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Practical
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| by T.H.H. Boykett | aaa | ||
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| Ars Catalogue text Project Title: Safe Harbours / Closing the Loop Time's Up Research Laboratories Article Title: "There's Nothing as Practical as a Good Theory" Tim Boykett If you hang a weight on a string and let it swing, the frequency of the swinging is, according to Galileo and confirmed by many, dependent only upon the length of the string. Thus two weighted strings of different lengths will swing at different rates. But if we hang two such different length strings from another piece of string stretched transversally, then they will influence each other, become captured into resonance and begin to swing together at related frequencies. This synchronisation property of coupled pendula, or more generally of coupled oscillators, is nigh-upon universal. Sometimes I feel that there is some truth behind the idea that thought is vibration, an oscillation of sorts ("666 megahertz, the frequency of human thought!"), that thinking is thus in some sense composition or improvisation. Perhaps this property of synchronisation of oscillators is an effective and accurate metaphor for the "Aha!" experiences we are always having with various people. Probably not. But at least such an idea is very pseudoscientific. "We hereby reclaim the notion of pseudoscience from the dangerous misanthropes, misguided fools and assorted miscreants that have been labeled with it. We claim pseudoscience as a source of life and flavour, a way of approaching work in the world that loses the life-threatening deadness of creation science or elixir-toting quacks, even that professional cynicism of that bugbear of rationality writ large, the institutional scientist. We are pseudoscientists, and we are here to make waves. None of this accretion of results in a Baconian evolution with outbreaks of paradigm shifting as per the Kuhn model. No, pseudoscience is for those who never lost the glint in the eye from those kiddie scientist stories, who really believed they could change the world from the back garage, and who aren't yet sure that they can't." [B98] I speak from the position of a confessed pseudoscientist, I am not in a twelve-point program. Sometimes I wonder what happens with more weights on strings hung on longer transversals in various directions, connected in various topologies of interaction and influence. Massively coupled pendula. Systems of such oscillators, where an oscillator is not just a simple repeating waveform. Nonlinear oscillations, alone cycling happily into infinity, once rivetted together form networks with emergent properties. Coherent gaits [T93, CR94], synchronisation of chaotic systems [PC90], economic autocatalysis and network externalities [D97]. It's all observable. DeLanda's exposition of the harbour mentality, exchange and trade, replacement economics and rhizome relations is fundamental here. The hypothesis of ((partially) autonomous) harbours as a driving force of two scales of capitalism, market and anti-market, leads us to reconsider the terms and phrases involved. The word "harbour" in current English derives from the old English "herebeorg", probably from old Norse, and is related to the word "harbinger", meaning "a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another." Relating to the source word "herbergere" from "herberge", a Germanic word for lodgings or one who gives shelter. A role becomes apparent here, the role of the protector of new, hidden, heretic or supressed knowledge, the harbour and the source of the carriers of this information, the herbergere protecting that person and their information. There must be many of these sanctuaries in harbours all over. Places for heretics, by their very nature always fleeing, to hide out, to rest their weary feet. In such places, it would not be unusual for two or more fugitives to come together simultaneously, hidden in the backroom of a dockside inn, for them to discuss their specific heresies or messages or contraband or knowledge. Such points act as nodes of concentration in a network of information, they are exchanges, routers. It would not be infeasible for such nodes to grow. There must be a desolate harbour in South America, the coast of Surinam perhaps, accessible only by boat, where a desolate hotel or two barely manage to keep up appearances. Behind this port town, a short distance but still far enough to deter casual visits, there is a hidden but extensive complex of buildings, some modern, well-built, housing large amounts of tech stuff, others with rough verandahs modelled on local standards looking out over the township, harbour and offshore islands. On these verandahs, groups of peculiar people, definitely not natives, sit and watch the sun set, or the moon rise, discussing at various levels of intensity and aggression the results and implications of previous work, making plans, plotting experiments, analysing results. They will return alone or in twos and threes to the buildings behind, below and around them, experimenting, postulating, negating, hypothesising. Such groupings need to exist by the bizarre logic of what must be going on. All this corporate profit and share-market winnings cannot be disappearing into sincere, rational research and development labs or even more expensive housing and entertainment for the filthy rich. No, there has to be a collection of near-crazies who got locked out of academia and the corporate labs, but whose competence is not completely questionable. They get funded somehow, probably by some bizarre patent schemes they worked out themselves. They are the hard-core pseudoscientists and we want to get to know them. Given schools of heretic researchers, staff and faculty at the Slightly Flakey Institute, the focii for their researches will spatter the memetic landscape in some pattern. Attempting to determine the pattern, looking for some points of light, we make our way back to the initial point and look at loops, systems of oscillators or other systems, we analyse metaphors and methods of control and perceptual modification. We close the loop of perception and control with biomechanical devices and protobiological metaphors. Calling on pseudoscientists everywhere to propose new and interesting experiments in loop-closing phenomena, we were overwhelmed with the response. A series of experiments are underway, the loops will be closed and more questions will be opened. The list below includes those pseudoscientists known to be collaborating at this stage. tb, linz, june 1998. Biography The Times Up harbourside laboratories have a history that reaches back to the pardon entitled "A PROCLAMATION for Supressing of PYRATES" given in 1717 by King George to the Caribbean pirates. At least two ships escaped the pardon and hanging by relocating to this central European location on the Danube, one of the main shipping channels at the time. Maintaining a low profile, camouflaged at times as an office and depot for the Donaudampfschiffgesellschaftkapitänsmutze, the laboratory raised its flag once again at the end of 1996. |
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