Awarding Influence

1. award, n. c1386

…A decision after examination, a judicial sentence, esp. that of an arbitrator or umpire; the document embodying it….

2. award, v.1 c1386

…To examine a matter and adjudicate upon its merits; to decide, determine, after consideration or deliberation. 

1. influence, n. c1374

The action or fact of flowing in; inflowing, inflow, influx: said of the action of water and other fluids, and of immaterial things conceived of as flowing in. Also concr. flowing matter. 

2. influence, v. 1658

trans. To exert influence upon, to affect by influence….

Etymology:  < French influence (13th cent. in Hatzfeld & Darmesteter) emanation from the stars (also inflow of water; affluence)…

(Oxford English Dictionary)

most-influential-blogger-e1364230844577

In the first place, I thank you Madeline Scribes for honoring me with this blogging award – I would think that any blogger is happy to hear that they have influence somewhere, somehow.  As concerns its meaning – its effect in ongoing flow – I am thinking that our passing these awards along through the blogosphere is an aspect of recognizing that the world around us matters that what we encounter continuously throughout our days effects the flow of them.  To award such influence must mean that, upon consideration, deliberation, we consider that influence to be of benefit or merit to the flow of our lives.  To diminish the function and roles of these eminently reusable and transferable images by querying the authority, justification, compensation or some other arbitrary criteria of significance or import seems to me to miss the point and ideologically dismiss their networked purposes and potentials.  I am very honored and very thankful for the effort and gift of recognition and assessment.

That being said – all of these awards (as with any gift) bring responsibilities…This particular badge indicates:

Award Rules

THE QUESTIONS:

1.  What makes you happiest?

developing attachment with my wife and children; inquiring and creating new knowledge.

2.  Do you love mountains or oceans more?

mountains

3.  What has been a special moment in 2013?

reading has provided millions of them

4.  What is your favorite quote?

Today?: “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”
― Marlene Dietrich

5.  Do you like yourself?

sometimes

6.  Do you stay up until midnight on New Years’ Eve?

rarely

7.  Is there something you wish could be done ASAP?

global peace and cooperation

8.  What is/was your favorite class in school?

philosophy/social science courses 

9.  What musical instruments do you / have you try/tried to play?

piano, saxophone, organ, drums, trumpet, harmonica, guitar, voice

10.  Anything you wished you would have learned earlier?

the world’s complexity and the constancy of change

11.  Do you like to do crafts, drawing or painting?

the effort extends and challenges me uniquely

And, given the reflective caveat above (that ALL we encounter influences us), I pass the award along to these fellow bloggers –

Life in Relation to Art

Multisense Realism

draw and shoot

AGENT SWARM

Unwanted Advice

Simon H. Lilly

midnighttheblues

ineedartandcoffee

tocksin

searching to see

 

The Perfect Sense of Embodiment

I have recently had the good fortune of correspondence with a tremendous thinker of whose work I have greatly admired and utilized continuously.  At some point he queried me as to my central concern or research interest which I pondered over a number of days.  About a year ago I recognized that filtering through all of my curiosities and fascinations (passionate inquiries) – in the end they were all about ways that meaning might be made for humans.  Thus I figured semiosis or semiotics was my central field of concern.  How we forge meaning in our surrounds.  As I’ve pursued library and information science I have attuned to the eagerness with which we as a species produce, hoard and waste information.  We’ve produced veritable clouds of data/information/knowledge and now it seems as if we swoon and drown in it.  For meaning, this cosmos of affordances must be utilized, integrated, incorporated.  As technologies explode and become increasingly symbiotic or synergistic with our own bodies and purposes, I have found that my responsive concern is one of remembering that the nexus or filament-combining locus for humans is the body.  No meaning can be had without the physical processes on which our being relies.  Every think I can think rests on the chemistry and material flows that comprise my organism.  It seems that even while we seek to develop intelligent robots and machines, ubiquitous data-recording and instinct-responsive computing, work with data sets increasingly monumental and robust, that a strong percentage of the human populace has the idea that the stigmergy and emergence of virtual social realities construct meaning, promise, potentiality.  I am not denying the fascinating quality of our rhizomic replications of our actual interconnectedness, overlap and interdependent influence, but I am committed to the fact that meaning only arises as relations are incorporated.  The translation and transformation of continuous relational events whether electronic and virtual or face-to-face and co-present into MEANING only occurs organismically, physically, presently in the knotting of convergences through our embodied existence.  Emotion, sensation, cognition, movement all ALWAYS play a part in the construction of meaning.  These are my thinkings/feelings.

In keeping with that, serendipitously my wife and I happened to view “The Perfect Sense” – a movie pursued to listen to Max Richter‘s incredible soundtrack in action – but resulting in a sort of visual commentary on my above thoughts.  We recommend it!  And would love to hear what you think!

2 Things in absence of composition

My maker-wheels or whatever complex machinery sometimes con-fuses to generate documents of creative writing are apparently on the fritz.  In lieu of some relatively originary textual flow (idiosyncratic dip into the semiotic waters of the resource of language) I forward along a poem that stands out to me from this weeks’ readings, and a plea that interest-piqued readers immerse themselves in a particular book regarding our co-creation and involvement with the rest of the world and one another…

First, the poem – from Bob Hicok‘s “Elegy Owed” – a fine collection:

Hicok - Poem

 

and second a plug for a compelling study by Ian Hodder – “Entangled: An Archaeology of the relationships between humans and things”

Hodder - Entangled

 

Life in Relation to Art

My super-wife (http://lifeinrelationtoart.wordpress.com/) strikes again – a triptych selected for exhibition opening this Friday at City Arts – Wichita, KS.  Come participate if you can – a varietous juried show!  Congrats love!

mixed media - Holly Suzanne
mixed media – Holly Suzanne

https://www.facebook.com/WichitaCityArts

http://www.downtownwichita.org/have_fun-first_final_friday.php

http://wichitaarts.com/

Too Big to Know (Essential Readings in the Philosophy of LIS)

I’m currently reading Too Big To Know by David Weinberger and quite intrigued by his observations – Lane’s account is a cogent analysis of why.

 

Sense & Reference

If David Weinberger is to be believed, the Internet hasn’t just changed how we access information, it has altered the very meaning of ‘knowledge’. In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Weinberger claims that “for the coming generation, knowing looks less like capturing truths in books than engaging in never-settled networks of discussion and argument.” Supposedly, the networked, collaborative, and social nature of the Internet has changed our very understanding of knowledge to the point that knowledge is no longer tied to concepts of truth, objectivity, or certainty. Instead, as Weinberger argues in his recent book, Too Big to Know, “knowledge is a property of the network” (p. xiii). That is, the Internet has profoundly changed what it means to be a fact, to be true, or to be known. This book has been making the rounds among librarians, so I thought it might be a good idea…

View original post 1,765 more words

Thinking Literac(ies)

Literacy“Ultimately we find that the cognitive consequences are more about the new meaning systems and activities that occupy our minds than they are just about the character of work with symbols…”

“Whether one form of inscription is more efficient or more easily learned than another (the asserted alphabetic advantage) may be less consequential in its cognitive consequences than if a society has developed a large bureaucracy, literary culture, philosophic tradition, technology, commerce, and educational system using whatever form(s) of inscription it has historically developed”

“The world we know, think about, and act within is saturated by and structured on the texts that travel from place to place and have some durability over the years.  The built symbolic world on which we have elaborated new social meanings and relationships and that is the object of our thought and attention as we try to live our lives as successfully as we can within it, in that we find the consequences of literacy.”

“literacy is part of the stuff out of which a way of life is made”

-Charles Bazerman, Social Implications of Writing-

On Rage, a poem

Rage

 

Rage

“            …that dog

barking at nothing

because every time he’s barked at nothing,

nothing’s gone wrong and why not keep it that way?”

– Bob Hicok, “One of those things we say…”

 

Blaze searing eye-corner

fierce rupture

a hazard of blades

 

we two, entangled –

emotion dug deep and flung far –

architectonic

 

like the causes of weather

complexity systems

large beyond measure

 

on any scale

insinuated within

spaces we intimately share

 

archaic wounds – a butterfly’s wing –

tempest stress to tumultuous effect

(deep dug, far flung)

 

we two, engangled

emotive amygdalas in action

safe love, a hazard of blades

 
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