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  • From: "Nick Routledge" <fellowservant@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture@franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Birmingham seed swap, online db stuff
  • Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 16:31:20 -0500


Have been bumping into Birmingham, Alabama, horticultural types who seem
rather enthusiastic at the prospect of a seed swap, so I've managed to
arrange one for the evening of Monday 19th (first day on the road, back
from Georgia). Venue is:

Birmingham Friends Meeting
4413 5th Avenue South

Time: 6.00 pm onwards.

At this juncture, I've no idea what route I'm following back to LA to
return the van (a couple of the team are peeling out and it looks as
though I'll have the company of one, perhaps). So far, we have offers of
shelter and num-nums in Jackson, Shreveport, Dallas, OK City, Amarillo,
Albuquerque, Flagstaff, LA. If you're along that route (or a couple of
hundred miles around it) and interested in getting together, drop me a
line.

The Botanical Gardens 'ere iz 'ooge and shockingly beautiful.

As per John's note about the opportunity cost of db architecting, namely:
"living a culture that worships non-human, non-living technology and
"dead" data and information, we conceive these extremely roundabout and
difficult and loss-prone ways to try and encode human/living knowledge," I
couldn't agree more.

But I do sense his portrayal of the relationship between living and dead
gnosis is not as broad as it might be. I think there's more to the story.
For example, I often hear gardeners suggesting that computer-mediated
communication is fundamentally a "substitute for the real thing" - or
however the suspicion might be phrased.

It gets complicated, but Sages have roundly debunked the assumption that
computer-mediated interaction somehow lacks value, power or, to put it
bluntly, integrity. Take Kevin Kelly's observation, for example, that:
"The apparent veil between the organic and the manufactured has crumpled
to reveal that the two really are, and have always been, of one being."
Put another way, a Sufi might say, "It's All God" and a contemporary might
insist, "It's All Cyberspace." Total heresy, of course, to the average
gardener. But to mystics with a deep, experiential understanding of
cyberspace ontology and our relation to it, a truism. Now, before you
poo-poo this notion, Toby Hemenway tells me Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control:
the rise of neo-biological civilization" ranks as one of the most
influential 'permie' texts of his life, and I believe the New York Times
has referred to Kevin as "the big brain on the west coast" so we're not
talking slouch city, here, folks.

Another remark by Kevin: "We should not be surprised that life, having
subjugated the bulk of inert matter on Earth, would go on to subjugate
technology, and bring it also under its reign of constant evolution."
Though the language is a trifle machocentric for my liking, I sense his
remark speaks to this thread. Despite all that computer mediated
communication is not, and John's spot on with his assessment there, I
would argue passionately that the web is one humdinger of a _complement_
to the permie movement. It is also a tool that is 'falling to Nature.' The
swing of the pendulum, in a sense. Kevin again: "Biology always wins in
any blending of organic and machine."

Little known fact, but it is precisely this insight that has motivated the
creation of some of the more influential web technes in recent years.
These words, for example:

"The cell is the universe within, and Mother Gaia the universe without.
And who among us can draw the line that separates these two? We breathe,
we grow, and spread our vitality up to the very edges of the stars, both
within our self-created world of ones and nones, and outside, to the
smiling eyes of all the ones who you will touch, and remain part of,
forever...At the End of History, we lose ourselves and gain our self. All
these lines that divide are just so much play, the hide-and-seek of
divinity. Remove the boundaries and see all as it really is: infinite.
Embrace the Earth, for thou art that."

are the words of Mark Pesce, inventor of VRML and one of the most
celebrated web wonks alive. VRML to your average web wonk is a way to
prettify the web. But conceptually, its appearance marked the arrival of a
techne that literally 'sensualized hypertext.' Big stuff. What I'm getting
at here is that its invention was motivated fundamentally by the instinct
expressed in Mark's words. Mark is one who understands that here is a
profound correlation between techne evolution and the evolution of
consciousness.

Phew.

n.




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