NOVEMBER 12, 1997Channel operator: Nell Tenhaaf
Log file opened at: 11/12/97 12:17:08 PM
rafa: OK that was the *last* server reset, I hope
nell: good. I have to get my netscape up.
rafa: OK the building is now online
rafa: we can speak in the open... right now it is just you me and the building
nell: ah indeed. guess "end of the end" is not so popular...
nell: ok. I'm going to set topic.
*** nell has set the topic on channel #fear to fear at the end of the end
Roc: hola amigos
rafa: English is the language of *fear*
Roc: sorry, I never know who I am talking to untill I feel their reaction to my words...
nell: Roc, you are from Spain and Mexico but in Brazil?
nell: oh, you are in Spain of course...
e: hi there
Gordana: From a place where paranoia, postnoia and nanohope are palpable, all theorising sounds papery, deceitful and impossible.
Roc: The floor in front of the Zeughaus in Graz looks wet
Roc: No, I was born in Mexico City and I live in Barcelona. I am in Barcelona right now.
e: Erik Davis has arrived.
diana: hello, sorry abit late.
rafa: welcome all
Roc: Is that important?
rafa: the idea of tele-absence is about the celebration of where one is *not*
rafa: I believe during this chat there will be some people who can attest to that because of their context
Roc: I am not in Spain!
diana: Rafa - do we celebrate not being in Graz?
nell: Roc, of course. Sorry!
Roc: My eyes are touching the facade of the Zeughaus in Graz
rafa: yes, diana, it is raining here and a Barco projector has failed :(
e: so rafa, are you afraid that things are not going so well now?
diana: technology is the last thing we can counton... couldn''''t find the dns entry for tu.graz
rafa: *very* afraid, but I was already, I do agree that we live in the time of Panic
e: so does this mean that none of this chat is being splattered on a wall in Graz?
Roc: No problem about nowhere
rafa: Yes, the IRC texts are being projected in Graz, on the Arsenal
diana: i'm in an anonymous room in bp - could be anywhere, but for the language in the background
diana: what kind of audience do you have there?
rafa: English is the language of *fear*, and perhaps it is a space
Gordana: good luck to all tecnics, rafa!
e: How is English the language of fear?
rafa: It is the fear of the de facto standard...?
diana: meaning that people fear english...
nell: meaning that people fear instrumentalization
rafa: when "the End" credit rolls out, we will all be speaking english...oder?
diana: I must disagree.. English is not a language of mystery. Mystery is fear
diana: but what kind of english will we all speak?
e: English is a mutt language, not just an instrumental one.
Roc: what does mutt mean?
diana: coyote
e: A mixture, the opposite of a pure breed.
Roc: hybrid or fertile?
rafa: mutt: therein lies its power
nell: heinz 57 varieties as the old saying goes
diana: all of the obove
e: Both, in my view, and that is indeed its power. Ever tasted the (English) literature of India?
nell: diana, why is mystery fear?
nell: hello pid.
pid: hello bot
nell: bot! that's good.
diana: Nell, not all mystery but people seem to fear the unknown, the unfamiliar
nell: which is everything, every moment...
rafa: The literature of India... a bit ignorant, me, but believing in reincarnation is one way to not fear THE END
pid: i fear, someone is a bot here...
e: The mystery of a lonely woodland path vs the mystery of Central Park at 2am.
rafa: but apocalapsus is really upon us
nell: pid, what do you fear about bots?
Gordana: the mistery of the atmosphere in Belgrade
diana: personally I like a good mystery - adds spice to life - but maybe this is also why I fear people worrying about mystery
nell: diana, is that paranoia?
diana: how about the mystery of the entire balkans.. big mystery for english speakers ;)
Roc: Tales of mystery and imagination... that title, together with that black cover have shaped my nightmares...
diana: Nell - no kind of a joke, but in bad taste.
pid: nell> bots are not human, they may bite you
nell: yes, I think they're erratic...
diana: who pid
rafa: has our understanding of THE END been changed by digital copy? by cryonics? by the hollywood sequel?
diana: which understanding of the end do you mean?
pid: and yes bots can be as stupid as humans, on the net you never know if someone is a bot
nell: pid, I don't _fear_ them but I fear the net turning into a botworld
rafa: "western" post-industrial culture
pid: the end of the touring-test
rafa: I believe erik davis has written a lot about apocalapsus
diana: i fear the world is turning into botworlds
e: this is konrad... sorry I really feared to be *excluded * from this as I could not geta connection to the server for a while...
nell: no one running the bots, do we fear that?
e: I like "apocalapsus." Like Apo-collapse. A-pox-a-lapse. (ED)
e: Hi - i fear I have interupted you... (k~)
Roc: I fear the mutt that came out of Disney and Duchamp
nell: Roc, yes, r. mutt. you fear that?
nell: lapsus, I fear lapsus.
diana: I've got to turn this machine over to somebody
pid: i fear hello
e: And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark on thier right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man migh buy or sell, save that he had the mark, of the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (ED)
e: AND WHATS THAT NUMBER FOLKS???
pid: 6667
rafa: 69
e: lets fear the void, can you feel it (k~)
Roc: Yes!
rafa: Roc - Mutt: between Disney and Duchamp... worse Disney meets the Vatican
rafa: I think Disney will license the rights to the bible
Roc: you mean Dylan?
nell: Disney will license the urinal signed R Mutt
nell: the apocalypse is a whole Disney world, then we'll have to start over, re-boot
e: Eistenstein loved Disney.
rafa: fear the end of the end... Disney rolls the credits on the apoca-leaps
Roc: Einstein loved fear
Roc: Boite en valisse = merchandise
pid: lapsus et culpa, mea apocaculpa
pid: it's a matter of fx-engeneering, lately they made progress with the rendering of fire and water..
Roc: I fear photorrealism!
rafa: it's a matter of fx-engeneering: yeah, special effects rendered a human at the same time that they mastered to render "flocking" behaviour
e: they made progress in rendering intellectuals... k~
e: I am rendered mute. E
rafa: Special effects: they rendered a human at the same time that they rendered "flocking" behaviour
e: I fear RAFA is a bot. is a bot. is a bot.
rafa: we can now walk the line
nell: I love these spews of thought and I love your wordplay, all
Roc: TV rendered flocking behaviour on many good people...
e: Who allows themselves to flock, to merge with crowds, to melt into incandescent flow....
nell: oh, or should I say I _don't_ fear words.
nell: konrad, your comment makes intellectual=bot
Gordana: what are you afraid of the most, nell
nell: ummm, running out of time.
nell: I mean, existentially running out of time, as well as, you know, before something I have to do tomorrow.
nell: Gordana, what about you?
rafa: millenarianism?
rafa: Gordana, are you in Serbia?
Gordana: yes, sure!
pid: who comes after the subject?
rafa: Could serbia be a place for tele-absence?
e: I am afraid I cant follow- that's why I don't fear bots... k~
Gordana: serbia is the best. you can survive only by feeling absent, to teleport yourself somwhere else.
rafa: the imaginary rest-space of absence
pid: i
e: we are afraid of having a car accidenct on the way where we are going now- c U , k~
pid: i love bots
rafa: time, we will never get to 2000
Gordana: unfortunately, rafa, i think we will!
rafa: 2000:Well, the Ramones were singing about it in the 70s and we are still singing about it rafa: 20 yrs later
Gordana: always going back to nowhere..
pid: the turning of the danger comes to pass suddenly
Gordana: maybe because i come from nowhere, rafa
rafa: yes, but you are *not* tele-absent
Gordana: yes, i can feel it
rafa: nano-hope, is there any in Serbia?
Gordana: oh, so very much, it is part of everuday life. you can it touch it.
nell: I would like to ask about coming from nowhere.
rafa: the yr 2000 in serbia arrived several years ago, what about in Barcelona, Roc, do people feel *coincidences* with their situation?
nell: dio, can we know who you are?
rafa: The gypsies say "my country is my shoes"
Roc: talking about fortune or talking about fear, the weels
Gordana: if your native country is like mine, your best answer is to say- i am from nowhere, besides, i do not recognize that surrounding as my country.
dio: god in spanish - nut in hungarian - diana in english - who are you?
Roc: I don't know, I fear history because my family has told me a history of horrors that had a "happy end" in the exile, in Mexico.
rafa: Roc, I know you are a mutt, mexican-catalan, do you see yourself as coming from nowhere?
Gordana: i am the electronic artist from belgrade, but not desperate as it could sound, and glad to be with you.
Roc: coming and going from/to nowhere, Rafa
pid: the class of the uncanny which proceeds from the repressed is the more resistant
Roc: I have nightmares about having roots (external" on my feet
rafa: roots: we have roots, but they are portable
nell: dio, rock in latin.
Roc: wheels of fortune
rafa: nowhere... nonlocation: the fear project is about cellebrating the impossibility of self-transmission, although that sounds pretentious...
pid: i am rubber you are glue
rafa: "i am rubber you are glue" - resistance?
Gordana: try to feel like a water, i like it the best.
Roc: the invention of wheels killed external roots... the invention of telephone gave way for skycrapers
pid: yes, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you (freud)
pid: what is uncanny is that which lies before us but which we are unable to see (poe)
dio: a godly nut of a rock called diana
rafa: The concept of "THE END", surely changes vertiginously from place to place...we have here people connecting from the US, canada, serbia , Budapest, etc.
wilding: the end seems so comforting to me I have a hard time to think of it as terrible.
pid: my only friend, the end.
wilding: Yes, pid,the only friend. Death as the ultimate seduction for which we can't wait, for which we always wait.
rafa: The end is not what it used to be, however
rafa: our perception of the end is affected by cryonics, by the hollywood sequel, by cloning , etc
rafa: digital replication affords no originals, no forgetting,
wilding: Indeed, rafa the end is not what it used to be? How can we know? I think the prospect of cloning, cryonics, etc. is remote for most of us despite the hype.
Gordana: what about reincarnation? forgotten?
Roc: changes aren't permanent, but change is...
rafa: pid was talking about bots, before... they are immortal, like yeast cells
Gordana: change is the only constant...
pid: www.i want to be a machine (aw)
nell: sure the end is the same, haven't you watched a hollywood film recently?
rafa: Michael Clark has a performance that begins with a large projection of the credit "The End" and Muntadas a video that only shows the end credits of several programs, perhaps the end has already happened (St. Augustin)
wilding: The end has always happened. I go to sleep every night without any guarantee that I'll wake up in the morning.
Roc: the mother of all machines is jelous of her doughters and sons
Gordana: do anybody of you belive in HAPPY END?
Roc: a) because they are young
pid: others dream about the "omega point ressurection" we all may come back as duplicates
Roc: b) because they are beautiful
Roc: c) because they are loved
pid: but also extropians use to die..
wilding: what is seems we are constructing here is an endrun around a text which can never end, never close. so the IRC as an endless possibility of loops and links.
pid: a profane talmud...
rafa: Cicero and many others said "to philosophize is to learn how to die" so is to get connected (not necessarily technologically)
wilding: About the end ezra pound (the old fascist) wrote: I have tried to write Paradise. Let the wind speak. This is Paradise. He wrote this in a cage.
Roc: some cultures use the metaphor of construction for their knowledge, others use the metaphore of music
pid: and freund just calls it death drive..
rafa: IRC texts leave a trace, a shadow of presence
rafa: yet we are all in different planes
Roc: a kind of memory, the shadow of a memory
wilding: Did we all say how we'd prefer to die yet?
rafa: frozen
Gordana: like a star
Roc: afro zen
wilding: I'm going to take drugs after a really great dinner with the ones I love.
*** nell has set the topic on channel #fear to fear at the end of biology
rafa: take the drugs and suicide the *next* day
wilding: I had a student once whose wife died while they were having sex.
nell: sounds like you've slid over into "fear at the end of biology".
rafa: The end of biology...the end of the concept of biology
Roc: this text window is better than a sticky table in a tavern in Montmartre... we are all kissing this cadavre exquise... se asceptic!
wilding: Yes, I really think my big fear at the end of biology is fear of aging. No one wants to talk about that much.
nell: death drive in freud is really regression to previous stages in evolution, the quietude of a rock being a kind of ultimate.
dio: I want to join faith in her final dinner party
nell: Roc, certainly un bon cadavre exquise, great metaphor
nell: freud the biologist, there's a good book about that by Sulloway (?)
rafa: fear aging: especially in the US, don't you think Faith?
wilding: We are kissing the cadavre in an attempt to deny it once again. Bataille thinks death is the great feast of connection once again. I would like to feel that, to sink into the abyss of connection. In that regard anything but a biological death seems frightening to me.
dio: ahh, but faith what is aging but slow certain death
Roc: Ignasi Aballi, a local artist here in Barcelona works on the presence of time... the dust on top of a piece of furniture...
nell: faith, what do you mean by biological death? what else?
wilding: aging makes your body into a new and uncontrollable space.It it like adolescence because there is so much change. Very unnerving and destabilizing.
Roc: No dust on our virtual desktops, no time in this motion...
wilding: Nell, I guess I meant disasters such as those caused by man-made war machines which would cause a machinic world death.
nell: ah yes, I see.
dio: my 93 year old grandmother is traumatized daily by a troupe of midgets that parade through her room and a group of Japanese people in her closet
rafa: machinic world death is upon us, no? so many bank tellers!
wilding: I mean I guess I fear most that I won't have control of my death and I constantly think of staging my death while I'm still in control (or illusion of control). Why could death not be staged consciously as a final bodily act, as a final biological phase?
dio: fine faith, but what happens to that fuzzy line between when you think you know where it is
wilding: I recently spent some time in a biology lab here at carnegie mellon and was shown videos of cell death. the student explained that cell death is programmed into our bodies for without it for example we would not have separated fingers.
rafa: cell death: haploid cells do NOT die from suicide
dio: that is beautiful - the poetic connection between life and death
nell: yeah, diploid we die.
nell: I always wanted to do a piece called that.
rafa: That means sperm and ova could live indefinitely
nell: exactly. like amoeba.
rafa: given the right conditions
Roc: I fear not having separated fingers
nell: it's this wretched old recombination imperative that does us in.
wilding: go for it nell. The cell death was beautiful as there were these macrophages that started eating parts of the cell and began to look like big fat planets.
rafa: and the recombination takes place thanks to scarcity in the environment
nell: that's the other nice part, it all becomes food. amoeba swallow each other too.
nell: rafa, explain more. biology lessons.
wilding: But if sperms and eggs were left alone and never joined wouldn't they lose all meaning?
rafa: and the swallowing is also sex
nell: ah, my thought exactly.
nell: it's sex as it should be.
wilding: Say that again please: the swallowing of the sperm by the egg as sex an sich, and forget about growing it into an embryo, just stop right there?
nell: faith, it's the great feast of connection faith was talking about earlier. maybe the end goes back to the beginning, no fingers, no limbs. fear.
rafa: the embryo is a mutant frankenstein
wilding: In the beginning was formlessness and then God(dess) decided to make forms by the use of cell death. And so death came into the world in order to make form, and so death is an artist.
rafa: the end of biology... everyone seen the oncomouse?
nell: is that the mouse that's designed for cancer research etc.?
rafa: yes, but there is also the ugly one with the human ear
nell: oh the ear, that was my favourite topic for a while. tissue engineering.
wilding: Actually we could talk a little about cannibalism. We were talking about transgenic pigs in class yesterday. After we harvest their organs then what? what if we ate them in a ritualistic cannibalistic feast. I foresee the beginnings of a ritualistic orgiastic culture with the new biology.
rafa: I guess all this material has been well covered by Haraway, etal, but it is still fascinating, all the porosity of the boundaries
wilding: How about a recipe book: How to grow, harvest, and cook the new transgenic plants and animals.
nell: in Toronto there's a group of young performance artists who perform rituals with animal guts and blood and fire, at bank machines
rafa: cannibalism... rituals, city tribes... don't buy that...it is a spectacle?
nell: some call it the "destructivist" school of performance -- young, rebellious, doing everything over again.
nell: could be related to the new biology, no? buy a bod.
rafa: hmmm body DJs
nell: explain,
wilding: The porosity of boundaries produces the revulsion and fear which is the announcer of the presence of death bataille talks about. I read that the first taboo was the taboo against eating the flesh of those who were like you. This is how you knew they were human...
rafa: reconstruction, amplification, cut and paste body
nell: I've read that too. Levi-Strauss I think. Incest and the like follows much later.
Roc: excuse me, what are those shadows on the wall?
rafa: roc: the shadows are the people in front of 14000 watts of projection (the piece will officially open tomorrow)
Roc: thnx. palimpsest...
wilding: Vienna actionism at the ATM, good one! Why these endless retreads?
rafa: endless retreads? nostalgia?
Roc: Is this the beginning or the end of fear?
wilding: Since we have such a metaphysically cannibalistic culture and we do it virtually all the time, why not the longing to do it in the real?
nell: very deep taboo, primal fear
rafa: cannibalistic: you know the day of the dead in mexico, YOU DO eat yourself...
wilding: Nostalgia for the great feast of bodies of reincarnation which lies at the heart of most pre-Christian and post-christian religions.
Roc: about those shadows... they were the image of presential absence on top of our letters which are the image of our tele basence... right?
rafa: roc:right
wilding: So back to cannibalism which seems the basis of life in a way. What do you think Nell?
nell: I do recall some material about primates that cannibalize the young of groups they are attacking.
nell: a way to ensure that they generate all new offspring with the grop they overpower. pretty primal.
wilding: Is there cannibalism in A-life?
nell: I wonder if primates also have a metaphysical experience of their cannabalism.
Roc: Every relation is endogamic in A-life, don't you think so?
nell: everything happens in alife, but it's not life so we're taling a different thing.
Roc: nature is culture made
wilding: what other end of biology fears do you people have?
Roc: 'cause nature is a concept, or is it more than that?
rafa: Faith:I dont agree that cannibalism is the basis of life...it is the basis of sex and death...cells are cannibals only if there are not enough nutriesnt in the environment
Andreas: How about a fear of hostile implants, not that I have any (yet)?
wilding: does anyone want to talk about cloning?
rafa: Dolly is the Calvin Clone
nell: actually, I don't have any great biology fears. I'd like to donate my cell or embryo for cloning or research or whatever.
nell: hmm, although that's certainly a different proposition from the Iron Man thing, metal gone wild in the body.
Log file closed at: 11/12/97 2:47:24 PM
Server Crash
Log file opened at: 11/12/97 2:59:13 PM
rafa: so after our server crash we are all back are we?
nell: welcome back, all.
rafa: OK let me recap a few things...we are projecting the IRC texts on the Arsenal your writing will be about 15 x 20 m large
Roc: yes but what type or font are you using?
rafa: but pople in Graz will only be able to see it if their shadow is over it
rafa: the font is hand made ;)
michael: may i say anything about fear at anytime
rafa: anytime... we are discussing the end of biology
michael: ah yes the first discipline of heads and tails
michael: i am not adept at the peculiarities of this application
Roc: thnx rafa, always so clear ; )
rafa: we have gone through haploid cannibalism to create the mutant diploid suicide machine
rafa: now we were about to talk Dolly, the calvin clone biology has become so porous that it now encompasses all disciplines
michael: but have you built the orgone machine as well?
rafa: it seems everything is alive
michael: it was always already all disciplines no need to incorporate it is the corporate discipline, no?
Andreas: Right. The end of biology. Someone brought up the fear of cloning earlier. Is is a real fear for anyone? One possible reason might be that its a threat to authenticity. You know, the "real me."
michael: andreas this can only be so if the soul is cloned with it - is it?
rafa: the vatican says no
michael: the vatican of course is hiding the fact that christ is a living vampire
Andreas: No I don't think it is. But I think that is how it is often portrayed.
rafa: earlier, we discussed that the vatican has the reproduction rights to all catholic bodies
michael: biology runs on the idea of fear of truth
michael: something like the vatican
Andreas: Maybe the Vatican should open a sperm bank.
michael: rafa, this is true but its enforcement is not legal only theological
michael: andreas i believe the vatican has a sperm bank already
rafa: well, there was always the inquisition
Andreas: Although in some places (times) theology is/was the law.
michael: that is the old days of doing things in the open for fear now to create fear it must be hidden because the seen is too easy to get over
rafa: fear of the end of biology permeates most sci fi
Roc: I once used letrasset to transfer a copyright sign to an eggshell... It is broken now and I keep the tiny pieces in a plastic bag.
nell: wanted to ask michael what he meant by "biology runs on the idea of fear of truth" -- will wait until he's back
rafa: so, as we wait for other server exiles, what might the new biology address?
nell: well, I do wonder how a non-biologist can enter any aspect of it, except to be flung back in awe.
Andreas: Augmentation and extension. Less meat, more gear.
nell: that certainly has been imaged a lot.
Andreas: Too much, I think.
nell: me too. what about a different kind of meat?
Andreas: Perhaps an enhanced meat. Meat with supercharged DNA and consciousness enhancing hormones.
rafa: there seems to be a recurrance of meat
Andreas: Could be because of what I had for dinner ;)
nell: our meat is already changed/changing, hormone emulators from the environment
nell: we don't know how we're different, how our consciousness results from changed bodies
nell: I have crash worries, are you people there?
Andreas: Yes, I'm here. I'm just slow.
rafa: yes me too
Andreas: So, what about a "new" biology? Is it to enter into the domain that was once the domain of the mind.
nell: I found out something at the european artificial life conference that I thought was really weird. Sony Virtual Laboratories in Japan "discovering" genes via 3-D simulation, genes that until now were named through long tedious fruitfly studies.
rafa: the new biology will likely take on a simulator approach
nell: definitely.
rafa: embodied simulators
Andreas: Virtual cures. Imagine the new industries it could spawn.
nell: simulators with a sense of themselves, their worlds.
rafa: How about virtual diseases?
rafa: not TV, but ones that you could get ill and recovered *fast*
Andreas: Will that leave us non-simulated beings behind? Although, I suppose I am one at the moment.
rafa: Imagine taking diseases like taking holidays
nell: yes, send a disease through the bod, go for a ride.
nell: you'd want to leave your bod though, to not have the displeasure.
Andreas: Hmmm . . . Club Med would take on a whole new meaning.
rafa: and the really black market disease is the one that can kill you
nell: the biggest thrill of all.
rafa: displeasure might be part of it, no?
Andreas: Equally dangerous would be diseases with defects. A kind of "Ford Pinto" gene.
rafa: Safe diseases
nell: smart diseases.
rafa: I like that!
rafa: smart as in bio warfare
Andreas: indifferent diseases
nell: I think new biology is recognizing all organic entities as having a world of their own that they live in, up to us to "understand" where they live. they may be indifferent to us...
rafa: and why stop at organic?
Andreas: And we inconsequential to them. The revenge of the microbe.
nell: indeed.
nell: heard of biosemiosis?
Andreas: No.
rafa: biosemiosis sounds like something to do with seeds
Andreas: Or breakfast cereal.
nell: biosemiosis comes out of Scandanavian countries, not very old idea, someone called Jakob von Uexhall (?).
nell: :-) nice associations
rafa: let me guess biosemiosis is the application of biology to non-rganic life
nell: it has to do with signification among entities in nature (could be nonorganic as well), significations across surfaces and among niches
nell: it's a different way of describing a study of nature, where every aspect has its own sort of "inner world"
Andreas: Is it related to bio computing?
rafa: so the search for differences rather than similarities like in taxonomy?
nell: yeah, a way of describing differences and relations among them
nell: what is meant by bio-computing?
Andreas: From what I know (which is not much) is that it uses biological metaphors and models to design programs and hardware. Its one of the depts. here where I work.
rafa: bio-computing is the usage of organic chemicals to be able to store memory states, right?
nell: interesting. I learned about evolvable hardware at that alife conference.
rafa: So actually, you have a petri dish with this stuff and you make proteins or whatever "switch" like computers
nell: right. they've made broths that work like computers.
rafa: evolvable hardware, pray tell
Andreas: I think that as well. I met a bio-computerists over lunch and she seemed to indicate that it was a more "theoretical" use of biology rather than a "wet" one.
nell: evolvable hardware means that, using a regular silicon chip, you let the circuit carve itself by setting beginning and end. trouble is, not easy to replicate.
Andreas: Would it be able to replicate itself, or at least similar offspring?
nell: not as I understand it, not yet. early stages of that work now.
rafa: what do they evolve toward?
nell: but that would be the idea. they evolve toward the best solution to the problem that is set.
rafa: interesting...their "life" is based on a problem..
Andreas: Is this something that makes anyone nervous.
nell: I believe the example was something really simple like making a sound.
Andreas: Isn't our life based on problems?
nell: we could call it a "goal", any better?
rafa: making a sound: hmmm, you would have to evolve ears
nell: lol. that's right. and look _really_ funny.
nell: biology is best by the issue of what's theoretical...
rafa: What do you mean?
nell: I mean that much of "complexity theory" seems to me to make proposals that are very narrative, speculative, but maybe have applications. like Stuart Kauffman's autonomous agent idea would be a good example.
nell: oops, now I have to explain that. Have been writing about this stuff, so am so immersed in it.
rafa: Kaufman, haven't read him yet
nell: he's very dense.
Simon: yeah, good idea, explain please,
nell: okay I'll try. you'll have to wait though until I get it figured out and typed.
rafa: In the meantime let me introduce you
rafa: andreas in sweden meet michael in montreal and simon in pittsburg
rafa: "building" is the arsenal in Graz
Simon: obliged, I'm sure
rafa: we have had a high connection rate for the previous session but the our server crashed and sent everyone away
rafa: FEAR, But now everything is OK, and Nell will explain Kaufman ;)
nell: so K. says that a self-sustaining contained system (think of a cell) which produces work and so keeps itself going answers to basic questions of self-organization, like where does order in nature come from and how does it keep going in the face of entropy. But he admits that this is a nice story to concoct, even if it can be applied in studying cells. The line between hard science and theory then becomes very fuzzy.
michael: is it kaufman who speaks about computer viruses as living organisms?
Simon: my question too, since we're housekeeping... network=?
nell: I'm not sure about that, doesn't sound like him as he's a biochemist and biophysicist.
Andreas: Is there not also fuzziness in other hard sciences, such as physics? It seems that matters become increasingly difficult to conretize the "closer" one looks at them.
nell: yeah, I think I'd call that a theory issue as well. we make meaning...
Simon: the problem is that self-organistation is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. ie: (no pun intended) ...
Andreas: Yes. And the beholder could by anywhere.
nell: oh I agree totally. it's a perception, a willed perception one might say.
Simon: one man's order is another's chaos
Simon: This is the issue of subjectivity which CS types are unwilling
nell: one man(sic)'s emergence is another's habit.
Simon: to confront, it threatens their cherished (but failed) objectivity
nell: simon, do you know the biosemiotcians, in Denmark? they're very involved in subjective worlds of agents of any kind.
nell: of course, thanks for clearing that up. that's a different kettle of fish.
Simon: indeed, "man's (sic)"
rafa: OK all, I have to run, thank you for your participation and drop by tomorrow if you like. Note: the channel will remain open for as long as you all want to be in it
michael: sorry, i'm back - it's richard dwarkin
reini: bye rafa, btw who is/was rafa?
michael: good question
nell: who is/was reini?
reini: Is
Simon: who am/was I?
nell: don't worry, none of us know.
michael: he's an interesting guy (dawkins - although rafa is certainly as well) because he almost demands a kind of living rights for the computer virus
nell: I have a lot of trouble with Dawkins myself. too genetico deterministico.
nell: reini, our overrall topic is fear and the current topic focuses on biology. that's it.
michael: genetico?
nell: made that up.
michael: too is always interesting because it is a limit
Andreas: A nice term, though.
Simon: too right, lots to fear about the Dawkins model
Andreas: To what extent does he take the "virus rights" idea?
Simon: see the discussions pre and post AEC96 for further info
michael: well he doesn't exactly do that it's a consequence of his tacit admiration, that is, his admiration for these things he's created which end up having a "life" of their own, they replicate and create other applications etc. they "behave" like definitions of living entities everything is by virtue of its definition - that sort of thing
nell: Dawkins never wonders about his own investment in those kinds of ideas, that's what bugs me about him, not very reflective
michael: biofearzenslap
Andreas: Hmmm. I can see why that may be disturbing in a social/political context.
reini: but what about fear? ist anyone hear AFRAID of visuses? in fact we all admire viruses
michael: i read an interview with him and he seemed quite circumspect - just very enthusiastic, enthusiasm always breeds suspicion
michael: i certainly have a dread of viruses
nell: well, Dawkins seems to pump up his ideas at the expense of referencing them to other research that's going on.
michael: although i respect their anarchic politico sensibility at an aesthetic level
nell: viruses are not fully organic, that's the interesting thing about them.
michael: what other research is that?
Andreas: Maybe. But as long as they stay in someone else's backyard.
michael: some virus are quite organic
nell: they're really just floating bits of code, that's why Dawkins likes them becasue _code is it_ for him.
nell: no, they don't have any meat.
michael: yes well genetics is code also
nell: genetics works with meat.
Andreas: But does genetics have to work with meat?
michael: um genetics doesn't work explcitly with meat and anyway language/code is meat in a way also
Simon: hmm, as for the end of biology, prions are even _less_ alive
nell: yep. lots happens in the meat itself that works in relation to genetics, starting with the first expression of genes in the egg.
Simon: and there's big fear there!
nell: what's a prion again? oh yeah, that has to do with mad cow disease,no?
michael: i'm very afraid of dear mouse shit
Simon: thinking about Prions?
michael: it can give you a disease which will kill nasty in a few hours
Andreas: And ticks.
michael: yeah anything which eats you
nell: we should close up shop I think. Is that okay?
nell: bye all.
Log file closed at: 11/12/97 4:09:01 PM
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