- Mar 2024
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Samuel Hartlib was well aware of this improvement. While extolling the clever invention of Harrison, Hartlib noted that combinations and links con-stituted the ‘argumentative part’ of the card index.60
Hartlib Papers 30/4/47A, Ephemerides 1640, Part 2.
In extolling the Ark of Studies created by Thomas Harrison, Samuel Hartlib indicated that the combinations of information and the potential links between them created the "argumentative part" of the system. In some sense this seems to be analogous to the the processing power of an information system if not specifically creating its consciousness.
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writingslowly.com writingslowly.com
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https://writingslowly.com/2024/03/13/the-card-index.html
Richard ties together the "aliveness" of card indexes, phonographs, and artificial intelligence in an interesting way. He also links it to the living surroundings of indigenous cultures which see these things in ways that westerners don't.
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People marveled at new invention after new invention and there was a tendency to see mechanical and especially electrical advances as somehow endowed with life. The phonograph, for example, was held to be alive and print adverts even claimed it had a soul.
I love the tying together of the "aliveness" of a zettelkasten with the "soul" of the phonograph here.
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- Dec 2022
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thereader.mitpress.mit.edu thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
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The sudden awareness of something that calls for an explanation, once the fog of habit has lifted, seems to be the real stuff revolutions’ sparkles are made of
!- revolutionary learning comes from : questioning basic assumptions - the art of asking questions about the simplest things - is the art of recognizing complexity in the obvious - is the art of not just taking things for granted - is the art of articulating wonder at the way things are
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- Jul 2022
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ernestbecker.org ernestbecker.org
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So we have come to the crucial point. The Socratic catharsis is a matter of letting death penetrate the self. It is the acceptance of the perishing of everything that will perish. In this acceptance a person imaginatively experiences the death of the body and the possibility of complete annihilation. This is “to ‘taste” death with the lips of your living body [so] that you … know emotionally that you are a creature who will die; “it is the passage into nothing” in which “a corner is turned within one.” And it is this very experience, and no other, that enables a person to act with genuine moral freedom and autonomy, guided by morals and not just attraction and impulses.
This is the age old principle of all wisdom traditions: To die while still alive.
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- Jun 2022
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globalecoguy.org globalecoguy.org
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It’s as if we need the gravitational pull of both worlds to keep us on track, locked on a good and righteous path. Without both worlds pulling on us, we would crash into one, or simply lose our way, hurtling through the universe on our own, intersecting nothing, helping no one.
As neuroscietist Beau Lotto points out, the Anthropocene is creating greater and greater uncertainty and unpredictability, but the one human trait evolution has created to help us deal with this is the sense of awe. See my annotation on Beau Lotto's beautiful TED Talk: How we experience awe and why it matters https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F17D5SrgBE6g%2F&group=world
In short, the sacred is the antidote to the increase in uncertainty and unpredictability as we enter into the space of the Anthropocene. Awe can be the leverage point to the ultimate leverage point for system change that Donella Meadows pointed out many years ago- it can lead to rapid shift in paradigms, worldviews and value systems needed to shift the system.
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admrayner.medium.com admrayner.medium.com
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When I was around eight years old, having recently made the trip with my family back ‘home’ to London from where I was born and lived my earliest years in Nairobi, Kenya, I contracted measles, the first of many childhood illnesses that confined me to bed and disrupted my schooling. My father sat by my bedside and read stories to me about the planets and outer space, infecting me with his love of scientific exploration. I was given books to read about natural history and I learned to identify the garden birds in the tree that grew outside my bedroom window. I made watercolour paintings of these and others that I had never seen from illustrations on the pages of ‘Collins Pocket Guide to British Birds’. Then, whenever I was well enough, I was taken out into the countryside and spent many happy days bird-spotting for myself. I was taken on my first ‘fungus foray’ to a place called Burnham Beeches, west of London. It was led by the redoubtable figure of a man called Bayard Hora and I was awestruck by what I many years later described as ‘The Fountains of the Forest’ as they erupted from ground and trees in manifold shapes and colours, not least the legendary ‘fly agaric’ (Amanita muscaria), the ‘parasol’ (Macrolepiota procera) and numerous ‘brittle gills’ (Russula spp). I found that their Latin names came easily to me and I delighted in showing off my recall to peers and teachers.
When we are young and provided with such opportunity to marvel and immerse ourselves in the patterns of nature, we keep the creative flow alive.
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www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com
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“No matter how it was collected, where it was collected, when it was collected, our language belongs to us. Our stories belong to us. Our songs belong to us,” Taken Alive, who teaches Lakota to elementary school students, told the tribal council in April.
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- Apr 2021
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stoa.anagora.org stoa.anagora.orgUntitled1
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The word which we most often use io talk about the quality without a name is the word “alive.”
It is interesting to me that this is being offered as a quasi-definition. Since reading [[notsof]] I've started to see spaces around the city (I love walking in cities) as "dead" or "alive" -- even without having a formal definition for those terms.
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- Jun 2019
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tele.informatik.uni-freiburg.de tele.informatik.uni-freiburg.de
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In 1953 I realized that the straight line leads to the downfall of mankind. But the straight line has become an absolute tyranny. The straight line is something cowardly drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling; it is the line which does not exist in nature. And that line is the rotten foundation of our doomed civilization. Even if there are places where it is recognized that this line is rapidly leading to perdition, its course continues to be plotted. ..Any design undertaken with the straight line will be stillborn. Today we are witnessing the triumph of rationalist know-how and yet, at the same time, we find ourselves confronted with emptiness. An aesthetic void, dessert of uniformity, criminal sterility, loss of creative power. Even creativity is prefabricated. We are no longer able to create. That is our real illiteracy. Friedensreich Hundertwasser
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