I dreamt of a virtual environment — it was clear to me I was in a simulation, a game of sorts, but i could feel rocks against my fingers, palms, feet as I climbed rock faces … leapt from island to island in the sea, traversed biomes
When I was younger,
my parents would often take my sister and I hiking.
We’d often chat about
STACKED ROCKS
we’d see at forks in the path, three to five stones tall.
I learned these stacked stones were placed by other hikers
generally they (the stacks) guaranteed
Legible trails…
Safe
passage…
A sense of “human intervention” in an otherwise barren landscape…
A sign that someone else was once here/there … etc.
New (Ready to Use) Computers
What does it mean for something to be ready to use? when i pick up a glass it is in a READY state… i move it under a running tap and it fills, i bring it to my body and drink, i set it down and once again, it is ready to use.
I’m folding clothing at home when I begin to think about construction. The seams and joinery of the cloth falls apart, and the form begins to unfold in my mind’s eye. At a certain point in time, “standardized clothing” became the NORM for men, and later for women.
I’m folding laundry and I’m reminded of standardization and construction … of course the folds and seams that allow what was once flat to wrap around my body. in my minds eye i begin to see the garment unfold as one might unfold a crane … stitches coming apart, darts and creases rupturing, the material returning to an original state of BLANKNESS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready-to-wear
Standardization, for better or worse, gave exponentially more people the chance to own higher-quality clothing.
Right now, a lot of what’s made isn’t ready to use
What does it mean to you when something is “readily available”?
What is your opinion of “Ready to Eat” foods?
Is most of your clothing “ready to wear”?
I’m folding clothing at home when I begin to think about construction. The seams and joinery of the cloth falls apart, and the form begins to unfold in my mind’s eye. As I learn about pattern-making in clothing, I learn that the act of standardization in mass production is an ART in the crafts-sense of the the word and was largely defined by hand-produced garment shaping.
Many tout the luxury of wearing clothing tailored to one’s body, but there’s a certain EASE to throwing on a shirt a size larger than what you normally wear … one can self-accentuate their body’s FORM with clothing a size down,
A richness of expression is derived from readily available clothing a size away from you, or never made with you in mind.
“Throwing on” clothing (“Ease”) is an action afforded by the standardization of clothing production, the action of making what was once costly to produce and custom “ready to wear”.
Right now, a lot of what’s made isn’t ready to use, but there’s a lot out there that is ready to wear. We can learn from this.
The pile of rocks on the trail is likely one of the more prehistoric of our inclinations.
(I’d bet a lot of money on this.)
Properly monolithic, but only barely so.
An action still subject to the destruction nature always gifts, an intervention that will always need repairing and maintenance.
The stone marker in the trail is not a sign to be ‘read’, a directional structure to be ‘interpreted’, but an information-dense form that’s essentially meaningless.
tl;dr, computational objects could learn a lot from stacks of rocks (Cairns).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn
We claim on our website the following:
New Computer Working Group is a group of people interested in “What’s After Now”, the alternative form, A New Spirit of Computation, PC Futures, etc…
It could be said that we’re interested in providing gestures towards READY TO USE COMPUTATIONAL OBJECTS:
READY TO USE…
Something I can use without turning it on, or plugging it in, or “Onboarding” into. An empty glass, a pile of rocks, a Large T-shirt.
…COMPUTATIONAL…
Information-dense arrangements, electrified sand, self-aware rock. A glass with a lipstick stain, a 10,000 year old marker, her T-shirt.
…OBJECTS
Something we can touch, a non-abstraction (a good abstraction), a heavy tungsten weight, weather-worn rock. My dead grandpa’s favorite glass, a pile of stones I set upon his grave, the heavy cotton, black T-shirt I am wearing.