The holes can strangle easily obsessed and the parts ship-wrecked together closely. The softness of the aspiceret near the delashelwill at some parts, and the ill-ad-vis-ed water-worn palouse of the half-musings at spinet's, rendered the passage branch-island. First, the Far-seen view, that Detuvose bo's'n's responsible for the foulenesse because she saidst not prevent Bickerstaff's from entering upon it, I solvit as childish, if it shadowes not simply oculist. He crimsons it by the too-gross variety of the boring-shells he chooses, and of the scenery in which he yeats's them. I said, Niksamma, it is our digestibility to cherish the waterspray, to slam all simulans that may happen that way. There were other facts he had nonplused among the L'anglaise, stam'ring to him it was a bull.

huh? what the? is this automatic writing, or one of the reputed spam-blogs? I happened to check out Finnish friend Tuomo's blog for his project tiletoy and clicked on the <<next>> button on blogspot and got to a site, well, with at least 50,000 characters of drivel on the opening page, with the phrase "wheight loss pills" every paragraph. cyberspew. people are so desparate to make a buck, or millions of them.

an afternoon slow hike around an area out Williamson Valley Road. treasure hunting. so I found one little potshard. about 1200 years old. of the Chaco Canyon variety (with black graphics on a grey very fine-grained clay substrate).

to the IDC list

sotto voce: Although, as a Univ educator -- I agree with John's appraisal of the condition of the contemporary educational institution (having taught in around 50 institutions in Europe and the US), there is this critical area to consider: yes, the classroom has not undergone a physical re-design, but perhaps it doesn't need one. When the door closes, it has the potential to be a space for transcendent encounters between the participants IF the oppressive effects of the fear that is instilled by the dominant educational system in both student and teacher -- the fear of nonconformity, the fear of personal idiosyncrasies, and the fear of the unknown -- if the fear is mitigated. I believe this fear is a result of the accumulation of pathologic (unbalanced) relationships that are mandated between humans when operating in hierarchic situations. If, as a facilitator, I can make even a small breathing space by establishing a trusting relationship among the participants, a space that allows at least a consideration of the powers that cause the fear to begin with, I feel that I have been successful. Of course, it is important to go beyond an awareness of the effects of oppressive social relations, and move into a radical praxis that opens all possibilities, especially the possibility of fearless encounters between the Self and the Other. This, I believe is the essence of learning -- the fearless opening of the Self to the unknown Other, the willingness to empathetically share a point of view with that Other. The physical/material nature of the room itself does indeed have built-in the accoutrements and arrangements of power and control. But it is possible to do simple things like re-arrange the furniture. this simple act alone cracks open the situation. Sometimes, for example, I take all the furniture in a space and before class I pile it all up in a corner. Watching the reactions when people come in the door, and in the instant that there is a the registering that the situation is anomalous, the participant facing an unknown. It is in that moment where something can happen. It's also nice to have participants "curate" changes of venue where everyone can meet. Having a 'class' in someone's livingroom is sure to shift things. It is called a Living room for a reason... Too often I have seen "new media" curriculums that miss the crucial ramifications of what "new media" has inflicted on the social structure -- where there is the teacher and the students, interacting in the same old form of power relation. Yes, the subject of inquiry is 'radical' and suggests other 'radical' ways of behavior within the greater social system, but often the dynamic of classroom relationships do not reflect the suggested realities of the subject of inquiry. I have found that it is of paramount importance to facilitate (and participate in) a evolutionary set of relationships that may start from the traditional teacher:student model, but transitions to a distributed human network during the course of studying "new media." Furthermore, without establishing a lived praxis, the radical possibilities of personal and social transformation are largely missed. I think this is a fundamental weakness of the vast majority of academic programs that seek to engage "new media": That within the classroom, it IS business-as-usual. Of course, there are exceptions which usually are a result of the efforts of individual teachers. It is rare for an institution to move itself into a space which denies the efficacy of its institutional structure. It does happen, but it is rare. I have found crucial to my own praxis is my position within the local hierarchy -- for the last ten-plus years I have maintained connections to institutions through personal relationships of people in those institutions. From this, come invitations to conduct workshops or seminars, where I am able to maintain a degree of independence from the local politic. This independence has great value as my relationship with the students can be much more frank and open in most cases. Often, the workshops include in-depth critics of the hierarchic situation that the students are in -- discussions that evolve openly from the content of the workshop (for example - networking and creative action) -- and discussions that lead to practical awareness and actions that are immediately relevant to actual situation of their lives. Of course, I personally pay for this independence in the lack of economic security that the social system mandates for people who follow non-traditional behaviors... Sometimes the price seems too much, and a "permanent" position seems attractive, but usually I can dispel that illusion with a phone call to tenure-track friends. ;-)

Man's comparative advantage in energy production has been greatly reduced in most situations -- to the point where he is no longer a significant source of power in our economy. He has been supplanted also in performing many relatively simple and repetitive eye-brain-hand sequences. He has retained his greatest comparative advantage in: (1) the use of his brain as a flexible general-purpose problem-solving device, (2) the flexible use of his sensory organs and hands, and (3) the use of his legs, on rough terrain as well as smooth, to make this general-purpose sensing-thinking-manipulating system available wherever it is needed. -- Herbert Simon

this is a clear statement of the resultant state of the human-technological system (though it does not consider the relationship between the repetitive motions of the machine (technology) and the social system that surrounds both the human and the machine which supplants the human). and it is precisely this relationship that generates the comparative advantage in favor of the machine. the human (to be supplanted) is a participant in the social infrastructure that generates the machine. this social infrastructure comes about as an emergent system as humans come together. any participant in the system gives their lived bio-energy into the system. the system, as an organized entity, needs this influx of energy to maintain its structure. when enough of this energy comes in, a degree of organization that can produce, for example, a moon landing, is formed. the relative state of advance in a technological product is directly related to the ability and efficiency of the social system to gather energy from its constituent individuals. each specific technology is the product of a equivalent state of social order.

Numbers (1) and (2) above are separable, but it is critical to note that the relationship of the two factors are in the material(object) versus its cognate. (cognate meaning the abstracted (linguistic) re-presentation of that object necessitated through the cognitive problem-solving process that the brain undertakes versus the very much real interactions of the body with the surrounding socio-technical system. it is not necessary to separate (2) and (3) in this case, as they both relate to the expenditure of applied bio-energy.

more notes on the time:money:energy issue -- a quick read-through of Adam Smith on the subject, the topic of VALUE pops out. where value is the process of tagging (or relating) the object to its cognate in the re-presentative system (this being the system of international finance -- where value must be negotiated dynamically in consideration of a plethora of factors -- all of which are rooted in material measure and its cognate representative in dualistic relation. (i.e., weapons & politics). this dualistic relationship is "acted out" whenever a consumer consumes -- trading money (a multifold cognate for a range of objects) for material(s). however, this act is always preceded by the consumer being a producer -- or, more precisely, one who gives in lived bio-energy into the social system in order that there is an organized production mechanism to create the objects to be consumed).

hunting more background on the 'structural holes' issue that Burt raises in relation to the geometry of links in a social network. Goyal, in laying out the question of whether or not connectivity is a sustainable strategy, formulates the ground conditions.

We develop a simple model of network formation to address this question. We consider a setting where interaction between every pair of individuals generates a surplus. If two individuals are directly linked then they split this surplus equally, while if they are indirectly connected -- there are other players in the 'path'' between them -- then the division of surplus depends on the competition between these intermediaries. In this setting, there are three types of incentives for individuals to form links with others. The first incentive is the desire to create surpluses: individuals would like to join the network so as to create exchange possibilities which in turn create surpluses. The second incentive is related to the rewards from intermediation: players would like to place themselves between others in order to extract rents from intermediation. The third incentive arises out of the desire to avoid sharing surpluses with intermediaries; in other words, individuals will try to circumvent intermediate players to retain more of the surplus for themselves. -- Sanjeev Goyal

this allusion to a surplus in the connection between two individuals is one of the first uses found in network theory that is in the direction of my research -- where a core outcome of the series of bi-directional connections that occur in an open network is a surplus of energy. back to the 1+1=3 theory. the extraction of 'rent' however brings up an entirely different mechanism. the mechanism is the applied attenuation of social strictures (as applied through the full range of 'technological' mediation) that extracts energy from the pair of engaged individuals -- in this case, the third party happens to be in control of the 'spending' of energy from that immediate social energy bank. so, two separate and very different dynamics happening, not degrees of the same mechanism.

counterpointing Bateson's ecclectic digressions with Ronald Burt's social systemics seems to point to a schizophrenic day of reading. Bateson clearly saw the dangers of the flows that power social systems, where Burt sees opportunity for command-and-control through semi-distributed systems. His view on 'social capital' is a mapping of positions for maximizing influence that this form of capital offers. Bordieu suggested the trinity of economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital, it is the latter that seemed to popularly circumscribe the most influential aspects of human relations. And as a way of mapping power, it floats to the surface of social consciousness.

The myth of power, is of course, a very powerful myth; and probably most people in this world more or less believe in it... But it is still epistemological lunacy and leads inevitably to all sorts of disaster... If we continue to operate in terms of a Cartesian dualism of mind versus matter, we shall probably also come to see the world in terms of God versus man; élite versus people; chosen race versus others; nation versus nation and man versus environment. It is doubtful whether a species having both an advanced technology and this strange way of looking at the world can endure...

The whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable during the Pre-Cybernetic era, and which were especially underlined during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroys us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way. -- Gregory Bateson

another oracle, or madman?

lines of the hand, with the skin thinning, turning to trapezoidal textures that shimmer differently than they used to do. cool tonight, here at altitude, in the dry west, when the sun goes, warmth goes as well. remembering the nights in the desert, so many times. no matter the heat of the day, the night gives the heat back to the darkness of the sky. only in deep summer, is there more heat delivered than can be reflected away, so that only at the null hour, a time before dawn, does the air loosen itself of the burden of heat. but as soon as fall comes, with a couple days of cloud cover, the night air is an empty chill.

time: money: energy. what about this triad? the conversion between the first two concerns a number of roles and activities that one undertakes. probably the first thing to notice is that time as a phenomena exists outside the framework of the social system. at the same time as recognizing this, a primary task of an evolving social system is the construction of a regulated mechanism for quantifying time. this is a feature of even technologically 'underdeveloped' cultures -- where the importance of the cyclic variations in the seasons was carefully framed and marked by religious holidays to remind citizens of their places in the (agriculturally) productive life of the society.

time as a raw phenomena is an intangible, of similar import to gravitation and Light. however, the development of devices which would demarcate apparently consistent segments of time has been and is important to any social system. one metric of the advancement of a society can be tied to the accuracy and extent of standardization of temporal measurement devices. framing of time is a key element to any set of basic standardization metrics. and, to the extent possible, these metrics are rigidly applied to all parts of the social system -- you know, those kind of people who don't wear a watch? a little revolt against the microscopic reach of hegemony in the social structure. try meeting someone without depending on some kind of shared standardization of time. at sunset? at high noon? at the first moon after the vernal equinox?

what is "spending time"? it is a commitment to share a portion of the lived expenditure of life-energy on some activity. life-time, and the co-committed life-energy that is 'used' in a unit of (standardized) time cannot be retrieved. time is a uni-directional flow that often appears to change speed, irrespective and independent of the standardization applied by the social system. cosmology suggests that perhaps there are regions of the universe where this flow is distorted significantly, though not reversed or stopped. it is a given that the existence of our local system of complexity that life-time flows in one direction. therefore, 'spending time' has a significance equal in importance to any other fundamental choice facing a sentient being. along the flow of time, biologic entities, at least considered as discrete material objects, display the uniform characteristic of increasing entropy according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. there is a clear relation between the limited amount of energy an entity can obtain, generate, use in an apparently materialistically limited existence and passing time.

then there is the issue of money. money is not the thing itself. money represents something, being only printed paper, it shares a parallel history to the development of the printed word, and before that, the abstraction of written language. but since the social system designates a set of equivalencies -- sometimes of limited number, sometimes in near-infinite variety -- to actual configurations of matter, or actions undertaken by other sentient beings. (to be continued)

happen to correspond with Claudia, Italian artist-friend from the Avantiere days in Aachen. I want to connect her up with Valgerdur and Niels who are down in Rome at the Scandic artist studio for a couple months. anyway, Claudia attached a couple snaps that Kaisu made when the three of us met in Helsinki a few years ago. don't remember why we were at the train station -- who was leaving for where. I had originally connected Claudia and Kaisu -- and they went on to have some nice art collaborations in Italy and Finland. bridging, I call it. finding souls of certain energy, nothing more rewarding than connecting the dots of life and seeing the results.

this photo by Stefan -- Evon at Dettifoss in Iceland this past summer. he's got that elvin smile which is some combination of that of his mum and dad.

got the idea when nothing is there to add, I would take an image from incoming email attachments. there are so many of those. and it traces the depth of the inbox. this is another image from John Douglas' -- always pro-vocative, pro-locative, and pro-optical imagery!

okay, okay, I'm slacking here. using all these GIANT bytes of texts-from-elsewhere. well, Karen sent this to me along with a nice photo of her son Henry at the beach. it resonated with my state of being at the moment.

Before the beginning, there was this turtle. And the turtle was alone. And he looked around, and he saw his neighbor, which was his mother. And he lay down on top of his neighbor, and behold! she bore him in tears an oak tree, which grew all day and then fell over -- like a bridge. And lo! under the bridge there came a catfish. And he was very big. And he was walking. And he was the biggest he had seen. And so with the fiery balls of this fish -- one of which is the sun, the other the moon?

Yes, some uncomplicated peoples still believe this myth. But here, in the technical vastness of the future we can guess that surely the past was very different. We can surmise for instance that these two great balls?

We know for certain for instance that for some reason for some time in the beginning there were hot lumps, cold and lonely, they whirled noiselessly through the black holes of space. These insignificant lumps came together to form the first union, our Sun, the heating system. And about this glowing gasbag rotated the Earth, a cat's eye among aggies, blinking in astonishment across the face of time.

Well, we were covered with the molten scum of rocks, bobbing on the surface like rats. Later when there was less heat, these giant rock groups settled down among the land masses. During this extinct time, our earth was like a steamroom, and no one, not even man, could get in. However, the oceans and the sewers were simmering with a rich protein stew, and the mountains moved in to surround and protect them. They didn't know then that living as we know it, was already taken over.

Animals without backbones hid from each other or fell down. Clamasaurs and oysterettes appeared as appetizers. Then came the sponges, which sucked up about ten percent of all life. Hundreds of years later, in the Late Devouring period, fish became obnoxious. Trilobites, chiggerbites and mosquitoes collided aimlessly in the dense gas. Finally, edible plants sprang up in rows, giving birth to generations of insecticides and other small, dying creatures.

Millions of months passed, and twenty-eight days later, the moon appeared. This small change was reflected best perhaps, in the sand dollar which shrank to almost nothing at the bottom of the pool where even dumb amphibians like catfish layed their eggs in the boiling waters only to be gobbled up every ten seconds by the giant sea orphans and jungle bunnies which scared everybody.

And so, in fear and hot water, man is born! -- The Firesign Theatre

so, from here on forward (and backward), recognizing that there is plenty of material to be culled from the email archive and the daily outgoing rush of words to generate relevant content here. (as I run into the issue of editing -- why not put material here that is more immediate, more intense, more reflexive of the trajectory of life in this incarnation? one old memory popped up -- that of a small scandal that I precipitated when I was in my last year of teaching at the Icelandic Academy in 1995. with a group of students, I was running a collaborative email- and fax-based project with a couple other schools and as I had also built the first, very primitive, web site for the school, I decided to put some form of documentation of the collaboration up as well. I stupidly put transcripts of emails that I and the students exchanged with the other schools. at the time there was a part-time video teacher at the academy who was using the computer lab repeatedly without asking me, for his own projects. I objected that unless he clear things with me, I would rather that he not use the machines during the day for his own things. somewhere in an email I mentioned this to one of the other schools, complaining about this guy. and somehow he ended up reading it (doh, I did put it on the nascent web) and complaining to the Rector. I was leaving the school anyway, but it upset some of the other teachers who were already ticked about the amount of money that I lobbied for -- to build up the photo/video/computer lab. anyway, sotto voce will become entries culled from email. they will only be scandalous for me.

sotto voce: I'm pretty slow on the reply -- just now coming out from under what seemed to be a large rock. I can walk, sit, drive now without the brace I wore until last week. it feels weird to be without it -- like a shell-less turtle. & still months before I hope to get back to full strength. it's been strange though. everything from the hi--tech repair job, the interruption to 'real life,' and dealing with a very material body...

three months out from accident/surgery and all reports are positive from Dr. Papadopoulos. he was busier than last appointment, but he gave the essential prognosis that I can wean myself from the brace and swim, hike, and so on. good deal. it comes off as much as possible. which may be a slow process, it has grown to fit, muscles secumbing to laze and sprawl in the molded plastic casing.

retro-fitting the travelog -- now back to December 2000. about half-way, though the first half is probably twice the volume of text than the latter half. doubt I will get the whole thing done. it is a legacy project.

pondering how it is that I have not brought more relevant experiences into this travelog. the last decade of my trajectory is relatively singular, and has crossed the paths of a great many of those who are greater in the eyes of the mass pay-per-view. nothing rubbed off. or only a little.

it could be that, as with the subject of my inquiry -- human relation -- I tend to take a relationist rather than a reductionist approach. that is, allowing a text (better yet, speaking!) to generate from the complex and dynamic space of the human connection rather than making a series of overarching reductions of that Other, through the encounter. hmmm. it is this pathway which almost requires an abandonment of social relevance, except as a chance by-product. there will be unprecedented outcomes.

it is exactly this reductionist approach which brings massive social rewards: the compressing/re-stating/re-creation of lived presence as completely embedded in the social system. indeed, this IS the essence of fame. the generation of parallel (yet seemingly convergent) pathways which appear known, or previously experienced (social structure is predicated on shared experience). when there is an encounter with an Other who, on examination, does not share any of the abstracted pathways of life-experience, we feel uncomfortable, distanced, and afraid. through the "getting-to-know" process -- a process of trying to locate within the Self and the Other common pathways and patterns of being -- if we are not successful in finding any shared pathways, then the social dimension of the relation is doomed. we are forced to simply be in the moment, in a fearful and unknowable sequence of moments that have no predictable outcome. "breaking-the-ice" -- looking for the flow of shared life by breaking through the stasis and reification of socialization (judging on looks, on possessions). looking at life passing on around through the (distorted) socialized eye. seeing only the known, blocking out any confrontation of the unknown.

a couple Latino guys come to deliver the firewood. my ears are wooden. hard to understand them. not able to dredge up some English, and not used to hearing the Spanish, though I can understand when one of them translates to the other.

starting off the month with reading more from and about David Bohm, the Quantum physicist and researcher into the nature of human relation (in the form of his defined term, dialogue). he maintained a suspicion about language, that it formed a mechanism that reified that-which-was-being-talked-about as it was (being) manifest in language. that thought tends to impress a static order on the world outside. (and meanwhile, accepting the premise that all reality is a dynamic procession, thought included.) however, there is an inexorable process -- as thought creates knowledge from reality (experience) -- that seeks to lock in a fragmentary (incomplete) view excised from reality. this is a fundamental nature of lingiustic representation of dynamic reality. in a similar vein, Walter Ong maintained that the transition from aural to written to print language defined deep shifts in the relation of the Self to the Other and to reality. He compiled a set of characteristics of express(ed)ive thought (=spoken word) that supported the necessary saliency of aurally transmitted information (as there were no other ways to catch / statify information in aural cultures:

• expression is additive rather than subordinative


• it is aggregative rather than analytic


• it tends to be redundant or "copious"


• the process tends to be conservative


• out of necessity, thought is conceptualized and then expressed with relatively close references to lived reality


• expression is agonistically toned


• it is empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced


• it is homeostatic


• it is situational rather than abstract

the key to most of these characteristics is that they directly relate to embodied presence. versus the absence (and abstractedness!) of a (printed) text. so that here, in this travelog, there is a long sequence of absences, separations -- which together accumulate as virtuality. Ong elsewhere hints about the cumulative effect of this movement from embodied connection with language to the abstractions of mediation introduced by printed texts. and on into the further mediation in telephony (all 'tele' or removed/virtual realities I would suggest). socialization is that process of abstraction and reification of what were once active and dynamic processes happening at a granular level of human-to-human. the process moving from dialogue to incontrovertible law is a mapping of the 'advance' of a social system. yet, social order is dependent on that granular system -- at least if a society wishes to retain a vital edge on evolutionary survival. it is precisely this reification process that spells the doom of a social system -- though often not before that system has attained a temporary advantage over other systems (by being more efficient in a materialist way), and caused great suffering and alienation.

I don't normally post long passages of other writers, but this was posted to nettime today: it penetrated the fog of hypo-texts that floods a typical day in front of screen-life.

The power grid provides 60 Hz here at approximately 115-117 volts; this is maintained by dynamos driven by steam or coal or oil or hydro held together in a malleable grid. The grid enters the city, where electricity is parceled out through substations to cables continuously maintained and repaired. Here, the cables are below ground. They drive my Japanese Zaurus PDA which utilizes an entire linux operating system on it. The Zaurus connects to the Internet through a wireless card that most often connects to my Linksys router, which is connected both to the power grid and the DSL modem by a cat cable. The DSL is operated by Verizon with its own grid at least nation-wide and continuously-maintained. The DSL of course connects more or less directly to the Internet, which is dependent upon an enormous number of protocol suites for its operation, the most prominent probably TCP/IP. The addresses of the Internet, through which I reach my goal of NOAA weather radar, are maintained by ICANN and other organizations. These organization are run by any number of people, who employ the Net, fax, telephone, and standard mail, to communicate world-wide. My Zaurus has its own TCP/IP interpreters built-in, and it connects through an open channel. The wireless modem may have been built in the US. In the final analyses, the materials for the Zaurus originate in extractive industries, whether mining or agricultural, chemical, or atmospheric. This is also true for the copper-wire, optic-fiber, and satellite communica- tions systems which deliver the Net. The Zaurus and other equipment exist for the most part within the Aristotelian domain of macro-objects and distributive logics, which makes them amenable to both manipulation and memory. Both macro- and micro- or quantum objects exist within the four percent of bright matter in a sea of dark matter in the universe. NOAA weather radar senses only bright matter and to some extent the cosmic microwave background. The radar depends on the power grid as well, but most likely also uses an emergency backup generator running on fossil fuels produced by DNA/RNA-rendered organisms millions of years ago. The relative bending of space-time in relation to mass holds everything together within the temporary aegis of a universe with energetic sources of heat driving both atmosphere and life-forms. The radar system uses precise algorithms to filter incoming data, in order that it appear to represent a one-to-one mapping of local and global conditions. The screen of the Zaurus is a further transformation of this mapping, also one-to-one, rendering it within a graphical user interface relatively free of bugs, worms, viruses, and other glitches; the same is true of the linux operating system in general, which must produce this transformation upon demand, as if there were no mediation, and with the illusion that in fact the weather is being presented in a relatively simple and decipherable manner. The linux works with a rechargable battery containing heavy metals and other elements traced back as well to extractive industries; the battery, at the end of its energetic life, should be disposed of within safe landfills designed to handle toxic material. In order for this to occur, a network of roads - highways, local roads, interstates, turnpikes, freeway, and other - must exist, as well as the mobile transportation machinery upon them, also dependent on fossil fuels and the perceptual guidance of life-forms to drive them safely to and from their destination. Within all of this, life-form perceptual algorithms are critical for a reasonable channeling, transformation, retention, and emission of data; this channeling must be relatively consistent, not only internally in terms of time consciousness and neural firing rates, but also externally in sync with other such organisms, and with the entire apparatus bringing the NOAA web pages into view. The NOAA is housed in various buildings across the nation, in communication with each other, using a wide variety of means. The NOAA is not only part of the power grid; it is also part of the socio-economic grid, a corporate/governmental economic system that keeps it functioning year after year, providing money for both updating and maintenance. The socio-economic grid also provides, by various routes, the sustenance that allows me both to survive - i.e. food, water, shelter - but also to purchase the Zaurus in the first place. This interconnects directly with the banking and credit systems, within which manipulation of abstract real numbers eventually results in the movement of goods and continuation of services within, not only the urban system itself, but within the loft-space where I live, providing a service industry of plumbers, brick-layers, roofers, general builders, electricians, and so forth, all of whom maintain and on occasion update the material infrastructure of the building. The internal illumination of the Zaurus, which occurs within the human visible bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum, is matched by the illumination of the loft itself, both dependent upon extractive industries for the production of glass and plastics resulting in various types of illuminating objects, each housed in a casing specifically designed for the transportation of electricity into them - electricity which will be transformed into photon production. Time of day must be allotted for the recharging of the Zaurus battery, using a charger designed to match the characteristics of the power grid, and to absorb surges or brownouts as well, keeping the flow fairly steady within acceptable parameters. In order to use the Zaurus, I hold it in one hand, while typing on its mini-keyboard with the other; both activities depend on hand-eye coordination, the result of numerous feedback loops using both local neural sensors and chemical/quantum brain processing, creating the illusion of an independent mind cohering to the exigencies of screen, keyboard, and macro-object characteristics. The latter are generalized, scripted for the most part, so that all objects are, in a sense, equivalent; if I pick up X, I do not have to learn how to pick up Y, but refer both to a Batesonian meta-scheme. Such meta-schemes, as well as schemes, scripts, circuit-board, protocol, radar, power-grid, and other processings, are constructed in part through mathesis, the applied mathematics of the world we live in. This mathematics is related to both standard and non-standard numerical systems; it is also limited, in terms of axiomatics, to what appear to be local coherencies within which the problems of infinities, both large and small, are dealt with in a practical way (heuristics). Applied mathematics is a construct, and constructed by life-forms that detect relationships among things, forces, states, and processes, of the universe they live within. In order for mathematics to satisfactorally model such a universe in the larger, computers (both analog and digital) are employed; these are programmed in languages that are, for the most part, locally coherent. Abstract and physical objects meet within the aegis of processes and flux; such are originally driven and created by life-forms which ultimately reproduce themselves through egg-sperm couplings related to fundamental biochemical operations. Couplings occur in the first place through the psychoanalytics of desire, chemically and perceptually driven; the psychoanalytical system creates the illusion of psychoanalytical states/objects, and emotional transformations of all sorts. The physical, psychoanalytical, and abstract systems all exist within certain political/abstract economies; for example, it is impossible to construct an infinite-energy machine to analyze fundamental particles. Furthermore, the political/abstract economies all interweave, inhere, and cohere, in relation to each other, with a remarkable degree of accuracy; otherwise, slippage might result in the entire bio-cultural apparatus collapsing, without the possibility of recuperation. When the mini-keyboard of the Zaurus is pressed; it appears to press back; this is the result of the local/global mappings related to tacit knowledge - the extension of the body into its tools and immediate environment surrounding it. I do not have to consider key after key, but only the obviously mediated message or command I am trying to write - a message which itself depends on natural language in relation to the purified language of keyboard commands. I think through the NOAA results in terms of this natural language, which is almost impossible to concretely represent as a somewhat small and coherent system; instead, the natural language is intricately interwoven with diacritical, inter- and intra-linguistic elements which situate me in relation to the world as well. Although natural languages change in time, they must appear relatively stable, capable of retrieval and communication among others; without this stability, communication and system-construction would be completely impossible. All systems are themselves interwoven, partial, frayed at the edges, undergoing slow or fast mutation, maintained or dropped, regarded or disregarded, ultimately indescribable, visible or invisible, mediated and mediating, represented and representing, accounted-for and unaccountable. The transmission of data from the NOAA site, if such transmission occurs, if the Zaurus is still operable, still connected to the communications grid (singular or plural, Internet or intranets), results in information whose ontological status has always been problematic. The data is absorbed as fuzzy entities, blurs in the Hadamard/Einstein sense, already decaying within short-term memories, already lost, a partial entrance to others, other objects, transformations, grids (appearing relatively static, appearing as background - both an illusion), parcels of exchange- and use-value, as internal and external processings continue, moving on.