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Before You Vote: 20 Questions for Day One

Published April 5, 2008 by cgerrish

The question of readiness attaches to the candidates. But who can really say they’re ready for the unexpected? Having seen the unexpected many times before, I still don’t expect it the next time it occurs. But I know the unexpected when I see it because it’s the thing I didn’t anticipate. It’s life. Who among us can say we are ready for life?

In making a sound judgment with regard to our candidates, perhaps there are other questions we should take with us into the voting booth:

Which candidate will be ready on day one?

Which candidate will be sharp as a knife on day one?

Which candidate will be greeted as a liberator on day one?

Which candidate will be both of our time, and outside of time, on day one?

Which candidate will take ‘the things you care about’ off the table on day one?

Which candidate will put the network into the white space of your favorite TV show on day one

Which candidate will be able to lay off the high fast ball on day one?

Which candidate will still hear the rustling of the leaves on day one?

Which candidate would feel a rapture filled with malice on day one?

Which candidate will write a letter from a Birmingham jail on day one?

Which candidate will appeal to our better angels on day one?

Which candidate will lose the game of actual ping pong of the abyss on day one?

Which candidate is ready to be a “free spirited wanderer” on day one?

Which candidate will know how to take the bus to work on day one?

Which candidate will dare to eat lobster without a bib on day one?

Which candidate will still know the heart of the electorate on day one?

Which candidate will keen like Lady Macbeth on day one? (Run spot run)

Which candidate could hit a curveball on day one?

Which candidate will look good in a hat on day one?

Which candidate will take a little piece of my heart on day one? Which will break it?

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The Politics of Technology: The Technology of Politics

Published April 4, 2008 by cgerrish

Woodstock

The network can’t congregate in a single physical location. Compare and contrast to Woodstock, or the gatherings of the 60s. It’s a limit of the current 802.11 wireless network technology. Perhaps no one anticipated that everyone would be able to and want to connect. And many people want to connect both with their laptops and their phones.

Given the current models, the physics of the event dictate that as the particles converge on a location, the network pipes clog to the point of stillness. The mass of people can talk to each other, but they can’t broadcast to the network.

Live blogging and Twitter have moved beyond the technology conference into both our politics and our lives. The Democratic Convention in Denver will feature a blogger assigned to each of the delegations. As we attempt to broadcast our politics into the network, in the interest of full and open disclosure, we’ll find we occupy a black hole. The density of the particles will prevent any light from escaping.

Of course, we’ll find a way to get reports out. Twitter, with its minimal requirements and multiple network paths, may be the most usable live reporting tool. The pulse of our politics could be largely expressed in bursts of 140 character SMS messages.

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Rhizomatic strategies: MSFT, Silverlight, the Link, the Fragment

Published April 3, 2008 by cgerrish

Gilles Deleuze

The giants, finding the limitations of growing to be the tallest tree, have started to look for other modes of expansion. Even the tallest tree can’t encompass the world.

Arborescent: growth by extension of mass and branching.

Rhizomatic: growth by linking and become part of the other.

From the definition on Wikipedia: “A rhizome works with horizontal and trans-species connections, while an arborescent model works with vertical and linear connections.” For near monopolies like Microsoft, companies that seemed to have the whole thing within reach, a new model of dominance has emerged. Google set the pattern, search is in the middle of everything.

The myth of the totalizing whole has been exposed. Not only is it not possible, it’s not desirable. For Microsoft to operate in the new order of things, they must accept a mixed operating environment. Rather than swallowing Yahoo whole, they must link to it and put themselves inside Yahoo as a fragment. Silverlight is the path toward that future because it doesn’t need to play Microsoft’s traditional zero-sum game. It can link to, and become part of, the other. The goal is to be the dominant fragment, the most aggressive weed in the garden.

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A Recording Organism contra The Figure Signaling Through the Flames

Published April 2, 2008 by cgerrish

Antonin Artaud

When we look to the new, the thing that really connects: it’s technology like a punch in the face, a figure signaling through the flames. It’s not the code, it’s the hunger, the blood, the bone and muscle. It’s the electricity that connects one human soul to another. And it’s the connectors that allow that surge of power to flow freely from one node to the next in the network.

Fragments from the introduction to Theater and its Double by Antonin Artaud:

“What is more important, it seems to me, is not so much to defend culture whose existence has never kept a man from going hungry, as to extract, from what is called culture, ideas whose compelling force is identical with that of hunger.”

“If confusion is the sign of the times, I see at the root of this confusion a rupture between things and words, between things and the ideas and signs that are their representation.”

“A protest against the idea of culture as distinct from life–as if there were culture on one side and life on the other, as if true culture were not a refined means of understanding and exercising life.”

“We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it in to being. and everything that has not yet been born can still be brought to life if we are not satisfied to remain mere recording organisms.”

“Furthermore, when we speak the word life, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from the surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach, and if there is one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.”

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