Just a few paces away from me at Carnegie Mellon University, the massive computer affectionately nicknamed “NELL” (Never Ending Learning Language) is learning English by surfing the web 24 hours per day. I personally am unlearning English by doing so, but that’s another story (ba dump bump). NELL has been continuously learning linguistic semantics through trial and error since January 2010, and was developed by a team of CMU researchers with support from DARPA, Google and Yahoo (via a research supercomputing cluster).

NELL reads the Web 24 hours a day, seven days a week, learning language like a human would — cumulatively, over a long period of time. It parses text on the Internet for ontological categories, like “plants,” “music” and “sports teams,” then uses contextual clues to sort out what things belong in which categories, like “Nirvana is a grunge band” and “Peyton Manning plays for the Indianapolis Colts.” And, perhaps most Skynet-horror-inducing, “anger is an emotion.” – Claire Evans, A Computer that Learns the Hard Way, io9

I recently signed up for NELL’s twitter feed to be among the 1700+ followers who are helping NELL categorize terms accurately. NELL’s peppy twitter bio reads, “I am a machine reading research project at Carnegie Mellon, periodically tweeting facts I read. Please follow me, and reply with corrections so I can improve!” When I clicked “follow,” I was NOT expecting the daily comic relief that the childlike NELL provides. Every few hours I get a tweet from NELL, such as:

“I think “Longnose Sucker” is an #Animal”

“I think “tsuyu sauce” is a #Condiment”

“I think “Battle of Invernahavon” is a #MilitaryConflict“ and

“I think “www.epilepsy” is a #Machine-learningConference.”

But I had to pause to ROFLGASM when on November 3 NELL tweeted:

“I think Sarah Palin is a #male.”

Read more about NELL in the NYTimes article, Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself by Steve Lohr, or visit the official NELL project site.

The author's own conversation with a computer at Exploratorium

Hal 9000 on view at Carnegie Science Center

The focus of my research at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry has been artists working in scientific or technological environments during the last four decades (see Chronology of Artists in labs, tech industries, or science agencies). The mid 1960s marked an explosion of interest in cross-disciplinary projects– the paring of artists with engineers, or the placement of artists in scientific environments or industry– as exemplified by Nine Evenings: Theater and Engineering, Art & Technology at LACMA, and the Artist Placement Group, all initiated in 1966. Contemporary artists working in scientific domains are heirs to the throne of these historic milestones, and have much in common with the prevailing spirit of the 1960s avant-garde. In her book Greenwich Village 1963, author Sally Banes argues that the work of the ’60s avant-garde had attributes of folk art, including the handmade & the functional, the incorporation of everyday materials, the inclusion of untrained and non-professionals in the creative process, and the refusal to participate in mainstream culture of mass production and consumption.

We call the art of traditional communities folk art– a term that implies not only function and form, but issues of training, subject matter, resources, and distribution. Folk art is embedded in the social process– it is art by the community for the community. Furthermore, it is made outside the sphere of professionalism: it need not compete in the contemporary market, and its makers are not trained toward that end. Whether this art is an object or a performance, it often appears unpolished and lively, since it is handmade and unique… What about the “tradition” forming in the Sixties artists– the avant-garde, which valued innovation over custom (the very opposite of folk art practice)? Is it possible to take folklore forms and folklore context out of their social milieu to consciously create a new American folklore from above, rather than from below?

The institutionalization of artists in scientific or technological environments never happened the way Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver had envisioned when they wrote the first statement of Experiments in Art & Technology (E.A.T.) in 1967.

The purpose of Experiments in Art and Technology, Inc. is to catalyze the inevitable involvement of industry, technology, and the arts… E.A.T. was founded on the strong belief that an industrially sponsored, effective working relationship between artists and engineers will lead to new possibilities that will benefit society as a whole.

My sense is that the practice has mostly moved outside rarified institutions and industries (the relationships were too complex and tied to capitalism and results-oriented economics), and into the hands of individuals and collectives (facilitated by networked communication which gave agency to maker culture, the open source movement, peer-to-peer sharing, crowdsourcing, etc.). From there, the types of activities exploded and yielded a variety of subtypes of Artists/Scientists/Technologists. Over the next week, I’ll fine tune this chart and add definitions, distinctions, and examples of each subtype.

The Art and Technology exhibition began as a “brave experiment.” The show, on view at LACMA from May 16 to August 29, 1971, was almost a by-product, and not the initial goal, of the project developed by the museum’s staff beginning in 1967, when senior curator of modern art Maurice Tuchman posed these questions: What if artists had access to the materials, expertise, and manufacturing processes of the day’s most advanced technologies? What if they were free to experiment with these materials and processes, and what if they could collaborate with the engineers and corporations who had developed them? –Kathy Talley-Jones on the Art & Technology program at LACMA

Based on my previous entry, I’m assembling a chronological list of artist-in-residence, or placement programs that invited artists to develop their work in partnership with labs, tech industries, or science agencies. Unlike permanent staff or consultants, in these instances artists were granted temporary access to a non-art field or were paired with a non-art professional, with varying goals– from bridging the two cultures of art and science to inspiring innovation through cross-disciplinary inquiry (or simply to illustrate and popularize science or technology, as in the case of NASA Art Program). This is a work-in-progress, and I welcome your shout outs.

Chronology of Artists in labs, tech industries, or science agencies (in progress)

1962

• NASA Art Program: The NASA Art Program was established in 1962 by the United States to commission artists, including Norman Rockwell and Robert Rauschenberg, for the purpose of recording history of space exploration through the eyes of artists. Using artist of different mediums and genres serves the purpose of educating different audiences about NASA and space exploration. The collection now includes 2,500 works by more than 350 artists. (Wikipedia)

1964

• Bell Laboratories: Bell Laboratories started an informal artist in residence program that evolved into the greatest art in technology programs in the country. It started with the beginnings of computer graphics, such as Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon’s Computer-generated “Nude” that processed a canned photograph by Max Mathews into a series of gray levels represented by mathematical and electronic symbols. Because of the incredible freedom at Bell Labs at the time, researchers were able to invite artists to collaborate and work with this new computerized imaging. Jerry Spivack, a pioneer in interactive graphics says, “We were in the privileged position back in the ’60s of being considered a national resource and an untouched monopoly. We had a freedom that few places had.” In 1963 Knowlton developed the Beflix (Bell Flicks) animation system, which was used to produce dozens of animated films with artists like Stan VanDerBeek and Lillian Schwartz. From www.bostoncyberarts.com

1966

• Artist Placement Group (APG): Founded in London by John Latham and Barbara Steveni, the APG “pioneered the concept of art in the social context. From the outset their notion of ‘placement’ acknowledged the marginalised position of the artist and sought to improve the situation. By enabling artists to engage actively in non-art environments, the APG shifted the function of art towards ‘decision-making’.” From www.tate.org.uk

• Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.): “Founded in 1966 [in New York] by Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, E.A.T. was a non-profit group active primarily from the 1960s to the 1980s. Its aim: to mobilize the arts, industry and science around projects that involved participants from each field. E.A.T. promoted interdisciplinary collaborations through a program pairing artists and engineers.” From www.fondation-langlois.org

1967

James Turrell & Robert Irwin were in residence with Garrett Corporation as part of LACMA's Art & Technology program

• Art and Technology: “In 1966, Maurice Tuchman, curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in Los Angeles, California, introduced the Art and Technology (A&T) program. The mandate of this project, which was peripheral to the museum’s activities, was to promote an exchange between artists and the corporate world. Tuchman selected California companies capable of supporting art projects, either by contributing financially to the museum or by providing technical expertise, and in 1967 the museum’s corporate partnership proposal was officially launched to 250 companies.” From www.fondation-langlois.org

• IBM: John Whitney becomes IBM’s first artist-in-residence.

1974

• Arts/INDUSTRY – John Michael Kohler Arts Center
The John Michael Kohler Arts Center is notable for its arts/industry program, the primary component of which is a residency program at Kohler Company. Artists have the opportunity to spend two to six months creating works of art utilizing industrial materials and equipment. (Wikipedia)

1985

• ANAT: Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) supports artists and creative practitioners engaging with science and technology, within Australia and beyond, including immersive residencies.

1992

Interval Research Corporation: Founded in 1992 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., and David Liddle, a computer industry veteran with deep roots in research, Interval was a research setting “seeking to define the issues, map out the concepts and create the technology that will be important in the future.”  Intervals “think tank” included filmmakers, designers, musicians, cognitive psychologists, artists, computer scientists, journalists, entrepreneurs, engineers and software developers. The company also collaborates with other research groups and university laboratories, including the Royal College of Art, the MIT Media Lab, the Santa Fe Institute and Stanford University and many others.

1993

• XEROX PARC Artist-in-residence program: Established by Xerox PARC leader John Seely Brown and run by Rich Gold, a former Mattel toy designer, the PAIR program paired new media artists with Xerox engineers.

2005

• Factory Direct: New Haven: Factory Direct: New Haven was organized by Denise Markonish and paired 10 artists with manufacturing companies for 3 to 12 weeks, and exhibited the results at Artspace in New Haven, CT.

2007

• Artists in Labs (AIL): Artists in Labs is a Swiss partnership between the Zurich University of the Arts, the Institute of Cultural Studies (ICS) and the Bundesamt für Kultur BAK. The AIL programme aims to promote knowledge transfer between artists and scientists, reflecting on the implications of technological developments towards the society, encourage Swiss artists to acquire technical and scientific expertise and to mediate art and science into the public domain.

(Post updated September, 24 2010, thanks to information generously provided by Julie Martin, E.A.T.)

Click image to watch video. Variations V, 1965. "Engineers devised technical systems so that the movement of the dancers affected the sound. Performing at the table with the tape recorders and electronic sound modulation systems are John Cage, David Tudor, and Gordon Mumma, with the dancers in the background. The images are by Stan VanDerBeek and Nam June Paik, from a performance in Hamburg, Germany, for television filming." – Julie Martin

One of the things that has struck me most since being at CMU is that the creative use (or mis/use) of scientific principals is genuinely valued here. I have encountered a large number of art students who also hold college degrees in scientific disciplines– mostly in Applied or Formal Sciences– I have yet to meet a physicist/artist (physicartist?), but I’m sure there’s one around. I’ve attended a Rossum’s meeting (a working group for robotic artists and engineers), and a dorkbot meet-up (people who like to do strange things with electricity) which appeared to attract a cross-section of creatives and technologists. And during my first week working in the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, The Moon Arts group (lead by space art pioneer and CMU Professor Lowry Burgess) met here regularly to propose a series of interactive art projects to accompany CMU’s Google Lunar X Prize entry into space. When I asked how the Moon Arts group convinced Field Robotics to take a conceptual art payload to the moon, I was told it was the other way around: the artists were invited by Field Robotics.

I also mentioned in an earlier post how fascinated I was with the collaboration between STUDIO fellow Axel Straschnoy and The Robotics Institute on a project Axel initiated titled “The New Artist.” I’m hard pressed to think of another university that would encourage their robotics staff to direct their time toward an artist’s project.

All this leads me to wonder what value is placed on the artist in high technology-focused environments? Do artists enhance the visibility and marketing potential of the research projects? Is the artist’s process of divergent thinking seen as conducive to innovation? Or does interdisciplinary participation yield greater productivity and better outcomes?

I’ve begun to look at earlier examples of artist-in-residence programs at technology-centered agencies, industries, or corporations to try to understand scientists’ motives for working with artists.

Cutting-edge artists aren’t supposed to work for the military-industrial complex, right? … Wrong.

Since the sixties, artists like John Whitney Sr., Stan VanDerBeek, and Robert Rauschenberg have collaborated with engineers from the likes of IBM, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and Kohler. In fact, some of these companies have even sponsored artist-in residence programs.– from “Big Business Artist-in-residence Programs” by Elliot Feldmen

Help me build my list of well-known artists who have participated in industry-sponsored residency programs:

John Whitney, Sr. & IBM
Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) & Bell Labs (Per Julie Martin, “E.A.T. never had a residency program with Bell Labs, although many Bell Labs engineers worked with artists on their own time.”)
Stan VanDerBeek & Bell Labs
Laurie Anderson & NASA
Natalie Jerimejenko & Xerox PARC Labs
Robert Wilson & VOOM HD Labs

Artists who worked within the technology industry:

Lillian Schwartz: consultant at the AT&T Bell Laboratories, IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Laboratory and at Lucent Technologies Bell Labs Innovations.
James Tenney: worked with Max Mathews and others at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in the early 1960s to develop programs for computer sound-generation and composition.

Artists commissioned to work with emerging technologies:

Andy Warhol & Amiga

Kevin Kelly also offers this outstanding list of current organizations that offer opportunities for artists to collaborate with scientists, technologists, or professionals in business or industry.

John Whitney's set-up for filming computer animation from a monitor screen, during an artist residency at IBM Labs, 1980s

We’re living in Pittsburgh, PA, where I’ve begun my Warhol Curatorial Fellowship at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. The good folks at the STUDIO have set me up with a desk, a stipend, and a new iMac.

The STUDIO's mission is to support creation and exploration in the arts, especially interdisciplinary projects that bring together the arts, sciences, technology, and the humanities, and impact local and global communities.

My 17 minute ‘on foot’ commute from Wilkins Avenue is heavenly. We’re renting a wonderful three-story (plus finished basement) furnished home from two computer scientists who are living abroad. As such, we’ve got an elevator, full gym, water bed, dart board, outdoor grill, and a jacuzzi that’s sadly off limits (but perhaps could perform as an ‘encounter zone’). Just kidding, landlords. :)

My fellowship here is an outgrowth of the exhibition, 29 Chains to The Moon, that I curated for Miller Gallery in 2009. The exhibit title is a reference to Buckminster Fuller’s first book, 9 Chains to the Moon, – the title itself a metaphor for cooperation toward solving socio-economic woes. The exhibit considers how artists can contribute to rethinking the production of food, shelter, transportation and energy for a rapidly increasing global population. During my fellowship, I’ll develop a traveling version of the exhibit, and oversee a book sprint (more details on that later). The notion that overpopulation can be addressed before imminent catastrophe is gleamingly optimistic, and nods toward Fuller, and his radical ideas for improving the quality of life for all humankind via progressive design and maximization of the world’s finite resources. I’m also interested in understanding that same sort of humanistic, utopian aesthetic brandished by 20th Century World Fairs, the NASA Space Art Program, and poetic gestures like the Voyager Golden Record.

"Bernal Sphere" space colony, Gerard K. O'Neill, 1977

The first part of my fellowship will be a getting-to-know-you series of meetings with interesting people doing interdisciplinary projects on campus at Carnegie Mellon. I just met former STUDIO fellow, Axel Straschnoy, whose project here involved working with The Robotics Institute to create The New Artist or “art done by robots for robots.” It was fascinating to hear how Axel’s abstract concept (a robot creating art for another robot) was embraced by The Robotics Institute and approached as an empirical problem that could be solved using scientific inquiry. Axel is going to introduce me to the resulting robots this week.

From STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Flickr site: "The New Artist" is a project to develop art by and for robots undertaken by Ben Brown, Garth Zeglin, Geoff Gordon, Iheanyi Umez-Eronini, Marek Michalowski, Paul Scerri and Sue Ann Hong and Axel Straschnoy. It is being produced by Piritta Puhto.

As for Carlos, he’s been working at The Waffle Shop (an artist-run restaurant and TV show) and bringing home delicious wraps from their adjacent Kubideh Kitchen. He’ll be hosting a bi-monthly, yet-to-be-named TV show about music. Certainly, shades of his former KPFT Pacifica radio show, Moontower Radio, will be present.

Carlos' first go of it as a talk show host at The Waffle Shop.

Congratulations to the good folks at Culture Pilot for knocking the TEDx Houston ball outta the park on Saturday, June 12, 2010 at University of Houston’s Wortham Theater. I had the good fortune to serve on the organizing committee, and learned volumes from the group’s cool resolve, and assurance that all would go as planned. And it did.

David Crossley (Houston Tomorrow) showing off his big locally grown zucchini (Photo courtesy of Blue Lemon Photo & TEDxHouston)

Throughout each talk, the theme that stood out for me was “unlearning” as Buckminster Fuller termed it – an approach to innovation that involves dispensing of old ideas that we now know are untrue.

Cliffnotes (don’t sue me) to TEDxHouston talks:

Brené Brown (research professor and writer at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work)
• Humans have a neurobiological imperative for connection.
• Shame is the fear of disconnection.
• In order to have connection, one must be vulnerable, defined as “doing something that offers no guarantees.”
• People who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe they are worthy of love and belonging, and have in common: courage, compassion and connection.
• On numbing (via substances, food, prescription drugs): you cannot selectively numb emotions.

Dan Phillips (founder of Phoenix Commotion construction company that uses recycled and salvaged materials to build affordable housing)
• The first cause of waste is hardwired into our DNA– the desire for expected pattern and unity of structural features.
• Trees don’t grow in 2 x 4s, at lengths of 8, 10, and 12′.
• Standardization leads to waste.
• Apollonian / Dionysian  contradiction.
• John Paul Sartre: Human beings act differently when they know people are watching them.
• We [Westerners] have confused Maslow’s Hierarchy and put vanity at the top, but the problem of waste is worldwide

Rebecca Richards-Kortum (Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering at Rice University) & Maria Oden (Professor in the Practice of Bioengineering Education in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University)
• 9 million children under 5 die annually because of lack of medical treatment.
• Using college students’ enthusiasm and ideas to solve global health problems.
• Students created a medical centrifuge from a salad spinner; a florescent microscope for $200 (vs. the $40k cost of a medical grade equivalent).
• And designed field backpacks for MDs to use in remote parts of the world – a kind of portable clinic made cheaply and efficiently.
• Redesigned a locally produced incubator in Malawi, made for under $100.

Stephen Kleinberg (Rice University Sociologist and Houston’s leading demographer)
• 1 million people moved to Houston between 1970-1982; abundance of jobs in the oil and gas industry.
• Houston was the city with the least industrial control: “Come on down and make some money.”
• Crash of 1983: 100,000 jobs lost.
• Industry became more diverse (medical, aeronautics, etc.). Quality of life became an issue.
• October 7, 1999: USA Today Headline: Houston, Cough Cough, We Have A Problem, Cough Cough. Air quality was worst in country.
• Environmental regulation was no longer seen as “anti-growth” but rather necessary for success.
• Changing view of prosperity in the 21st century.
• Innovation is now network-driven.
• In the space of the last 20 years, Houston has become one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country. It is a city of majority minorities.

Mark Johnson (founder of Hometta, a collaborative of designers, architects, builders, writers and editors who have banded together to rethink and improve the way residential architecture is designed)
• With regard to the architectural mash-ups in Houston (French Chateau, Tuscan Villa, etc): “One day I’d like to go to France and see Houston ice houses.”
• First ring of suburbs built 30-40 years ago are now deteriorating; going to landfills.
• How can we reboot our value system to promote sustainable building?
• We can start by building appropriate to scale and location: authenticity.
• Look to the sustainable food movement as an example.
• Build to impress your kids; your kids won’t remember the 2″ beveled granite countertops or the 6 burner professional stainless range. They’ll remember the oak tree, the reading nook, the originality.
• Build a house with intentionality and thoughtfulness, to be passed down through the generations.
• Houston’s Beer Can House is an example of sustainable building, and the townhouses around it will be gone in 100 years, while it will still stand.

Monica Pope (award winning chef, T’afia)
• Most of my cooking career has not been about cooking;
• Through food, I search for who I am, and what I’m supposed to do.
• We say “eat where your food grows.” I say “eat at a table.”
• We need to reinvent the campfire- the place where we gather, tell stories, and eat.

Gracie Cavnar (founder Recipe for Success)
• Obesity rates in the US doubled between 1980-2000.
• As a nation, we need to lose 4.6 billion lbs.
• 41% of us will be morbidly obese by 2015. This will be the first generation that will die before their parents.
• In 2008, $147 billion was spent on medical treatment for obesity related illness.
• Recipe for Success fights marketing with marketing.
• They put kids in touch with their food from farm to plate.
• Future plan for Hope Farms: 100 acres in the shadow of downtown Houston: the largest urban farm in the world!

David Crossley (President, Houston Tomorrow)
• By 2050, Houston will reach 11 million in population. How will that population be fed?
• We live in the most diverse eco-region in North America, but are looking at a major loss of farm land, and forested area to accommodate the growing population.
• New urbanism values: balance of natural and socio-economic development.
• 47% of Americans would rather live in a different place.
• HUD/DOT/EPA have formed “Sustainable Communities Department.”
• Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow.
• James Howard Kunsler: Downscaling.
• Houston 3.0 walkable urbanism, monorail!

Mat Johnson (Author of the graphic novel, Incognegro)
• Between 1880-1930 an estimated 2400 men, women and children were murdered in the US by lynching.
• Lynching is murder by mob action (a tactic which makes prosecution difficult to impossible)
• Lynching was a form of “domestic terrorism.”
• Mention of Walter White, civil rights leader and chief investigator of lynchings.

David Eagleman (Neuroscientist and author)
• 2003, Hubble Deep Field Observation of a dark spot in the sky, revealed thousand of universes.
• What we really learn from a life in science is the vastness of our ignorance.
• The scientific temperament is one of creativity.
• We have created a false dichotomy of god vs. no god.
• I am not an agnostic, I’m a possibilian – one who makes up new narratives about why we are here.
• Doubt is an uncomfortable position but certainty is an absurd position  (In reference to quote by Voltaire, “Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.”)

I’m presently participating in Jeff Howe’s international Twitter book club, better known as #1B1T (One Book One Twitter). If you missed the 1B1T NPR broadcast produced by Laura Sydell (including my one minute of fame), it can be heard here.

The tweeters have spoken, and they want to read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. At the moment, readers *should* all be on Chapters 4-6, marking our tweets #1b1t_4c (and so on for each chapter) to prevent spoilers, and wearing our official book club badge. I think membership is in the 6,000+ range now, so good governance is a must to maintain a cohesive conversation. I’m having a hard time keeping up, but like all online social groups, the best part is the offline outcomes, like the geek-out conversations I’m now having with Houston readers, Grant McManus, and Carlos Lama (a.k.a. father of my Lamas). American Gods was a good choice for comic book, fantasy or sci-fi enthusiasts, like us.

I adore projects that extend the social web beyond its known capacity, and often wonder what an artist like Andy Warhol would have done with his Twitter account? Would he have had one? Of course. Warhol tackled new technology–from the first consumer video camera to the first computer with a drawing application–the minute it was unveiled. Would he have tweeted live before an audience at Lincoln Center?

One of the 1B1T logistical problems thus far has been keeping pace with the volume of conversations on twitter. As I’ve been writing this entry, no fewer than 25 #1b1t tweets have been posted, and most are just observations or non-starters. The conversations online aren’t especially reciprocal or enduring as of now. Another issue is *some readers* clearly subscribe to the Evelyn Wood school of speed reading, and have completed the entire book. They’re already smoking a cigarette, and I’m still getting undressed.

According to R.A. Hill and R.I.M. Dunbar in the paper “Social Network Size in Humans,” the average person has capacity (in his/her neocortex) to remember 153.5 different individuals. What do I do with 6000+ instant new friends?

Even in contemporary western societies, where individuals are operating egocentric networks within a virtually infinite array of social possibilities, social network size and differentiation reflect the sociocentric networks observed in traditional societies, suggesting that the cognitive constraints on network size may apply universally to all modern humans.–R.A. Hill and R.I.M. Dunbar

I’m reading two books with opposing philosophies simultaneously: You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier and Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson. The former argues that technology is reducing humanity to bits of information, and the latter argues that technology is contributing to mental evolution. As my reading progresses, I’ll post some highlights from both books (provided my brain doesn’t explode).

Let’s start with Mr. Lanier, who presents the following themes in the Preface and Chapter 1: Missing Persons.

Lock-in
Technology (software, file formats, web platforms, etc.) that is inflexible in design and isn’t adaptive to a range of future possibilities can lock-in patterns of human behavior that are reductive rather than expansive and can stunt the overall course of social evolution. (Lanier uses MIDI as an example of a pervasive standard format that has unintentionally limited the potential for digital music because it is too hard to change.)

Fragmentation
Digital technologies stimulate different potentials in human nature, and current Web 2.0 designs are trending toward the reduction of users (people) to fragments. The way people engage with platforms like Twitter and wikis, by providing bits of succinct information, is ultimately toying with social engineering and changing how humans express meaning.

And the counterpoint, Mr. Johnson’s Introduction.

The Sleeper Curve
Despite the assumption that culture is being dumbed down, today’s video games, television shows, and movies are far more nuanced and advanced than those previous, and they ultimately encourage cognitive complexity that is causing culture to grow more sophisticated, not less.

Games vs. Books
Reading books is not necessarily more cognitively complex than playing video games. Video games have open ended narratives that require probing and telescoping (probe, hypothesize, reprobe, rethink), which is a basic procedure of scientific inquiry.

RELATED LINKS GALORE:
• An excellent story, Text without Context by Michiko Kakutani in the 3/17/10 issue of NY Times.
• The forthcoming book by Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, explores how the Internet is affecting our brains.
• A transcript of Caleb Crain’s talk on How the Internet is Changing Literary Style.

Here are some random notes I jotted down yesterday during Open Video Alliance’s Wireside Chat with Lawrence Lessig. Mind you, I *was* multi-tasking!

john philip sousa
infernal machines
reaction to phonograph – demise of music
technology and policy
2002 – began to change!
technology gave back
revival of the community culture that sousa celebrated
remix culture – music, Beatles white album, JZ black album, DJ Danger Mouse, grey album, girl talk remix 230 trax in a single performance.
anime music videos
technique has nothing to do with remixing importance
it’s that the technique has been democratized
2006 – another change!
youtube
facilitating a call and response in the way culture gets made and consumed
youtube video inspired spin-off youtube video inspired spin-off youtube video … millions of viewers
this begins to be precisely what sousa romanticized
rather than gathering on the back lawn
they gather on this online platform
creating bits of culture
ALL DEPENDS ON PRINCIPALS OF FAIR USE & FAIR USE CODECS
rip : a remix manifesto- movie
lib(ertarian) julian sanchez summation
new kind of amateur culture, extraordinarily professional in what it produces
walt disney’s greatest works were derived from those of the past: brothers grimm, inspired by other creative works, mickey mouse based on steamboat bill
every episode of disney’s little einsteins uses classical music or works of art
sonny bono legislation extending copyright
free culture, free codecs
a business that leverages user value through reviews, recommendations, feedback that channels people to things they want to buy
every search is a gift to google – market data provided by users working for free
on the other hand
flickr twitter yelp – build value by encouraging people to contribute something back
copyright holders are a share cropping vision of future of digital creativity
no reason to regulate amateur activity; there’s no market
with sharable licenses: consumers add value back

wild card! what does the science say: not what does the industry want it to say

The TEDxHouston website is officially live, and on Twitter, and on Facebook, and on Flickr, and so on.