example, were unscientific, because a patient's disagreement with its findings could be explained away as the result of repression. Marxism, likewise, he regarded as unscientific because when events failed to unfold as Marx had predicted, his followers could always say that the right historical conditions had not yet arisen. The theory that biological diversity is a product of Intelligent Design is also unscientific by this criterion, since its advocates can and do say1 that any apparent failure of design may merely reflect our lack of insight into the motivations of the designer.
But what about theories that almost all of us would agree to regard as scientific, such as the theory of planetary motion, or atomic theory, or the theories of geology, or of the origin of species by evolution? Here, current thinking can be and at various times has been falsified by observation. But what, precisely, was falsified?
No theory exists on its own, as the philosopher-scientist Duhem pointed out over a century ago,2 and when a theory fails an observational test there are two kinds of possible explanation. The fault may lie with the theory itself, or with the assumptions we make while testing it. More specifically, as Lakatos pointed out in 1970,3 every application of a theory involves ancillary hypotheses, which can range from the grandiose (the laws of nature are unchanging) to the trivial (the telescope was functioning correctly). When a theoretical prediction fails, we do not know if the fault is in one of these, rather than the core theory itself. Much of the time, we are not even aware of our ancillary hypotheses, which is one reason why we need philosophers of science.
by Ashutosh Jogalekar
The crossing of disciplinary boundaries in science has brought with it a peculiar and ironic contradiction. On one hand, fields like computational biology, medical informatics and nuclear astrophysics have encouraged cross-pollination between disciplines and required the biologist to learn programming, the computer scientist to learn biology and the doctor to know statistics. On the other hand, increasing specialization has actually shored up the silos between these territories because each territory has become so dense with its own facts and ideas.
We are now supposed to be generalists, but we are generalists only in a collective sense. In an organization like a biotechnology company for instance, while the organization itself chugs along on the track of interdisciplinary understanding across departments like chemistry, biophysics and clinical investigations, the effort required for understanding all the nuts and bolts of each discipline has meant that individual scientists now have neither the time nor the inclination to actually drill down into whatever their colleagues are doing. They appreciate the importance of various fields of inquiry, but only as reservoirs into which they pipe their results, which then get piped into other reservoirs. In a metaphor evoked in a different context – the collective alienation that technology has brought upon us – by the philosopher Sherry Turkle, we are ‘alone together’.
The need to bridge disciplinary boundaries without getting tangled in the web of your own specialization has raised new challenges for education. How do we train the men and women who will stake out new frontiers tomorrow in the study of the brain, the early universe, gender studies or artificial intelligence? As old-fashioned as it sounds, to me the solution seems to go back to the age-old tradition of a classical liberal education which lays emphasis more on general thinking and skills rather than merely the acquisition of diverse specialized knowledge and techniques. In my ideal scenario, this education would emphasize a good grounding in mathematics, philosophy (including philosophy of science), basic computational thinking and statistics and literature as primary goals, with an appreciation of the rudiments of evolution and psychology or neuroscience as preferred secondary goals.
This kind of thinking was on my mind as I happened to read a piece on education and training written by a man who was generally known to have thought-provoking ideas on a variety of subjects. If there was one distinguishing characteristic in Albert Einstein, it was the quality of rebellion.
Diamond Stingily. Elephant Memory, 2016.
Installation.
"… combines various shades of the store-bought hair not with cute or colorful accessories but with forbidding steel chains and sturdy hooks more befitting the exhibition’s explicit allusions to the threat of violence and to the troubled threshold between public and private. A group of battered apartment doors, weary sentinels armed with baseball bats in the darkened gallery, composed the solemn suite Entryways, 2016; nearby, projected behind a section of chain link fence, footage borrowed from a 1967 documentary looped: Black schoolgirls (many with braids in their hair) sing happily at the playground, but one unnerving chanted refrain—“How did he die?”—evokes looming tragedy."
Thanks to Anjuli Kolb for introducing!
by Mathangi Krishnamurthy
I am currently obsessed with Jordan Peterson and his videos instructing men on ways in which to be men. He goes on to inform us that in his experience, so many are men petrified by women and specifically by the specter of being dismissed by them, and how men need to fix themselves because they are probably being rejected for "real" reasons. Peterson is currently a popular figure on the internet, and in many ways, defies glib categorization. See, for example, Slavoz Zizek's as ever quick take on why Peterson captures something in popular imagination.
But my obsession with him has to do with my own interests in the ways in which gender is produced in the world, as an either or—either, it is a binary — or as fluid one that can be placed along many combinations of body, desire and soul on a world-wide, gender-wide spectrum. At a recent conference organized by QueerAbad in Ahmedabad, India, author of Sexualness, social anthropologist and activist Akshay Khanna spoke about rites of passage in academia in terms of being able to speak about gender and gender fluidity. Rightly invoking Judith Butler, and questioning the seeming need to always begin all such conversations, even in Indian academia, with her seminal work, he emphasized the need to find local language, affect, and feeling, to be able to describe forms of gendered imagination.
In teaching Butler to undergraduates—many of them often being exposed for the first time to feminist theory—I sometimes conduct an exercise bringing props such as wigs, face paint, and make-up to class, encouraging participants to experiment and play with their appearances. Many do so. As they pose and prance, I also gently suggest that they take a walk around the building and premises of one of the premier technology and science institutions in India, going as far as they dare, before returning to the safe space that is class. I sometimes daydream about appearing in class, teaching in zoot suit, suspenders, and gelled hair, but am never quite able to find similar enough courage to play. We also speak about Aravanis or Thirunangais, the community of transgender women specific to Tamil Nadu, where I teach, and the ways in which their appearance, both as an act and a phenomenon may invoke a whole set of feelings and affects in their heteronormative audiences. We agree collectively, that yes, we perform gender; we nod agreeably that gender has solidified in us over years of performative rendition; and we silently hope that our experiments in class may lead us to be more fluid in our daily lives.
And yet, over five years of teaching Butler, identity theory, and gender performativity, I am interested more than ever in the resurgence, and arguably, the never-ever-gone-ness of the unspoken norm of the gender binary, and the investment that discourses have in making them real. Here, I use real not in the sense of a "constructed" real, but in the sense of belief, inhabitation and feeling. I am, hence, obsessed with Jordan Peterson.
When I was a young, I don't remember why, but I scribbled a poem by Osip Mandelstam on a piece of thick, mauve-color Nepalese mulberry paper. And as I wrote it, I thought to myself, "This is a poem to cross a desert with."
Depriving me of sea, of a space to run and a space to fly,
And giving my footsteps the brace of a forced land,
What have you gained? The calculation dazzles
But you cannot seize the movements of my lips, their silent sound.
–Osip Mandelstam 1935
I carried this poem around in my wallet for twenty-five years–like an amulet. Looking back, I can only wonder what in the world drew me to it when I was still so young and free-spirited…But in fact, this poem of Russian gulag captivity gave me strength during times of hardship; for contained within those few short lines is a beautiful testament to the great strength that our inner lives have to sustain us…
Fast forward twenty-five years when a forty-five year old woman scrawled one line from another poem on the back of that same mauve-color piece of mulberry paper. This time it was the famous line from Tao Yuanming's poem, Plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence:
採菊東籬下
A world away in spirit from Mandelstam's poem perhaps. As the poem sums up perfectly the serenity achieved by a life of cultivation –at the end of the hero's journey.
飲酒詩 陶淵明
結盧在人境 而無車馬喧
問君何能爾 心遠地自偏
採菊東籬下 悠然見南山
山氣日夕佳 飛鳥相與還
此還有真意 欲辨已忘言
Drinking Wine (#5)–Tao Yuanming
I’ve built my house where others dwell
And yet there is no clamor of carriages and horses
You ask me how this is possible– (And so I say):
When the heart is far, one is transported
I pluck chrysanthemums under the eastern fence
And serenely I gaze at the southern mountains
At dusk, the mountain air is good
Flocks of flying birds are returning home
In this, there is a great truth
But wanting to explain it, I forget the words (my trans）
That line has become a perfect touchstone for the next part of my life; another poem to cross a desert with.
Iqbal Complains to God
by Mohammed Iqbal
Why should I map my own loss,
not think of tomorrow,
forget my profit, lose my due,
grieve, ignore a nightingale’s wail,
be silent
as a rose?
Words give me courage
‑—dust be in my mouth—
I’ve a complaint. God,
famous for praising You,
we now can’t help
but complain.
When a rose bloomed
it was unable to disperse
its scent.
We became the breeze,
we spread its essence.
Before our arrival
some bowed to trees,
others to idols—
not to a god
they couldn’t see.
Who called out Your name —
ancient Greeks, Jews, Nazarenes:
when things fell apart
did they draw their swords?
Who tore down the gates of Khaibar,
reduced Constantinople
to rubble,
turned Iran’s fire-temples cold?
Who stamped the crescent
on every heart,
who brought the idols to proclaim,
“There is no god but God?”
by Carol A Westbrook
On the other hand, when I was a young woman, discrimination was so prevalent it was ignorable. Putting up with discrimination was the price one had to pay for trying to make it in a man's world, for trying to do something with your life other than become a subservient wife and mother. Social attitudes were very different then. It was the 60's.
We women of the 60's had more rights and privileges than did our mothers and grandmothers– we had the vote, and a few more property rights–but we were by no means legally equal to men. Birth control was available, but abortions were not. There were many jobs which excluded women. Pregnant women had to quit when they started to "show." Married women lost control of their finances, and sometimes their bodies, too–marital rape was not even a crime in some states! Married women couldn't hold credit cards in their own name. In the 60's it was okay for a man to date his secretary or pressure his intern for sex. It may have been ill advised or downright coercive, perhaps, but not illegal.
Women were regarded as inferior members of the human race, not able to do men's work, and needing a man's protection so they could fulfill their God-given role of wife and mother. Some women accepted this role, but others of us felt that it kept us back from our full potential. We were called "feminists," but we were just women trying to carve out our own place in a man's world.
by Brooks Riley
by Max Sirak
And, in honor of his passing, but more in remembrance of his life, I want to dedicate my little sliver of cyberspace, a realm he was passionate about, to highlight three pieces of his writing and thought. First, a political document; second, a code of conduct; and lastly some lyrics.
A Child Of Boundless (Digital) Seas
JPB was a pioneer of an open, free-range internet. He, along with others, founded The Electric Frontier Foundation (EFF) (here), a "nonprofit defending digital privacy, free speech, and innovation" in 1990. He literally wrote the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (here) in 1996.
For those who don't want to read it, it is what it says it is. It begins with, "Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of the Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone."
The Declaration goes on to lay out the foundational premise of what the internet should be. A "global social space" independent of past tyrannies and a natural emergence of human creativity to serve as a self-regulating web of communication free from commercial enterprise and regulation.
Idealistic? Sure. Naive? Quite possibly. But don't those two usually walk, arm-in-arm, like sunshine and daydreams?
by Christopher Bacas
The Pre-War building crumbled around us. The steps to the 5th floor roof held small monuments: a bottle of cheap liquor, stubbed-out blunt, sometimes a slimy condom. On cold days, running the steps for exercise, dog in tow, I dodged the messes. The dog charged right through them, scattering nastiness. Sometimes, high school canoodlers, truants who left the ashen relics, blocked our path completely. Carrying my trash through the back door, I once encountered a teen couple, partially disrobed, going at it under the stairs. Another kid, holding his belt, stood nearby. As I exited with a heavy trash bag, he nodded rhythmically at me. When I returned, no one had moved. The kid in the on-deck-circle didn’t even look around.
During the coldest nights, our radiators hissed for a few minutes, then went silent for icy hours. We boiled water for nighttime baths. Small ceramic heaters crackled and hummed in the dark, blistering our throats and noses. The super looked on when we wildly pantomimed the conditions in our apartment. I’ll never know if his expression meant worry about our comfort or just our sanity.
We began regular calls to the city and our property manager, and stopped paying rent.
by Ali Minai
A light went out in the world yesterday. Asma Jahangir — Pakistan’s icon of human rights and liberal values — passed away. In her short 66 years, she lived the length — and made the impact — of many lifetimes. If a person’s character is known by the enemies they make, her credentials are impeccable. Every dictator, every autocrat, every paternalistic preacher, every friend of the powerful hated her — and she welcomed their hatred as a badge of honor. Even in death, the barbs of her enemies ennoble her further for posterity.In the Middle of Hosanna
snow’s piled against the generator
smooth white talus
at the foot of sheer thought in
arctic regions of mind
through glass the near tangle
of bare forsythia beneath draped wires
pole to pole is a snap of unchecked ruminations
that fold upon themselves in crazy chiaroscuro
a dispensation of light expected in a skull of whims
while further right the barrel arc of a stone wall
familiar now as arrays of spots on the back of a hand
is as solid as the conviction of crystals in a cool savanna
between here and the neighbor’s shed in the middle of
hosanna!
.
Jim Culleny
2/12/17
