überall or computer says no

A fascinating feature article by Frank Pasquale, writing for Æon magazine, called the Digital Star Chamber is an excellent articulation of some of the fears that harboured when comes the faith we’ve vested in the unaccountable algorithms and the predictive models that produce. The story is told through the lens of the new class of instaserfs who’ve entered into a contractual relationship, albeit voluntarily, that’s very much of balance and crushing for the entrepreneurial spirit.
Not only is the potential for mischaracterisation tremendous, not without human bias and prejudice but subject to the same slant as racial profiling and stereotyping despite being computer generated—the collected demographics and dossiers of markets have real world consequences beyond targeted advertisements, like the ability to get a loan or not due to the deportment of one’s neighbours or predictive purchasing habits, allowed on an aeroplane or into a foreign country, with whom one is mated, what kind of medical treatment that one receives, or even how one’s own shingle, enterprise, is framed. Such judgements were always there is formulae that companies employ for determining a good or bad risk, but now even the criteria themselves are obscured and there is no chance for appeal. Of course, in a broad sense algorithms must provide a a functional gauge and reliable measure, despite our instinct to style ourselves other than average, otherwise there would be no longevity to such routines and recipes and they are forever being manipulated in mysterious ways. It is nothing new or novel to compartmentalise individual behaviour for study, nor unfortunately is it a new development to blindly trust the results insofar as they are mechanical and supposedly non-judgemental.  Our reliance and deference, however, becomes very perilous considering how exposed we have allowed ourselves to become transparent and vulnerable as opposed to the voyeuristic and inscrutable number-crunching systems that stalk our every real and assumed step.  What do you think?  How ought such prowling agents be held to account?

5x5

to boldly go: Nichelle Nichols’ Star Trek workout

cartel: film camera company squashed a digital camera design forty years ago

remains of the day: durable vegetal leather reclaimed from market day leftovers, via Nag on the Lake

◊: the UK is road-testing a special lane that recharges electric automobiles as they go

retrofile: 1970s gallery of stock photography shows how little we’ve progressed in marketing sophistication 

samapātti or avatar

Partially motivated out of neglecting to graciously receive the Dalai Lama when he came to me and missing a yoga session in succession but mostly out of a curiosity for reverence, I took a detour north during the weekly commute to return to Limburg and attend a meditation session with Mutter Meera, an incarnation of the Hindu mother goddess, Shakti, in her home below Schloß Schaumburg in the village of Balduinstein.
Careful not to misrepresent a divinity (though there’s certainly much to be gained by that industry) and there was certainly no pressure to make a donation or elaborate self-promotion, despite a quick study, I was not sure what to expect or what was expected in terms of protocol. After I had arrived, finding the hall pretty full already—a bigger audience than I had thought, one of the ushers asked me if this was my first time and sat me nearly directly in front of the presentation place. I was not the first to approach Mutter Meera, so I watched and had some idea of how to deport myself. Unshod, row by row, we inched from the back of the hall when called up to the dais, and prostrate, the avatar placed her hands on our heads and recalibrated our chakras then looked us in the eyes for an instant. I sort of felt like when I had queued up at the Vatican to touch the feet of Saint Peter and kind of rushed myself through it, cognizant of those behind me, sort of fearful that I would start laughing hysterically or manage to spill the contents of my pockets as I arose and couldn’t really immerse myself in the experience—regrettably.
Something sank in, however—not an immediate bolt that made me feel that I suddenly had my head on right, but rather as I returned to my seat and held that gaze in my mind and got to watch the rest of the audience—mostly veterans, I thought, with all their anticipations and expectations to unburden go through the same ritual up close. Some had worn holey socks, like I worried about, some betrayed a little smirk afterwards, and others I believe were a little starry-eyed just afterwards from the head-rush of having crawled across the floor, but judgment was somehow absented in the quiet procession, which is no mean task. The darshan (blessing) of silence and at minimum the opportunity for reflection that admitted no trappings of showmanship was something I am glad that I sought out (despite and because of the nasty weather that precluded routine investigation of the nice surroundings) this shared experience and hopefully have some positive energy to impart.

sampler or some pig

My mother shared with me this striking photo- graph of a rather inti- midating spider she spied in her garden. I’d seen such a big spider, called an argiope (silver- faced and named after a water nymph), once before, for whom a humming-bird or minnow wouldn’t be out of its weight-class (predators take on weird, liminal proportions when they’ll take on something bigger than a fly and especially with its doubled-up pouncing stance that announces it’s beyond the arthropods and in fact quadrupedal) but the web its weaved is particularly striking. I wonder whether the distinct zig-zag pattern, the signature I learnt of a male of the species, represents a kind of stitching sampler (and may well come to spell out something, like Charlotte’s Web, or suitable for framing or a throw-pillow), a repair to damage caused by some bumbling giant, or reinforcement executed with foresight. Any answer is pretty remarkable.

5x5

ready for my close-up: a look at the directorial epic flop about a woman scorned, Madame Satan

worth 1000: iconic emojis that art history students would appreciate and we could all employ

neon-natal: an old street lamp flashes in silent celebration each time a baby is born in Ghent

seat-cushion becomes a floatation device: Victorian life-preserver and personal entertainment centre

patience: the real reason behind the inclusion of the classic games-bundle was to teach dexterity

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?