HUPOMNEMATA

Stitch and Split

“And why not a fanzine?”

One of Tom’s work.

Selves and Territories in Science Fiction

“The split and contradictory self is the one who can interrogate positionings and be accountable, the one who can construct and join rational conversations and fantastic imaginings that change history. Splitting, not being, is the privileged image for feminist epistemologies of scientific knowledge. ‘Splitting’ in this context should be about heterogeneous multiplicities that are simultaneously necessary and incapable of being squashed into isomorphic slots or cumulative lists. This geometry pertains within and among subjects. The topography of subjectivity is multidimensional; so therefore is vision. The knowing self is partial in all its guises, never finished, whole, simply there and original; it is always constructed and stitched together imperfectly, and therefore able to join with another, to see together without claiming be another.”
Donna Haraway, Situated Knowledges

A project by Constant vzw
For Fundació Tàpies
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Stitch and Split
I met Isabelle, the 19th of June, at le Ptit Yoyo at Brussels University, a dark place painted in red. We had expressos, and chatted about the project called ‘Stitch and Split’. Well maybe it is time that one of the first draft of this project should be on this blog, so next post will contain it. One of the thing Isabelle told me was: ‘Never destroy a text before you write a new (better?) version of it.’ She told me also that we should write a diary of this project, to document it. So these posts are part of that diary, and I guess most of this blog is part of that too, in a way. Again Isabelle: that may be this project, will be a way we could visit one another library, exchange experience of reading, exchange books, texts, characters. Have fan activities, as this diary could be like a fanzine. One of her questions, trails for this projects: ‘What is about science fiction which allows fans to enter it, and be creative with it, and use, develop their imagination? May be because there is the creation of precise world, with its rules, its geography, its ecology, and characters. And this framework allows imagination at work.’ And she told me about Marion Zimmer Bradley, who published fan stories in some of her books. Fans were welcome to create new characters in her world, but not allowed to take and write the characters she created first.
She talked to me also about David Brin, CJ Cherryh, Samuel Butler. If you want to follow this conversation, go on reading.
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robert a.metzger’s ” picoverse ” is advertised as a “mind-boggling hard-science SF novel”.
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This blog seems to be obsessed with seafood and plastic cows. Do you know what it’s about? I don’t but so much beauty is worth a visit.

A nice and exhaustive history of telephone in Atlanta:
images and sounds from early telephones, documenting the technological evolution but you can learn more about the social movements inside the company(strikes) and early hackers(Phone Freaking)

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I had since long forgotten it. A bookmark’s resurrection, the unabomber manifesto’s table of contents and the link to the text, the other link to the trial and the third to the unabomber timeline

The Unabomber’s Manifesto

Industrial Society And Its Future

Table of Contents
# Introduction
# The Psychology Of Modern Leftism
# Feelings Of Inferiority
# Oversocialization
# The Power Process
# Surrogate Activities
# Autonomy
# Sources Of Social Problems
# Disruption Of The Power Process In Modern Society
# How Some People Adjust
# The Motives Of Scientists
# The Nature Of Freedom
# Some Principles Of History
# Industrial-Technological Society Cannot Be Reformed
# Restriction Of Freedom Is unavoidable In Industrial Society
# The ‘Bad’ Parts Of Technology Cannot Be Seperated From The ‘Good’ Parts
# Technology Is A More Powerful Social Force Than The Aspiration Freedom
# Simpler Social Problems Have Proved Intractable
# Revolution Is Easier Than Reform
# Control Of Human Behavior
# Human Race At A Crossroads
# Human Suffering
# The Future
# Strategy
# Two Kinds Of Technology
# The Danger Of Leftism
# Final Note
# Notes

Notre ami Harrisson s’est enfin lancé dans la production intensive sur son blog Die With a Smile où il raconte son long séjour à Berlin. Avec photos. Il s’y confirme qu’il est non seulement graphiste mais aussi poète quand il parle d’asperges à la flamande et de chutes à vélo. Pendant ce temps-là mes amis Julie et Luc partent à Toronto, déplacés par l’industrie du jeu vidéo. Bruxelles se vide. Vu hier, ‘Any way the wind blows’ de Tom Barman ne donne pas pour autant envie d’aller à Anvers.

In complement to the book of Bruce Sterling, here is another history of hackers.
But this time written by a Swedish computer enthousiast, Linus Walleij.

“The word originally applied to the people who spent their time crawling under the railroad tracks at the Tech Model Railroad Club’s (TMRC) facilities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 1950’s, connecting switches and relays with cables. This model railroad was one of the first computer-like structures. A hack originally meant a prank of the kind that students and faculty played on their school (or rivaling institutions), such as wrapping the entire roof in tinfoil. A good hack would be very conspicuous, and also prompt the observer to ask him- or herself: “How in the hell did they do that!?”. Later, the word became synonymous with a spectacular solution to a technical problem, or an ingenious computer program, or some other generally brilliant design. A hacker , therefore, was someone who created and implemented things of this kind.

A hacker, generally speaking, is a person who uses a computer for its own sake because it’s fun. An author that uses a word processor all day is not a hacker. Neither is a graphic designer, inventory specialist, or computer instructor. Their professions simply require them to use a computer to simplify or improve the efficiency of some other task. However, a programmer that loves his or her work is a hacker. Likewise, an enthusiastic computer technician or microcomputer designer is also a hacker. Last but definitely not least, there are hobby hackers , who actually constitute the largest and most overlooked group of computer enthusiasts – probably because they don’t use a computer in a professional sense. These amateurs do not have PR directors shouting their cause, nor do they have publishers or trade journals that print their opinions. Some elements of the media focus on this group, but they seldom speak for them; rather, the computer media generally focuses on “bringing up” the amateurs to the standards and norms of the professionals. ”

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I don’t really know who is Souther Salazar. He or she publishes comics and has an art gallery on his/her website.. There are those robots.