Re: <nettime> There are only Vectors

[human being <human {AT} electronetwork.org>]

[my dialup went down else this would've been sent an hour earlier]

  hi McKenzie,

> I will only respond briefly, for I think many of your speculations are
> not really addressed to me, but to yourself, to your own future
> thinking.

  This puzzles me, and I appreciate what follows but this is ridiculous.
  The questions sent to your private e-mail and to the nettime-list
  were directly addressed to the questions you raised, much of which
  is in the past of my own work, and so I am trying get beyond this so
  as to find out more about what you are considering. To dismiss the
  substance of the questioning as related to my own speculations
  misses a very big VECTOR. I would hope you spend the 'time'
  and reflect upon the list of questions related to the previous post
  sent to the list which is chock full of opportunities to respond with
  your ideas, to ideas your presented to the list as if they were facts.


> This point I think is crucial, and I have only formulated it this way
> recently: Information has an *abstract* relation to matter. Information
> is always material. It does not exist independently of its material
> substrate. But it can have any substrate. It has no necessary relation
> to the substrate in which we happen to find it. For example, these
> ascii characters could be on my screen, your screen, a piece of paper.

  Agreed for the most part, yet your previous text (along with myself)
  disagrees on the notion of paper being the same, as information
  behaves differently pre- and post-telegraph (electromagnetism).
  Paper and its contents (medium and message) dissolve away.
  The screen (which does not hold the information, but presents
  it) will go away, so too the harddrive, but this information may be
  captured and continued via its format (electromagnetic substrate),
  potentially. If energy cannot be created or destroyed, and if energy
  at the same time represents information, could it thus endure..?)

> ...the differences between Platonism, Constructivism and Intuitionism
> in meta-mathematics. The position I would defend falls in one of the
> latter two camps. ...Vector is quite an old word... I prefer not to 
> get into
>  it too much. I am interested in the relationship between a geometry
> and a geography of information.

  It may be interesting if you continue to use this word to know of
  your extensive understanding of it in terms of meta-mathematics,
  as your definitions stay in relatively the same position as before,
  and most likely there is some logical explanation, but they do
  not necessarily help me to better understand what you are write.
  And, it is interesting, so if you care to share, you've an audience.


>
> A vector has a fixed property and an indeterminant property.
> ...
> I find this very useful for thinking about how information moves 
> through time
> and space. Any given media has certain fixed properties... and some 
> that are not

  Okay, that's awfully fuzzy which is fine, but it is not definite in
  the sense that you used it in the post which generated these
  followup e-mails. It is, as it stands, the equivalent of a prefix-
  or -suffix (vector) which has been proprietized by a specific
  but general definition (known only to you, or those who may
  grok your brain, or your writing, etc.) which does not stand up
  to basic scrutiny when asked for a basic definition.

  Your response then, to the following, would be as follows,
  one is left to assume (through the power of substitution)...:


> The vectoralization of power

['a fixed and an indeterminant power']


> the vectoral class

['a fixed and an indeterminant class of people']


> vectoralization of world trade

['world trade is fixed and indeterminant']


>  the commodity game of the vector

['a fixed and an indeterminant commodities']


> the strategy-game of the vector

['a fixed and an indeterminant strategy']


> vectoralization

['a fixedness and an indeterminacy']


> vectoral transformation

['a fixed and an indeterminant transformation']


> vectoral power

['a fixed and an indeterminant power']


> the vectoral empire,

['a fixed and an indeterminant empire']


  I'm with your definition up until the last one, and in these terms
  there is a lot already to discuss, as questions. Maybe you write
  as questions, I do not know, but I read them as if they are already
  answered ideas, that the Vector is the Answer. sort of like the
  plug-and-play conceptual friendliness it shares with empire. If
  left in the realm of privatized definition, that is, it need not be
  discussed or communicated or questioned as for its legitimacy
  as an idea, as a truth even, even if it contradicts its own highly-
  limited, potentially easy to obfuscate, definition, then what is
  the basis for this questioning if 'vector' is not open to question?
  This would be an empire of vectors, would it not? You, being
  the vectoral emperor, word in hand/mind, ready to divine truth.
  No, of course not, if you do not dismiss the legitimacy of basic
  questioning. Though, through your psychological dismissal of
  this basic questioning, it could easily be interpreted as such.


> The telegraph is not striictly the first vector that separates the 
> (geometric) plane
> of information (third nature) from the geographic plane of collective 
> human
> labour (second nature). yes, one can beat drums, make smoke signals. 
> But
> honestly, are these precursors of all that much *historical* 
> significance?
> Thinking ought to be oriented to the historical horizon, in my view.

  I am not interested in absolutes, unless you have the following:
"In the beginning was the Vector..." then follow it up with the stuff
  of science or theology. Yet, having it both ways, is to have neither.
  Yes, drums mean a heck of a lot in terms of information, as do visual
  smoke signals (speed of human eyesight and light, faster than any-
  thing, probably even telegraph, up to a certain distance, and relays
  for microwave towers work the same way as smoke signals, today,
  for all this electromagnetic gear we communicate with.) Yes, hugely
  historically significant, semaphores, as their form was basically that
  which preceded telegraphy towers and radio towers and aesthetically
  have these forms are in-formation, through their designs, such as
  'why are a lot of power/electrical distribution poles' similar to 
crosses?
  Or, boat masts, for that matter. Semaphores 'beat the feat' of anything
  running or human-made that was based in transportation beyond the
  visual, it was the speediest and was pivotal in the winning of wars,
  through the relay of signals and troop movements. Significant, yes.

> "There is nothing outside the vector" ie, we can reread Derrida 
> through the
> history of communication and the communication of history.

  Okay, then. I'll believe you when you question your own answers:


  "in the beginning was the Vector....


			???


  ...in the end was the Vector."



  Ok. Let's start here. You have an absolute universe devoted
  to this concept, beginning to end (it is a Vector, as you defined)
  and you can define its universe in its absolute entirety. But does
  anything, absolutely anything (even in the vacuum of space there
  is dust!) exist so in-itself, as information? No. You said, it is tied
  to a substrate, which is probably this screen, this information is
  tied to something-- for reality's sake, let's say it is our computers,
  and we are communicating about this idea tied into these devices
  and you are defining the 'vector' in this realm, and you have the
  empty space above in which no rules work, except that it is bound
  to the medium (ultimately, electromagnetic matter and energy),
  and information is related to this realm, which I am in agreement
  with in certain terms, but I do not understand what is in-between
  the beginning and end of the vector as a definition, as it remains.

  The only thing I can gather is that this is helpful for computation,
  if everything is a vector, it is a directional data-point in 
space-time.
  Is the Big Bang a vector? How is empire a vector? or class? or
  world-trade, in being 'a fixed and an indeterminant property'?
  This is equivalent to saying world-trade is something, world-
  trade is nothingness. No doubt that it can be said and argued,
  but that's quite a distance to go from that definition to the present.

  Please help me better understand through further explanation.
  bc

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