2023s
-
an emerging network of federated networks, all interoperable, thereby marginalising the walled garden silos of monopolistic data-extracting megacorps. HT: Paulo Amoroso ↩︎
📷 Day 26: beverage (@Annie) #mbsept
Art at The National Gallery of Victoria: 100 glasses (1991-92).
glassblower: Michael Hook
engraver: Perry Fletcher.
📷 Day 25: flare (Matthew, aka @matt17r) #mbsept
Sydney’s Darling Harbour may feel like an over-developed tourist trap, but I must admit, sometimes it really comes good.
📷 Day 24: belt (George, aka @allaboutgeorge) #mbsept
When we visited CERES in Melbourne, we also walked past this velodrome. 🚲 A bike path that goes on forever!
📷 Day 23: a day in the life #mbsept
Deeply into our residency in Portland NSW. Please come to the open rehearsal on 1 October. And you can even support this project.
📷Day 21: fall #mbsept
Coat-hanger season might be my favourite time of year.
📷Day 20: disruption #mbsept
Sometimes you have to protest to stop the disruption.
“Let’s dream new blueprints for the world we want to live in.” 💬
Is domain-hosting a viable social media business model?
Since July 2023 BlueSky has apparently learned from Manton Reece and micro.blog that you can run a sustainable and open social media network with a domain-hosting business model.
Almost learned. There’s a way to go yet, with a big missing owning your content piece.
Meanwhile, micro.blog cross-posts automatically to BlueSky, so the #Interverse1 is gradually becoming a reality. 😍
“You can automatically cross-post your microblog posts to Medium, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Bluesky, Nostr, and Pixelfed.” Source
I’m not using BlueSky myself. I really loved Paul Frazee’s work on BeakerBrowser, and it’s great he’s working on BlueSky. That’s very nearly enough to sign me up, but the venture capital vibe still puts me right off. I mean, ultimately it’s all just for the venture fund returns isn’t it?
I’m very happy just owning my content, and sharing it with you myself, with a little help from micro.blog and Mastodon. So thanks for reading, wherever you read.
📷 Day 17: “intense” #mbsept
Can you make your autobiography out of hashtags?
Image credit[^1]
The hashtags of a cyberneticist
In 1963 Ross Ashby, the British cyberneticist and inventor of the automatic homeostat, engraved a tiny schnapps glass with a list of things his wife liked. He called this gift A Cup of Happiness from Ross to Rosebud.
When I read the tiny spiral writing engraved on that glass it seemed like a very personal version of the hashtags by which, sixty years later, people on Mastodon or other social networking sites introduce themselves. But they are also a rather touching distillation of the couple’s life together.
Since reading this, I’ve been over-thinking what hashtags I might use for this purpose, and Ross Ashby’s attempt has inspired me. Not that my hashtags would be anything like these, but their bourgeois English everyday intimacy does have a certain kind of charm. As a historical document the list fairly oozes ‘mid-century anti-modern’! Here are the items, in full:
Jill ~ Pottery ~ Sally ~ TR2 ~ Ruth ~ Arranging flowers ~ Preserved ginger ~ ITMA ~ Shaffers ~ Steven ~ Dinard ~ Tennis ~ Mark ~ May Hill ~ John ~ Merrow Down ~ Richard ~ Lobster ~ Bread making ~ Michael ~ Clive Brook ~ Bear Lake ~ Chas. B Cochran ~ Auctions ~ Wood fires ~ Stratford ~ Terry’s ~ Gardening ~ Cookham ~ Tiddles ~ Repertory ~ Swimming ~ Bingen ~ Green Ridges ~ Sand castles ~ Ewhurst ~ Nov. 1926 ~ Cheltenham ~ Monday Night at Eight ~ Ouray ~ Delphiniums ~ Windon House ~ North Devon ~ Eau de Cologne ~ Dressmaking ~ Rhossilli ~ Tea ~ Palo Alto ~ Hot baths ~ Take it from here ~ Earrings ~ Cornwall ~ Geraniums ~ Painswick ~ Bear Grass ~ Oeufs Mournay ~ Furs ~ Vanilla slice ~ Crème de Menthe ~ Gt. Smith Street. Source
There are several different ways of reading this list. You can highlight interests:
Pottery, arranging flowers, tennis, bread making, gardening, swimming
Or you can name favourite places and houses:
Shaffers, Dinard, May Hill, Merrow Down, Bear Lake, Stratford, Cookham, Bingham, Ewhurst, Cheltenham, Ouray, North Devon, Rhossilli, Palo Alto, Cornwall, Painswick, Terry’s, Green Ridges (the house they built)
You can remember favourite people:
Jill, Sally, Ruth, Steven, Mark, John, Richard, Michael,
Or shows:
ITMA, Monday Night at Eight, Take it from Here, Chas. B Cochran (impressario of Cole Porter and Noel Coward musicals)
Or favourite foods:
Preserved ginger, lobster, tea, oeufs mornay, vanilla slice, creme de menthe
Or beloved objects:
TR2 (the Ashbys' sports car), wood fires, sand castles, delphiniums, eau de cologne, hot baths, earrings, geraniums, bear grass, furs
Or special moments:
Nov. 1926, Gt Smith Street (the place in central London where the couple first met)
According to the Ross Ashby information site, Tiddles was their cat. The rest we have to work out for ourselves.
What do your own hashtags say about you?
If you think about your own list of hashtags, I wonder which personal ones you left out, since the Internet doesn’t need to know everything about us (read: has already categorised us to the minutest detail).
For example, web developer Jeremy Keith has a ‘bedroll’ list on his website of people who have visited his house in Brighton. Who else does this?! Hashtags may be quite generic, but in combination they can tell a unique story.
Cybernetics revisited
Clearly no mention of Ross Ashby can go without reference to cybernetics, which is seemingly back in fashion. As the AI revolution takes off there’s a renewed interest in revisiting the aims of the earlier cyberneticians, and to some extent their methods. A new School of Cybernetics has recently opened at the Australian National University (part-funded by Microsoft, Meta and others), with a public exhibition that took place until 2 December 2022. The school is led by Prof Genevieve Bell, a former vice president of Intel.
The claim is:
“We focus on systems – rather than specific technologies, or disciplines—as the unit of analysis. Cybernetics offers a way of transcending boundaries, of thinking in systems and ensuring that humans, technology and the physical environment are in the frame as technology advances and transforms the world around us. It is a way to imagine humans steering technical systems safely through the world.”
And there’s plenty more on what they’re calling ‘the new cybernetics’.
I can’t help thinking: there’s a lot of politics in who gets to do the steering. The culture of Microsoft and Meta is powerfully to resist being steered, at every possible opportunity, law-suit by law-suit for eternity. Cyberneticist Stafford Beer’s support for the socialist Allende government of Chile is probably not a model they’re all that interested in. But if you are interested in what might have been, you could do worse than listen to Evgeny Morozov’s podcast, The Santiago Boys. I’ve found it fascinating.
📷 Day 16: oof! #mbsept
📷 Day 15: red #mbsept
The bottlebrush trees at the front of our house are just coming into bloom.
📷 Day 14| statue #mbsept
Food for thought.
As 9/11 is commemorated again it’s worth reflecting on why some people are wary of US foreign policy. This 9/11 is also the 50th anniversary of the Nixon/Kissinger coup in Chile.
If you think human rights is all ‘liberal crap’, as Nixon did, that right there is why we remain wary.
“¡Nunca más!” 💬
📷 Day 13| glowing #mbsept
Sydney Airport at dusk.
📷 Day 12 | panic #mbsept
📷 Day 11 | retrospect #mbsept
📷 Day 10 | cycle #mbsept
I’d like to put an end to these signs. Bike paths should go on forever! 🚲
