[Nettime-bold] Hvis du go omkring i skoven/////memuar deklaraz!e on mass produced model ...

[Nmherman@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/5/2000 9:44:34 AM Central Standard Time, 
integer@www.god-emil.dk writes:

> biodiversity must be konserved for its own sake and not for any utilitarian 
> value. 

Time Magazine, Nov. 6, 2000:  The Choice

The Phantom of Utopia:  p. 120
Geniuses, crackpots, and dictators through the ages have pursued the delusion 
of human perfectibility.

Max Herman says no + no.

"Basically, Utopia is for authoritarians and weaklings.  But it was also 
loved by philosophers, when they were in a what-if frame of mind, dreaming up 
systems."

Je ne vais pas etre Napoleon.  The Revolution is over.  I am the revolution.  
(nn watches PBS).  Listen to Eroica on Election Day and cry for the defeated!

"While at this show [at NY public library 2001] you may think that to be 
deprived of a life in utopia may be a loss, a sad failure of human potential. 
 Until, that is, you consider how unspeakably awful the alternative would 
be."  --Robert Hughes (called R. Crumb "the Brueghel of the 20th century.")

Dietz=antiutopia=Packer=Hughes=cumulative artvalue.

Utopia = "The utopian state of mind indicates a yearning to be released from 
history (yes ma'am) to shed the burdens of free will (the cerements of the 
grave), failure (yes please) improvisation (not me no way king shit)."

History=geniuses or geniusy.  "La geniusie"?  "Vox Genius Populi"?  "Dulce 
est decorum est pro genius mori"?

++++++++++++++++=

I don't know what I can do to bring a miracle for the election.  If all net 
users propagated a message of hope and cooperation, we could affect this 
election heavily.  If we don't--if no one does--the election will be another 
bullshit win by the universities and corporations and suburban males (I will 
erase you from the book of life).

Hughes doesn't understand the jetztzeit, holographic knowledge, synapses, Zen 
and the Brain, histor, history, Genius, Genius 2000, Brueghel (I'm the 
Breughel), Crumb, or anything.  He's like a crank-up toy with a backyard and 
a hairstylist.

I agree with Mark Stahlman.  Genius--the synaptic firings that enable thought 
and image--is the bug in Windows (Walls).  The machines and their DNA, 
currency, are killing us.  (http://www.geocities.com/~genius-2000/Launch.html)

++++++++

Max Herman's newest, current show is called "Genius 2000:  Works on Paper," 
to be presented at OpenMouse.  YOu can contribute your work on paper if you 
are part of the Genius 2000 Network (a self-title already in place if you're 
reading this, sorry).  Just send it to Max Herman, The Genius 2000 Network, 
P.O. Box 14443, Minneapolis, MN, 55414 USA.  It must arrive before November 
14.

Good god, let's try to do something about the election.  It's so hellish here.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

"New York New York," a work on paper by Max Herman, is hereby offered for 
sale to Steve Dietz and/or the Walker.  I want $2000 for it.  I need the 
$2000 before Nov. 13.  I will demonstrate and videotape in front of the 
Walker until they buy it.  If you want to buy it for the Walker, send me a 
check at my P.O. Box 14443.  Also, you can send checks for Conference 
Commemorative Prints, signed first editions, promo editions, and other works.

++++++++

The Genius 2000 Network may soon acquire digital capability (currently we're 
analog only).  In this event, we will provide lots of public domain material 
to be used in any way possible.  

Farewell for now my flabby, weak, authoritarian fellow utopians (Je ne suis 
pas une pipe).  Let's leave the world to the real artists, the unacknowledged 
legislators of the world:  corporations.

Best,

Max Herman
The Genius 2000 Network
Works on Paper, New York 2000
http://www.geocities.com/~genius-2000/Stahlman1.html

Subj: Re: Last Call for Launch Page Submissions

Date: 9/14/2000 5:03:10 PM Central Daylight Time

From: Newmedia

To: Nmherman

Who Cares About GENIUS? 

Mark D. Stahlman

(copyright 2000)

In 1950 one the greatest living American mathematicians, Norbert Wiener, 
published his most important work, "The Human Use of Human Beings" (HUoHB). 

Commonly considered to be the "popular" version of his formula-laden 1948 
book, "Cybernetics," HUoHB was actually something quite different. It was a 
MANIFESTO around which he would spend the next four years of his life 
organizing.

Organizing for what?

For the very survival of HUMANITY.

There was little hint of this campaign in "Cybernetics," although Wiener did 
signal in the introduction that he had been contacted by Margaret Mead and 
Gregory Bateson for an important "mission." At the time Mead and Bateson -- 
both of whom had served in high positions in the OSS -- were spearheading a 
broadscale effort to try to "control" what they considered "dangerous" 
aspects of society using "social science."

According to Wiener in this introduction, "On this basis [that social systems 
exhibit control and feedback dynamics], Drs. Gregory Bateson and Margaret 
Mead have urged me, in the view of the intensely pressing nature of the 
sociological and economic problems of the present age of confusion, to devote 
a large part of my energies to the discussion of this side of cybernetics."

"Much as as I sympathize with their sense of urgency of the situation, and 
much as I hope that they and other competent workers will take up problems of 
this sort, which I shall discuss in a later chapter of this book, I can share 
neither their feeling that this field has the first claim on my attention, 
nor their hopefulness that sufficient progress can be registered in this 
direction to have an appreciable therapeutic effect in the present diseases 
of society."

Wiener did touch on these issues in the penultimate chapter of "Cybernetics," 
"Cybernetics and Psychopathology," which he closes with "The human brain may 
be as far along on its road to this destructive specialization as the great 
nose horns of the last of the titanotheres."

But, the real follow up on these TITANIC issues took two more years to 
produce. Wiener's response is in the powerfully polemical 1950 HUoHB and in 
the hundreds of lectures and articles and letters he gave and wrote from 1950 
to 1954.

What is their theme?

That ANY repetitive task can be better performed by an "arbitrarily complex 
feedback mechanism" than they can be by humans.

That assembly line work and then administrative work and then managerial work 
will become the domain of these "mechanisms" -- computers -- and that humans 
will be progressively pushed towards the sidelines to install, upgrade and 
maintain these machines . . . until the machines figure out how to do all 
that "themselves," at which point, humans will NO LONGER be needed.

That there was a raging battle between man and machine in which the machine 
held ALL the trump cards . . . except one . . . "moral judgment."

That unless society devoted all of its energies to educating each of its 
members in higher and higher skills of "moral judgment" . . . humanity was 
DOOMED to be replaced by its own inventions.

Then, in 1954, Wiener totally re-wrote HUoHB.

The new "Second Edition" is really another book altogether.

The new "Human Use of Human Beings" had no polemics, no battles, no 
struggles, no warnings, no crusades.

This "edition" was the one that was translated into dozens of languages and 
later reprinted in the paperback version that may people living today have 
read.

Why this dramatic change?

Why did Wiener stop his public lectures and speeches?

Why did Wiener end his campaign of letter writing to everyone of influence 
that he could contact?

Because he came to understand that it was too late. That the "machines" had 
already WON.

That HUMANITY had already "dis-appeared."

So, what did he do now? Jump out a window? Shoot himself in the temple? Jump 
in front of a speeding train?

No, Wiener went to work.

He started to examine the question of "genius."

If "humanity" had already "dis-appeared," then the logical question which 
follows is "Can humanity re-appear?"

And, being a deeply educated historian who was surrounded by some of the best 
historians of his age, he asked them the question, "Has humanity ever 
produced a GENIUS who by virtue of their superior knowledge has led humanity 
back from its ignorant 'non-human' condition?"

He believed that the answer to this question was yes.

He was convinced that the best example of a GENIUS in history was probably 
the Greek-Egyptian polymath PTOLEMY . . . because PTOLEMY appeared to 
innovate in every field of human knowledge without having anyone else's 
shoulders on which to stand. 

It was as if he appeared out of nowhere . . . which is the true mark of a 
GENIUS . . . to point "humanity" back towards its own HUMANITY.

He assigned some of those in his group to thoroughly research PTOLEMY in 
order to help explicate the process by which GENIUS could appear in an 
otherwise "non-human" society. (Just like ours . . .)

He directed that this research should be published in books and in other 
formats.

This effort was cut short by Wiener's death in 1963.

One of the principle books to emerge from this effort was published in 1969. 
Its title is "Hamlet's Mill: An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time." Its 
authors are Giorgio deSantillana and Hertha vonDechend. Its frontispiece 
illustrates "God creating the stars, with the planetary spheres shown inside, 
according to the Ptolemaic order."

Giorgio was my godfather.

The principle researcher into the life and work of PTOLEMY in this group was 
my father, William D. Stahlman.

 

 

  
Try Yahoo! Messenger 
 
 
 
More... 
 
 
Keep in Touch All the Time
Yahoo! Messenger shows you when your friends come online, so you can 
instantly reach them throughout the day without your boss knowing.

Download Yahoo! Messenger Today! 
 
[Close] 
 
 
undefined 
[Close] 
 
 


_______________________________________________
Nettime-bold mailing list
Nettime-bold@nettime.org
http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold