The Mooresie

But technology in terms of video-tape machines and so on may make it possible to have a continuous alternative to direct experience, and I mean any alternative. You can have this played back in a slow motion, or do you want it in infra-red, or do you want it this or that. Take your pick, like a juke-box. Technology may make it possible to have a continuous feedback to ourselves of information. But at the moment I think we are starved of information. I think that the biggest need of the painter or writer today is information. I’d love to have a tickertape machine in my study constantly churning out material: abstracts from scientific journals, the latest Hollywood gossip, the passenger list of a 707 that crashed in the Andes, the colour mixes of a new automobile varnish. In fact, Eduardo and I in our different ways are already gathering this kind of information, but we are using the clumsiest possible took to do it: our own hands and eyes. The technology of the information-retrieval system that we employ is incredibly primitive. We fumble around in bookshops, we buy magazines or subscribe to them. But I regard myself as starved of information. I am getting a throughput of information in my imaginative life of one-hundredth of what I could use. I think there’s an information starvation at present and technology will create the possibility of knowing everything about everything. When Apollo 99 blasts off to Alpha Centauri we will know everything about the crew all of the time. It’s always struck me that Eduardo’s studio is lavishly equipped with photographic and recording equipment of various kinds. He spends a large part of his time on information collection and sorting, and an equal amount of time ensuring that he has a ready access to all the material he has around him. It’s a far fry from the nearest thing I can visualize which is books on shelves in a library where one has a kind of notional access to the material but no real access because it’s not all scanning in front of your mind. And it struck me that the information system Eduardo has designed for himself comes very close to the sort of information-retrieval systems that a scientist has. For instance, Dr. Christopher Evans at the National Physical Laboratories uses very similar devices and has a similar internal scanning system to make sure that he keeps up to date with whatever touches his imagination. I know no writer, other than Len Deighton, who maintains this sort of system. Most do not even grasp the fact that they need information to keep their imagination up to par. Deighton used to have, perhaps still does have a computer, a Telex and an electric typewriter plugged into the system.

That’s a 1971 interview…

some obituary links, Metafilter discussion

EDIT: almost missed ballardian.com which has always been full of great content.

Design Altruism Project: POSTprofessional

A number of years ago, long after I’d left the Scouts, I penned a self-righteous screed criticizing the inherent myths of expertism. I must confess, at the time I was not armed with the most credible objections, and at least one of my grad-school mentors had trouble accepting the apparent irrationality of my discontentment. More recently, while reading John Thackara’s wonderful In the Bubble, I came across his reference to Ivan Illich’s 1973 book Tools for Conviviality. Here, in 110 jam-packed pages, Illich advanced all the arguments I was lacking in my own earlier critique of professionalism. According to Illich, industrial growth and efficiency demands that man “submit to the logic of his tools.” Since it is in the nature of man’s “vital equilibrium” to resist such a dynamic, men must be manipulated by education, engineering, and bureaucracy. “People feel joy, as opposed to mere pleasure, to the extent that their activities are creative; while the growth of tools beyond a certain point increases regimentation, dependence, exploitation, and impotence.”

via Metafilter

Very good summary of Illich and the implications of his ideas; he was pretty much right about a lot of things, i think.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

” […] Then something happened. Nixon played to it of course but it really came into play in the 1990’s and even more this past decade. Republicans turned their backs on smart people. Just like that, being smart was less important than being ‘real’. Being qualified was about being ordinary.
[…]
He stopped for a moment and took another sip from his mug. “The Republican party is the party of the bowling alley. It’s the party of the poker game. It’s the party of pseudo patriotism and talking points masquerading as a platform. It’s the party of shrillness and fear and I couldn’t in good conscience be a part of that smoke and mirrors any longer.”

GIN, TELEVISION, AND COGNITIVE SURPLUS:
A Talk By Clay Shirky

[…] People asking, “Where do they find the time?” when they’re looking at things like Wikipedia don’t understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of the cognitive surplus that’s finally being dragged into what Tim O’Reilly calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn’t know what to do with it at first—hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, it wouldn’t be a surplus, would it? It’s precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

Outstanding essay and video presentation. The movement of society from passive consumption to active participation that Shirky describes gives me hope for the future.