TIMES, TIME, AND HALF A TIME. A HISTORY OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM.
Comments on a cultural reality between past and future.
This blog describes Metatime in the Posthuman experience, drawn from Sir Isaac Newton's secret work on the future end of times, a tract in which he described Histories of Things to Come. His hidden papers on the occult were auctioned to two private buyers in 1936 at Sotheby's, but were not available for public research until the 1990s.
The darker blue and pink areas show where the lunar eclipse will be visible on 7-8 August 2017. Image Source: Time and Date.
There is a partial lunar eclipse of the Sturgeon Full Moon occurring on 7-8 August 2017. The eclipse begins at 15:50:01 UTC and ends at 20:50:56 UTC. For your local time, go here. Space.com:
"The Slooh community observatory will stream live views of the partial lunar eclipse of Aug. 7, 2017, which will only be visible over Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Watch live from 11:45 a.m. EDT (1545 GMT) to 3:20 p.m. EDT (1520 GMT), courtesy of Slooh. You can go to Slooh.com to join and watch this live show, chat with audience members and interact with the hosts, and personally control Slooh's telescopes."
During the eclipse, you can watch a live feed of the moon passing through the earth's shadow on the video screen below. Eclipses come in pairs, so expect another, solar eclipse in two weeks on 21 August 2017. It will be visible on the other side of the world, in North America.
Partial Lunar Eclipse (7 August 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Probably Chelsea (2017) by Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning. Genetic materials, custom software, thirty 3d prints. Image Source: Joerg Blumtritt. Thanks to Heather Dewey-Hagborg for her press release on the 2 August 2017 opening at the Fridman Gallery in New York City, for the opening of A Becoming Resemblance, a collaborative exhibition with Chelsea E. Manning.
This post is part of a series which considers the impact of Internet leaks, hacks, urban legends, conspiracy theories, and rumours as forms of public discourse. This blog is politically neutral, and my aim here is to step back from left, right, and extremist debates in order to understand how politics is developing in a new environment, informed by online media.
I have a grand theory about current political evolution. Here is the
TL;DR: There are two stances currently merging in political discourses. One is the 20th century paradigm. The other is a 21st century form. It is difficult to understand political change because we are using 20th century terms superficially to describe 21st century trends. Whether left or right, the 20th century paradigm depends on labeling as a mode of organization and control.
The impact of technology makes for a very different 21st century model. Accelerated technology depends on our most visceral responses; its intimate incorporation into our lives and minds creates a political sphere driven by instinct, taboo, fear, projection, confusion, distraction - in short, the shadowy collective unconscious. Thus, we are using highly rationalized and limiting 20th century thought forms to describe the 21st century's exploding unbounded experience and the politicized anti-rational.
A new academic project has begun to explore the historical teaching potential of virtual reality environments. I have previously blogged on a similar projects concerning history and video game technology with regard to 17th century Netherlands in The Golden Age, and colonial Quebec in I Remember the French Revolution. This is the teaser trail for Virtual Time Binoculars - Edinburgh 1544:
"PREVIEW - TEASER TRAILER
New technology reveals old Edinburgh.
St Andrews research brings 16th Century capital back to life.
The lost townscape of sixteenth-century Edinburgh is being brought back to life by researchers at the University of St Andrews.
The reconstruction is still under construction and will be available on a number of digital platforms (including a mobile app, a 3D virtual experience, and more traditional web-based resources) from 1 May 2017.
'The new digital reconstruction is the first to be created of the sixteenth-century city, and is based on a drawing from 1544 (thought to be the earliest accurate depiction of the capital).'
The technology will be shown for the first time today (16 March 2017) at a special event showcasing the University’s research to industry partners.
The virtual time travel technology – which will be released as an app in May – provides a unique window into the capital around the time of the birth of Mary Queen of Scots.
The technology is the result of a collaboration between St Andrews historians, art historians, computer scientists and University spinout company Smart History. The result is an interactive tour of the capital as it appeared in 1544, just before the city was sacked and burned by an English army led by Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford.
Dr Bess Rhodes, an expert on sixteenth-century Scottish history who collaborated on the reconstruction, said,
'For the first time visitors and residents can compare the city they know with the capital of James V and Mary Queen of Scots.'
'It has been amazing seeing the recreation of a lost townscape. I hope this project makes the public more aware of the layers in the capital’s history, and furthers understanding of the complex way in which Edinburgh evolved.'
The reconstruction is inspired by a sixteenth-century drawing of Edinburgh made by Richard Lee, an English military engineer who later designed the massive artillery defences at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Lee accompanied the Earl of Hertford’s forces to Edinburgh in 1544, and his drawing is thought to be the first realistic depiction of Scotland’s capital.
The interdisciplinary team of St Andrews researchers supplemented the information from Lee’s plan with archaeological evidence, sixteenth-century written sources, and information about the geography of the modern city, to create an updated reconstruction of Edinburgh.
Dr Rhodes continued, 'The 1540s were a tumultuous period in Edinburgh’s history. In December 1542 King James V of Scotland died, leaving his baby daughter Mary as monarch. Not long after the English King Henry VIII ordered an invasion of Scotland, with the aim of forcing the Scots to accept a proposed betrothal between the infant Mary and his young son (the future Edward VI of England).'
'One of the first major actions in the conflict later known as the "Rough Wooing" was the Earl of Hertford’s attack on Edinburgh in May 1544. Hertford’s forces failed to capture Edinburgh Castle, but set fire to the city, damaging the medieval townscape, before they retreated. Our reconstruction is the first digital representation of Edinburgh at this eventful moment in the capital’s past.'
The new reconstruction gives an overview of the townscape of the entire sixteenth-century city, with a particular focus on the Royal Mile – the historic spine of Edinburgh. The digital development was largely financed by a grant from Innovate UK."
See all my posts in the series, In Millennial Eyes, in which I explore how history and historic themes are viewed from 21st century perspectives.
One of the marvels of the middle ages, a moment when technology jumped, is the flying buttress. Perfected by the 12th century, the elegance and grandeur of flying buttresses are obvious. As an architectural innovation, they leap toward the modern world's astounding tall buildings. They have a lesson for us, too, because flying buttresses tell us what technology really means and why we use it.
The flying buttress was not invented for its own sake. The point to the buttress - even with everything it did for architecture - was not the buttress. Its invention was a means to an end. The buttress was incidental to a larger goal that had nothing to do with the buttress itself.
The flying buttress was invented to solve a problem of faith. It was deliberately conceived to narrate a great architectural story about how human beings can reach higher. At that time, the metaphor for that adventure was religious; the flying buttress was created to vault ornate ceilings into the heavens, to make buildings which touched the edge of God's celestial dominion.
Technology is a servant of higher impulses in human nature; it is supposed to expand our tool-using capacity to accomplish greater things. The past decade has confused the meaning of technology, with corporations portraying tech gadgets as autonomous objects, birthed in rapturous marketing campaigns. They present the technology as an end in itself. Some say this is a nihilistic message, and its implications are evident in recent scandals.
Apple Official iPhone 8 Trailer 2017 (26 June 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
Another Benchmark in the Downfall of Modern Society (26 July 2017). Video Source: Youtube.
This summer, I have covered several wild conspiracy theories and the evolving dynamics of memes, alt-news, and fake news in an effort to understand what part information plays as we use technology to reach beyond worship of the gadget. My posts are not advocating or seeking to prove conspiracy theories, rather indicating where their use takes us.
The established mainstream media attack the alt-media as the latter attract huge audiences on the Internet. The MSM insist that only the corporate media may define the narrative of what is happening in the world. They are grounded in reputation, domination, professionalism; these are the compensated establishment voices who wish to control the way we consume information.
Unless the MSM speak of a cherished citizen journalist who supports the mainstream narrative, there is an established media backlash against nearly all alt-media as 'fake news.' Do not believe the unbranded, no-name voices in the online realm of the disreputable, flawed, amateur, or ideologically threatening. For all this criticism, the MSM journalists have spent little effort trying to understand what practical purpose is served by fake news, conspiracy theories, and other dubious information.
To return to the flying buttress, technology serves a purpose larger than itself. In virtual reality, information becomes a technology. Information and disinformation are tools which can build new realities and new potentials. This utility is little understood by those who take information at face value, as an end in itself. Treat information as a new kind of technology, and the endgame of conspiracy theories, alt-news, and fake news makes more sense.
The last time we saw similar aspects (north node in Leo) was before the tech boom in 1998-1999, which defined the way the world came to look - but what was subsequently created was not as planned or prescribed; nor was it expected, given the way things were in the 1990s. It is a time of huge creativity, combined with uniqueness, individualism, and unpredictability.
Sandhana Palli Anand Kumar's selfie video from the summit: Amazing video from top of Mount Everest: Anand Kumar on peak (June 2014). Video Source: Youtube.
Symbolic this new moon may be, but no summit can be scaled without initial resolution and Mount Everest provides the best example.
At 8,848 metres (29,029 feet), the mountain, half in China, half in Nepal, is of course the world's tallest. It has other names: Chomolongma (in Romanized Tibetan); Sagarmatha (Romanized Nepalese); Qomolangma (Romanized Chinese). Its Old Darjeeling name is Deodungha.
Here are some new videos of people who successfully scaled this incredible peak. The most recent examples involve people who use the summit simultaneously to break social barriers, while overcoming tests of personal physical endurance and possibility. The latter have always been so. Only two people have ever scaled the mountain solo: the Italian, Reinhold Messner and the Swede, Göran Kropp (1966-2002). But today's mountaineers challenge the mountain, as well as barriers of age, gender, and social class.
After two years' preparation, Russian Valery Rozov set a record base jump off the mountain in May 2013: Mount Everest Wingsuit Jump Video: Man Jumps Off Peak With Wingsuit (May 2013). Video Source: Youtube.
"With 2016 in the books, there have been 7,646 total summits by 4,469 different climbers. 1,105 climbers, mostly Sherpa, have multiple summits. The south side (Nepal) remains more popular with 4,863 summits while the north (Tibet) has 2,783 summits."
Those numbers come from The Himalayan Database. Spaniard Kilian Jornet accomplished the fastest ascent to the top in May 2017, without bottled oxygen or fixed ropes. He managed it in 26 hours. By 2012, Apa Sherpa - whose nickname is 'Super Sherpa' - had climbed the mountain 21 times.
Indian Girls On Top Of The World! Mt. Everest next door!! (June 2016). Video Source: Youtube.
The National Cadet Corps (NCC) of India has intenstive mountaineering programs, and on 21-22 May 2016, a team of ten female cadets, aged 17 to 21, climbed Mount Everest. Their climb is documented above; they were honoured in New Delhi on 10 June 2016, below. Then-Army Chief General Dalbir Singh declared the girls would be considered to become officers in the Indian Army.
Army chief praises girl NCC team which scaled Mt. Everest - ANI News (June 2016). Video Source: Youtube.
It is no secret that the recession sparked a huge backlash against the establishment. It does not help that there are legitimate reports of a "global scourge" of high level corruption. Royal families are lightning rods for projected anger and distress, channeled through fake news stories which blame them as grand masters of everything that has gone wrong. As democracies slip into fascism, frightened citizens fear the resurgence of old monarchical absolutism, in the same way they fear a phantom limb. Do they really need to fear, when many royals have become commoners, like Korea's forgotten prince, who ran a liquor store in Los Angeles?
"I have done CGI compositing for broadcast, using live footage and 'fake' elements blended to look like one shot. As a professional I can confirm that this is a studio quality job and I would strongly disagree with those who claim it is 'obviously' fake on the basis of the visuals alone. You have done your homework and established it as a fake by cross referencing the footage with verifiable reference photos. Given the expertise and resources required to fake this so well, the fact that reference to the architecture of Buckingham Palace quickly proves this to be a fake would lead me to agree with you that this could well be a psyop designed to muddy the waters for all researchers."
Conspiracy theorists would probably distrust Google's street view and insist the footage was real. This video was linked to the Pedogate conspiracy theory, implying that the royals are involved in child sex slavery rings, or worse.
"Surrey’s Operation Arundel, which ran for six years from 2000, centred on the disco in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey[, UK,] where [Jonathan] King and Chris Denning picked up victims in the 1970s and 80s." Image Source: Nick Holt/Daily Mail.
This is an ugly topic, which the mainstream media condemned as 'fake news,' a pro-Trump political hoax. Pizzagate expanded into the larger conspiracy theory of global child abuse: Pedogate. Pedogate embroidered an extended, hideous, anti-Semitic story of a global child-killing, about a cannibalistic cabal of black magician bankers and world leaders. The discussion grew so politicized, nasty, and insane that the respectable media dismissed it all as fake news, which left conspiracists even more convinced that all the horrors were real.
My posts on this topic step back from the mainstream dismissals of this information, and from the popular investigations on sites like Voat and Reddit and Youtube. I will look at the rumours as a symptom of larger social evolution, as influenced by technology.
Today's post deals with the facts. The Web has enabled and worsened real problems of child abuse, pornography, sex slavery, and sex trafficking. A later post deals with the political exploitation of Pedogate, and its post-truth meme-ification. There are facts, there are fictions. There is a third aspect here: who is responsible?
One of the questions which I pursue on this blog is whether or not human consciousness is manifesting on the Internet, in the psycho-anthropological myth-space of virtual reality, or as an alternate way of being, or in zeroes and ones, or in the physics of quantum computing. If human consciousness operates collectively on the Internet, it raises a subsequent question of whether that online consciousness can alter actual, real world reality.
This sounds bizarre, but the relationship between mind and matter remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern science. In my 2015 post, A Quantum Christmas, I outlined the origins of the mystery: when we measure matter, matter changes. And quantum entangled matter shows that we can measure an entangled particle, and its unmeasured twin will change too.
This means that matter has some other way of existing beyond our perception and we have an effect on matter which we do not understand. At the quantum level, matter changes from a previous, indefinite state before we look at it, where it exists in all places at once. After we look at it, it acquires a definite, measurable state. The impact our observations have on reality is exerted at a speed of three trillion metres per second. This is how fast our observations travel to transform reality into fixed states. We might call it the speed of consciousness.
Try to assess this, and find further, via the double slit experiment, that before we measure matter, when it exists in an indefinite state, it acts like a wave of energy. Measure the matter, and it becomes definite, fixed, and the wave 'collapses' to behave like particles.
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