human being on Wed, 12 Mar 2003 11:35:45 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> There are only Vectors |
If I am to understand your reply, McKenzie, you quoted from a book (that I'm assuming you're the author of) and then referenced other texts for further definition of the vector's specific definitions. The text was understandable, up to a point, and the idea of the 'vector' was understood in a limited fashion, but halfway through your book quote, my understanding receded as 'vector' began to replace other words that would have better described the situation based on the reasoning used, for instance: > We are not entirely without resources for > thinking about such things. The Canadian media > studies scholar Harold Innis had the idea that > the types of vector people use will not only > shape certain kinds of culture, but will offer > different possibilities for the shape and > durability of society, economy and nation. His > famous example, to put it in a very crude way, > was to think about the way ancient Egypt built > itself out of media with very different > properties -- stone and papyrus. Did Harold Innis actually use the word "vector" in his writings and reasoning, or another terminology, which you are interpreting with the idea of the vector? Does "vector" originate in 1950s Canadian Media Policy, or in your most recent work and Virilio's? This is partly why it is difficult trying to understand, as planting "vector" in another context makes it hard for those who do not know what this "vector" idea is, its background (as a word, coined/ defined by whom, its genealogy of sorts), and its purpose. --- [Someone, possibly you] write in the book quote: > I'm interested in the way the vectors along which > information moves separated out from those > that move things. Information can now almost > always get there before you can ship your > goods there, or dispatch a division. Third > nature is fast; second nature is slow. Third > nature seems increasingly to be in control of > second nature. We no longer have roots we > have aerials. It is understood up to this point (I think it is here) then I get totally lost in the 'vectorialization of the vector'-speak, and I realize this was written in 1997 but I do not believe scholarship is any more in-depth today about these same subjects to think understandings have significantly changed. I am left to wonder about this whole 'telegraph' as a defining moment of the vector, in its definition, as what were smoke- signals or other signaling systems used by the military, such as flag patterns and raised semaphores used to send coded messages via a distance, faster than any material being could walk, run, or ride, during the pre-telegraph days? It is information but is it possible it is also 'medium-bound' in that information is, as far as I know, not floating around invisibly, or at least this is another very big question. If anything, I would argue that it is very difficult indeed to separate the information of a global telephone call from the atoms and electromagnetic carrier waves for the phone signal routing over global satellite and microwave repeaters, until they reach the end of this 'vector' of information. The information may travel, but is it ever by- itself, in-itself, separated? It is this idea of separation and also the preclusion of 'fixed length' that baffle me entirely. Though the idea of 'vector' is not meant to be dismissed, by this questioning, as it is appreciated that you've shared more data about what it is to define. Its seems parts space, parts time, (spatio-temporal) and parts information and virtuality. That is the sketch that is received, at least for this person. And it makes me question, how does 'vector' relate to the idea of 'vector-based' graphics software, such as Adobe's Illustrator and other programs, as its definition seems to be similar to that versus bitmapped programs. I'm unsure if you have read of Japan's overtaking the supercomputer market with an old-style method of computation, beating the USA as a result of a vector-based supercomputer. For me, it is unknown if this relates to 'vector' as defined by you and how, and yet from your definition it certainly seems it would. Plus, supercomputing itself, as far as I am aware, is based on the plotting of data points (possibly vectors) and their calculation in relation to one another (such as weather, oceanographic, nuclear detonations) and so if 'trajectory' is its definition it is also seemingly literally related to the tangible developments of such knowledge. It is unclear if 'vector' is being used as a descriptive metaphor or if it is also the mathematical version. --- I've been imagining it must be related to geography, as I thought that was what your work was about but maybe this is mistaken (though space-binding and time-binding are fascinating to consider). It is the specific definition of 'vector' by Virilio and yourself that causes me confusion: > A word on this word vector. I've borrowed it > from the writings of French urbanist and > speculative writer Paul Virilio. It is a term from > geometry meaning a line of fixed length and > direction but having no fixed position. Virilio > employs it to mean any trajectory along which > bodies, information or warheads can potentially > pass. The crux of my basic confusion with your most basic definition is 1:1 relation to geometry and the idea of fixed-length. I am left to guess if 'information trajectory' is closest to a definition of vector. For if I am to consider 'vector' as information, in its own curious behaviorism, I am confounded by the idea of fixed-length & information: Information A = between Information 'A starting - A stopping.' Information, can it be separated, completely from matter and energy? I don't comprehend how, else why would concepts such as noise and data corruption exist? It can be transferred (trajectory) but can it be separated? With- out an extended proof of this idea, and assuming it is so, is to bring back an idea of a separated physical and non- physical world, which is refutable by the nature of matter, energy, and information itself. The global phone call is little different, in foundation, than what is being stored in one's brain during consciousness and communication, via electromagnetic particles, fields, & storage mediums. If information was separable from matter and energy, by itself, maybe it would be floating around in thin air (the idea of the aether, as I've understood it, but open to others interpretation). The idea of a philosopher's breath being of the same air we breathe today, so too, maybe there are ideas hanging invisibly in the air, embedded or embraced or entangled, which we walk in and through, catching the thoughts as fields and notions and ideas, as if our brains are motors whose gears move as they move through the charged particles which make up the Earth's atmosphere, which enables us to live, as sentient beings. This may not be far from common sense, if one considers that like phone calls, the air is a medium in which information can travel, just as with airplanes so too with broadcasting signals and their receptive antenna. Though, most 'aerials' are for the mass monopolization of information and its broadcast, and so individualizing of the idea of 'roots and aerials' while it is quite meaningful, makes me consider whose 'antennae'? [For instance, micropower broadcasting of TV/radio signals]. From this it makes me wonder about information decay and entropy or half-lifes, versus something of fixed-length and (possibly, virtually) a fixed-trajectory. This all relates to the idea of media archaeology which deals with information and not only of the theory kind, but also library science and also information archaeology itself, dealing with information and archives and how to span not decades but centuries. Maybe it is to stop the process of a type of pre-electronic/telegraph information, which could degrade as papyrus and stone, and now has an entirely new set of contexts and variables with which to figure out not just information supply and storage, but information endurance. Though, 'vector' seems far from being equated with its definition as an 'information trajectory', or so it seems. It is hard to know and maybe I am missing it, unable to see because I use other words or concepts or ideas for the same thing, but it seems what you've written is some- thing else, and yet when I try to write toward what it might be, as I am capable of understanding, I get lost in these words. --- For instance, once again, if taking the title of the book "The Virtual Republic", this may explain a lot and yet within its title is the word virtual, which in my statements above I've tried to create a context which may challenge the notion of the 'virtual' as being something other or else altogether, in that it may be the same stuff (only a different nature, in a different spatial-temporal information binding) such that a loop between what is 'actual/real' and 'virtual/imagined' may be a process, at times, as that between metaphysical and physical or mind and body dichotomies. This is to say that everyone may be able to say, yes, people who believed in Zeus constructed Zeus and created an environment based on this. It was the cosmology and the order of things, and yet today that world is almost virtual, something if looking back one could say 'people's brains believed in Zeus and they processed information in their brains and bodies about Zeus and this cosmology' to some extent, and it was a predominant belief system, and yet today our primary understanding of, say, why lightning bolts strike down upon us have a different way of perception and understanding, and if judging peoples' minds back in those days, what was being processed, as the reality of the world, it may be overwhelmingly fiction and virtual-reality in the human mind, as an electromagnetic space-time machine. [or media machine, to be less specific, but also post-telegraph.] If one looks at brain studies today, they are using brain imaging (and it may have been referenced on list, recently) for everything in order to define the realm of the human mind (virtual's vestige) with economics, sociology, psychology, and other sciences. If a scientist, by studying the brain, can restore sight to a blind person through using a metallic plate on their tongue and an array of sensors for an eyeball, or have people 'think' and thus 'move' objects via electromagnetic nerve and thought impulses, and that this is defined in such a way that 'information trajectories' (not sure if this is vectors or not, in your definitions) are controlled as are outcomes, as is the 'human subject' (as objectified being), and as such, becomes a common empiricism in which people with epilepsy or brain or nerve damage may be 'regenerated' in some sense, literally reconnecting nerve connectors (vectors?) and creating paths to restore abilities to some basic extent. The radio, television, computer, et cetera, also are like the brain as information devices but less complex and less mysterious (though Craig Baldwin's film, Spectre of the Spectrum, and it seems Erik Davis' written work on the same subject detail how there is a great wealth of missing information, adding complexity and social-economic-political context and import to these devices). To consider these media architectures (say, living media archaeo- logies) or space-time machines or whatever (media vectors maybe) is not so different from that of the specificity of the human brain, though less complex, and with information, not the center of the information universe, media, it is proposed, but that the medium, in this case human beings may be at the center, not 'new media' or 'plasma screen TVs' as a long-term organizing device of data about human beings. It is human beings which define humanity. The human can be considered as a space-time machine, and as such, equally so but loses a lot of its richness when compared in its entirety to a video-game console, a cellphone, or film projector in a 1:1 empirical relation based upon information-based analyses. Thus, like the cosmology which centered around the Sun, of which the Earth (and Man and his God) was to previously to have defined, when taking into account the issues raised (virtuality, say, and also electromagnetic matter, energy, and information, in one parlance) human beings are at the center of the empirical model, not one kind or human being, but a public-private sampling and mixing of many into one and one into many, and in the terms of 'the virtual republic' and information trajectories, say, it could have a much different kind of meaning if it were not based on this but another empiricism, say, that of a private cloistered academic theory community which has significantly helped define the present, though in a metaphysical stage, which is in process of being transcended from virtual->real. Else, who's virtual republic? who's vector? etc. If the idea you share of the 'vector' is to be given intellectual weight and omnipresence, in what terms, this has been the question. And in neither those of Virilio nor your own has the rigor been anywhere near to the big ideas being addressed, unless there is something implicit but is not yet communicated about this idea- to relate it to these things. And this is said because people like me would like to know, so as to not dismiss it but also to ask for more details, and generalities, actually. To maybe have a dialogue about what this is based on. Virilio's definition is not good enough to resolve all global dilemma. And, thus, maybe in further discussing this as a dialogue of many, the points that remain unanswered.... --- I am not going to read these texts to get basic answers, so ask again... >> the vectoral class > > see A Hacker Manifesto: > http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/warktext.html > >>> the commodity game of the vector > >>> the strategy-game of the vector > > see > http://www.criticalsecret.com/n10/McKENZIE%20WARK/\ I repeat.... based on the following definition... > A word on this word vector. I've borrowed it > from the writings of French urbanist and > speculative writer Paul Virilio. It is a term from > geometry meaning a line of fixed length and > direction but having no fixed position. Virilio > employs it to mean any trajectory along which > bodies, information or warheads can potentially > pass. How can these following concepts be specifically defined? > The vectoralization of power ? [power as a vector?] > the vectoral class ? [class as a vector?] > vectoralization of world trade ? [world trade as a vector?] > the commodity game of the vector ? [vectors as commodities] > the strategy-game of the vector ? [vectors as strategies?] > vectoralization ? [vector as a verb?] > vectoral transformation ? [vector as a process?] > vectoral power ? [the power of the vector, itself?] > the vectoral empire, ? [empire and its relation to the idea of vectors?] --- To me this indicates my own ability to attempt to understand from the most basic definition of the 'vector' of which I am still unclear but fascinated by its relevancy at the same time, yet confused. Is it possible to further define this idea of 'vectors' in common language, or how it differs or is similar to what is stated above, in order to allow for a base of comprehension for its many other word options? Where does a vector, as an idea, begin and end? Is it the social and cultural response to its use in the sciences, a type of conceptual calculation, and as such, many things can be considered in these terms? In summary, vector as a word/concept does not yet carry a type of 'answered/approximated' understanding and exists more as a question, such as "Vectoral? Class." And, even then, with all words mentioned, especially with the enigma that is empire (related to words, not a common person) "Vectoral? Empire?" is how it reads to this person.* Further definition of 'vector' would help clarify quite a lot. bc *in terms of empire, as a concept, it has been a wonder if it is empirically based (which based on the statements sent to the list declares its definition, more through power of statement than any ability to reason in shared truths). If empire were Empire, it would seem appropriate that people have a shared sense of identity, literally, if it is defined around people and not a privatized and thus limited idea or concept. This is to say, if gathering under a banner, would it not be one of commonality of human beings, human beings wearing shirts with their name on it, everyone being the same and equal, and this populace standing up, as one, undulating undifferentiated mass, everyone with a white or black or grey shirt on, and signs, saying human beings, humans, humanity- 'rights' 'peace' 'truth' et cetera. This commonality is not found within the rhetoric, or so it seems, and thus while co-opted or engineered for this very purpose (of power manipulation and management) it is curious how the media have taken this on as a 'psyche' which is at best delusional, given a common human context, and the idea of a 'successful' American Empire. If anything, ideas of America as Empire will destroy the country, by the destruction of truth through power of programming information and ideas into the state: or, the State, the individual and group State. Or, the human state & world state. The Amercian State inbetween, trying to figure out the balance between public/private e-states. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net