Syndicate: a star is born

["Sally Jane Norman" <norman@wanadoo.fr>]

Dear Syndicate

Beta pictoris is a new star on the rise. There may be not so much new under
the sun but there may be a new sun.

The question raised the other day (Amy) as to what kind of entity might
viably count as a subscriber on the list - human and/ or programme - strikes
me as a far-reaching one. What to do with Varela? definition of the living
as capacity to evolve, (self-)generate, create (autopoiesis)? Who is /?t a
programme, how and why ? How are human-machine hybrids influencing the
human-human world, which they?e/we?e been doing ever since we developed
prehension and a few other higher chimp talents and started chipping
silicium.

El-fish was an aquarium developed back in the early nineties by Vladimir
Pokhilko, met in Monaco over an aquarium full of vodka before he ascended to
WIRED heights of fame. Obviously there have been many such environments
since Santa Fe and other AL groups started inspiring and generating
spin-offs. But what I (poorly) remember about the Russian programme was
being able to gauge behavioural traits for the artificial fish from a basic
gene pool, sticking more or less with or departing from biologically
credible models. Quite novel at the time. So here we are in our aquarium
list trying to go with the flow which, in aquariums, tends to be pretty
limited. Yet of course the image isn? quite accurate because we?e in the
internet ocean aren? we indeed. Like a lagoon ? A private walled-off
swimming pool? (Popotla-Titanic style?) Gimme shelter but keep that
wilderness feel? How programmed are you? Tell me your gene pool and I?l
direct you to the most fitting fish bowl. Or to go jump in a lake.

Some of the people (yes, people) I really like on this list aren? all that
vociferous. But when they do pitch in, it moves me. And saddens me to see
them go, just like in physical life. Especially knowing how much they?e
given to others, including me. Insinuations of profiteering in this context
are obscene/ Ob/ scene. Off the stage. Misplaced. But how can something be
misplaced in electronic non-place? Can? burn down the home of the homeless.
Lots of weird behaviour patterns coming through, like very wilful inclusion
in texts of bits of signed mail that was exchanged off the list, which
stands out like prove of some strange form of authenticity, has that sepia
hand-developed old photo feel about it (? look this has to be real got it
from my real personally addressed off-the-list mailbox ? or something. Not
critiquing, just clinically curious. And evidence of a huge but hopefully
not unsurmountable gap between traditional exchange of words and the quasi
teratological epistolary practice that? seeping through the chinks of our
not quite watertight aquarium and our not quite cut-and-dried definition of
what? a real fish. Like what Bateson calls the species that emerge in the
cracks of the rocks after the tide goes out.  Te Parata again.

Ocean full of sharks and barracuda and stingrays and electric eels and
bluebottles and orca and? But this yet again simply translates the
obsessions of an idiot born about 17000 kilometers east of Russia.

Nobody ever pretended that internet communities would be any better or
smarter than physical communities. So why be surprised.

Anyway, Beta pictoris is a new star on the rise. Going round in circles.
Some call it orbiting. Try to hit a tangent and make it a spiral. Preferably
upwards and outwards. Cosmic fucking dust.

Kia ora

sjn

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