[Reader-list] on scarcity

[Rob van Kranenburg]

at the conference McKenzie Wark explored the notion of scarcity, I 
wrote this for Janus. It might not be a brand new start (as Paul 
Weller sings), but it may be a beginning:


New beginnings begin by ways of teaching.
And on scarcity, sketchingly.

In the philosophy of Aristoteles there were three domains of 
knowledge with three corresponding states of knowing that were 
deigned equally important; Theoria, Techné and Praxis. Theoria with 
its domain of knowledge epistéme, was for the Greek gods, mortals 
could never reach this state of knowing. But they could try to strive 
for it. In Theoria and epistéme we immediately recognize our concepts 
of theory and epistemology. In Techné with its domain of knowledge 
poèsis we can retrieve the concepts technology and poetry. Related, 
for example, as follows: the poetics of Aristotle can be seen as a 
catalogue of literary techniques. The original meaning of the word 
'technology' was concerned with know-how or method, and it was only 
with the Great Exhibition of 1851 that the word became associated 
with machines. It is therefore all the more interesting that the 
domain of knowledge which belonged to Praxis: phronesis has dropped 
out completely, not only in our language but also in our thought and 
ways of thinking. Phronesis, that knowledge that any one of us uses 
daily in the practice of living his everyday existence, is no longer 
recognized as an important domain of knowledge with a modern 
linguistic equivalent.

It took me five years to figure out, to grasp, - understand - let me 
use the word resonate - these lines of Heraclite: and I rephrase them 
in my own lines - "of all that which is dispersed haphazardly, the 
order is most beautiful."

In the Fragments you read that these lines are incomprehensible as 
far as the Heraclite scholars are concerned. They can not link it as 
a line of verse with other words in other lines in verse.

I read it and in reading I knew it to be true.

Knowing that only as experience is not very productive in a society 
that has no non-iconic medium for transmitting these kinds of 
experiences. In order to make this experience productive; read: make 
it politically viable and socially constructive - in order to find 
ways of transmitting, ways of teaching experiences like this - we 
textualise them. We find analogies, we read initial lines as 
metaphor, as metonomy. I went for a walk one day in the woods near 
F., in the Belgian Ardennes. A beautiful walk it was, steep down, 
hued autumn colours, leaves fading into black. In the quiet meadow 
that we passed I saw autumn leaves, small twigs, pebbles sometimes - 
hurdled into the most beautiful of patterns by the strenght of water 
moving. I looked hard realizing there was indeed no other way of 
arranging them.

I recognized leaves as data. I recognized data as data. And I 
recognized the inability to find a way to come to terms with 
Heraclite's line without walking, without taking a stroll in the 
woods and look around you, look around you and find the strenght of 
streams arranging.

The ability to read data as data is what makes new beginnings. 
Reflect a while on what you bumped into, run up against, hit when you 
did not look.

Anyone can tell you when a volcano erupts. No one can tell you when 
it becomes active. Bernard Chouet, a physicist, shut himself up in 
his study five years ago. With thousands of prints. Thousands of 
charts. And where no one else saw any data, he saw a deep regularity 
in certain lines that no one had seen all those years. He saw data 
where others saw noise.

All I have to do now is the following. I can not quite put it into 
adequate terms and I therefore hesitate. I do check my lines 
regularly for lines that make no sense even in those regions where we 
need to make no sense for a while in the registers that do make sense 
so. It has to do with my ability to visualise a setting in which 
people resonate with media through simulating processes. Simulating 
processes that are actual processes, for in a digitised real, any 
process might become experiential, might resonate.

Let us stand still for a while. Reflect on standing still. Just be 
still. And jump about, maybe?:

"A person who weighs 65 kilos, standing still, exerts a pressure of 
650 Newtons on the floor. If he jumps up and down on both feet this 
pressure is multiplied by seven. Fifty people jumping at the same 
time would produce 23 tonnes of pressure, equal to 33 cars stacked on 
top of each other :  With every drum beat, these tonnes of pressure 
pile-drive into the ground at the resonant frequency. Seeing, hearing 
or feeling even the slightest response from the structure initiates a 
feedback loop between the building and its occupants which increases 
the feeling of communal action. The amount of force required to cause 
a full structural collapse is between ten to one hundred times 
greater than that needed to see the first surface cracking. These 
warning signs are sufficient for our purposes since they force the 
authorities to close down the structure. Used in this way the tactic 
should pose no danger to anyone."

That is tactic and strategy in one move, oh, and a simple one at 
that. We stand. Jump. We become komuso:

The komuso, a wandering priest, plays a central part in the history 
of Japanese Shakuhachi music. From behind their wicker visors these 
basket-hatted men have "viewed the flow of Japanese life from the 
seventeenth century to the present", as Charles P. Malm writes. The 
ranks of the komuso were filled with ronin: masterless samurai. In 
Kyoto a group of komuso called themselves the Fukeshu. The Buddhist 
shogun government, which had smashed all Christian inspired 
opposition after the battle of Shimabara, was very suspicious of any 
form of organisation that contained these samurai whose allegiance 
was doubtful. The Fukeshu secretly purchased a building that belonged 
to one of the larger Buddhist temples. By faking a number of papers 
claiming their historical origins as coming from China via a priest 
named Chosan, the Fukeshu tried to secure their position. They also 
produced a copy of a license from the first Edo Shogun, Ieyasu, 
giving them the exclusive right to solicit alms by means of 
shakuhachi playing. When a samurai became ronin he could no longer 
wear his double sword. So these wandering priests redesigned the 
shakuhachi. The flute became a formidable club as well as a musical 
instrument. The Fukeshu asked for official recognition of their 
temple. The government demanded the official document. The Fukeshu 
claimed it was lost. The shogun granted their request on the 
condition that they act as spies for the government. The Fukeshu 
accepted. The Fukeshu played soft melodies and overheard intimate 
conversations.

If we read these steps backwards there always seems to be one more 
mask, eine maske mehr.

The final layer is nonexistent, the essence never material, the 
object ever empty.
But in finding the story, and in telling, it we have learned.
We have learned along the way.
What kind of learning is that?

Charles Selzer has investigated the role of the exploratory, non-task 
driven behaviour in learning. His findings indicate that many animals 
seem intuitively to engage in environmental investigation "without 
any specific motivation and that their familiarity with a general 
terrain assists them in solving problems that arise later, such as 
escaping from predators."  According to Selzer, when people 
investigate the resources available through the Internet, "they 
engage in many of the same processes that animals engage in when they 
explore their environment. I argue that exploring the Internet is a 
learning experience that helps satisfy the desire for explorationŠ 
Learning is an inherent by-product of sensory processing and (Š) 
appears to be a by-product of Internet exploration."

Learning is a byproduct of standing about.
In walking we are the seismographs of everyday life.

I went for a walk one day in the woods near Felenne, in the Belgian 
Ardennes, and  recognized data as data, the very beginning of any 
educational process:  deciding what is data and what is not. As data 
form the key to information and information informs the process of 
creating intersubjective knowledge communities, it is vital that the 
tactics and strategies for laying bare the decisions data/not data 
are at the forefront of educational issues today. The role of the 
teacher is to lay bare the code that decides what is data and what is 
not data. For that both teacher and pupil have to move about, walk.

Ok. So these are stories and you're telling me it is theory, right?
Yes.
So, where do I start?
You can start by making things scarce.

Why?

We are moving rapidly towards a hybrid reality, where analogue and 
digital connectivity will be fighting for the ability to make sense, 
to make meaning. Pervasive, ubiquitous, pro-active, disappearing 
computing will foster a renewed animism, where things are coming 
alive with functionality, connectivity and consequently meaning. When 
things start talking to each other through Radio Frequency Tags, 
Bluetooth or smart dust sensors, we can only hope to speak to them. 
And for that we need procedures of translation. For these procedures 
we need concepts and models. Ours are formed in a realm of the 
analogue which is fuelled by the dominance of the scarce over the 
ubiquitous, the few over the many, the one over the team, the 
original over the copy. In a digital realm there is no scarcity, we 
can always add a server, always add bit or two. We can always add 
data.

Ok. But what is your point?

I have always refused to have one, but I might have many. Here's one:

We live in a world of data which is mistaken for information which is 
mistaken for knowledge. We negociated for centuries in this analogue 
world as to what counts as data and what not, what will become 
information, what will become knowledge, what is deemed worthy to be 
wisdom. The notions that have scripted this process are inclusion and 
exclusion. The design principle in this process is scarcity. What is 
scarce, is valued.

So?

So we must find a way to come to terms with a hybrid reality that no 
longer underlies our process of designing data and information into 
layers for policy and education. In this brief moment of transition 
(where we still have barcodes and not individual tags) we might try 
to script scarcity into the digital realm. Fix the pixels on our 
stylesheets. You add a paragraph? You take one off.

But that's just buying time!

Indeed, it is.

It is, just buying time. For you know as well as I do that this 
convergence towards a technologically fuelled hybrid real will be 
matched with the convergence of race, colour and beliefs towards a 
creole real; a real in which we we all be wearing colours.

In such a real we learn by walking. Can you envisage schools there? 
Teachers? Students? Blind in that world, all of us.

Go on. Just move one foot, gently now, gently.


Notes:

In 'Mobile Vulgus' ("an attempt to reclaim the mobility of the crowd 
as a physical force for change"), Christian Nold talks about the 
"potential force a crowd of people hold when they act as a cohesive 
whole. Music is not dangerous, it's the people. Music can be as loud 
as you like, and OK you get blast effects but they can't be worse 
than explosions, and buildings are designed to withstand explosions. 
No, it's the actual effect that people would be able to cause."
MOBILE VULGUS by Chrtian Nold is published by Book Works. 128 pages, 
printed offset, with an audio CD, 170 x 155mm, ISBN 1870699564, price 
7.50
http://www.mobilevulgus.com/text.htm

Selzer, C. P., 'The Use of Investigatory Responses as a Measure of 
Learning and Memory', in Forsythe C., Grose, E., Ratner, J., (eds.) 
Human Factors and Web Development New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum 
Associates, 1998, p. 21.

Malm, W. P. Japanese Music and Musical instruments Charles E. Tuttle 
Company, Rutland Vamont, Tokyo Japan, 1959, pp. 153-154.
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