I saw We Live In Public @ IFC last Sunday night. It’s closed now.
For some reason, had I not seen that movie with a friend, I would have walked out. That probably was a good thing. I’ve never had a movie, particuarly a documentary, where I so closely dientified to everything that was going on. particuarly during all the scenes of the art experiemtns. For some reason, ther film shook me to a point where I started babbling about the truths of Josh Harris (I Think it was also the Guns in Quiet as well).
The movie actitively was one of the scariest movies I had seen in a while. Beyond being about the pitfalls of shooting past the stars, reaching the end of the universe, slamming into the walls, and hurling back to earth, it spouted some of the most active Truisms I’ve seen since staring at a Jenny Holzer piece for far too long (here is an example of what she says.) It’s hard to say if what he says is true, will be true, becoming true, or one of many possibilities.
The New York Times, in its review, mentions Jeremey Bentham’s Panopticon and its interplay as a theme for many of the artistic experiements that Josh Harris did and espoused about. Constant surveillance was part of the normalcy of Josh Harris. Foucualt expands upon on this idea. He labels this prison (which was never built), as the ideal prison, since it repsetns to ideal extension of governemntal power. What Josh Harris did was screw up the Panopticon. He asks what happens to people who live in the Panopticon, full time, in real life.
What no one is asking, and what scares me the most- in theory, there should be a guard in the guardtower that we are all afraid of. He can punish us, and if not, our fellow citizens will report us. That’s what keeps the Panopticon society in line. It’s considered a most subtle form of control, relying on the mind and the mind alone. In Josh Harris’s experiments- we took the guard tower out. Only our fellow citizens watch us- however, as individuals, none have real power. They can get progressively wilder. They are totally independent of each other.
This movie frightens me, because maybe Josh Harris is right, maybe on the Internet, there is no guard. I want there to be, not to keep me in line (or just me), but to keep all of us a little afraid. Maybe it will prevent us from being too much. A little fear may be a good thing. It can keep us in line, make us respect our fellow citizens. For we know that someone beyond them may be watching and that hurting our fellow citizens can cause severe pain to ourselves.
I don’t like the Josh Harris effect. In a world where there is no one to answer to, yet, even in the secret parts of the heart, how do you make a really viable connection? It’s one of the reasons the Internet in it’s current form works. I can say that the people on the Internet who’ve read my stuff “know me,” some very well, because there are details about me scattered like breadcrumbs on a kitchen floor, yet how well have any of you jointly experienced my life, my memories,, my experiences? I can write about them, and it still wouldn’t be enough. As a result, even if I wanted to, and people do, how angry can I really get at the Josh Harris effect? On some level (and don’t take this too personally), until I meet a whole lot of you, we are but extensions of a machines, and we hold emotional attachments to them. On some level, how real am I in this form? And you, the new Roman Republic? The thing is, we will. At least for Technologists, and even parts of normal people, and even people like me (I am falling through the chasm, damn it), we treat technology at a minimum as an extension of ourselves, extensions of others, as beings with the soul of a Golem in it.
I’m slightly obsessed, I suppose, with putting the guard back into Internet society, to make us all accountable, in a variety of ways. I want to build companies that build society and bring balance, for a part of me really runs utterly in fear (in the biblical sense of fear: “fear and love and awe of God”^). If not companies, then something. Depending on what you think this is, I am partially living in a world that is being created in front of my eyes. It is partially straight out of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau (who I should reread), partially straight out of who knows what. The rules are partially bound to some “physical entity” in the physical planet. This is a world that is rapidly changing. Even more interestingly, as this great experiment develops, in parallel, so are the social sciences, especially as they relate to the hard ones. Nothing like the hard study of society becoming extremely serious at the same time a new one is created.*
Will we rally to the distant drums, the barely hearable call that we are building something that extends the notion of society, and the truths about them? What will we say when we are armed? It’s something beyond the machine – we are their collective soul, and our collective cultural nuances, our collective economies, our collective thoughts and beings, psychology, and biology, is currently way beyond any machine to even try to communicate a milligram of what is inside us back to us believably. How will we answer to that march?
For me, it’s beyond a new feature. Belissima for you. For me, it’s what makes society disruptive, what makes society normal, what makes society alive, a creature that we engage in. For all that this long term plan may have a corporate structure at first, with shares and stock tied to some physical world entities, when I sit at watch a movie like “We Live in Public,” I sit there and worry far less about the to be stock. I have to answer to the problems of building a society where there previously is none, so that when the next iteration of this goes around, there is something safer, better, happier, and easier on people than what exists before.` If you don’t feel slightly obligated, I wonder…
^Feeling slightly guilty about this phrasing. At some point, I need to sit down with me, God, and Religion. Even though theoretically I’ve been doing that a good chunk of my life. I just want to do it independently as an adult, without pressure, and with lots of support for whatever I choose. Too complicated otherwise. And yes I can easily feel guilty about that. Don’t bug me about it.
*I read a lot of social science papers growing up, for the hell of it. At one point in the early ’00s I had bookmarked every paper on the web about early teenage sexuality and about Jewish life that I could find. I thought I was going to do something like go onto the Kinsey Institute, or write a paper for AviChai/Brandeis. To the point of near burnout now. I’m still passionate about the social sciences, I think they are super insightful when used properly *cough Economicspleasestartusingtheworldcorrelationthanks cough* though the one thing I wish now, despite everything, is that I took some stat/probability so I could do some yelling and look a little deeper. It’s very difficult to talk about sampling and weighted sampling without it. This is what near burnout gets you.
‘After rereading this, I’m surprised what a specific class in college did to me. I didn’t do very well. I was afraid to have an opinion (note to those going to college: Have an opinion your theses of your papers: Often an analysis is not enough.). Yet still, that one class, seemed to have a large affect. I’m just as shocked as you are by this. If you are curious, my first choice of something to build would be a bank and/or an exchange for virtual moneys/social karma points/friends. I might also create another money to go with it so I can do fractional banking (though I think all those API makers might hate me, as the more developed my bank system is, the more revealing of what other people think of them it would be).
Quiet, For We Live in Public, yet I live slightly in Fear
I saw We Live In Public @ IFC last Sunday night. It’s closed now.
For some reason, had I not seen that movie with a friend, I would have walked out. That probably was a good thing. I’ve never had a movie, particuarly a documentary, where I so closely dientified to everything that was going on. particuarly during all the scenes of the art experiemtns. For some reason, ther film shook me to a point where I started babbling about the truths of Josh Harris (I Think it was also the Guns in Quiet as well).
The movie actitively was one of the scariest movies I had seen in a while. Beyond being about the pitfalls of shooting past the stars, reaching the end of the universe, slamming into the walls, and hurling back to earth, it spouted some of the most active Truisms I’ve seen since staring at a Jenny Holzer piece for far too long (here is an example of what she says.) It’s hard to say if what he says is true, will be true, becoming true, or one of many possibilities.
The New York Times, in its review, mentions Jeremey Bentham’s Panopticon and its interplay as a theme for many of the artistic experiements that Josh Harris did and espoused about. Constant surveillance was part of the normalcy of Josh Harris. Foucualt expands upon on this idea. He labels this prison (which was never built), as the ideal prison, since it repsetns to ideal extension of governemntal power. What Josh Harris did was screw up the Panopticon. He asks what happens to people who live in the Panopticon, full time, in real life.
What no one is asking, and what scares me the most- in theory, there should be a guard in the guardtower that we are all afraid of. He can punish us, and if not, our fellow citizens will report us. That’s what keeps the Panopticon society in line. It’s considered a most subtle form of control, relying on the mind and the mind alone. In Josh Harris’s experiments- we took the guard tower out. Only our fellow citizens watch us- however, as individuals, none have real power. They can get progressively wilder. They are totally independent of each other.
This movie frightens me, because maybe Josh Harris is right, maybe on the Internet, there is no guard. I want there to be, not to keep me in line (or just me), but to keep all of us a little afraid. Maybe it will prevent us from being too much. A little fear may be a good thing. It can keep us in line, make us respect our fellow citizens. For we know that someone beyond them may be watching and that hurting our fellow citizens can cause severe pain to ourselves.
I don’t like the Josh Harris effect. In a world where there is no one to answer to, yet, even in the secret parts of the heart, how do you make a really viable connection? It’s one of the reasons the Internet in it’s current form works. I can say that the people on the Internet who’ve read my stuff “know me,” some very well, because there are details about me scattered like breadcrumbs on a kitchen floor, yet how well have any of you jointly experienced my life, my memories,, my experiences? I can write about them, and it still wouldn’t be enough. As a result, even if I wanted to, and people do, how angry can I really get at the Josh Harris effect? On some level (and don’t take this too personally), until I meet a whole lot of you, we are but extensions of a machines, and we hold emotional attachments to them. On some level, how real am I in this form? And you, the new Roman Republic? The thing is, we will. At least for Technologists, and even parts of normal people, and even people like me (I am falling through the chasm, damn it), we treat technology at a minimum as an extension of ourselves, extensions of others, as beings with the soul of a Golem in it.
I’m slightly obsessed, I suppose, with putting the guard back into Internet society, to make us all accountable, in a variety of ways. I want to build companies that build society and bring balance, for a part of me really runs utterly in fear (in the biblical sense of fear: “fear and love and awe of God”^). If not companies, then something. Depending on what you think this is, I am partially living in a world that is being created in front of my eyes. It is partially straight out of Locke, Hobbes and Rousseau (who I should reread), partially straight out of who knows what. The rules are partially bound to some “physical entity” in the physical planet. This is a world that is rapidly changing. Even more interestingly, as this great experiment develops, in parallel, so are the social sciences, especially as they relate to the hard ones. Nothing like the hard study of society becoming extremely serious at the same time a new one is created.*
Will we rally to the distant drums, the barely hearable call that we are building something that extends the notion of society, and the truths about them? What will we say when we are armed? It’s something beyond the machine – we are their collective soul, and our collective cultural nuances, our collective economies, our collective thoughts and beings, psychology, and biology, is currently way beyond any machine to even try to communicate a milligram of what is inside us back to us believably. How will we answer to that march?
For me, it’s beyond a new feature. Belissima for you. For me, it’s what makes society disruptive, what makes society normal, what makes society alive, a creature that we engage in. For all that this long term plan may have a corporate structure at first, with shares and stock tied to some physical world entities, when I sit at watch a movie like “We Live in Public,” I sit there and worry far less about the to be stock. I have to answer to the problems of building a society where there previously is none, so that when the next iteration of this goes around, there is something safer, better, happier, and easier on people than what exists before.` If you don’t feel slightly obligated, I wonder…
^Feeling slightly guilty about this phrasing. At some point, I need to sit down with me, God, and Religion. Even though theoretically I’ve been doing that a good chunk of my life. I just want to do it independently as an adult, without pressure, and with lots of support for whatever I choose. Too complicated otherwise. And yes I can easily feel guilty about that. Don’t bug me about it.
*I read a lot of social science papers growing up, for the hell of it. At one point in the early ’00s I had bookmarked every paper on the web about early teenage sexuality and about Jewish life that I could find. I thought I was going to do something like go onto the Kinsey Institute, or write a paper for AviChai/Brandeis. To the point of near burnout now. I’m still passionate about the social sciences, I think they are super insightful when used properly *cough Economicspleasestartusingtheworldcorrelationthanks cough* though the one thing I wish now, despite everything, is that I took some stat/probability so I could do some yelling and look a little deeper. It’s very difficult to talk about sampling and weighted sampling without it. This is what near burnout gets you.
‘After rereading this, I’m surprised what a specific class in college did to me. I didn’t do very well. I was afraid to have an opinion (note to those going to college: Have an opinion your theses of your papers: Often an analysis is not enough.). Yet still, that one class, seemed to have a large affect. I’m just as shocked as you are by this. If you are curious, my first choice of something to build would be a bank and/or an exchange for virtual moneys/social karma points/friends. I might also create another money to go with it so I can do fractional banking (though I think all those API makers might hate me, as the more developed my bank system is, the more revealing of what other people think of them it would be).
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