The Digital is All About Boundaries

The digital is all about boundaries. The digital does not follow a moving line, it imposes a grid of lines which produce a series of boundaries. In the analog, difference is the productivity in excess of itself; in the digital, difference is a negation that comes from without. Roll the ball as much as you like, but unless it reaches the size King Digital demands within the time He allows, you fail — and are subjected to His lofty disdain. The analog is variation along a line, a difference ...

 AI Philosophizing

Tachikoma: So, will we be sent back to lab too? Batou: Wha...? Who's been telling you that? Tachikoma: Well, it's just that the way the Major's been looking at us lately is kinda scary. Batou: Oh, is that all? The major's always scary, remember? I think you guys are doing a fine job. Tachikoma: You really think so? Batou: What, you're still worried about that? Tachikoma: Yeah... It just seems like the Major is angry about what we've acquired recently. Batou: "Acquired"? Acquired what? ...

 Ted Nelson's Hypermedia Would Empower Content Creators

So is there any way to bring money and capitalism into an era of technological abundance without impoverishing almost everyone? One smart idea came from Ted Nelson. Nelson is perhaps the most formative figure in the development of online culture. He invented the digital media link and other core ideas of connected online media back in the 1960s. He called it “hypermedia.” Nelson’s ambitions for the economics of linking were more profound than those in vogue today. He proposed that ins...

 The Rigidity of Digital

Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition. It was a way for a musician to think, or a way to teach and document music. It was a mental tool distinguishable from the music itself. Different people could make transcriptions of the same musical recording, for instance, and come up with slightly different scores. After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure you couldn’t avoid in the aspects of life that had...