There should be a blog about the life-cycle of trends. Based on the hypothesis that all what is new will soon be old and the people soon will be oversaturated it should deconstruct all the new IT-buzzes.

Web2.0. hum. A paradigm, but what was meant besides multimedia? Community building? Yes, interesting. But how many communities have been "built" in the last years containing nothing except some bits. Real communities cannot be built, only fostered and constrained, they emerge.

While building virtual communities for the sake of profit, real communities may be destroyed and prevented to grow. Yesterday, the barber shop over the street was closed because all the money is somewhere else.

Maybe they built virtual communities with it. Being so virtual that all that lasts is a pile of metal, programmed to make fancy pictures, spin users into an illusion of community and need a lot of electricity while nobody feels a real community any more. We need to understand that the good ol' times of the net are no more existent, many communities are a product and feel like one.
As soon as something new, something more important, something more natural, can act as a new focus for the money-streams, subsequently being destroyed by them and converted into a we-are-all-very-happy-colored-supermarket.

Modern Mythology:

From "Outer Limits"

THE GRID

first broadcast July, 14th of 2000

When Scott Bowman gets an urgent message from his brother Peter, he decides to drive back to their hometown of Halford, Washington to see what is wrong. When he gets there, he discovers that Peter is dead and his wife Eilleen has been charged with his murder. But that's not the only shock awaiting Scott. The town where he grew up has been transformed. Antenna towers dot the landscape and the people act strangely, as if they are under some kind of sporadic mind control. Scott goes to the jail to visit Eileen, where she warns him about the towers - just moments before grabbing the Sheriff's gun and killing herself. This turn of events convinces Scott that he needs to investigate further. He meets with a former colleague of Peter's, Dr. Jim Holbrook, who seems friendly, but doesn't give Scott any information. Scott doesn't know where to turn next, when out of the blue, one of Peter's former students shows up. She tells Scott about a book that holds the secret to what is known as Project Halford. Scott finds the book and a videotape that reveals the Army's plan to construct a neural computer network that would communicate directly with the brain. It also reveals that the project spun out of control and that Peter stole vital codes in an attempt to halt the computer's drive to take over the minds of the townspeople. There's enough information there to stop the plan, but who can Scott trust to help him?



Directed by: Charles Winkler Written by: Duncan Kennedy

Starring: D.B. Sweeney, Jessica Steen, Colleen Rennison, Brent Stait, Edward Evanko and Gina Chiarelli

Das Rechenbrett der Inka:


Anleitung hier: Andean Calculators

Die Inka verwendeten Quipus, Systeme aufgereihter Knoten, zum Speichern und Abrechnen von Information.

Eine neue Studie
gibt ein wenig Aufschluß über die Organisation dieser Quipus:
"Urton says the khipus that he analyzed, which were organized in a three-tier hierarchy, show how census and tribute data were assembled and transferred among different levels of authority within the Inca administrative system.
The khipus on the lowest level of the hierarchy may have represented contact between the khipu keeper and local laborers. While the top level probably represented contact between the palace of Puruchuco and a central authority. "

Interessant auch, daß viele Quipus wohl bis zu 256 Zustände (2 hoch 8) enthalten.





mehr zu ethnomatematik

Drei Wochen Peru.... Ich habe so das Gefuehl, dieses Land wird mich noch laenger beschaeftigen.

Cahuachi:

" Zuerst möchte ich mich auf Margaret Mead, deren Name Ihnen gewiß geläufig ist, berufen, In einem ihrer Vorträge für die American Society of Cybernetics sagte sie:
"Als Anthropologin haben mich die Auswirkungen der Theorien der Kybernetik auf unsere Gesellschaft interessiert. Ich beziehe mich dabei nicht auf Computer oder die elektronische Revolution als solche oder das Ende der Abhängigkeit des Wissens von der Schrift oder darauf, wie unter den rebellierenden Jugendlichen Kleidung an die Stelle der mimeographischen Maschine als eine Form der Kommunikation getreten ist." Lassen Sie mich das wiederholen. "Ich beziehe mich nicht darauf, wie unter den rebellierenden Jugendlichen Kleidung an die Stelle der mimeographischen Maschine als eine Form der Kommunikation getreten ist." Und sie fährt fort: "Insbesondere möchte ich auf die Bedeutung der interdisziplinären Begriffe hinweisen, die wir anfangs als 'feed-back', dann als 'teleologische Mechanismen' und dann als 'Kybernetik' bezeichnet haben - eine Form interdisziplinären Denkens, die es den Mitgliedern vieler Disziplinen ermöglicht hat, miteinander in einer Sprache zu kommunizieren, die alle verstehen konnten.""

Aus: Heinz von Förster " Ethik und Kybernetik zweiter Ordnung":
http://meta.iflugs.hdk-berlin.de/metaflux/archive/hvf_ethik.htm

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

—Henry David Thoreau

After all that buzz about MMORPGS, it may now seriously be time for Croquet

Multiple conferences, Kerzenhändler, cybernetic platonism, virtual organizations, communities ....

this all remindes me somewhat on Douglas Adams Bistromatic Drive in the "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy".

It may be the engine driving the world of publishing as well as the engine driving science and world perception in general.

so - lets have a nice summer and get some good pizza !