Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.20.1707260037480.3645@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: London Routing, Stairs
Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:39:25 -0400 (EDT)
London Routing, Stairs http://www.alansondheim.org/london0059.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/lund11.mp4 http://www.alansondheim.org/london0054.jpg Our London Trip and What We Found this Summer Our Summer Vacation Summer Art and Fun The Grass is Always Greener in the World of Intelligent Beings An obviously superficial essay written by an outsider, apologies for any inadvertencies. 1. From a Facebook message to Ruth Catlow - The time traveling has been really interesting; we have a detailed London map from 1827 that's very different and I think if we do get back to London it would be great to do a partial psycho-geography of the city (through these books and talking/talking of course) in relation to the early networks of travel (wherries, hansom cabs, horses, steam, walking/John Gay etc.), which then developed through gas/electric/underground steam locomotives etc. to the Internet - how skeins develop and extend faculties, etc.; London seems good for that because of so many layers going back to 420,000 b.c. etc. - anyway nothing will probably come of this but cross-correlating the books and our own minor experiences has been fascinating. 2. Since then we've found an 1819 Pictures of London that's somewhere between statistics and a guidebook; an 1828 "City Scenes" of London; and we also have an 1895 Baedeker's and have found another 1823 Baedeker's, plus yet another 1923 guide. 3. There's a clear distinction between analog and digital networking, particularly in relation to dynamics; the former abjures the jump-cut; the latter is based on it. Between one pixel and another there is nothing; increase the raster of a lossless image, and artifacts show up; increase the magni- fication of a landscape and more details emerge. Searching for the Thames stairs on Google maps tends towards jumps of detail, resolution, mapping strategies, and so forth; nothing is gained but a difficulty telling the image from the image-machine and its protocols. 4. The networks in London moved bodies and goods; telegraphy on the other hand already began the transition to artifacture; it's also based on protocol layers (the idea that simple Morse was used raw for information transmission and reception simply isn't true). There was also mail, which involved the particulate release of sheets of information from one site to another; the delay involved was palpable, with no pretense towards instantan- eity. The movement of goods on the other hand, like bodies, was analog and continuous, and required constant tending. 5. Thinking through Angela Nagle, it's the apparent intantaneity of the digital that creates, on one hand, the simultaneous horizons of imminence and immanence, and, on the other, the clear distancing that results in projections and introjections of false objectivities. Fake and "real" news are equally slotted within the protocol stacks; there's no distinction, no difference. There's also no alterity that points to "other-than" - as if there were a rule which could be used as a standard or guide (search the Guildhall and Greenwich Observatory for such) - as if, in other words, there were algorithms for truth-tables such as Beth developed, Wittgenstein, I believe, referenced. Within the digital, and without-within the digital, one is literally lost among texts and images that lack any sort of verification procedures; change one pixel of a reputed "true" representation, and an entire world is lost, another is born. 6. With wherries and hansom cabs, underground locomotives and porters, there is still another layer, that of bills of lading, contracts, payments duly noted, insurance, licensing, taxation, legal rights-of-way, etc. - the whole apparatus of commerce and communication as written, promulgated within and without legal codes (thank of the cants of vagrants in 19th-century London) - all the materialities and communications that Braudel and the Annales analyzed. Relate this to Benjamin's Arcade project and you see what a fine and literal mess we're in, trying to contain the uncontainable. On the other hand, every tcp-ip transmission and blockchain elements tends towards a packet exactitude based on infinite and indefinite reproducibility. One written check for example is fundamentally different from another, but one x.jpg duplicated is equivalent in any conceivable test to its copy - as if there were an original in the first place. The originality of the signature on the check is taken as a fundamental guarantee of authenticity (of course there is also counterfeiting and so forth); there is no originality in the duplicate image, steganography notwithstanding. 7. Who, in actually, sends the telegraph, and who receives it? Who views the jpg, who saves it to her file? These, I think, are not equivalent questions; telegraphy is still of an area which is replete with bodies, operating keys, translating from written text to code, for example - while the jpg may be manufactured, literally, away and apart from any body whatsoever - its return is that of data (interpretable or not), not the projected presence of a sender or even receiver at either - or multiple - ends of telegraphic communication. 8. London is overlaid and underlaid by all of these systems and their analog and digital interrelationships, codes, histories, mensurations, and communities; one can find Roman road markers for example, and going back even farther, say to 430,000 years ago, there are traderoutes involving knapping technologies, flint tools, and the like. Written communication, whether analog or digital, as we know it, is just the surface of an obdurate landscape; deep ecology makes us aware of these things, which today are more likely than not to be trashed. But these things, as paths and diffuse vectors, present a history from diffuse beginnings to the diffusions of the present; what might be worthwhile to explore is the phenomenology, not only of dissemination, but of diffusion itself. Communities form, roil, collapse, flee, reassemble, disappear, along with technologies and traderoutes, and so - 9. What of the London stairs? They granted and some still grant, access to the Thames and all that the river might or might not bring; they're also embarkation and debarkation points for moving bodies, goods, mail, machinery, technologies before technologies were online (with their own sustaining physical apparatus of course). One could do worse than walk the stairs, from one to another, whatever remnants that exist, a form of Situationist derive interstitial between analog and analog, analog and digital. This is surely a project involving another system of laminations, already heavily explored (to the point of exhaustion of course), that of combing the shore at low tide. What sort of derive would this be, involving, caressing, bodies and networks, networked bodies and bodies of networks? The surface, and the depths of the surface, are inconceivably thinned testimonies; that will not, cannot, change. Too often history and process are seen in terms of events, dates, genres and canon (much as literatures); here we have the opportunity to examine striations and dynamics, worlds in flux as Braudel might have it. Wandering, we were amazed at the density of London and its diffuse chronometries; behind every wayfare was another, an other, ready to give way. The world is always already entangled and the stairs tend to that, lend themselves to flow. --- Corrections --- 31c31 < networking, particularly in relation to dynamics; the former --- > networking, particularly in relation to dyanmics; the former 38c38 < but a difficulty telling the image from the image-machine and --- > but a difficulting telling the image from the image-machine and 69c69 < contracts, payments duly noted, insurance, licensing, taxation, --- > contracts, payments duly noted, insurance, licensings, taxation, 83c83 < fundamental guarantee of authenticity (of course there is also --- > fundamental guarantee of authenticity (of course thre is also 107c107 < beginnings to the diffusions of the present; what might be --- > beginnings to the diffusions of the prsent; what might be