See Dick Click



Dick and Jane were my classmates back in the first grade. In fact we spent quite a bit of time together, running, jumping, playing ball, learning to read … surely you remember them too, or have at least heard of them? That was fifty-three years ago, but the memories linger, and even today I can still occasionally hear our echoes!

See Dick run.

Oh, See Jane. Funny, funny Jane.

See Spot jump.

Oh Father. See funny Dick. Dick can play.

Indeed, we spent a lot of time playing, making things, working, helping Mother and Father, watching out for Sally and Puff, exploring the natural world outdoors … and still we all learned to read, and so much more! At the time it seemed so ordinary, but looking back now I’m just not so sure … really it’s disconcerting … maybe it just wasn’t right?

Why were we allowed to waste so much unsupervised time in those childish, unproductive activities? Dick was always climbing trees, or he and Jane were pulling Sally or Spot around in that silly red wagon, or they were all chasing Puff, all while the Russians were launching Sputnik! Shouldn’t we have been doing state-mandated No Child Left Behind homework each day after school instead? Granted, we didn’t have computers back then, but surely we could have at least learned to use slide rules by the sixth grade, without waiting for High School? After all, kids today can all use computers by the time they’re ten, if not some years earlier!So perhaps things were not entirely as they seemed; what had appeared so natural and ordinary was in some ways a national shame, so many childhoods hours wasted playing outside.

Thankfully, things have been getting better in America, at least ever since home computers came out in the 1980s. For near thirty years now, every single year more and more kids spend more and more time on computers: surfing, clicking, double-clicking, texting, tweeting, and more! That’s technology for you, and high-tech is as natural today to kids as mothers’ milk or soda pop. Better yet, practically all the kids today have 24/7 cell phones with Cyber-connectivity, so they’re almost never really unplugged!

 But that’s nothing. You’ve heard of evolution haven’t you? Well let me tell you a story...

There are some schools now where a lot of the children are “ScreenHeads.”  ScreenHead children are so highly evolved that their heads have become flatscreen monitors, and some even have IPhone hands. That’s the honest truth … and there’s one school where ALL the children are ScreenHeads, except for just two ‘normal,’ un-evolved HumanHead children, Hillary and Humphrey. You can’t begin to imagine that first day of school, and how terribly inferior Hillary and Humphrey felt relative to their so very sleek, so very smart, and so very ‘connected’ ScreenHead classmates. But here’s the interesting thing: as the school year unfolded, Hillary and Humphrey discovered that being HumanHeads is wonderfully rewarding after all!

Can you imagine that? Well it’s true, and you can read the rest of the story in...

ScreenHeads: A Story for Children (and Adults)

available as a free download. Simply click the title, then use the "File ... Download … Open (or Save)" menu to convert to the superior PDF format.

ScreenHeads: A Story for Children (and Adults) employs an innovative “You are the Illustrator” format which encourages (but does not require) artistic exploration of the story’s important Human and Cyber themes. (15 story pages, 19 pages total)

Copyright 2012 Stephen Rowe

FAKE REALITY

We are swimming in a digital ether of fake news, fake politics, fake robotic phone calls, fake facebook accounts, fake smiles (say “cheese!”) and even fake reality TV shows… Just the very beginning…

Can anyone begin to imagine the warp of the next twenty years???

The Ghost Kohada Koheiji, by Katsushika Hokusai, 1760-1849

Post-New Age Philosophy 101

if

 something

is Not

on the internet

does it

REALLY

exist
?

did it
REALLY
happen

?

Me Watching You Watching Me

FACEBOOK

is

Me

watching you

watching Me

THE SINGULARITY

The notion of “singularity,” where brains and personalities are integrally uploaded to cyberspace, is entirely naive – practically, and even theoretically:

1. A static digital map of the brain will not suffice. The construct must capture not only every digitized element at a fixed point in time, but must also capture the rate at which every element changes.
2. But the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principal definitively asserts that location and instantaneous velocity cannot be known simultaneously.

This alone is enough to damn the project.

And then there is an even more likely and intriguing obstacle, should you ask “Wherin lies consciousness?”

• So subtle, surely consciousness resides in the most subtle sub-atomic spaces...
• But no one knows what an atom is! The sub-atomic particles are just models that change every year – femons, leptons, bosons, baryons, mesons... an ultimately never-ending list that we will never hold in our hands.

We are brilliant fools

to pursue such nonsense

in a world so bright

we can no longer see the stars...

Creativity, Idleness, Amusement, and Bob Dylan

Someone – let’s call him “Ethan” – recommended a book to me, “How to be Idle” by Tom Hodgkinson. It was a great delight! I loved the many, many literary excerpts on the subject that Hodgkinson compiled from the past five plus centuries. Ethan knew I would be interested, as I am an accomplished Master in the discipline of Idleness, and have been for years.

For Ethan, the book’s central insight is the relationship between Creativity and Idleness. Throughout history, the most creative people have been relatively idle, and Ethan’s new objective is to be more idle and hence more creative. And me?

My objective is to explore the literal meaning of amusement, the difference between amusement and Idleness, what all of this has to do wBob Dylan, and to note an even deeper dynamic relating Idleness and Creativity. 

The Literal Meanings of Amuse and Amusement




  

To muse generally means to reflect or meditate on something, often with a sense of wonder or awe.

In classical mythology, the Muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne who presided over the classical Greek arts. And somewhat more recently, a “muse” came to mean any source of artistic or poetic inspiration. 

Given this root, what is the literal meaning of amusement? Just as amoral means without morality; as atheism means without theism (without belief in God); as apathy means without feeling; as atypical means not typical; etc:

“To amuse” then might literally mean to take away one’s muse; one’s inspiration; one’s imagination. And to replace these creative gifts with external distractions.

What does this have to do with Bob Dylan?

Do you remember the lines from Bob Dylan’s great 1965 caustic anthem Like a Rolling Stone: 

 

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns


When they all come down and did tricks for you




You never understood that it ain't no good  


You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

Who can know Bob Dylan’s mind? But to my mind, these words are about the negative aspect of amusement. Amusement distracts us from deeper creative wellsprings; it stunts our spiritual and creative growth; it diminishes us.

The Difference between Amusement and Idleness

How many times have you heard the phrase “idle amusement?” Driven by our Protestant work ethic, we often confuse Idleness and amusement, but in fact “idle amusement” is a contradiction.

True Idleness, as Hodgkinson explains, generates open, calm space in an otherwise noisy, pressing, preoccupied world … the very space that is necessary for creativity.




Amusement, on the other hand, fills that space with inauthentic noise and activity – Dylan’s “jugglers and clowns.”

Today we are “amused” as never before. Television, radio, movies, CDs, iPods, email, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet in general - how can anyone be creative when the mind is so jangled?

 

It is impossible; Creativity requires Idleness.

 

A Deeper Dynamic between Idleness and Creativity?

Ethan wants to become more idle and hence become more creative. But is this possible? Or does this notion put the cart before the horse?

I believe that some truly creative people are born that way. These people create their own Idle space almost as their lungs create breath: they must be Idle; they crave Idleness and Solitude; the drive is innate; it is in their bones; they cannot and never have been otherwise.

But what about one who have lived his life amused rather than Idle? Can one then become more Idle and consequently more Creative? I do not know … But I suspect yes, at least to some degree. It can’t hurt, and I wish him well.

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)

Still We Wonder, Still We Yearn

This graphic juxtaposes the painting “Allegoria Della Vita Umana,” (Allegory of Human Life) by Guido Cagnacci (1601–1663), which presents a beautiful woman contemplating youth, time, transience, mortality, and eternity (symbolized by the medieval ouroboros, a snake continuously renewing itself by feeding on its own tail, positioned by Cagnacci to suggest a halo), with a much later vision.

     Today our contemplations are more scientific …

                                                                                    Informed by data …

                                                                                                                       Debated by experts …

Yet our fundamental nature, created eons ago, still wonders, still yearns …

Even though we have forgotten what it is we wonder about and yearn for!

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)

Caught in the Web!

I created this using photographs of myself and a small frog or some kind of something caught in a large spider web in the tall grass on our property 1-2 miles west of Fremont, about a half mile from Satek’s Winery. The crucifixion in the web was painful to witness, such is nature … And such is Cyber-absorption in the WWW!

 

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)

 

Can You Imagine, Had God Texted (Instead Of Spoken) His Creation Into Existence, How It Would Have Looked?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Gospel According to St. John {1:1}

 

 

So we have it through John that in the beginning, the Word was paramount … and through Genesis we know that God spoke His Creation into existence: “Let there be this,” “Let there be that,” “Let there be a few other things,” and Creation was wrought!

The Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man, Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1615

But of course, the Word that was God and the Words He spoke were not the English words spoken in Shakespeare’s day (when the King James Bible was translated); nor is contemporary English as rich and powerful as Shakespeare’s … centuries of devolution … continuing to just yesterday, when written text (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc) all but displaced the human voice in most social interaction … and now even families and close friends prefer “texting.”

 

What a shame! Voice “channels” so much more than text: the nuance of volume, tone, timbre, inflection, cadence, hesitation, impatience, confidence or uncertainty, warm hot or cold, joy, sadness, etc, etc, etc … Not to mention how spoken conversations tend to lurch in unexpected directions, enabling discovery, because dynamic, instantaneous, interactive exchange lends to productive interruptions that cannot occur in the linear, sequential exchange of text messages.

 

And it just gets worse, as text messages become shorter and more abbreviated: AAP (Always a pleasure); 143 (I love you); 1432 (I love you too).

 

I guess I’m just happy that it took so long to come so far. Can you imagine, had God texted (instead of spoken) His Creation into existence, how it would have looked?

 

 

 

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

(watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics)

 

Do you think all this texting, email, and internet is making us less human somehow?

You this email think us do texting all less making human somehow internet and is?

Think do internet and email you texting all making this less us is human somehow?

You do all internet think and this us less email texting is human making somehow?

You texting all think do email this internet and human less us is making somehow?

All think texting do internet and you less this email is making human us somehow?

Do email you think all is internet texting this less human us making somehow and?

This think do you internet texting us less and all email making human somehow is?

All do this think you us texting and is less making email internet somehow human?

Do internet this email you think and all texting human less is us somehow making?

Do all this think is you making us texting human internet email somehow and less?

Internet do all think you this email texting and making less is human us somehow?

Think this you do all and texting is making human less email internet us somehow?

Do and you making think all us texting email this internet human somehow is less?

Do you think all this texting email and internet is making us less human somehow?

I used a computer to randomize the fundamental fifteen-word question posed by a human [me]: “Do you think all this texting email and internet is making us less human somehow?” The randomizations create questions that are obviously related to the fundamental question, but meaning is denigrated by syntactical gaps, breaks, dislocations, etc. In struggling to read a few of these degraded questions, you vaguely perceive the original, intended question, but comprehension is labored and fuzzy.

From this perspective, comparing just one of these randomized questions to the fundamental question provides a poetic metaphor of the difference between Cyber-social interaction and pre-Cyber, face to face, in the same physical space, Human social interaction.

Face to face, in the same physical space, Human social interaction is dense, with meaning amplified, buttressed, nuanced, modulated, etc by:

·         Gesture, posture, dynamics of personal space, etc

·         Inflections of tone, volume, pitch, timber, tempo, etc

·         Facial expression, including the subtle eyes, often described as windows to the soul

·         Etc

In comparison, Cyber-interaction is the dim shadow of a fragrant, glorious flower … A flower less and less in the sunlight as people, especially youngsters, invest more and more time and social energy in the Cyber-cave.

Homo Cyberius: Cyber Man #1

Stepping outside, I see vast, fragrant fields of tulips, lavender, daisies, poppies  … a thousand varieties … slowly morphing to plastic, dime store replicas …

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort per StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com

Do you ever feel like you REALLY need a new Facebook icon, if just for one day?

“Where’s your head at today?” When it is absorbed in Cyberspace, then you are a ScreenHead. And what is your Facebook icon, but another type of ScreenHead?

Yet our Facebook icons are more than ScreenHeads – they are our masks, even the void, default silhouette some choose by not choosing otherwise. The void mask obviously hides us, but so do many others. Some hide the 'real' us through glorification, while others radically transform and reinvent us. And all are expressive of something … Don’t you ever feel like you REALLY need a new Facebook icon, if just for one day?

William Blake, Nebuchadnezzar

William Blake, Angel of Revelation                                         William Blake, Eve Naming the Birds 

                         Stephen Rowe, Cyber-Man                                                                 Edvard Munch, The Scream

             Kali the Destroyer Hindu Goddess                                                           William Blake, Death’s Door

 Grant Wood, American Gothic

To PARTICIPATE in constructing a HYPER-CYBER MONTAGE:

The above icons comprise a personal Cyber-Montage of some interest which reflects my personal psyche ... but wouldn’t it be cool if we could altogether construct a much-expanded Hyper-Cyber-Montage?

SAY WHAT??

Well, imagine that you …

1.       Construct your own personal Cyber-Montage just as I did above, and post it on your own web site or personal web page. [Your Facebook Notes could work.]

2.       Include that internet address in a comment to this post so anyone reading this post could then go to your Cyber-Montage. See the Comment Examples below.

3.       Also imagine that your own post contains all the identical text you see in this section, beginning with “To PARTICIPATE in constructing ..." above and ending with “NOW DO IT!” further below.

Now further imagine …

4.       Sending invitations to your friends [per email, Facebook posts, etc], inviting them to view your Cyber-Montage.

5.       Since your Cyber-Montage contains all the identical text you see in this section, it is self-replicating:

a.       Friends viewing your Cyber-Montage are automatically invited to do the same, thereby iterating successive branches, similar to a chain-mail.

The root of this tree [chain] is http://screenheads.blogspot.com/2012/01/do-you-ever-feel-like-you-really-need.html. Do not edit this URL [internet address], as it points to the very first, beginning post in the Hyper-Cyber montage: starting here, anyone can navigate through all the individual Cyber-montages added to the ever-growing Hyper-collection.

The URL to your Cyber-Montage should go in the comment you write to the post that just now brought you into the chain.

Comment Examples:

This idea is super-cool!!  I set up a branch at www.MyPost.MyHost.com, wonder where it will lead?

Interesting selection, especially liked the _________ icon. My personal interests revolve more around _________ you will see that in my Cyber-Montage at www.MyPost.MyHost.com .

Dig it, my Montage is entirely composed of my own photos: www.MyPost.MyHost.com .

If others participate precisely as outlined above, we will be jointly constructing a Hyper-Cyber-Montage, wherein each individual Montage is just one facet of a dynamic, ever-expanding super-construction of Cyber-Montages, all related per the Cyber-tree-branches, continuously growing as additional participants are brought into the project.

Of course not everyone will participate, but that’s OK – it’s like a successful Gallery exhibit: you expect far more lookers than participants, and all are welcome: anyone can view the facets of the Hyper-Cyber-Montage by simply following the links left in the comments, and it will be an interesting gallery indeed!

Perhaps the very first example of an entirely new concept: Hyper-Cyber-Art?

NOW DO IT!