MachineMachine /stream - tagged with perspective http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com Methods for Studying Coincidences http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/ With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen. The point is that truly rare events, say events that occur only once in a million [as the mathematician Littlewood (1953) required for an event to be surprising] are bound to be plentiful in a population of 250 million people. If a coincidence occurs to one person in a million each day, then we expect 250 occurrences a day and close to 100,000 such occurrences a year. Going from a year to a lifetime and from the population of the United States to that of the world (5… ]]> Mon, 21 May 2012 10:44:39 -0700 http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/05/methods-for-studying-coincidences/ In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on Vertical Perspective http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 Imagine you are falling. But there is no ground.

Many contemporary philosophers have pointed out that the present moment is distinguished by a prevailing condition of groundlessness.1 We cannot assume any stable ground on which to base metaphysical claims or foundational political myths. At best, we are faced with temporary, contingent, and partial attempts at grounding. But if there is no stable ground available for our social lives and philosophical aspirations, the consequence must be a permanent, or at least intermittent state of free fall for subjects and objects alike. But why don’t we notice?
]]> Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:49:08 -0700 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/222 We are as gods and have to get good at it http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods, we might as well get good at it". Photographs of earth from space had that god-like perspective.

What I'm saying now is we are as gods and have to get good at it. Necessity comes from climate change, potentially disastrous for civilization. The planet will be okay, life will be okay. We will lose vast quantities of species, probably lose the rain forests if the climate… ]]> Thu, 28 Apr 2011 03:27:00 -0700 http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/brand09/brand09_index.html The New Athe­ists' Nar­row Worldview http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ With tongues in cheeks, Rich­ard Daw­kins, Chris­to­pher Hitch­ens, Sam Har­ris, and Dan­iel Dennett are embracing their reputation as the "Four Horsemen." Lampoon­ing the anx­i­eties of evan­geli­cals, these best-sell­ing athe­ists are em­brac­ing their "dan­gerous" sta­tus and dar­ing be­liev­ers to match their for­mi­da­ble philo­soph­i­cal acu­men.

Ac­cord­ing to these sol­diers of rea­son, the time for re­li­gion is over. It clings like a bad gene rep­li­cat­ing in the pop­u­la­tion, but its use­ful­ness is played out. Sam Har­ris's most re­cent book, The Moral Land­scape (Free Press, 2010), is the lat­est in the continuing bat­tle. As an ag­nos­tic, I find much of the… ]]> Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:58:29 -0700 http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-Athe-ists-Nar-row/126027/ The Postmedia Perspective http://rhizome.org/editorial/3964 The starting point of the book is that the label “New Media Art” does not identify an art genre or an art movement, and cannot be viewed – as it usually is – as a simple medium-based definition. On the contrary, a work of art – whether based on technology or not – is usually classed as New Media Art when it is produced, exhibited and discussed in a specific “art world,” the world of New Media Art. This art world came into being as a cultural niche in the Sixties and Seventies, and became a bona fide art world… ]]> Wed, 12 Jan 2011 10:44:34 -0700 http://rhizome.org/editorial/3964 Is there a secular body? http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/15/secular-body/ Is there a secular body? Or, in somewhat different terms, is there a particular configuration of the human sensorium—of sensibilities, affects, embodied dispositions—specific to secular subjects, and thus constitutive of what we mean by “secular society”? What intrigues me about this question is that, despite its apparent simplicity, the path toward an answer seems not at all clear. For example, are the scholarly sensibilities and the modes of affective attunement that find expression here elements of a secular habitus? What would be indicated by calling such expressive habits “secular”?

Clearly, they have been learned in a secular… ]]> Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:47:00 -0700 http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2010/11/15/secular-body/ Analogue Inception http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ The structure of the film is that of a heist movie, but if the film were to be slotted into a genre, that genre would have to be science fiction. Personally, I would say it’s cyberpunk. But it’s a strange kind of cyberpunk where the emphasis is less on technology and more on the film-noir mood and transcendental possibilities of the genre.

In fact, technology in Inception is notable by its absence. There is a piece of hardware to enable the central premise of the film, but it’s of no more importance than the hardware used in… ]]> Sun, 18 Jul 2010 06:07:00 -0700 http://adactio.com/journal/1680/ Michelangelo's secret message in the Sistine Chapel http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=michelangelos-secret-message-in-the-2010-05-26 At the age of 17 he began dissecting corpses from the church graveyard. Between the years 1508 and 1512 he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo Buonarroti—known by his first name the world over as the singular artistic genius, sculptor and architect—was also an anatomist, a secret he concealed by destroying almost all of his anatomical sketches and notes. Now, 500 years after he drew them, his hidden anatomical illustrations have been found—painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, cleverly concealed from the eyes of Pope Julius II and countless religious worshipers, historians, and art… ]]> Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:44:00 -0700 http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=michelangelos-secret-message-in-the-2010-05-26 Separate Truths http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/04/25/separate_truths/?page=full It is misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom.

At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe and the United States in the 1960s, it has been fashionable to affirm that all religions are beautiful and all are true. This claim, which reaches back to “All Religions Are One” (1795) by the English poet, printmaker, and prophet William Blake, is as odd as it is intriguing. No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism… ]]> Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:55:00 -0700 http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/04/25/separate_truths/?page=full First-Person Tetris http://www.firstpersontetris.com/ A head spinning new take on the classic videogame. Play it until your sense of direction explodes. ]]> Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:58:00 -0700 http://www.firstpersontetris.com/ Profane Prisms http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/profane-prisms
See more of Koizumi Meiro's profane paintings

by artist Koizumi Meiro

“It is a delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and the invisible, of speech and noise, that simultaneously determines the place and the stakes of politics as a form of experience. Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time.”

Jacques Rancière, The Distribution of… ]]> Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:14:00 -0700 http://machinemachine.net/text/arts/profane-prisms Fez (Trailer) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H54u4VmDFc ]]> Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:21:00 -0700 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H54u4VmDFc Exploring Empathic Space: Correlates of Perspective Transformation Ability and Biases in Spatial Attention http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ability-literally-imagine-oneself-anothers-shoes-may-be-tied-empathy-22592.html Empathy involves, in part, the ability to simulate the internal states of others. The authors hypothesized that our ability to manipulate, rotate and simulate mental representations of the physical world, including our own bodies, would contribute significantly to our ability to empathize. "Our language is full of spatial metaphors, particularly when we attempt to explain or understand how other people think or feel. We often talk about putting ourselves in others' shoes, seeing something from someone else's point of view, or figuratively looking over someone's shoulder," Sohee Park, report co-author and professor of psychology, said. "Although future work is needed… ]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:42:00 -0700 http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/ability-literally-imagine-oneself-anothers-shoes-may-be-tied-empathy-22592.html Closure http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006 A surreal spectacle of a game, balanced half-way between the whole and the gap ]]> Sun, 24 May 2009 15:04:00 -0700 http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/480006 The Total Library Project http://spacecollective.org/projects/The-Total-Library Books that redefine reality - or - How to redefine the book... ]]> Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:58:00 -0700 http://spacecollective.org/projects/The-Total-Library The Various Workings of a Cube-Shaped Gallery | Ask MetaFilter http://ask.metafilter.com/61272/The-Various-Workings-of-a-CubeShaped-Gallery Imagine a cube-shaped building, with ten cube-shaped rooms along each side (10 rooms long, 10 high & 10 deep). Each cubular room has 4 walls, 1 ceiling and 1 floor. Each of the 6 interior surfaces in all 1000 cubular rooms is decorated with a different pi ]]> Wed, 25 Apr 2007 03:39:00 -0700 http://ask.metafilter.com/61272/The-Various-Workings-of-a-CubeShaped-Gallery