Kevin Ryan in Tokyo

Category: Opinion

  • Marilynne Robinson and What Are We Doing Here?

    I try hard to keep up with Marilynne Robinson and her writing. The book that made me think the hardest in the last decade got me turned on to her. No, I am not a masochist, even though I do keep returning to Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. She deftly drives right up the path where science and religion intermingle. Her Giliead trilogy is a remembrance of an austere midwest influenced by Protestantism and the dust bowl. With writing as sparse as Absence was rich, I was able to glimpse the breadth of her intellect. When I was a Child I Read Books is much more accessible, but a cautionary tale when we look at the direction of content being consumed today.

    So when I saw her article on Humanism and thinking after the Enlightenment in the NY Review of Books, I was happy it was Sunday breakfast. An hour later, I came up for breath. What Are We Doing Here? looks at the control of information in the early days of publishing. With prose like “However, I am too aware of the ragged beast history has been to fret over the fact that its manners are not perfect yet. ” how can we resist getting that extra cup of coffee and listening to rain as we finish the long read. Taking the extra time is mirrored in her celebration of Liberal Arts. The meaning of liberal here is from libere, or free. Free to study, which has nothing to do with politics. Robinson:

    It has given me an interesting life, allowing me all the time a novel requires and every resource for following the questions that arise as I work. I have enjoyed the company of young writers, and I have learned from them. I know that one is expected to bemoan the present time, to say something about decline and the loss of values. O tempora, o mores! But I find a great deal to respect.

    The problem is that this “Liberal” is not working to make the rest of us, outside of the university, free. Robinson goes on to bemoan the current “eclipse” of humanism after its sunrise through authors like Walt Whitman and Keats. She looks at Competition (with a big C) and quietly advocates for a revolution of thinking about our purpose here. Humanities is a necessary opening of our thinking, the first real Big Data of our existence, but it is in danger from those who have influence and now the tools to create a Benthamist Panopticon, something we must run, at top speed, from.

    The 500th anniversary of the posting of the 95 theses by Luther on the church door in Wittenberg is next week, Wednesday, November 1. All this reminded me if we dialed back a couple of centuries, and listened to Dan Carlin’s podcast about the Rebellion of Munster in post-Luther society, we could actually see how a new media was causing terrible contortions, violence, and revolution in Europe. Not a pretty site. But between Marilynne Robinson and Dan Carlin, we can get perspectives on What Is Happening Now.

  • Interactive Fiction and Time Travel

    I have been delving into Interactive Fiction lately, becoming more consumed by both reading (watching, playing) branching fiction stories (Choose Your Own Adventure, or CYOA) and the like. Zork is probably the first digital instance of branching fiction. There is an annual competition of IF stories (record 72 submissions) you can try out if you like.

    I also read a lot of science fiction, the latest being D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson (my favorite author) and Nicole Galland, collaborator with Neal and 4 others on The Mongoliad Trilogy (another kind of interactiveness). D.O.D.O. is a story about magic, and its recursive recovery and application in modern times through time travel. A very complicated treatment of time travel, with varios threads of the story intertwining like the infinite branches in the universe.

    I teach a course that uses Twine for students to create their own interactive fiction. I find it the easiest of the different story engines (word processors for branching fiction) out there.

    So when I saw this video, it made me happy to see a physicist treat the plots of time travel movies in such a logical way. This is important to both Interactive Fiction (IF) and storytelling.

  • Myanmar Update

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Frank is away, I am staying at his apartment in the Pansodong area of Yangon, waiting for the next session of teacher training. Today marks the first third of my six weeks here. Also the first time I have seen the sun on this trip. Two weeks in and we have finished sessions in Bago (monastery near Yangon, in the jungle) and in Sittwe, in Rakhine State near the Bangladeshi border. Of the two Sittwe (pronounced sit-way in Yangon, but sight-way locally) was the most successful.

    We had 42 high school English teachers for 4 days, 5 hours a day (including lunch). Rakhine State is what the Burmese called Arrakan after conquering them in 1787. They are similar to Okinawa in that they have a rich heritage, but very little support (and lots of control) from the central government. They have a different language and different customs, along with different food from the Burmese. The Brits called the country Burma because the ethnic group around Yangon had that name. They pretty much ignored the other 129 ethnic groups. That continues to a certain degree.

    This lack of support means that the acceptance rate for high school grads into university is the lowest among all states in Myanmar. The Education Minister of the region hopes that our training can help teachers raise entrance exam scores for students.

    The classrooms were hot, sticky and noisy. We occasionally had to stop classes or do writing or reading when the pounding rain on the roof made conversation impossible. But the students were really motivated and most were open to new ideas. There have been rumblings in the Ministry about changing the entrance exam away from one that tested memory more than language. Teachers are ready. It was good timing.

  • Myanmar 2017 Day 2

    Day 2

    Frank gets up, shows me how the wifi doesn’t work. We spend the morning buying a phone to get hooked up. Three trips back to the store to get the network up and running. Soaked with seat. The phone was only $50, and buying $10 of time got me $10 extra. All set, but the battery runs down. We return to the building to find the power out. Which means no elevator. Now way 8 floors in this weather. We go get a snack.

    I forgot how humid Yangon can be, as the torrential downpours of rainy season make me look forlornly at my athlete’s foot. Regular application of medicine helps. A little. Surprising how it can make an angry hot red painful infection that runs up the leg behind the ankle, but this is TMI.

    2 hours later the electricity comes on, we return to the apartment, fiddle more with networks, and get packed. Our driver arrives at 4, nice Toyota with air conditioning. Best part of the day taking the 2-hour drive to the monastery in the jungle.

    Except it is a 3-hour drive. Yangon traffic is jammed, and we take the road toward Golden Rock. The turn-off at Bago puts us on a muddy road that challenges the driver not to break an axel. Reminds me of the time of a college vacation trip with Lenny and friends to Lake Hudson in Canada to private undeveloped property, where we almost broke an axel.

    Dark arrival at the monastery, huge, a small city really. We get dinner, delicious bean soup, rice, and half dozen curries. The head monk talks with us briefly, and the jocular assistant takes care of anything we need. We bed down in a huge bungalow a 5-minute walk from the center of the complex.

    Leg is getting better, but the Yangon hack is back, a cough about half the people in Yangon have. The driver had it, but I don’t think it is catching. It is due to the pollution and crappy environmental factors, and may include things like mold.

  • Is “picting” a word? Should it be?

    So you have “texting”, and a new–some would say equivalent–literacy of taking pictures, or “picting”.  Norris and Soloway argue that it is becoming more and more important.  To which I say, why not, then, “vidding” for the moving pictures, and “graffing” for those infographics, and “audding” for those sound clips (“podding” for podcasts?). Then there is “selfing” for those digital navel gazers. “Virching” for those new VR players, “augging” for those adding information to digital feeds (AR), and eventually, whatever comes with teledildonics. I don’t even want to think about that.