Category Archives: Letters from Aliens to Aliens

Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | wondering, The field of AI

<< I know you not, I know your produce >>


“Full Many a Flower Is Born to Blush Unseen” (Gray 1751)

“Maybe it’s the language that is off-putting. Gray created a heightened diction based in part on classical poetry. Today, formality and artifice strike many as insincere, as though something that’s not colloquial is necessarily suspect. We’re still suffering under an ersatz Romanticism that gives value to the spontaneous and devalues the polished and restrained.“ (La Belle 1994)

I wonder, in the spirit of obsessive innovation, is taking note of dusting off and revisiting acts classified as ‘romantic,’ and yet as easily classifiable as pragmatic contextualization of the incessant “new?” Is it ripping off a style, is it an ode to generating the past generations, is it lacking ingenuity, is it contextualising innovation? Is it, it is all and then some.

Some recent technologies have added a new word into the mix: ‘generative‘ which does sound different from ‘to generate.’ Being ‘generative,‘ to generate, is a form of “creation,” to create, across the generations of human produce. Is a machine that is generative in some (perverting) sense a hyper-romantic dusting of styles of bygone eras, where era might be a time period in a style of yesterday’s meme? Across the polemics of whatever is generated, created or imagined, many a produce are increasingly designated to be democratized on the graveyards of human creation as “Full Many a Flower,” “Born to Blush Unseen.” (Gray 1751)

That brings this writing to further mimicratic note-taking and referencing [*1]: As rays shining brightness on our market-made cultures, there is Samuel W. Franklin with the “Cult of Creativity”(2023). His writing might be unthreading the web of “imagination,” “interpretation” versus “creation,” “production,” (tooled, mechanical, digital or other), and “generation” from an age not too far into the recent past. Creativity –if one could be accepting of a simplified interpretation of the above author’s recent publication– is then possibly a democratization of the output-sell-buy-move-on lineage.

Do I know you or do I know your produce?

There is no “or” through the communal lenses. This might be a subtext symbolized through the passionate, yet society-defining tensions between New York’s Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.

Both could be equalized as peddling lanes for produce, and yet only one upheld community, relation, and reference to that individual human in the smallness, yet persistence of being, among the vastly architectured physical or digital cityscaping.

“When city planning supremo Robert Moses proposed a road through Greenwich Village in 1955, he met opposition from one particularly feisty local resident: Jane Jacobs. It was the start of a decades-long struggle for swaths of New York.” (Palleta 2016)

The acts of cutting through human creativity-over-time (and that with roads or other and possibly less tangible means) tends to meet with some resistance. Though, is this a romantically fading notion, erased by the statistical structuring and channeling of our produce and fruits of our laboring? In the pragmatics of communal resistance we can take (agency over) produce to proverbial multi-vectored meta-levels.

In that humanly —and at times dehumanizingly— yet created, anthropomorphic environment, have you lately taken a whole day, from before the sun rose until it set, to “unproductively” observe, take note of, one petal —there placed “Between the Commonplace and the Sublime”? (Franklin 2023)

Or, are you predestined to peddle stock in styles appropriated from hushed bygone times to be forgotten the moment you set foot on the (digital) subway, swaying you back to your nightly stead?

Please note, as I too am a peddler, and yet as you can assign time to read this: no counter argument could be that some must, unwaveringly, innovate their produce for a sustainable living. After all, as you observe –as or not as judgement of– lack of beauty “observation can tell more about the observer than about the environment being observed.” (Goldsmith & Lynne 2010)

There is that place between the Franklinses, the Grayses, the Jacobses, the Moseses or the digital versions of Le Corbusierses of our times.

There is non-romanticist beauty in unnoticed smallnesses, you see. In those moments there are no big names, no genius. There is you.

There is the vulnerable yet persistent petal. There is your human-made environment. There are producing generations of cohabitation. And that especially in the solitudes of creative observations.

Epilogue

I was touched by these words by Dr. Tim Williams as a reply to the above writing.

I wish to cherish them here:

“When I read the article, I sensed the tensions of what elements should be included in genuine generative, creative production. And thus, this led to subtle definitions to differentiate between concepts. As such, I felt that each was bringing to light an important nuance; each having its own emphasis on something important. Romanticism with its revolt against the rigid rationalism, reminding us that there are other features beyond what is in the nous; there is the entire phenomena to be considered. But then it too frequently morphs into the abstract and then without purpose (art for art’s sake). And then there is the industrialization of production with its utilitarian focus, almost to the point of killing creativity. And so, I thought a holistic approach looks upon all of these facets — the teleological, the epistemological, and aesthetic perspectives. The entirety of man in all that man is — a being that creates from who he is, limited but profound as that might be.”

Williams, T. (2023, May). “Holistic approach to being really generative.” Online: LinkedIn. Last retrieved 21st May, 2023 from a Dr. Williams comment on a LinkedIn post of the above writing. Thank you, sir.

Attributions, References & Footnote

Header photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Generations_%284120355763%29.jpg

[*1] “mimicratic” as from Rampage376·11/22/2020 “mimicratic reflexes (copies moves, techniques and fighting styles like he trained for years)” https://powerlisting.fandom.com/f/p/4400000000000249793 IN: JokuSSJ. (2020, 21 November). If you lived in an Anime World, what would be your life and powers? Online: Superpower wiki.

Franklin, S.W. (2023). “Cult of Creativity.” London: The University of Chicago Press.

Goldsmith, S. A., & Elizabeth, L. (Eds.). (2010). What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs. NYU Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt21pxmnw

Gratz, R. B. (2010). The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs

Gray, Thomas. (1751). Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Last retrieved May 18, 2023 from https://poetryarchive.org/poem/elegy-written-country-church-yard/

Jacobs, J. (1961). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books. 

La Belle, J. (1994). Full Many a Flower Is Born to Blush Unseen’ : The echoes of a classic poem about the democracy of death still resonate in our language and literature. Online: The LA Times. Last retrieved on May 15, 2023 from https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-02-16-me-23414-story.html 

Palleta, A. (2016, 28 April). The story of cities Cities Story of cities #32: Jane Jacobs v Robert Moses, battle of New York’s urban titans. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/28/story-cities-32-new-york-jane-jacobs-robert-moses

Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | poetry, text | wondering

<< The Age of Open Letters >>

hyping human-made lo-fi ladders to the Moon –animasuri’23

<< The Age of Open Letters >>

Earth, 12 April, 2023

Dear H.S. Sapien,

Since the dawn of our species we wanted to be the knowing type. Intelligent. Wise. We are trying so hard to forgot our ignorance. 

This urge might have been one to control and impose our individual or communal agency. Agency, as if an act of increasing embodiment of the lived world, and of they who be-live it. I do not know. I imagine.

Thousands of years later we still have little idea and try to label, or ostracize, our fellow companions as lesser in areas we claim authority. In doing so we increase our own agency by implying we versus them know, we versus them are intelligent, we are the wise, they are not. We silence by ignoring.

Ignorance is then the severance of relations from the other: the not-wise, the not-intelligent, the not-knowing. We prefer to do so by the bling bling of our words, our artifacts and our utopian or dystopian prophecies. We dichotomize, and with it, lobotomize humanity by targeting the anonymized other.

In this process it seems as if, to some, that ‘intelligence’ is the antithesis of care, compassion, nuance, context, consideration, acknowledgment and relation. A lack of nuance seems to be introducing a lack of diversity, and therefore possibly a lack of inclusion.

This reduction, could well be functioning as a little tea bag. It is soaked into our glorification of machined representations and of mechanized representations of us. Or rather, of how a happy and certified-intelligent few envision us in their image. This occurs, and yet not consistently, as a questionably scientific or rigorous observation. This letter could be perceived as one such example. Though it would not be the most urgent nor most important example. Let us not get fixated.

This letter, as call to action (perhaps slightly biased through a leftish-libertarian communal lens), is not a new one. It is a repeated call to ever so slightly begin to increase doing the reverse: include compassion, care and nuance. Especially invest consideration into those voices that are not in our comfort-zone of our knowing, from our assigned wise, nor from our designated intelligent. Again, let us not get fixated on staring onto one belly-button.

We relate too often by diminishing the other. We too often engage in this Spiel with fallacious rhetoric. Yes, this letter –as any letter– too suffers from it. Across the ages of eagerly grasping at knowing, intelligence, wisdom, some now also hide behind the dominion of one techno-narrative to rule them and us all.

Dominion is a diminuet. We then wish to pour this overlord-story into one tightly controlled story and ask ourselves “what is intelligence ?” That process seems as a rigged game-play.

We could do this. We could collectively submit to this. And yet, we could also diversify our narratives and ventures. We probably do not wish to be manipulated into only one answer to the question on intelligence. It’s way too early for that. It feels way too simplistic.

Moreover, besides the question of intelligence(s), other, urgent and pressing matters too might need attention with tools, aptitudes and attitudes we are maintaining and creating.

In rigging ourselves and others we have been using models which are inherently reductionist and inherently flawed. As dragnets we apply these models, across the proverbial sea floor of what it means to be(come) human. This is then somewhat blindly engaged into, while grabbing and clawing around and about ourselves. The models can be; the manner of use or of celebration might need nuancing.

There is one field of study, I shall not name it, that has especially taken it upon itself to exclude the uninitiated and yet, simultaneously has some of its prominent voices express expertise on almost everything and all. That is, in the least, a double standard. 

This self-imposed reverence goes from labeling and containing of what it means to be human, to how to replace humans or the activities humans (“should”) care about, and activities we humans (“should”) not care for. One could think about work. One could think about processes of creativity and expression. This meaning of human (or the dismissal of meaning and understanding as important attributes in the human becoming) happens to become narrated in one, or very few, and yet rather unnuanced story-telling sweepstakes.

Remarkably, at present, the field implied here is especially strongly condemning and that via its output, its exclusion, and its practice against any human who is interested in areas of the Arts and Humanities. This goes at times also for they who are interested in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Though, some might argue that a disdain is especially noticeable toward humans who relate through, or to, the Arts and Humanities, and then back to that one unnamed field here in question. With the exception of a coopted few (whom among themselves are also bickering and ignoring), this latter set of humans get fired, debased, mocked or ignored. 

Some members in this unnamed field will pay lip service to the importance of some areas within the Arts and Humanities. Though, in some sort of double speak their acts and their lack of entering in debate or dialog with the “commoner” shows a different reality-building. As long as the rebuttals towards the in-grouped are not too critical, the outside voices can offer their awe and pay their undying gratitudes. These dynamics too make up human “intelligence” and “intelligentsia.”

While decisions are made on intelligence –which afflicts all life– it might feel, to some, as if it is not life itself deciding. Machine and their bell curves seem to be taking on that role of decision. This is then augmented by “life” seemingly bestowed onto machine and its curved output. In this exciting, and yes, creative human storm, we then argue that soon only some of us have to discuss (our) intelligence. 

No. 

We have already been discussing intelligence and related constructs. We have done so via scientific or other models, and we know we still know very little. We do know more than I know, or you individually know. We still know too little. To some it is even questioned whether we could or even should know. Others then dismiss these voices even more. In considering intelligence, we should continue the consideration by means of transdisciplinary exchanges, inclusive of they who might not know, not be as intelligent as you (perceive yourself), or not be the wise whom you revere.

What could, additionally, be discussed is how our lack of insights (from Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Humanities, the Arts,…insights which are already limited in these segregated fields) are being hyped and contorted even further through one field, as if answers from that one field are set and done. They are not.

Let us not be too blasé. It does not take a non-insider too much effort to notice –without perhaps being able to put a finger on the accurate pain-point– that something might be amiss. (Algorithmically, systemically, and culturally) amplifying voices, while attenuating others, does not make this disappear. It makes for arrogance and readiness for a trip up. True, as this letter, anyone who puts their work out there exposes oneself to trip ups. It is ok, until it is too scaled, too urgent and too (hyped to be) consequential.

Moreover, this narrative-monoculture could be diminishing the diverse collections of human stories. This could thus also diminish scientific methodological rigor.  This could, thirdly, diminish and disempower innovation to be constraint into a very narrow stratum. 

Yes. 

Yes, we will have to discuss the intelligence of how that is being done by a select group in name of all individuals (i.e., human or other forms of life and other degrees and nuances of non-human forms of *biological* intelligence). 

Perhaps we might want to add some humbleness and inclusivity to those “voices” who are less-to-not-initiated in the realm which some call exclusively their own, yet which output is bragged to be spreading like a wild fire across all fields; across all of humanity; over and across all life. 

Is the intelligence, of the stakeholders in this one unnamed field, sufficiently justified for outside-others to only remain “beautiful yet quiet?” Is it intelligent to speak of an attribute that belongs to all (i.e., the complex of intelligence), while the majority sits by quietly and simply accepts a verdict?

Do you remember being a child and being talked about, yet having no say, no voice, no enablement and no empowerment? Try to go back in your memory. Try to sense that feeling it created in you then. Extrapolate this feeling, beyond this one demographic niche of “justified” (?) patronization (i.e., parent-teacher onto child). It is not stimulatingly intelligent. Stimulate this awareness. Stimulate this not only for technical or mathematical processes (which could indeed be “cool!”) while mimicking our intelligence (and not only yours) with a model, as a slither of what might be imagined as one (mimicry) of intelligence for and to all. 

As some, in this unnamed field, have stated: if you don’t know the difference between x or y, you should not talk about our  field. To those who claim this: I am not mentioning your field here, and yet I will not retire from learning about yours as I embrace it as part of our shared, human journey. You claim to know, but have you listened and learned outside your niche? If not, then what is intelligence? What is wisdom? What is knowledge?

Perhaps it might be intelligent and wise for that unnamed field to also embraces  humans, the humane and the Humanities –as well as Biology, Chemistry and Physics– while the field seems to be set on its appropriation of intelligence, and what it tells us intelligence to be and what human is to be. What life is to be. If the unnamed field were to continue as the sole backer of financially viable form of intelligence, could it intelligently become as a field filled with unnamed soldiers who were in pursuit of humanity’s freedoms?

Sincerely,

The Other Kind of (Tech-loving) Human.

The Age of Open LettersDownload
Letters from Aliens to Aliens, The field of AI

<< HOMOGENIZATION of STANDARDIZATION >>


There were two aliens “sipping” Gnoflrnem at their local establishment. Their conversation was automatically translated, with acceptable quirks, into this version of English. 

 “Why are human applications as they are?” asked the one to the other. 

The second alien aliensplained it to the first: 

“At times humans confuse what they label as ‘standardization’ with what they label as ‘homogenization.’ It’s somewhat fun or tragic to see how they go about it. They forget, at times, that these two are not the same when applying themselves with other humans. Some who do realize this seem to be concerned to not point that out. They think it could upset their position among the other humans. So they apply as all others do. Then at times humans mix this confusion with what you and I know as ‘rigidity.’ After all, they have learned to believe that it supposedly asks less energy to follow a given framework created by other humans rather than to allow for adaptation, iteration, appropriation, participation, transformation, departure, letting go and do many more possibly applications they do know yet seem to ignore or even refute to exist or be allowed. “

The second alien continued:

“A few humans then engage further in this ritual of confusion between standardization and homogenization, while still trying maintaining forms of explainable, evidence-based governance. They confuse the one for application —standardization— with the one for themselves —homogenization— when making, doing, maintaining or undergoing their applications. Governance is important to many humans. Some even find it important to govern so that the two, standardization and homogenization, are confused. They see it as a divine reflection. Many of them guard against entropy of the applications which they created, justifying their intentional confusion between standardization and homogenization. They are seriously afraid of diffusion of one and thus use the other to feed and justify that fear. 

Next, as an application of standardization, this Earth species has been known to confuse their own constructed models, representative of a slice of their perceived reality. Reality for humans is that which they then vehemently posit that their own model represents. Here the humans starts to really enjoy homogenization and starts to forget standardization as a separate and distinct application of a process. It’s fun that some then add that all models are wrong and some just more than others. They don’t think all are right just some less so than others.”

the second alien takes a “sip” (there is no representative English word for the actual act) and continues:

“ The humans forget the distinctions even further by short-handing the application of their modeled standard via various processes of public rehashing and the use of adaptive forms and ways enabling some to claim their model is reality; thereby implementing not standardization but rather tools for homogenization. Reality is 1:1 all the same as their model. Some will even substitute reality with standardized and homogenizing constructs. These are all the hype now there. Some will even end others’ and, at times, their own life for it. It’s amazing how far this life form goes. So alive in its idiosyncrasies yet so death-hungry by equalization.

“This,” said the alien,

“I think to observe, could then be making it easier for them to slide unwitting & perhaps now pacified or apathetic participants into self-censorship of their fear by means of compliance not to standardization but rather to the homogenization. Their artists, take Shakespeare, did apply a standard very heterogeneously. In contrast to the artist, groups of humans then are only seemingly willingly kept into existence, as a homogenous group, in function of their own created architectured system rather than the other way around: the use and redesign of a standardized application for individual expression and collective relations. They lock themselves into their application by numerous self-made tools. They gradually become and wish to homogenize yet tend to vehemently deny it. It’s impressive to watch. Their diverse and conflicting collection of Value is one such toolbox. It’s awe inspiring how powerful this concept of Value is to them. They have built their entire application pool based on the belief of assigned and shared Value. They can’t seem to be able to think outside of it. They even labeled daring a thinking outside of it, as a thinking about less then nothing; a negative nothing. This complex process of assigning Value is both their standard and homogenization tool. We could learn something from this. “

the second alien halted and “looked” up to the first alien. There was a longer silence. The second alien then continued:

“The  humans can more easily reinforce this confusion between standardization and homogenization by claiming there is reason for the fixed hierarchy of Value, followed by systemically denying any rhizomatic fluidities to coexist with some needed or desired universal and local hierarchies. Again, they eagerly apply yet another reinforcing layer of confusion between standardization and homogenization. Their rhizomatic or adaptable attributes are then open at times to be equated, via implicit narratives, with being too upsetting, fearfully unknown or simply ‘dangerous.’ Before they know it, some are happy with homogenization & nurture an unlabeled fear from freedom. Now their application has become an unrelatable APP that is vehemently believed to be what it is.”

The first alien fell asleep somewhere mid monologue. The second finished the first’s Gnoflrnem.

the visual is of unknown origin while the subtext was added by animasuri’22

Reference:


Box, G. E. P. (1979). “Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building.” In Robustness in Statistics, edited by Robert L. Launer and Graham N. Wilkinson, 201–36. Academic Press: “All models are wrong, but some are useful”.


Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | poetry

<< contraContext >>

Hushing until we no longer see each or one self is the ultimate silencing of an ego. Though not one of spiritual enlightenment, more one of imposed dilapidated zombification. And yet, and yet and yet then there is one or other hidden stage, squeekingly behind, in-between, a digital seamless door, which one can identify and carve open, with screams of surprise or a kind whispered silence of the written rapprochement and of that what needed no restoration: the Viennese Barbarian. — animasuri’22

Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | wondering

Going Beyond Ranking Institutions of Learning?


the following is a communication catalyzed by Dr. Dobson’s invitation to offer some reflection on his article, considering going beyond the manner of ranking universities. Dr. Dobson’s article can be found here

I found a link to the article via Dr. Dobson’s LinkedIn posting of the same article.


Beijing, July 11, 2020

Dear Dr. Dobson:

A workaround aided me to access your article after all. 

Thank you for the enriching contextualization and attributes in relation to the present-day dynamics in University Rankings. The article’s historical contextualization, while in some attributes known, is important and enlightening to me and I can only hope it is also to others with far more expertise in this matter. 

Instead of waiting for your acknowledgement of the usability of my less-than-expert imaginations on the matter, I prefer to take a minor risk of perhaps sharing naive or incomplete views as a layperson. 

In ode and augmentation to the extended longitudinal manner your article offered it, I wish to reach back through history as well; personal history. I feel personal histories (and perhaps scaled via ethnographic approaches) could just perhaps hint of a manner to move beyond (and in-between) present-day measurements. 

I feel the topic of “University Rankings,” and whether we could collectively or otherwise move beyond it, does touch on and influence my work via some attributes (not relevant now to explore further). 

Secondly, I observe that with a number of “common” citizens today, such ranking does influence daily operations in one’s social setting, following the access to or choice of one or other institute of learning. 

In short, the pressure of the ranking is at times possibly experienced and imposed to that extent that any intellectual ability (or merit) seems too easily dismissed if not derived from one of such highly ranked institution. (This is not at all implying that such institute should not be expected to produce output of a high quality; within and beyond academic settings). 

While, as above, I can offer personal experiences I also seem to have the tendency to abstract topics and see attributes, processes and dynamics that seem similar or intriguingly comparable (at least at a level of my intuitive imagination and wondering). If these, experiences and abstractions, are of value then, perhaps the following might also be of use, to some degree, in this conversation on university ranking. 

Personally, as a child, I had not worried too much about the rankings of any institutions nor of their main linguistic formats (ie English or not). The premises with which I grew up, which aided me to relate to the processes of learning (and their potential effects), were rather different from some of the premises I have observed within the societal setting which I have worked in for the past 20 years. 

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The latter, still today (and perhaps more so now) showcases a high competitive nature and a high appreciation for scores, tests and formalized academic status. There seems to be a trend to make measurements even more so scientific. Nevertheless, in the society I work and live, there seems also a (political and academic) will to push up academic institutions into becoming better in quality and status, while also allowing for the search for diversification and the value thereof (both in the realms of the institutional as well as that of students). 

Besides these and focused on the personal, I  on the other hand, was as a child concerned about learning at those institutions that could aid me with: 

  1. what I felt an intellectual or emotional lack in or 
  2. that would be challenging (intellectually, creatively and systemically)
  3. that could complete a metaphysical puzzle on my path of wonder and understanding (which is perhaps irrelevant here to elaborate on)
  4. that could offer system thinking that was previously eluding me. 
  5. pedagogical methods that i felt could add to what I had previously been exposed to. 
  6. that could create a model which in turn could offer sets of values back into the communities I might work within 
  7. others

The pressure of ranking has only become apparent when having been confronted with some specific individuals (some of whom used it through a filter of ego or a process of devaluation of the other)  or later on with system-thinking that weighted the ranking considerably different from my perceptions and upbringing. 

Thus pulling the ranking of universities out of the frameworks of the academics and perhaps into that of human experiences, the (metaphysical) potential seems at least to me clear. I hone in on this since I feel that your article suggest a similar vantage point via the spiritual. Perhaps the ranking could also be done based on the perception of the individuals where the individuals might need to shift their perception of what learning and places of learning could actually be (again). 

So too, I imagine, could the effect and affect of the institution into the community be a source of measurements or ranking. The latter I feel is expanding on the ranking via the Sustainable Development Goals which I find excitingly innovative and which your article also refers to. 

Hence, I feel (perhaps crudely) that one could abstract these personal, metaphysical or other experiences as models. Firstly, as my personal models, secondly as models that stand to some degree in tension with other models; the latter which might be increasingly (?) dominating models (e.g those models with parameters making up complex algorithms that process universities as being scaled into an almost status quo of a ranking). Lastly, some models which maintain the model of ranking the universities and which are not academic in their nature (e.g. socio-political, geo-political, Models maintaining inequities between cultural variations based on historic and systemic biases, distrust toward some forms of diversification or perceived deviation away from the historic models, to name but a few). 

In doing so I feel a possible direction to look into when considering going beyond ranking is identifying the deeper-lying models as well as the deeper lying tensions between such models that allow for the ranking to exist as it does.  This is, in abstracting, “but” a feeling I have. Now, at present this is only in the frailty of a feeling, thus easily dismissible or thus easily debased as if crushing an ant. This latter metaphor is also a hint to a model that might create hesitation to go beyond: that what is untested, “weak”, unmeasured is not to be trusted. In this metaphor lies a hint of how one might go beyond. I feel your article also points these out (some explicitly and some I feel are implicit or imagined because of your article by me). 

As an example of the above: 

From my experience and from the article I infer that ranking is seemingly dominated by a singular academic Lingua Franca; English. However this might be shifting; as it has done in history with, for instance, Latin or French or others  (eg: while Tsinghua University academia are surely enabled to author in English and while the university has a respectful global position on these rankings, many publications in China and perhaps from this one university might be brought into existence in Chinese) .  The weakness is perhaps not to be found in this new paradigm but rather in the (technological) inability or unwillingness to read Chinese text by those who maintain to (impose to) operate outside of such differentiating models.

That stated, to allow the shift, one needs to allow the adaptation of other models (of a geopolitical kind perhaps?). As your article seems to point out, at some points in human history Latin, Greek, Arabic, Farsi and so one were Lingua Francas that overlapped in spacetime. One might need to diversify and innovate in one’s individual openness, scale that to a collective shift in awareness and then perhaps make it positively systemic. 

These are some of my thoughts on the topic you have offered. 

I hope rather to learn more from you. Thank you. 

Sincerely,

Jan Hauters 

Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | wondering

I’m not A Virus; I can’t Breathe; I TOO am a Berliner; We come in peace, …and you?

Or, …do we really need an alien invasion to allow a halt to the mind-numbing cynical slapstick of horror and fear?

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Anecdotes, events or histories are important to humanize; …or the opposite. They are deeply touching so they mobilize in various ways; yet, at times, in opposing directions…

Anecdotes can offer seeming clarification (as if real-life metaphors or analogies, at times looping meaning into conscious stomach-turning absurdity). They could clarify or at least unveil a deeper-lying problem. Anecdotes can do this aided by various lights and focuses; …some persisted “clarifications” are not so conducive nor sustainable.

Anecdotes can pull and push; ease and slap; silence and amplify. Anecdotes are felt as mine not yours, unless you’re in and not out.

Anecdotes do seem to work in narrowly strengthening the cohesion, within one bubble, against the next or against the other.

It is seemingly so since an anecdote’s force is defined by the mechanisms of whether we want to (or can) find, or offer, meaning-giving ; for the good or the bad and anything in-between its polarizing power. Anecdotes are like potent meaning-giving positive feedback loops with no singularly positive outcomes.

Their effects echo, ever so distorted yet, lasting. However, do we want to see their depth and breadth? Many seem to want to refuse, stubbornly.

Yes, anecdotes are lasting whether or not we (wish to) see their more abstract systemic mechanisms at work, which are reoccurring in any of these same anecdotes, irrespective of the specifics of one or other confronting , kick-inducing or shocking event.

If, however we were not to see beyond 1 event or that 1 sour apple or the next 1 bad apple, how may examples would we need before the proverbial aha-erlebnis could be shared by enough leading (and less leading) voices?

When would the one breath-taking anecdote be transcended and aid our discernment and actions into a next level of human development?

If that moment were to come along… How about us developing into humans that are slightly more sharing, considerate, insightful, inclusive, empathetic, emotionally mature yet rich, patient and problem-solving rather than problem-recreating?

How about moving towards wanting to become wise? (psst, have a look at the meaning of ‘sapiens’ in our species’ taxonomy).

How many kills do we need? How many viruses do we need in other or your locations? How many teases, pokes, dismisses and growls do we need? How many “I’m with you’s” do we need? How many warnings or how much finger-pointing do we need? How many far-fetched yet unresolved conspiracies or bile-laden debasements do we need before we see there is no worse conspiracy but the ones we inflict upon ourselves?

Even if an alien spaceship were to hover over a metropolis, under our present-day mindsets, some human individual would seemingly be able to find a way to blame and use another human into some convoluted and perverted strategizing, catalyzed by a good doze of distrust and short-minded, linear, negative manipulations. When will it be enough? How about,… now.

[read with a tone of irony] We are a species that is very resilient and formulaic-creative. We loop the same thing over again into enforced and accepted meaning. We are a species that enjoys bumping over the same stone again and again and again. One might reluctantly want to shout: “show me that ‘new normal’, please! Where is it, beyond the veil of a mask or a missing hug?”

Do you easily want one or other excuse you can hide behind? You will find it. Do you want easy access to one or other fear-inducing tool which you can project outwardly? You will find it. Do you need a bed-time story to paint the other as negative, debased and too different from you? You will find it.

But, tell me dear fellow human, where then reaches your innovation? How far beyond the surface of your smooth digital touch screen? To the delegation of your smartness to a database? Perhaps all the way to the digital version of your eagerly mined bills and coins?

An anecdote in forms of story, event or technology needs a higher resolution; a finer and deeper nuance. It needs an added realization and willingness to identify complexity, inter-relations, associations, contexts and systems. We need to move onward and upward by innovating cognitively, around that 1 or other human output, that 1 utterance and the next 1 act and the next, and the next.

It is not because I am small that anything larger than my own experience or my own anecdote, does not exist. There is more. Yes, there is even more we don’t know that we don’t know; …know that. It might aid in making you a bit more humble.

We can move, perhaps with falling, into a systematic learning-process that could answer systemic, thus process-driven and larger issues, lying at the foundation of your or my anecdotes.

One can device or uncover the blueprints and pragmatics of a systematic learning-process to a sustainable co-existence, a co-creation and a shared consciousness (one away from a willing and blinding “ignorance” into a willing actionable awareness with shared directional sight). It is one that needs to be approached methodologically, systematically and pedagogically; with care and reflection.

It is one that can allow for the individual in considerate interaction with the collective human existence adapting, yet set in a far larger context of change. It’s ok, it’s daunting, it’s life, but then we might just perhaps be truly in it together (oh…, you thought we are now?).

This is not mitigated even while a noticeable-some aren’t thinking nor acting as such; which is contradictory and perhaps counterproductive .

It needs to be done by also going deeper than any symptoms of that deeper dynamic and systemic issue, associated with the human output (e.g. an anecdote in utterance, act or technology).

A reset or augmentation or a truly disruptive paradigm shift in humanity (which is not but the sum of the parts of its output alone) could and perhaps should also go beyond the initial labeling of “the other” (i.e. those not “in the know”) an act which otherwise, if not methodologically gone beyond, might stay at the level of “mud-throwing”, debasing or instigating of negative sentiment or much worse.

For instance, among many moreresources, Cognitive Biases need to be identified (this is being done) and addressed (could be done with more method). These are beyond one individual, one community. These are transnational and fundamental to communal, geopolitical or other strategizing or forecasting. These resources are being interconnected by some initiatives yet more implementation within online and offline learning services need to be undertaken.

The broadest sense of “Literacy”, e.g. in relation to applications and interactions of skilled-up emotional intelligence need to be implemented. For this, anecdotes, such as technological output, stand in function of humanity (not the other way around).

Media literacy needs to be built into this and growth-mindset or imaginative skill-sets, leading to increased ability to adapt in complexities and diversities need to be nudged forward. The scientific methodology can and should be intertwined.

Conversation skills and how to construct a narrative must be made aware. Active Listening skills are quintessential . The latter to me is about knowing how to process input: internal(ized) imagination, making, creativity and innovation (within oneself). This is as of use and as practical as “output skills”: externalized imagination, making, creativity and innovation (from oneself). (psst, no worries, neither I am good at these. We’ll learn together yet, at our own individual pace).

And these superficial items too, mentioned here previously, are but the surface as are the (important and at time shocking) anecdotes.

To enable such paradigm shift, as an in-depth humanity 2.0, investment is needed (monetary and also other). It is needed trans-nationally (or rather, “meta-“). I’m (still) ignorant and naive about these yet, intuitively, I do sense a need for this to be urgently considered. I do realize that, in our traditional thinking, what I wrote here is painful, irrational and to some laughable to state, especially now.

The answer and the manner of answer to the above attributes and the associated questions (which and how questions are asked) will be unveiling as to the insight, readiness and willingness of our species or at least of its front-stage voices (to think beyond the immediate or instant proverbial yet petty knee-jerk reactions).

There are actors already active in the world, aiming to offer uplifting method, process and solutions to the above lament.

Let us identify them better, mobilize them, give them an enabling platform rather than the continuous mind-numbing, impatient, cynical slapstick of horror, hate and fear.

header image:

“El Hombre” . photo-edited digital sketch . –animasuri’20 yes.

later add-ons, corroborations, examples and more:

Letters from Aliens to Aliens, text | poetry, text | wondering

The Universe as a Collective Memory; as a Collective Narrative

The perceived universe is a history. One’s perceived thoughts are a history. Each inevitably lie in a past; one slightly longer distanced in timespace then the other.

As a child, and still today, I imagine(d) that some attributes that make up interstellar space could function as memory banks for our collective (and individual) information (knowledge, anecdotes, personal stories, that evasive theory or elegant formula, that silly cat video and so on).

As a child, and still in my today’s naivete, I envision(ed) that the information could be encoded onto radiation, onto waves (of light or which ever), used as carrier waves, carried for eternity (or until the next Big Bang) at the speed of near-to-light, across the galaxies, as our echoes of who and what we once were with one another. …Yes, one might prefer to be more cautious, just in case there is that space-faring parasitic yet intelligent species out there. Though, this might be more telling of how we reflect upon ourselves as a species and how we have been perceiving how we (should) relate to other species around us (and vice versa) rather than being about that hypothetical non-terrestrian.

Some might pose that vision without action is delusional. However, I beg that nuances do exist. One can envision something and can, at the least, be exhilarated or rejuvenated when seeing that somehow similar visions are brought to execution by others. Then such delusional self shifts to becoming a meaning-full self. This occurs through a positive psychology of interconnection with that unknown other, by means of the unintended gift of meaning, or hope, through proxy. That is somewhat what stories do; both fictional or less fictional ones.

I have seen the nascence of DNA computing and information storage on DNA , allowing for enormous capacity and durability. I discovered this through the media I browsed.

I have seen the mentioning of 5D data storage through some kind of glass imprinting of information, of even more impressive proportions. This is achieved at a nano-scale, by means of a dense laser beam of sorts.

I have observed reports about initiatives of databases and storage-redundancies on- and off-planet; not only of stories and information but also of flora’s “story” in the form of seed banks. Who’s and what will (not) be stored?

I have heard of research towards brain implants aimed at increasing memory capacities within an individual

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I have seen initiatives where common individuals can record their common stories of a lifetime for themselves and with others to enjoy and be touched by: a mother about her son; a person about a lost love; that common story that makes us daringly, beautifully and yet frailly human in-between one another.

I also encountered questions of the “right to be forgotten”. In extension to that, it has been said that for instance on LinkedIn an increasing percentage of profiles are of deceased individuals and that in a not too long a near future that can easily reach up to 20% (I will want to verify this). I am equally thrilled about this in associated with the sensation of the echoes of humanity as portrayed in the opening paragraph. Why should one or more of one’s story (not) be stored?

This then in turn entangles with concepts of “privacy”, “freedom of speech”, “secrecy”, “intimacy”, “trust”, “ownership of information”, “the right to perform or distribute”, and many more. Does storage dismiss the story thought or the story hushedly stumbled and stuttered in private settings of the fleeing moment and among those who are trusted? Is there your poetry in the ephemeral, the passing?

I also hear about some who ponder whether or not more and faster (information) is unequivocally better.

Either way, I distill a tautology: we are story keepers, story tellers and maybe more so, story hackers; irrespective of whether we like, want or agree with their content or not. That brings us to meaning-giving, meaning-taking and meaning-maintaining or meaning-alteration.

I wonder, …

I wonder, besides one’s intentions with a story and those intentions being different from the perceptions of a story –which in turn can be seen as an example of the process of “meaning-alterations”– is wanting to be forgotten the ultimate alteration of meaning? Has intention the upper-hand to perception? Has one infinite ownership over one’s story? Could one, should one and how could one ensure the intended meaning of a story over time? Is this the human tragedy or playful dance between the individual and the collective as portrayed in stories over space and time and imagination (i.e. meaning-alteration; since perception is the processing of a story through filters such as one’s imagination)? [if you are wondering how I am making these statements and assumptions as to how someone might process a story: while anecdotal, last I checked I am human and I process stories through imagination and other cognitive mechanisms].

This post will function as a repository of these and associated initiatives or considerations by others. If I find them I will post URLs here.