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Last login: 10 hours agoLaodan: laodan is a guy from Milford, Pennsylvania, USA.; Likes 1,599 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 228 fans • Received 65 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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How to Save the World: Jun 7, 2007 9:41am 1 review evolution, complexity, chaos, order
http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2007/06/06.html; The Immune 'Setwork': Our Body's Other Brain, and What It's Telling Us in How to Save the World by Dave Pollaerd
Varela's point is that the immune 'system' is actually a combination of: * a relatively simple, mechanistic system (called clonal selection, illustrated at right, by which stem cells form into lymphocytes ready to respond to many types of antigens, and then, when they actually encounter antigens, neutralize them and clone themselves to be ready for reinfection by the same antigen), and * a more complex, dynamic network (a learning, evolving, self-regulating network with the intelligence to, as Varela puts it, "know and select what it should pay attention to") He calls this a 'second generation network', but there should be a name for a combination of a system and a network, integrated together. Since there isn't one, I'm coining one: a setwork. ... when environmental changes occur faster than setworks' ability to adapt to them, the result is called Extinction. Perhaps Gaia will learn from the mistake of "letting the apes run the laboratory for awhile". Perhaps the next evolution, after our extinction, will be a creature with a smaller brain, or at least without an opposable thumb, one that will evolve 'culturally' at a pace that its physical evolution can keep pace with. The Immune 'Setwork': Our Body's Other Brain, and What It's Telling Us This tempest in the tea-cup of immunity appears strangely similar to the foundational rule described in the Tao: "all have 2 sides" like 2 sides of a coin. And "all change" as the tension, resulting from the balancing of the interests of the 2 sides, accumulates into chaos where appears a point of bifurcation leading to... well change. (no good, no bad) In his conclusion Dave posits that the re-balancing of the side-effects of modernity shall be concluded in favor of Gaia the whole, The apes, its rebellious constitutive particles being mutated into submission to the whole.... I suggest that there is another way of seeing this drama unfolding. Gaia has innumerable particles and the "apes presently running the laboratory" are only one of this multitude. I posit that the re-balancing of a particle gone out of order happens at the level of its own sub-ensemble and not at a higher systemic level. The human particle functions as its own polar system: individual particles and societal groupings. And what do we observe presently? Human societal groupings (societies) have completely lost their capacity to auto-regulate. They have been overtaken by a mechanism that lays out of the will of their human particles. The loss of auto-regulation at the level of the human ensemble will not go far, for, the adjacent ensembles will freeze it in its steps leading it in chaos till it reaches a point of bifurcation where humanity rediscovers societal auto-regulation through the interaction between its polarities. And for sure the bifurcation point from chaos to order emerges out of disruption and pestilence bringing about their lot of mutations in the multiple sub-ensembles of the human ensemble.

feltron vii: Jan 14, 2007 5:46pm 1 review visualization, society, order
http://feltron.com/06report_index.html; Feltron's 2006 annual report via information aesthetics, in Felron.com
personal annual report including several nice infographics, documenting a multitude of events, including the 'airmiles traveled', 'number of emails sent', 'number of photos taken', 'animals eaten', 'books read', 'most frequented bar', 'best meal', 'miles run', 'plants killed' or 'beverages drunk by type'. I am wondering a little how he kept track of it all? Feltron's 2006 annual report Feltron's 2005 annual report
2006 report
2006 report

Wow! I'm not too sure what to think about this? We all to one degree or another are somehow voyeuristic and as such always are interested to take a peek at the privacy of others. But I can't suppress an awkward feeling that submerges me. Is this not in a way or another giving us a preview of what could well be the annual reports on each individual produced by search engines, marketing companies and eventually some dark forces of order representing national establishments... brr.