The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines
Saturday, January 21, 2006, 12:52 AM - Theory
In Slashdot today:"In Dr David Ellerman's book Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life there are a number of interesting essays. But there is one particular essay, entitled "The Semantics Differentiation of Minds and Machines" that caught my attention and which should be of interest to Slashdot readers. In that essay Dr Ellerman claims that "after several decades of debate, a definitive differentiation between minds and machines seems to be emerging into view." In particular, Dr Ellerman argues that the distinction between minds and machines is that while machines (i.e., computers) make excellent symbol manipulation devices, only minds have the additional capacity to ascribe semantics to symbols." Read the rest of John's review.
Isn't that the difference between intelligence and memory? Read the rest of the review by John David Funge
2 comments Pornographic Coding
Friday, January 20, 2006, 11:09 PM - Theory
Program code is like pornography. It has linear logic, but no meaning. There is an accumulation of things already known. The focus is always on the same explicit facts. Repetition and boredom rule.
(Adapted from a Neoist slogan)
Art is sanctioned pornography.
(Neoist slogan)we demand a shamanic pornography. Capitalist ``progress'' destroys the imagination through a frenzy of the visible. What we see we no longer need to imagine. A a famous zero from the popsicle academy was once moved to write that every time a man had an erection it was a triumph of the imagination. Power to the imagination, and to sex - for they are one and the same thing. Pornographers of the world close your eyes. You have nothing to lose but your bodily fluids! It is time to decondition ourselves by going beyond the known world.
The shamans of old ingested psychedelic mushrooms, and today we are further armed with a battery of chemically synthesised drugs including ecstasy and LSD. These psychedelics are psychic elevators that can power us through the seven levels of human consciousness. The first four levels of consciousness can be reached in ordinary everyday life. Level Five requires either chemical assistance or long hours of arduous interaction with your computer, and when you hit this level sexual activity is vastly enhanced. Once you go above Level Five consciousness you don't necessarily need coitus. Indeed, at Level Six you are telepathic and sexually combined with your fellow hackers, and this integration is even greater at Level Seven (aka total fucking zero and one pornography).
Drugs and code are the ancient and modern tools with which we can investigate our own minds while turning our bodies into one vast erogenous zone. Our message to purveyours of representational porn is HANDS OFF (OUR) EJACULATIONS (both male and female). WE WANT TO CUM IN ALL THE COLOURS OF ALL THE FLAGS OF ALL THE CONSULATES. As an initiated shaman Jean Cocteau was able to come through the sheer power of his imagination, he could do this without using his hands to manipulate his genitals. Let's keep our hands free to imput date on our computer terminals and use the convulsive power of codes to bring us to orgasm.
Florian Cramer and Stewart Home, Crash conference paper, Feb. 11, 2005
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theory and techniques of electronic music
Saturday, September 10, 2005, 07:56 PM - Theory
This book is about using electronic techniques to record, synthesize, process, and analyze musical sounds, a practice which came into its modern form in the years 1948-1952, but whose technological means and artistic uses have undergone several revolutions since then. Nowadays most electronic music is made using computers, and this book will focus exclusively on what used to be called 'computer music', but which should really now be called 'electronic music using a computer'.
Most of the available computer music tools have antecedents in earlier generations of equipment. The computer, however, is relatively cheap and the results of using one are much easier to document and re-create than those of earlier generations of equipment. In these respects at least, the computer makes the ideal electronic music instrument--until someone invents something even cheaper and more flexible than a computer.
[Miller Puckette is also the author of Pure data (pd), a graphical programming language for the creation of interactive computer music and multimedia works, written in the 1990s with input from many others in the computer music and free software communities.]
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