When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to shamelessly self-promote, and to strengthen the bands which connect one with the Internet, a decent respect to the opinions of Humankind requires that one declare the causes which impel one to the blogitation.
Showing posts with label butterfly effect. Show all posts
Showing posts with label butterfly effect. Show all posts
I'm visiting home for spring break and a job interview. While sleeping on the couch very early this morning, my mother dropped what she called an "interesting fact" on the table next to me. Upon waking, I read this (apparently from a "Fact-a-Day" calendar, dated Wednesday, January 28th):
It is believed that Shakespeare was forty-six around the time the King James version of the Bible was written. In Psalm 46, the forty-sixth word from the first word is shake, and the forty-sixth word from the last word is spear.
I was picking through two old posts, one about the disembodied nature of empire and the other about the shifting nature of political/economic/social authority on a global level, and I started to think about how to apply my older thoughts on such things to my current interest in social contract theory and the growth of the "digital superstructure(s)" that are increasingly front-and-center in our lives.
In this case, being a contributor, or at least a mildly active participant in one's own "digital life" (since you've got one even if you're not online!) is a better idea than sitting back. The benefits (real or perceived) of being plugged in are simply higher than staying out. Pragmatism, not popularity, is driving us onto the internet - into the diffuse, sometimes highly-selective networks that are changing the speed of news, connecting consumers to producers, or even helping people.
We have absolutely no idea what is coming next, but we know that when things change, or when something big happens, there will be reflexive, collaborative and, above all, supportive networks in place for dealing with whatever it is. Best of all, these networks are, to a certain extent, self-regulating. We are governing ourselves by a loose set of rules that become more and more codified as time goes on. I doubt we'll ever have a "Blogger's Bill of Rights" or anything like that, but things are progressing, whatever that means.
For an interesting look at what might be coming around the bend, take a look at Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point Theory, but instead of viewing it in terms of true global consciousness, put it in the language of social networking and the internet. Doesn't sound quite so far-fetched now. Or does it?
The last day or so has featured a flurry of Motrin (yes, the pain reliever)-related activity on the Twittertubes. I was working at the library most of yesterday, so I avoided keeping up with the madness. I didn't know what was happening, and I figured that I'd savor that and wait to find out today. And so I did, by following through to Thinkjose's post about Motrin's Twitter Headache. He does an awesome job of explaining the evolution of the damn thing, and it's well worth the visit. Apparently, the hubbub was about this video:
Yeah, I agree. Pretty silly. I do like the wordart stuff, though. The entire fiasco is another example of how different things are these days. Gives me more fodder for my upcoming Magnum Opus, which will be a research project involving social media, democracy, and international relations. Gotta think big, you know.
My instructor in my Modern Political Theory class was discussing how political theory, like any good idea, is generally applied retrospectively to a given situation. We aren't usually able to see patterns until after the fact. Not that this makes theory worthless, of course; we gain a greater appreciation of what has happened, and we can certainly learn about possible future occurrences of that given situation.
My instructor did point out the need for theory to be as proactive as it possibly could though, by positing this thought-experiment: "What if, tomorrow, science proves that I'm actually standing on the other side of the room?" It was a ridiculous idea, but not outside the realm of possibility.
We already know that time is relative, perhaps even more so than we would like to admit. It is, as I've long held, a social construct more than an empirical thing (I still show up early to everything, though). We can, if we like, view time as everything happening all at once, since there's no feasible end or beginning point for what we call "time." Even more disturbing/inspiring is quantum mechanics, which allows us to think really, REALLY big by looking at things that are very, very small. I offer the following easy explanation of superposition theory:
By this reasoning, my instructor most certainly could have been on the other side of the room, at the exact same time that he was where we perceived him to be. Using the aforementioned notion of time as relative, he could have been inhabiting both positions at different times as well. Whew. We can't stand still because, depending how you look at it, we are everywhere at once.
I love this stuff, but you can't think deeply about it for too long or your brain will explode.
The past three weeks have been spent very actively working on investigating and monopolizing my digital self. I feel as if I've wasted far too much time as it is. The diagram below is where I will be working on my presence in the months to come. If this is all very strange, it's because it is. I'm aiming for a public launch sometime in December. Hah.
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