https://www.flickr.com/photos/foam/20440221873/ (external oembed url) http://pipelines.local/images/L1022062.jpg (local image url) Overview *The Dark Mountain *Industrial autocatalysis & complexity *The Infrastrcuture Century *"Reflections on trusting trust" *Implied flow *Commensurability, container legibility *Liquid Agency *Intent & the working Mage *Super Empowered Seeing *Infrastructure s Story as Infrastructure *Scripts *Topocratic Networks *The Revolution of the Toolmaker *Failure *Fractures and Parallels http://dark-mountain.net/ ( http://dark-mountain.net/content/themes/darkmtn/img/logos/logo.png catastrophes = that human civilization is facing we might solve a few of them New myths to maintain humanity in coming loss Industrial Autocatalysis Dependecy chains Grier on limits: Civilisations limiting factors (the example of Rome & unconquered territories as limiting factor) Splitting vs. (up)Shifting to a new resource... but only delaying the moment of hitting a wall of another limit in 100/150 years, all of what consistutes humanity now will no longe exist not question of how to survive, but how we can keep some human aspects now coming up with new myths that could let us maintain our humanity through the catastrophes to come. structure of the world would change radically this century people under 40 will see 2 billiards people dying industrial autocatalysis. the loop of extractions-productions, where 'breakdowns' happen. "catalysis and complexity" paper by Grier? limiting factors. ie roman empire's limiting factors etc.. fragmenting one of the 'solutions'. upshifting, another solution, switching to different resources to exploit. necessarily adds complexity because one switches to resources which where ignored beforehand each new shift gets less time to be exhausted. the infrastructural century :the shift is when the infrastructure is planetary size, with huge supplychains cascading failings on a plantetary size. % GRAFT: Cascading trust, library, TODO cascading trusts (What establishes the trust of the pre-determined "trusted" certificates in a system ... and so on down to OS / System / hardware/chip ...) at the end failure of trust - not solved yet with pipelines, implied flow. with piplines, implied discussion about container, commodification, legibility content includes container / system + power of control ex money as infrastructure, liquid agency [^]{paper computer science 'Reflections on trusting trust' https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf} http://pipelines.local/bibliotecha/p761-thompson_Reflections_on_Trusting_Trust.pdf pipelines : need for repetitivity you have one because you believe you will use it more than once (implicit sense of future repetition) diy bio movement : making it easier for people to come up with new organisms novel organisms ex bioorganism that would kill anyone who has eaten meat during the last 6 months "seeing like a state" - book by james scott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State http://pipelines.local/bibliotecha/james-c-scott-seeing-like-a-state-how-certain-schemes-to-improve-the-human-condition-have-failed.pdf what the vision of the state does to the world. at some point germans? decided to see forest as a revenue for the state. make the forest legible to the state. planting trees etc.. exhausted nutricional capacity of the soil 1940s forestry crisis cause: all other ways to view a forest were not part of the 'state' vision: -> ritual uses, ... Example from early Chinese culture last name : to ensure that they could inflict punishment and ensure military service -> made families legible to serve the state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years http://pipelines.local/bibliotecha/Debt_%20The%20First%205,000%20Years%20(267)/Debt_%20The%20First%205,000%20Years%20-%20David%20Graeber.epub | seeing like an entity which is super-empowered.| ex see like Google or see like state Magic useful tool for metaphorical or actual structures of technology technologists are bad at seeing power within technology; but Magic allows technologists to recognize the role of power (where otherwise blinded ;) chaos magic : you project a will out in the world and channel some energy to this intent and something happens into the world, and how it works don't reall matter ex : silicon valley/ VC energy holding intent for single person is hard, holding it for a group is much harder -> specifications, manuals, regulations detrititus of collective intent: specifications, manuals easier to hold intent with people who think 'like you' the role of "short-hand" ... iphone 6 development: design team carried a set of prototypes produced at various sizes and in the end picked the one that "felt right in the hand" -- but the team is 95% male leads to a size not comfortable to an (average) female hand picked model that fitted better their hands -> Iphone6 too big for women, 95% of crew is male "unity of intent" super-empowered entity represents single position in field, otherwise it cannot act institution: structures that centralises intent networks : no good in propagate intent over networks, decohere when they get bigger, because they do not have structures (3000 people?), all decisions can be made on ground level, in nodes of the network graph of size vs. efficacy: organisations scale better with size as networks start to degrade (after maybe 3000 people) netwrork protocols point to spread decision making (allow decisions to be made independently) topocratic network : poorly connected network (vs a network in which transaction exist on strict efficiency basis) http://www.nature.com/articles/srep03784 value from position in the network -- the nodes that connect disconnected subgraphs carry disproportionate importance (and thus reintroduce a kind of hierarchy) infrastructure is shifting from 20th century infra, like road, railway, etc.. towards a logistic network. an ensemble of material and abstract elements. much more logical, more like software 'imaginary'. of a thing: the understanding / mental model of a thing vs. the thing itself the infrastructure that is legible. as the infrastructure becomes softter, you change it through social scrips, thru the imaginary you can change an infrastrucure by changing the imaginary, telling the infrastructure with another story rewriting social scripts as a tool ex fantasy game take stories seriously instead of props rescript social interaction in order to live with 5 people in 1 bedoom flat, 20m² rewrite what housing is just changing the story "what does it mean to live in a place".... scripting **revolution of the toolmaker:** toolmaker position is a priviledged position to rewrite society's flows/ on the fly? Graph of Skype adoption (geometric curve) foreign aid (flat) remittances - money people end home (similarly geometric growth) correlation or causation? Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor neutral" Ellul? % GRAFT: disposition, TODO "Disposition" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statecraft:_Strategies_for_a_Changing_World http://extrastatecraft.net/ Keller Easterling rules create games + realities : magic circle (goffman) if you punch someone in the boxing ring, that's good, outside of it, no. failure it's where you learn how the system works failures have a disposition (?) aesthetic frame that allows you to evaluate a system and make judgment (ethics) failure is not the only way a system breaks fracture is another way where are the slippage Google security: engineers searching malware, they 'see everything' what is weird = way to notice the malware statistical view of the world: what is different, is start for what is malicious (Example of cctv use in Boston, that looks for patterns that are exceptional) "take a look at this, this doesn't normally happen" "never undestimate your adversary" motto in security. shifting terrains how to come human again at the other end of the dark mountain.. (hope ;) dark mountain (a group of artists, writers...) : interesting manifesto but what they propose as an output is pastoral and not interesting http://pipelines.local/images/Dados_4_a_20_caras_trans.png LARP communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game social performance, social scripts working at an affective level: we have a lot of models for how to do things, but not many for how we feel "i"m not here" badge as a pause in the game once you learn you can rewrite social rules, everything bewomes rewritable counterpoint to legal positivity... positivism?seeks to obtain a normalisation in exploring possibilities with the goal of fixing a single wheras LARP is more playful exploration / hacking of the normative through rewriting it book "legal traditions of the world" https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/legal-traditions-of-the-world-9780199669837?cc=be&lang=en& in magical circle you can find out what new rules have as effect, allows to take people to places they want to explore living two lives in parallel and consider the contrast between the two skill of playing: doing shift between doing experience and creating social scripts - going back and forth in this you don't learn social script through abstraction but by observation / as abstract knowledge, but by doing learn as you go / as you do script as legible object to interact with / rewrite