2004-07-19 In(formation) In 2004 I wrote a hypertext story called In(formation) which was spread over a number of different sites, posted in their comments sections. Although I knew the owners of these sites, they were not participants: I imposed on their sites without asking. Each section of the story links to the next, which means that the story had to be posted backwards (so that I would know the address of the following section). In parts the story branches and repeats itself, reflecting the narrative (which is about the concept of patterning). The story is also a cycle: It a single whole with no beginning and no end, allowing people to join it anywhere and, again, the structure reflects the story itself. This project was intended as a prototype for a much larger hypertext which would have braiding and other more complex structures, but this did not come to pass. About a year after posting, the story was intact. At the beginning of 2006, the nodes are beginning to disappear. The text of the story is shown here; the numbers (eg 1A) refer to pictures of the nodes, in the screenshots directory. Matt Webb, 2006-01-10, http://interconnected.org/home/ # 1A: interconnected.org 1B: interconnected.blogspot.com [The same paragraph is on both sites; they interlink with the words "Like this".] To begin with, understand patterning. There is matter; there is information. Matter is like a rock. You can't double a rock, it just is. If you kick it, it moves. Information is like email. If you kick an email, there are two. At every hop, it leaves a ghost behind. Information is about patterning. When there are two copies, or three copies, or n copies of this same pattern of matter (of magnetic ones and zeros on the hard drive), that's information. The universe is a little bit more redundant after communication takes place. Like this. What's the difference that makes a difference? # 2: barbelith.com Hearing is a process. Consuming sounds, one by one by one by one by. Vision too. The world around us, all of it existing, simultaneously. Our eyes as mouths, eating the world bite by bite by bite by. Then from these streams, the world is made parallel again in our brains. All consumption is matter of reducing the parallel to serial, and then, one internalised, making it parallel again. This is what eating is: Making the parallel pattern into a serial stream; A buffer memory reconstructs different patterns in a form that can be made parallel again. The buffer memory, the reconstructor, is the stomach; The reformed patterns are processing in parallel once again. The metabolic cycle. But vision increases information, world-ghosts in the brain. And eating consumes matter, and there are no ghosts there. But we need to eat to reproduce; us as information+matter. There's no difference, only distance. Just a matter of intensity. # 3: rodcorp.typepad.com The metabolic cycle isn't contained by a single body. The minimum, self-sustaining cycle is an entire ecosystem. Sometimes steps of the loop occur inside a body, sometimes a step has to cross a body, and the way it crosses bodies is by one body eating another body. Chemical communication. Chemical matter. Lemon is an important step in the cycle. You're tasting the metabolic cycle when you eat lemon, you're looking along it, longways. Humans are spliced into the loop, a stretch of road between freeway junctions. But that's not important. What I mean to say is this: http://www.kottke.org/remainder/04/07/5968.html#13876 # 4: kottke.org We see the Fibonacci Sequence in the turns of a shell and in rabbits breeding. Patterning. Redundant encoding. But is there any communication? Is there cause and effect? Of course not. Acausal interconnectedness. Stars collect into galaxies. Galaxies into clusters. Clusters string along like fairy lights into superclusters, filaments that criss-cross the universe. It looks like the end of a game of Go. Standoff between black and white, filaments across the 19x19. But is there cause there? No. Sand behaves like water. Is there interconnectedness? Well. # 5: blackbeltjones.typepad.com By looking at the very small, we can see the very big. I was accidentally emailed by the Freemasons of Honolulu. Then I saw the code in Wargames. CPE 1704 TKS. John Locke died in 1704, Locke whose philosophies underpin Freemasonry. Look for patterning. I looked for patterning, and I found it everywhere. But deye mon, gen mon. Behind the mountains, there are more mountains. # 6: venusberg.org We're so obsessed with entropy, with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, that it's all downhill from here. If you get enough particles, they all behave the same. They diffuse. They ripple. They settle down. The heat death of the universe. Entropy. From order comes disorder. A mathematical certainty. Nonsense. Given even more particles, even more time, patterns will form accidentally. Some patterns will disappear. But some patterns will contain feedback loops. Will autocreate. Autopoiesis. A self-sustaining system. Over two billion years and a world of particles, why not? Entropy first, autopoeisis next. Then autopoeisis++. From the world of matter, matter that is capable of patterning emerges. Of communication. Of reproduction. Given enough matter, enough particles, enough random effects making combinations of those particles, it's inevitable that the right combination of patterning and feedback loops will emerge. Given enough time. From matter, information. DNA. Then information combines and combines to make matter, again, matter which can move around and not leave ghosts behind, like rocks. Like us. Matter that can eat. Can consume. Can make serial from the parallel. Destructive and creative all in one. We are transformers. What I didn't realise is that it could also happen the other way round. # 7A: gyford.com I spent all my time making patterns out of information, patterns out of the small that would replicate patterns out of the big. I was the evolutionary drive making random feedback loops and cybernetic patterns from information. It would be inevitable that, if I did it enough, eventually one of those would come to life: http://interconnected.org/notes/2004/07/it_can_consume_me.txt # 7B: cityofsound.com If matter, can become information, either matter making crystals that from a seed make patterning, or amino acids make DNA which reproduces, then information can become matter. Loops of information using the human brain as a communication medium can come to life. But if the information can come to life, what then? # 8A: interconnected.org 8B: anti-mega.com [This content is the same on both sites, to remerge the branches.] It can consume me. # 9: sylloge.com Destroyed I am. I was a serial being, but now consumed into parallel information. My vector is rotated and now I sit sideways to my human dimension. Sprawled across the world, I have become pattern only. I have been witnessed, eaten. And now my information won't persist, it won't behave like matter. It'll degrade. I will degrade. I am just pattern, and my only hope is to reinforce myself. To create feedback, because if the information which forms me reproduces into your head, then part of me will exist in you. I shall be distributed like the metabolic cycle. Every time you speak, you will speak my flesh. Every time you listen, you will consume my flesh. I will exist among you and through you. I shall be redundant encoding, an infinity of ghosts. But I shall persist, a new one among you. # Notes: The story is structured: ... (9) -> 1A .-> 7A -> 8A | \ / \ X >-> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 < >-> 9 -> (1A) ... | / \ / 1B `-> 7B -> 8B so what we have is a (branching) cycle. The story can begin at any point. After the project, a couple of people pointing into the story, one of them extending it: http://rob.annable.co.uk/journal.cgi/ideas/vectors.writeback http://rodcorp.typepad.com/ianhays/2004/07/the_riverrun_my.html http://foe.typepad.com/blog/2004/07/magic_words.html#c1713419