2004-11-14 canals pervasive computing following ethical rules mobile phone form factor zoos, botony mud balls process design algorithmic walks # process for everyday life # mike saw "crude stuffed animal made out of real fur, left on the street" i wonder whether it was stuffed with meat. localised etherpeg from phones a thing which illuminates things which only perform as hinges smooth -> striated -> building -> architecture collection -> relatedness + valence -> ? -> ? # canals in amsterdam are literally canalisation, wormholes. circuits are really important. there are circuits through the city, the self-reinforcing circuits. they are the attractor, the path. and there are many circuits, but not millions, there are typologies. # adam: stewart brand's diagram of different speeds is very influential on all of us. [i don't really like that diagram. the solid things in the world short-circuit the layers, pinning commerce [agriculture and the defense of that] to human nature [relationships, genetics] in order to make something really solid: the stone tombs of norwich.] # so far politics has been a matter of building two solid towers and it's seeing who can build taller. but now the web is a very oral place, despite its apparent permanence, and politics has become a matter of defending on a 1000 different fronts, and you have to either iterate/defend/restate the idea, or cede the position (not a matter of losing, just a matter of letting go). like bao, not like go. # 2004-11-14 Design Engaged, recommended books 3 books: considered: hoffmeyer jj gibson, an ecological approach to visual perception gregory bateson, steps to an ecology of mind recommended: cloud atlas, david mitchell How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics by N. Katherine Hayles le guin, always coming home