[iDC] how long is a piece of string?

[Peter Timusk]

I am a systems student and we study dynamic systems in movement open  
systems are at least 70 years old. Ecosystems matter as much as  
computers. I for one like to study social systems. Can you see the  
sociology in systems? A system to me is a network of roads but my  
system is more meaningful the faces I see on a daily commute on the  
bus. This person system is my city the whole. Legal systems ie how  
does a prisoner travel to the execution? i.e Foucault describes this  
system .

just some thoughts but you seem to be less aware of what's going on  
with this possibility

a theatre is a system it has parts. <-- in humour

Peter Timusk,

B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa.
just trying to stay linear.
Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.



On 28-Oct-07, at 8:46 PM, Mark Shepard wrote:

> Brian, Katharine,
>
> Let's see how far we can spin this thread?
>
>>> cybernetics still considers 'systems', which to some extent is
>>> grounded in the underlying assumption that a system in itself has
>>> some form of boundary and can be studied objectively as an entity-
>>> which can be limiting as  an approach.
>>
>> Indeed, very limiting. My understanding is that the feedback loop,
>> whose purpose or "teleology" is to maintain a system in a steady
>> state, has
>> become the paradigm of control in contemporary societies. To
>> achieve this steady state, the control engineer must identify the
>> variables of the system, both in the machinic actor and in its
>> environment.
>
> Clearly first-order cybernetics as exemplified by, say, the
> Homeostat, follows this logic. But my understanding of how the field
> evolved (which is limited, although I think Hayles (1999) provides a
> useful introduction) is that second- and third-order theoreticians
> such as Gordon Pask sought ways of thinking about interaction with
> (and through) computers that favored "open" over "closed" systems,
> with outcomes that were not knowable outside the system's
> performance. By "underspecifying" the goals of the system, the focus
> shifted from maintaining systems in a steady state to ones capable of
> evolving with and through "conversations" between machines, people
> and environments that unfolded over time.  His Conversation Theory
> may be worth revisiting for a way of thinking through how the act of
> story-telling–as something that unfolds over time–produces a "shared"
> space "between" actors resulting in "outcomes" to which neither can
> lay claim to exclusive authorship. Or maybe not.
>
> Another place to look might be his Colloquy of Mobiles, part of the
> 1968 exhibition «Cybernetic Serendipity» held at the ICA in London:
> http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/colloquy-of-mobiles/ - Here, the
> closed loop determining the interaction between the machinic actors
> of the system is interrupted by the viewer/participant wielding
> mirrors and flashlights, influencing how the system itself evolves
> (learns).
>
> At the same time, it might be helpful to differentiate between
> "addressable" and "non-addressable" things (spaces, events,
> subjects, ...)? Computation normally requires that which it "operates
> on" to be addressable: as a variable, IP address, memory register,
> sensor threshold or peak, whatever. This is the "discreteness"
> Chalmers et. al. refer to. Non-addressable things are those that
> either don't fit a known pattern or can't be described or specified
> in the terms available at the time "code" is initiated, and are
> therefore hard to represent symbolically to the computer. Neural-
> networks and evolutionary programming are two approaches to this
> "problem."
>
> But is this "problem" itself not the problem? The critique of
> encroachment of the domain of the "addressable" upon that of the "non-
> addressable" is long-standing. Deleuze (1992) discusses this in the
> context of the dissolution of forms of societal enclosures
> (Foucault), new forms of mobility and corresponding regimes of
> control. Further, as Law (2004) shows, the messy, non-addressable
> aspects of the "real world" pervade the scientific laboratory as much
> as they do everyday life. So I'd think it's less a question of
> looking away from science to art, but recognizing the inter-weavings
> of the two (among others) in the larger frame of this thing we call
> life. If technology is to be the answer (and it may not be in this
> case, but Katharine, you originally frame it as such), how we frame
> the question is, in fact, *the* critical question. Asking how we
> might narrate the (last remaining?) spaces "in-between" (as Ian
> Sinclair does in Orbital London, or J.G. Ballard does in Concrete
> Island for that matter) would inevitably to lead to us down the line
> to yet another mobile application designed to direct the tourist to
> that hidden cafe located "off the beaten path." Perhaps "local
> knowledge" is best left local?
>
> I want a SATNAV device that helps me get lost...
>
> I think Brian eloquently expresses how at least art can work toward
> producing "non-addressable" spaces/subjects:
>
>> This is the liberating side of art: when you really engage with it,
>> it brings you into contact with what you don't know, it vibrates
>> you, as it
>> were, between the presence and absence of any consistency of the
>> self, and in this way opens you up a processual change of state,
>> which is the very process of living.
>
> So, maybe the question then (if the answer is to be technology): how
> do we create technologies that work toward enhancing the
> serendipitous, the unexpected, the schizogeographic,  the always
> already _un_known, the stuff which elides what Brian describes as
> "the imposed patternings of everyday existence in technological
> societies", or in plain terms, that which simply enhances the very
> _process_ of living?
>
> Mark
>
> +++
>
> Delezue, Gilles, (1992). Postscript on Societies of Control. OCTOBER
> 59, MIT Press,
>
> Hayles, N. Katherine, (1999). How We Became Posthuman. University of
> Chicago.
>
> Law, John, (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research.
> Routledge.
>
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