Scryberspace

Reversal of Fortune, featuring Julia Child and chickens A...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 22:06:00 -0500

Reversal of Fortune, featuring Julia Child and chickens

A careful reading of the signs of the times reveals that the fastest way to get a 3-novel contract with any publishing house is to put it in reverse. Reverse your way to the 1990s, or, ideally, even earlier than that, when publishing houses rested on rather firmer foundations. Once there, choose a dependable genre, such as Mystery, Romance, Historical Fiction, or Spies. Pitch with confidence, iterate at will.

If time travel in reverse remains elusive in your practice (and even John Dee required assistance in certain directions), John Dee advises abandoning the novel for the contracted, using the following simple recipe:

1. Become a celebrity.

2. ~~Write~~ brand a cookbook with your imprimatur and visage.

3. Deliver on any two of these supplemental variants: Brunch; Tailgates and BBQs; Holidays; Easy Low-Fat Meals in 15 Minutes!; Mixology.

Finally, if you abandon hope of contract, all is not lost. A more etheric reading outlines the fortuitous advent of self-published e-books, where Jupiter in Capricorn shows rising fortune as long as Supernatural Entities are invoked and Appeased. See also: Romance, Young Adult; Porphyria, Romanticism of; Elves. A corollary cookbook featuring mystical feasts would not be ill-advised.

In answer to thegibsongirl, who asked, “what’s the fastest way for me to get a 3-novel contract with Penguin?”

What's the fastest way for me to get a 3-novel contract with Penguin?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 09:32:00 -0500

John Dee has taken considerable time with this reply, as it turns on time as its central concern. John Dee assumes the petitioner is referring to what you might call traditional, and he calls real, books, with “pages and everything!” Sadly, the time for those sorts of traditional deals may be realistically behind us. But as John Dee knows intimately about time travel, the query has arrived at the right place. The petitioner is advised to await the next post, which will contain the ingredients and steps of the time-spell.

Do Cellos Dream of Electric Guitars? (or is it the other way...

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:58:57 -0400

Do Cellos Dream of Electric Guitars? (or is it the other way around)

In answer to LRJP!, who asked via Twitter, ”Is the cello a dream of the guitar or the guitar a dream of the cello’s?”

Watson, Come Here, I Want You: featuring Alan Turing, Pontius...

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 10:24:42 -0500

Watson, Come Here, I Want You: featuring Alan Turing, Pontius Pilate, Henry Higgins and the midcentury mainframe of your choice

Does Watson know that he won? Ohhh, I’m sorry…in linking thinking to biology, John Searle offers an answer that is not in the form of a question.

Watson did quite well on Jeopardy, as it was designed to do. Machines tend to play games well, especially when the games involve logical or mechanical procedures, i.e., rules. Or building SUVs. But did doing well mean it knew the answers? Does it know things? Does it know it won? Can we infer self-awareness, consciousness, from a pattern of perceived causes and effects?

Can Watson say, with Rene, “I think, therefore I am?” Or can it only display it?

For that matter, can you?

The problem of other minds extends to the issue of artificial intelligence, rather than the other way around. I do not have privileged access to your mind the way I do to my own, so how do I know that you think? I don’t know it, I can only infer it, from a pattern of behavior and belief-reports on your part. Aside from that, I have to take it on faith. Since this is the same procedure whether the other in question is you or a reasonable facsimile, then how do I know a machine does not think, if it produces a similarly believable pattern of behaviors and claims about itself?

This is the perspective of Alan Turing, as he designed his eponymous Test: behind each of two doors is a man and a machine. The questioner (let’s say, you) submits typed questions to each through a tiny slot (no peeking!), and typed answers are returned the same way. If you can’t guess from the answers which is what, and what is who, then thinking must be attributed to the machine the same way it is attributed to the man. Of course thinking and consciousness might not be the same thing. But regardless, so far no machine has passed the test.

But so far does not have a lock on never, and whether or not the Turing Test will be our ultimate Test, the question is still an open one. So Searle’s recent cri de coeur in the Wall Street Journal turns out to beg the question it claims to consider. Despite observing consciousness’ relationship to biology (so far), Searle does not succeed in establishing a necessary link between the two. “I am” may be an epiphenomenon, or even a congeries of epiphenomena, upon multiple foundations; some carbon-based, some silicon-, and some, perhaps, even more distributed and less tangible.

Cyber-resurrections of 16th century esoteric philosophers, take heart.

“…I haue of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custome of...

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:21:11 -0500

“…I haue of late, but wherefore
I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custome of exercise;
and indeed, it goes so heauenly with my disposition;
that this goodly frame the Earth, seemes to me a sterrill
Promontory; this most excellent Canopy the Ayre,
look you, this braue ore-hanging firmament, this Maiesticall Roofe,
fretted with golden fire: why, it appeares no other thing
to mee, then a foule and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of worke is a man! how Noble in
Reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving
how express and admirable! in Action, how like an Angel!
in apprehension, how like a God? the beauty of the
world, the paragon of animals.”

- Hamlet, Act II, Scene II, by William Shakespeare

In answer to various petitioners via the interwebs who, in their quest to formulate questions that confound Watson, quest in effect to formulate the question, “what does it mean to be human? What should it mean?” #qwca

“Cargo Cult,” featuring technology, transport and...

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:30:53 -0500

“Cargo Cult,” featuring technology, transport and materiel. Excerpt from IBM 1401, A User’s Manual, by Jóhan Jóhansson.

In answer to sargemetalfatigue, who asked, “is there any existing cargo cults?”

is there still any existing cargo cults?

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 17:53:18 -0500

An excellent question. If you are referring to scattered techno-tribes wielding magic iPads and other interwebbed devices in the hopes of coaxing further information bounty from the cloud(s), then: no. No one does that anymore. Of course not! Certainly not. Not at all. None. John Dee is happy to report that humanity has arrived at such a state of elevated progress and homogeneity that … wait … the signal has become noisy, the signs are suddenly unclear. John Dee advises the petitioner to watch this space for further clarification.

Modeling the Spectacle Should you happen to live in a city, you...

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:45:55 -0500

Legos

San Francisco by Liz Hickok

Panorama, Queens Museum, NYC

Belsay Hall, Newcastle by Slinkachu

Wandsworth, London by Slinkachu

Acropolis, Athens by Slinkachu

Photo by asthmatic on Flickr

Modeling the Spectacle

Should you happen to live in a city, you have but to invoke the magic syllable Yopp to bring your miniature to realization. By virtue of your ambulatory and augmented peregrinations within the built environment, you dérive a city in miniature — your city — every day.

But should you wish to model your experience, the signs do not discriminate as to material. Legos are a bit over-memed at the moment but retain a pleasing functional modularity. Alternatively, you might prefer the flexibility of Jell-O, thus modeling necessary forces and flows as well as structures. Or you may forgo the hipster materials and just build normal little models — say, 895,000 of them — with patience, adhesiveness and an unbreakable belief in virtual futures.

But any model is only as relevant as its demonstrated or implied inhabitation. Your miniature would not be a city without miniature people. Slinkachu’s tiny residents and tourists, lacking a city of their own, can be discovered here and there in our own cities attempting to fend for themselves. Help them! Invite these goodly model creatures into your brave new miniature world.

Of course if all this seems like too much work, you can always go virtual and tilt-shift the documentation.

In answer to danochiva, who asked, “how might I construct a miniature city?”

How might I construct a miniature city?

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:53:01 -0500

Thank you for your question. Early signs point to different approaches depending upon whether you are interested in constructing the experience, tiny copies, or The Spectacle. Check future posts for more specific guidance.

Anime Battles The Elements The recitation from three Japanese...

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 09:01:00 -0500

Anime Battles The Elements

The recitation from three Japanese schoolgirls giggling about boys is of course a caricature from a satirical operetta and exactly the cartoon it was meant to be, although girls giggling over boys will probably be relevant for as long as there are teenagers. In the late 20th / early 21st century we have literalized the metaphor with anime, in which even more two-dimensional Japanese schoolgirls cavort for our amusement. However, it is true that some of the anime’d maids also battle demons and chthonic elementals, braids and batted eyelids notwithstanding. So, there’s that.

In answer to kiplet, who asked via Twitter, “What significance do the lyrics of ‘Three Little Maids From School’ have for us in the second decade of the 21st century?”

Vanitas, featuring hums, glows, and memento...

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:47:25 -0500

Vanitas, featuring hums, glows, and memento mori.

Fluorescence’s name and mechanism were defined by Sir George Gabriel Stokes in the mid-19th century (yes, that’s our friend Stokes of fluid dynamics fame). But the phenomenon itself had been defined much earlier at least by Athanasius Kircher, and possibly thousands of years earlier in ancient China, as a property not only of phosphorus, but of plants and even of fireflies, where it was eventually termed luciferin, after everyone’s favorite fallen angel.

Today we confine the phenomenon largely to tubes on office ceilings, illuminating circles for hells not envisaged by Dante. But it also ranges free in the body paint, hair color, and even tattoos with which some of the residents adorn themselves in the after hours, if not the afterlife.

In terms of a personal glow, what other people see in any of us is entirely up to them, and is subject to change at any moment. Will you glow in the dark if no one is there to see it?

In answer to aisling-stargazer, who asked, “how was fluorescence discovered?” and “what is it about me that others are so keen with but I can’t seem to understand?”

what is it about me that others are so keen with but I can't seem to understand?

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:37:00 -0500

The signs indicate that desirable degrees of social adhesion are relative. Sometimes you are a burr, you must stick. Other times, a more casual post-it note approach may be advisable. Check future posts for additional indications.

how was fluorescence discovered?

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:36:00 -0500

How fluorescence was discovered depends on how you define it, and like most definitions, words assume primary importance. In this case, the word definition. Check future posts for further illumination.

“Angels and Bits,” featuring Fred Astaire,...

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:57:20 -0500

“Angels and Bits,” featuring Fred Astaire, telegraphs, telephones, and the world wide interwebs.

John Dee thinks of calligraphy as the record of the hand’s movement. And as the stroke is the record of the hand, so the dance is the record of the body. These gestures are less about communication itself, and more about conducting it with flair.

Your questions concern both embodiment and legibility. With the virtual turn, embodiment becomes a more flexible concept, whereas legibility becomes more fraught. Conducting is strictly defined as on or off. Any move away from strict function is error, especially at the level of the bit, and any bit-level flair must be encoded as error. So a move toward calligraphy must read error as art.

As for the angels: all of them, but in sequence, as the alternating states of the bit tap out the 9 billion names of God.

… — . —

In answer to LRJP!, who asked, “How many angels can dance on the head of a bit? Is it impossible to imagine that there might one day be a sort of calligraphy of the bit?”

I've stolen the following two questions; i hope this doesn't invalidate anything.

How many angels can dance on the head of a bit? [ http://is.gd/kzZlR ] Is it impossible to imagine that there might one day be a sort of calligraphy of the bit? [ http://is.gd/kA3yF ]

I hope it isn't too presumptuous to conjoin these two queries; asking one without mentioning the other seems almost negligent to me somehow...

Sincerely,

LRJP!

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:37:58 -0500

John Dee believes you were right to pose your query in combination. As the stroke is the record of the hand, so the dance is the record of the body. These gestures are less about communication itself, and more about conducting it with flair. But how does one encode the gesture at the level(s) of the machine? See the next post for signal interpretation.

During his previous manifestation, John Dee made the mistake of...

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:33:17 -0500

During his previous manifestation, John Dee made the mistake of believing that the dead have special knowledge of the future by virtue of an apparent similarity, in that neither one is currently here. And paid for the mistake in real currency, both reputational and financial. Therefore, he cautions petitioners against coding too many links between arbitrary correlations and seeming similarities. The links may be all, and only, what you make them.

Apocalyptic visions and other sweeping declarations satisfy our desire for a single conclusion, a single goal, a single answer: a grail, if you will. A shortcut rent through endless webs of ambiguity. However, just because there exists a desire does not entail its necessary satisfaction. The ability to abstract does not entail that abstraction’s manifestation. There is no grail that does not fragment into many grails. Which makes it rather difficult to drink from that cup.

If you believe that the world will end — for you? For our current way of life? For the planet? For time? — you are right, although it is doubtful that all of those ends, or any of them, will co-instantiate. In the meantime, John Dee advises: carry on and keep calm.

In answer to @tezcatlipoca, who asked, “is it true the world will end in 2012?”

Is it true the world will end in 2012?

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 10:45:12 -0500

Early signs indicate that a civilization’s past failure does not grant it special insight into the future. Please check the next post for your answer.

Only Connect John Dee recognizes that by submitting this query,...

Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:34:45 -0500

Only Connect

John Dee recognizes that by submitting this query, the petitioner is not seeking a chronicle of once and future events. Instead, the “What am I doing” contains an implicit “What should I be doing,” that is the real focus of the inquiry. It may be that an implicit normativity is contained within every list. If so, consider carefully your elaborations, and wield your sequencing with care.

In answer to @tezcatlipoca, who asked, “What am I doing with my life? If you can’t figure it out, that’s ok… can I have Johnny Depp’s phone number instead?”

What am I doing with my life? If you can't figure it out, that's ok... can I have Johnny Depp's phone number instead?

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:39:52 -0500

Sure, that’s 867-530…

…wait, did you want Jenny or Johnny?

So one obvious thing you should be doing with your life is fronting a generic-80s cover band. Are you doing this? You should do this. Do you even know how to play the air guitar? Get on that. We await your debut at the Middle East Downstairs.

“Hope lies in sense, you said…” In answer to...

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:38:31 -0500

“Hope lies in sense, you said…”

In answer to @katiegid, who asked, via Twitter, “can people start acting in their own future interest, or do I just embrace ‘I told ya so’ and the fall of a misguided culture?”