her father beat the system by moving bricks to brixton

Hearing news of small-batch artisanal money being minted not to be collectible (while it surely is for a chance to get a Bowie or a Gromit back in change) but to be exchanged for goods and services on a very local level and to supplement the more widely acknowledged legal tender—at parity, it made me think of how for all the woes of globalisation, the phenomenon of hegemony, integration and degredation of native traditions and customs, it does also contain its own antithesis. The anti-globalisation movement is a global one itself and can, especially now thanks to the availability and access of communication, harness some of the same driving factors. Coordinating protests and fund-raisers worldwide among kindred strangers is probably the most apparent example, but evidence of the upside to globalisation is also found in these handsomely crafted bills, the organic and slow food movement, urban victory gardens, seeking out farmers’ markets and locally produced goods, and the increasing number of participants in the so called sharing economy.

rapture-ready or recursive self-improvement

In the labour market, the concerns about mass redundancy due to advances in robotics is undeniable and computing has gotten quite good at putting on at least a friendly persona, a clever mask for its subroutines that make it possible for the user (client) to engage with it.  Maybe humanity’s enduring and abiding mystery is a bit of a conceit itself, and surely the spark of conscious, self-awareness is dulled some if it only amounts to a convincing though banal chat with an automated customer service telephone tree, judged effective if the result is customer satisfaction.

The Singularity does not necessarily follow—and if it did, artificial intelligence won’t partake of the same negative and positive aspects of human character—on it’s own accord, at least, and needing human agency—like greed, ambition, kindness or curiosity that we would like to ascribe to it. Such an incubation period, even if at infinite speeds, does not given guarantee a survival instinct or evolutionary drive—gestating in an environment where it can only know, if know at all, those traits as abstractly material. There may only come a point when the robotics industry has taken all the jobs, writes sitcoms and the news, are our interstellar ambassadors, controls the economy and the defense apparatus—but by Jove, they’ll still be us curmudgeonly humans, managed but still with the advantage of being conscious, whatever benefit that affords. Maybe the Singularity is like the way that some fundamentalist Christian sects interpret the Rapture, the End of Days—for those not left behind (that is, made unemployable by the robot masters) they’ll be the chance for some sort of ersatz biological or uploaded immortality. What do you think? Are we just forever refashioning our hopes and fears?

5x5

pastafarian: avatar of the divine flying spaghetti monster spotted underseas

umbrella corporation: a web search engine redefines it corporate profile

hall-tree and hutch: Dangerous Minds explores how sci-fi films require long, branching corridors

fun house: revisiting Lucas Samaras’ 1966 mirrored room installation

baumbastik: a visit to the small Alpine village of Neuschönau and the world’s longest tree-top trail

hand of glory

With the collapse of the banking system in Greece, a threatened haircut for private accounts and even the strict rationing of access to money, much of the affected population is understandably still wary of entrusting their wealth to any such institution. This lack of confidence and the physical lack of a safe place to park one’s money—the tycoons and magnates can be more resourceful and liquid, as the magnificent BLDGBlog inspects has led many stashing their cash and valuables under the mattress, and burglars are keenly aware of this shift.  Meanwhile, residents are resorting to creative methods of do-it-yourself security-measures in order to stave off or at least discourage break-ins.

I think that this practise and trend won’t stop at the borders and there will be an artistic revival in robbery and defense—skills that have very much atrophied as it was formerly more profitably and less risky to seek out victims virtually and at a distance or to simply exploit and abuse under a legal ægis—that, or just making neighbourhoods more gentrified. This scary and traumatic new landscape reminds me of some of the superstitious rites and rituals that I have encountered in my latest reading assignment: the Golden Bough, which goes into ethnographic detail over some of the totems and talismans that both crooks and potential victims employ.  The so called hand of glory—which sounds like a slumber party game, is a corruption of the word for mandrake root, which was also believed to possess paralyzing magical properties, but evolved into the ceremony of taking a desiccated, dismembered hand of some infamous master-criminal (although, like with the lucky rabbit’s foot not really a charm for the unfortunate rabbit, one wonders how the culprit was caught or lost that hand in the first place) mummified and given a candle to hold, which would supposedly render the inhabitants of the dwelling being burgled immobile. Various other gruesome candles made of the tallows of cadavers that met their fate in specific ways make the thief invisible or otherwise impervious and evade discovery or capture. As a recourse, victims could toss a voodoo doll, an effigy into a bramble bush to ensure that the thief would be caught and justice would be served. I wonder if in this new environment, where abstract things like a store of wealth becomes again made real, a regression that some of the sheltered, privileged classes will regard as positively medieval, new amulets and charms will be invented for the inventory of coping.