an evening’s entertainment or byob

The ever-inquiring Nag on the Lake introduces a fascinating sociological phenomenon captured in the ephemera collected by poet and reformer Langston Hughes—intrigued by the little rhyming couplets on the header of invite cards, Hughes amassed quite a number of them when he first came to Harlem in the mid-1950s, that document the plight that black tenents faced in New York City from the 1920s onwards. Low wages combined with price gouging in certain boroughs meant that renters often needed to resort to creative measures (crowd-funding, I guess we would call it today) in order to meet monthly obligations. Many apartments opened up for house parties—which for a nominal entrance fee (refreshments not included), neighbours were treated to a night of music, dancing, card playing and general merry making. Proceeds helped the tenants to bridge the shortfall. Those invitations that Hughes held on to are housed in a special collection at the library of Yale University.

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