The Novel
or
The Novelty
I have to stand somewhere and these old fields are empty yet still watched by many, I suppose to see if an event might happen. They make a good place to stand and even if it is a bit barren the sound carries well. I sometimes look to see if the builder still lives here amongst us, a Wren amongst the sparrows. The way the the early dialog flowed and then settled left a lot of these types of spaces over the years and decades left a lot of these mental arenas connected to many SI nodes. These spaces are like a time lapse series of photographs of a prairie dog colony showing it slowly migrating away from one place, leaving just holes where it used to be. The divisions of the outer world exist here on SI or we couldn't be a holon of the new land. Now those of you who know me understand that the new land I have always spoken of is this one, where we are part of a network that consists of minds linked by keyboards and that as we type and tell and interact we lay down a usable stratum of human consciousness. It isn't that we are consciously promulgating any reality, our individual psyches simply are what we are if we are naked here. In the beginning the nakedness was a result of novelty. It sounds pornographic but we used to be able to finger others and see when they were online, old tools that worked in the Infancy. That nakedness still exists, it can still be seen, how many actually mentally framed some response to Jeffery on whether rock or country CD's would be better for keeping off the pigeons, then didn't preferring instead that UE got it himself? Put simply, you and I, we have shared a lot of food and ink. I have been telling our story for a long time right here. I wrote this right here on SI almost 24 years ago,
The tremendous economic clout of the focused world economy and collective wealth had made major changes and upheavals in the power structure, routine, in the late 2010's.
The true benefits had gone to a new group of companies that had realized the power of the early data nets hastily thrown together in the dying years of the last century. When those first crude "computer nets" appeared, followed by an international internet, few had realized where it was going to lead, the few who did became pioneers in a new transformation of the power base. It became evident as time passed, that this "internet" was the the new forum of public opinion. As companies flocked to this new medium, it was obvious that only a few hot spots were actually instrumental in "creating" the opinions, while those opinions then permeated every corner of the globe.The situation envisioned by Confucious 2000 years earlier became an actuality, "The wise man sits outside his house, the world comes to his door."
If I wrote that today it wouldn't matter and no one would read it because it is obvious, but when I wrote it wasn't totally true, yes, many others were saying the same thing but Amazon was still a bookseller. No one might have foreseen that a virus would have been responsible for an international shutdown but in my future the virus was Japanese, not Chinese, and called PAIDV and just shut down international markets, not humanity. I wrote this as part of the same look at the future,
Everyone remembered the attack of the Matsushita BLAT, a PARA AI Destructor Virus in 2015. SI at that time had been dependant upon the Intel AI's, and the death of Erin (Early Reasoning Intelligent Network) had paralyzed SI and as a result, markets world wide. The PAIDV attack had created havoc and had led to the initiative that developed FINN
I have always maintained that my writing has just two purposes, to educate or to entertain and I always hope that the style I choose to tell any tale is one that tries to solve both. It isn't that the telling of stories makes them real, it is that the vision of the writer is the seed that another plants, all our power is in the mind's of others. So we are at a place imagined many years ago, it is a novel situation, at this point no one knows when this is over. Analysis in the real is one way to follow this situation and there is plenty of that going on so I cannot contribute much beyond, wash your hands.
What is happening is going to take a while, spring and summer will be spent in a very different way than we have spent them before, all this novelty will get boring. So what comes next, are you an optimist or a pessimist. Are you an objectivist or is it subjectivism for you. Me, I make some basic assumptions about any group of humans in any situation. Most people don't really pay attention to much, it is just the way people are. Most people are not aware of the state of other people most of the time, it is just the way people are. Most of us don't want to use a dictionary or a thesaurus. Some people are naked, most are armed, there will always be victims.
I suppose my true weapon is one called Greensward, also described here on SI many years ago when I was writing a tale regarding a person who caused two camps to form here on SI,
Greensward
Looking at old battlefields is grim work, the green grass covers the churned mud and the relics of battle lie buried. Living is the default condition in the real world, that rule doesn't apply in this land. There is no corollary for breathing, dying here is easy, no need to kill yourself. To be alive in this land we make a conscious decision to live. The ability to stand and breathe the air of this land is as easy as a few clicks of the mouse, living here is harder. Our comments and our positions are a direct reflection of our relationship to this land. This story, more than any other story I have ever attempted, has driven me to consider the sides that make up each facet in a tale. It isn't possible to read Tim's story and avoid conclusions about people, about his enemies, his detractors, his friends and ultimately about all of us. The observer principle ensures that the observation can never be separated from the observer and this same rule applies in regards to community.
I have always treasured SI and it is sometimes painful reading through old threads and getting reminded of so many fine constructs that were built and then left behind. One constant in all my stories, except for a few, is that the material for each tale has always been provided by others on SI. I haven't always listened to all of you, some of the strange languages you speak in your camps to those you would shepherd or protect are foreign tongues to me, some of your rituals are the same, they are not ones I would perform for myself. Your selves in the real, they are not who you think you are, who you think you are is the person who lives here in this land. And even if that is acceptable it is not true, because here you really are what everyone has in their mind when they listen to you. As a holon of the new land SI shares attributes found in all holons. Even though we have the same divisions as the real here we can consciously step beyond nationality. Our deep sets do not contain nationality in the traditional sense of that word, we are nationals of a new land, we are a unique subset of humans who demonstrate this trait in our essential nature. We are aware that we are (nationality here) but also we know we are something more, we are the little fish of the new land and we are boundless. If you embrace this idea it literally dissolves other structures that have dependency, it is a variable/function/library scenario where the variable is removed, the related functions and libraries no longer work as expected.
Wikipedia has this entry describing the "Internet meme
"An "Internet meme" is a concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet, largely through Internet-based E-mailing, blogs, forums, imageboards like 4chan, social networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, instant messaging, social news sites or thread sites like Reddit, and video hosting services like YouTube and Twitch.[56]
In 2013, Richard Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as one deliberately altered by human creativity, distinguished from Dawkins's original idea involving mutation "by random change and a form of Darwinian selection".[57].
Now I know that no one needs to hear that but the connection is of interest. This last little bit was taken from 2002 and was a discussion then about the nature of memes and the role they played in changing digital patterns. It would take years for the actual internet to become the Internet and for sites to catch up to the primals that were thrown out in the beginning from so many sources here on SI. I am throwing these old posts out because they are helping me choose a name for the new story and will be part of the billet I am attempting to forge. It is good that I have plenty of time and I enjoy reading all this old stuff as well. I want to leave this story for now so that I can help out with supper. I am going to take ground pork and ground beef, mix them together and then slam the resulting mass repeatedly into a bowl from some distance above it to remove all the air. That is not an attempt to create a memetic link to this tale it is the literal truth. It is what the recipe calls for.
Digital cognizance
or
Meme valency
Like viral proteins, our digital surfaces are keyed to certain memes. A lot of people can't see cyberspace and the digital projections of self clearly. Digital frameworks can be collapsed with a single well placed blow, they then coalesce in a different pattern. Serious dialogue is often like that, leaving crumbling digital structures and free memes in it's wake.
None of it really means anything in the real world. It only matters to those that inhabit this universe we have created.
Message 4203992
Message 4203994
Message 20343428
Message 17019616 |
