Xark!

Info R/Evolution, Intertwingularity & Xarkism

I built this blog began in the summer of 2005 based on a couple of insistent thoughts:

1. The standard media/cultural categories for topics and discussions were entirely too sterile and limiting for the way I wanted to think and talk;
2. Based on my mode of working as a reporter (diving intensely into one topic after another) it was increasingly obvious to me that my learning in one area (quantum physics) influenced my thinking about another subject (microbiology), which provided insight into seemingly separate topics (mass media, sociology, politics, etc.).

Hence, Xark began with a foundational statement: Because there are no unrelated topics.

Our thought? Maybe by involving people from multiple backgrounds in multiple topics, we'd have more interesting and productive discussions and insights. I based this on the notion that communites that grow up around "themed" blogs tend to evolve into monocultures. Ecosystem biology teaches us that a monoculture (tree farm) simply isn't as sustainable, healthy or as valuable as a naturally diverse ecosystem (rainforest).

These days I'm happy to observe how well those concepts fit into our developing understanding of knowledge and human intelligence in the networked world. From Peter Morville and his book Ambient Findability to Dave Weinberger and his Everything is Miscellaneous, the leading edge of the culture is rapidly incorporating radical ideas about the semantic structure of information -- quite literally, how the Web works better when we pattern our information systems on human-ness. The Web has rather haphazardly grown into an extension of ourselves. The next step (generically, The Semantic Web) may be very deliberately built as an extension of human consciousness.

So Ted Nelson's notion of Intertwingularity (1974) re-emerges in a new contest and reflects its futuristic light on the notion of Xarking.

Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged -- people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchaical, categorizable and sequential when then they can't. Everything is deeply intertwingled.

So Anthropology professor Michael Wesch begins to make sense instantly: Everything is connected. Nothing is separate.

I suspect it was always this way. Perhaps we saw it differently before because information and communication was so slow and precious and difficult before. It took improvements in maritime and navigational technology before we could "see" the Earth as round. Maybe it takes the explosion of networked media for us to "see" that everything is an expression of the one, that technology is evolution by non-biological means, that political, economic and social systems based on keeping us artificially separate and oppositional are wasteful relics.

The rest of the world doesn't think this way right now. We're still in the minority. But that could change.

FOX ATTACKS: Going after Obama

The FOX VIRUS...

Even Chris Wallace gets disgusted by it...

Just for context on the M.O. of Rupert Murdock's corporate news philosophy, The Investigators meet The Buzzsaw...

No, of course we're not surprised. I'm sure they originally prepared for an all-out assault on Hillary Clinton, but they retrenched, retooled, and sent their minions out after Barack Obama instead. And let's face it: The GOP is going to continue this steady drumbeat of sleaze from now through the election, supposedly at arm's length via their "remote operative," Roger Ailes, at the FOX News Division.

Our job is to recognize it, name it, talk about it, share it. Human beings, like many living things, are quorum sensors (bacteria do it chemically; we do it psychologically). So it isn't just the quality of the signals we receive from our environments that matter -- the number of signals of certain types that we receive quite literally count toward shaping our image of reality.

Ailes, Rove and others on the Right understood this many years ago.

Which is why I say: Share these videos. Embed them. E-mail them. Every time you use the power of human relationships and social networking to spread this exposure of media sleaze you are acting as an antidote to the sickening virus FOX keeps deliberately injecting into our culture. We have to become D.I.Y. media antibodies in defense of our society. We must inoculate ourselves against bullshit. When you show a thing that attempts to be secret, you remove some of its power.

To clarify: I have no quarrel with anyone who opposes Obama for policy reasons. Don't like his ideas about Iraq, or social security, or economics, or taxation? Fine. I disagree, but I respect reasonable disagreement.

But if you think that Obama is a Muslim, or a black racist, or a shadowy figure who secretly hates America? Conversation over.  You've just defined yourself out of  relevancy. My suggestion? Take another look at why you believe what you believe, and then rejoin the rest of us in our imperfect lurching toward a better future.

Hat tips: Janet, Revere at Effect Measure, MoveOn.org, Robert Greenwald.

Meme 2008: "Control doesn't scale"

Three words of infinite simplicity and value (via Dave Weinberger):

"Control doesn't scale."

Want to understand the convulsion that lies ahead of us? The transitions in economics, technology, management, politics, media and art that must be made if we're to benefit from the new tools? The divisions that animate our "culture war" bullshit sessions? 

Three words: "Control doesn't scale."

Think that's a recipe for anarchy? Think again. Think it's unprecedented? It isn't. Think distributed control is a geektopian pipedream? I disagree.

Human beings have been giving up control in exchange for the expanding wisdom and benefits of freedom for as long as we've been a species, so there's plenty of historical precedent to instruct us on what course to follow. The unprecedented part is actually the rate of change, which means that the challenge in the scaling issue really lies in the feedback loops we imagine. We can't wait around and expect the old culture to vet new ideas for us. We'll have to invent the "new normal" on the fly, and  we'll certainly screw that up a few times.

But this is the central issue. And the other thing history teaches is that the people who have control generally don't like giving it up. So that's our short-term future in a nutshell.

Thinking Blogger Award

We've been tagged by Big Bad Ivy of Home Ec 101 ("What you wish your mama taught you") as part of the Thinking Bloggers Award meme. Works this way: First Ivy and Heather got tagged for Home Ec 101, and then they turned around and picked five more bloggers who make them think. Here's what she wrote:

Xark!- Xark is a wide ranging blog covering art, philosophy, religion, and politics. They do so in a thought provoking, controversial manner. Instead of just posting talking points, they start discussions.

They left out sports, jokes, geekery, movies, books, media, doodles, pictures and the various YouTube  diversions posted here, but make no mistake: I'm always ecstatic to find out that somebody outside of the immediate family actually reads us. Thank you, Ivy.

Now it's up to us now to pick five blogs that make us think, thereby extending the circle of recommendations. Since this is a group effort, I thought I'd open this one up to discussion. Any nominations from the floor?

Some possibilities: