Am I planting as much as I pick?

[imomus]

I once suggested that there was a new digital ethics which included the responsibility to upload as much as you download from the net. This has now become a commonplace on filesharing sites, which assign users with an exact ratio measuring their uploads against their downloads, and make them feel guilty if it slips too low (it's an "honour of thieves" situation, because the whole thing is also illegal). But those ratios only measure data in bulk, they don't -- can't -- assess the quality of what's uploaded and measure it against the quality of what's downloaded.

It's an interesting thought: is what I'm uploading of a different quality and character than what I'm uploading? Is it "gold in, garbage out"? Or vice versa? If I'm downloading porn but uploading calculus, am I actually turning porn into calculus? Do I trivialize (upload more superficial things than I download) or add weight and value (upload more intelligent things than I download)? What kind of intertextuality is developing as this data flows back and forth? Am I rotating my data crops responsibly? How's my yield, year-on-year? Am I planting as much as I pick?

Here's a tiny cross-section of data I've down- and uploaded in the past few days. I seem to be writing more web content than ever -- it feels like a full-time job, actually.

Read a piece on Pingmag about the Tama Art Academy, which begins with the unusually critical idea: "Have you ever had the feeling that in Japan, since things are so over excessively convenient, people tend to lack imagination…?" Vastly more intelligent and helpful than the Adbusters article we looked at on Sunday, the Pingmag piece shows one group of people (tutors) engaging with the ideas of another (students) and helping them improve the quality of their imagination by offering practical criticism.

Wrote a piece for the New York Times about extreme craft and Ikea-hacking. (Published Friday.) "Art masquerading as craft, craft masquerading as art, and craft extending its middle finger".

Read a long review of a biography of the Marxist literary critic Raymond Williams in The London Review of Books (Stefan Collini on Dai Smith's Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale).

Wrote an article for Frieze about how graphic designers are having a "Duchamp moment", crossing over to artist status, abstraction, conceptualism. Posited several reasons this is happening: the computer's democratisation of design skills, the migration of practical design to workshop nations like India and China, ethical concerns over unsustainable consumerism, art curators looking for multi-disciplinary crossover... (Now published.)

Watched the BBC Horizon documentary about the Large Hadron Collider, due to be switched on later this month, to simulate the conditions milliseconds after the Big Bang. (And, some believe, to create a black hole which will swallow the planet.)

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Wrote my regular column for Spanish music site Playground about the taxonomy of record store categorizations. "Down with Linnaeus!" pretends to blame the Swedish naturalist for the excessive genre divisions in record shops, which make it impossible for me to locate my own record in Rough Trade. Why can't it all just be alphabetical? (Published next week, when it'll appear here in English.)



Devoured fifteen photos by Dan Chung on The Guardian site of The people of Kashgar, China. Some people may look to Victoria Beckham, but these people are my style avatars. I seriously -- but seriously -- look to them for style tips. I'm not too concerned that radicals from this community are said to be targeting the Olympics, an event which has always struck me as essentially fascist in spirit and aesthetics. Given the choice, I would always side with the people of Kashgar over the Olympics people -- merciless go-faster Spartan meritocrats, with their harsh world of logistics and competition. Then again, one of the photos shows that even the Kashgar people have red Ferraris on their walls. What hope of alternative values?

Read John Pilger's piece in The Guardian about the West's one-sided definitions of "war crimes" and "weapons of mass destruction". With extreme approval and appreciation.



Published 38 new photographs on my Flickr page, representing one week in my life. One of them shows some anti-Zionist orthodox Jews who believe that only the messiah can create Israel, and who therefore don't recognize the state as it exists now. I admired their outfits. Another shows me dressed as a gardener -- an outfit that creased my mother into giggles. The Other is... me, apparently.

How about you, are you planting as many ideas as you're picking?

Comments

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of a function description of stupidity as a process, not a state:

A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. “Stupidity” is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information he or she puts out, commits him- or herself to taking in no more information than she or he can put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind/perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results. The process, however, can be reversed at any time…

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Interesting, so this one:one ratio I'm describing as moral goodness might, in fact, be stupidity? Dostoyevsky's idiot comes to mind!

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

"Functional description," I meant, dang it. —Heck, some communities want you in the positive: uploading MORE than you download! Quick, make something from nothing!

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I pick more than I plant... but my torrent ratio is always 1.0.

I'll share with you some stuff I've been picking though:


The clothes and fabrics in this video appeal to me. Especially the cute girl in peach colored dungarees and a bright yellow top in contrast to the woman in a deep blue kimono with a vibrant white obi.


This is an old Japanese cooking series from the 90s. The rest of the series you can find here (http://www.youtube.com/user/otamajisyaku)

Poems in English by Fernando Pessoa (http://pintopc.home.cern.ch/pintopc/WWW/FPessoa/FPessoa.html)

A series broadcast on BBC2, now available on iPlayer for viewers in the UK: The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00cy97t/)
"In the city of Changsha, Communist Party member Mrs Qin owns the 5,000-seater West Lake Restaurant, where all manner of important events take place - weddings, baby banquets and birthdays. Between mouth-watering Chinese food and the rousing communist songs sung by the staff, we explore the struggles and hopes of Chinese people today."

commonplace dream logic

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

I think my journal explains what I have been up to given your question. The most recent entry sort of chimes with this entry.
http://robinsonner.livejournal.com/

I am still trying to shake off the shackles of a consumerist approach to the Internet and information sharing but I have never really seen that as a problem.

Currently changing position as I move from the niddrie_edge blog to this new one. I hoped to keep it more literate and less dependent on Youtube but the modern commonplace has many ingredients.

In the real world I am renegotiating outlets for all this stuff. Two community based outlets have fallen to funding problems but some devilish cleverness should help me pick up the pieces.

Re: genre - in a recent Radio 4 documentary called Poet Unwound (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/a4gf4/) about the use of Spleen in literature and culture through the ages, Paul Morley pops up to mention an unspoken all-encompassing genre that could be called Spleen, where a Northern European melancholy suffuses the art.

Right, I must get back to accompanying my aunt and mum on old Music Hall and war songs!

Daisy, daisy...

[(Anonymous)]

You actually mean that I can pick them too? To think I have only been planting without reaping what I...
-John Flesh

www.fashionflesh.com

[sirwilliam.livejournal.com]

I don't think the ratio between production and consumption need be one-to-one because there are millions of people contributing - in other words if everyone online only wrote one article we could all read a different article every day of our life without exhausting the possibilities.

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

How about you, are you planting as many ideas as you're picking?

Not necessarily on the internet, no. Outside of the web, yes, lots and lots of volunteer protesting a certain controversial cult that is not Mormonism.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I was really hoping this entry would prompt people to post things they've been picking and planting recently...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed yours, by the way -- except for the dismal generic 90s music played alongside the shows. I suppose even that was quite interesting for its "bamboo music" elements.

I'm watching this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo) right now. Soooooooo American.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

I remember watching that lecture when it was doing the rounds (rather sensationally) as "Dying professor's last lecture to students".

It's very American, the whole thing is an emotional sugar-overdose and I couldn't help but feel cynical towards it.
He did nothing but gush about his achievements and his experiences and his aspirations. I found it all so material and non-consequential. A lot of the advice he gave were just cliches dressed up as unique life experiences.

"I have cancer... but I lived the dream. Follow your heart."

My favourite "deathbed tale" is predictably Buddhist, about a man called Hoshin:

"Seven days ago," Hoshin remarked to his followers, "I predicted my death. I said I was going to leave you. It is customary to write a farewell poem, but I am neither poet nor calligrapher. Let one of you inscribe my last words."

His followers thought he was joking, but one of them started to write.

"Are you ready?" Hoshin asked.

"Yes, sir," replied the writer.

Then Hoshin dictated:

I came from brilliancy.
And return to brilliancy.
What is this?

The poem was one line short of the customary four, so the disciple said: "Master, we are one line short."

Hoshin, with the roar of a conquering lion, shouted "Kaa!" and was gone.

oh and I'm currently watching this (http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6LLcqmDnQ). Sooooooooo Japanese.

[desant012.livejournal.com]

It makes a good supermarket/Oprah story for overweight middle-age sadsacks who only watch it so they can say, "my uncle Cleetuphus died of pancreatic cancer and type 4 diabeetus! This man is an inspiration to us all just like Cleetuphus wurs!"

Otherwise I haven't been more bored in my life to hear someone speak about their life. It just goes to show you, people who've led easy content lives are absolute bores.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

It just goes to show you, people who've led easy content lives are absolute bores.

Isnt that the opposite of whats being described in that lecture though? We're not dealing with a simple, easily pleased man, we're dealing with a man whos pretty much said "ive lived my dreams, this is how I did it, and you can too"

[desant012.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, I guess I'm more interested in hearing about the shades and tones of life rather than the stuff and things.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

Well I'm writing five stories and am eating a metric ton of courgette...

Took them 50 years to stop calling women raped by Nazis here "Nazi-whores" who deserved to be lynched and humiliated or portraying the women who were forced to prostitute themselves in Japanese camps as collaborators in history books so IDK what you plan to do about the war crimes thing. Nothing like that though I daresay.

[crowjake.livejournal.com]

Picking:

This.

Watched Rockers last night which made me feel very good

Decided that i needed to listen to 20 hours of wagner without sleeping... but i only got through the first cd yesterday.

My friend's poetry.

Read the big issue. Which i really like - some of the stuff is misguided, but i like the general gist.

Planting:

I'm working on some bits of philosophy, and writing them down. But it doesn't seem to be fooling anyone i've shown - not online yet.

I planted a little piece about a dysfunctional relationship on livejournal.

Ranted about how stupid "nature/nurture" research is, on a local forum.



God i feel entirely unineteresting!

Is this you Mr Hipster?

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

"Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics. Loosely associated with some form of creative output, they attend art parties, take lo-fi pictures with analog cameras, ride their bikes to night clubs and sweat it up at nouveau disco-coke parties. The hipster tends to religiously blog about their daily exploits, usually while leafing through generation-defining magazines like Vice, Another Magazine and Wallpaper. This cursory and stylized lifestyle has made the hipster almost universally loathed."

Re: Is this you Mr Hipster?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Um, you're a bit late to the party, dude.

If you really hurry you can be the 78th comment (http://imomus.livejournal.com/390994.html).

Re: Is this you Mr Hipster?

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, your bubble. You are ideologically inbred.

[loveishappiness.livejournal.com]

I read this (http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries) and this (http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/010555.html), watched this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SItPGEsjLQ) and uploaded this:

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/8303854@N02/2737386687/)

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

consuming is editing, which is output

[cookie-puss1.livejournal.com]

Well I uploaded this to Youtube......

....but I had to download all the clips from Youtube in the first place. This does nothing to offset my porno footprint.

[(Anonymous)]

Japan's resurgent nationalism has global ramifications
The new prime minister's unrepentant attitude to war crimes
could threaten the world's most important economic zone

Martin Jacques
The Guardian, Wednesday September 27 2006