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Critical Mass
This nOde
last updated January 15th, 2008 and is permanently morphing...
(9 Et'znab (Flint) /
6 Muwan (Owl) - 178/260 -
12.19.14.17.18)
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This nOde
last updated January 15th, 2008 and is permanently morphing...
(9 Et'znab (Flint) /
6 Muwan (Owl) - 178/260 -
12.19.14.17.18)
critical mass
critical mass noun
1. The smallest mass of
a fissionable material that will sustain a nuclear chain reaction at a
constant level.
2. A very important or crucial stage.
The process
has not stopped. It is still creating new meme-copying devices. While human language
is a vast system for transmitting memes
with high fidelity, it took the invention of writing to enable memes to be stored.
Now telephones,
fax machines, photocopiers, computers and the Internet
all increase the speed and ease of meme-replication. We may think that we invented
all these machines for our own convenience, but once memes got going, these
devices--or something like them--were inevitable. The real driving force
is the evolutionary
algorithm. And the real beneficiaries are not us but the selfish memes.
- Susan Blackmore - _Meme, Myself And I_
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Desovereignization:
"Never before in all history have the inequities and the momentums of unthinking money-power been more glaringly evident to so vastly large a number of now literate, competent, and constructively thinkingall-around-the-world humans.
There's a soon-to-occur critical-mass moment
when the intuition of the responsibly inspired
majority of humanity, in contradistinction to
the angered Luddites and avenging Robin Hoods, faced with comprehensive
functional discontinuity of nationally contained tecno-economic systems,
will call for and accomplish a world-around reorientation of ourplanetary
affairs."
-- R.
Buckminster Fuller, _Grunch of Giants_, p. 89
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Think about this for a moment: If
the human mind does not loom large in the coming history of the human race,
then what is to become of us? The future is bound to be psychedelic,
because the future belongs to the mind. We are just beginning to push the buttons
on the mind. Once we take a serious engineering approach to this, we are going
to discover the plasticity, the mutability, the eternal nature of the mind and,
I believe, release it from the monkey. My vision of the final human future is
an effort to exteriorize the soul and internalize the body, so that the exterior
soul will exist as a superconducting lens
of translinguistic matter generated out of the body of each of us at a critical
juncture at our psychedelic bar mitzvah. From that point on, we will be eternal
somewhere in the solid-state matrix
of the translinguistic lens we have become. One's body image will exist as a
holographic wave
transform while one is at play in the fields of the lord
and living in Elysium.
- Terence
McKenna - _Tryptamine Hallucinogens
And Consciousness_
_Out
Of Control_ (1994)by Kevin
Kelly
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A sink brims with water.
You pull the plug. The water stirs. A vortex
materializes. It blooms into a tiny whirlpool, growing as if it were alive.
In a minute the whirl extends from surface to drain, animating the whole basin.
An ever changing cascade of water molecules swirls through the tornado,
transmuting the whirlpool's being from moment to moment.
Yet the whirlpool persists, essentially unchanged, dancing
on the edge
of collapse. "We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves,"
wrote Norbert
Wiener.
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As the sink empties, all of its water passes through the spiral. When finally the basin of water has sunk from the bowl to the cistern pipes, where does the form of the whirlpool go? For that matter, where did it come from?
The whirlpool appears reliably whenever we pull the plug. It is an emergent thing, like a flock, whose power and structure are not contained in the power and structure of a single water molecule. No matter how intimately you know the chemical character of H2O, it does not prepare you for the character of a whirlpool. Like all emergent entities, the essence of a vortex emanates from a messy collection of other entities; in this case, a pool of water molecules. One drop of water is not enough for a whirlpool to appear in, just as one pinch of sand is not enough to hatch an avalanche. Emergence requires a population of entities, a multitude, a collective, a mob, more.
More is different. One grain
of sand cannot avalanche, but pile up enough grains of sand and you get
a dune
that can trigger avalanches. Certain physical attributes such as temperature
depend on collective behavior. A single molecule floating in space does
not really have a temperature. Temperature is more correctly thought of
as a group characteristic that a population of molecules has. Though temperature
is an emergent property, it can be measured precisely, confidently, and
predictably. It is real.
It has long been appreciated by science that large numbers behave differently than small numbers. Mobs breed a requisite measure of complexity for emergent entities. The total number of possible interactions between two or more members accumulates exponentially as the number of members increases. At a high level of connectivity, and a high number of members, the dynamics of mobs takes hold. More is different.
The weakness of conspiracy
theory is that human nature is to fuck up. Yeah, of course! I said
that in _The Invisibles_, the idea that no matter how many surveillance cameras
you put up, the guy in the surveillance screen room is jerking off. He's
not watching; he's playing computer games and looking at some magazine
or whatever it is he's doing. You don't have to worry about it.
I think we live in a self-perfecting system and we just don't know it.
Everything is fine. It's working perfectly; just let it correct itself,
and do what you can to help it correct itself when you become aware of it.
Isn't that a justification for apathy? It only looks like apathy. It's why Buddhist monks seem apathetic to us. I think it's because they've figured it out. But it's the kind of system that perfects itself. Even if you become apathetic, there's always someone else who'll come up who hasn't reached that stage yet and will do all of that.
- Grant Morrison re: the comic series _The Invisibles_
bicyclists
and, less frequently, unicyclists, skateboarders, inline skaters,
roller skaters and other self-propelled commuters take to the streets
en masse. While the ride was originally founded with the idea of
drawing attention
to how unfriendly the city was to bicyclists, the leaderless structure
of Critical Mass makes it impossible to assign it any one specific
goal. In fact, the purpose of Critical Mass is not formalized beyond
the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city streets.non-commercial
and non-competitive, and they operate with diffused and informal
decision-making, independent of leaders. They are often also
unofficial, foregoing permits and official sanction from municipal
authorities. Typically, only the meeting place, date, and time are
fixed. In some cities, the route, finishing point, or attractions along
the way may be planned ahead. Participants have differing purposes for
the event, such as celebrating their choice of the bicycle for
transportation, and enjoying car-free social time on city streets.perceived
as protest activities. A 2006 New Yorker magazine article described
Critical Mass' activity in New York City as "monthly political-protest
rides", and characterized Critical Mass as a part of a social movement;
and the UK e-zine Urban75, which advertises as well as publishes
photographs of the Critical Mass event in London, describes this as
"the monthly protest by cyclists reclaiming the streets of London."
However, Critical Mass participants have insisted that these events
should be viewed as "celebrations" and spontaneous gatherings,
and not as protests or organized demonstrations. This stance allows
Critical Mass to argue a legal position that its events can occur
without advance notification of local police.rhizomal
(rather than hierarchical) structure. Critical Mass is sometimes called
an "organized coincidence", with no leadership or membership. The
routes of some rides are decided spontaneously by whoever is currently
at the front of the ride, others are decided prior to the ride by a
popular vote of suggested routes often drawn up on photocopied flyers.
The term xerocracy was coined to describe a process by which the route for a Critical Mass can be decided: anyone who has an opinion makes their own map
and distributes it to the cyclists participating in the Mass. Still
other rides decide the route by consensus. The "disorganized" nature of
the event allows it to largely escape clampdown by authorities who may
view the rides as forms of parades or organized protest. Additionally,
the movement is free from the structural costs associated with a
centralized, hierarchical organization. In order for the event to
function, the only requirement is a sufficient turn-out to create a
"critical mass" of riders dense enough to occupy a piece of road to the
exclusion of drivers of motorized vehicles, pedestrians, and other road
users. Authorities in New York, California and Oregon have expressed
concern with the difficulty of coordinating with the riders, due to the
lack of leadership.
Temporary Autonomous Zones
- they arrested people for riding bikes in nyc. when asked why
they were being arrested, the answer was "you're breaking the law".
by Eat
Static
by Eat Static off of _Atomic Powder_ compilation
by Chrome off of _Half Machine Lip Moves/Alien
Soundtracks_ CD on Touch & Go
(1978/1979/1990)
by Matthew Shipp Quartet off of _Critical Mass_ on Thirsty Ear (1997)
by Numb off of _Blood Meridian_ on Metropolis (1997)604
track _Do
Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?_ MP3
by Growling Mad Scientists off of _3D_ compilation 12"x3
on 
(1997)sample: "Finally a kind of critical mass! At this point, the atmosphere begins to grow..."
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