Thoughts About Time-Binding 3

So, following Thoughts About Time-Binding 1 and Thoughts About Time-Binding 2, it's time for the third installment of this timely series.

But first, a big THANK YOU to Bruce Kodish for posting an entry on his own blog saying nice things about what I've been writing here: Some Strate Talk About Time-Binding. Bruce is our leading expert on Alfred Korzybski who, as you know, is the fellow who came up with the idea of time-binding, and general semantics, and was the founder of the Institute of General Semantics. Bruce is currently completing a biography of Korzbyski, and his blog, Korzybski Files, is a great resource available to all (and I have added a link to this blog to my listing over on the right).

Now then, back to the binding of Isaac, er, I mean the binding of time (sorry, some residue from the High Holy Days). Korzbyski's concept of time-binding is related to the idea that human beings have supplemented biological evolution with cultural evolution, and through culture, language and symbolic communication, the accumulation of knowledge, and technological innovation, we have progress. Time-binding is a basic characteristic of the human species as a "class of life," to use Korzybski's own terms, so that it is, in one sense, universal to all human societies.

But in another sense, Korzybski was non-Aristotelian even before coming up with his non-Aristotelian system, and realized that time-binding of one sort is not the same as time-binding of another sort. Specifically, some forms of time-binding allow for relatively rapid progress, while others allow for only slow, gradual evolution. The difference was akin, in metaphoric-mathematical terms (mathemetaphor?, hey Ray Gozzi, how about that?), to the difference between arithmetic and geometric progressions.

So, all human societies are characterized by slow, gradual time-binding. Some human societies, however, managed to develop an accelerated form of time-binding in specialized sectors, specifically those associated with science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. And so, Korzybski reasoned, if we could generalize from those sectors to the rest of society, we could achieve rapid progress in all aspects of human life, allowing our species to reach its true potential, which he referred to in the title of his book as the Manhood of Humanity.

Having not yet arrived at the discipline of general semantics, Korzybski instead puts forth a vaguer notion involving the application of scientific method to all human affairs, and refers to it as human engineering. This was an unfortunate choice of words, as it at once summons associations with Communist attempts to create a "new man" via Pavlovian conditioning techniques, Nazi eugenics and racial sanitation/ethnic cleansing, controversial notions of social engineering, and in contemporary culture, genetic engineering. And not surprisingly, Korzybski backed away from this sort of terminology later on. Engineering had a cachet in the early 20th century that it lost in light of the Nazi's all-too-efficient concentration camps and gas chambers, and the atomic bomb. And after all, what we're really talking about here is education. A much better term, don't you think?

But let's look at some of what Korzybski said in Manhood of Humanity, shall we? For example, here he draws a sharp contrast between science and non-science (or should that be nonsense?):

Some technological invention is made, like that of a steam engine or a printing press, for example; or some discovery of scientific method, like that of analytical geometry or the infinitesimal calculus; or some discovery of natural law, like that of falling bodies or the Newtonian law of gravitation. What happens? What is the effect upon the progress of knowledge and invention? The effect is stimulation. Each invention leads to new inventions and each discovery to new discoveries; invention breeds invention, science begets science, the children of knowledge produce their kind in larger and larger families; the process goes on from decade to decade, from generation to generation, and the spectacle we behold is that of advancement in scientific knowledge and technological power according to the law and rate of a rapidly increasing geometric progression or logarithmic function.
And now what must we say of the so-called sciences—the pseudo sciences—of ethics and jurisprudence and economics and politics and government? For the answer we have only to open our eyes and behold the world. By virtue of the advancement that has long been going on with ever accelerated logarithmic rapidity in invention, in mathematics, in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in astronomy and in applications of them, time and space and matter have been already conquered to such an extent that our globe, once so seemingly vast, has virtually shrunken to the dimensions of an ancient province; and manifold peoples of divers tongues and traditions and customs and institutions are now constrained to live together as in a single community. There is thus demanded a new ethical wisdom, a new legal wisdom, a new economical wisdom, a new political wisdom, a new wisdom in the affairs of government. For the new visions our anguished times cry aloud but the only answers are reverberated echoes of the wailing cry mingled with the chattering voices of excited public men who know not what to do. Why? What is the explanation? The question is double: Why the disease? And why no remedy at hand? The answer is the same for both. And the answer is that the so-called sciences of ethics and jurisprudence and economics and politics and government have not kept pace with the rapid progress made in the other great affairs of man; they have lagged behind; it is because of their lagging that the world has come to be in so great distress; and it is because of their lagging that they have not now the needed wisdom to effect a cure.
Do you ask why it is that the “social” sciences—the so-called sciences of ethics, etc.—have lagged behind? The answer is not far to seek nor difficult to understand. They have lagged behind, partly because they have been hampered by the traditions and the habits of a bygone world—they have looked backward instead of forward; they have lagged behind, partly because they have depended upon the barren methods of verbalistic philosophy—they have been metaphysical instead of scientific; they have lagged behind, partly because they have been often dominated by the lusts of cunning “politicians” instead of being led by the wisdom of enlightened statesmen; they have lagged behind, partly because they have been predominantly concerned to protect “vested interests,” upon which they have in the main depended for support; the fundamental cause, however, of their lagging behind is found in the astonishing fact that, despite their being by their very nature most immediately concerned with the affairs of mankind, they have not discovered what Man really is but have from time immemorial falsely regarded human beings either as animals or else as combinations of animals and something supernatural. With these two monstrous conceptions of the essential nature of man I shall deal at a later stage of this writing.
At present I am chiefly concerned to drive home the fact that it is the great disparity between the rapid progress of the natural and technological sciences on the one hand and the slow progress of the metaphysical, so-called social “sciences” on the other hand, that sooner or later so disturbs the equilibrium of human affairs as to result periodically in those social cataclysms which we call insurrections, revolutions and wars. The reader should note carefully that such cataclysmic changes—such “jumps,” as we may call them—such violent readjustments in human affairs and human relationships—are recorded throughout the history of mankind. And I would have him see clearly that, because the disparity which produces them increases as we pass from generation to generation—from term to term of our progressions—the “jumps” in question occur not only with increasing violence but with increasing frequency. (pp. 19-23)

Looking at what Korzybski is saying from a media ecological perspective, we see an emphasis on the role of technology and science in human history, what Siegfried Gideon referred to as anonymous history. We also see a critique of the scientism of the social sciences. Moreover, we can discern in the disparity the need to find a way to gain some measure of control over our technological and scientific development.

Further, in considering what it means to be human, which was one of the basic questions Korzybski was asking (as discussed in Thoughts About Time-Binding 2), he argues that human beings are by nature social and cooperative--Kenneth Burke makes a similar argument in Rhetoric of Motives, stating that the whole point of symbolic communication is to establish, maintain, and increase a sense of common ground and identification among individuals), and that we are by nature creators (a point made more recently by Daniel Boorstin, in The Creators, natch) and inventors, that we require technology to survive (a common point in much of the anthropological literature, and especially among technology scholars in the media ecology intellectual tradition, going back at least to Lewis Mumford):

What is achieved in blaming a man for being selfish and greedy if he acts under the influence of a social environment and education which teach him that he is an animal and that selfishness and greediness are of the essence of his nature?
Even so eminent a philosopher and psychologist as Spencer tells us: “Of self-evident truths so dealt with, the one which here concerns us is that a creature must live before it can act. ... Ethics has to recognize the truth that egoism comes before altruism.” This is true for ANIMALS, because animals die out from lack of food when their natural supply of it is insufficient because they have NOT THE CAPACITY TO PRODUCE ARTIFICIALLY. But it is not true for the HUMAN DIMENSION.
Why not? Because humans through their time-binding capacity are first of all creators and so their number is not controlled by the supply of unaided nature, but only by men's artificial productivity, which is THE MATERIALIZATION OF THEIR TIME-BINDING CAPACITY.
Man, therefore, by the very intrinsic character of his being, MUST ACT FIRST, IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO LIVE (through the action of parents—or society) which is not the case with animals. The misunderstanding [pg 073] of this simple truth is largely accountable for the evil of our ethical and economic systems or lack of systems. As a matter of fact, if humanity were to live in complete accord with the animal conception of man, artificial production—time-binding production—would cease and ninety per cent of mankind would perish by starvation. It is just because human beings are not animals but are time-binders—not mere finders but creators of food and shelter—that they are able to live in such vast numbers.
Here even the blind must see the effect of higher dimensionality, and this effect becomes in turn the cause of other effects which produce still others, and so on in an endless chain. WE LIVE BECAUSE WE PRODUCE, BECAUSE WE ARE ACTING IN TIME AND ARE NOT MERELY ACTING IN SPACE—BECAUSE MAN IS NOT A KIND OF ANIMAL. It is all so simple, if only we apply a little sound logic in our thinking about human nature and human affairs. If human ethics are to be human, are to be in the human dimension, the postulates of ethics must be changed; FOR HUMANITY IN ORDER TO LIVE MUST ACT FIRST; the laws of ethics—the laws of right living—are natural laws—laws of human nature—laws having their whole source and sanction in the time-binding capacity and time-binding activity peculiar to man. Human excellence is excellence in time-binding, and must be measured and rewarded by time-binding standards of worth.
Humanity, in order to live, must produce creatively and therefore must be guided by applied science, by technology; and this means that the so-called social sciences of ethics, jurisprudence, psychology, economics, sociology, politics, and government must be emancipated from medieval metaphysics; they must be made scientific; they must be technologized; they must be made to progress and to function in the proper dimension—the human dimension and not that of animals: they must be made time-binding sciences.
Can this be done? I have no doubt that it can. For what is human life after all?
To a general in the battlefield, human life is a factor which, if properly used, can destroy the enemy. To an engineer human life is an equivalent to energy, or a capacity to do work, mental or muscular, and the moment something is found to be a source of energy and to have the capacity of doing work, the first thing to do, from the engineer's point of view, is to analyse the generator with a view to discovering how best to conserve it, to improve it, and bring it to the level of maximum productivity. Human beings are very complicated energy-producing batteries differing widely in quality and magnitude of productive power. Experience has shown that these batteries are, first of all, chemical batteries producing a mysterious energy. If these batteries are not supplied periodically with a more or less constant quantity of some chemical elements called food and air, the batteries will cease to function—they will die. In the examination of the structure of these batteries we find that the chemical base is very much accentuated all through the structure. This chemical generator is divided into branches each of which has a very different rôle which it must perform in harmony with all the others. The mechanical parts of the structure are built in conformity to the rules of mechanics and are automatically furnished with lubrication and with chemical supplies for automatically renewing worn-out parts. The chemical processes not only deposit particles of mass for the structure of the generator but produce some very powerful unknown kinds of energies or vibrations which make all the chemical parts function; we find also a mysterious apparatus with a complex of wires which we call brain glands, and nerves; and, finally, these human batteries have the remarkable capacity of reproduction.
These functions are familiar to everybody. From the knowledge of other physical, mechanical and chemical phenomena of nature, we must come to the conclusion, that this human battery is the most perfect example of a complex engine; it has all the peculiarities of a chemical battery combined with a generator of a peculiar energy called life; above all, it has mental or spiritual capacities; it is thus equipped with both mental and mechanical means for producing work. The parts and functions of this marvelous engine have been the subject of a vast amount of research in various special branches of science. A very noteworthy fact is that both the physical work and the mental work of this human engine are always accompanied by both physical and chemical changes in the structure of its machinery—corresponding to the wear and tear of non-living engines. It also presents certain sexual and spiritual phenomena that have a striking likeness to certain phenomena, especially wireless phenomena, to electricity and to radium. This human engine-battery is of unusual strength, durability and perfection; and yet it is very liable to damage and even wreckage, if not properly used. The controlling factors are very delicate and so the engine is very capricious. Very special training and understanding are necessary for its control.
The reader may wish to ask: What is the essence of the time-binding power of Man? Talk of essences is metaphysical—it is not scientific. Let me explain by an example.
What is electricity? The scientific answer is: electricity is that which exhibits such and such phenomena. Electricity means nothing but a certain group of phenomena called electric. We are studying electricity when we are studying those phenomena. Thus it is in physics—there is no talk of essences. So, too, in Human Engineering—we shall not talk of the essence of time-binding but only of the phenomena and the laws thereof. What has led to the development of electric appliances is knowledge of electrical phenomena—not metaphysical talk about the electrical essence. And what will lead to the science and art of Human Engineering is knowledge of time-binding phenomena—not vain babble about an essence of time-binding power. There is no mystery about the word time-binding. Some descriptive term was necessary to indicate that human capacity which discriminates human beings from animals and marks man as man. For that use—the appropriateness of the term time-binding becomes more and more manifest upon reflection. (pp. 72-77)

Note that all instances of capitalization and italics are from the original text.

Interesting to see the reference to the materialization of time-binding, in reference to human invention, innovation, and technology. This was an important point that unfortunately becomes overshadowed by the emphasis on scientific method and human engineering in Manhood of Humanity, and verbal/symbolic communication in Korzybski's later work on general semantics, but of course it was enough for him to deal with those topics. The comparison of the human being to a battery may put you in mind of the science fiction film, The Matrix, in which human beings actually were depicted as living batteries kept in a virtual coma by artificially intelligent machines. There is also a reversal here from the way that scholars of technology understand technology to be extensions of the biological and human, a kind of reverse engineering if you will. But there is also an understanding that the material technology (or biology) cannot be considered separately from the software, instructions, technique, operating system. The reference is not to the metaphysical, but the methodological, and metacommunicational, or put another way, the medium.

Here now is a kind of summary statement from Korzybski:

It is essential to keep in mind the nature of our enterprise as a whole, which is that of pointing the way to the science and art of Human Engineering and laying the foundations thereof; we have seen Human Engineering, when developed, is to be the science and art of so directing human energies and capacities as to make them contribute most effectively to the advancement of human welfare; we have seen that this science and art must have its basis in a true conception of human nature—a just conception of what Man really is and of his natural place in the complex of the world; we have seen that the ages-old and still current conceptions of man—zoological and mythological conceptions, according to which human beings are either animals or else hybrids of animals and gods—are mainly responsible for the dismal things in human history; we have seen that man, far from being an animal or a compound of natural and supernatural, is a perfectly natural being characterized by a certain capacity or power—the capacity or power to bind time; we have seen that humanity is, therefore, to be rightly conceived and scientifically defined as the time-binding class of life; we have seen that, therefore, the laws of time-binding energies and time-binding phenomena are the laws of human nature; we have seen that this conception of man—which must be the basic concept, the fundamental principle and the perpetual guide and regulator of Human Engineering—is bound to work a profound transformation in all our views on human affairs and, in particular, must radically alter the so-called social “sciences”—the life-regulating “sciences” of ethics, sociology, economics, politics and government—advancing them from their present estate of pseudo sciences to the level of genuine sciences and technologizing them for the effective service of mankind. I call them “life-regulating,” not because they play a more important part in human affairs than do the genuine sciences of mathematics, physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology, for they are not more important than these, but because they are, so to say, closer, more immediate and more obvious in their influence and effects. These life-regulating sciences are, of course, not independent; they depend ultimately upon the genuine sciences for much of their power and ought to go to them for light and guidance; but what I mean here by saying they are not independent is that they are dependent upon each other, interpenetrating and interlocking in innumerable ways. To show in detail how the so-called sciences will have to be transformed to make them accord with the right conception of man and qualify them for their proper business will eventually require a large volume or indeed volumes. (pp. 95-97)

But of course, Korzybski was also presenting a decidedly utopian vision of human beings and society governed by the rational, scientific principles of human engineering. In doing so, he took his place as part of a tradition that dates back to Plato's Republic, and includes Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels notorious Communist Manifesto, Edward Bellamy's science/speculative fiction novel, Looking Backward, and Thorsten Veblen's The Engineers and the Price System published in the same year as Manhood of Humanity, 1921. To be fair, Korzybski did not overtly forward a prescription for technocracy (see the interesting wikipedia article on the technocracy movement). In the same sense that we can substitute education for engineering, Korzybski's approach emphasized individual enlightenment rather than autocratic social control, which was why it wound up having a great deal of influence over the human potential movement, and various forms of psychotherapy.

We can also discern in Manhood of Humanity an implied theory of history, broken up into three stages of human development. The first stage could be referred to as pre-scientific, characteristic of all traditional societies, where time-binding exists, but progress is very slow. Korzybski has relatively little to say about this stage, as he was not an anthropologist or historian. Perhaps he might have referred to this as the infancy of humanity (which is not to say that I support such a characterization).

The second stage would be scientific, wherein the adoption of scientific method allows for rapid progress in specialized sectors such as applied science, technology and engineering, and in our knowledge of pure science and mathematics--but not in any other aspect of human affairs. This is what Korzybski means by the childhood of humanity.

The third stage, yet to come when Korzybski was writing this first book in 1921, and arguably still yet to come today, would be when all human life is informed by and governed by a scientific approach, human engineering as it were. I think we could refer to this period as post-scientific, not because science would be obsolete, but simply because it would become ubiquitous and environmental; this follows the same logic in which Fredric Jameson explains that the postmodern is considered the period following modernization, in which the process of modernization has been completed and is no longer an issue. This period would be the manhood of humanity, our mature phase, a stage he believed we were about to enter.

Now it's true that developmental models were all the rage in the early and mid 20th century, Toynbee's world history being a prime example, and that they have since been discredited--societies are not like organisms, evolution is not teleological, at least not from a scientific perspective. And even if we are not trying to be scientific in the sense that Korzybski advocated, I do think that our ideas have to be at the very least consistent with established scientific understandings of the world.

Be that as it may, models of historical and cultural change are not unfamiliar in other areas of the media ecology literature. For example, the pre-scientific period clearly connects to oral culture, while it is writing and especially printing that go hand in hand with the development of science. This development is especially well discussed and explained in physicist Robert K. Logan's book, The Alphabet Effect. Writing and printing are materializations of our time-binding capacity that change the very nature of time-binding itself, applying time-binding to time-binding in self-reflexive manner, another aspect of non-Aristotelian dynamics. The technologies of writing and printing give rise to other technologies and techniques, to applied science and pure science, and to the technique of scientific method, which further improves upon our capacity for time-binding.

So, the shift from pre-scientific to scientific societies follows the shift from orality to literacy, from oral culture to literate culture. And it also follows the shift from what Neil Postman in his book Technopoly referred to as tool-using cultures and technocratic cultures. Postman's taxonomy follows a common enough understanding about technological development, and his use of the term technocracy refers not so much to government by engineers (although it does coincide with the advent of social science, which was often used in the service of governmental bureaucracy), but to the advent of modern science, belief in progress, and emphasis on technological development that increasingly overshadowed all else, but remained confined within its specialized sector.

So what of the post-scientific society that Korzybski looked for? We might see in Postman's dystopic vision of technopoly, which he argued is already with us, the shadow, the dark side of Korzybski's vision, the society ruled by technology, where no sector is safe from the technological imperative, where it is all but impossible to say no to technology or imagine a value other than efficiency to invoke when deliberating and decision-making. Again this is the opposite of what Korzybski was anticipating, but they form a dialectic of sorts.

Postman's three cultures, tool-using, technocracy, and technopoly line us with the three main media environments often discussed in the media ecology literature, the oral, the literate and especially the print or typographic, and the electronic. I have discussed these correspondences elsewhere and won't go into them here.

But how interesting to consider McLuhan's vision of electronic interdependence, the global village, everyone involved in depth with each other, all in light of a post-scientific age. McLuhan wrote about a new ecological awareness that does not seem inconsistent with Korzybski's ideal of mature consciousness, nor does the related turn to relativism in the late 20th century. Yes, there seems to be a contradiction when McLuhan spoke of a return to the tribal, but on a global scale, but then again, Marx's view of a just and rational world was linked to a return to communal living, hence the term communism. The electronic age is characterized by both irrationality and hyperrationality. And the computer, the electronic medium par excellence, represents the triumph of a rational and mathematical approach to the world. Might it be that the computer represents the materialization of the third stage of time-binding? Just some speculation, mind you, but I do think there is an important connection between general semantics and digital technologies that has yet to be established.

Well, this post sure took a lot of time to put together, and there's still more to be said, which I'll save for next time...

Thoughts About Time-Binding 2

So, to pick up where I left off with Thoughts About Time-Binding 1, back in the old media ecology program at New York University, Neil Postman and Christine Nystrom used to place a great deal of emphasis on thinking about the kinds of questions we, as scholars, were asking, and a great deal of emphasis on asking good questions because, contrary to common belief, not every question is a good question. And this leads me to consider the questions that Korzybski seems to have been asking and trying to answer in Manhood of Humanity, which are in fact very good ones.

So, let's start with the big three, as represented by Cosmos, Bios, and Logos (remember these three musketeers from Thoughts About Time-Binding 1?). First, there is the question inherent in Cosmos, that is, what is the nature of the universe? This is the most fundamental question underlying Korzybski's project, and his answer is that the universe is basically a material reality, the kind of reality that is best understood by scientists. He rules out the spiritual, metaphysical, all that is not available for direct examination by the senses. And as an engineer, he is also grounded in pragmatics, the fact that science and technology works, their effectiveness and efficiency being the best indication of their validity. This fits in well with the North American intellectual tradition, and Korzybski is indeed a part of that tradition, no matter that he was a Polish immigrant to the United States.

Second is the question inherent in Bios, that is, what is the nature of life? Korzybski does not address this question directly, opting instead to provide his taxonomy of three classes of life, chemistry-binding plants, space-binding animals, and time-binding humans. At once it becomes clear that these categories do not actually cover all forms of life, even all forms that were known back in 1921 when Manhood of Humanity was published. But returning to the three classes corresponding to three dimensions, I would suggest that we can also look at this taxonomy as referring to three basic characteristics, or dimensions, of all life forms.

First, chemistry-binding corresponds to metabolism. All life forms must, in one way or another, bring in something from outside of itself, some form of matter and/or energy, which it then transforms, absorbing some into itself, and expelling the rest as waste. All forms of life partake in this function in one way or another, and plants have pushed forward in this dimension farther than any other form of life.

Second, space-binding corresponds to any kind of movement or growth, or simply any sort of reaction. All forms of life respond in some way to some kind of stimulus from their environment. Significantly, this is also the basic, behavioral definition of meaning--a response to a stimulus. When a one-celled organism moves towards a light source, that behavior is the meaning that the light-source has for the organism. When we get to animals with nervous systems, the stimulus causes nerve cells to activate, firing off signals, and that behavior is in one sense the meaning that the animal gives to the stimulus, but of course this can result on another level in another kind of behavior, like running away, which then is also a kind of meaning. And when the nerve cells are firing off, and the result is a different kind of behavior that we call "thought," that is the kind of meaning that most often comes to mind when we think about the meaning of "meaning," so to speak. Holding meaning aside, space-binding, as in movement through space, does strike me as very much in line with what we mean by "behavior" after all.

Third, time-binding corresponds to any kind of communication, any signal or message sent by an organism, and of course to the genetic code that serves as the organism's blueprint, and which is transmitted through reproduction. All forms of life send and receive information, and all forms of life replicate in some way--according to biologist Richard Dawkins, that is their primary function, organisms are just means or a medium by which genes engage in self-replication and reproduction, being fruitful and multiplying. Language and symbolic communication then are not something wholly other to the rest of biology, but part of a continuum and natural process of evolution. But what language and symbolic do afford us is an awareness of time that no other form of life seems to possess, and an ability to consciously control our process of sending and receiving information and knowledge over time.

Returning to our triad of Cosmos, Bios, and Logos, the third element brings to mind the question, what does it mean to be human? Korzybski rejects mythological and religious answers to that question, and also the reduction of humanity to animal status (and in that, as I noted in Thoughts About Time-Binding 1, I believe he draws too sharp a distinction and sets up too much of a binary opposition between animal and human, nature and culture as Claude Claude Lévi-Strauss would put it; I'm also not entirely willing to chuck the religious and spiritual dimensions of human life). This becomes his key question, as the title of his book, Manhood of Humanity, would suggest.

What does it mean to be human? Korzybski's answer is that human beings are the only species to truly operate in that third dimension of time, and in particular to accumulate knowledge over time, and thereby make significant progress from one generation to the next. This is what Sir Isaac Newton meant by his famous quote, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." And time-binding applies even to that quote, which is believed to have originated long before Newton's time, at least as far back as the 11th century, and probably even earlier.

And Korzybski doesn't go into this, but I would add that it does seem that human beings, through symbolic communication, develop a level of self-consciousness and time consciousness unprecedented in the animal kingdom. We can actively retrieve memories, imagine the future and plan for it, we maintain a sense of history that transcends personal experience, even if in oral cultures that history is in the form of a myth-narrative, and we become aware of our own mortality, the only organism with this awareness, which Ernest Becker maintains is so crushing to our self-esteem that one of the primary functions of culture is to compensate for it and help us to engage in the denial of death. Time-consciousness, and modern historical consciousness, is very much what led to Korzybski's own efforts to improve human behavior and thought. In this sense, I do think that there is an intrapersonal time-binding that relates to the time-binding of the species, that the two are not distinct, but rather interact.

So, what it means to be human is to be a time-binder, to become aware of our temporal environment, and interact with it in ways that no other form of life does, indeed to manipulate it, and perhaps even control some aspects of it. It is interesting also to connect all this to the term Logos. Korzybski identifies Logos with intelligence in the passage quoted in my last post, Thoughts About Time-Binding 1, and of course human intelligence is grounded in our capacity for symbolic communication, for language, for the word, which is what Logos means, word, speech, and of course logic and rationality. Although it is not apparent in Manhood of Humanity, Korzybski's concern with time-binding will naturally point him in the direction of understanding the medium of language.

So, even if you don't care for Korzybski and general semantics, or don't agree with the conclusions arrived at, there is much to be gained from going back to the original questions that Korzybski posed, seeing how he answered them, and answering them again for ourselves, in the context of our own time. This is a worthwhile exercise as well for those who are completely in agreement with Korzybski. To make an analogy with mathematics, it is not enough to get the right answers, you have to go through the process by which they were attained, understand that process, and make it your own.

There is much more to be said about time-binding, but for now I'm out of time...

Thoughts About Time-Binding 1

So, back in the merry merry month of May I posted a post about being appointed Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics, and promised to post more about general semantics soon, but never got around to it (although subsequent posts have touched upon the topic). So, now the time has come.

For starters, I thought I'd go over the first book published by the founder of general semantics, Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity (available for purchase through the Institute of General Semantics and by the way, do check out our newly revised website and discussion forums, if you haven't already). Originally published in 1921 by E. P. Dutton & Company, a second edition was put out by the Institute in 1950, the year that Korzybski passed away.

At the time that he wrote Manhood of Humanity, Korzybski had not yet developed what he described as the non-Aristotelian system of general semantics. But this book introduces the foundation of general semantics, Korzybski's notion of time-binding. The concept is well known to those well versed in general semantics, as Korzybski posits three classes of life, plants which are chemistry-binding (using photosynthesis to absorb energy from the sun), animals which are space-binding (able to move around freely through space), and human beings which are time-binding (able to retain and preserve knowledge over time and pass it down from one generation to the next).

Korzybski presents the three classes as three dimensions. Plants being chemistry-binders are one-dimensional, while animals are two-dimensional because they eat the plants (to this can be added the more recent understanding that animals also use the sun to manufacture vitamin D) thereby partaking of the benefits of chemistry-binding, while adding on the ability to engage in space-binding. And human beings, as a species, are three-dimensional because we are animals who also engage in time-binding.

Albert Einstein's influence is reflected here, as Korzybski is thinking about dimensions of space and time, and positing a general theory of time binding. He also draws on physics and his own background in engineering in referring to time-binding as a source of energy. Chemistry-binding obviously captures solar energy in the form of chemical energy, space-binding transforms it into kinetic and potential energy, and time-binding too is a source of energy. Here is quote to that effect from Appendix I of Manhood of Humanity, entitled "Mathematics and Time-Binding":

In this book a new and experimental fact has been disclosed and analysed. It is the fact that humanity is a time-binding class of life where the time-binding capacity or the time-binding ENERGY is the highest function of humanity, including all the so-called mental, spiritual, will, etc., powers. In using the words mental, spiritual, and will powers, I deliberately accept and use them in the popular, ordinary sense without further analysing them. (p. 211)

Korzybski goes on to touch upon different notions of time related to physics, biology, and mind:

Once the word and concept Time enters, the ground for analysis and reasoning at once becomes very slippery. Mathematicians, physicists, etc., may feel that the expression is just a “well adapted one,” and they may not be very much inclined to look closer into it or attentively to analyse it. Theologians and metaphysicians probably will speculate a great deal about it vaguely, with undefined terms and incoherent ideas with incoherent results; which will not lead us toward a scientific or true solution, but will keep us away from the discovery of truth.
In the meantime two facts remain facts: namely, mathematicians and physicists have almost all agreed with Minkowski “that space by itself and time by itself, are mere shadows, and only a kind of blend of the two exists in its own right.” The other fact—psychological fact—is that time exists psychologically by itself, undefined and not understood. One chief difficulty is always that humans have to sit in judgment upon their own case. The psychological time as such, is our own human time; scientific time as such, is also our own human time. Which one of them is the best concept—which one more nearly corresponds to the truth about “time”? What is time (if any) anyway? Until now we have gone from “Cosmos” to “Bios,” from “Bios” to “Logos,” now we are confronted with the fact that “Logos”—Intelligence—and Time-binding are dangerously near to akin to each other, or may be identical. Do we in this way approach or go back to “Cosmos”? Such are the crucial questions which arise out of this new concept of Man. One fact must be borne in mind, that “the principles of dynamics appeared first to us, as experimental truths; but we have been obliged to use them as definitions. It is by definition that force is equal to the product of mass by acceleration, or that action is equal to reaction.” (The Foundation of Science, by Henri Poincaré); and mathematics also has its whole foundation in a few axioms, “self evident,” but psychological facts. It must be noted that the time-binding energy—the higher or highest energies of man (one of its branches anyway, for sake of discrimination let us call it “M”) when it works properly, that is, mathematically, does not work psychologically but works ABSTRACTLY: the higher the abstraction the less there is of the psychological element and the more there is, so to say, of the pure, impersonal time-binding energy (M). The definition of a man as a time-binder—a definition based on facts—suggests many reflections. One of them is the possibility that one of the functions of the time-binding energy in its pure form, in the highest abstraction (M), works automatically—machine-like, as it were, shaping correctly the product of its activity, but whether truly is another matter. Mathematics does not presume that its conclusions are true, but it does assert that its conclusions are correct; that is the inestimable value of mathematics. This becomes a very comprehensive fact if we approach and analyse the mathematical processes as some branch (M) of the time-binding process, which they are; then this process at once becomes impersonal and cosmic, because of the time-binding involved in it, no matter what time is (if there is such a thing as time). (pp. 211-213)

An interesting passage, I particularly like his use of the triad of Cosmos, Bios, and Logos. But the bottom line is that time-binding is what makes us human, it is the essence of the distinctively human intelligence, according to Korzybski:

Keeping in mind both conceptions of time, the scientific time and the psychological time, we may see that the human capacity of “Time-binding” is a very practical one and that this time-binding faculty is a functional name and definition for what we broadly mean by human “intelligence”; which makes it obvious that time (in any understanding of the term) is somehow very closely related to intelligence—the mental and spiritual activities of man. All we know about “time” will explain to us a great deal about Man, and all we know about Man will explain to us a great deal about time, if we consider facts alone. (p. 217)

Korzybski would later identify our capacity for language and symbolic communication as the basis of our ability to bind time, and this also coincides with the anthropological view that it is culture that distinguishes our species from other forms of animal life. From a contemporary point of view, the distinctions he draws between animal and human beings are drawn too sharply, there is too much of a binary opposition between nature and culture in Korzybski's writings, but that was typical of his time, and the overall point that he is making about the human race remains true.

Put in more ecological terms, time is our environment, and our species has a unique ability to navigate and manipulate our temporal environment.

Well, that's good for a start, I'll write more on this topic another time...

Veep Mass Debaters

So, loathe as I am to talk much about politics, I did add a post last week regarding the first presidential debate, First Act of Public Mass Debate Shun, and I guess I'll put one up about this first, last, and only debate between Vice-Presidential candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.

But hey, I am going to make this easy on myself. You see, this time around, I actively interacted with the social media site Twitter, and sent tweets out over the course of the debate. I didn't bother using the secret sign of #vpdebate to tag my tweets--I really don't care after all, if my display of my own ignorance is picked up on anyone's search engine or not. If all this Twitter talk makes you feel like a twit, or worse, makes you think that I must be one, here's my first post about the service: All A Twitter.

But in case you are impatient, the tweets of Twitter amount to the blogger's equivalent of the sound bite, essentially a text message. And these were all texted through my cell phone, and boy is my thumb aching right now.

So, now, without further ado, here are my VP Debate 08 tweets:

Expectations for Palin are so low, she's almost certain to come out ahead

Biden is talking too fast with too much complexity. Palin is Reaganesque

Palin stumbling on climate change

At this point, someone in my network directed a tweet to me:

cscan @LanceStrate I knew Ronald Regan. Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. :-)

To which I responded:

@cscan People were looking for serious solutions to the oil crisis & foreign policy in 1980. Reagan promised them convincingly

And then another query:

danlatorre @LanceStrate But isn't Biden out friendly-ing on the smile count?

And my reply:

@danlatorre no, Biden's smiles are shortlived, Palin's are broad

And continuing on with a sarcastic comment that is the hallmark of frequent Twitterers:

Isn't anyone brave enough to support plural marriage?

In the meantime, a follow up to a previous exchange:

cscan @LanceStrate I knew Ronald Regan. Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. :-)

To which I rejoined:

@cscan no Palin's no Reagan, she blew the white flag quip. Biden blew his bridge to nowhere line. He's no Clinton.

Then back to irregularly scheduled commentary:

Palin says "nuclear" like Carter did LOL

Palin working on the Jewish vote. Biden countering.

At this point, I noted a tweet by @mattthomas that said:

Does Biden's tendency to repeat points (with emphasis) help or hurt him? I fear it makes him look condescending.

To which I responded:

@mattthomas it's not repeating points that hurts Biden, it's his tone and rate of speech

To which he responded:

mattthomas @LanceStrate Not to mention his impatient sighs. Sigh.

And then this:

Palin invoked special needs. Wish Biden had pointed out that special needs needs funding!

Say it ain't so, Joe :p

That was a line that Palin used, in case that's not clear. And my next tweet was a criticism aimed at the moderator, Gwen Ifill, who asked how the candidates would differ as VP from their respective President:

Stupid to ask a question no VP candidate would answer

And then these:

Palin counters experience deficit with identity. Could work.

Biden shows emotional vulnerability talking about his kid. Powerful.

Biden strong on McCain no maverick. Should've done that sooner

And next, a question from my man in Japan:

mikeplugh @lancestrate Who's playing to the medium better tonight?

My response being:

@mikeplugh Palin was more televisual, Reaganesque, but not outstanding. Biden was not likable, but not ineffective. Might give a little boost to McCain

After which, danlatorre added:

danlatorre @lancestrate Like Reagan, Palin's televisual "training" has paid off and remains an asset in this land of vacuous sensory overload.

And my conclusion:

Palin corrected her own image problem, but the economic situation still favors Obama

But wait! In going back over all this, I discovered that I missed a message during the debate:

danlatorre @LanceStrate Lakoff or Goffman; frames or nonverbal language; which counts more voter-wise in this VP debate event?

And so, I now offered the following response:

@danlatorre Missed your earlier tweet. On television, it's Goffman that counts, as per Josh Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place.

And then:

danlatorre @LanceStrate Not familiar w/ Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place, will check out. (Still want to meet up! Work still insane; but getting staff)

Now let me go and respond to this. Just wait here for a minute...

OK, I'm back, and here's my new tweet:

@danlatorre No Sense of Place is required reading for understanding electronic media environments. Understand about work, just let me know.

Hey, why stop here. Here's a recent follow up comment from @mikeplugh:

mikeplugh Hey fathers out there....Biden's emotional moment was our liberation. We love our children and worry about them, too. It's 2008. Show it.

So I'll respond with:

LanceStrate @mikeplugh That was the most interesting moment of the debate, but I thought Biden squelched the emotion too quickly.

And:

LanceStrate @mikeplugh But yes, a great moment for fatherhood!

Hey this is fun, and oh look, here's another nice tidbit from @mikeplugh:

mikeplugh CNN talks about Palin running in 2012. GOP pundits give her a real shot. I PRAY they run her against Obama. Please almighty God, please.

Let's see, what shall I say, hmm...

LanceStrate @mikeplugh Palin in 2012? I tell ya man, she's the next Reagan, which may mean she loses over and over again until say 2020 (my vision)

So, as you can see, you can get a full and complete account of the debate simply by monitoring Twitter alone, and of course monitoring my tweets in particular will provide you with a fair and accurate assessment, as I am only concerned with the aesthetic performance of the candidates in a "debate" that is in no real sense a debate, and will have very little if any impact on voters' decision making processes.

Or so a little birdie told me, tweet tweet!

Head First

So, I thought I was all done with Rosh Hashanah posts for 5769, but over on MySpace I reposted a poem from last year entitled Head First--that same poem was included in a post here on Blog Time Passing that I put up last year, From 9/11 to 5768. For that very reason, I didn't bother to include it with this years posts. But my MySpace friend Ami, who I mentioned at the end of my last post, Inscribed and Monitored, happens to be an artist, and very generously decided to turn my poem into a work of art, digitally speaking. And I, in turn, am very pleased to be able to share it with you. To get the full effect, or at least be able to read the words, you need to click on the picture, which will take you to a page where it appears in full size.

In this poem, I took a rather traditional theme/motif, the year and its seasons as a life cycle, and incorporated many of the Jewish holidays, in symbolic fashion. I also tried to work counter to the typical metaphor in which birth is linked to either the season of Spring (the rebirth of nature), or the Winter solstice (as the days start to get longer and longer, as in the Roman calendar's January 1st coming after the Christmas week). Thinking in terms of the Jewish calendar, it follows that birth would be associated with the end of Summer and the start of Fall, and death therefore would correspond to this transition period as well. This would make Winter the time when we come of age, Spring the season of mature adulthood, and Summer the time of old age. While this may seem counterintuitive, even to Jews who largely live by the Roman calendar, the Jewish cycle does correspond to the school year, which begins in September, usually ends in May or June, but can continue in Summer Session over June, July and August.

The title of the poem, Head First, of course is a reference to the name of the holiday, Rosh actually meaning head rather than new, so the literal translation of Rosh Hashanah is Head of the Year. And that in turn struck me as corresponding to the typical way in which we are born, and also the way we think of diving into anything.

My use of a feminine archetype is also a departure from the patriarchical character of Jewish tradition, but it is hardly unknown in Jewish mysticism (I studied a little Kabbalah when I was a teenager for my confirmation class, and this was long before it became a fad), in Chasidism which was mysticism for the masses, and in contemporary Reform Judaism. And it can be debated, but it is certainly arguable that Judaism has a powerful matriarchical bent to it.

Cycles are our natural experience of the world, perhaps not so much as a perfect circle as a spiral moving from past to future, but always swinging around and around. There is a kind of madness that we embraced in the West, especially since the advent of the printing press, in which we try to flatten everything out into a line, all straight lines and right angles, the mark of the machine! In this respect at least, the electrical circuit has had a positive effect in shocking us out of that obsession, and opening us up to the possibility of reclaiming the curvature of space and time! This poem is a celebration of the circles and cycles of life--L'Chaim!!!--and the illustration provided by Ami helps to accentuate that sensibility.

So, here it is:




I think this is absolutely gorgeous, and I want to say, again, thank you Ami.

Inscribed and Monitored

So, at Rosh Hashanah services this morning at Congregation Adas Emuno, I was particularly taken with the prayer called unetanah tokef (which means, "we shall ascribe holiness to this day," the first line of the prayer) . This is a religious poem that is only recited on the Jewish New Year and on Yom Kippur, and its origins are appropriately apocryphal--legend has it that it was composed in the 11th century by Rabbi Amon of Mainz, Germany (where four centuries later Johann Gutenberg would invent the printing press with movable type), although it probably was the product of Byzantine Jewish culture in the 8th or 9th century. The legend has it that Rabbi Amon was asked to renounce his faith, tortured, and before he died, was taken to his synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, whereupon he interrupted the regularly scheduled service, recited this poem, and died. He later appeared to one of his disciples in a dream, and asked that this prayer be recited each year.

The legend matches the apocalyptic theme of the prayer-poem--it's judgment day, after all, but in Jewish tradition that's an annual event, not something that comes just at the end of time. But it does share themes and motifs with Christian apocalyptic prayers, notably the Dies irae prayer of the requiem mass.

But that's not why I'm bringing it up here. What struck me about the prayer, today, was the way in which it described God as a writer, a scribe who painstakingly records all that occurs, and also as an accountant--it has been established for sometime now by archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat that the first writing system was developed by accountants in the ancient Sumerian palaces of Mesopotamia, and that numerals were among the first written characters (in systems such as cuneiform and hieroglyphics, as well as Chinese ideographic writing, each character stands for an entire words, in contrast to the alphabet).

I whispered the point about God being a scribe to a fellow member of the Adas Emuno Board of Trustees, Virginia Gitter, and she added, noting the references to seals, that God also seems to be a notary public. A joke of course, but a seal is the traditional means by which a written document would be validated, substituting for the author's actual presence (if he or she were there, you would know where the words came from for sure, or at least could ask). The signature became the more widely used and democratic substitute for the seal, a sign that seems to be becoming less and less significant now that we have moved from the print era (where handwriting represented the previous era) to an electronic era (where print represents the most recently passed period).

I think it altogether extraordinary to consider this concept of the divine, not as an animistic spirit or as Zeus hurling lightning down from the heavens, but as God the scribe, the author, creation being written, a work in progress that continues to this day. So, anyway, here's a translation of this prayer-poem that I got from MyJewishLearning.com that seems pretty good, although it's not exactly the same as the one we used in our prayerbook. I'll put in boldface all the writing metaphors I can identify, and related references to acoustic and mnemonic terms:

We shall ascribe holiness to this day.

For it is awesome and terrible.

Your kingship is exalted upon it.

Your throne is established in mercy.

You are enthroned upon it in truth.

In truth You are the judge,

The exhorter, the all‑knowing, the witness,

He who inscribes and seals,

Remembering all that is forgotten.

You open the book of remembrance

Which proclaims itself,

And the seal of each person is there.

The great shofar is sounded,

A still small voice is heard.

The angels are dismayed,

They are seized by fear and trembling

As they proclaim: Behold the Day of Judgment!

For all the hosts of heaven are brought for judgment.

They shall not be guiltless in Your eyes

And all creatures shall parade before You as a troop.

As a shepherd herds his flock,

Causing his sheep to pass beneath his staff,

So do You cause to pass, count, and record,

Visiting the souls of all living,

Decreeing the length of their days,

Inscribing their judgment.

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,

And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,

Who shall live and who shall die,

Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,

Who shall perish by water and who by fire,

Who by sword and who by wild beast,

Who by famine and who by thirst,

Who by earthquake and who by plague,

Who by strangulation and who by stoning,

Who shall have rest and who shall wander,

Who shall be at peace and who shall be pursued,

Who shall be at rest and who shall be tormented,

Who shall be exalted and who shall be brought low,

Who shall become rich and who shall be impoverished.

But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree.

By the way, the line about the "still small voice" is very evocative, as it refers to an inner voice, the conscience, perhaps thought itself as a still, clear voice, small but nonetheless heard, if we choose to listen.

The beauty of this prayer was obviously not lost on the Jewish-Canadian musician and poet Leonard Cohen, who based his song "Who By Fire" on it. There are several compelling versions available on YouTube, and here's one that only makes use of still images, but features a particularly lovely musical arrangement from a live performance:



And here are Cohen's lyrics:

And who by fire, who by water,
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
Who in your merry merry month of may,
Who by very slow decay,
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
And who by avalanche, who by powder,
Who for his greed, who for his hunger,
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
Who in solitude, who in this mirror,
Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
Who in mortal chains, who in power,
And who shall I say is calling?

So, returning to the original unetanah tokef prayer, what also strikes me about it is the very clear assertion that God is not only watching everything we do, but writing it all down. The parallel between this concept and the modern notion of surveillance, the panopticon, and Orwell's Big Brother, all functions of the secular State is quite interesting. But whereas the modern notion was of a loss and invasion of privacy, this medieval view comes without any real sense of privacy to begin with, privacy itself being a modern phenomenon. From a media ecology perspective, privacy develops within print culture as a consequence of widespread literacy, because reading and writing move us into an increasingly more isolated position, whereas speaking and listening are communal acts.

So, looking at it in media ecological terms, in oral cultures individuals would consider themselves to be always under observation, because all of nature is alive and imbued with spirit. Any given deity may or may not be paying attention at any given time, but it's a good bet that something supernatural has its eye on you. As we move from oral polytheism to literate monotheism, we have the one all-seeing God not only watching, but also recording everything you do. Then, in print culture we start to develop deistic notions of a God who sets things in motion and then walks away and doesn't pay much attention to what we do, coinciding with the advent of privacy. And as noted, the modern State moves in to fill the gap, or as they said on the classic British TV series The Prisoner, Be Seeing You!

And now we find ourselves moving into a time of widespread narcissism and exhibitionism, where we are training the video cameras on ourselves, revealing all in our blogs (yes I know, not all of us, but more and more we're moving that way, and more so with each generation). As the late Tony Schwartz put it, media have become the second god, and especially the internet, if the definition of a god might be something that is always watching you. And it may well be that privacy was the great anomaly, and we are by nature a species that craves attention, that wants to believe that someone is always fascinated with our every action, word uttered, and every thought that pops into our heads.

Well, ok, so much for philosphizing for tonight. So, how about I end with something for the kids? Here you go! This video was sent to me by my MySpace friend Ami:



And finally, may you all be inscribed and monitored in the Book of Life for another year, signed, sealed and delivered!

5769

So, it's Rosh Hashanah time again, so best wishes to all for a happy and healthy New Year on this, the birthday of the world, the original Earth Day!

Five thousand, seven hundred, and sixty-nine years, that is a very, very long time indeed. Tradition has it that the calendar goes back to the six days of creation, which is why Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world, and really the whole damn universe! And why shouldn't there be a birthday for the whole kit and kaboodle? Why not celebrate the anniversary of the big bang?!?! Although, admittedly, that sounds more like the moment of conception, rather than birth. But who wants to get into a debate about when life begins? We can at least all agree to abort that topic.

Historically speaking, though, 5,769 years ago, the systems of notation used to keep accounts, presumably including an accounting of time, were evolving and being developed into the first true form of writing. This was happening over in Mesopotamia, where our troops are today (may God watch over them and keep them safe, along with all others), on the part of the Sumerians, in places like the city-state of Ur. You know Ur, as in Ur-text, and as in the birthplace of Abraham, née Abram, ancestor of the Jews/Hebrews/Israelites, as well as the Arabs.

So, 5769 does represent the anniversary of the beginning of an accounting of time, the birth of a chronology that in turn gave rise to the first full sense of history, a written narrative of events occurring in linear order over time, as can be found in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. While certainly not a factually accurate accounting, this represents a marked departure from the mythic traditions of other peoples in the ancient world, most of whom had narrative without chronology, or in the case of the few cultures to utilize writing systems such as the Sumerians and Egyptians, had chronology that was not integrated with narrative. It is only with the advent of the semitic alphabet that sufficient carrying capacity in written form was achieved to allow for the creation, transmission, and preservation of the chronological narrative we call history.

Sarah Silverman's Great Schlep for Obama

So, this video is just too good to pass up. It's funny girl Sarah Silverman exhorting her fellow Jewish-Americans to get their grandparents in Florida to vote for Obama. A warning, though--this contains political content, expletives, and lots of Jewish humor!



The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

First Act of Public Mass Debate Shun

So, it was tempting to shun it, but I broke down and watched the debate, you know, on television, like most everyone else. My cell phone was going off like crazy with text messages from all the people I follow on Twitter, almost all of whom were rooting for Obama like he was their favorite sports team. No one seemed interested in an impartial examination of the issues, it was all about scoring points. No big surprise there. That's the sophisticated, media savvy view, after all. Very depressing.

My former MA student Mike Plugh, an ardent Obama supporter, posted a thoughtful, albeit one-sided blog: What Wins a Debate. My friend and colleague Paul Levinson, who also has been cheering rather loudly for Obama posted a similar kind of assessment: Both Candidates Speak Well, But Obama Looks More Presidential in 1st Debate. But it's an old, old commonplace that viewers committed to a candidate will typically perceive that their candidate won the debate.

Loathe as I am to lower myself to the level of political analyst, I think I will say some things here because I'm not sure anyone else is saying them. I don't have a candidate myself, so I do think this is an impartial assessment. And what I have to say has nothing to do with issues or positions, just how well they did as actors in front of a camera in the Greatest Quiz Show Ever Told. And I don't think it's going to make much difference who's elected, and this was reinforced by the general lack of disagreement between the two candidates on many issues, the biggest argument being on budget and taxes that amount to the tinniest percentage of things, and over whether it was a good or bad decision to go into Iraq, which cannot be proven either way and is a moot point in any event.

So, on to the handicapped horse race.

First, and most importantly, the outcome of this debate was pretty much a draw. No one screwed up in any major way, there were no really dramatic moments, the debate was substantive and a bit dull, and I don't think that anyone who is undecided will have been moved to one side or another by what they saw in the first debate. Not much entertainment value, I bet lots of folks changed the channel after half an hour or so. This was the most even-handed debate since George H. W. Bush squared off against Mike Dukakis. So, I expect that the polls will show that the debate had little or not impact on people's voting decisions at this point.

Overall, I think McCain won on the nonverbal cues. He looked good, mostly relaxed, did not overheat, employed a conversational style reminiscent of Ronald Reagan, but also was assertive and authoritative, establishing dominance for most of the debate. Next to him, Obama looked like the smart kid who knows a lot, but thinks he knows everything, while McCain looked like the firm and confident adult, perhaps a bit of a strict disciplinarian. This was especially the case when the debate shifted from the economy to foreign policy about forty minutes into it. Of course, quite a few viewers may have changed the channel by then, negating McCain's advantage.

I think that many people who did not follow the Democratic primaries would expect Obama to be highly charismatic in the debates, based on his reputation, and they would have been disappointed with his style, which was relatively unemotional, at times wonkish. He's no grat communicator (you remember, that's what they called Reagan, who was not all that good at making speeches like Obama is, but was brilliant on camera).

On the other hand, Obama did hold his own, and as the less experienced, and more exotic of the two candidates, this helps him look acceptable as an alternative to McCain, and as someone who could indeed be president. In other words, the two candidates came across as relative equals in their presentation of self, and this could only help Obama overcome the resistance to his candidacy from voters who would be otherwise sympathetic to the kind of candidacy he represents.

So, my assessment is that overall McCain did a little better, offset by the fact that Obama held his own as the new kid on the block. The outcome: even-steven!

Respect!

I think this video says it all!

What Makes a Poet

So, last week was my birthday, and the less said about that the better, if you know what I mean. But I do want to use this blog post to say thank you to one of my MySpace friends, Simon Philbrook, who has taken a leadership role in the MySpace poetry community. Si posted a wonderful bit of poetry last week under the heading What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance), and I want to share it with you dear reader (whoever the one person reading this blog may be), and enter it into the permanent record that is this blog, however permanently ephemeral it all may be. And in case you missed it, I did make that title, What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance), a hot link, so you can click on it and go to the poem, and there I did it again. And now I'll do it one more time: What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) . Hey, you can't do it too many times, or at least I can't. What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance) What makes a poet? (a birthday poem for Lance)

There, you see!

So, who is this Simon person you well may ask, or as he is known around MySpace, circles, "Si" (may not be his real name, how the hell should I know???)???

Well, here's what he looks like:







Si is from Brighton, which is some sort of place in jolly old England. I don't know much about it, but I got this from the wikipedia entry:

In the Domesday Book, Brighton was called Bristelmestune and a rent of 4,000 herring was established. In June 1514 Brighthelmstone was burnt to the ground by French raiders during a war between England and France.

This sounds about right to me, but I think there's also something more in there, something about a beach, which perhaps is apparent from a couple of those photographs. Or is it that Brighton Beach place in Brooklyn or Russia or something? Or was that the place in The Who's Quadrophenia? Wherever it might be hiding, it shouldn't be too hard to find it, what with the 4,000 herring and all.

In any event, you can take a look at Si's MySpace profile and figure it all out for yourself, just click here:

Si

And in all seriousness, Si is an outstanding poet, and you can read his work for yourself on his blog, just click here:

Si's Blog

And that about wraps it up, except for, er, well, one more time:

What makes a poet?
(a birthday poem for Lance)

Oh, and one more time, thank you Si, my friend, thank you!

More-On Politics

So, I want to share with you a YouTube video that my friend Andrew Postman put together just recently. It's about politics, and the presidential election campaign, and I suppose I should note that I made my feelings known in a post this past February, Political Ponderings, and I don't think I need to trouble you with them again.

Andy's video is clever and well done, and expresses a sense of disillusionment with McCain, describing it as, "the story of what can happen to a man." On the Media Ecology Association listserv, Andy wrote the following:

While I honestly respect opinions on both sides of the political divide, certain behavior in the last couple of weeks finally moved me to action. Over the weekend, I taught myself iMovie and made this movie, which is now on YouTube (link below). It will take under four minutes to watch. If you think the video is of use to pass along to others or post somewhere, please do. If not, not. I realize there are people out there who will disagree with my conclusion. I respect that.

Either way, thanks for watching. I appreciate it.

Note that this does not necessarily translate into an endorsement of Obama, as it is just as easy to say, a pox on both their houses!

And now this:



And hey, please go ahead and watch it over on YouTube, leave comments for Andy, and pass the URL on to others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlU92rN5fPc


And now for something maybe just a little different, here's a poem about politics, sort of, that I wrote in the summer of 2007. For those of you who like puzzles and puns, this could keep you busy for a little while.

Ship of Fools

the ship of state shape shifts
O shun navigation old son
the cybernetic government drifts
steering by the bull horns hun

head for safe harbor day of treason day for rest
Jack Druid's lumbering about too much to drink
what err what err everywhere dropped bawl to digest
shipwrights play their part for the prince blue plan ink

to build a vessel titanic that God could never swallow
a wailing walrus of a schooner Joe knock on wood
a major league mass hull it has Moe bedecked and all hollow
even armored call it fish mail Levi-Ethan would call it good

be he moth or be he mammoth Wally the point is she be large
the harsh ebb lows the tide in time pin oak key on the nose
pin tales on donkey Otie of nights in a shining barge
crew sadists accrue Jay on emission arose is justice Rose

set sail on disk count leave it up to freight
red tag by morning cod dish for breakfast all's ship shape
load mess cargo at a snail's pace food courts judge peaces of fate
eight royals make Spanish dough Lars be calm they risk no escape

pump galleons of guess Seline riddle me this
empty tanks giving Turkey stuffing abets money on the foe
oil czar dean of an urge Genie us don't you miss
O zone me for sun block aS UV radiates shun the embargo

shipping over seize the smug glares wearing shades in cages
contra band plays merry Archie soused of the bored doorway
him my grey shun ill eagles be low my numb mom wages
good defenses make good neigh boars horse O they say

so fools pita head Hank course away now
mock twain and beyond Gordi in knots don't hold back
row them and down boys bloat and mend the bow
ready the canon Madamme the torpedoes and attack

can we win can bling can eggnog turn the tide?
dip low ma see gumbo tsunami might work
freed traitors flooding marked cats kept tenses let it ride
unlucky role played bad break levitax newer liens done Kirk

Noah government is an ark key too much is a tear Annie
candied dates good at tacking each other as the wind blows
Mister Christian leads a mute tinny band out of tuna uncanny
playing Nero My Cod Toothy on fire roaming he goes

So we sail the seven seas of Sir Cum's ask-tell navy gay shun
1. Poli Sea: home to many herded hydra Deb baiting amongst themselves
2. Embass Sea: foreign so very rainy terror Tory's station
3. Legitima Sea: bases of author eddies prose and consent aligning the shelves

4. A B Sea: alfalfa bit soup the shoals call it Litera Sea
5. Priva Sea: in excess a bull and dream moat body heat-vaporating
6. Intima Sea: aka Six Sea, beware imp each man takes in turns liberty
7. Luna Sea: sailing by moon is shunned Armstrong race dictating

but ship of fuels spills its guts slick move Gil again
skip her two million errors his wife move he starboard
hollow wood out cries fund razors save the sea quell number ten
clean nuptials? I'll ask her pipe line laid for safe's ex harbored

famous Al G. an inconvenient bore at cause a kiss Stan
speaks truth about Emir Ricka a star is burn and bright
O beast O very weighty neigh shun great is thy span
sea to shiny C note glow bell worming at kin's diet light

so dive dive dive you boat Ben ether sea
twenty Thou sand leaks voyeur urge to the bottom of it all
form a sub come Mitty sin a Tory Al cast broadly on TV
parties sects you all congress is always greener on the mall

investdignation time a point asp ash hull persecutor
have herrings Cherry have testes moaning call witless to the stand
bring on the supreme courtesans come missionaries program the supercomputer
right it wrong Cap size it super a report in every storm we planned

so chase 'em and the arkonauts a quest shunt not aside
task Andy shall Reese even odds ask aweigh ye journey lists
press on peep holes write to no drink deep the mead Tia confide
foist amen damn meant no secretions Papa rot seamen get the jists

so answer now and swear not total that Ruth and no think butt
who takes the rap in syncs ships? loose slips of girls bad luck for sale hearse?
Did DOS boot error sport holes in the SS Lose-It-Potamia, bag dad it all, Jabba Hut?
Was it pie rates of the carob bean theEMParks emptying their purse?

was it Bermuda shorts triangles of flesh and fabric crew's ships all poise and food?
was it Po' sidin' aluminated sub fang erred three hole pointure wounds made?
try dent and scrape and airing out the contracted hull Burton but good?
did inept tunes in the keys of seas shake rattle and roll over bait oven's arcade?

or was it an iceberg let us pray in man tis folly to trust?
not burg but 'burb sub urban subversion of the engine's viscosity core?
neither burb nor burg but ball of ice at high velikovicity thrust
comet strikes coral reefer causing SS Tyrannosaurus wrecks and this means war

and can you tell a port from harbor can you tell a port away?
can you be me up Scott free enter pries my cold gun from me?
do we fish and see experts see beyond the prescient day?
can you give 'em healthcare Harry or make rudder Kennedy?

a drowning man knows nothing of the waters that engulf him
gone overboard and in too deep he cannot find his way
clinging to life rafter death to gather sticks for ferries we swim
and we fools all build our ship of state to float just one more day

Blasphemy or Blasfunny?

One of my MySpace friends, Misha, posted this on her blog, and I thought it was pretty damn, oops I mean darn, funny. It does make fun of a kind of Christian conservative mentality, and so is potentially offensive, but it clearly is not a critique of evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity, but rather of some of the popular culture manifestations of what Stephen Prothero refers to as the American Jesus. Of course, I leave the final judgment up to you, and merely provide the service of bringing this new development to your attention.







In an unrelated development, I learned from someone on Twitter that filmmaker Kevin Smith is making a new movie entitle Red State, a horror movie due out next year. You can read all about it on wikipedia. Kevin Smith is best know for his depictions of New Jersey, which is where I live, and for the most part a blue state. So we have red for blood, blue for bruises, and white for I've had enough already, make it stop, I surrender!

9/11

As a tribute and memorial, I thought I would post here two poems I've posted on my MySpace poetry blog on this theme.

long, long time

rubble, rubble
toil and trouble
jet engines scream
buildings crumble
fire burns

ashes upon ashes
dust upon dust
fire burns

shock and stumble
fire burns

autumn leaves fall
falling
falling
fire burns
fire burns
fire burns

swing me low
sweet cherry
it has been a long, long time since I been home

swing me low
sweet cherry
it has been a long, long time since I been home

what followed

following the shock and the panic
the desperate race to collect the children
and huddle together in what once was
the safety of the home
the black curtain of smoke
rising in the distance
the horror replaying replaying replaying on TV
(but cable only, the networks knocked off the air)

following the exodus, stuck in traffic
the tiny sliver of an island sealed off
like some bad sci fi movie

following the chaos and the confusion
the mad rush to the supermarket
the cries of disbelief and anger
the first of many tears

following the day of madness

came a long moment of silence
a time of stillness
a quiet never known before
in the city of cities
no cars on the road
no planes overhead
no people rushing to work, or play
the ever-present buzz was gone
the white noise replaced by black silence

and all that could be heard
was a whispered accounting:

one brother
one husband
one son

Aftermath.

PowerPoint, What's the Point?

So, people always ask me about PowerPoint presentations.

Well, no, no one asks me about PowerPoint presentations, actually, and maybe that's the point.

But maybe if they did ask me about PowerPoint presentations, I'd answer by saying, what's the point? What's the point of PowerPoint, on the one hand, and what's the point about complaining on the other, as in point of fact, I am powerless to do anything about their proliferation.

Sorry.

The point I am trying to make is that, despite the popularity of PowerPoint, many of the people I come in contact with have a powerful distaste for the medium. Some despise it, while other more moderate individuals only hold it up to ridicule.

Many of us who studied with Neil Postman recall his advice, when it comes to public speaking, never to use visual aids. Apart from the problems that often come up when some sort of technology is being used--you know, just getting it to work right--Neil felt that visual aids only serve as distractions, and that our emphasis should be on the spoken word. It is certainly true that, given a limited amount of time available to prepare a presentation, time spent on visuals will take away from time spent on writing, refining, and rehearsing the speech, which is why I tend to avoid visual aids myself.

But of course it could be argued that PowerPoint has only taken the place of older forms of lecture support such as slides and overhead projectors, and this is true enough. Still, the problem brought on by this new technology has something to do with the fact that it has become so much easier to prepare really snazzy, professional-looking visual aids via PowerPoint than it was before, so that instead of becoming an afterthought, visual aids threaten to become the main event.

Certainly, in public speaking classes in the past, instructors would indicate whether use of visual aids would be forbidden or optional for a given assignment--almost never were they required. But nowadays it is not at all unusual to find a course devoted specifically to making PowerPoint presentations, that is, preparing the PowerPoint itself, and giving your presentation with the aid of PowerPoint, or with PowerPoint being the main point.

Of course, the use of PowerPoint as a crutch is entirely understandable, when you consider that individuals tend to name public speaking as their greatest fear, death coming in a distant second.

To be fair, PowerPoint can be useful when dealing with a speaker who is difficult to understand, say because of a heavy accent, or when speaking to people who have a hard time understanding you, say to folks who are less than completely fluent in English. And of course it makes perfect sense when you need to make reference to images, for example, in a lecture about painting or architecture. From a media ecology perspective, it makes sense to allow for appropriate use of a technology, as well as arguing against inappropriate use.

But otherwise, PowerPoint seems to feed into the worst tendencies of the abstract visualism that came in with the printing press, and the more recent rise of image culture, and it seems to go hand in hand with the decline of eloquence that we have been experiencing over the past century. Perhaps nothing makes the point more powerfully than The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.

And then there's this comedy video that Gregory Reynolds recently shared with the Media Ecology Association listserv:




And if you're interested in a more serious assessment, I do recommend Edward Tufte's essay, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, which can be downloaded as a PDF file for seven samolians (that's US dollars, for those of you who unfamiliar with the old school slang). Tufte is our leading voice arguing for appropriate use of visual aids, diagrams, graphs, tables, and illustrations. A sample from the essay is available free of charge: PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports. Although it is probably impossible to say for sure, we have the argument that the space shuttle Columbia disaster may have something to do with oversimplification due to PowerPoint, and a similar argument has been made in reference to decisions made concerning our occupation of Iraq.

To invoke general semantics, the problem with PowerPoint is that it tends to be used to increase our level of abstracting. Just as the map is not the territory, and can never represent the entire territory, we might also say that

• Bullet points are not the presentation.
• Bullet points are only part of the presentation.
• Bullet points do not provide all of the reasoning and evidence being presented.
• Bullet points are oversimplifications.
• Bullet points are annoying.

That last bit is not so much general semantics or media ecology, but if you get my point, well, then more power to ya!

The Tenth Anniversary of the Media Ecology Association

So, today, September 4th, is the Tenth Anniversary of the founding of the MEDIA ECOLOGY ASSOCIATION. Ten years ago, Thom Gencarelli and Casey Man Kong Lum came to the Bronx to meet with Susan B. Barnes, who was on the faculty at Fordham University back then, and me, at our offices in Fordham University's Rose Hill campus, in Faculty Memorial Hall, which is technically off-campus, on Belmont Avenue--it's the same avenue that gave rise to Dion and the Belmonts, as in Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love:



But that is besides the point, which is that the four of us planned to meet the evening of September 4th, 1998, in our Department of Communication and Media Studies conference room (Room 433). As luck would have it, Paul Levinson, then a visiting faculty member, was hanging around, so we invited him to join us at our meeting, and the five of us talked it over and voted to form the Media Ecology Association. We decided that Sue Barnes would be the first Executive Secretary, Thom Gencarelli the first Treasurer, Casey Lum the first Vice-President, and I was given the honor of being the first president. I've continued in that office for the past ten years, and will finally be stepping down when my term ends in January.

It's been an amazing ten years, and creating and building the MEA has been a real labor of love. We've come a long way over the past decade, and I think we're all pretty proud of it. Because a Thursday night at the beginning of the school year is not exactly optimal for getting people together, we'll be celebrating with a small group going out to dinner. You can read about our Fifth Anniversary event, which was very special, and view the amazing video that was produced for that occasion, by going to one of my older blog entries: And Now This...

But for now, I have to get going or they'll be calling me late for dinner, so let me just end with...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MEA!!!

Sign of the Times?

I was very taken with the short film, Historia de un Letrero, a Mexican production whose title is translated as Story of a Sign. It is a charming parable with religious overtones, or would that be undertones? In any event, this comes across as a fable with a moral about the power of words, and how changing the wording of a sign changes the reactions and responses of those who read it. It therefore serves as a nice little vignette for making a point about language, communication, persuasion, and both general semantics and semantics in general.

The religious sensibility has something to do with this being a "Latin" film, I imagine, and the young man in the film who comes to the aid of the blind beggar could be interpreted as a Jesus-like figure (and isn't Jesus typically depicted as an Italian, visually, as opposed to a Jew, owing to the long Italian tradition of religious art? (of course, in American television and film, there is a longstanding tradition of using Italian and Jewish actors interchangeably to portray Italian and Jewish characters, both having that Mediterranean quality and communicating ethnicity in contrast to the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant types)). As a savior-figure, the young man seems to provide a variation on the old saw about giving a man a fish and feeding him for a day while teaching a man to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Certainly, the blind beggar seems to treat him like some kind of messiah.

This film is not without its controversy, however, and I will admit to feeling less than comfortable with the portrayals, and some of the folks on the media ecology listserv took great offense with what they felt was a patronizing attitude on the part of the filmmakers towards the poor and the disabled. No doubt, some of the anger this film generated was due to the yuppie-like appearance of the savior, seeing him as a smug professional PR or ad exec type who did nothing significant to change the blind beggar's circumstances, and did not even donate his own money to the unfortunate man.

While I leave you to draw your own conclusions (and how interesting it is that this film leads to such disparate interpretations) I would point out that if we accept the critical view of the film, it uses images and narrative to manipulate the audience, just as the blind beggar's sign is about using word choice to influence the passersby reading it. In other words, on two different levels this film is about the same thing, the use of communication techniques, symbols, and media to achieve effects, specifically to influence and manipulate individuals.

Anyway, the film is described simply with the following: "Sometimes all it takes is a stroke of a pen. A beautiful film by Alonso Alvarez." And here it is: