[NetBehaviour] New spinning pool method

Tue Jan 12 17:25:43 CET 2021

Hi Simon,

I'm less informed than most on big data regulatory options, but big-picture I see two main issues: a lingering "robber baron" phase and a public health crisis.  The former is typical for core-type industries like oil, railroads, steel, lumber, etc. when they first appear, and now we are well into the data version.  The latter goes beyond Covid-19 to climate change, social breakdown, mass extinctions, and the like.

Terrible solutions to both of these are just as possible as excellent ones and probably more so.  I cannot predict if humanity will get an A or an F on the test.  So far I think we are a C, at say the middle of the term.  The 2020's will determine a lot I think.

In politics I tend to side with Shelley, who said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.  I agree in the sense that what we each do artistically forms who we are, and who we are is the strongest force in politics.  A poet is just someone who actively tries their best to live up to their aesthetic potential, and fosters the same in others, so in this sense everyone is a poet or can be.  I also believe that meditation, or states of waking rest, are fundamental to both aesthetic experience and brain health; hence whether large numbers of people learn to meditate and actually do it will affect political stability.  Going for a walk or picking apples can count as meditation, absolutely.

The robber baron phase will definitely be re-examined in light of Covid-19 and the US insurrection.  I don't know if creating 5 Twitters will be the path or not.  To me, these platforms should be more evanescent.  After all, the name "twitter" was borrowed from Keats' "To Autumn" -- "and gathering swallows twitter in the skies" (witness their logo) -- which is an emblem of passing away.  There could be a new short-message-sharing platform called, say, "Adonais," as a riposte to Twitter, which focuses on health.  I don't know how it would work at all so it's just a thought experiment.  There could also be something like a change of heart among users and society at large about what is acceptable, leading to self-restraint and perhaps some basic safeguards (call it Twitter with seatbelts).

Interestingly, robber baron phases usually occur after a government builds a major infrastructure (like railroads, shipping, oil, or the internet).  The massive R&D for the internet was too much for any company to invest in, but once the govt built it the barons were set free.  We are now in a period where the barons who benefitted so much from the publicly-funded internet are rabidly against any regulation of their activity, much less any government role in funding the next big infrastructure (the Green).  This needs to change, and it well may.  The pressure to improve things is high so various sides may choose to cooperate.

Perhaps that comes down to economic health.  Progressives in the early 20th c. saw that the brutal working conditions were harming the nation, that the profits had a health cost.  The medical health side is another huge factor.  It could well be that digital media have taken on a highly profitable but toxic form somewhat like the tobacco industry once had.  There could be a combination of disclaimers, taxation, regulation, lawsuits, and simple public disapproval to curtail the toxic product.  I'm not sure.  A lot will come down to individual choices, circumstance, and frankly luck.

Regarding human health, I see two interesting technological developments: one is brain imaging, and the other is CRISPR.  They are now able to "dye" the neurons in a worm's brain so as to envisage all that goes on, much like a painting or moving image.  Maybe this will help humanity understand what we are doing to our brains, and each other's brains, from a health standpoint.  There's an artistic side to interpreting and acting on these brain images in which artists and poets may have a role to play; and perhaps the brain imaging will help to clarify what artists already know.  CRISPR is a bit darker I think; more like eugenics and thus more potentially destructive.  Neither brain imaging nor CRISPR are going away.

Much will depend on whether humanity is controlled by its fears, or able to face and transcend them.  Either can happen.  Leonardo knew this, I think, and wrote "Fear arises sooner than anything else."  This is factual neuroscience.  Learning pathways in advance, prior to stressors, that allow us to react without fear is what Leonardo tried to promote I think.  (In fact, I believe he foresaw much of our current dilemma and tried to speak to it as plainly as he could.)  Many others have done so as well, and many are doing so today, so I tend to agree with another statement by Leonardo "One's thoughts turn toward Hope."

Best regards,

Max

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-scientists-multi-color-atlas-brain.html

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02765-9

________________________________
From: Simon Mclennan <mclennanfilm at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2021 7:14 AM
To: Max Herman <maxnmherman at hotmail.com>
Cc: netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] New spinning pool method

Thanks Max! I
Love ‘..knits up the ravelled sleeve of care’
With regard to your thoughts
On social media in an earlier
Post, I think there needs to
Be some in-depth discussion
Right across the board and
Probably some serious curtailing of the big corps’
Power and do they need to
Be broken up? The stuff
Of dreams I suspect.
The advent of the factory
Has led us here to this
Big world factory.
Craft was better?
Factory farmed populations
Now.
Pre-agrarian daydreams.

Ha ha I waffle

Best,

Simon

Sent from my spyphone

On 11 Jan 2021, at 18:35, Max Herman <maxnmherman at hotmail.com<mailto:maxnmherman at hotmail.com>> wrote:

There is a greatly cheering quality to this Simon, especially in the list toward the end somehow which reminded me of the second of the below quotes from Leonardo, but the first (adjacent on Wikiquote) is also apropos:

"The knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind."

"To lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from God's grace; and Truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble."

I found this by searching for "noble" on the wikiquote page with ctrl+F, to find the second half of the second half of the sentence, but the first half reminded me of Macbeth which I re-read last night:

"Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep, -- the innocent sleep;
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast."

________________________________
From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org>> on behalf of Simon Mclennan via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>>
Sent: Monday, January 11, 2021 4:45 AM
To: netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>>
Cc: Simon Mclennan <mclennanfilm at gmail.com<mailto:mclennanfilm at gmail.com>>
Subject: [NetBehaviour] New spinning pool method

Illustration of form https://www.instagram.com/p/CJ4mWIKHebf/?igshid=1b0ew40ffgelc

The method of propulsion on this ‘sloop’ job was a small pool
On board
They clambered into the pool
Three oarsmen used paddles to swirl the water around them
Creating a vortex.
As they spun faster and faster
A ripple in the fabric of the day
Began to form and
The oarsmen would need to
Pinpoint the exact moment
They needed to stop paddling at which time they would
Throw down the paddles
And leap overboard as
The vortex accelerated
At the tremendous rate.
Suddenly the whole sloop would rise up to a height
Of about twenty odd feet
Then plunge back to Earth
And create a great racket
And a big mess but then if
All went according to
Plan L and B would find
Themselves in a different
Time stream.
Hopefully in The Palaeolithic
Early part around two million years
Ago.
Temperate zone of valleys
Forests of northern African continent.
Tricky to get back... without
The big oarsmen..
But they’d have to think
About it meanwhile have
A campfire and pick some
Fruit and have a natter.. carry
On the conversation they were having
About the big chalk drawings
Of closed systems
They were planning
Sketches of moths
Types of echo
Best and favourite harmonies ie a third fifth seventh plus extensions built on a flattened
Fifth that created a binary tension
Consisting of a yearning
And a beautiful release
At the same time
Plus just a good old
1 4 5 cycle
Like the Cuban stuff
The Kinshasa sound
And the hornpipe
>From Canadian wharves
The trance of it
The reference in the words
To small roads in Liverpool
Or Manchester
>From trips up the canal
Early pale shadows
Of tall chimneys
Fat gasometers
Outside towns
Conurbation
Dinner dance
Chicken
With white sauce
Wings of falcon
Badly tuned radio
Scraping itching ear drums
Night driving
Hair oil
Hairspray
Wax crayon

And all that stuff

Like Notty Ash

Picking apples is a good idea
As an alternative to tiny digital endorphin hit! Ha

Best wishes in these weird times,

Simon In Brighton

Sent from my spyphone
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