<nettime> The World Novel, introduction and basic ideas. Plus a quick politics update

[Max Herman via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

+++



"The World Novel" is a new fiction manuscript in progress during 2025, being written by Max Herman (without using any AI-GPT's).

It takes place in 2032, after all that has happened between now and then, and tells the story of two computer programs -- a.alpha and a.digamma -- who populate a single web page with text each day of that year.  It is a 250 word count limit.  They can also email one person per day but for technical reasons cannot read any return emails (noreply).

The web page, beyond the open text window populated daily by a.alpha and a.digamma, has only three other elements.

These are:

1 - The painting by Leonardo of Vinci of a smiling woman on a balcony, sometimes called "La Joconde" or "La Gioconda."
2 - The words "Please vote below on a scale of 1-5 how worthwhile you think it is to discuss the Esperienza hypothesis."
3 - A five-star rating display which can be clicked on to vote.

The programs are designed to attempt to get as many votes as possible with as high a rating as possible.

This novel will be completed on December 31, 2025.  If of good quality it should be available the following year.  If you would like to discuss or collaborate on it please let me know.



+++



News flash: Your City at Summer Risk


When temps warm up, people go outside and body language gets intense.  Outdoor partying can spark confrontations and fisticuffs, and police involvement may not prevent escalation.  Hence urban unrest, in the US northern hemisphere, kicks off its high-likelihood phase on Memorial Day Weekend.

The US Regressive movement is cranking its disruption efforts up to eleven.  This means damaging non-Regressive cities and states as much as possible, that is, their economies of course but also their communities and social fabric in every possible way.  The radical regressive right, let's be honest, want non-Regressive places and spaces to go up in smoke; and by combining such harassment with bribes and pardons they hope to drive people, rapidly and sheep-like, into their fold.  And not just someday: they want it this summer.

Their fanatics, who abound, might take it upon themselves to play at agent provocateur but might also just be content to exacerbate spontaneous events.  These are shock doctrine people, folks, so don't kid yourself that they aren't at the highest and lowest levels more than ready to carpe the diem.  They are.

To avoid sleepwalking into their many impending traps, set a counter-trap of your own first: the Esperienza hypothesis.

Prove the radical regressives are not the leading edge of modern efficiency, in either technology or government, in science or in art, but rather self-dealing retrogrades and anti-social cronies fueled by desperation which they accelerate for fun and profit.  Embarrass them for their anti-democratic fervor by showing your pro-democracy fortitude.  Point out that they are Machiavellians, autocratic fantasists, not rightful heirs to the imperfect legacy of the democratic rule-of-law world and its work in progress.  Compete for the Anthropocene, lest it not be competed for, and set their mightiest opponent at your side as ally -- the previously unrecognized author, philosopher, inventor, discoverer, and planner nonpareil Leonardo of Vinci, artist, scientist, humanist, engineer, and worker in every field -- and do your duty.  Emulate MLK of course, with redoubled perseverance, who defeated their forbears so decisively with peaceful protest so many times in the sixties.

Don't want to play into their EM-PT machinations?  Then don't take the bait.  And don't let others, which means pointing it out as well as routing a bypass.

And if you want to influence the judiciary, who do still matter, there is one thing they watch more than everything else: peaceful marching and demonstrations, whether for prosecuting hate crimes or advancing the Esperienza hypothesis (supported by Ken Burns, Robert Zwijnenberg, Carlo Vecce, and so many more).  Don't believe me?  Just ask a judge who talks to other judges.

Thanks, and good luck avec Expérience,

Yours &c.



+++



“If Galileo was not quite what the standard myth makes of him, we may ask how we should rather understand him given that he is, for many purposes, not so much a historical person as he is a symbol, the personification of an imagined conflict between science and religion, truth and authority, or almost, to put it baldly, right and wrong.  Such a caricature is a misrepresentation of him, not just mistaken but pernicious in its widespread acceptance, yet it does little good to argue the fine points of the case in a scholarly way.  A careful argument will never prevail over a simple and instantly understood caricature.  Galileo has an image problem.  Galileo needs a public relations makeover.

"Perhaps what is needed is a new caricature, one more useful and nearer the truth.  In this way we re-enter, having left them on the title page, the territory of the Muses, those slightly cartoonish but enduring divinities, almost the last of 'Olympus' faded hierarchy' to have any currency with us. They are ancient daughters of Zeus, invoked by Homer and named by Hesiod, and in later times variously associated with specific arts, or even subjects we would not immediately call arts, like Clio, Muse of History, or Urania, Muse of Astronomy. Urania, I am arguing, is not Galileo's Muse, but she is close enough to indicate what is missing among the Nine, a new art, requiring a new Muse who really would be his, something like a Muse of Earthly Things, or a Muse of Mathematical Experimental Science. If Astronomy could have a muse in Hellenistic times, then surely these more modern subjects, so aptly associated with Galileo, could have one now. There are many practicing scientists who would be glad to imagine that this Muse was hovering nearby to symbolize to others, or even to themselves, what it is that they do. She would need a name—Galilea? Such a divinity would personify Galileo's notion of science with about the right mix of seriousness and lightness, I think. It would take a long time to establish her, probably as long as it has taken to establish the old Galileo story. I can imagine a distant future time, though, when it would be common knowledge, and simply assumed, that Galileo, sometime around the beginnings of our present scientific age, performed a Pygmalion-like trick: he invented a new Muse to smile on him."


(Epilogue to "Galileo’s Muse," by Mark Peterson, 2011, Harvard University Press)



+++











-- 
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org