From: Mark Crosby (crosby_m@rocketmail.com)
Date: Wed Feb 18 1998 - 11:31:55 MST
You wrote:
< Alas, apart from Ander's pretty pathological case
(open descension/ascension hierarchies, with
persistance of the identity (is such a thing at all
possible? -- I thought it was a function of
rerecognizing agent history of _nonnegligeable_
interactions)) there seems no positive return on such
an investment. >
Forgive me, I've been reading too much Deleuze &
Guattari (lost in _A Thousand Plateaus_) and find
oracles of bifurcation and destratification leading
to singularity, as epitomized by the classic story of
Oedipus Rex, somehow relevant for the possible
Posthuman Child's blind relationship to His human
parents.
As for "open descension/ascension hierarchies, with
persistance of the identity", on top of Davin's post
describing our reliance on the subhuman critters and
multiplicities within and without, this sounds
somewhat like "The Machine at the Heart of Desire:
Felix Guattari's Molecular Revolution" see
gopher://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/00/pubs/listservs/spoons/deleuze-guattari.archive/papers/stiv.guattari2
Better yet, glance at this bit of inspired
gobbledygoop for a burst of what I'm bubbling about:
< Thought is molecular and olfactory. Thought is the
absorption, penetration, filtration, and
configuration of particles and molecular chains
appropriated from the surrounds. [CUT] Somewhere in
our history we began to emphasize the secondary five
senses as if they were primary. This was a step of
alienation, as it created a sense of distance between
ourselves and the world, when in fact all perception
is molecular and we are literally homeopathically
bathed in the world on a constant basis. We are in
chemical communion with the surrounds. [CUT]
Essentially the brain is a networked, highly
differentiate, and electronically accessible storage
center of various chemicals; in other words, the
brain is not an electronic computer, but a
macro-gland that is electronically stimulated to
allow the rest of the body through the nerves to
activate molecular memories and assemblages. In other
words, the viscera runs the brain and not vice-versa.
The brain is not the master control center, but a
preservation garden of pheremonal biodiversity, a
fabricked museum of scents. >
There's much more about the "ongoing battle between
light and scent" between "exclusive, bounded entities
in nonsimultaneous relations and arrangements" and
how "the sensicality of the molecular realm is
catalytical rather than logical" in this essay, "A
Deleuzional Pheremonal Hypothesis", at
gopher://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/0R2950-11214-/pubs/listservs/spoons/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari.9712
To try and veer this back toward "Intra-Entity
Ethics" (especially in light of your Long Now URL for
Danny Hillis's essays), here's the conclusion from a
book review that didn't make the cut for EO 1.0:
< George Dyson leads up to the end of DARWIN AMONG
THE MACHINES by citing his namesake grandfather who
developed modern grenade warfare while also being an
accomplished musician. This leads into Connection
Machines founder Danny Hillis's 1988 memetic fable
about the coevolution of apes and song.
The final chapter also presents the ancient fable of
Roger Bacon's (13th century) Brass Head as a metaphor
for the development of computers, AI and the global
communications network: "we stand transfixed, like
monkeys given a mirror, by the novelty of our own
image reflected in the surface of the web. When the
smoke clears and the master wakes, the computer as
disembodied head will have disappeared, replaced by a
diffuse tissue enveloping us in nebulous bits of
meaning, as neurons are enveloped in electrolyte by
the brain". >
Mark Crosby
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