Thoughts on Social Book/ Avatar Emergency

The enterprise that was reading Avatar Emergency was made easier with the goal in mind of finding instructions. Like a treasure hunt, I scoured the text and it was easier to remain an active reader. It was interesting because Social Book lends itself to a kind of highlighting race. I was in fourth place so I could see the tracks laid behind by Jake, Scott, and Phil. Though I was behind, it made it all the more enjoyable to believe I had unearthed something that no one before me had, like early pioneers and discoverers. 

My first hint at instructions were: "The postmodern taste for pastiche recovers some of the effects of imitatio." I annotated, "We could use pastiche taking inspiration from Titian's painting and making our own digital Allegory of Prudence. It will be important to understand how Titian came to create his work in the Italian Renaissance in between the age of orality and literacy and then use that to influence our own works at the edge of literacy and electracy." I could toss out a cliche like "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" or I could repeat Ulmer's favorite: Matsuo Basho's adage, "Not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought."

Next, why prudence? "It is worth remembering that the purpose of this exercise is to learn from the history of prudence (good judgment) how to deliberate at the speed of light." Flash reason, epiphany, Now, seems like something one would want a military to operate with. This perhaps ties into my research on how we might use EEG technologies to "whisper our thoughts" without being overheard. Instantaneous shared knowledge. Each brain is separate, but can access others at a "Moment"'s notice. In Tamora Pierce's novels, the Voice of the Tribes, the prudence, the wisdom of all ancestors and descendants, is contained by a spiritual link. Our job is to update that into electracy.

Thinking more about prudence and flash reason, I wondered "how flash reason relates to dreams. In biblical times, they believed that God/angels appeared to them in dreams. Yet I've been told that dreams are a product of your unconscious attempting to solve all the problems you left unsolved that day. Could avatar/flash reason be coded into our sub/unconscious?" As I brainstorm how I might depict my own personal Allegory of Prudence and what my moment of epiphany is, I want to keep in mind what happens in my dreams. I rarely recall dreams, only nightmares, but I'm sure if I keep digging and keep dreaming, something will happen. Later on in Avatar Emergency, Ulmer writes, "In apparatus theory, dreams (visions, fantasies) motivate invention as much as does practical necessity." I think the work of MakerBot and any opensource technology is the electrate future.

Socialbook could be enhanced by first imitating the capabilities of what already exists in note taking/reading, ie. multiple color highlights, circle words,  search functions, page numbers, Read-Aloud for the blind, and could add in pre-existing Social Media, by adding Facebook link-ins.

To go back to Avatar Emergency, to find our avatar, "I think one our best depictions of this "guardian angel" could be Jiminy Cricket. He claims to be Pinocchio's conscience, but also has prescience. Jiminy however seems to be very much about the right or wrong scale, while Pinocchio, like the angels, is completely enraptured and envious of the sensory experiences of the "real boys" and the pleasures of the world." Just as MetLife took on the Peanuts characters as their emblem, how can we look to narrative characters like Jiminy Cricket, and use it to help create our own emblem/allegory/pastiche? "Allegory. Pastiche. In order to complete our instructions, we must keep in mind how important symbolism and drawing on the past to produce something for the Now is. We should design something that can bridge the gap between becoming and being." More explicit instructions: "The instructions are to form an image—a dialectical image—by juxtaposing a detail in my own setting with a detail or feature of a cultural text—any work of my choosing in arts and letters."