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| Attunement is the feeling of an object's power over me—I am being dragged by its tractor beam into its orbit. | Attunement is the feeling of an object's power over me—I am being dragged by its tractor beam into its orbit. |
| | <cite>Tim Morton</cite> |
| —Tim Morton | |
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| <blockquote> | <blockquote> |
| The necessity of changing methods is all the more obvious when it is a question of finding the explanation of a phenomenon that nature offers in all of its complication. There, where the givens are by their very existence more complicated than the results we seek, direct synthesis becomes inapplicable, and it is necessary to take recourse either to direct analysis if possible, or to indirect synthesis, to feeling around (tâtonnement) and explanatory hypotheses. | The necessity of changing methods is all the more obvious when it is a question of finding the explanation of a phenomenon that nature offers in all of its complication. There, where the givens are by their very existence more complicated than the results we seek, direct synthesis becomes inapplicable, and it is necessary to take recourse either to direct analysis if possible, or to indirect synthesis, to feeling around (tâtonnement) and explanatory hypotheses. |
| —André-Marie Ampère | <cite>André-Marie Ampère |
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| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
| The response to technology in this period thus confounded familiar oppositions: fetishism and scientific truth; magic and mechanisation' charisma and instrumental rationality. Walter Benjamin's discussion of “the aura” of a work of art offers insight to such doublings. In “The World fo Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he spoke of the aura as a “nearness in a distance,” explaining the concept with reference to a poem of Novalis that described a landscape that seemed to look back at a human spectator. For Benjamin, such an encounter was the paradigmatic experience of aura: “the transposition of a response common in human relationships to the relationship between inanimate or natural object and man. In other words, “To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return." | The response to technology in this period thus confounded familiar oppositions: fetishism and scientific truth; magic and mechanisation' charisma and instrumental rationality. Walter Benjamin's discussion of “the aura” of a work of art offers insight to such doublings. In “The World fo Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” he spoke of the aura as a “nearness in a distance,” explaining the concept with reference to a poem of Novalis that described a landscape that seemed to look back at a human spectator. For Benjamin, such an encounter was the paradigmatic experience of aura: “the transposition of a response common in human relationships to the relationship between inanimate or natural object and man. In other words, “To perceive the aura of an object we look at means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return." |
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| —John Tresch | <cite>John Tresch</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| Rock is passionless. "Stone hearted" and "cold as stone" are as much a part of our lithic vocabulary as various expressions for stony silence. Without a human hand to impress meaning upon it, stone would be blank, impassive, aloof. Immobile and sterile, stones do not do much. Or perhaps our lexicon for stone is impoverished. When observed within their particular and nonhuman duration, stones are forever on the move. | Rock is passionless. "Stone hearted" and "cold as stone" are as much a part of our lithic vocabulary as various expressions for stony silence. Without a human hand to impress meaning upon it, stone would be blank, impassive, aloof. Immobile and sterile, stones do not do much. Or perhaps our lexicon for stone is impoverished. When observed within their particular and nonhuman duration, stones are forever on the move. |
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| —Jeffrey Jerome Cohen | <cite>Jeffrey Jerome Cohen |
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| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of a "machinic phylum," which they define as "materiality, natural or artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression". Because of its constant flow and variation, the machinic phylum is very hard to measure indeed. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the "matter-flow can only be followed" | Deleuze and Guattari introduce the concept of a "machinic phylum," which they define as "materiality, natural or artificial, and both simultaneously; it is matter in movement, in flux, in variation, matter as a conveyor of singularities and traits of expression". Because of its constant flow and variation, the machinic phylum is very hard to measure indeed. Therefore, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the "matter-flow can only be followed" |
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| —Patricia Pisters | <cite>Patricia Pisters</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| <blockquote> | <blockquote> |
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| Despite software's abstraction the geological maintains a particular attraction, as earth substrate, that which surrounds us, our material. Substrate equally presents a set of economic, political and economic consequences which contrast with software's lack of coded visibility, its inevitable "encryption". | Despite software's abstraction the geological maintains a particular attraction, as earth substrate, that which surrounds us, our material. Substrate equally presents a set of economic, political and economic consequences which contrast with software's lack of coded visibility, its inevitable "encryption". |
| —Martin Howse | <cite>Martin Howse</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| (...) their values are intrinsic and without external reference," might he be imagining a kind of geological Turing Completeness?—a universal lithic calculating machine whose solution is its own morphology (Turing). This possibility echoes the inklings of tantric cybernetician Stafford Beer in Pebbles to Computers who saw that "Nature's computers are that which they compute" and who maintained that "We cannot read off numbers" from these calculations "because nature does not put labels on its solutions—it becomes them". The sealed language of stones... | (...) their values are intrinsic and without external reference," might he be imagining a kind of geological Turing Completeness?—a universal lithic calculating machine whose solution is its own morphology (Turing). This possibility echoes the inklings of tantric cybernetician Stafford Beer in Pebbles to Computers who saw that "Nature's computers are that which they compute" and who maintained that "We cannot read off numbers" from these calculations "because nature does not put labels on its solutions—it becomes them". The sealed language of stones... |
| | <cite>Paul Prudence</cite> |
| —Paul Prudence | |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| The field of meta-heuristic search algorithms has a long history of finding inspiration in natural systems. Starting from classics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization, the last two decades have witnessed a fireworks-style explosion (pun intended) of natural (and sometimes supernatural) heuristics - from Birds and Bees to Zombies and Reincarnation. | The field of meta-heuristic search algorithms has a long history of finding inspiration in natural systems. Starting from classics such as Genetic Algorithms and Ant Colony Optimization, the last two decades have witnessed a fireworks-style explosion (pun intended) of natural (and sometimes supernatural) heuristics - from Birds and Bees to Zombies and Reincarnation. |
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| https://github.com/fcampelo/EC-Bestiary | <cite>https://github.com/fcampelo/EC-Bestiary</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| When you cook bread from a recipe, you’re following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you’re following an algorithm. When you put a sharp edge on a piece of flint by executing a precise sequence of strikes with the end of an antler—a key step in making fine stone tools—you’re following an algorithm. Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the Stone Age. | When you cook bread from a recipe, you’re following an algorithm. When you knit a sweater from a pattern, you’re following an algorithm. When you put a sharp edge on a piece of flint by executing a precise sequence of strikes with the end of an antler—a key step in making fine stone tools—you’re following an algorithm. Algorithms have been a part of human technology ever since the Stone Age. |
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| —Christian & Griffiths | <cite>Christian & Griffiths</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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| From earlier cultures Egypt inherited much of its star lore as well as the sanctity of stone. The innovations she brought to these beliefs were dramatically improved forms of masonry and a calendrical and mathematical sophistication that went unequaled for thousands of years. (...) We may speculate here that entangling one's consciousness with certain stars lead to certain 'inspirations/innovations', which improved the technology of consciousness entanglement, which lead to further 'inspirations/innovations'. Think of it like a cosmic version of runaway climate change. | From earlier cultures Egypt inherited much of its star lore as well as the sanctity of stone. The innovations she brought to these beliefs were dramatically improved forms of masonry and a calendrical and mathematical sophistication that went unequaled for thousands of years. (...) We may speculate here that entangling one's consciousness with certain stars lead to certain 'inspirations/innovations', which improved the technology of consciousness entanglement, which lead to further 'inspirations/innovations'. Think of it like a cosmic version of runaway climate change. |
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| —Gordon White | <cite>Gordon White</cite> |
| </blockquote> | </blockquote> |
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