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6/23/10

Degenerative Fragmentation: The Internet Hurts

Nicholas Carr (The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains) argues that the internet is taking negative advantage of brain plasticity to weaken our ability to concentrate and achieve the focus required for intellectual achievement. Chasing the fragments delivered by networked media fully absorbs the multi-tasker's nimble but simple minds, he says, re-mapping the brain in the process to a new form of shallowness and stupidity.

6/23/10

Optimal Fragmentation: the Internet Helps

Clay Shirky (Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age) argues that the internet's low-friction networking of millions of minds creates a new "cognitive surplus," overcoming the constraints of older ways of ordering human knowledge. He believes that the intellectual benefits of this surplus will outweigh the accompanying burst of stupid or trivial output that so characterizes the internet, and which similarly characterized the emergence of the printed page.

He compares this transition to the emergence of science in the west, an event that rode the printing press to create peer-reviewed discourse, overcoming earlier monopolies of knowledge with the overlapping efforts of many minds in feedback loops of learning.

He points to open-source coding and Wikipedia as early examples of internet-driven innovation. He also cites the 20th century's temporary absorption of its leisure-based cognitive surplus by television, an attention-monopoly now broken into fragments by the internet.

6/22/10

Optimal Fragmentation: Break-up of Standard Oil in 1911

The cubist era saw one of the great examples of optimal fragmentation in the breakup of a famous monopoly, the world's first multi-national corporation, Standard Oil. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling in a suit by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.

The fragments of Standard Oil became such familiar names as Exxon, Mobil, Chevron. The fragmentation released innovations as the rigid structures of Standard Oil's management, which were at one time responsible for the success of both the company and the industry, gave way to the innovations of varied and younger minds.

For example, the process of thermal cracking, an innovation of chemist William Burton, allowed the creation of much more gasoline from a barrel of crude. His work was resisted by "26 Broadway," the home of Standard Oil management, but was embraced by the fragment, Standard of Indiana, after the breakup. This occurred just as oil was making its transition from being an illumination fuel to being a transportation fuel with the rise of the automobile.

Another benefit accrued to the retired creator of Standard OIl, John D. Rockefeller. As principal stockholder of the fragments, whose value rose significantly, he became even wealthier.

5/17/10

Framentation Health Flaw in Pre-Cut Produce

The Washington Post quotes Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, on cross-contamination, saying "you're taking lettuce that could be grown in different areas and batching it together. ... If you've got one infected field, you're mixing it with lettuce that would otherwise be uninfected, and now the whole batch is contaminated."

3/1/10

Mashup Textbooks for the "Hive Mind"

Macmillan announced software to allow college teachers to customize textbooks to their whims and news. L. Gordon Crovitz reports in The Wall Street Journal on this new trend of collaged author-obscured instruction. He quotes internet expert and pioneer Jaron Lanier: ""Authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind."

2/28/10

Get Small: Nuclear Power to Fragment into Many Little Pieces

The nuclear power infrastructure is preparing to fragment into numerous smaller, simpler reactors. The high cost and siting problems of larger plants combine with the potential for simpler designs in these smaller power plants. They can also solve transmission problems for some remote areas needing more electricity.

The World Nuclear Association reports the following:

"The most advanced modular project is in China, where Chinergy is preparing to build the 210 MWe HTR-PM, which consists of twin 250 MWt reactors. In South Africa, Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Limited and Eskom have been developing the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) of 200 MWt (80 MWe). ...
Another significant line of development is in very small fast reactors of under 50 MWe. Some are conceived for areas away from transmission grids and with small loads; others are designed to operate in clusters in competition with large units.
Already operating in a remote corner of Siberia are four small units at the Bilibino co-generation plant. … They produce steam for district heating and 11 MWe (net) electricity each."
Scientific American: Less Is More for Designers of "Right-Sized" Nuclear Reactors
Wall Street Journal: Small Reactors Generate Big Hopes
Technology Review: Small Nukes
New York Times: Company Calls New Small Nuclear Reactor a "Game Changer"

2/22/10

Chunky-Lit Manifesto Promotes Fragments for the Self-Aware Scrap Book

Sam Sacks review of David Shields's "Reality Hunger" in the Wall Street Journal offers these quotes:
"The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps."
"My intent is to write the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated (but unconnected) artists in a multitude of forms and media… who are breaking larger and larger chunks of 'reality' into their work."
Reality Hunger blends 617 fragments from other writers, with Shields's own edits enhancing the mash, in the author's effort at self-referential, self-aware artifice.

Center Column Images The images are by artist John Boak, executive director of the Institute of Applied Cubism. [TOP OF PAGE]

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2010

7/11/07

Polartics

Polartics means the politics of those who recognize only their own polarized viewpoint as legitimate. John Boak, 7/11/07. Withering contempt for the opposite pole will proliferate in any such infected culture.

6/19/07
Flickrvision: world's snapshots, as they are posted.

1/23/07
Iraq in Fragments
A Movie

2/20/05

Marketing Cubism in America

Shelley Staples site on the famed Armory Show of 1913, which introduced modern European art to America, including cubist work by Picasso, has a fascinating section on marketing. Scroll down towards the end to discover the role of department stores in bringing this new art to Americans.

1/14/05

TV-B-Gone

Ubiquity of public screens spawns device

2/25/05

Universal Net Cubism

12/31/04

Hoopster Picasso

Homeland Cubism

11/27/04

Absinthe Drinking Revives

5/10/04

Easy Virtual Vanity Plates Click Here

4/15/04

Diego Rivera's Cubism An exhibit at the National Gallery April 4 — July 25.

2/12/03

Park Avenue Cubists NYU's Gray Gallery showed the work of four American artists of the 1930's.

8/13/02

Steering to TV A new fashion has emerged in the custom car world: mounting a television in the steering wheel where the air bag ought to be. Story by Earle Eldridge USA TODAY, 8/13/02.

Multi-channel Shoppers are a Hit with Retailers According to a study of Christmas 01 shopping by dataminer DoubleClick, people who shop using all three retail channels — stores, catalogs, and website — are bigger spenders than people who use only one or two channels.

U.S. Census' Racial Lens Experiences Hyper Fragmentation 63 racial options 6 single races 15 combinations of two 20 combinations of three 15 combinations of four 6 combinations of five 1 mix of all six main groups 2 ethnic categories (hispanic/ non hispanic) TOTAL= 126 possilities There were only 5 categories in 1990. The trend toward self-identification of racial group may have a corrosive effect on traditional "minority" group politics.

New cookbook has recipes from each of 122 American Ethnic Groups The American Ethnic Cookbook for Students, By Mark H. Zanger Includes: Early and recent immigrant groups. More than 20 Indian tribes and native groups. Ethnic groups which became groups in the United States, such as the Pennsylvania Dutch and the Acadians (Cajuns). Ethno-religious groups such as the Mormons, and Black Muslims. Creole and mixed-race groups such as Cane River Creoles and Cape Verdean-Americans. "Founding Stock" groups including Anglo-Americans (English) and New Mexico Hispanics. Ethnic groups which did not have a homeland in their previous country, such as Carpatho-Rusyn-Americans, and Hmong-Americans Small ethnic groups, such as the Wampanoag and Texas Wends.

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