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Category: Viral

Entrecard Top Droppers

Entrecard Top Droppers

Appreciation and link love for my top droppers in January! Feel free to comment while you’re here – no need to drop and run.

  • BMWF1Blog – All the buzz about the BMW Sauber F1 team.
  • Subjective Soup – A hearty mix of different thoughts from a retired teacher, empty-nester, and optimist – seasoned with a hint of attitude.
  • Entrecard SEO – Search engine optimization tips for Entrecard.
  • My notes – A diary of notes about online services and tools.
  • Zero– Mixed-bag blog of lifehacks and trends – a little of everything.
  • I Love-Hate America – An Filipino immigrant’s perspective on the American way of life.
  • The Daily Planet – News, current events, recycling, the environment, humor, and daily life.
  • Politicus US – Insightful political commentary.
  • World Through Coloured Glasses – Perspectives on global trends and the folk technology that affects people’s lives.
  • Maitri’s Compassionate Living – A space to gather together blogs celebrating compassion and loving-kindness in myriad forms.
Buy John’s Book

Buy John’s Book

I have been seriously remiss in my intellectual (and wifely) support! I haven’t even urged you to buy, read, and comment on hubby’s book – The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Artificial Life, and the New AI (Bradford Books, MIT Press)!

Preview The Allure of Machinic Life at Google Books.

allurofmachinic

I’m a little annoyed about the title, since I preferred “The Lure of Machinic Life” to “The Allure of Machinic Life.” However, the absolutely wonderful bit on me me me in the acknowledgments almost makes up for it. The book cover is extra-special, too, because it features a suggestive artwork by our friend Joseph Nechvatal.

John Johnston
John Johnston
The book is a philosophically-minded constructive analysis that answers Heidegger’s critique of technology in subtle and completely unexpected ways. It builds on the understandings of such thinkers as Lacan, Foucault, Deleuze, Baudrillard and Kittler, but it’s also a very original tour through areas of research that haven’t been connected or critiqued from this kind of perspective. It’s worth the read if only for the interpretive history of research on (and ideas about) artificial life.

I’m biased, but I’m also a pretty good critical reader – and this book is fantastic. I think it’s been mislabeled by the marketing people, so I’m afraid that it won’t be read – and that would really be a shame.

Review
“John Johnston is to be applauded for his engaging and eminently readable assessment of the new, interdisciplinary sciences aimed at designing and building complex, life-like, intelligent machines. Cybernetics, information theory, chaos theory, artificial life, autopoiesis, connectionism, embodied autonomous agents—it’s all here!”
—Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Reed College, and Editor-in-Chief, Artificial Life

In The Allure of Machinic Life, John Johnston examines new forms of nascent life that emerge through technical interactions within human-constructed environments—”machinic life”—in the sciences of cybernetics, artificial life, and artificial intelligence. With the development of such research initiatives as the evolution of digital organisms, computer immune systems, artificial protocells, evolutionary robotics, and swarm systems, Johnston argues, machinic life has achieved a complexity and autonomy worthy of study in its own right.

Drawing on the publications of scientists as well as a range of work in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory, but always with the primary focus on the “objects at hand”—the machines, programs, and processes that constitute machinic life—Johnston shows how they come about, how they operate, and how they are already changing. This understanding is a necessary first step, he further argues, that must precede speculation about the meaning and cultural implications of these new forms of life.

Developing the concept of the “computational assemblage” (a machine and its associated discourse) as a framework to identify both resemblances and differences in form and function, Johnston offers a conceptual history of each of the three sciences. He considers the new theory of machines proposed by cybernetics from several perspectives, including Lacanian psychoanalysis and “machinic philosophy.” He examines the history of the new science of artificial life and its relation to theories of evolution, emergence, and complex adaptive systems (as illustrated by a series of experiments carried out on various software platforms). He describes the history of artificial intelligence as a series of unfolding conceptual conflicts—decodings and recodings—leading to a “new AI” that is strongly influenced by artificial life. Finally, in examining the role played by neuroscience in several contemporary research initiatives, he shows how further success in the building of intelligent machines will most likely result from progress in our understanding of how the human brain actually works.

Language is not only a virus (grin) but also an essential bit of the block of the discourse network that co-evolves with technological change and human action to give rise to the computational assemblage; or, machinic life is always already within you (and without you) but here are some of the details.

Now – go forth and buy many copies, and tell all thine friends (and thine enemies as well) to read and discuss.

Try these too!

Female Icon Quiz

Female Icon Quiz

I didn’t think I was either a Jackie or a Marilyn. Hmmm… an Ingrid? Not sure.


Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz…

You Are an Ingrid!

mm.ingrid_.jpg

You are an Ingrid — “I am unique”

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

  • * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
  • * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
  • * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
  • * Though I don’t always want to be cheered up when I’m feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
  • * Don’t tell me I’m too sensitive or that I’m overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

  • * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
  • * my ability to establish warm connections with people
  • * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
  • * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
  • * being unique and being seen as unique by others
  • * having aesthetic sensibilities
  • * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What’s Hard About Being an Ingrid

  • * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
  • * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don’t deserve to be loved
  • * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
  • * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands me
  • * expecting too much from myself and life
  • * fearing being abandoned
  • * obsessing over resentments
  • * longing for what I don’t have

Ingrids as Children Often

  • * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
  • * are very sensitive
  • * feel that they don’t fit in
  • * believe they are missing something that other people have
  • * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
  • * become anti-authoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
  • * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents’ divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

  • * help their children become who they really are
  • * support their children’s creativity and originality
  • * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
  • * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
  • * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed


Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz
at HelloQuizzy

A Meme for Sunday

A Meme for Sunday

Things I’ve done are in bold.
Things I am indifferent towards or actively would like to avoid are crossed out.
Things in normal type face are things I’d like to do.

I got this version from Quod She.

  • Start my own blog
  • Sleep under the stars
  • Play in a band
  • Own a cell phone
  • Visit Hawaii
  • Watch a meteor shower
  • Give more than I can afford to charity
  • Visit Disneyland / Disneyworld
  • Climb a mountain
  • Sing a solo
  • Bungee jump
  • Participate in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony
  • Teach myself an art from scratch
  • Adopt a child
  • Purchase real estate
  • Had food poisoning
  • Visit Parliament / Capital Hill
  • Grow my own vegetables
  • See the Mona Lisa in France
  • Sleep on an overnight train
  • Have a pillow fight
  • Hitchhike
  • Take a sick day when you’re not ill
  • Build a snow fort
  • Hold a lamb
  • Go skinny dipping
  • Run a Marathon
  • Been on television
  • Ride in a gondola in Venice
  • See a total eclipse
  • Watch a sunrise or sunset
  • Hit a home run
  • Go on a cruise
  • See Niagara Falls in person
  • Visit the birthplace of my ancestors
  • See an Amish community (nope, only Shakers)
  • Teach myself a new language
  • Have enough money to be truly satisfied
  • See the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
  • Go rock climbing
  • See Michelangelo’s David
  • Sing karaoke
  • See Old Faithful erupt
  • Buy a stranger a meal at a restaurant
  • Visit Africa
  • Walk on a beach by moonlight
  • Be transported in an ambulance
  • Have my portrait painted
  • Be arrested
  • Go deep sea fishing
  • See the Sistine Chapel in person
  • Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
  • Go scuba diving or snorkeling
  • Kiss in the rain
  • Play in the mud
  • Go to a drive-in theatre
  • Be in a movie
  • Visit the Great Wall of China
  • Start a business
  • Take a martial arts class
  • Visit Russia
  • Serve at a soup kitchen
  • Sell Girl Scout Cookies
  • Go whale watching
  • Get flowers for no reason
  • Donate blood, platelets or plasma
  • Go sky diving
  • Visit a Nazi Concentration Camp
  • Bounce a check
  • Fly in a helicopter
  • Save a favorite childhood toy
  • Visit Quebec City
  • Eat Caviar
  • Piece a quilt
  • Stand in Times Square
  • Tour the Everglades
  • Been fired from a job
  • See the Changing of the Guards in London
  • Been on a speeding motorcycle
  • See the Grand Canyon in person
  • Published a book
  • Visit the Vatican
  • Buy a brand new car
  • Walk in Jerusalem
  • Have my picture in the newspaper
  • Read the entire Bible
  • Visit the White House
  • Kill and prepare an animal for eating
  • Had chickenpox
  • Save someone’s life
  • Sit on a jury
  • Meet someone famous
  • Join a book club
  • Lose a loved one
  • Have a baby
  • See the Alamo in person (I might have when I was five, not sure)
  • Swim in the Great Salt Lake
  • Been involved in a law suit
  • Been stung by a bee
  • Ride an elephant

Totals:
Did: 51
No Thanks: 9
Would Like: 40

Universal Light Award

Universal Light Award

I am pleased (and a little floored) to be among the very first recipients of the Universal Light Award!

I created this award to honor those sweet souls that share the light.

Love and light to you.

I have received several awards from some of my favorite blogs in the last few weeks. I’m honored and blessed by the women and men that inspire me through their blogs, as well as share their thoughts and comments on mine.

Sharing light is simple and free. It costs nothing.

The more we inspire others the more we are placing goodness in this world.

We all need a little encouragement to continue our journey. Pass it on to people that share the light!

Much gratitude, Kimmy! I love the idea of the light circuit that is implied here, and so I give your award back to you!

Universal Light Award
Universal Light Award

Among those who blog, these are the ones that come to mind right away when I think about what lifts my spirits, encourages me, and provides the kinds of questions and thoughts that help me to thrive. Gratitude to you! Love, light and laughter!

And I’m holding one for you Elainna, whenever you start a blog! (smile)