Voting Technology as Magic (or not)
Grok Headline matches for Voting Technology as Magic (or not)
Thoughts on magic, religion, metaphors
and technology...
Thoughts on magic, religion, metaphors
and technology...
04/18/2004 06:51 PMSo this is one of those posts that nothing good can come from. This
is because it's one of those posts that is inspired by something so
profoundly clumsy and grotesquely insensitive that I stumbled upon
elsewhere that I'm almost loathe to link to the original source. And
I'm going to make it worse, I fear, because in order to get some kind
of interesting aesthetic resonances I'm going to smash it together
with a bit of horrific ethnic sterotyping, cod technology
might-be-April-Fools technocrap and some wodges of clumsy
Occidentalism. Nothing good can come from such clumsiness, and I want
to start off saying before I go any further that I'm a bit ill and
that the sheer depths of my ignorance on almost every aspect of what
follows should not be underestimated. This is an extended riff around
a theme. No more.
Basically the whole thing starts and ends with an extremely dodgy
thread on Barbelith - more
specifically a thread in the Temple section of the
board. This section has the honour of being essentially the best board
on the internet about Chaos Magick, paganism and alternative
spiritualities. This is in itself a pretty good thing. On the other
hand, it's also a bit of a ghetto that doesn't mix that well with the
rest of the community. I find it even more problematic because for the
most part I don't believe in any of it. I'm basically interested in
Magickal practice only in as much as I'm interested in how models of
said practice that concentrate on language and sigils tend to
intersect with structuralist and post-structuralist thought on
language as a conceptual binding agent for the modernist universe. At
which point, of course, I should shut up before I sound like a
complete twat.
Anyway - back to the questionable thread in question, which has
been posted by one of the fun new guys who have been turning up on the
site pretty regularly since we opened up the site to Google spidering. The thread is
called - rather depressingly - Al queda wizards and
is, essentially, about whether Al Qaeda used practicing magicians in
order to influence the success of their attacks on the States and
across the world. Let me say straight off that it is, in my opinion, a
pretty dumb insensitive thread written by a pretty dumb insensitive
person. And yet the thread has tweaked my interest because of another
post which reads as follows:
"But djinn and efreeti on the battlefield would be so
cool, especially if they went up against the robot tanks and
battlesuits that are in development."
Which got me thinking about technology and the way we use it to
make the dreamed-of real. Because whether or not we're at such a place
where technologies are able to meet the fantasy desires of human
beings - and whether or not those dreams would inevitably have to come
with deep-seated provisos and qualifiers and restrictions - it's
pretty clear that these fantasies and beliefs and aspirations and
desires are starting to be made real. Moreover it's
increasingly clear that our aspiration is to do this - that technology
is moving more and more towards the attempt to fulfil things that have
been human fantasies for hundreds or thousands of years.
Let's start with some simple examples - which fantasies have we
seen become technologised and then become commonplace? A few hundred
years ago, it was the magical objects that were the focus of our
aspirational children's fantasies - fairy stories of enchanted carpets
that could whisk you anywhere you wanted, cave-doors that would only
open if you knew the correct passwords, magical talking beasts that
could aid you in your quests, objects that responded to your whim in
some way from a distance. And these objects gradually become
technologised in our myth-making as they become increasingly close to
plausible. The talking horses and magic carpets became the talking
cars full of gadgets, the magic carpets secret military helicopters
hidden in atolls. The man who could call down the power of the sun
became the man with the orbiting satellite. And then the cars in
real-life got GPS and computer controlled suspension and cruise
controls and the televisions started keeping programmes for you that
you liked and the houses started turning the lights on when you got
home or responding to your voice-print. Magic became aspirational
fantasy technology became real-life technology. And it'll keep
happening. It's not that any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic - it's that the aimof all
technological advancement is to aspire towards the appearance of
magic.
Some fantasies were born from a scientific mindset - a modernist
frame of being - but had no relationship to science itself. Many of
these were fantasies of aspirational human powers - extensions and
enhancements of the self that are best exemplified by super-heros and
comic books. These characters - given their gifts by collisions of
lightning and mysterious chemicals or by the rays of strange exotic
suns - might as well have been purely mystical in origin for all their
relationship to any laws of thermodynamics that I'm familiar with. But
that too started to change. A few decades ago a fresh pass of the
fantasy crystals of TV-land created the six-million dollar man. And
technologists started to try and buildworkable jet-packs. Our
sensibilities with regard to fantasy started to change and our
super-heroic figures started blurring more in with the realms and
limits of technological possibility. And now our soldiers are wearing
nanofibre weaves that make them nigh-on indestructible and have
extended senses that make normal humans look comparatively useless.
Binoculars become smart-glasses, clothing becomes exo-skeletal or
supportive and people keep working on the jet-pack every few decades.
And why? Because fundamentally people want to fly like the birds
fly and they'll keep dreaming about it until someone has made it
real - however long it takes.
And while the extreme ends of super-heroics are visible on the
horizon, even now we can see traces of the future possibilities of
implants and genetic development in the cyborgised grannies with
hi-tech hips and knees. The next few hundred years will see the
development of human beings in directions that will astonish us.
Any sufficiently advanced (and rich) human being will be
indistiguishable from a super-hero (or a super-villain - but more
on that later).
Which brings me to the religious and mystical aspirations like the
idea of djinn and efreeti on the battlefield. Fundamental dreams and
concepts that have lived in the narratives of cultures for millennia.
And immediately I'm drawn to attempts to bring about religious events
with technology that I've read about in Wired. Unfortunately I read it
in an April (Fools?) issue of Wired so I don't know if I believe it or
not (I'm thinking not), but the story remains online and it's scary
and plausible enough to support the weight of my flimsy argument even
if it's not true: How a hologram, a blimp and a massively multiplayer game
could bring about the end of the world. The article suggests that
a prophecy says that a temple made of light will descend onto the
site of Solomon's temple in Jerusalem - and some rather nutty
technologists are proposing to make it happen with mist, some
holograms and a convenient blimp. Apparently, there's no collision
with what is understood by the religions in question (Judaism and
fundamentalist Christianity) except that a lamb must be sacrificed
onto the altar and they're wondering how its blood could be spilt on
something with no physical substance. Prophecy is a different thing to
fantasy, and this story may be total bunk, but the promise remains -
could technology be used to satisfy another few aspirational desires
in ways that - to all outsiders - would look like magic...
So what about djinn and efreeti on the battlefield? Will they be
battling robots? Well, we already have concepts of smart
dust, and self-organising swarms and
motes. We already have illustrative science
fiction concepts that place distributed technologies in the Middle
East. Who's to say that resurgent interest in technology combined with
non-Christian value systems might not generate technologies that are
built around radically non-Western metaphor sets or aspirations? Who's
to say that cultures that are based around the ultimate stability of
the nation-state might not concentrate on representations of the
enhanced body politic, the ultimate Westerner/Viking/ThunderGods,
while cultures who have a different relationship to statehood, a
different relationship to land and a different land to have a
relationship with (or who are concentrated around religious
identities, or in extreme cases have an understand of warfare at the
cellular guerilla level, or have a more nomadic heritage - but
generally just have a radically different set of metaphors and
aspirations to cast into matter in the heat of technology) might view
their goal to make the very land itself swarm up and fight back - to
make the powerful spirits of their traditions emerge from narrative
and into reality.
The world of the future, then, is full of the products of our
fantasies but is it a better place? As ever it's impossible to say.
The story of the human race is no different from that of most other
creatures - there's always a tension between what's good for the
individual and what good for the collective or the environment or
ecosystem within which they operate. And fantasy is a singular thing,
the product of one mind wanting to put itself in the centre of an
idealised future. But not everyone can be in the centre and so as
individuals get catered for more and more, there's ever more reason
for people to ignore the collective and concentrate on their own gain.
Arguing that the future is full of dreams fulfilled doesn't make it
necessarily Utopian - it simply means that individuals are able to
experience things they've only dreamed of before. Whether the indirect
consequence of this is that they're also forced to experience a
degradation in society and the environment that they've only dreamed
of before is unclear. Most likely balances will be struck, equilibria
found, and fantasy will move on through to the creation of more
authentic experiences, new and more vigorous attempts to become the
individual godheads we all secretly crave to be (in one field or
another). And only the variety of cultural backgrounds that we have
around us can hope to provide us with enough metaphor sets to provide
us with enough new avenues for discovery to last us in the longer
term. The future we're looking towards may be one where memetic
biodiversity is severely threatened as all our dreams come true.
Addendum: Think of this as the product of an unsound
metabolism and don't take it too seriously. The satisfaction I'm
getting from such a large mind-dump is enormous, but don't take that
as sufficient reason to believe that anything within it is even
slightly plausible. It might get edited for sense over the next couple
of days as I try to find out what it's supposed to be about.
Read the
comments
Popularity of using "in five years" to
predict near-magic technology
Popularity of using "in five years" to
predict near-magic technology
04/11/2005 05:12 PMMark Frauenfelder:
sebb says: "Why is this story not the biggest story in the media right
now??!!?? (
Cure
for Cancer Within Five Years) Surely the best news of the
millenium so far. A cure for cancer! all cancer! Posted as a side
article on bbc news april 8th.
Whenever I read an article about a cure for peanut allergies (my
daughter has a life threatening nut allergy), the articles always
quote some researcher as saying it'll happen "in five years."
Curious about the popularity of "in five years," I googled the
following terms:
"in two years" -- 1,320,000 results
"in five years" -- 1,420,000
"in ten years" -- 584,000
"in fifteen years" -- 59,000
"in twenty years" -- 176,000
"in fifty years" -- 74,300
"in a hundred years" -- 77,500
"in a thousand years" -- 56,300
"in ten thousand years" -- 3,370 (first hit is Cory!)
"in a hundred thousand years" -- 828
"in a million years" -- 202,000
"in a billion years" -- 5,410
"in a trillion years" -- 933
"in a quadrillion years" -- 51
"in a googol years" -- 38
"in a googolplex years" -- 2
"never" -- 296,000,000
"Never" wins by a huge margin, but "in five years" comes in second.
Magic Carpet Has Arrived - New Phase in
Game Accessory Technology
Magic Carpet Has Arrived - New Phase in
Game Accessory Technology
06/07/2004 02:37 AMThe Magic Carpet series will be the leading pad in the high-speed game
market. Just as the racing wheel swept the game accessory market in
record time, the Magic Carpet is poised to replace the current
fighting game accessory technology. [PRWEB Jun 7, 2004]
Election Managers Preview Internet
Voting Technology
Election Managers Preview Internet
Voting Technology
07/17/2004 02:52 AMUS & Aussie Firms Team For The Future of Public Sector Balloting
[PRWEB Jul 17, 2004]
Magic Project, the true Magic playing
Magic Project, the true Magic playing
11/11/2003 06:54 PMMagicProject 0.3 released !
Voting Machine Companies Make Political
Contributions to Both Democrats and
Republicans - New Report Traces Campaign
Contributions of Companies that Produce
E-Voting Machines
Voting Machine Companies Make Political
Contributions to Both Democrats and
Republicans - New Report Traces Campaign
Contributions of Companies that Produce
E-Voting Machines
08/13/2004 03:15 AMNew research on the political campaign contributions made to Democrats
and Republicans by voting maching companies. [PRWEB Aug 13, 2004]
NEW ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM IN FLORIDA:
FLAWED... electronic records from first
widespread use of touch-screen voting in
Miami-Dade County have been lost ,,,
records disappeared after two computer
system crashes last year, leaving no
audit trail for t
NEW ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEM IN FLORIDA:
FLAWED... electronic records from first
widespread use of touch-screen voting in
Miami-Dade County have been lost ,,,
records disappeared after two computer
system crashes last year, leaving no
audit trail for t
07/28/2004 07:38 AMnytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?ei=5006&
en=b992e2c2cfb441c3&ex=1091592000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&
position=
track this
site | 4 links
BMC looks for a little Magic
BMC looks for a little Magic
12/16/2003 05:18 PMPersonal Computer World Dec 16 2003 4:35PM ET
The Magic 7
The Magic 7
08/30/2004 12:50 AM
What's stranger than
Madeline Kahn (who
passed away 5 years ago) appearing in
an upcoming animated
feature for TV? Her co-star is
John Candy, who's been
dead for a decade.
Yes, It Is Magic
Yes, It Is Magic
12/19/2004 02:58 PMThis image will no longer magically change as time passes by....
New: Safari Magic 1.0
New: Safari Magic 1.0
07/20/2004 11:26 AMSafari Magic enhances the web browser with tools to selectively
collect, organize, and edit text, graphics, and pictures from multiple
web pages and non-contiguous sources.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
01/03/2004 07:20 PMI finally got around to reading Cory Doctorow's novella, "Down and Out in the Magic
Kingdom." It's quite good, and he's got it posted for free on his
Web site (in no less than 17 different formats). You may know
Doctorow know from Boing Boing
fame.
If you've been to the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney
World in Orlando, the book will mean more to you because it
revolves around the park. It's set in a future where bodies are
cloned and if you die, you just restore a clone from backup.
Consequently, you lose everything since your last backup. I have to
admit that I'll never look at backups quite the same way again.
Another central concept (borrowed from blogrolls, perhaps), is
"Whuffie." There is no money in this world, everything is bought by
reputation. The more people like you, the more Whuffie you have, the
more power you have. When you meet someone new, you "ping their
Whuffie," to see if they're worth your time.
The actual plot revolves around The Haunted Mansion at the Magic
Kingdom and the "ad hoc" political groups that have formed to manage
them like little countries. The group managing the Hall of Presidents has designs
on taking over The Haunted Mansion. Intrigue ensues.
It's short — you can put it away in a couple of hours. It's
winning some great sci-fi awards as well. Worth checking
out.
Click here to comment on this entry
Northern Magic
Northern Magic
03/15/2003 10:14 PM Diane Stuemer
, an Ottawa area entrepreneur, and her husband reevaluated their
priorities in the early 90's after Diane was diagnosed with malignant
melanoma and her husband had a work related accident. After her
cancer went into remission, and fearful that her 3 children would grow
up without remembering her, the family took the bold decision to pack
up everything and circumnavigate the world. Despite having less than
4 days of sailing experience, the family took to the seas with great
enthusiasm.
The Northern Magic became
the Steumer's home for 4 years as they travelled around the world.
During that time Diane wrote a series of weekly
dispatches to the readers of her hometown's newspaper. It became a tradition
in many Ottawa households to read Diane's column in the saturday paper
while dreaming of the exotic locals she was writing about (a sharp
contrast from Ottawa's winters).
In those 4 years, readers got to experience Herbert (the husband)
become a master mechanic, Diane adapt to life afloat, and the 3 sons
grow up. When the Stuemers finally arrived home in Ottawa in August
of 2001 they where greeted by
thousands of
well-wishers.
Sadly, Ottawa residents learned early in February that Diane had been
readmitted to hospital where she was fighting a very aggressive
melanoma battle. Today,
Diane
succumbed to her illness and passed away.
During their voyage, the entire family took on
several projects in
the countries they visited which are still active today. What amazes
me about Diane is the experiences she lived through with her children,
the memories they will cherish and the lasting effect their travels
will have on the people they met.
Realms of Magic
Realms of Magic
01/04/2004 09:31 PMRelease 0.6.0 coming soon
HotKey Magic v1.24
HotKey Magic v1.24
07/04/2004 05:25 PMHotKey Magic lets you launch applications and open folders using the
Alt and Windows keys. It features drag 'n drop hot-key mapping, and
more. [Shareware $25.00 30 Days 2.85 MB]
Config-Magic-0.72
Config-Magic-0.72
06/22/2004 11:40 PMSendTo Magic v3.0
SendTo Magic v3.0
05/20/2004 05:43 PMSendTo Magic adds functionality to the SendTo menu. It lets you move
or copy files, create shortcuts in the SendTo menu, Start menu,
Favorites folder, and the Startup folder. [Shareware $20.00 30 Days
1.45 MB]
Config-Magic-0.71
Config-Magic-0.71
06/22/2004 11:40 PMConfig-Magic-0.73
Config-Magic-0.73
06/25/2004 12:39 AMTemplate-Magic-1.03
Template-Magic-1.03
01/25/2004 06:25 PMMarconi's magic box
Marconi's magic box
11/19/2003 03:32 PM
When I need an alternate place to work, I head for the local college
library. The armchairs are comfortable, the WiFi is fast. As a bonus,
I get to raid the new books shelf. Today's catch,
Signor
Marconi's Magic Box, put my twenty-first-century smugness into
perspective:
...Magic DVD Ripper v2.0
Magic DVD Ripper v2.0
07/20/2004 06:25 PMMagic DVD Ripper is a powerful and easy-to-use DVD backup software,
which can backup original DVD to hard disk or convert DVD to VCD, SVCD
and AVI(DivX) formats. It provides fast ripping speed and wonderful
output quality. It supports batch file processing and has many
settings that you can customize. And it can detect DVD disc and select
appropriate settings automatically for beginner, so you can get
started with just one click. [Shareware $29.97 5 Uses 1.36 MB]
Magic Rescue 1.1.2
Magic Rescue 1.1.2
05/06/2004 05:40 PMScans a block device and extracts known file types by looking at magic
bytes.
Magic Vines 1.0
Magic Vines 1.0
04/08/2005 08:41 PMPack your bags and get ready to travel the world on a puzzling
adventure with Magic Vines.
That magic moment
That magic moment
03/26/2005 09:34 AM
Here's a photo James Hong shot at PC Forum. As James describes
it:
I HAD to take a picture of this potentially
historic moment.. Kim Cameron (Microsoft) and Mitchell Baker (Mozilla)
discussing the possibility of cooperating on Open Identity!! Do it
guys!! It'll change the world and make the Net feel safe again.
Craig Burton has his own version of
the story.....
Doc Searls arranged a meeting
yesterday beween Mitchell Baker
and Kim Cameron to discuss
the possibility of Mozilla supporting Kim's Open Identity
System. Since the meeting was at the PC Forum, and I live in
Scottsdale, I was lucky enough to be sitting at the table during the
event. It was so cool when Mitchell groked what Kim was proposing.
Of course she didn't make any commitments, but it was obvious that
her wheels were turning. I think history was made. Wouldn't it be cool
if Firefox supported Kim's Open Identity System, It felt like a real
magic moment.
If I were Mozilla, I would jump all over it!
Later: James Hong was also there and took a photo of the moment.
He posted the uri in the comments but I thought it should be up front.
Thanks James!
And Doc
puts it this
way (on his IT Garage):
If you're wondering about the power of podcasting, stay
tuned for what's happening to bring identity to the suite of
Internet services. (for details on the meaning of that phrase, see Craig Burton's Internet
Services Model). Back on December 31, Steve Gillmor convened a
Gillmor
Gang podcast of a conversation about identity. On the 'cast were
Craig, Kim Cameron, Dave
Winer, Drummond Reed, Marc
Canter, Bryan Field-Elliot, Phil
Windley and myself. (For more background on the 'cast, see this post here.)
There were so many on the 'cast that it became known as The Gaggle.
The conversation continued, to say the least.
So in other words - if you ever wondered whatever happened with FOAFnet and my identity efforts, I've
been working the back channels, insider games and politics of the
Commons - trying to make sure everyone was talkng to each other.
Our own solution is Sxip Networks -
but anyone should be able to use their own solution, and plug into a
'identity backplane' that.....
OOoppps - we're still not ready to announce - yet. Stay tuned till
DIDW in May.
It'll be big.
The only bummer was that Dave Winer wasn't there. His concerns on
Microsoft drove us to create this 'bottoms up' effort. Clearly MS
will worry about the top-down ramifications of their actions, but
'we're' helping them - from the bottom up.
Maybe Dave can come to DIDW this
year?
Magic Rescue 1.1.3
Magic Rescue 1.1.3
08/10/2004 07:39 PMScans a block device and extracts known file types by looking at magic
bytes.
10-Bagger Magic
10-Bagger Magic
08/10/2004 02:36 PMHow to succeed in small-cap investing despite the inevitable losers.
MAGIC XSS INTO THE DNS: coelacanth
MAGIC XSS INTO THE DNS: coelacanth
06/15/2004 01:41 PMhttp-equiv_at_excite.com (Jun 15 2004)
The magic of love
The magic of love
12/23/2003 05:39 PMIt's no secret I've been unbearably cranky and in a funk this holiday
season. There are many reasons and none...
Mud Magic Mud Client 1.0.1
Mud Magic Mud Client 1.0.1
07/11/2004 06:25 PMA GTK/GNOME multi-platform MUD client.
Template-Magic-1.2
Template-Magic-1.2
05/02/2004 05:54 AMRe: MAGIC XSS INTO THE DNS: coelacanth
Re: MAGIC XSS INTO THE DNS: coelacanth
06/19/2004 01:13 AMqazxdrgb_at_hotmail.com (Jun 17 2004)
Magic Software, BEA Eye BPM
Magic Software, BEA Eye BPM
04/11/2005 06:03 PMMagic Software and BEA have plans in the works for new business
process management capabilities.
Config-Magic-0.74
Config-Magic-0.74
07/01/2004 05:24 PMMud Magic Mud Client 1.0.2
Mud Magic Mud Client 1.0.2
07/23/2004 01:28 AMA GTK/GNOME multi-platform MUD client.
Template-Magic-1.31
Template-Magic-1.31
08/11/2004 10:19 AMCGI-Builder-Magic-1.26
CGI-Builder-Magic-1.26
06/24/2004 06:44 AMTemplate-Magic-1.05
Template-Magic-1.05
01/27/2004 11:00 PMTemplate-Magic-1.04
Template-Magic-1.04
01/26/2004 10:18 AMGrok Description matches for Voting Technology as Magic (or not)
GrokA matches for Voting Technology as Magic (or not)
Voting Technology as Magic (or not)
