Tag: Memetics

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Car-Race Meat Spiral Chief Restaurant Snail Button

No, it’s not some new awesome, all-purpose web widget. That was the subject line of an email I just received. The next one read “Butterfly Drink Book Army Data Base Aeroplane Space Shuttle,” and “Worm Data Base Rainbow Jet fighter Compass Pocket Telescope” was after that. They were spam of course, and, as much as it still frustrates me that there’s an entire industry dedicated to intruding my inbox (and phone line, and hard drive), I’m trying to see the positive.

Mind Performance HacksThe subject lines above are perfect fodder for Mind Hack #19 [Seed Your Mental Random-Number Generator] from O’Reilly’s Mind Performance Hacks (edited by Ron Hale-Evans). I mean, you can make that stuff up, but randomness is easier if it just arrives via email.

Another one I use a lot is Hack #27 [Play Mind Music]. Though I still often play Hip-hop when I work, I’ve been listening to more and more instrumental music. Here’s a sample of my recent playlist of “mind music”:

  • Explosions in the Sky All of a Sudden I miss Everyone, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, Friday Night Lights OST
  • Cliff Martinez Solaris OST, Wicker Park OST
  • Pelican City of Echoes, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw
  • Red Sparowes At the Soundless Dawn, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun
  • Main Hz, Motion Pool
  • Mogwai Zidane OST, Mr. Beast, Happy Music for Happy People
  • Peter Gabriel Long Walk Home (Rabbit-Proof Fence OST), Passion (The Last Temptation of Christ OST), Birdy OST
  • Brian Eno Eno Box I: Instrumentals, Music for Airports, Apollo, Discreet Music, etc.

(Brian Eno might be the best creative catalyst available, what with his cannon of ambient music and his co-creating the Oblique Strategies [Hack #23]). Mind Performance Hacks has nearly a hundred tricks and exercises to rattle your brain out of its usual patterns.

A Whole New MindI also just read The 4-Hour Workweek (Crown) by Tim Ferriss and am in the middle of Daniel Pink‘s A Whole New Mind(Riverhead), both of which have exercises that will make you think differently. The former has more for achieving personal goals, delegating responsibility, and getting free of your work, while the latter has more regarding cognitive and creative concerns. Pink contends that the next revolution will come not from left-brained engineers and accountants but from right-brained creative types like designers, teachers, and storytellers (good news for artists that want to be formerly known as “starving” — thank you, Govone), and his book is rife with exercises for your right hemisphere.

Anyway, I’m now thankful for weird subject lines in spam messages. Anything that makes me think about things in a different way is welcome.

What tricks do you have for tackling problems creatively?

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Pranks 2, Applicant, and And Your Point Is?

Twenty years later, Vale Vale and Company finally return to the land of pranksters with Pranks 2 (RE/Search). These interviews, mostly done by V. Vale himself, illustrate just how deep pranks run in our current cultural milieu — and how far they’ve spread since the last volume (RE/Search #11: Pranks). From the spread of culture jamming and parody to the mainstays of satire and social commentary, pranksterism is standard fare. Heck, just the mainstreaming of the lyrical spoof, which has nearly put Weird Al Yankovic out of business, is proof enough. All of this makes it that much more difficult to shake things up with a good prank. Well, the time has come for the O.G.’s and the current reigning few to get their due. Continue reading “Pranks 2, Applicant, and And Your Point Is?”

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Sticker Nation by Srini Kumar

I don’t know how most people feel about stickers, but they make me get all smiley. Sticker Nation (Disinformation) contains over 400 stickers emblazoned with subversive themes. Classic slogans like “Let the good times roll,” “Express yourself,” and “Power to the people” are peppered amongst “I just changed the world,” “Listen to Marshall McLuhan,” “Eat more veggies,” and “Talk nerdy to me.” My personal favorite is “When I hit the drum, you shake the booty,” but it’s difficult to have a favorite when there are so many good ones in here. Continue reading “Sticker Nation by Srini Kumar”

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Eugene Thacker: Whole Earth DNA

Eugene ThackerIf, as Martin Heidegger wrote and Michael Heim clarified, philosophy is to stay one step ahead of science, then art is to stay one step ahead of philosophy. Art has the most freedom as a form of exploration, as a method by which to find the limits of a domain of research. That said, Eugene Thacker doesn’t necessarily consider himself an artist, but, as he told Josephine Bosma in an interview for Net-time, “I have always been interested in approaching things from a theoretical viewpoint, as well as exploring the same issues in, for want of a better term, an artistic domain. Sometimes getting different results, sometimes seeing what you can learn from doing those kind of activities.” Continue reading “Eugene Thacker: Whole Earth DNA”

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Why Societies Need Dissent by Cass R. Sunstein

In Why Societies Need Dissent, Cass R. Sunstein illustrates the powers and dangers of dissent through a clear and concise exposition of three basic phenomena: conformity, social cascades, and group polarization. His epistemological view of conformity shows how we tend to learn less first-hand than from what others think and believe. Social cascades occur when a meme, carried by early-adopters, reaches its tipping point. Group polarization shows how extreme views become more extreme in group deliberations.

Why Societies Need DissentAccording to Sunstein, dissent is essential, but not always good. Your average contrarian can contribute a great deal to an argument by offering a differing point of view, but this can also be counterproductive for the community. Still, communities need constructive dissent and need to find ways to reward it. “In the real word,” writes Sunstein, “people will silence themselves for many reasons. Sometimes they do not want to risk the irritation or opprobrium of their friends and allies. Sometimes they fear that they will, through their dissent, weaken the effectiveness and reputation of the group to which they belong. Sometimes they trust fellow group members to be right.” Conformity carries its own rewards. Dissent does not.

Why Societies Need Dissent is an excellent overview of a concept that doesn’t get enough serious consideration or positive attention. Plus, you’ll look bad-ass reading it on the bus.

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A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark

A Hacker Manifesto is the Big Picture of not only where we are in the “information age,” but where we’re going as well. Adopting the epigrammic style of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, as well as updating its ideas, Ken Wark establishes so-called “knowledge workers” as an unrecognized social class: “the hacker class.” Wark also updates Marx and Engels, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche, and a host of others: Continue reading “A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark”

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Rhythm Science by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky

If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain — do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set? — Warren Ellis

We’re all connected. Our saturated selves are each a part of a collective, socially constructed mix of language games and habits without names. “All minds quote,” once quoth Ralph Waldo Emerson, but let’s forget about the mind, the brain, and the head that holds them. It’s not about nouns; it’s about verbs. It’s not about the dots, it’s about the connections between them. Networks, not nodes. The journey, not the destination. It’s a trigger, not a gun. Software is the paradigm of the now. It’s where nouns become verbs and all are subject to “the changing same.” Continue reading “Rhythm Science by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky”

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Year-End Top Ten List, 2003

My friends and I always used to do year-end top ten lists of our favorite records of the year. Thinking back through 2003, I decided to archive my favorite ideas of the year. Not that I was let down by music this year, on the contrary, I heard plenty of good records in the ’03 (e.g., Aesop Rock, Kinski, Cex, Prefuse 73, Radiohead, Ilya, Interpol, Mogwai, Tomahawk, Deadsy, Why?, The Blood Brothers, The Mars Volta, Atmosphere, The Roots, etc.), but I thought this would be more interesting. We shall see. Continue reading “Year-End Top Ten List, 2003”

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I Want That! by Thomas Hine

Columbus killed more Indians than Hitler did Jews, but on his birthday you get sales on shoes — The Goats

What at first might seem mundane subject matter is made illuminating and interesting by Thomas Hine’s engaging narrative, personal and historical examples, and downright deep digging. Excavating our culture of consumption from the perspectives of power, responsibility, discovery, self-expression, insecurity, attention, belonging, celebration, and convenience, Hine unearths the desires and rituals that have made us all shoppers in one sense or another. In the spirit of the quote above, I Want That! (HarperCollins) points out the fact that we “mix up reverence with consumption.” Our every holiday is tied to purchases and a subsequent sale of some sort. Continue reading “I Want That! by Thomas Hine”