Rudimentary Knowledge

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8 minutes

I read the Teen Luddite article in the NYT I’m sure most of you did too.

I thought it was perfectly pitched to tick all the millennial commentariat’s sweet spots. That closing scene of them looking up the Moon. Lord save me. So cringe.

I don’t care all that much about a group of teenagers in NYC who choose not to have a phone in 2022. I liked it the article though. Perhaps for different reasons than most. I thought this quote was killer:

“I still long to have no phone at all,” she said. “My parents are so addicted. My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart. But I guess I also like it, because I get to feel a little superior to them.”

The same way we/I/Gen-X/Older Millennials looked down at Boomers with their brains pickled by 24/7 rolling news, television in the early 00’s (and more recently by Facebook). Gen-Z is looking aghast at the cringe behaviour of their Gen-X and Millennial Parents.

I can’t imagine the level of scorn I’d be pouring on people if was a teenager right now.

Folks are so upset about the bad man buying their precious social methwork, they need to move to Methadon.Social to get a similar fix. It’s hard not pass judgement.

Interestingly, the same people ‘woe is me’ about Twitter/death of Web2 social media are by and large (i’m generalising) the same people who are deeply skeptical about the idea of the Metaverse.

Which is wild.

It’s funny, then look around at the people in my friendship group who never had any time for Social media – They (In parallel to me/you) spent the same amount of cumulative hours (millions?) as we did on Twitter, but they were playing Call of Duty, FIFA, and GTA on xbox live.

Without exception this segment of my friendship group think the Metaverse is inevitable.

This slide from Metaverse hype man Matt Ball is also really important.

All the babies that tired to multi-touch zoom in on magazines back in 2011 are ageing into being a distinct independent internet user demographic. The metaverse is enviable.

The popularity of games like Among Us (A game of deduction, teamwork, and betrayal – mostly mediated over voice chat) see also Fall Guys. Minecraft and Roblox are all about modifying 3D environments and show no sign of running out of steam, Fortnite’s most popular mode is the build mode where kids just hang out with their friends.

For millennials the internet they grew up on was forums, livejournal, early social networks like MySpace etc. Thats what we think the ‘internet’ is, when we actually mean the web.

For these kids growing up now, being on the Internet means 3D/virtual worlds, they never touch a website.

They are all hanging out with friend’s. Audio chatting in virtual spaces, manipulating and changing environments around them. Also very comfortable with paying for and spending money inside virtual economies and environments.

Just as we grew up with a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and CSS from MySpace, or knowing ‘roughly’ how to use cracked Photoshop or music programs like Logic. Kids today are growing up with a rudimentary knowledge of how to use game engines and 3D modelling tools.

Unlike Photoshop and Logic however, both Unreal Engine and Unity are Free and on top of that Blender is open source.

I don’t know why I ended up on rant about this today. Apologies.

In order to note break my rule of criticising things with out offering something positive.

I’d observe that the most important structural development that happened on Twitter in the last 2 years as the inclusion of Twitter Spaces. I’ve been on/in some, I’ve listened to hour and hour of Twitter spaces since they came in. The live chat/audio component of twitter brought the network alive for me and for the first time made it feel ‘multiplayer’. It also humanised many PFP’s I’ve seen get retweeted into my feed over the years. If you weren’t devastated when the spaces feature disappeared without warning after the bad man threw a strop maybe you aren’t playing in the same twitter, the same metaverse as other people?


Permanently Moved

EOY 2022

Alright then, that’s it for 2022. 45 episodes, 3 3/4 hours audio read from approximately 42k words of script.

Photo 365

337/365

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

  • Closing down commitments for 2022
  • Finished the last podcast of the year
  • Finished up the person writing project that started during NaNoWriMo – wild results
  • Narrowly avoided a relapse into urgent anxiety
  • Downloaded the ‘Year Compass’ workbook that loads of people told me about over the summer

Terminal Access

Lots of my extended social network have been reading, discussing, commenting on Chia Amisola’s post There is an internet that is mine & I would like you to live in it with me this week.

Its a meditation on the internet of 2022, social networks, and as the introduction says we must “broaden the label of who is a technologistrecognizing the people actively dwelling amongst our technologies as those shaping it.” well worth your time.

Simon Rynolds blogged about blogging and collated the things he’s written recently.

unseensounds sprung back to life recently and has been on a meta blogging spree too: why write?,

RSS. Alis.me has been doing similar.

Alis, pointed to a post by Robin Rendle from September. “Take Care of Your Blog

I say again to ye: just blog!

Ignore the analytics and the retweets though. There will be lonely, barren years of no one looking at your work. There will be blog posts that you adore that no one reads and there’ll be blog posts you spit out in ten minutes that take the internet by storm

I really don’t care about what anyone is saying on social media. If you are writing a newsletter, make a podcast, writing a blog, have a tumblr. Let me know.

I don’t care if its mediocre, I’d like to hear from anyone creating work and thinking beyond 240 characters. We can’t run our society on gossip.

Dipping the Stacks

Sortable – The distraction-free news reader

Choose your favorite sources (even Twitter). Receive an email digest at a time you like. Bringing RSS into the modern age.

Meet the Mice Who Make the Forest – The New York Times

“This diversity of personality types is maintained in populations because it’s a good thing, just like genetic diversity is a good thing,”

Enlightenment – by Sasha Chapin – Sasha’s ‘Newsletter’

Meditation teachers usually tell you not to chase the State, and this is helpful advice, but impossible to follow all the time, since the State feels like the point of everything. After particularly powerful experiences, you want to tell everyone you know about this State.

Virtual K-Pop Competition Series, GIRLS RE:VERSE, Put On Indefinite Hiatus

As Girls Re:Verse began production before this announcement was released, it can be inferred the show’s copyright issues might have been initially overlooked in production. If you buy an avatar, you get universal usage from it, right? Not always so.

Your Personality Has To Be Load-Bearing – Freddie deBoer

If you just are “Star Wars Fan,” you’re exempt from the exhausting and frightening work of making a self. The work has already been done for you.

Reading

I finished reading Non Violent Communication. Whilst not the best, might be the most important book I’ve finished reading this year.

I started listening to The Greater Good Book 9 in the Ciaphas Cain series. As I’ve said before its Flashman in Space ‘but make it Warhammer’. Stephen Perring’s performance is as always outstanding as narrator.

Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace came up 4 times in various bits of media and conversations I’ve had with people this week. It really seemed like the universe was trying to tell me something. As of the time time of writing I’m 70-ish% of the way though. I must admit read easier to digest texts by 4th century mystics than Weils…

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist

Ryoji Ikeda – ultratonics

If you aren’t a fan of sonic composition, sound art, you might want to give this a miss. ultratonics is a super interesting album containing frequency studies in sound taken from studio sessions recorded between 1989 and 1999.

I listened to the whole thing once though and thats enough.

I wouldn’t advise listening to this album with dogs in the room, or near anyone who thinks music should have melody or rhythm. The whole album at best sounds like what I imagine being inside a circuit board is like.

Tracks have been work in progress for over 30 years, the sonic minimalism and interests of Ikeda’s career/work is very apparent.

I visited Ikeda’s Test Pattern installation at 180 The Strand back in 2017 and saw his show at the Barbican around 2005/6 ish? I forget what year.

Like Test Pattern, I wonder if ultratonics will become the foundation for a new multi decade long artistic installation/exploration.

I listened to the album over on Bookmat as their MP3’s are insanely high quality. But its on Spotify if you want to spend 90mins being blasted by high frequency noise and distortion.

Remember Kids:

LOL truly amazing meme

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2 responses to “Rudimentary Knowledge”

  1. PD73 avatar

    Just wanted to say how your optimistic missives are a real help. I get prompted to think a little differently and have another look at the world. Wishing you the very best for the year-end and whatever it is that’s coming in ’23

  2. Jay avatar

    Thanks Paul! You too!

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