Re: LIFESCIENCE: on the raft

[trevor <tebatt@dds.nl>]

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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 99
LIFESCIENCE
Linz, Austria, September 04 - 09
http://www.aec.at/lifescience
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On 17-Jul-99, speer wrote:

>   a disapointment that this list has gone nowhere.. where it's subject
>leads to topics that are lush with possibilities... or do we ,, have we been
>so trained by the mediasphere that only consumption is valid and safe..
>where creation (and not impersonal abstractions) and creativity is shunned
>,,as it offers the creator to criticisms by imagined peers and superiors...

Well, I guess that sums it up pretty well, although personally I think a few
more "impersonal abstractions" and a bit less incoherent and foundationless
'personal ramblings' might improve things.

Intelligent dialogue is impossible without some common basis (of intention,
language and knowledge).

Clearly, the art/cultural scene got so confused by the industrial revolution
plus the artistic and scientific developments around the end of the last
centuary that it has never been able to intellectually recover since then.

Because the commercial "mediasphere" thrives on low-level criticism, mutual
suport and emasculated "controvesies" there seems little chance that the mess
will ever get sorted out (or even that it ever gets recognised). 

>and most seem to afraid that these criticisms will hurt there much
>artificially constructed egoes and facades..

...which, like any dam, causes enormous damage if it breaks!

It seems GM products are being rejected in England largely because of the
backlash regarding governmental incredability after the BSE affair.

Concidering capitalist exploitation of the industrial revolution was
impossible without socialism to re-distribute incomes and recharge the
economic motor, I'm wondering if current systems will not destroy themselves
unless they adopt a more "open and honest" paradigm.

I see "information flow gridlock" as being a prime and certain cause of
collapse for any "undemocratic" system. Ironically, our current "comercial
democracy" also seems to be moving in the direction of self-destruction by the
same mechanisms that eroded the soviet system.

Good news for nature but bad for humans!
(thinking of medieval plagues and other natural defence systems)

>    the question might be,,, who's still on the raft..

.....hanging on by the fingernails

>    and who has slid off,, unwilling to take a stand??

...........or unwilling to waste time?

greetings to any intelligent life forms still out there!
trevor

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