Collective intentionality and the further challenge of collective free improvisation

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11007-020-09484-y?fbclid=IwAR08IWwX_T0sdEp5SU_DqQgtm16lWjq_OZq2Up3bJH8r2iY0-EZR6-wv0xA

Collective intentionality and the further challenge of collective free improvisation

Continental Philosophy Review volume 53, pages49–65(2020)

Abstract

The kind of collective improvisation attained by free jazz at the beginning of the sixties appears interesting from the perspective of contemporary debates on collective intentionality for several reasons. The most notable of these, is that it holds a mirror up to what analytical philosophers of action identify as “the complexly interwoven sets of collective intentions” that make a group more than the sum of its parts. But at the same time, free jazz poses a challenge to these philosophical theories of collective intentionality, because what happens is not planned in advance but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. The second and no less decisive reason is that jazz musicians act together in a very distinctive way, which casts into clear relief the interplay between togetherness and agonism, individual freedom and group commitment, which is contained in every human interaction. In other words, in free jazz we find what Hannah Arendt calls the “paradoxical” or “twofold” character of “human plurality.” Starting with the analysis of two paradigmatic case studies—Charles Mingus’s Folk Forms No. 1 and Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation—my main concern in this paper is to provide a phenomenological account of the individual-yet-plural intentionality that emerges and runs through the improvisatory process in the free jazz case. After having made the negative point that this phenomenon represents a challenge to the analytical theories of collective intentionality, I shall argue that it can be accounted for from a phenomenological perspective. My basic thesis is that the overall cohesiveness of the improvisatory process must be regarded as a meaningful realization of an overall feeling, shared and shaped together by musicians over time—and not as the execution of an advanced plan.

test data

Technological solutions such as machine learning statistical modeling are limited by the quality of the data in which they are based (a scientific methodological point typically overlooked by programmers and armchair epidemiologists :):) ). and in this case the tables of coronavirus statistics are practically useless without understanding how they were derived.

Numerology : Mistaking a numeral — a squiggle on a screen or a piece of paper — for a fact of the world.

___________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei | skype: shaxinwei | mobile: +1-650-815-9962 | asu.zoom.us/my/shaxinwei
________________________________________________



APR. 4, 2020, AT 1:11 PM

Coronavirus Case Counts Are Meaningless*

*Unless you know something about testing. And even then, it gets complicated.

By 


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/coronavirus-case-counts-are-meaningless/?fbclid=IwAR380aOHz1KQp1nrf4e8V2mWzecJ0gzDWblHUiNQfBoD9Xhr4RZeTAoGGiM


If you’re a regular reader of FiveThirtyEight, you’re probably used to looking at data in sports — where basically everything that happens on a basketball court or a baseball diamond is recorded — or in electoral politics, when polls (in theory, anyway) survey a random sample of the population. COVID-19 statistics, especially the number of reported cases, are not at all like that. The data, at best, is highly incomplete, and often the tip of the iceberg for much larger problems. And data on tests and the number of reported cases is highly nonrandom. In many parts of the world today, health authorities are still trying to triage the situation with a limited number of tests available. Their goal in testing is often to allocate scarce medical care to the patients who most need it — rather than to create a comprehensive dataset for epidemiologists and statisticians to study.

Dunne & Raby : What it means to prototype?

Design researchers Dunne & Raby brilliant speculative design research.  Worth careful study.

dunne raby speculative everything

See their work for striking ways to present and work through complex systems
using articulatory techniques that complement (not replace):
equational simulations,
animate objects,
forum theater and movement / somatic.

Bioland


on  prototyping: FICTIONAL FUNCTIONS AND FUNCTIONAL FICTIONS

NOT HERE, NOT NOW (VIDEO), 2015
http://dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects/772/0

PROJECT #26765: FLIRT, 1998-00 (multi-scale)

UMK: LIVES AND LANDSCAPES, 2014

(Thanks to OSK.)

___________________________________________
Sha Xin Wei | skype: shaxinwei | mobile: +1-650-815-9962 | asu.zoom.us/my/shaxinwei
________________________________________________

Lithopia / Lithopy: a design fiction nightmare of a blockchain+drone-powered transaction-based village economy

http://www.brokennature.org/lithopia-prototyping-blockchain-futures/


Lithopia: Prototyping Blockchain Futures

By  | July 4, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lithopy, curated by Denisa Kera and Petr Šourek along with a second project entitled Out of Power Tower, represents the Czech participation in the XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature. The projects arise from a survey centered on the significant mineral resources of the Czech territory––in particular, lithium. Lithopy questions the practice of this mineral’s extraction and its use. The Czech pavilion was commissioned by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague with the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.



Lithopia Design Fiction movie scene.

The Lithopia Project1 offers a design method for anticipatory governance7 of emerging blockchain and DLTs that goes against the current hype of anticipatory and frictionless design promises of full control over user decisions2,11. Instead of predicting user needs that ultimately serve one version of the (industry defined) future, anticipatory prototyping involves the users as stakeholders in the adoption of the emerging technology. It offers templates of blockchain services that present the future scenarios and dilemmas, which can be modified and iterated to support inclusive and democratic “future-making”14,15 that combines prototyping with deliberation.


The Lithopia prototyping templates consist of a dashboard featured on Figure 1 and a design fiction scenario (Figure 2 and 3). While the dashboard integrates the existing social and technical infrastructures (social institutions of marriage and property ownership on the ledger with data from satellites, Hyperledger Fabric REST API, and various open APIs), the design fiction presents exaggerated and artistically rendered use cases that hint at the potential (mis)uses. In this fictional village, some common gestures have unexpected meaning if caught by satellites, and the Lithopians are forced to invent bizarre strategies of hiding under umbrellas to escape their satellites and the blockchain. They also indulge in various techno-superstitions, such as horoscopes of satellite locations, which they use to interpret geopolitical events.


The scenarios are intentionally ambiguous and exaggerated to provoke creative uses of the Lithopia templates on the Github. In the Lithopia context “Sunny days are made for transactions. No clouds prevent satellites from keeping an eye on contracts being made and assets changing hands. People exchange goods, make payments, marry and divorce. All the hustle and bustle of sunny days is recorded by the decentralized digital ledger of the blockchain. Hugs are big and kisses are many to make sure satellites recognize and the blockchain records affection, love, and friendship. In Lithopia, all social contact is a smart contract.”8



Figure 1: Node-RED dashboard for Lithopians connecting various open APIs (Twitter, OpenWeather, and Sentinel2) with the REST API of the Hyperledger. On the dashboard you can follow the current position of the satellite, weather conditions for transactions, communicate with the blockchain (proposing a sale of property, marriage or partnership), follow cryptocurrency exchanges and Twitter sentiment analysis related to Lithium that help business decisions.

Anticipatory prototyping
The Lithopia project serves as an educational tool, but also a participatory probe to critically evaluate the promises of DLTs’ future, in which governance will merge with automation over smart contracts, and we will have a tool to control data tempering, fake news, or even AI simulations. The anticipatory prototypes explicitly connect design with ethical deliberation and policy negotiations by engaging the public directly in the design process rather than predicting user behavior and promising “anticipatory” design.
The prototypes utilize existing open source tools (Hyperledger Fabric and Composer for the blockchain contracts; Node-RED and various open APIs for the dashboard) to create templates on GitHub that support creative and exploratory uses of such technologies. The goal is to help the general public and various stakeholders to understand, experience, experiment with, and deliberate upon the future of blockchain and its integration with other existing technologies.

Blockchain governance and design
While the first decade of blockchain and DLTs was mainly on transactions between humans (Bitcoin blockchain and numerous crypto-alt-currency projects), we are entering a phase that emphasizes integration of these emerging technologies with existing infrastructures and corporate and institutional actors (Ethereum, Ripple, and Corda platforms and protocols) along increasing machine-to-machine transactions, including AI and IoT scenarios (IOTA). The original, libertarian, and crypto-anarchist emphasis on privacy and anonymity of the individuals is transforming into a pragmatic search for convergences of the DLTs with existing social, but also technological, infrastructures (satellites, IoT, banks, and supply chains)4,13 .

...


___________________________________________
________________________________________________

Angela Walch, The Bitcoin Blockchain as Financial Market Infrastructure: A Consideration of Operational Risk

For another “AI”
and governance issue.

Walch’s argument can be retargetted as a problematization of 
the present financial system itself, and of any infrastructure software technology...



Abstract:

Blockchain” is the word on the street these days, with every signifi- cant financial institution, from Goldman Sachs to NASDAQ, experimenting with this new technology. Many say that this remarkable innovation could radically transform our financial system, eliminating the costs and inefficiencies that plague our existing financial infrastructures, such as payment, settlement, and clearing systems. Venture capital investments are pouring into blockchain startups, which are scrambling to disrupt the “quadrillion”- dollar markets represented by existing financial market infrastructures. A debate rages over whether public, “permissionless” blockchains (like Bitcoin’s) or private, “permissioned” blockchains (like those being de- signed at many large banks) are more desirable.

Amidst this flurry of innovation and investment, this Article inquires into the suitability of the Bitcoin blockchain to serve as the backbone of financial market infrastructure, and evaluates whether it is robust enough to serve as the foundation of major payment, settlement, clearing, or trading systems.

Positing a scenario in which the Bitcoin blockchain does serve as the technology enabling significant financial market infrastructures, this Article highlights the vital importance of functioning financial market infrastructure to global financial stability, and describes relevant principles that global financial regulators have adopted to help maintain this stability, focusing particularly on governance, risk management, and operational risk.

The Article then moves to explicate the operational risks generated by the most fundamental features of Bitcoin: its status as decentralized, open- source software. Illuminating the inevitable operational risks of software, such as its vulnerability to bugs and hacking (as well as Bitcoin’s unique “51% Attack” vulnerability), uneven adoption of new releases, and its opaque nature to all except coders, the Article argues that these technology risks are exacerbated by the governance risks generated by Bitcoin’s ambiguous governance structure. The Article then teases out the operational risks spawned by decentralized, open-source governance, including that no one is responsible for resolving a crisis with the software; no one can legitimately serve as “the voice” of the software; code maintenance and repair may be delayed or imperfect because not enough time is devoted to the code by volunteer software developers (or, if the coders are paid by private com- panies, the code development may be influenced by conflicts of interest); consensus on important changes to the code may be difficult or impossible to achieve, leading to splits in the blockchain; and the software developers who “run” the Bitcoin blockchain seem to have backgrounds in software coding rather than in policy-making or risk management for financial mar- ket infrastructure.

The Article concludes that these operational risks, generated by Bitcoin’s most fundamental, presumably inalterable, structures, strongly undermine the Bitcoin blockchain’s suitability to serve as financial market infrastructure.

Global Cafe - Plates, flatware & glasses

Thanks Ri!

what’s the total cost ?  $50-$80 for 10 sets would be fine.  Can you work w Pete on actual purchase?

Let’s get ceramic plates and metal flatware.

Simple classy design is good.

It would be really great  to get plates that can hold a projected image.
eg matte surface like “stoneware” 
white is fine, but  projecting into dark slate gray could yield images with much richer color and good contrast.

(I’m not sure about exactly which colors are optimal — best to experiment by shining a portable projector onto the plate — but there’s no time. :)

Xin Wei

Global Cafe + Object Theater: toward Media Architecture Biennale 2020

Hi Yanjun, Shomit, Christy, Haakon, (other interested folks welcome!)

Shall we build the Global Cafe and related works into a joint project  on augmented social refreshment space
the we can exhibit at world-level venue such as:

Media Architecture Biennale MAB 2020 Utrecht

Ingredients:

The local responsive objects as well as telematically mated objects have behaviors that are designed first 
with social & dramaturgical power (think experimental puppet theater), and 
with experiential research questions such as:

On Sep 13, 2019, at 6:00 AM, Christy Spackman <Christy.Spackman@asu.edu> wrote:

Imagine you are at a cafe. Three people are there. 
1) who are the three people whose interaction you want to prototype?
2) what might a "normal" script be for those interactions?
3) what new script(s) are you hoping to inspire?

• Global Cafe (project webpage coming)

• Apply for international exhibition July / Aug 2020

• Ecology of Things

• Theater of objects (Ri)


Yanjun — Do you know this biennale: MAB: Media Architecture Biennale
https://mab18.org was hosted by CAFA in Beijing
The general chair in 2018 was Prof. Chang Zhigang – CAFA, Beijing

Overall timeline:
Prototype Fall 2019
publish in DIS, CHI, Leonardo, etc.
Local Exhibit Emerge 2020
Apply for funding Spring 2020
Refine Summer 2020