serendipityoucity

Stephenson, Neal, 1995,  The Diamond Age: or a young lady’s illustrated primer.  Bantam Spectra Book: Toronto.

“folklore consists of certain universal ideas that have been mapped onto local cultures. For example many cultures have a Trickster figure, so the  -Trickster may be deemed a universal; but he appears in different guises, each appropriate to a particular culture’s environment. The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the pacific coast called in Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br-er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker” p.94

“as technology became more important, the trickster underwent a shift in character and became the god of crafts – of technology, if you will-while retaining the underlying roguish qualities, So we have the Sumerian Enki, the Greek Prometheus and Hermes, Norse Loki, and so on”. p.95

“Trickster/Technologist is just one of the universals. The Database if full of them. It’s a catalog of the collective unconscious. In the old days, writers of children’s books had to map these universals onto concrete symbols familiar to their audience-like Beatrice Potter mapping the Trickster onto Peter Rabbit. This is a reasonably effective way to do it, especially if the society is homogeneous and static, so that all children share similar experiences”. p.95

the Primer invented by Hackworth abstracts that

“process and develop systems for mapping the universals onto the unique psychological terrain of one child – even as the terrain changes over time”. P.95

on describing technological elegance

“the concept is not easy to explain-there is an ineffable quality to some technology, described by its creators as concinnitous, or technically sweet, or a nice hack-signs that it was made with great care by one who was not merely motivated but inspired. It is the difference between an engineer and a hacker.” p.102

A conversation between Judge Fang and his assistant Miss Pao regarding the quality of the primer versus the quality of the Primer and the quality of the nanotechnological devices developed by Dr. X which are considered to be evolved but not engineered.

“yong is the outer manifestation of something. Ti is the underlying essence. Technology is a yong associated with a particular ti, that is…that is Western, and completely alien to us. For centuries, since the time of the Opium wars, we have struggled to absorb the yong of technology without importing the Western ti. But it has been impossible. Just as our ancestors could not open our ports to the West without accepting the poison of opium, we could not open our lives to Western technology with taking in the Western ideas, which have been as a plague in our society. The result has been decades of chaos. We ask you to end that by giving us the Seed.”p.417

I came across some really interesting reference to this.

“The Seed is technology rooted in the Chinese ti. We have lived by the Seed for five thousand years” “These were rice paddies before they were parking lots. Rice was the basis for our society. Peasants planted the seeds and had highest status in the Confucian hierarchy. As the Master said, ‘let the producers be many and the consumers few’. When the Feed came in from Atlantis, from Nippon, we not longer had to plant, because the rice now came from the matter compiler. It was the destruction of our society. When our society was based upon planting, it could truly be said, as the Master did, ‘virtue is the root; wealth is the result’. But under the Western ti, wealth comes not from virtue but from cleverness. So the filial relationships became deranged, Chaos…Parking lots and chaos” p.417

A conversation between Dr. X and Hackworth as the Celestial Kingdom is waging war with the fists a band of crazy gangster like killers wanting to murder all westerners in Shanghai, while they are sitting in a desolate conquered area on the outskirts of town, in a ransacked McDonalds, drinking tea.

about engineers:

“You do these things not to serve your queen but to serve your own nature, John Hackworth, and I understand your nature. For you cleverness is its own end, and once you have seen a clever way to do a thing, you must do it, as water finding the crack in a dike must pass through it and cover the land on the other side” p. 418

New words

callipygious
cineritious
concinnitous
Propaedeutic Enchiridion
proscenium
phyle 

Lets just say that while battling some very powerful inner demons, i thought it best to sleep on the sofa for 3 days, and spend the waking hours of those reading this book.  I woke up in the morning and just grabbed the book from the coffee table and only moved when absolutely necessary.  I am not sure this will help me write a comprehensive, but it did provide me with a reprieve from myself. 

What a great story!

hmmm! are we having a socio-technical conversation about nanotechnology in this country?  I know the National Research Council up the road from here has a ton of mulah for R&D at the National Institute for Nanotechnology. Also, as a person working in the cartographic realm, spending much time on symbols and graphic representations heightened the power of the mediatrons which subsequetly gave me the willies, and the work we are doing with multisensory media is en route toward the manupulative interactive theater, phenomena scopes, and ractives.  The work on meme creation is stupendous in the book, the panopticon like surveillance technologies ubiquitous and creepy, the social construction of subversion embedded in the stories remarkable but so to the limits of AI in teaching in the absence of real people and human institutions like family and friends in bringing up children.  And as pointed out by the wikipedia entry i just read, the cultural relativism most striking, particularly the idea of cultural habitution creating the inability to move beyond the norms as in the case of the neo-Victorians or the conservatism and fear of change coupled with obedience of Confucianism.  In both cases the inability to think that something other is plausible, and if plausible then it most certainly is less desireable.  The experience economy was played out to a frightening crescendo!  The ideas of AI and the possibility of hive mentalities resulting from its use were quite fascinating. I also want to revisit my Confucianism, the relook at the I-Ching - the book of change, the Primer in fact reminded me of the I-Ching.  It was something i used to frequently consult, to the point of not wanting to make decisions without it.  I and many others became addicted to the pertinent wisdom it provided which made us reluctant to not using it.  Eventually I and a few others had discussions on the teachings received and the timing of when these events would manifest.  It was all very intersting indeed and I still have the book that travelled with me 20 years ago kicking around somewhere!

Just came across this article, In the Kingdom of Mao Bell the pre-cursor to the book, or potentially one of the probably many field trips to gather intel for the story.  By reading it i can see how he got his territorial ideas, neo-victorian = Hong Kong, Shenzhen Special Economic Zone = Leased Territories or the terrain of Dr. X, the wong ti ideas of fast adopters, and so on.  If we fastforward to today, he was off on the Gaming as not being important, but i think bang on with the network as being a way to weave more state power, there may be some infrastructure by pass in the content with creative symbology (Scroll down to see the crab!) and some great propaganda but i would guess that this is not the norm.