On the virtual and the real:

The main statement (that virtual reality is as real as physical reality) is to me quite obvious and not really a ground- breaking. Already in the 60s Deleuze describes the virtual as a dimension of reality. Virtual reality is obviously real to me, as much as virtual objects are real objects, virtual places are real places, and virtual experiences are real experiences. I feel like he is taking advantage of a semantic gap or misuse of the word “real” to claim something obvious to us all.

This led me to think: what do I even consider unreal? Is there anything? And I came to the conclusion that from my point of view, everything is real as it exists, even if it does in our imagination, in our dreams or in a book. A unicorn, for instance, it is a real fictional animal, with real characteristics. Even a lie is real as a lie. So, no biggie when he declares all virtual things are real things.

It is also obvious to me that a virtual table is not the same as a physical table in the same way an image of a vase (or a pipe) is not an actual vase (or a pipe), but a real image of a vase (or a pipe). So if we would be clear enough to make the difference between a table and a digital table, I’m more than fine agreeing with both of them being real, but different.

It is interesting to me and beautiful to reflect on the flow between the digital and the physical. Every time I think about social media dilemmas, it’s as if social media would be this encapsulated sphere where things happen and I’m drawn to identify the inconsistencies between it and the physical world. Like when someone has so many followers but are actually quite lonely. So it was actually nice to be reminded that things in the Internet do have a correspon- dent effect in the physical world and vice versa.

Using Instagram to one’s favor and not being outruled by the constraints and algorithmic forces is something I have been thinking about for so long, and really struggling with, to be honest. And as mentioned in class at the end it narrows down to this complex and somewhat paradoxical concept of authenticity.

Some current philosophers disregard the concept of authenticity as something that doesn’t make sense anymore. And post-modernists, also disregard the concept of authenticity because this would mean that there is some sort of core true self, that is covered on layers of inauthentic or fake, and that is not being able to shine through. Cor- porations want to be perceived as authentic, and they can follow a step-by-step guide that actually works to be perceived as it, which is of course, paradoxical.

However, it does seem like the concept of authenticity is ever more current since the romantics. But is beign au- thentic what matters, or as mentioned in the text, is it appearing authentic? We like reality TV, because it is present- ed as “real” even though we know in the back of our minds that it’s staged or highly produced. I found interesting Taylor’s conception of authenticity as compound by 3 concepts:
- Creation (related to the romantic idea of living an artistic life, being eccentric maybe)
- Originality (this proposes that to be authentic we need to be unique, which I’m not sure I agree with)
- Resistance or rebellious against the current order of things

Is there such a thing as a true self? or am I just what I choose to perform?

Here are some things I’m sure I think about AI:

- AI won’t save the world
- AI models are just a tool for different means
- AI is not bad or good perse
- We should stop referring to AI as an autonomous being
- AI is not an “alien intelligence”
- We should stop distancing the AI mod- els from the system of exploitation and extraction that sustain it.
- Most AI models are build on unethical labor structures (Amazon Turk)
[Kate Crawford’s — the Atlas of AI].
- AI won’t create less work, or liberate us from labor. If anything it will create more work.
- Do we even want to be liberated from work? (Thinking about Kant’s view on work)
- AI models like Chat GPT, can benefit us all in some way, but they clearly benefit Sam Altman the most.
- AI can insert an inhuman pace of labor.

How will we keep up?

It is quite astonishing what can be deduced from the aesthetic value of landscapes, objects and even people in relation to the culture, economy and society in which they are embedded. The example with the grass in the US for instance, and why people like it so much or find it “beautiful” is not arbitrary. I read in a book by Arnes Naess, that grass and lawns rise as a sign of wealth in France in the 17, 18th century, so they become fashionable during the reign of Louis XIV and Versailles. Maintaining a mani- cured lawn takes a lot of resources: labor, water and time. For peasants and working class families, the land needed to be used for productive tasks.

By the 19th century, the us-ies started incor- porating grass to emulate the upper-class European lifestyle. It’s mainly displayed in the front yards to let others know that you have the economical means to maintain it. And therefore it’s beautiful. So beautiful is also economic (and environmentally damaging).

A few years ago, I got very interested in the concept of “ungliness” and a style of design called “ugly design” that was published in a book from the Gestalten. The Gestalten was known for creating the most beautiful books, so having one on “ugly design” was validating it as a viable and valuable, which was quite liberating. I bought myself a book called “History of Ugliness” by Umberto Eco and was fascinated to read how the ugly was much more than the antithesis of beauty and that it had certain autonomy. It had to do with disability,

evil, uncertainty, dissonance, unmoral.

When I hear in the talk that aesthetic (as in beautiful aesthetic) should be a desirable value (like freedom or equality) I wonder if there’s something like a universal beauty.
How do you navigate the value when there’s no consensus and when the meaning of what it means for something to be aesthetic is so culture-dependant. The same talk mentioned a few examples of the mutation of what it’s per- ceived as aesthetic both in time and in space. It is the dilemma of international law.

The text creates a taxonomy of self-tracking.

Exploitative self tracking is one of the kinds described. But, isn’t all data tracking exploitive? Is any data really private (in its motivation or intention)?

In a way, one could argue that any effort of self-improvement is motivated by the imperant system of efficiency and optimisation at the core of capitalism. And even the most rudimentary private self-tracking it is in a way an abolition of the public and public responsibility, as the individual sees themselves forced to take ownership over their own destiny.

I asked my friends yesterday if they know how many breathing cycles they do a minute. One friend told me he got reminded of the little prince, when he says:

“Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, ‘What does his voice sound like? (...) Does he collect butterflies?’ Instead, they demand: ‘How old is he? (...) Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.”

In a way, this summarises my feelings about self-tracking, as emotional as it sounds (emotions being a valuable form of knowledge, as claimed in the second paper). When I go to run using Nike+ I’m running in a virtual map. The trees and the canal become landmarks in a pixelated reality and I become a moving blue dot. My goal is to improve, the focus is on the mark, the result, the number. It’s not about the process of running anymore, its not about breathing the fresh air, feeling it going through my lungs. Its not about feeling my muscles (or the absence of them).

I’m a Capricorn. Which means I’m supposed to be hard worker, perfectionist, critical and ambitious. Capricorns can also be self-centered and controlling. I think Capricorns are the perfect target audience for self-tracking. Nothing better than measure yourself, so you can spend the day thinking about how you are not perfect and others are higher than you in the ranking, so you can give a meaning to your workaholic habits as a proper overachiever.

I have been a fan of self-tracking, not (necessarily) as a way of self improving, but yes in a way of self knowledge or self analysing or narcissistic self obsessing for what matters. At some point, though, I came to the conclusion that deterministic data will tell me very little about myself and came to believe that the better I understand myself, the less I can pinpoint anything about me. It’s the paradox of self-awarness. The better I understand me, the more I un- derstand I’m a soup of contradictions, a mixture of incoherent, inconsistent, moldable behaviors and beliefs, always muting, and not even agreeing with myself. I’m thinking of Pessoa, who seemed to believe that self-knowledge or self-awarness is a free-fall down a rabbit hole that ultimately kills you. For me, it has been rather liberating.

In relation to waste and adversing:

Waste is oftentimes a consequence of excess.

We discussed in the text e-waste. Before reading the text I thought e-waste referred to waste in the Internet, or pixel trash which, as a graphic designer, has always been quite haunting for me, although I’ve never read anything about it.

I’m also unsettled by graphic design because of its tight friendship with advertising. The role of advertising is pervasive and its responsibility over technologies’ envi- ronmental impact is clear. A big part of why we endlessly pursue goods, it’s because advertising creates false needs or artificial demands that lead to a wasteful overcon- sumption.

Is it possible to work in advertisement and be good? Can I be a graphic designer and quit that game?

It reminds me to that campaign from Patagonia “Don’t buy this jacket. We make useful gear that last a long time, you don’t buy what you don’t need”. The campaign lead to massive sells. The role of actors involved earlier in the process, designers, business owners, policy makers is crucial.

Leave the last call to indi- viduals and they will fuck up (?).

Is at the end always capitalism’s fault?

About the consumerist trap and individual responsibility (how much chicken wealth can I afford?):

I remember when I first read Speculative Everything by Dune and .... I felt empowered by their view on our individual agency as consumers:

“In today’s economy it is as consumer that we have power. The most threatening act of protest for a capitalist sys- tem would be for its citizens to refuse to consume.” And they also say “in a consumer society like ours, it is through buying goods that reality takes shape. The moment money is exchanged, a possible future becomes real”. We can also reject a reality by refusing to buy, so the moment of monetary exchange becomes the very last checkpoint, and the shopping window, the very last barrier the reality shall cross before becoming so.

In the case of a harmful reality (environmentally harmful, for instance, to go back to the texts) it means that multiple institutions and agents have failed at protecting the world from the harm, and the product is now in the very last stage of becoming a reality. And in that very last stage, it is us, as consumers,
as gatekeepers,
the only ones
who can possibly
do something about it.

[We should not forget that this moment represents a failure of industries, regulatory authori- ties and laws.]

On process philosophy, performativity and queerness:

About the importance of time and temporality as a central aspect of process philosophy, it reminds me of this quote from Borges where he writes

“Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”

Basically claiming that time and change are intrinsic to existence. We are intertwined with change, as temporal beings.

I also believe that process philosophy aligns quite well with queer theory in a way, if we consider the dynamic aspect of identity, and queer theorists like Judith Butler. Butler suggests in “Gender Trouble” that gender and sexual orientation are not fixed, inherent traits, but rather performative acts.

I remember reading about this on a book on queer theory a few years ago, and feeling drawn to the idea that you are not really gay, but you are being gay. And this for me felt much more beautiful than a fixed identity (that is oftentimes perceived as a burden). It means that in a way, I choose to be gay right now and that’s ok, I don’t need it to be assigned at birth for it to be valid, it can be valid even if its a choice, and even if its temporary. It also gave me the freedom to change fluidly between sexu- al orientations, because even though I am being now gay, I could “be being” straight tomorrow and that’s also fine, and that doesn’t mean I’m being less gay today.

The speed at which things are presented to us, the fleeting images in the phone, or the flying signs by the highway, require us to shift our attention quickly, from one object to another. As Augé propose, it’s only by getting out of the highway that we can experience the “monuments”. Monuments that we preserve as a reminder that there’s a histo- ry. Something that precede us and that will also, most likely, survive us. This gives us, for a brief moment, the relief of knowing that:

[We belong to something bigger]

Putting attention into these monuments is becoming increasingly harder, as they feel more and more removed from the network of highways that characterise the “supermodernity”. Before, the monuments would be integrated in the network, so the attention would be drawn to them. In other words, we would be forced to pass through the city center instead of passing by it.

In Auge’s non-places, we experience what he calls “the flip of the gaze”. We turn back on the self and the gaze itself becomes the object of attention, we observe ourselves observing things. We see ourselves as a thing among other things.

On attention and non-places (Marc Augé):
Attention is closely related to habit, and both are closely related to...: time!

When we linger for long enough in a space, we give attention to things that usually would escape our eyes. In a way, the post-modern acceleration has made it harder for us to notice things because, as Jaana said, “we don’t have enough time”. However, when we are presented with a situation in which time is suspended, we pay attention to things, we cut them out of the background, we examine them as objects.

I wonder if it matters if things have politics intrin- sically or extrinsically. If they would have intrinsic politics, that would mean that a thing that appears out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, and that is used by no-one, would still be somewhat polit- ical. That would (for me) mean intrinsically politi- cal. So that it needs no interaction with anything external, neither in its conception, design, produc- tion, usage, or after usage. It’s hard for me to see how this could be possibly true, but if it would be, then, would this object be politically neutral?

However, all things and infrastructures are some- what material. If we look at the material properties of this object in a vacuum: what is it made out of? We can also look at the potential interactions, so even when no-one has yet ever interacted with it, the materiality of it already defines who can and who cannot interact with it, by it’s weights, sizes, and others.

However, no object is created by “no-one”. And even a ready made objects found in nature, for example a stone for smashing a nut, would already absorb the politics of “nut smashing”. So if the political qualities are inherited or acquired, is not really as relevant as admitting that all objects have politics, and the role we play in shaping those politics.

When we were asked in class, how can we find the balance between commercial pressures and feminist design ethics. The question some- what ignores the fact that the current commercial system is
build upon,
maintains
and has roots
that are mostly patriarchal
and racists,
and so,
acting within the current economic structure will always mean a trade of or a settlement.

However, strictly speaking, any kind of settlement won’t be balanced if it exists inside of the system that oppresses or exploits. Or at least that’s how I see it. It is like striving for a balance in people of color’s rights. There’s no middle ground or partial right that will ever be balanced. It’s not like we can say, “ok, now we can all sit together in the same bus, but it will be just a bit harder for you to get employed. Hope that’s balanced enough”.

Feminism is not only about gender equality, the contemporary view on feminism is inter- sectional, and therefore fights for equality and dignity for everyone, regardless of their sex, gender, race, ethnicity, education, so- cial class, and so on.

As capitalism has so far proven to be unsuc- cessful in terms of equality and dignity, it could be said that capitalism and feminism can hardly coexist. Can they balance?

I believe full equality is the only possible balanced scenario. If we can’t prove that capitalism can live up to that scenario, the only possible balance is a deep change of paradigms, a new cultural mindset, and possibly a
new
economical
system.

“The things we call “technologies” are ways of building order in our world”.

I wonder what Vertbeek would say about this statement as he criticises the one-size-fit-all statement from Heideg- ger when he says that all technologies are a will to power, which is basically the same. I have the impression that it is in this discourse where you can really see the inherited political properties of all modern technologies as they all serve mainly for productivity and optimisation, in one way or another (?).

[2] Objects revealing themselves:

If we think about the idea of things appearing to us when they break, we can think about during the act of waiting, things do too reveal their outlines, as mentioned by Schweizer in On Waiting.

In the waiting room “each object is dragged out of its invisibility to have its particular- ity exposed to the vexed gaze of the waiter who finds in the accidental phenomenolo- gy of things a mirror image of her own accidental presence among things”

Which connects also quite well to the opening phrase of the first text by Marleau Ponty. “Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things”

Schweizer writes,

“the duration of the material world is also the waiter’s own duration; the slow unfurling of things, their dissolving, their melting... coincides with a certain portion of my own duration”.

So maybe: the things in the waiting room also break, in a way that they become useless for the purpose of waiting. The only way in which they are made useful is by detaching from their functionality and becoming material to be observed, examined, gazed, in a desperate attempt to contract time, in an attempt to avoid waiting.

While the first text starts as a review of a lot of things we’ve seen, when it describes this appearance of invisible objects as they break (which is of course discussed much more in depth in the second text) I thought again about the experience of waiting and thought again of two ideas:

[1] Time revealing itself:

As Heidegger proposes, the objects become invisible when they are serving their function ready-to-hand and will come back to our attention as soon as they break or fail. Two things I thought in this regard, guided by my other readings. First, I thought about time as a technology (or as an infrastructure). According to Bergson’s idea of two times (one thought and one lived), what happens during the waiting experience is that the correspondence between mathematical time (thought) and real time (lived), breaks. The way we experience time differs drastically from the time that passes in our clocks, and so according to Heidegger’s ideas, it become apparent to us. It changes from zuhanden, from us “using” it without theorizing, to being vorhanden, so we turn our focus to it. It’s in this focusing, Schweizer says, that we are reminded of our own endurance,

“To distract them (the waiters) at all cost is to prevent them from feeling their time”.

[2] Pendulum and the experience of time

I’ve been cross-reading with the texts for my thesis about time perception and the act of waiting. The example of the telescope and Galileo observing and therefore changing the moon and himself as he observed, made me think about the clock as an instrument and how it has affected our perception of time.

The pendulum clock (here comes Galileo again) still allow us to see the continuity of time, we can literally see the pendulum oscillating each second. Then, we can feel the endurance of the object and perceive therefore time as a vessel through which we, together with the clock, flow fluidly. Later, the pendulum gave place to the quartz crystal and the oscillation became hidden, the seconds changed in a precise moment, and suddenly the milliseconds or anything in between disappear to our view, and time becomes fragmented, as the hands of the clock moves sharply. By doing that, we become blind to its continuity, in the same way Idhe mentions how we don’t see infrared or ultravi- olet, we don’t see the continuity of time, even though it is there

Now, with the digital clocks in our smartphone, we mostly perceive the time passing in terms of minutes, or even in blocks as it fits into our Google Calendars.
Time changes
We create a new time.

Time itself becomes fragmented It elapses in blocks.

This setting is ideal for the performance society as it fits appointments, meetings and deadlines, that also occur in blocks, and where the con- tinuity of time passing is less relevant that the eventuality of a certain time, as the marker for a specific appointment.

The attitude of Peter Paul towards the “digital detox” is reluctant of the idea that some technologies right now are controlled by tech giants and that can be, under this specific circumstances, indeed, toxic. It gives again all the power of “freedom” and responsibility to the individual, in a great display of existentialism, which is of course fully debatable. [But then again, I have to admit, that I watch any white straight man confidently talking on a stage with apprehension. Oops]

[1] On post-phenomenology:

It seems accessible and practical but at the same time, while it’s indeed not removed from the practicalities of real life experiences, as Verbeek critique to Heidegger, it does feel removed from:
Power dynamics,
Cultural settings,
Economic forces,
Political contexts,
Anything not directly descriptive.

It wants to describe but its scared to take stands or morally judge any technology, neither in general nor in partic- ular. Like the corporate brother of philosophy, as it can peacefully exist within the current political and economical system, and go have dinner at his house without any disagreement and then go to Russia and do the same. And I don’t say this as a critique (I’m yellow). Corporate is accessible (sellable), practical (useful) and apolitical (descriptive).

About the ontological distinction between natural things and artefacts, it vaguely reminded me of a conversation I saw between Noah Harari and Slavoj Žižek on Youtube, where Yuval said (referring to homosexuality) that anything possible within the natural world is, therefore, natural. And so, in that line, if we look at a transistor being made out of germanium and silicon, that is, at the same time, made out of sand and carbon, we could conclude that

[Everything is natural] (?)
or, “everything is dust and to dust we return”

If we were to define tech, we could define it as “any tool that expands human bi- ological capabilities”. But this definition could be confronted and pointed out as too human centered, by, for example, the Actor Network Theory, that would claim that the tool doesn’t spin around the human, but we are all a part of a network where humans and non-humans interact and co-define each other.

And Herbert Marcuse would maybe say that some technologies don’t enhance our capabilities, but sometimes they do quite the opposite, creating dependences that limit our potential.

And Donna Haraway would maybe say that such definition creates a division be- tween humans and tools that is too sharp, and that tech actually blurs those bound- aries, questioning if tech really expands or actually transforms our biology.

I remember my first class in economics, I was introduced to the term “ceteris paribus” (if everything else remains the same). But nothing ever remains the same, everything is complicated, layered, intersectional, dynamic, everchanging, nuanced, fluid, non-binary...

[capitalism works great in graphs]

Read the newspaper from Chile after a long time of blocking the news. Video of Fernando Chomalí talking about how Catholicism is profundly ingrained in the Chilean culture, which is of course, true. He uses that as an argument to deny the declive in popularity of the Catholic church during the last 15 years, he says he sees a society that even when declaring themselves non-believers, they still want a liturgy when a beloved one dies, which is also true. Is that a lack of coherence and congruence or is it just the final emancipation of traditions from religion, of rituals from beliefs.

I’ve dedicated a significant amount of time thinking about rollercoasters. Significant compared to how much time I’ve spent thinking about other fairground attractions or many other objects for what matters. 

I first became intrigued by rollercoasters while listening to Tang and the Bangas’ tiny desk on NPR Radio. The whole band was sobbing as the main singer was spouting lines out in their characteristic spoken word style: 

“I've always wondered why people rode rollercoasters
When did feeling sick become equivalent to thrill? 
When did nausea become the new X pill?”

I forgot about rollercoasters for a few years, until they were brought up to me again a week ago or so by Sontag, but now in relation to love. In an interview with the Rolling Stones she said that people seek to fall in love for the same reason they queue to get on those very big rollercoasters. Not as a metaphor (would she ever?) but as a concrete comparison of human behaviour, seeking some sort of masochistic excitement. 

A few days later, I read Sapolsky saying that the human species is the only animal species that willingly engages in artificial and constructed situations specially designed to experience fear. Because anxiety and excitement activate the exact same area in the brain. So, basically, we enjoy rollercoasters for the same reason we enjoy scary movies. We want to feel fear, so then, when it ends, we can feel the relief of it. 

Now I enjoy looking at people riding rollercoasters, the frenetic laughter, the smiles, the green faces begging for it to stop, the men pretending to be tough. I used to love rollercoasters, the speed, the danger, the loops, the twists and turns. I don’t enjoy riding them anymore. Maybe because fear arises naturally on a daily basis without the need to self-induce it. Maybe it is because I’ve found other ways in which adults release endorphins, or maybe it’s because I’m already in love, so I don’t need to know how it feels to just fall. 

I didn't realise at the beginning that these letters were the perfect queerisation of the binary understanding of inward-outward. To converse with you but with myself, dance with your thoughts as I try to develop my own. Build upon and (as opposed to "or") besides.

The holy mountain became really holy when i got you into that boarding school. I'm not sure if I admire Jodorowsky's idea(l)s as much as his performance / artist persona. I sometimes find myslef jealous of his friendship with Lihn adn Parra. Biomes exchanges on fire.

My grandma died a while ago, she was a literature professor. I miss her.

From her, I inherited this one book, "La poesía de Nicanor Parra: anejos de estudios filológicos". By the end of it, in an interview, Parra remembers his childhood and how he didn't like to see his father, after getting a bit drunk, picking up the guitar and start singing. He would walk behind his chair and loosen up the strings.

Parra is a master in finding those "small contradictions". All the anti-poetry he promoted is about that. About observing from a marginal POV, from excentric positions -> begging for meaning.

All anti-poetry is a dialectic, a way of asking - dismantling. The purpose is mainly to expose. Impertinent - subversive - humoristic - critical - coloquial. I always preferred the anti-heroes.

I specially like it because even if it doesn't seem like it, it is intrinsically hopeful. With every fallen column comes an implicit scream for unity.

I remember that scene from the Wizard of oz. When the dog Toto rips the curtain to the side and the wizard, after realising he's been exposed, shouts over his loudspeaker: "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

Here's to finding those contradictions and exposing them.
Here's to T-shirts with cheesy slogans and presentation slides full of mucus.
Here's to poking the system, to loosening up its strings.

Thank you. For your time, interest, your inwards and your outwards.

To write a diary doesn't only require poetry, but it also requires discipline. Discipline and poetry are not and should not be enemies. Given my lack of poetry, I know I can inject at least a bit of discipline. Schedule and Structure.

Schedule alternatives:
Everyday before going to bed
Everyday on my way to uni
Every wednesday night
Whenever I can (No poetry, no discipline. What do I have to offer?)

Structure:
I could reflect on the day: what did I learn? what did I unlearn?
I could answer a questionnarie: how many times did I check my phone? how many ppl did I greet?
I could reflect on my practice: what is data? what's new media? what the hell?
I could write a rhyme: For every day, for every round, you'll non-stop scroll down. Until your thumb hurts, and your head pounds, and your lungs beg for air like in the lockdown. Till then, my friend, till the sound of that church stops this merry-go-round non-sense and brings you back on your feet to the ground.