John Hopkins on Tue, 30 Jan 2018 14:59:06 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Zach Blas: Metric Mysticism


Glass *is* silicon, as is what we've been staring into, all of us, in the form of mediated and virtual life for quite some time now in a variety of forms that tend to lead us astray in our perception of the nature of reality. But this misperception is wider than the particular valley of silicon we've been gazing into recently. Consider that we've been gazing through glass for 170 years in the form of photography: what has that done to our perception of and interaction with reality?
Yet what if one were to gaze not into a crystal ball but rather a chunk of silicon? Not transparent glass but rather an opaque, geologic material at the very core of digital technology.
*Window Weather* http://neoscenes.net/blog/archives/75283 for a brief history of 
silicon dioxide, glass:
All organisms, humans included, evolve ways of modulating and attenuating the 
changing flows that are potentially harmful to them. Humans are exceptionally 
well-adapted to utilize and re-configure available flows to secure incrementally 
increased viability. In one instance they discovered that they could manipulate 
the most common forms of energized matter at the surface of the earth — silicon 
and oxygen, with bits of carbon, sodium, and calcium — to create a substance 
that was, at human scales, relatively impervious and that could constrict extant 
or generated flows in a variety of ways.
Subsequent to its discovery, glass performed a set of functions that would 
fundamentally alter the energetic relationship of humans with their environment. 
It also significantly altered social relation and the flows of energy within the 
burgeoning techno-social system (TSS). Even before human fabrication of glass, 
the sourcing of flint, chert, obsidian, and other forms of knappable lithics [1] 
was a primary influence on population location and clan/tribal viability. 
Without the enormous advantage conferred via the tools and weapons produced from 
these substances, life in the Paleolithic was severely compromised.
The precise origin of the initial human fabrication of glass is unknown, but was 
likely an accidental occurrence somewhere in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. Its 
utility as a robust and immutable container was eventually established and the 
technology for its production was widely spread during Roman times. Its use was 
largely restricted to a decorative substitute for precious stones outside of 
western Eurasia until the mid-18th century. Between the 14th and 18th centuries, 
the Venetians created a sophisticated production regime that raised the 
technological level substantially to include reflective (silvered) mirrors, 
complex vessels, and lenses.
The use of glass in windows -— existing in Roman times but stagnating like many 
technologies after the collapse of the Empire -— developed substantially between 
1100 and 1600. It is this particular use that surfaced when I was living in 
Reykjavik, Iceland in the 1990s:
There is a word in Icelandic “gluggaveðri” that translates literally as “window 
weather.” This suggests a kind of weather where it is much more comfortable 
sitting on the inside of the window than on the outside. Windows came to Iceland 
early, but glass was a premium commodity, so the half-underground sod huts of 
early Iceland might have only one 15 x 15 cm window set in a wooden door at one 
end of the hut. Better to be watching out this window than experiencing the 
full-bodied wrath of a winter storm, a rök [2], a storm with the power to remove 
life from the body. By putting the sheet of silicon dioxide between the body and 
the storm, a sort of virtual world appeared -― one that could be seen but not 
felt. Toasty, steamy warm inside with the sheep and ponies, death-dealing 
blizzard outside.
Anthropologist, Alan MacFarlane, tracing the history of glass forward beyond 
decorative and limited household uses, suggests that without glass there would 
never have been a scientific revolution in the Western world. The use of glass 
in a wide variety of (transparent) containers made possible a range of 
fundamental experimental situations in evolving scientific endeavor. The results 
of those experiments over time increased the precision by which humans then 
controlled flows around themselves. This control liberated even more energy for 
innovation. This, by definition, led to more optimized living, leading to more 
efficient use of available energy flows, subsequently ‘liberating’ extra energy 
to drive a cycle of knowledge propagation and further innovation.
However, the spread of the use of glass was contingent on the stable 
availability of fuels for the very energy-intensive manufacturing process. That 
proceess needs sustained temperatures above 600°C — almost as high as some 
worked metals. It also depends on a clean and controlled production environment 
and on sourcing the relatively pure silicon dioxide (usually in the form of 
clean sand) and the other chemical ingredients. Historically, the necessary 
high-temperature fires or furnaces consumed tremendous amounts of wood and 
charcoal. Only a techno-social system (TSS) that had an excess of these energy 
sources, initially in the form of forests, was well-situated to produce glass. 
Europe, after the Middle Ages, had optimal conditions for both the stable 
accumulation of knowledge and the energy (re-)sources to drive an innovation cycle.
The production of lenses and mirrors was intertwined with contemporaneous 
developments in optics, geometry, and perspective. It was optics that moved the 
TSS firmly into the mediated — where ‘real’ simulations of what was ‘out there’ 
could be presented or re-presented on 2-dimensional surfaces. Photography, as a 
further convergence of early chemistry (utilizing glass containers extensively) 
and optics, made these virtual re-creations ubiquitous. Winding still further 
forward in time, we come to incandescent Light bulbs that overcame the 
limitations of darkness; other evacuated glass tubes including the cathode ray 
tube made possible both radio and television. Radio was completely dependent on 
the principle of thermionic emissions which, via glass vacuum tubes or valves, 
formed the electrical circuits of early amplifiers.
These glass tubes were subsequently replaced by solid-state devices, most of 
which were constructed on amorphous silicon substrates, the same primary element 
in glass. Every single digital device has — as a crucial and absolutely 
irreplaceable element — an integrated circuit whose primary material is the 
amorphous silicon substrate that the circuitry sits upon. It is no coincidence 
that we speak of complex cumulative protocols such as Microsoft Windows as a 
window on the world: one looked ‘through’ that we might see what is ‘outside’ 
without actually venturing out into the rök.
In view of where we have come from and where we have arrived in relation to this 
particular form of energized matter, it is no coincidence that our deep 
dependence on silicon dioxide is a means to attenuate the threatening flows that 
surround us. It also forms our relation to all frequencies of Light: energy that 
is crucial to Life. This is not to say that the dependencies on glass were any 
more important than, say, on the development of efficient delivery of energy in 
the form of agriculture, animal husbandry, charcoal, coal, oil (whale and 
others), and electricity. These flows are not separable from each other. They 
are all deeply intertwined where we find ourselves in the present moment, and 
also, who we are: we are always affected by altered and changing flows.
A singular conclusion of this short look at glass (through a pair of glasses on 
a glass screen!) brings me to define the “virtual” as being the situation where 
one is experiencing an attenuation of energy flows (via some ‘blocking’ or 
‘diverting’ technology) that otherwise would be impinging directly on the 
body-system. This suggests that any discussion of the virtual not be limited to 
material ‘delivery’ mechanisms or mediatory (digital!) devices. Rather, a broad 
consideration of the character of flows between the Self and the Other, the Self 
and the cosmos, is needed: especially the relation between those flows and 
embodied sensory presence. The dialectic of reality/virtuality is fundamentally 
about the ‘allowance’ or attenuation of potential energy flows as they effect 
change in the energized body.
—–

[1] Knapping is the process of impacting two stones (liths) together to chip one into a usable tool or weapon—arrowhead, scraper, ax head, etc. The stones most employed in this process were of microcrystalline silicon dioxide, that is, naturally occurring glass.
[2] Icelandic, as in Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of Norsk mythology as laid 
out in Icelander Snorri Sturlsson’s “Prose Edda” where the earth is submerged in 
the ocean, to arise, transformed, and re-populated.



--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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