Order without authority.
Is that a paradox? A teasing question.
FLEX offered to gather and make available voluntary information on the society's resources. That's an order. But it didn't tell anybody what they must then do with it. That's non-authoritarian.
Thirty-five years after vainly offering this service I'm still tickled by the contrast between the anarchist nature of FLEX and the autocratic rigidity necessary for its administration. The director must cleave to the ideal: entirely undemocratically; but then the public could use it however they wished.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Order
Order: that's what we have (with or without civilization).
Authority: that's what we also have (under ciilization become kleptocracy).
That's what I'm for!
Authority: that's what we also have (under ciilization become kleptocracy).
Order
without
Authority
That's what I'm for!
Monday, May 23, 2005
Public Coordinations
By now everyone knows how General Motors made sure that good public transportation would never materialize in any foreseeable, practical future. For the city developing fastest in the early 20th Century, Los Angeles, the city that needed current sensible design the most, GM bought up huge lots of key land. The corporation could bring its full power to resist any claims of eminent domain. By comparison, seeding DC with lobbyists to talk down efficiency and public interests was chicken feed.
Still had the public any mind in its own interests, GM and DC could have been gotten around, if not defeated.
How about TV? How come the public didn't march on DC to demand that TV be paid for by those interested in watching TV? A paying audience has a big say, even if it's an indirect say, a delayed say, in what it's fed. Coke was a nickel. Pay a nickel for a Coke, send a nickel to the network: I want Shakespeare! I want Dickens! I want naked girls! Coke would still be a nickel, and for a dime we'd have a Coke, and with it, Shakespeare, Dickens, naked girls ... And no commercials! (Look at the price of Coke now! And look at all the commercials!)
Did the networks seed DC with lobbyists? Notice how it's escalated. Ad allotments encroach further and further into the entertainment. (pk has elsewhere commented on how the "entertainment" is itself largely advertising: for the network, for the culture, for the nation ...) I know of no Spooners or Thoreaus or pks running around agitating for politically free TV ("free" meaning you pay for it, pay for what you want) while the networks were sinking their tap roots deep into the economy; but that doesn't mean there weren't a dozen of them: the dominants control the lighting – and otherwise, shadow is our natural condition.
My life in the early 1970s was devoted to offering the public a cheap, government-free internet. Since 1995 my life has been devoted to broadcasting the public's many missed opportunities: none more important that the public remaining asleep until the Pentagon, a few universities, and CERN foisted an expensive internet on us instead. Don't get me wrong: the internet on which you read this is certainly better than none; but it's a far cry short of what nearly all ignored in 1970, 1971, 1972 ... (I know that I'm a pariah, I can't know, I don't know that anyone can know, quite how many actual sabotages were involved: plain inertia can explain most if not all of it.)
Perhaps in seventy years everyone will know how pk and his cheap, free internet were sabotaged.
Hey, that would mean that we're very lucky! That there would actually be people in seventy years to believe anything: anything at all!
(Jared Diamond sees cultures like the United States lasting that long and longer: and he's studied it closely. And he's smart as hell. Still, I'm not so sure.) (Partly a Christian hangover, partly hope.) (A desire for revenge.)
Still had the public any mind in its own interests, GM and DC could have been gotten around, if not defeated.
How about TV? How come the public didn't march on DC to demand that TV be paid for by those interested in watching TV? A paying audience has a big say, even if it's an indirect say, a delayed say, in what it's fed. Coke was a nickel. Pay a nickel for a Coke, send a nickel to the network: I want Shakespeare! I want Dickens! I want naked girls! Coke would still be a nickel, and for a dime we'd have a Coke, and with it, Shakespeare, Dickens, naked girls ... And no commercials! (Look at the price of Coke now! And look at all the commercials!)
Did the networks seed DC with lobbyists? Notice how it's escalated. Ad allotments encroach further and further into the entertainment. (pk has elsewhere commented on how the "entertainment" is itself largely advertising: for the network, for the culture, for the nation ...) I know of no Spooners or Thoreaus or pks running around agitating for politically free TV ("free" meaning you pay for it, pay for what you want) while the networks were sinking their tap roots deep into the economy; but that doesn't mean there weren't a dozen of them: the dominants control the lighting – and otherwise, shadow is our natural condition.
My life in the early 1970s was devoted to offering the public a cheap, government-free internet. Since 1995 my life has been devoted to broadcasting the public's many missed opportunities: none more important that the public remaining asleep until the Pentagon, a few universities, and CERN foisted an expensive internet on us instead. Don't get me wrong: the internet on which you read this is certainly better than none; but it's a far cry short of what nearly all ignored in 1970, 1971, 1972 ... (I know that I'm a pariah, I can't know, I don't know that anyone can know, quite how many actual sabotages were involved: plain inertia can explain most if not all of it.)
Perhaps in seventy years everyone will know how pk and his cheap, free internet were sabotaged.
Hey, that would mean that we're very lucky! That there would actually be people in seventy years to believe anything: anything at all!
(Jared Diamond sees cultures like the United States lasting that long and longer: and he's studied it closely. And he's smart as hell. Still, I'm not so sure.) (Partly a Christian hangover, partly hope.) (A desire for revenge.)
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Experience versus Theater
I want to establish two basic pictures, then overlap them, jiggle them, get new patterns.
Bees spend most of their time in the hive: a bee-made environment. Honey bees are social creatures. The busiest worker, the farthest ranging forager, still spends a great deal of time lounging around the hive, while other workers work. One-third of the time the forager ranges the hive's environment; two-thirds of the time the bee is surrounded by BeeCity. Wolf pups spend their most helpless days in the den: a natural environment modified by mother wolf: at least to the extent of her warmth, her fur, her tits ... her licking up their crap after them. But the pack of wolves work much of the whole of their land environment. They may tred lanes but they don't pave highways, erect structures, legislate laws. New paths are seldom trod: and when they are, they'r'e cut by the alpha wolf: alone. Man as a baby lives in a totally artificial environment: and as an adult worker still encounters only managed environments. "Reality" for TV means a carefully managed cast wearing scripted costumes on some "island": surrounded by producers, directors, coaches ... cameras ...
The alpha buck may blaze a new trail; some young buck who hasn't won a confrontation yet may go off into the woods all withershis; the tenured professor 99% of the time covers ground already well mapped, and generally by others.
Even our language, though it resists management, is perpetually tampered at. (I just wrote a piece for example on societies, with political motivation, forever recasting the meaning of
murder.)
That's one picture, sketched briefly. The other is that any thing, any institution for example, is potentially ambiguous. That is, a school may be used to train engineers, as well as possible, as fast as possible; or a school, even the same school, may be used prevent learning, to govern and stunt it. If the student is doing math twelve hours a day, then the student is not likely to be also reading Wittgenstein, or writing manifestos. The society may send a young man to West Point hoping for a follower who can also lead, technically proficient at war, to be put in harm's way; or, if Eisenhower's White House hears of imminent attack, grandson David could be sent to West Point to keep him out of harm's way.
We live not on earth but in a world, a social artifact. The Jew who resides at 112 West 112th Street, apartment 3A, does not live in the same world as the Baptist who resides at 112 West 112th Street, apartment 3B. The kid who goes to Friends Academy does not learn of the same world as the kid who attends PS 189. The guy who digs ditches for a living does not work in the same world as David at West Point.
And our managed environments are managed for shifting agendas in a society of ever-shifting powers. One senator is committed to oil: finding it any where, any way; another is committed is keeping water for the cattlemen; down the hall is a senator committed to getting water for the sheep herders. All the talk is of the people ... whatever the hell that means. One upon a time all the talk was about God, or about the Church. Before that, all the talk was about rain magic.
Eden is not Nature; though Eden is palmed on us as though it were nature. This and that world is palmed on us as though it were the earth. This and that culture palms itself onto its (not typically voluntary) members as though it were life. Man is a subset of life, one of many. Confusion however is to the advantage of the managers.I joined the navy to see the world
And what did I see? I saw the sea. That was a funny gag in 1946. Though as we grow up and die off, fewer and fewer people will remember what the song was about. Navy recruiters advertised See the world. Hell, people had come home from WWI and they had seen Gay Paree.I pause to interject a Tolstoyism. Few people, including the educated, have a clue what their motives are: until they read about them in the paper, or are told by some priest, or some Freudian. After the priest, you can say, "The devil made me do it." After the Freudian, you can say, "I couldn't help myself."
In all cases, our managers, would-be and actual, want us all to be in the same story.
Any of these points can be expanded indefinitely. I intend to expand some. But I quote the post-war musical to bring the concept of synecdoche into our weave. Synecdoche is the figure by which we say Behold a sail when we mean Look at the boat. We symbolize a whole by a part. As I have argued nature was already using synecdoche when it programmed caterpillars to climb toward the light in order to find food. Leaves are not a part of light, but they are generally found, by caterpillars, in the direction of light. The association has worked, keeping caterpillars alive, for many a year. And, you see, my point is that cultures also use synecdoches, associations: sometimes to enlighten; more often to confuse.
I'll go on about schools when I return.
Bees spend most of their time in the hive: a bee-made environment. Honey bees are social creatures. The busiest worker, the farthest ranging forager, still spends a great deal of time lounging around the hive, while other workers work. One-third of the time the forager ranges the hive's environment; two-thirds of the time the bee is surrounded by BeeCity. Wolf pups spend their most helpless days in the den: a natural environment modified by mother wolf: at least to the extent of her warmth, her fur, her tits ... her licking up their crap after them. But the pack of wolves work much of the whole of their land environment. They may tred lanes but they don't pave highways, erect structures, legislate laws. New paths are seldom trod: and when they are, they'r'e cut by the alpha wolf: alone. Man as a baby lives in a totally artificial environment: and as an adult worker still encounters only managed environments. "Reality" for TV means a carefully managed cast wearing scripted costumes on some "island": surrounded by producers, directors, coaches ... cameras ...
The alpha buck may blaze a new trail; some young buck who hasn't won a confrontation yet may go off into the woods all withershis; the tenured professor 99% of the time covers ground already well mapped, and generally by others.
Even our language, though it resists management, is perpetually tampered at. (I just wrote a piece for example on societies, with political motivation, forever recasting the meaning of
murder.)
That's one picture, sketched briefly. The other is that any thing, any institution for example, is potentially ambiguous. That is, a school may be used to train engineers, as well as possible, as fast as possible; or a school, even the same school, may be used prevent learning, to govern and stunt it. If the student is doing math twelve hours a day, then the student is not likely to be also reading Wittgenstein, or writing manifestos. The society may send a young man to West Point hoping for a follower who can also lead, technically proficient at war, to be put in harm's way; or, if Eisenhower's White House hears of imminent attack, grandson David could be sent to West Point to keep him out of harm's way.
We live not on earth but in a world, a social artifact. The Jew who resides at 112 West 112th Street, apartment 3A, does not live in the same world as the Baptist who resides at 112 West 112th Street, apartment 3B. The kid who goes to Friends Academy does not learn of the same world as the kid who attends PS 189. The guy who digs ditches for a living does not work in the same world as David at West Point.
And our managed environments are managed for shifting agendas in a society of ever-shifting powers. One senator is committed to oil: finding it any where, any way; another is committed is keeping water for the cattlemen; down the hall is a senator committed to getting water for the sheep herders. All the talk is of the people ... whatever the hell that means. One upon a time all the talk was about God, or about the Church. Before that, all the talk was about rain magic.
Eden is not Nature; though Eden is palmed on us as though it were nature. This and that world is palmed on us as though it were the earth. This and that culture palms itself onto its (not typically voluntary) members as though it were life. Man is a subset of life, one of many. Confusion however is to the advantage of the managers.
And what did I see? I saw the sea.
In all cases, our managers, would-be and actual, want us all to be in the same story.
I'll go on about schools when I return.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Medium : Message
The medium is the message. That's what Marshall McLuhan said in the 1960s. Of course he was already a smart dude, but it was in the '60s that more of us noticed.
That is, at least, more of us noticed that he had become famous. How many people who can say his name can then also give an intelligible account of two or three of the many smart things he said? Take that title statement for example: what does it mean?
I vote that ivan Illich was one person who got at least part of it. Around 1970 he applied the McLuhan principle to schooling: what is the fundamental lesson of schooling? (of modern schools, of state-coordinated, compulsory (ahem) education? Simple: that you have to be there!inserted: doesn't quite scan with what follows, but this is a first draft, complexifying into a second.
That is in perfect keeping with the fundamental message of a government: monopoly! this is your government, you have no other. Preferences are treason. Has there ever been a society that allowed a choice of governments?
Has there ever been a society that allowed a choice of cultures? (Long before the stork is summoned, could there be a way station in heaven where the incipient soul is asked if it prefers to be a headhunter or a cannibal? a Christian or a Jew? a Communist or a Capitalist?) What's the basic message of society? Whoa! Society is complexity personified: surely it betrays a host of fundamental messages. Indeed I bet that the bulk of them are contradictory! Still I'll pick one: a few judge the behavior of many.
Thus, schools will tend to be a distillation of the society displaying the school: a committee gangs up on the larger public. In some cases, in graduate oral examination, for example, the committee gangs up on an individual. The medium is the message: beyond this committee, there is no appeal. The decision of the judges is final.
That's the fundamental message of the Supreme Court as well, isn't it? What else does "supreme" mean? There's no god here, folks. We (the secular) are supreme.
Now in theism, it's God who's supreme. The decision of God is final. This is the final analysis.
But in time, nothing is final: time keeps ticking!
Science trumps God by not being final!
Wait for more evidence. Wait forever.
That's just a start. Not that I haven't said each part before. Maybe I've even coordinated them. But not quite this way.
That is, at least, more of us noticed that he had become famous. How many people who can say his name can then also give an intelligible account of two or three of the many smart things he said? Take that title statement for example: what does it mean?
I vote that ivan Illich was one person who got at least part of it. Around 1970 he applied the McLuhan principle to schooling: what is the fundamental lesson of schooling? (of modern schools, of state-coordinated, compulsory (ahem) education? Simple: that you have to be there!
That is in perfect keeping with the fundamental message of a government: monopoly! this is your government, you have no other. Preferences are treason. Has there ever been a society that allowed a choice of governments?
Has there ever been a society that allowed a choice of cultures? (Long before the stork is summoned, could there be a way station in heaven where the incipient soul is asked if it prefers to be a headhunter or a cannibal? a Christian or a Jew? a Communist or a Capitalist?)
Thus, schools will tend to be a distillation of the society displaying the school: a committee gangs up on the larger public. In some cases, in graduate oral examination, for example, the committee gangs up on an individual. The medium is the message: beyond this committee, there is no appeal. The decision of the judges is final.
That's the fundamental message of the Supreme Court as well, isn't it? What else does "supreme" mean? There's no god here, folks. We (the secular) are supreme.
Now in theism, it's God who's supreme. The decision of God is final. This is the final analysis.
But in time, nothing is final: time keeps ticking!
Science trumps God by not being final!
Wait for more evidence. Wait forever.
That's just a start. Not that I haven't said each part before. Maybe I've even coordinated them. But not quite this way.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Macro Differences
Any society preserves some records. Once the preservation was oral, now preservation comes in a range of media, including digital, including web archives. But the ideal of pk's Free Learning Exchange is still nowhere near being met.
George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman imagined heaven as a state of being stripped of illusions: not a nice place at all. In hell things were as you wished them to be; in heaven things were as they were. Imagine Judgment Day as an event where man presents his version(s) of things: then God puts a chill on it by telling the truth.
In society we can read the Times's list of best sellers. We can buy, we can even read, the best sellers. Annually we can read the Times's announcement of the issuing of Nobel Prizes. We can read about Pulitzer Prizes. We can follow the Academy Awards. Much will be on TV. After the Awards we can anticipate reruns of some winners at local theaters.
Had pk's FLEX (Free Learning EXchange) been supported, had it been cloned into every community, had the communities cooperated in being coordinated, anyone, anywhere, anytime, could have also looked up books that didn't get a Pulitzer, movies that didn't win an Oscar ... Provided that the authors submitted them, you could have looked up digital transforms of manuscripts that didn't get published, scripts that never found a sponsor, patent applications that weren't granted ...
You can go to an old university and read theses going back centuries. At FLEX you could research those (if submitted) and (if submitted) papers that didn't earn a Ph.D., papers that were rejected. What about what the kid tried to say to the teacher but was prevented? Yes, if the kid writes it out and submits it.
What if the kid was lying? What if the kid writes it out badly? That's tough: raw data is the game.
What about God and his chilling voice of truth? Ah, with Flex anyone and everyone could try his own hand at judgment. 24/7.
Chaos? or revelation? That would depend on the judgments.I expect that some portion of visitors would know that Einstein's high school physics teacher went out of his way to sabotage Relativity, to prevent Einstein's paper from being published. How many also know that Suskind's paper first elucidating string theory was in fact rejected? Schwartz's was ridiculed. But even before that, Einstein himself delayed the publication of Kaluza's paper on dimensions for two years!
(If that's how scientists behave, what about the rest of us?)
Science depends on the recognition of peers. What if you have no peers?
Under institutional management, possible peers may be impossible to locate.
If he says, "No, I didn't," and she says, "Yes, you did," that's a difference. If we say, "Aren't we wonderful?" and God says, "Here's the truth!" that's a macro-difference. The difference is not only orthogonal, it changes the temperature, changes the season.
If the Nineteenth Century says, "Wordsworth and Byron are our best poets," and the Twentieth Century says "Shelley and Keats and Blake were just as good," the one age puts a chill on the judgment of the other age. If some other age says, "Wha'? Who cares?" that too is a macro-difference.
The macro-difference that pk imagines, and seems to imagine alone, prompts the question, How can people stand to have their information managed, packaged, edited?
Selection is fine: so long as it clearly bears the name of the selectors: These are Lefty's picks for Hialeah. This is Bob Costas's Short List of Great Sports Moments. This is Professor Moriarty's reading list for detective fiction. Here's who The NASCREEP wants you to vote for. FLEX would have made available all such submitted lists. NBC could submit a list of programs it wants you to watch tonight. FLEX, supported by NBC and by the public, would make the list available.
As FLEX coordinator, pk would say nothing. As a FLEX user, pk could say, "Ooo, I like Lefty's picks."
George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman imagined heaven as a state of being stripped of illusions: not a nice place at all. In hell things were as you wished them to be; in heaven things were as they were. Imagine Judgment Day as an event where man presents his version(s) of things: then God puts a chill on it by telling the truth.
In society we can read the Times's list of best sellers. We can buy, we can even read, the best sellers. Annually we can read the Times's announcement of the issuing of Nobel Prizes. We can read about Pulitzer Prizes. We can follow the Academy Awards. Much will be on TV. After the Awards we can anticipate reruns of some winners at local theaters.
Had pk's FLEX (Free Learning EXchange) been supported, had it been cloned into every community, had the communities cooperated in being coordinated, anyone, anywhere, anytime, could have also looked up books that didn't get a Pulitzer, movies that didn't win an Oscar ... Provided that the authors submitted them, you could have looked up digital transforms of manuscripts that didn't get published, scripts that never found a sponsor, patent applications that weren't granted ...
You can go to an old university and read theses going back centuries. At FLEX you could research those (if submitted) and (if submitted) papers that didn't earn a Ph.D., papers that were rejected. What about what the kid tried to say to the teacher but was prevented? Yes, if the kid writes it out and submits it.
What if the kid was lying? What if the kid writes it out badly? That's tough: raw data is the game.
What about God and his chilling voice of truth? Ah, with Flex anyone and everyone could try his own hand at judgment. 24/7.
Chaos? or revelation? That would depend on the judgments.
(If that's how scientists behave, what about the rest of us?)
Science depends on the recognition of peers. What if you have no peers?
Under institutional management, possible peers may be impossible to locate.
If he says, "No, I didn't," and she says, "Yes, you did," that's a difference. If we say, "Aren't we wonderful?" and God says, "Here's the truth!" that's a macro-difference. The difference is not only orthogonal, it changes the temperature, changes the season.
If the Nineteenth Century says, "Wordsworth and Byron are our best poets," and the Twentieth Century says "Shelley and Keats and Blake were just as good," the one age puts a chill on the judgment of the other age. If some other age says, "Wha'? Who cares?" that too is a macro-difference.
The macro-difference that pk imagines, and seems to imagine alone, prompts the question, How can people stand to have their information managed, packaged, edited?
Selection is fine: so long as it clearly bears the name of the selectors: These are Lefty's picks for Hialeah. This is Bob Costas's Short List of Great Sports Moments. This is Professor Moriarty's reading list for detective fiction. Here's who The NASCREEP wants you to vote for. FLEX would have made available all such submitted lists. NBC could submit a list of programs it wants you to watch tonight. FLEX, supported by NBC and by the public, would make the list available.
As FLEX coordinator, pk would say nothing. As a FLEX user, pk could say, "Ooo, I like Lefty's picks."
Monday, March 28, 2005
Institutional versus Individual Filters
Has there ever been a society that could levelly countenance any subject? I mean ANY subject? Has there ever been such an individual? Could any institution within any society ever possibly be even-handed or level-headed about any (x) or all (x-inclusive) challenges?
I don't think so.
And pk specializes in probing the margins.
Mythology is handy: it provides recognizable SYMBOLIC examples:
Could any group of Jews level-headedly consider whether or not a particular group of rabbis two millennia ago unfairly flushed away a prophet with candidacy for Messiah?
Could any group of Catholics level-headedly consider whether or not any particular heresy deserved the harsh treatment it in fact received from their ancestors' hands?
Could any group of Americans level-headedly consider whether or not any particular parcel of their most-prime real estate was legally acquired?
Ask any religion: How many messengers of truth have you homeostatically but wrongly tortured as a heretic?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
Ask any state: How many would-be reformers have you homeostatically but wrongly censored, imprisoned, blackballed ... as a radical? a trouble-maker?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
Ask any university: How many messengers of truth have you homeostatically but wrongly mis-identified and mis-labeled? And in how many cases did you abridge your own rules in order to dismiss them, not understand them, blackball them, give them no fair hearing?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
just starting, more coming
the context being initiation of a conversation with a professor about pk's repressed Shakespeare thesis
I don't think so.
And pk specializes in probing the margins.
Mythology is handy: it provides recognizable SYMBOLIC examples:
Could any group of Jews level-headedly consider whether or not a particular group of rabbis two millennia ago unfairly flushed away a prophet with candidacy for Messiah?
Could any group of Catholics level-headedly consider whether or not any particular heresy deserved the harsh treatment it in fact received from their ancestors' hands?
Could any group of Americans level-headedly consider whether or not any particular parcel of their most-prime real estate was legally acquired?
Ask any religion: How many messengers of truth have you homeostatically but wrongly tortured as a heretic?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
Ask any state: How many would-be reformers have you homeostatically but wrongly censored, imprisoned, blackballed ... as a radical? a trouble-maker?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
Ask any university: How many messengers of truth have you homeostatically but wrongly mis-identified and mis-labeled? And in how many cases did you abridge your own rules in order to dismiss them, not understand them, blackball them, give them no fair hearing?
How many will answer none? if they deign to answer at all?
just starting, more coming
the context being initiation of a conversation with a professor about pk's repressed Shakespeare thesis
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Teacher Speak
It was Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough that lodged clearest in my mind the culture-politics component of sub-languages within a language. Frazer cited a tribe in Africa where the peers spoke the culture's language while the tribe's women were restricted to a women-speak of seriously reduced vocabulary, all the more taboos, and an imperative toward euphemism. In women-speak for example the dead could not be named: therefore the woman had to exercise considerable ingenuity to come up with a new euphemism each time a departed had to be referred to. A guy named Like-a-Lion, once dead, would have to be called, say, Fierce-One in one mention, Yellow-Mane in another ...
(Don't think for a moment that pk doesn't recognize a biological component to culture-politics, particularly as regards gender; but let's tip our hat to it, then leave it alone, at least for the moment: we don't know nearly well enough what we're talking about to get too fussy.)
In the movie Girlfight we meet the female students in the Michelle Rodriguez' character's school (Diana Guzman) more than the males. Taboos once thought to apply in our own culture, especially to females, are not strictly operative in the Girlfight world. Diana and her fat ugly friend walk down the street. They pass a slender girl who's clearly looked in the mirror while dressing. Diana mocks her and her ilk to the amusement of the fat girl: Oh, let me put my lipstick on just perfect before I give you a blow job: which is all I'm good for.
In the school hallway Diana hauls off and clobbers that mannequin (or a clone, who knows?)
"Fuckin' bitch," they scream.
Teachers arrive and separate them.
(I remember from my own highschool days the shortest of all possible male teachers plucking the football hero from a melee by the scruff of his neck. There's something to being thirty over being eighteen.)
Now here's my point. As suddenly as crossing into Florida from Georgia, or from Switzerland into France, or from Kansas into Oz, the diction changes. The teachers speak; but they say neither "fucking" nor "bitch." Neither does the principal once Diana is once again there: fighter, trouble-maker.
Soon we have a scene at Diana's home: Dad, Diana, brother. The diction is of the same base as we saw among the girls in the school hallway.
It's the teachers – and this part is utterly real – who speak teacher-speak.
And we can imagine them speaking teacher-speak in the teacher's lounge as well. What they speak once they're home though may well be the same as the general language.
(Don't think for a moment that pk doesn't recognize a biological component to culture-politics, particularly as regards gender; but let's tip our hat to it, then leave it alone, at least for the moment: we don't know nearly well enough what we're talking about to get too fussy.)
In the movie Girlfight we meet the female students in the Michelle Rodriguez' character's school (Diana Guzman) more than the males. Taboos once thought to apply in our own culture, especially to females, are not strictly operative in the Girlfight world. Diana and her fat ugly friend walk down the street. They pass a slender girl who's clearly looked in the mirror while dressing. Diana mocks her and her ilk to the amusement of the fat girl: Oh, let me put my lipstick on just perfect before I give you a blow job: which is all I'm good for.
In the school hallway Diana hauls off and clobbers that mannequin (or a clone, who knows?)
"Fuckin' bitch," they scream.
Teachers arrive and separate them.
(I remember from my own highschool days the shortest of all possible male teachers plucking the football hero from a melee by the scruff of his neck. There's something to being thirty over being eighteen.)
Now here's my point. As suddenly as crossing into Florida from Georgia, or from Switzerland into France, or from Kansas into Oz, the diction changes. The teachers speak; but they say neither "fucking" nor "bitch." Neither does the principal once Diana is once again there: fighter, trouble-maker.
Soon we have a scene at Diana's home: Dad, Diana, brother. The diction is of the same base as we saw among the girls in the school hallway.
It's the teachers – and this part is utterly real – who speak teacher-speak.
And we can imagine them speaking teacher-speak in the teacher's lounge as well. What they speak once they're home though may well be the same as the general language.
Friday, March 04, 2005
Gresham's Law: Beyond Economics
pk makes little study of economics, but even pk had heard of Gresham's Law:Bad money drives out good.
bk's recent interest has had some impact on pk's ignorance, especially with bk supplying the library, but pk's skepticism that economics could possibly be a real science has been inveterate. Nevertheless one point really hits home for me. I quote from Section 7 of Murray N. Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money?: [In a common view]
I post this at the InfoAll blog (as I develop it) because the first area I want to extend it to is education: schooling.
Scholars got together, put their personal libraries relating to their profession onto a common table. Thus was Yale founded. The scholars were of course self-appointed, but the market ratified them: more than one, more than two persons who wanted to learn went to Yale. They gained thereby access both to the scholars' books and to the scholars. Graduates prospered, more people went to Yale. That's as free a market as was possible in Eli Yale's time. Other scholars had already gathered around precious manuscripts at Cambridge, at the Sorbonne. The more books there are, the more disciplines, the more important universities became.
Those earliest and early universities were based on a natural kind of gold standard for learning: the good scholars know who they are, tend to know each other; the government doesn't know who they are, except second hand.
Once upon a time gold and money were (not quite) interchangeable. Once upon a time quality and universities had some mutual acquaintance. But then government got into the game of mining education: by fiat of course.
The good scholars didn't leave Yale when the University of Connecticut was founded. One or two might have been lured, but not the bulk. No: new scholars had to be printed. Lots and lots of them.
With the population increasing, with leisure on the upswing, naturally, the number of scholars would have waxed; but not at the rate that fiat scholars were hired.
Metal coins wear naturally. Metal coins can also be clipped. The minting of coins can also be fraudulent, whether private or municipal.
Those thoughts I shall develop further (especially I wish to iterate the theme of goods and qualities overvalued artificially by government), but for the moment I want another tack in mind as well: no university has ever gathered all the best scholars. The most free marketplace has never contained all goods. Homeostasis operates in scholarship as it operates in all complex systems. Astronomers ganged up on Galileo. Physicists ganged up on Einstein. Doctors ganged up on Walter Reed ... Then they were converted. When Jesus visited Jerusalem for Passover the priests of the Temple were highly learned men. As a group they did not take to Jesus' teaching, refused to be wowed by the stories that accompanied him. The best university may represent in general the best scholarship, but may reject the very best scholar: or some percentage of the very best. The list of geniuses that Harvard didn't hire, or hired only to bounce is staggering. (That list of course can never be up to date: we, as a group, will never know who today's VanGogh is.) (That's why VanGoghs, the Gospels ..., become so valuable once they are reassessed.)
Additional scrap: Any society influences its consituent families in the education of the young. Necessity must influence learning in a society: so does culture. This culture insists on the teaching of the Torah, that culture insistes on the Koran, the other culture insists on the New Testament. One culture might prescribe martial arts for all males, another for all youthful members. Churches have evolved to insist all the more strongly on some aspects of curriculum. Having colonized morality, one religion might further try to colonize say agricultural techniques. Institutions tend to spread. The Jews’ Sabbath limits business to six of seven days.
Modern states colonize the secular, but there’s no stopping.
Money emerged from the complexification of markets. Then governments took over the money. Private coinage predates government issue. Schools too are older than government, but government mints its own version.
See my related piece on Inflation [link will have to be restored]. This all needs further exposition, but there’s a start.
bk's recent interest has had some impact on pk's ignorance, especially with bk supplying the library, but pk's skepticism that economics could possibly be a real science has been inveterate. Nevertheless one point really hits home for me. I quote from Section 7 of Murray N. Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money?: [In a common view]
... the free market cannot be trusted to serve the pubic in supplying good money. But this formulation rests on a misinterpretation of Gresham's famous law. The law really says that "money overvalued artificially by government will drive out of circulation artificially undervalued money." Suppose, for example, there are one-ounce gold coins in circulation. After a few years of wear and tear, let us say that some coins weigh only .9 ounces. Obviously, on the free market, the worn coins would circulate at only ninety percent of the value of the full-bodied coins, and the nominal face-value of the former would have to be repudiated. If anything, it will be the "bad" coins that will be driven from the market. But suppose the government decrees that everyone must treat the worn coins as equal to new, fresh coins, and must accept them equally in payment of debts. What has the government really done? It has imposed price controls by coercion on the "exchange rate" between the two types of coin. By insisting on the par-ratio when the worn coins should exchange at ten percent discount, it artificially overvalues the worn coins and undervalues new coins. Consequently, everyone will circulate the worn coins, and hoard or export the new. "Bad money drives out good money," then, not on the free-market, but as the direct result of governmental intervention in the market.Government monopolizes more things than money. Government mints dollars by fiat, controls values artificially. Government mints lots of things by fiat, artificially controlling more and more values: a school system, a postal system, justice, medicine ... We have to accept dolt after schmuck by government label: as quality leeches from the society: exported or hoarded (or, just as likely, extinct).
I post this at the InfoAll blog (as I develop it) because the first area I want to extend it to is education: schooling.
2005 03 09 insert: I think I started this well enough, but just as I arrived at my real start, here, other things drained my momentum. So, it doesn't get well done all at once. Life can be like that.More Trust Misplaced: Gresham's Law in Education
Scholars got together, put their personal libraries relating to their profession onto a common table. Thus was Yale founded. The scholars were of course self-appointed, but the market ratified them: more than one, more than two persons who wanted to learn went to Yale. They gained thereby access both to the scholars' books and to the scholars. Graduates prospered, more people went to Yale. That's as free a market as was possible in Eli Yale's time. Other scholars had already gathered around precious manuscripts at Cambridge, at the Sorbonne. The more books there are, the more disciplines, the more important universities became.
Those earliest and early universities were based on a natural kind of gold standard for learning: the good scholars know who they are, tend to know each other; the government doesn't know who they are, except second hand.
Once upon a time gold and money were (not quite) interchangeable. Once upon a time quality and universities had some mutual acquaintance. But then government got into the game of mining education: by fiat of course.
The good scholars didn't leave Yale when the University of Connecticut was founded. One or two might have been lured, but not the bulk. No: new scholars had to be printed. Lots and lots of them.
With the population increasing, with leisure on the upswing, naturally, the number of scholars would have waxed; but not at the rate that fiat scholars were hired.
Metal coins wear naturally. Metal coins can also be clipped. The minting of coins can also be fraudulent, whether private or municipal.
Those thoughts I shall develop further (especially I wish to iterate the theme of goods and qualities overvalued artificially by government), but for the moment I want another tack in mind as well: no university has ever gathered all the best scholars. The most free marketplace has never contained all goods. Homeostasis operates in scholarship as it operates in all complex systems. Astronomers ganged up on Galileo. Physicists ganged up on Einstein. Doctors ganged up on Walter Reed ... Then they were converted. When Jesus visited Jerusalem for Passover the priests of the Temple were highly learned men. As a group they did not take to Jesus' teaching, refused to be wowed by the stories that accompanied him. The best university may represent in general the best scholarship, but may reject the very best scholar: or some percentage of the very best. The list of geniuses that Harvard didn't hire, or hired only to bounce is staggering. (That list of course can never be up to date: we, as a group, will never know who today's VanGogh is.) (That's why VanGoghs, the Gospels ..., become so valuable once they are reassessed.)
Additional scrap: Any society influences its consituent families in the education of the young. Necessity must influence learning in a society: so does culture. This culture insists on the teaching of the Torah, that culture insistes on the Koran, the other culture insists on the New Testament. One culture might prescribe martial arts for all males, another for all youthful members. Churches have evolved to insist all the more strongly on some aspects of curriculum. Having colonized morality, one religion might further try to colonize say agricultural techniques. Institutions tend to spread. The Jews’ Sabbath limits business to six of seven days.
Modern states colonize the secular, but there’s no stopping.
Money emerged from the complexification of markets. Then governments took over the money. Private coinage predates government issue. Schools too are older than government, but government mints its own version.
See my related piece on Inflation [link will have to be restored]. This all needs further exposition, but there’s a start.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Sidetrack
Schools, including universities, are a major finger in the hand(s) that control markets. Schools, including universities, are used to sort who goes where and at what pace in our society.
Where the society is comprised of human beings, schools can help recognize and promote talent. Where the society had been body- and mind-snatched, automata replacing humans, other criteria apply. If I were a robot I too would probably prefer C3PO to John Donne or John Milton.
pk has been through all that again and again, but here's a new tack: actually, a side track.
Once upon a time someone cultivated a potato in order to harvest and eat it: or at least to sell it. In modern markets all sorts of other considerations come into play. One may cultivate a million bushels of potatoes, and harvest them, only to dump them off a cliff: keep the price up: maybe to spite somebody ...
Of course Bucky Fuller said that the basic purpose of higher education was to keep young bucks out of circulation, so the old bucks didn't have to fight them.
So I just have to repeat a story told at Knatz.com in a different connection:
But once I was ready – anxious, had something to say, something important – I couldn't find a single old stag willing to take on a real challenge.
Had the robots been switched in while I wasn't looking? Or had the switch been completed before I arrived? I'm not sure, but 1968 ... early 1970s really was a time when the fed put the screws to the open-beaked begging institutions, processing only establishment orthodoxy. The old stags have no idea how to battle: their puissance has been bestowed on them by magic, by fiat. No fake society can risk injury to its expensive stage properties, its fake faculty.
The labyrinth, despite its low top, was bottomless.
Where the society is comprised of human beings, schools can help recognize and promote talent. Where the society had been body- and mind-snatched, automata replacing humans, other criteria apply. If I were a robot I too would probably prefer C3PO to John Donne or John Milton.
pk has been through all that again and again, but here's a new tack: actually, a side track.
Once upon a time someone cultivated a potato in order to harvest and eat it: or at least to sell it. In modern markets all sorts of other considerations come into play. One may cultivate a million bushels of potatoes, and harvest them, only to dump them off a cliff: keep the price up: maybe to spite somebody ...
Of course Bucky Fuller said that the basic purpose of higher education was to keep young bucks out of circulation, so the old bucks didn't have to fight them.
So I just have to repeat a story told at Knatz.com in a different connection:
The Philadelphia lawyer I first did art tax shelters with in 1978 got antsy about art shelters for 1979. Instead of just financing graphic multiples that few expected to sell or oil wells where no one expected to find oil (neither would they try very hard), or indy movies with budgets that assured the films' non-completion, Mr. Solomon Liberty, Esq. sold time shares in a railroad freight car permanently parked on a rusty side railing not even connected to the system of railroad tracks. A thirty minute share would lose the reluctant tax payer a quick $30,000.When I went to graduate school, I was using its rusty labyrinth for my own purposes. I was in no great hurry to butt heads with the old stags.
But once I was ready – anxious, had something to say, something important – I couldn't find a single old stag willing to take on a real challenge.
Had the robots been switched in while I wasn't looking? Or had the switch been completed before I arrived? I'm not sure, but 1968 ... early 1970s really was a time when the fed put the screws to the open-beaked begging institutions, processing only establishment orthodoxy. The old stags have no idea how to battle: their puissance has been bestowed on them by magic, by fiat. No fake society can risk injury to its expensive stage properties, its fake faculty.
The labyrinth, despite its low top, was bottomless.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
All Information
The universe contains all the information in the universe, but not by a system conveniently accessible to sentiences. A human information storage system, to hold all the information in the universe, would have to be bigger than the universe, significantly bigger: but we are not competent to perceive, let alone gather, such information.
A sentience's information storage system can only deal with part of the information, and even so it must select.
Yet, have the information storage systems used thus far by civilizations been wise in their selections?
I think not.
What pk opposes is politically determined selections. That is, institutions promote orthodoxy, ignore (or burn) dissent, label it heresy.
In church my attempts to see universality in religion were harshly discouraged by the adults in charge. Was my thesis "true"? I don't think so now. Nevertheless, the church was cutting off inquiry at its roots.
In school my attempts to celebrate jazz were rudely cut off. Without apology, the teacher who'd given me permission to play a recording for the class, scraped the needle across the grooves, ruining my record, in her haste to censor the "jungle music" once it had commenced. My high school agreed to allow a jazz concert for charity, then violated contract after contract with its arbitrary powers. In college I didn't dare say what I thought. Despite these experiences, my desire to be one of those who monopolized the head of the class, that is, a teacher, prompted me to endure graduate school. The graduate school took my money but wouldn't listen if I had anything interesting to say: and by "interesting," I mean non-standard perception. My vision of Shakespeare's sonnets as warring meta-oxymora which recapitulated the dynamic conflict between Christian orthodoxy and the epistemological heresy of nominalism was interrupted and insulted: unheard: undiscussed: still awaiting analysis or legitimate challenge.
But, through Ivan Illich's design for Learning Webs, I'd already found, had already offered, the solution.
Deregulate information. Disestablish the information regulators: the schools, the universities, the media ... Replace them with a free market place for information.
Would all viable information flourish in a free market? I didn't think so. People are seldom ready for innovative perceptions or solutions: we're so used to our problems as they are: and we're addicted to our failed remedies. Still, let the public itself be responsible for its failings: fire the keepers.
Thus, in simple:
List public resources (and by public I mean volunteered)
Human
Inanimate
List volunteered interests (so people can match themselves)
Publish feedback
from the resources
from the consumers Period.
In 1970 when I offered to be the public librarian for all public information, there were no PCs. There was no internet (just my offer of one). But there were mainframes, and time could be rented. For a pittance (compared to managed information budgets, the public could have freed itself, first of the monopoly of schools, then of all restricted markets: Time-Life, the AMA, the fed ...
See:InfoAll.org
FLEX
A sentience's information storage system can only deal with part of the information, and even so it must select.
Yet, have the information storage systems used thus far by civilizations been wise in their selections?
I think not.
What pk opposes is politically determined selections. That is, institutions promote orthodoxy, ignore (or burn) dissent, label it heresy.
In church my attempts to see universality in religion were harshly discouraged by the adults in charge. Was my thesis "true"? I don't think so now. Nevertheless, the church was cutting off inquiry at its roots.
In school my attempts to celebrate jazz were rudely cut off. Without apology, the teacher who'd given me permission to play a recording for the class, scraped the needle across the grooves, ruining my record, in her haste to censor the "jungle music" once it had commenced. My high school agreed to allow a jazz concert for charity, then violated contract after contract with its arbitrary powers. In college I didn't dare say what I thought. Despite these experiences, my desire to be one of those who monopolized the head of the class, that is, a teacher, prompted me to endure graduate school. The graduate school took my money but wouldn't listen if I had anything interesting to say: and by "interesting," I mean non-standard perception. My vision of Shakespeare's sonnets as warring meta-oxymora which recapitulated the dynamic conflict between Christian orthodoxy and the epistemological heresy of nominalism was interrupted and insulted: unheard: undiscussed: still awaiting analysis or legitimate challenge.
But, through Ivan Illich's design for Learning Webs, I'd already found, had already offered, the solution.
Deregulate information. Disestablish the information regulators: the schools, the universities, the media ... Replace them with a free market place for information.
Would all viable information flourish in a free market? I didn't think so. People are seldom ready for innovative perceptions or solutions: we're so used to our problems as they are: and we're addicted to our failed remedies. Still, let the public itself be responsible for its failings: fire the keepers.
Thus, in simple:
Inanimate
List volunteered interests (so people can match themselves)
Publish feedback
from the consumers
In 1970 when I offered to be the public librarian for all public information, there were no PCs. There was no internet (just my offer of one). But there were mainframes, and time could be rented. For a pittance (compared to managed information budgets, the public could have freed itself, first of the monopoly of schools, then of all restricted markets: Time-Life, the AMA, the fed ...
See:
FLEX
Monday, February 21, 2005
To School Or Not to School
In 1970 Ivan Illich began publishing his design for Learning Webs: a set of information repositories by which a society could map its resources: bottom-up. A Learning Web was to list the community's tools available for learning: both human and inanimate. The web would also list information volunteered by individuals so that people could know with whom they might form their own learning circles: bull sessions, practice or discussion groups ... see who they might want to see a movie with or join in a walk. The Learning Web must also publish feedback both from the resources and from the users of the Web: "teachers," "experts" ... may evaluate fellow experts; students, consumers ... may evaluate the resources. If you hire a math teacher, and you say she raped you, the community should have an opportunity to know that you say so.
The Learning Web would not endorse its content: merely list it. Users should do their own evaluating via the Feedback option. Thus, incompetence as well as dangerous behavior would be exposed.
In 1970 pk got very excited by Illich's design. Here was the perfect mechanism for the global village I'd by then seen forecast for a decade. I told Illich that I'd actually do it: become the librarian for the bottom-up community. Anyone who would listen, few as they were, I told that the same design naturally extended to all possible kinds of free markets: doctors, farmers, mechanics ...
Three by five cards could begin the record keeping. With increasing traffic, time on a main frame would be necessary. Star IBM programmers were ready for a pittance to write the software.
By 1975 we should have been in Nirvana. The Web of any community should link with the Webs of any other communities.
Instead what we had was the same-old same-old: politics, wars, elections ... top-down, managed markets, no modern possibly able to figure out the real price any anything from food to shelter to medicine to roads and gas.
By 1975 pk was barely able to stay alive, barely able to keep issuing the message. In 1995 my views on many things had changed; but not my view that the public should be told of the window of opportunity that had closed forever by the mid-1970s. PCs are private, not public: and expensive: especially where the industry is coordinated with planned obsolescence. Hardware and software prices may come down but the budget for them goes up and up. Mainframe time would merely have come down and down: and a community could have subsidized the resourceless with little effort (so long as the population doesn't explode out of bounds).
Ten years of such online scribbling have made my directories a mess, and few people seem to understand the message any better in 2005 than did in 1970. Any god at any judgment should have an easy time showing the public that it has never heard key messages in time for salvation of any sort. I'd rather be a fifteen thousand and sixth unpublished Jesus than Pope of any funded church. (The Church had thrown Illich out before he had designed his Web, lending credence to my conviction that the message was indeed divine.)
Anyway, as awful as the internet that the magicians palmed onto us is, blogging may just solve some of my scribbling problems. Launching an InfoAll.org module takes minutes; posting a blog entry can be accomplished in seconds. Then, I can worry about better ordering InfoAll.org.
See:
InfoAll.org
Illich Learning Webs
FLEX
The Learning Web would not endorse its content: merely list it. Users should do their own evaluating via the Feedback option. Thus, incompetence as well as dangerous behavior would be exposed.
In 1970 pk got very excited by Illich's design. Here was the perfect mechanism for the global village I'd by then seen forecast for a decade. I told Illich that I'd actually do it: become the librarian for the bottom-up community. Anyone who would listen, few as they were, I told that the same design naturally extended to all possible kinds of free markets: doctors, farmers, mechanics ...
Three by five cards could begin the record keeping. With increasing traffic, time on a main frame would be necessary. Star IBM programmers were ready for a pittance to write the software.
By 1975 we should have been in Nirvana. The Web of any community should link with the Webs of any other communities.
Instead what we had was the same-old same-old: politics, wars, elections ... top-down, managed markets, no modern possibly able to figure out the real price any anything from food to shelter to medicine to roads and gas.
By 1975 pk was barely able to stay alive, barely able to keep issuing the message. In 1995 my views on many things had changed; but not my view that the public should be told of the window of opportunity that had closed forever by the mid-1970s. PCs are private, not public: and expensive: especially where the industry is coordinated with planned obsolescence. Hardware and software prices may come down but the budget for them goes up and up. Mainframe time would merely have come down and down: and a community could have subsidized the resourceless with little effort (so long as the population doesn't explode out of bounds).
Ten years of such online scribbling have made my directories a mess, and few people seem to understand the message any better in 2005 than did in 1970. Any god at any judgment should have an easy time showing the public that it has never heard key messages in time for salvation of any sort. I'd rather be a fifteen thousand and sixth unpublished Jesus than Pope of any funded church. (The Church had thrown Illich out before he had designed his Web, lending credence to my conviction that the message was indeed divine.)
Anyway, as awful as the internet that the magicians palmed onto us is, blogging may just solve some of my scribbling problems. Launching an InfoAll.org module takes minutes; posting a blog entry can be accomplished in seconds. Then, I can worry about better ordering InfoAll.org.
See:
InfoAll.org
Illich Learning Webs
FLEX
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Illich, Wall, pk
LewRockwell.com recently published an article on Ivan Illich by Richard Wall. That in itself is important enough. But in addition
and the author have subsequently been corresponding, and a most welcome correspondence it is.
2011 09 09 This all has a complex history which must be added: after I move everything to pKnatz blog, attempting to reconstruct the censored Knatz.com (and other pk domains).
and the author have subsequently been corresponding, and a most welcome correspondence it is.2011 09 09 This all has a complex history which must be added: after I move everything to pKnatz blog, attempting to reconstruct the censored Knatz.com (and other pk domains).
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