Tinkering to best understand tech, then perhaps criticize it

The Paris chapter of Creative Mornings had been dormant since the pandemic (as far as I know), so I was happily surprised when I found out it was recently taken over by a new group of people, I'm joining in to support them.

CreativeMornings exceptionally took place in the evening yesterday, the speaker was Benjamin Gaulon, an artist, researcher, and I'd say tinkerer extraordinaire.

I raised my hand to look for sponsors for event series (j'écrirais sans doute un post en français à ce propos bientôt, mais n'hésitez pas si jamais vous voulez discuter de devenir sponsor pour Creative Mornings Paris).

I'm sure strategists and other Venn diagram geeks will appreciate Ben's "unifying theory" diagram that came towards the end of his talk, as he pondered the relationships between his art projects and teaching workshops.\

Ben began by telling us he grew up in a small village in France that happened to be right next to a open air dump, and that was his favorite place to play and explore, digging up treasure out of the dirt.

A description copied from his website, Recyclism: "His research focuses on the limits and failures of information and communication technologies; planned obsolescence, consumerism and disposable society; ownership and privacy; through the exploration of détournement, hacking and recycling."

Recyclism

My main takeaway from his talk is that to criticize, you best first understand, and that happens as much through tinkering as it does through theorizing (or perhaps more).

Ben pulls all sorts things apart from other people's electronic waste and teaches students how to work with, hack, experiment, as well as critically think about electronics, digital devices, our use of them, and a lot more.

He started NØ and the NØ School in Nevers (Burgundy), a collective and summer school to understand and critically discuss electronics and communication technologies.

NØ Collective

NØ School Nevers

I enjoyed hearing about all the projects I worked on, from The Internet of Dead Things to Tech Mining and Retail Poisoning, his websites are definitely worth checking out.

Because I remember playing with them as a kid, special mention to his rehabilitating a collection of Minitels to set them up as a simili Apple/Minitels store for people to experiment with.  

In case you don't know, the Minitel was the French government's first digital communication network, and there were terminal screens in many homes, with proto websites people could visit, and use to find information, chat with other people by text, play games, etc.

The next Creative Mornings Paris talk is on Friday 19th July, and the monthly theme is 'trust' - sign up here.

Thanks to Frédéric Bussière, Catherine Erneux, and the others for putting this up!

Perceiving different shades and textures of colours

 

"Ancient cultures have more developed and nuanced sensitivities to colour than contemporary societies. In all areas, there is not just one colour black, but several."

That's roughly translated from French in this book I'm reading from historian Michel Pastoureau, Noir - histoire d'une couleur (Black: history of a colour, there is an official English translation).

This is his second book in a series about the history of colours, focused mostly on European history and culture (the author's speciality and field of scholarly research).

It's a fascinating read, first in the introduction to appreciate that the meaning we tend to associate with different colours nowadays is cultural, and different from what it had been in the past. 

Until recently, and for a long while, black and white were not considered to be colours. In antiquity and the middle ages, they were though.

I'm paraphrasing a few bits I thought worth sharing here, namely that there used to be several words associated with the colours black and white. 

Colour was also a matter of expressing light (bright/dark, matte/glossy), matter, texture, surface (smooth/rough), and saturation. In Latin was done with different words, prefixes, and suffixes.

Black is about fighting off darkness and a quest for light.

In Latin, as well as ancient German and English, there were two distinct sets of words for the colours black, one for matte black and another for bright or glossy black.

Some ancient cultures even set more emphasis on other areas of perception than chromatic tone, so brightness, density, or texture was more important than tone. 

I find it difficult to wrap my head around, but apparently because of this, in ancient Greek and Latin for example, there is a word that designates and means both blue, and black ('kuanos in Greek, 'caeruleus' in Latin). 

No wonder some ancient texts are tough to translate, and placing these words and meaning back in their cultural context is extremely challenging.

It's mind-boggling to consider that if I had someone from ancient Greece or Rome looking at the editor with a black screen background I'm typing on now, would have multiple words to choose from to name and describe this colour, when I just have one in mind.

Next time you look at a brand logo, a sign, or an ad, keep in mind that whatever interpretation you have of the colours involved, not only did past cultures have different ones, they also had more words to express what they saw.

Pretty wild.

Black: The History of a Colour, by Michel Pastoureau 

Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber [book review]

I don’t rave about non-fiction books as ‘absolutely riveting’ to my friends and family all that often, though I’ll admit it’s kind of more likely if it was written by David Graeber. I highlighted whole passages, enough to question the point of a highlight altogether, and added a bunch of other referenced books to my reading list. In fact, Goodreads tells me I highlighted 272 passages of a 534 page-long book, about one every other page. Clearly I loved it.

“Surely one has to pay one’s debts.”

David Graeber begins the book by with a conversation he had with someone, who apparently said those words in such a way that he started questioning them. This led him to taking a wide view: 5,000 years of history around the world, about debt as a moral and economic notion; the origins of markets and money (and that coins have little to do with barter, which is fascinating in and of itself).

The history is “a way to ask fundamental questions about what human beings and human society are or could be like—what we actually do owe each other, what it even means to ask that question.”

“the central question of this book [is]: What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts?”

Financial issues and debt were a thing in my family for a whole period of time growing up. I’m not going into much detail, but I experienced bailiffs and debt recovery agents knocking at the door, furniture being removed, and being evicted from home, among other things. It’s not fun. I used to just blame my parents, but going back 5,000 years and considering debt from different angles and cultures has been eye-opening, both soothing and shaking.

If you’ve experienced debt (I’m pretty sure we all have) and enjoy considering big questions, there’s a fair chance you’ll enjoy it. Plus it’s masterfully written: legible, blending engaging stories with a large amount of bibliographical references, and big questions, as already mentioned. I strongly recommend it. I’m looking forward to reading his posthumous ‘Dawn of Everything’ written with David Wengrow soon.