From: IN:A.Ludovico@agora.stm.it
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Kybernetike
Datum: 02-04-96 19:44
Area: Email
Kybernetike'.
The art of flying on the outside data getting lost everytime in our
inner mindspace, and then naturally returning in the physical world
without suffering cyber-lag.
From: IN:BMSLIB%MITVMA.BITNET@v
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Re: KIBERNETIKE' TE'CHNE
Datum: 02-06-96 02:14
Area: Email
The term cybernetics was born with Norbert Wiener's use of the phrase
in The human use of human beings; cybernetics and society (Garden
City: Doubleday, 1954).
An excellent treatment of the subject appears by W. Ross Ashby in a
book entitled An introduction to cybernetics (New York : Science
Editions, 1963, c1956. Ashby elevates the word from a concept to a
science.
In the 1960's the term became abused. Cybernetics became a catch-all
for everything from positive thinking to wholistic thinking.
Thus, while the word is useful in some circles, it has a connotation
of being either arcane or associated with odd ideas.
As a result I avoid using the word in my writings (reluctantly).
W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
Center for Information, Technology & Society
Voice: 617-662-4044 BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Fax: 617-662-6882 WWW: gopher://gopher.eff.org/hh/Groups/CITS
From: IN:astingsh@ksu.ksu.edu
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Re: Kybernetike
Datum: 02-13-96 23:57
Area: Email
In coining the term, Norbert Weiner recognized feedback as the
essence of guidance in biolgical systems and extended it to
mechano-electrical control systems. But the discovery in "cyberspace
as I know it" is that human consciousness is also piloted by
feedback. Everything I post gains meaning from other responses - that
is, *I don't know what I have said* until I see where the thread goes
with it.
Certainly I have an idea, a suspicion, an expectation, a *projection*
of where it may go, and certainly I may add further material in order
to, if not "make" the thread actually develop in that direction, at
least demonstrate that it could have done; that it was a valid branch
of the discourse.
Whence this standard of validity? Why, from the guidance, the
piloting, the feedback I have received over the years in other
discourses, other contexts, other relationships with lively
minds.
To what end is the demonstration valuable? To define the self that
says these things. What "actuality" does the discourse have? I take
it to mean that the value of engagement is not diminished, not
exploited, not consumed in flames and blithering ash. It means that
"could have done" is equivalent to "still might do," for feedback is
*regenerative*, time-transcending. It means sustainable conversation/
conversion/ conservation of *imagination*, a human resource which is
breathtakingly close to being infinite, even as we come to terms with
(terminal realization of) the finiteness of every other human-devised
"system." (These, of course, were always framed against a larger
context; when feedback came, it was called "side-effects,"
unwittingly.)
The validity (viability) of the Net is just this cybernetic
relationship, wherein we are indistinguishably guide and guided,
reference and referee, scene and non-scene, content and discontent,
whole and partner. Linear, time-bound, officialistic decrees of what
shall constitute decency *xor* indecency would reduce consciousness
to no more than those finite (deterministic) mechanical (legalistic)
contraptions (contradictions) it has always before been able to
transcend.
> Let's see if it works.
Let's see that it not run down.
kerry miller astingsh@ksuvm.ksu.edu
Reduce Reuse Repair Recycle Reject *Remember*
From: IN:---@le---nd.Sta---rd.
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Re: KIBERNETIKE' TE'CHNE
Datum: 02-03-96 22:35
Area: Email
Where did you get my e-mail address?
I don't know what policy is in italy, but over here we tend to frown
on unsolicited e-mail. Particularly mass mailings. -r....
======================
Note by G.Iannicelli: the email address was PUBLISHED on
the ".net" magazine...
From: IN:jwarburt@mars6.UnitedK
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Re: Kybernetike' te'chne
Datum: 02-13-96 15:30
Area: Email
ncruk!eurohub!ncrhub2!ncrgw2.ncr.com!psinntp!psinntp!psinntp!howland.reston.ans
****************************************************
* JOHN WARBURTON *
* NCR *
* U.K. *
****************************************************
Date: Mon, 7 Apr 1997 12:32:32 -0400
From: Alan Jen Sondheim <sondheim@PANIX.COM>
Subject: (For the Kybernetike project)
Alan sits on the Web, the wires binding his hands and feet, his
panties creased by thin copper. Electric packets jolt his thighs,
Jennifer laughs.
Alan loses control, his panties all wet, Jennifer laughs, spreads the
silk smooth against his genitals. Je nifer and Alan all wet! Tangled
in the wires, going nowhere.
There's nowhere for the pilot to go, waves of information soaked in
every direction. Jennifer-Alan's mouth is wet, urine short-circuiting
Website after site. No one notices; packets meander, take nanoseconds
longer. Occasiona ly a chara ter is lost; Jennifer-Alan body shudders
in happiness.
Beautiful skin inscribes inform tion everywhere, come closer, you can
read you on me, Alan.
Alan moves closer, tends to Jennifer-skin; late into those impossible
days of September, 1752, they read each Jennifer-Alan world, tied
taut in the wires, eternal, burned into flesh-inform tion, you
slow-disappear nce into pure byte.
Come closer, Jennifer, take me with you, in you. Piss-soaked wires
sing memory-remnant-flesh, cloister where everything writes. Wires
are beautiful, Alan. There are no cool sites, Jen ifer, my face
buried against your breast. Sizzled wires. In 1752, the calendar took
days out, conforming new-date-protocol. We're there, aren't we, Alan.
We're never there, pilot into node, spre d into black-hole protocols,
string-theory vibration modes wryting us forever:
September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
From: IN:ro-----@z--o.ibd.n-c.
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Subject: Re: Kybernetike' te'chne
Datum: 02-12-96 18:31
Area: Email
In article <4fj886$h4b@galactica.galactica.it> you write:
>_KYBERNETIKE'_TE'CHNE_ = ancient Greek for >The art of
piloting<
Your posting is not appropriate for comp.society.development, which
deals with the impact of computers on the development of the Third
World.
W----r R------n ro---n@--d.n-c.ca
=================
Note by G. Iannicelli: Not appropriate? Really? Sure?
From: rwhyte@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Date: 10 Apr 1997 09:25:00 GMT
Subject: Kybernetike
"For the last few centuries a civilizational contradiction has
moved our western lives. Our greatest intellectual endeavor - the new
co-penetration of 'logos' and 'techne' - affirmed that in
understanding everything we know it as ruled by necessity and chance.
This affirmation entailed the elimination of the ancient notion of
good from the understanding of anything. At the same time, our
day-to-day organization was in the main directed by a conception of
justice formulated in relation to the ancient science, in which the
notion of good was essential to the understanding of what is. This
civilizational contradiction arose from the attempt of the articulate
to hold together what was then given in modern science with a content
of justice which had been developed out of an older account of what
is."
George Grant, _English Speaking Justice_, p.78
In a liberal culture for which the prime mover is technological
mastery, art tends to become *the art of,* which is to say "the
science of". The phrase "the art of piloting," then, describes a kind
of horizon for this condition, in which art-as-science is the "art of
living" altogether, which is living-as-technological willing. In this
condition, wherein science is driven by the liberal cult of
technological mastery to encompass all fields, the bizarre absence of
the language of "goodness" can not be conspicuous; there is simply no
place for it. "The art of piloting" has replaced ancient morality. In
the milieu described above, piloting is about self-control and
control of one's vehicle; piloting is about forethought, linearity,
and accomplishment; piloting is about testing, initiality and
colonization; piloting is about the maintenance of a domain which the
subject is the center of.. Piloting is metonymic for the confluence
of 'logos' and 'techne' Grant focuses on; it is the essence of
technology's relation to the subject.
That the internet troubles the singular status of the subject which
the notion of piloting as mapped out here relies upon, has been
successfully and at length demonstrated by theorists of language and
of art. I cannot hope to make global proclamations about the
"internet subject;" instead, what follows is a brief description of
my own experience "piloting the net."
My computer, by today's standards, is hopelessly underpowered. An old
Macintosh Powerbook 145, it runs at 25 mHz, and bears 4 megs of RAM.
This means that my access to the web is mainly text-based. I can run
Netscape, but only early versions, and these are painfully slow,
leaving little or no memory in reserve. Further, my internet account
is a Freenet, which is not SLIP/PPP but text-based, so that only by
borrowing a friend's account can I have graphical - ie. Netscape -
access at all. Of course, I retain the ability to download image
files and view them later, using JPGView, but again, this is a slow
process, not conducive to working directly with web pages.
A commercial internet account would solve some of these problems; so
would more RAM, or, of course, a newer computer. However, I simply
can not afford to purchase any of the above - in fact, the computer
itself was a gift. The issue *here* is not class (which is not to say
that *the* issue at the center and borders of the internet is not one
of class), for I fall squarely in the white-upper-middle-; instead
the issue is one of control, of piloting. If I choose to sit still,
to take my hand from the throttle, the internet literally speeds out
of my domain. Early Netscape can not handle, for example, Java
scripts, which now comprise the content of many web pages. Further,
in Lynx, the text-only Freenet shell, sophisticated graphical web
pages display only a blank screen - there is simply no textual
alternative given. Sound and motion - the ubiquitous Real Audio, Mpeg
and Quicktime streams - are out of the question.
I wonder where this will end - what will remain, years from now,
text-based. I wonder if mailing lists will stick around. I wonder
where the Internet will pilot me, and how much control I will give
it. I wonder when my test-vehicle, pushing the other edge of the
envelope, will finally, to turn an apt phrase, give up the ghost.
Mastery is not capital, nor does capital in itself beget mastery.
Piloting *in* technology, the mastery "of it all," is dependent upon
the test-pilot's relation to his or her vehicle, and remember that in
matters of technology the pilot is always subordinate, at risk, and
responsible to/for the technology. This is a relationship which
allows for no good, no morality. The morality was bought and sold -
finalized - in the pilot's choice to _be a pilot_, to climb into the
craft. Morality, if it can be conceived anew, is in the escape hatch,
waiting. And so I wait too, bored, till one of us crashes - the
Internet, my machine, and I.
From: Matt_Blackburn_at_AAP__DC__PO@aap.org
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Date: 11 Apr 1997 19:46:14 GMT
Subject: "The Art of Piloting"
Cyberspace presents you with a choice. Two links sit rather placidly
on the screen. Both go to destinations which you have not previously
visited. How do you choose between them? Does one "sound" cooler?
Cyberspace presents you with a choice. Logging on to a MUD for the
first time, you are allowed to inhabit a simulation of your own
devising. Putting together its attributes, what do you pick? Is it
near your own conception of your self or something radically
different and why do you pick one attribute over another? Do some
characteristics just "sound" cooler?
When presented with a choice in a realm of near infinite choice, a
place without boundary, a discourse who's rules are flexible and
fluid, decisions should be difficult...but they're not.
M.B.
From: zoneaway@socal.com
To: GIUSEPPE IANNICELLI
Date: 10 Apr 1997 15:45:20 GMT
Subject: Kibernetike'
My current thinking on the subject of "...this original significance
(art of piloting) related to the '_cyber_space'..." is framed as
follows:
Rapture * state of ecstasy and high level emotion equated
equally with being sent (as in "you send me") and any form of willful
travel
Rupture * breaking apart and/or through also associated with a
shattering equated equally with a form of psychic shattering as with
imagery of breaking glass and other moments of destruction and/or
explosion (ref. Cronenberg/Ballard's "Crash")
Suture * impulse of reparation equated equally with dull
association to [dull] (human) flesh and/or a form of piercing beyond
literal flesh ritual toward new forms of reiterated bonds generated
among/between unprecedented [ephemeral and/or flesh] bodies
Amy White
ECN Culver City Ca. Telnet: 198.211.192.146
