Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[K E N O]

The Voyager Golden Record is an abstract of humanity. Are those really the key 
facts about humanity? What do we want to tell aliens about us? Are cable TV, 
internet memes and Starbucks coffee not a better abstract of our (yes, rich and 
privileged Western) culture (and their counterparts in Asia, Africa, …)?
Kim Asendorf created the “First animated GIF sent into Deep Space”. ;) 
http://kimasendorf.com/first-gif-sent-into-deep-space/ 
. And my entrance exam 
at an art school was actually about teaching aliens something human: 
https://vimeo.com/101217279 .

> Forget the aliens. If you read Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem, you don't
> want to communicate with them.

But only imagining communication with aliens (or science-fiction in general) 
can bring interesting ideas about humankind itself.
Do we want to discover aliens or is it better to solve human problems first 
(whatever this means)?

> I totally agree with this. And wouldn't it be a great collective project
> to devise new ways of listening.

New ways of listening is a good point and reminds me of acoustic and soundscape 
ecology (R. Murray Schafer, Barry Truax, https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/wsp.html) 
and Pauline Oliveros’ term Deep Listening.
Not only listening to individual lifeforms, but to systems (nature, climate, 
the atmosphere, the universe, …) is a way to understand those systems better 
and to be aware of their specific needs (oh no, climate change!). It’s seems 
like a very meditative task.
Yes, we need new ways of listening. We need to listen better.

K E N O


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Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[Felix Stalder]

Forget the aliens. If you read Liu Cixin's Three Body Problem, you don't
want to communicate with them.

On 2018-01-12 12:19, Sean Cubitt wrote:
> would it be more useful/interesting to establish communication with
> planet Earth? “If a lion would speak, we would not be able to
> understand it” (Wittgenstein) but it is clear that lions (rivers,
> forests, oceans, reefs, animals etc) do speak; but that we refuse to
> listen.

I totally agree with this. And wouldn't it be a great collective project
to devise new ways of listening.

This, it seems, has two parts. First is to find ways of translating
their speech into something that we moderns, raised on science, can
understand. There, I think, we are making great progress as we cover the
world with sensors to give us an intimate understanding of processes
within local ecosystems at a global scale. It's not just that we can
individualize animals by tracking and recording their unique paths
through life, but can make trees tell us on a daily basis about the
state of their metabolism over twitter. And perhaps not with ants but
with bees, we know pretty well how and what they are communicating among
themselves. But we still poison them knowingly.

Because listening in a more meaningful way also means coming to terms
with what is being said and adapting one's behavior to it. This, of
course, is what we are refusing, individually, but more importantly,
collectively. There are rare exceptions, such as the recent granting a
river in New zeal legal personhood.

The new ways we are currently inventing to make make non-humans speak to
us, are, in my view, necessary but insufficient as long as we are not
willing to listen deeply.

Felix





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Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[Sean Cubitt]

would it be more useful/interesting to establish communication with planet 
Earth?
“If a lion would speak, we would not be able to understand it” (Wittgenstein)
but it is clear that lions (rivers, forests, oceans, reefs, animals etc) do 
speak; but that we refuse to listen. 
Nowhere in the galaxy is more observed by humans than this one yet we are not 
understanding what we see and hear (across multiple spectra) - at least in the 
sense that the only evidence of understanding would be taking action on what we 
learn from what the panet is saying.

But to go back to the SETI thought experiment. The one thing we can be sure of 
is that comms with aliens will be slow: light years intervene. So we need to 
survive in order to have a dialogue. Since we are ecologically-implicated 
creatures, we may need to establish a working planet in the ruins of this one 
if we are going to have a chat with the Greys. 

I see us as naughty teenagers being told by our new interlocutors “Clean up 
your room. Then  you can play on intergalactic social media”

sean

> 
> 
> --
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 20:17:37 +0100
> From: K E N O 
> To: christineT , nettim...@kein.org
> Subject: Re:  Speculative Intergalactic Network
> Message-ID: 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
>> It would probably not be called internet, require a better
>> understanding and use of our "other senses and sensors".
>> Maybe it exists and we dumbs don't perceive it... or we don't know that
>> certain waves effects are signs of it... or we produce too much
>> electromagnetic pollution to be able to catch it, or?
> 
> ? or they are already using gravitational waves for communication. ;) Or some 
> other kind of transmission medium. Or they exist in another dimension. That 
> would be nice: an intergalactic and multi-dimensional internet. What would 
> intergalactic internet memes be like?
> Electromagnetic pollution is an interesting point, since we love (I do, for 
> sure) our electromagnetic communication and broadcasting systems. 
> Nevertheless, we only focus on pollution regarding the spectrum of light 
> because we can see it.
> That leads to the SETI initiative, which I find very interesting from both a 
> scientific and an artistic view. Analysing electromagnetic signals, they are 
> not only able to discover extraterrestrial life, but also to detect other 
> cosmological events. It?s like fundamental research of electromagnetic 
> signals with a chance of finding aliens.
> 
>> For the first amateur radio satellite, they could call it Loretta Strong
>> ( from Copi's theater play) or Walt Dangerfield (from  P. K. Dick's Dr
>> Bloodmoney). I think that should enable a better communication to/with
>> space, cause they are intergalactically known and explicit, nope ?
> 
> They do call it Fox-1D. ;) 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT#Satellite_names 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT#Satellite_names>.
> 
> K E N O
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> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:16:00 +0100
> From: Keith Hart 
> To: nettime 
> Subject: Re:  Speculative Intergalactic Network
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> As a thought  experiment, consider why we can't communicate with the ants
> or vice versa. Their social organization is stronger than ours and their
> collective intelligence is demonstrable. It may be that one side is more
> primitive than the other. But which?
> 
> Kant held that reason is still largely individual in the human case and its
> potential will only be realized at the species level. He didn't mean that
> we all become one big brain, but rather that we have to learn to pool our
> intelligence and knowledge more effectively than at present. He probably
> had in mind libraries to which we could add mass media (which are usually
> one-way) and now the internet where everyone in principle can be a producer
> and consumer, but it would seem that the organization of collective reason
> is far away.
> 
> Kant also asked if our mathematics were universal and might therefore be a
> means of communicating with aliens; and rejected the idea. His Copernican
> revolution in metaphysics led him to make this observation: "Hitherto our
> knowledge has conformed to objects; but what if objects have to conform to
> our knowledge?" Our mathematics, music etc are therefore culturally
> spe

Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[John Hopkins]

Keith - you beat me to it --

There is much room for expanding ones communicative system in the immediate 
surrounds of this very planet -- there is an abundance of communicative energy 
flows all around us. Most of these we are -- by choice and by social convention 
-- completely ignoring. Yet we possess the faculties to tap into them 'merely' 
by paying attention ... both to our body-system and to the rest of the systems 
we are but a small part of...


If only as a mental exercise, it can be cleansing of the mind to move into some 
environment, preferably one with some shred of 'naturalness' remaining, and 
'unknow' what you observe in it. You will see alien worlds at your fingertips.


Indeed, if you consider communication to be the directed/organized flow of 
energy, the concepts of primitive or advanced need to be considered both in end 
effect on the transmitter and receiver, as well as the overall effect of the 
communicative act on everything around it. I suspect that primitive/advanced 
have no meaning in that regard! DNA signaling or pheromones being just as 
profound as Kant ... and ultimately far more potent ...


JH

On 11/Jan/18 09:00, christineT wrote:

I very much like the idea of a communication network expanded to aliens
(us included) and the question of imperialistic subordination of ones by
others. It would probably not be called internet, require a better
understanding and use of our "other senses and sensors".
Maybe it exists and we dumbs don't perceive it... or we don't know that
certain waves effects are signs of it... or we produce too much
electromagnetic pollution to be able to catch it, or...



--
++
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twitter: @neoscenes
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++
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Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[Keith Hart]

As a thought  experiment, consider why we can't communicate with the ants
or vice versa. Their social organization is stronger than ours and their
collective intelligence is demonstrable. It may be that one side is more
primitive than the other. But which?

Kant held that reason is still largely individual in the human case and its
potential will only be realized at the species level. He didn't mean that
we all become one big brain, but rather that we have to learn to pool our
intelligence and knowledge more effectively than at present. He probably
had in mind libraries to which we could add mass media (which are usually
one-way) and now the internet where everyone in principle can be a producer
and consumer, but it would seem that the organization of collective reason
is far away.

Kant also asked if our mathematics were universal and might therefore be a
means of communicating with aliens; and rejected the idea. His Copernican
revolution in metaphysics led him to make this observation: "Hitherto our
knowledge has conformed to objects; but what if objects have to conform to
our knowledge?" Our mathematics, music etc are therefore culturally
specific and would not allow us to communicate with aliens. But hang in
there, maybe, if we don't destroy the planet first, we might get there as a
species one day. Think again, Steven Spielberg.

The digital revolution is the most important in human history since the
invention of agriculture, but we are the digging stick operators in that
revolution and they couldn't have a clue that it all ends up as Chinese
civilization.

Alternatively we and the other inhabitants of this planet may already be
the objects of a computer game played by much more intelligent aliens. It
is absurd to imagine that our pathetic technologies and even more pathetic
societies could expand our current means of communication to reach
extraterrestrials, any more than the ants already have the means to reach
us or the other way round. The Victorian thought they were the last stage
of evolution. We need to be more modest.

Keith

On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 5:00 PM, christineT  wrote:

> I very much like the idea of a communication network expanded to aliens
> (us included)
>
> > Let’s assume (so called intelligent) aliens would exist. What do you
> think: How would communication work with those aliens? How would it change
> the Internet if we expanded it to different planets? I’ve been wondering if
> hierarchical structures between the new lifeforms and us humans would occur
> – like a new form of imperialism.
> >
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Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[K E N O]

> It would probably not be called internet, require a better
> understanding and use of our "other senses and sensors".
> Maybe it exists and we dumbs don't perceive it... or we don't know that
> certain waves effects are signs of it... or we produce too much
> electromagnetic pollution to be able to catch it, or…

… or they are already using gravitational waves for communication. ;) Or some 
other kind of transmission medium. Or they exist in another dimension. That 
would be nice: an intergalactic and multi-dimensional internet. What would 
intergalactic internet memes be like?
Electromagnetic pollution is an interesting point, since we love (I do, for 
sure) our electromagnetic communication and broadcasting systems. Nevertheless, 
we only focus on pollution regarding the spectrum of light because we can see 
it.
That leads to the SETI initiative, which I find very interesting from both a 
scientific and an artistic view. Analysing electromagnetic signals, they are 
not only able to discover extraterrestrial life, but also to detect other 
cosmological events. It’s like fundamental research of electromagnetic signals 
with a chance of finding aliens.

> For the first amateur radio satellite, they could call it Loretta Strong
> ( from Copi's theater play) or Walt Dangerfield (from  P. K. Dick's Dr
> Bloodmoney). I think that should enable a better communication to/with
> space, cause they are intergalactically known and explicit, nope ?

They do call it Fox-1D. ;) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMSAT#Satellite_names 
.

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Re: Speculative Intergalactic Network

[christineT]

I very much like the idea of a communication network expanded to aliens
(us included) and the question of imperialistic subordination of ones by
others. It would probably not be called internet, require a better
understanding and use of our "other senses and sensors".
Maybe it exists and we dumbs don't perceive it... or we don't know that
certain waves effects are signs of it... or we produce too much
electromagnetic pollution to be able to catch it, or...

Just fro the fun.
Do you know Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics. There is a tasty novel talking
precisely about intergalactic communication, that is worth reading.

For the first amateur radio satellite, they could call it Loretta Strong
( from Copi's theater play) or Walt Dangerfield (from  P. K. Dick's Dr
Bloodmoney). I think that should enable a better communication to/with
space, cause they are intergalactically known and explicit, nope ?

christine
"Spéculez, spéculez, il en sortira toujours quelque chose"

Le 11/01/2018 à 16:06, K E N O a écrit :
> Let’s assume (so called intelligent) aliens would exist. What do you think: 
> How would communication work with those aliens? How would it change the 
> Internet if we expanded it to different planets? I’ve been wondering if 
> hierarchical structures between the new lifeforms and us humans would occur – 
> like a new form of imperialism.
> 
... Furthermore the first amateur radio satellite will be sent to space
(https://www.amsat.org). Do you think this will enable astronomy and
communication to/with space for a broader audience?
> 
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Speculative Intergalactic Network

[K E N O]

Let’s assume (so called intelligent) aliens would exist. What do you think: How 
would communication work with those aliens? How would it change the Internet if 
we expanded it to different planets? I’ve been wondering if hierarchical 
structures between the new lifeforms and us humans would occur – like a new 
form of imperialism.

There are two interesting talks about Libre Space (https://libre.space) from 
Greece: “UPSat — the first open source satellite” 
(https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9182-upsat_-_the_first_open_source_satellite) and 
“SatNOGS: Crowd-sourced satellite operations” 
(https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9189-satnogs_crowd-sourced_satellite_operations). 
Furthermore the first amateur radio satellite will be sent to space 
(https://www.amsat.org). Do you think this will enable astronomy and 
communication to/with space for a broader audience?

K E N O
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