I had had run across a similar idea, reading up on Magick and Alchemy about fallen angels “giving us their minds”

But as for taking it literally, I’d have to say its not for me. It creates too much paranoia and anxiety to keep that in my reality tunnel. ;)

My preferred way of looking at it is something that needs developing, but which ultimately we need to step away from and reintegrate that sense of ego back into the sense of connection. We are god’s way of developing “me” organs. The ego is only a wrong turn if we don’t see it as a wave that’s reached its peak on one side and is now returning to the other.

(I use ego in this comment to mean sense of a separate self, not in the Freudian sense of the ego)

Its like farming. Domestication. We are a food source. We weren’t a food source as primates, so they gave us some stuff to develop our consciousness in order to feed on it.

The anger gives rise to a highly emotional buildup, something that I feel is best expressed by the phrase “fuck that”.

But of course, my apologies if the language offends anyone.

I used to say quite a lot that a lot of the wonders in the world were /hiding/ from us, and that they were hiding because they were scared.

Maybe They are We, and We are hiding.

Basically, it seems like it’s all just an excuse to stop thinking, to stop growing.

But we already are what we are, and we already are always growing. So it’s all a big waste of time to pretend otherwise, eh?

By ‘spirit’ I mean an actual technology that’s not just a creation of the advertisers, that has a Name and approximates to some sort of higher truth. A path that takes us somewhere useful, a useful way-of-seeing.

The Computer is probably one of these.

So there’s a /massive/ industry out there dedicated to making computers look like as many other things as possible. Like desktops and offices. Like musical instruments. Like brains and people. But actually a computer isn’t any of these things in itself. Where’s the drive for computers to become all they can be? Sorely lacking in my opinion. Stopped shortly after Mandelbrot took Picasso’s line for a walk in a fractional dimension. Instead there’s just creeping onionism, layers of lagging, and increasing heat.

It goes beyond that too to cars with hidden engines, which look like washing machines. In fact everything seems to look like a washing machine these days. (Use New Formula Moonie, washes brains whiter! … as the guys from Spitting Image once said) And beyond washing machines to the drive we all feel to be what we’re not. Hence ‘spirit’ as a catch-all term.

See what things are (cool) not what they’re trying to look like (hot).

This is great.

There’s this (twisted) idea out there that a spirit will only be accepted if it looks like something it’s not.

This sounds interesting too, but I’m not sure I completely understand. Can you help to explain it a little?

Maybe we just have to go out and do the seeing. See what things are (cool) not what they’re trying to look like (hot).

There’s this (twisted) idea out there that a spirit will only be accepted if it looks like something it’s not.

yeah, I like the curve you’re outlining here. cool and participatory -> -> -> hot and taken-care-of-for-you (wholesale). But is that something due to the media itself, or is it just the way the media has adapted to those how use it?

How do we switch from seeing the world as a hot media to seeing it as a cold media? This is what we were talking about earlier in regards to each generation needing to relearn how to do things. And the fact that as societies develop, people seem to be less willing to maintain their underpinnings, perhaps because of the difficulty getting to them. Or possibly just the perceived difficulty, but that makes little difference as far as people actually doing anything. Perhaps these things have life cycles, just like anything else. “All conditioned things pass away”. So to, therefore, must all mediated things…

An involving technology has an element of the self-contained about it. I get out what I put in, to a degree. The opposite is exemplified by the principle of constant remote updates of my computer system. There’s nothing to get involved with, cos the rules are constantly being changed from afar. All I can do is watch and put up with it.

It’s more like a cool medium /creates/ awareness, drags the mind into an aware state, whereas a hot medium /destroys/ awareness and indeed will function without it.

In that case, it’s almost like the difference between the two is that as the media heats up, it creates more friction, and something has to give for the two to operate smoothly (and cooly) again…

Occasionally, though, true cool comes along. I’m sure there’s something we can do to help crystallise the situation, I’m just not sure what.

Yeah, I’m with you there…

McLuhan writes about Narcissus and how people often think that Narcissus fell in love with his reflection because he thought it was Narcissus. In fact, the point of the myth is that Narcissus didn’t realise that his reflection in the mirror was himself. Similarly, we don’t in general realise that technologies are extensions of ourselves, and falsely fall in love with them.

> Cool media, as I’m coming to understand it, is something that invades awareness

This is very interesting and I think you’ve hit upon something here. Had to read that a few times to take it in! But I’m not sure about ‘invades’ exactly. It’s more like a cool medium /creates/ awareness, drags the mind into an aware state, whereas a hot medium /destroys/ awareness and indeed will function without it.

> Computers in a “hot” state

I get the feeling that the ‘break boundary’ where hot flips to cool is of critical importance. It amounts to understanding, realisation, amid an increasing sea of neutral symbols. A cool medium is truly iconic and cannot be broken down into its parts without destroying it. Branding is largely an exercize in attempting to fake iconic coolness in an overheated world. Occasionally, though, true cool comes along. I’m sure there’s something we can do to help crystallise the situation, I’m just not sure what.

Cool media, as I’m coming to understand it, is something that invades awareness, because it requires that awareness in order for the message it carries to become present. In this sense, the boundary between “self” and “other” definitely breaks down (maybe not completely, but still).

Whereas in “hot” media, the message can exist even without the awareness’s involvement.

I like the idea because it suggests that in cool, less “developed” media, awareness must be given to the media for the message to be brought into being. Whereas hot media does not require as much awareness in order to be functional.

And it also make awareness something that settles over/into media, almost like a fog. In cool media, the media doesn’t communicate until the awareness gets into it, whereas “hot” media communicates regardless of how much “fog” it has.

Computers in a “hot” state… Yeah, too much heat and it might eventually not need us at all any more, which I guess if what the Singularity is all about. We want to get back in there, but we can’t, yet. Maybe that Ubiquitous Computing stuff or Augmented Reality stuff will “cool” things down a bit…

http://stumblinghorse.tumblr.com/post/133977987/it-was-an-effort-to-systematize-inner-thought

which I wanted to make a note of for later.

“viewing objects as extensions of our subjective self”

As I understand McLuhan:

A cool medium demands complete involvement from those involved with it, irrespective of whether they want to be completely involved or not. McLuhan says this sort of technology is what unites people as a tribe.

A hot medium has higher definition and information content than a cool medium, but in return can exist in the background, or as an object of study without involvement in depth. This is the kind of technology that advancing civilizations tend to produce.

McLuhan proposes that a sufficiently overheated medium can suddenly ‘flip’ to become something entirely new and cool once again.

*

This DJ played all those songs that you have to know the moves to. It was terrible, there was never more than half-a-dozen people up at once, zero participation. I found myself getting quite annoyed. Give me dance-round-the-handbag music any day ;-D

It struck me that this exclusive/excluding kind of music was a ‘hot’ form of disco, and that it wasn’t a good thing. Somehow the guy couldn’t elevate it to the level of being cool to do the Macarena. I don’t fully understand what was happening, but it seemed really important.

I have this idea floating round my head that computers have been stuck in this ‘hot’ state since about 1987, and that’s why the world is crying out for a Singularity to save us. I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but that’s how it’s looking from over here. It’s weird…

I’m not sure I’d say “cool” media = participation mystique, wouldn’t “hot” media be the closer of the two? Maybe I still don’t quite grasp the concepts well enough though.

I would say that “hot” media is more a participation mystique, because it more directly involved the awareness with the media content. That is, the connection is stronger, less resistance in the wires, and the message comes through clearly.

But is is that the boundaries in “cool” media are more permeable? That the self-awareness must become more intimate with the media/message in order to understand it fully? In that case, I can definitely see how it would be more like a participation mystique. It’s as if “hot” media, by being so focused, doesn’t allow the awareness to forget that it is there.

In the directness of its communication, it is that much harder to forget that it is separate from your own awareness?

I think the TA states, and TA in general, is very McLuhan friendly field. I both cases, one is analyzing the pure awareness and it’s ways of interacting/mediating with, the world and other people.

If you’d care to go more into how you think they’re tied together, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

That’s spot on about the Zen lineage obsession (the same’s true for martial arts masters as well). Does anyone really think that there were only 82 generations between the present day and Buddha? No one who spends the time to actually think about it, that’s for sure. But that’s not the point. The point is that you have become part of a living tradition that can pass on things in that direct person-to-person fashion. That the teachings (be they zen, kung fu, or music) come from a tradition that is larger than the original person, and that is still alive. Not an entity per-se, or even an organizing principle. Just a way of doing things that works.

The internet is, I think, really a force for good, in the end. It’s basically just an amplifier, of thoughts, cultures, memes, ideas. There’s a truth buried in that old “series of tubes” joke as well, I think.

you /can’t/ change anyone’s mind; you can only show them things to think about (Adult) and help them realise how they feel (Parent/Child)…

I’ve heard it said that, really, the teacher has nothing to give, and the student nothing to take. “Selling water by the riverside…”