Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Spacetimecontinuum...

Something odd is going on.

I never had time to do things. I never had the space in my head to draw, to write. Who did this?

What the hell is going on?

I am meeting people that I have never met, yet wierdly it doesn't feel like that. I forget that I haven't seen people in the flesh, I feel their presence in these fingers.

I appear to be like the amputee who is convinced that his leg is there when his eyes tell him it is off.

I needed to hear people say, it's OK if it breaks. It's OK if you don't know what you are doing. Put your foot here. Put your hand there, see you did it.

They are strangely absent. Spirit-like, their empathetic routine appears embedded. Empathetic habitus.

Something is going on here.

What is it about the people whose minds are young, when their bodies appear old? It appears that they bounce, curious bounds, hops....

Then, I am reminded in an instant of Dorothy Parker.

How did she get here, is she a facilitator in this connected course?

"The cure for boredom is curiosity, there is no cure for curiosity."

I am living in a smaller space and yet it appears that my life is bigger.

I need to get this clear in my head. I didn't eat the 'Eat me.'

What the hell is going on?

Blog posts, and pictures appear to walk towards me. Blog posts don't walk.  Blog posts appear to saunter by.

It happened to me just yesterday, the other day. I was struck by an article by Mariana Funes.

Suddenly it gave me notice, to pay attention. Quite bizarre!


Wierdly, I had already collected the picture of a cat, the first time round.  I found it in my stock.

I notice how connections suddenly come alive, dormant for indeterminate time they suddenly fire and images, words, ideas flow out.

This appears to be learning.

I start to review the tags that I throw unthinkingly on my blog posts, there is no getting around those key words -

COMMUNITY, CONNECTION, LEARNING. 

I virtually never write, I never write what I think, imagine, or foresee I am going to write. I am written.

I can't think this onto a page.

How is it that suddenly my fingers move and something unexpected comes out?

Quite bizarre, quite bizarre.

This learning is surely ordered and yet I didn't order anything, it came at its own command. 

I have the impression that my fingers are picking up waves, spasms of those I have never seen, who in all probablity I will never meet.

No matter. No matter.

This connects.

I no longer feel the apprehension of being on the Edge of Chaos.

Vertigo lessens, vertigo lessons?

This is becoming familiar to me... the little boy asking, 'Are you sure you are wise to say that?' is sulking in a corner behind me.

These edges do not define me, these lines do not give us bodily shape, there is something else much more subtle going on.

It reminds me of learning a language.

Suddenly I realised that I had 'absorbed' more than words, I had become part of a linguistic space. What had appeared insurmountably long, suddenly became a footnote.

A short step....

Words are poor vectors for connection.


18 comments:

  1. Words are poor vectors for communication--I was struck by the connection to Claude Shannon's early work with binary communication. In every line of communication there is noise, even in the simplest ones of all, zeros and ones. It that is so think about how redundant language has had to be in order to function at all. Considering what a poor vector it is, how complex and fit for corruption, it is a miracle that thing works at all. Language, not technology, is the limit to communication. Language is the bottleneck and it inherently a bad actor in part because it generates its own noise. Add that to the dangers of operator error and you have an opportunity for an error besotted vector. Don't you just hate a drunken vector especially a mean one? You might like this video from the website, Delve: http://delve.tv/the-man-who-turned-paper-into-pixels-information-theory/

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    1. "Language, not technology, is the limit to communication. Language is the bottleneck and it inherently a bad actor in part because it generates its own noise." -- now this has me thinking and shaking my head in agreement (can you see me? Head shaking!) and it is the conundrum of open learning and online networks, where words don't do justice to ideas.
      Kevin

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    2. Does it work? Interesting why do we say work? Will investigate.

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    3. @dogtrax "notes punctuate silence" Miles D.

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    4. Aha maybe this is where Keith picked up 'words are poor vectors for communication' I didn't write that I wrote "words are poor vectors for connection."

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    5. Kevin. What constitutes language for you?

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  2. When you figure out what the hell is going on, can you let me know? Words will work fine. :)
    I love your posts. Even when you are not writing poetry, your writing is poetic, and I appreciate that.
    Kevin

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  3. I had seen this earlier and didn't read it. It wasn't time is all I can say. Then tonight it was time. I was trying to finish my first post about coding the auto ethnography with prepositions, and I couldn't find the words to say what I wanted. So I read your post and discovered you'd already written them. Thanks.

    But I'm must counter the idea that language is a poor vector for communication. I understand the frustration with the imprecision and lack of clarity in language, but I think that very imprecision is part of its power. Our deepest religious and philosophical insights tell of the power of language to create the world out of the noise and chaos and then to hide the world in noise and chaos. It's why we keep writing, and I love it.

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    1. Hi Keith
      Thanks a lot. I didn't write 'language is a poor vector for communication' but 'connection' now my question is what differentiates "communication" and "connection"? and to what extent u disagree.

      Interesting that what I wrote has words which on reading change :-)

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    2. Keith. Second question what constitutes language?

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    3. Keith. "I understand the frustration ( ..,,,,,) It's why we keep writing and I love it."
      I don't feel frustration at the uncertainty of the meaning of these words, I am curious at the wealth of the conversation around IT. I love these dialogues with IT and myself, with myself and yourselves. Keep writing and commenting I feel the love.

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