Comments on: Gurdjieff and Technology

By: speedbird

speedbird — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:39:19 +0000

The only worthwhile point to recreating reality is to understand it better, and by understanding, to appreciate it better.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 18:16:23 +0000

Heh, clip art. That’s an awesome stand in for a faked version of real experience.

Here’s something I ran across recently that just made me think, “why bother?”:
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/tangible-hologram-projector/

Yeah, they can make you feel virtual rain drops on your skin. I look outside when it’s raining, even just a slight mist, and everyone’s got umbrellas. What’s the point of re-creating reality? Recreational usage only…

If its programmable, it’s controllable. If it’s controllable, it’s predictable. Reality, in the end, is not. We need to remember that.

By: speedbird

speedbird — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 07:59:09 +0000

Hey, trust Ran Prieur to pull one out of the bag:

‘technologies that expand our range of real experience are being abandoned, while “progress” gives us better artificial experiences. I find that troubling.’

That’s the thing, right there. Information is the content that swamps any experience of /pattern/. Everything’s turning into frakkin’ clip-art.

By: speedbird

speedbird — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:45:52 +0000

> the human nervous system does a damn fine job of this on it’s own.

If you let it. Yes, these sound like wise (and calming) words.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:13:22 +0000

Yeah, you’re right about the need for sense. Perfect historical records won’t really make much of a difference as far as the alleviating the need for sense, but they would give us a richer source from which ti draw that sense. I don’t know though, after some experiences I had last week, I think the human nervous system does a damn fine job of this on it’s own. Spend enough time sitting still in silence and everything you don’t want to admit you need to know will come bubbling right up…

As for the tiger picture, yeah, I was sort of told up front. Can’t remember where specifically, but I knew. That’s what I like about it so much, the jungle beast cowering in fear of nature. Really breaks up our prejudices of “man vs nature”…

By: speedbird

speedbird — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:19:19 +0000

“… to consider past knowledge as something that does not need to be learned because “someone else knows it already, why bother?” will only lead to more and more ignorance as time goes on.”

Well phrased, better than I could have put it. I’m beginning to think that this tendency is the cardinal sin of the age. My boss has it *bad*. And the higher up the greasy pole I look, the more I see it.

“If we ever are able to have a complete visual and audio record of everything that happens to us, as well as a way of adding our own comments to these records when desired, then we have essentially solved the problem of lack of a true objective historical context for any record.”

Er… hang on a mo! This feels like a MASSIVE monkey trap about to open up.

Surely once that occurs then the dominance of the first evil becomes absolute and irrevocable! “Someone else knows it already, why bother?”

I’m beginning to think that the process of history *requires* revision and re-invention to have any meaning at all. Knowledge is a process. Even if we have perfect historical records, they don’t immediately make /sense/. Sense has to be made of them, and that’s the process of history, *the maintenance of sense*. The temptation of total information is the end of history and the end of meaning.

In school history class our teacher would bring in an object (say a picture) from a particular time and the game was very simple: ‘what’s going on there then?’ And I tell you this: it’s a bloody hard game at age 15. It’s like you’re using parts of your brain you didn’t even know you had. We underestimate this skill at our peril.

Actually that Tyger painting is a good example. If you’re not told upfront, how long do you think it takes to work out the source of illumination in the image?