Gert Gast - Communications Design

From Here to Where?

2009-10-19T17:14:00.004+11:00

Whoever is following my blog unfortunately I have disappointed you for a very long time. Basically I was not quite clear what the purpose of this blog should be or should become. I still don't know to be honest.

Nevertheless, maybe there are some things that could be valuable to be communicated to friends or people that are just simply interested in topics that I discuss.

So, what I'm doing at the moment is basically very much being caught up in teaching, teaching about communications and how to apply media theory to media productions, for example how to interpret the television and film culture of the last 30 years and earlier.

I'm very much interested in exploring the audiovisual language of important directors. For example, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and various others have influenced me profoundly.

I'm also working on a film script at the moment for a short or documentary. Probably it will be only a short film called Shadows. Inspired by the the cinematic work of Andrei Tarkovsky's Nostalghia I would like to walk in his footsteps. However, I'm trying to use his techniques to communicate a different content, less bleak yet strong.

I enjoy his slow camera movements, the intensity of his emotions. I am not sure how that can be reproduced in the current world of "YouTubianism".

I recognize how important this is to make a larger audience familiar with these kind of ideas. So, hopefully, sometime I will be able to present some snippets on this blog going into that direction.

Andrei Tarkovsky is absolutely extraordinary in visual communication of emotions. Emotions that touch the human soul, not just the Russian, but the human soul that is sensitive to profound questions of existence.

A good place to start is

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~tstronds/nostalghia.com/index.html

More soon!

I´ve found them ...

2007-05-12T13:49:00.000+10:00

I´ve found them. Now all I have to do is place a mail order to get my ¨slaves¨ from Headcase labs!

Aren´t they lovely? And they seem to be very clever. What if I become their slave?

Find more about the ¨machinery¨ behind Headcase here and here.

Virtual Slaves

2007-05-05T20:31:00.000+10:00

It´s been a long time since my last blog entry. Too much to do, too much to think about. In IT things have developed rapidly. We are living in a most exciting and yet also a most challenging epoch. We are not talking about single virtual environments anymore, we´re talking about virtualising the planet.

PCWorld reports:

IBM Executive Calls for ‘Virtual Planet’:

¨As companies look to engage in more virtual business interactions, IBM Corp.’s head of innovation called for more integration between the various online virtual worlds where avatars meet.

Nick Donofrio, executive vice president, innovation and technology at IBM, hopes to encourage the creation of what he termed “a virtual planet” where rival virtual worlds are more interlinked.

“We want to bring all the worlds together in some way,” he said Wednesday during his keynote address at IBM’s PartnerWorld conference in St. Louis. “Wouldn’t that be a blow for freedom?” he added.

Ok, so forget the web. Let´s jump from one 3D island to the next. We talk, chat, communicate ... or, hold on .. actually why does it actually have to be ¨we¨?

Our avatars can do it!

They are currently not very smart, but by adding some artificial intelligence they may become more intelligent in the near future. Something like Hecht-Nielsen´s Butler Chancellor.

But wait! Why a tin creature in the kitchen that´s taking orders for cat food? Silly!

An avatar is a virtual robot in a virtual world that could be dealing with virtual things, like money for example, or mortgages! So why can´t I let my avatar buy shares on the stockmarket when the price and the market is right, process orders for my customers, or check my emails? It would be like having an intelligent virtual slave in a virtual world that works virtually for me while I´m dancing on the beach!

Give it another 5 years...

Nevertheless, meanwhile it is quite worthwhile listening to Robert Hecht-Nielsen ...

Which leaves us with the philosophical problem of the avatar, as being a simulation of myself in a simulated world. But what if I, my own self, is also a simulation?
Here is what the philospherThomas Metzinger has to say about that:

Information Tunnels to Virtual Worlds.

2006-05-21T19:35:00.000+10:00

From my brain to your brain. My brain is the world’s best information processing system, so is yours by the way, so are 6 billion other brains, and a few billion monkey or ape brains aren’t doing that bad either. My dog of course is the brainiest of all. Naturally, he has probably the same set of mirror neurons I have. I know instantly when he is in a bad mood, and so does he …and it all happens without saying a word. How mirror neurons do that you can find out on this fascinating video.

But back to brain – the human one - talking to brain. The 'in-between' the two or more is a problem. A couple of miles of distance between two brains requires technology for transferring information. There is a bottleneck that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation. For example the Google ads on this page. Google responded “cleverly" to the keyword “container”, yet took it entirely out of context. No, I’m not dealing with shipping containers. I’m dealing with containers for information and there is one we all know so well and of which Preston Austin and Julian Lombardi, two of the key architects of the Croquet project, say it sucks. We're talking about the World Wide Web.

They point out that over the last 20 years our communication “container” on the Internet was a flat “document” inside of which were other flat documents that we then could shuffle around, and replace with even more flat documents and now and again some flashing lights and animations. Browser developers try to do so much these days, but in the end browsers still do the same thing as 20 years ago, shuffle around flat documents on a flat desktop.

Internet chat was 'flat’ too. Scrolling panes of texts. But although at the time our 2D world was flat it still sort of worked. Our brains compensated well on what was missing with a lot of fantasy. In the late nineties I would spend hours in what was called “The Palace". Wiki: “The Palace is a software program used to access two-dimensional virtual communities, also called palaces. A typical palace is represented as a series of flat backgrounds with one or more clickable areas, or doors, and players represented by either the default spherical avatar or a user-created avatar up to 132×132 pixels large, with an 8-bit color palette.”

It was great, I still have overseas friends from that time. But nevertheless it was rather limited and limiting. “Rooms” were small pictures of “rooms”, doors were “holes” in the pictures you would click on and jump into a new room or to a different palace. And chat happened with these wonderful "cartoonish" speech bubble clouds above the avatar’s head. Bandwidth and computing power didn’t allow for much more. But it was cool and it was free!

Then came 3D and broadband and today we’re playing over the Internet in “virtual worlds” such as Second Life, Entropia, Everquest and others. A lot of people put a lot of money, skill and computing power into these 3D worlds also known as Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG), and they cost massive dollars for users. Certainly more than for example educational institutions, non-government organizations, clubs, user groups etc. could afford. These wouldn’t be much interested in role playing games anyway. But what about having meetings, lectures, discussions, work shops, business presentations in a 3D enviroment with VoIP, video, and all the bells and whistles where you and your avatar could walk around, shake hands, sit in a virtual café and just simply talk? This is what the croquet project (Wiki) is all about.

So what is croquet ?

“The Croquet project is an effort to develop a new open source computer operating system built from the ground up to enable deep collaboration between teams of users. To do this, the project seeks to define and develop a system that is focused on the simulation and communication of complex ideas. We call this "communication enhancement" - the direct extension of the abilities of humans to develop, understand, and describe even the most complex simulations. Croquet enables this communication by acting as the equivalent of a broadband conferencing system built on top of a 3D user interface and a peer-to-peer network architecture. Through the public release of this software technology, we are seeking to harness the creative power of thousands of software developers and seed the development of transformative technologies.”

Simply put your screen is not a flat document on your flat desktop anymore but a 3D space, a room or even a whole world. Croquet is what I’ve been waiting for since my days in “The Palace”.

Picture: 1998 Palace screenshots in a current Croquet based 3D gallery (Citris Gallery Builder).

Information Tunnels

2006-04-18T22:45:00.000+10:00

Headlines. I come across them everyday. “MySQL to Adopt Solid Storage Engine”. I read this headline and something happens in my brain. I am either interested and become conscious of the headline, or, hardly noticing, I skip over it.

I decide quickly whether I want to continue reading the whole article. Actually I’m not really aware that I’m deciding. When reading an online headline for instance, I just click. Some process inside my brain must have made made me click, a conglomerate of past memories maybe, a current technological interest, or something.

My brain is deciding for me, it knows why and how. Some of its structures have decided to twitch my finger and also have let me know that they have clicked. This is how Wegner sees it anyway (Wegner, D M 2002, The Illusion of Conscious Will MIT Press, Cambridge).

But going back to the click and the headline. I plug into a data stream, virtually, conceptually and physically.

I connect to the machine because of my inner thought pattern - call it interest in the topic - to the communication machine. It could be a printed newspaper as well as a networked computer screen. I read the headline and possibly continue reading the whole article. I could also go to the new web page of course. In both cases I open up something like a conceptual tunnel linking my inner thoughts to the machine's thoughts. Or should I say my thoughts become the machine’s thoughts?

As I read I emulate the headline in my brain. The headline that someone else wrote, or another machine wrote. A machine spitting out headlines.

So the headline I tunnel into does things in my brain. I react emotionally. I like it or I don't. I can get upset, or curious, ecstatic or simply indifferent. We always already have some emotion (Heidegger). Indifference is an emotion too.

But I may not only react emotionally I can also take action. If the headline reads: “WAR BROKEN OUT” I might ring my family, talk to my neighbour in the café next to me. I become engaged in this way or that way. But not only me. I do what probably in this moment thousands of other people do that read that same headline and article.

The headline controls the pattern generator in my brain, memory banks are tapped, new memory loops generated, enforced, depending on the conceptual power of the headline. The phrase “WAR BROKEN OUT” I will not forget for the rest of my life. “MySQL to Adopt storage Engine” will probably only remain in memory if I’m a MySQL developer.

Now imagine your web browser as a container, or better an array of containers, clicking tabs open container after container. Each container is filled with headlines, each headline is pumped into your container as soon as it appears from the source. It can be a news service, a discussion forum, a web log, a weather channel, sports news, science and technology news and more.

Your container's wriggly headlines finger your brain. You scan over them, focus on this one or that one. Most you ignore. Some trigger some response and you click. You feel like clicking on the Peanuts cartoons, the weather channel, or the world's news wires. Fingers pulling and pushing, waving and luring. In minutes you have scanned the entire page, you go to the next tab, and the next.

In a couple of minutes you can scan a few hundred headlines. It may take some practice but once you start realizing how effortless it is to scan hundreds of information chunks for their usefulness this thing becomes incredibly valuable. A true thinking machine. You find stuff you normally would never come across.

These new web tools are literary machines Ted Nelson might have never dreamed of, consisting of modules that you can assemble according to your own taste, desire, belief, interest or need. Check out Netvibes, a Web 2.0 application. I wouldn't want to live without it anymore.

Doisneau's Kiss

2006-02-05T16:01:00.000+11:00

“Scan courtesy of Masters of Photography”

Saturday morning I usually sit with friends in The Byronian cafe in Byron Bay. A weekly ritual! Usually we're quite laid back, unless something catches our eyes.

This morning for example, there was the Good Weekend section from the Sydney Morning Herald flying around with the cover photo of “The Kiss”. I recognised it instantly, in the sixties and seventies it hung in every European poster shop, in students' flats and bed rooms. However, I couldn’t remember the photographer.

Discussing the image with friends, I elaborated on how spot-on the shot reflected Paris in 1950. The people, still under war shock, yet daring to step out and there in the centre this spontaneous impulse, this intensity bringing Paris back to life.

But then, reading the SMH article I learned that the photographer was Robert Doisneau and as that the kiss was fake, staged.

According to BBC News "the woman featured in Robert Doisneau’s classic photograph of a couple kissing outside Paris city hall has sold her original print at auction.” and “Francoise Bornet and her then boyfriend agreed to pose for the seemingly spontaneous photo in 1950. The photo went on to become a poster icon around the world…..Romantics like to believe the young lovers were captured in a spontaneous moment of bliss, but the pose was staged.”

I was such a romantic.

But then, thinking about it, does that reduce its cultural or aesthetic value? What is the labouriously crafted moment of intense experience cast in an artistic medium such as a photograph that seems so light, so casual, so coincidental? We call it art. It makes our world stand still for one moment capturing our imagination, passion, or sorrow, even capturing the spirit of an entire generation. There are not many images that do this.

What else became apparent curiously enough was that my Australian friends did not know the poster. It was European thing. Later at home I found apart from BBC article a rich repository on information about Doisneau. The most interesting one Masters of Photography even give kind permission to use the images for non-commercial purposes.

The relevance and usefulness of this kind of “open source style” policy became apparent, combining sharing and fair use with some commercial solution for interested parties.

Then our discussions turned towards, images and metaphors and that’s when we touched on George Lakoff’s “Philosophy in the Flesh” … But that’s another story.

Writely headaches ..

2006-01-23T09:34:00.000+11:00

Ok..got some probs posting to the blog ..

Where is the text ...? Ah ..here we go ...

What a mess...

2006-01-22T22:29:00.000+11:00

Writing with Writely is cool. Blogging with Writely even cooler !

But getting to the point ..Dion Hinchcliffe dreams about Ajax’s Disruptive Influences..

"The End of Software Upgrades, Fixes, and Security Patches" ...

"Since Ajax software delivers an application fresh to your browser each time you load the URL, you’re always getting the latest version, with all fixes and updates, automatically."

Provided that I really always want the latest version! Quite often I don't want to upgrade at all, or upgrade when I'm really ready. Sophisticated programs do have a learning curve to master. I would prefer deciding for myself when and how I want to upgrade. Minor upgrades for rather "simple" programs like Writely don't matter so much, but what about more complex programs?

In terms of complexity of features. I can't see Photoshop, Maya or similar as a web-based application, in a few years maybe, something the big guys should think about, which they probably do. If they don't others will.

" Software and Data Available Wherever You Go" ...

Hinchliffe: "How many of us are tired of synchronizing their personal, work, and family computers with the latest software and files?"

This is a bonus, no doubt. An important one too. This currently is the niche where I see Writely working for me. I can continue working from where I left off when shifting places. Crashes? Let the world crash, my Writely docs are safe...well backing up is never wrong of course ..

"Isolated Software Can’t Compete with Connected Software" ...

Hinchcliffe: "The best software is now highly integrated into the Web and leverages the rich landscape of services that can be found there."

I disagree. It's far away from highly integrated. In general, considering IT developments over the last 20 years complexity has continually increased. Using computers has become more difficult, no easier. (Remember the good old days of Windows 3.1?) Of course, it is also because we can do more with computers, but who is "we"?

The Microsoft aficiados are still working their way through XP and can't wait to wade through another 500 pop-up windows after installing Vista, while OS X addicts sweat in horror while waiting for the Apocalyptic Intel chip ... and the LINUX dudes are hailing every new Dr Mabuse Linux quick release as the final death knell for Windows.

The current desktop environments stink, and ye all know it.

Sun's Jonathan Schwartz was completely correct when he said while introducing "Project Looking Glass" that we need to look beyond reproducing paper office metaphors on computer screens. Not that he was the first. Ted Nelson once said

"Computer people don’t understand computers. Oh, they understand the technicalities all right, but they don’t understand the possibilities. Most of all, they don’t understand that the computer world is entirely built out of artificial, arbitrary constructs. Word processing, spreadsheet, database aren’t fundamental, they’re just different ideas that different guys have whomped up, ideas that could be totally different in their structure. But these ideas have a plausible air that has set like concrete into a seeming reality. Macintosh and Windows look alike, therefore that must be reality, right? Wrong. Apple and Windows are like Ford and Chevrolet (or perhaps Tweedledum and Tweedledee), who in their co-imitation create a stereo illusion that seems like reality."

And Linux desperately attempts to emulate, imitate and simulate both.
We need a re-metaphorization of the GUI. Maybe the 3D gamers can help us. Maybe we should start dancing on our desktops instead of staring at them. Maybe we can reach inside one day, walk through, open it from the top. X-Ray the HD, or CAT scan, or zoom in and out and left and right. Why do I need a boundary between my computer and the Internet?
I need conceptual boundaries, levels of intimacy and security, not Windows to simuated sheets of papers residing on a piece of hardware that is already junk by the time I unpack it.

We have no sense for information architecture and structure, only for nested folders and believe it or not, the majority of my customers don't even have that! They don't know where their stuff is on their hard drives. We can't see the threads that link...the clouds of metaphors that create meaning, history and reach out.

Nevertheless Web 2.0 is a promising first step in the right direction ..

Hot Stuff

2006-01-20T22:15:00.000+11:00

I'm in the process of preparing some lectures about current developments in multimedia and Internet technologies. After investigating a large number of documents and statistics it seems evident that employment and industry perspectives are good, possibly getting even better month by month, unless major disasters strike.

The current evolution of Web 2.0 seems to be turning into a revolution with a Pandora's box full of new apps hitting the market almost daily.

The Web is re-inventing itself ....

Testing Writely again !

2006-01-18T21:55:00.000+11:00

I'm finally getting around to write a few notes about Writely. As a typical Web 2.0 environment you work on the web from whatever available computer.

Writely is more than just an online word processor. It's a universal publishing tool across various formats (html, doc, pdf etc) that can be shared with other collaborators.

Currently I'm developing a "slideshow" for a small lecture series on Multimedia Industry Perspectives, using Writely as as production and presentation tool.

What I love best? I can keep working on my file after leaving work from my computer at home without even having to open an application on my home computer. That baby is connected and logged in to Writely already, automatically through mypersonalised "porta"l, provided by Netvibes. But that's another story...

Testing Writely

2006-01-01T11:15:00.000+11:00

Testing Writely ... and lots of other cool stuff. There's lots of information on WEB 2.0 BLOG

seeds {maybe some sprouts}: Designing for Embodiment

2005-12-30T21:03:00.000+11:00

seeds {maybe some sprouts}: Designing for Embodiment

The Multiverse According to Ben: Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness

2005-12-30T16:45:00.000+11:00

The Multiverse According to Ben: Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness

The Multiverse According to Ben: Immortality and the Potential Obsolescence of the Self

2005-12-30T16:43:00.000+11:00

The Multiverse According to Ben: Immortality and the Potential Obsolescence of the Self

Savitri Era Learning Forum: Being No One

2005-12-30T16:38:00.000+11:00

Savitri Era Learning Forum: Being No One

Valenzuela's Veritas

2005-12-30T16:33:00.000+11:00

Valenzuela's Veritas

RobotCub

2005-12-27T11:30:00.000+11:00

RobotCub: An Open Framework for research in Embodied Cognition describes a "research initiative in embodied cognition that will create and exploit a 54 degree-of-freedom humanoid robot." Their website gives a detailed account on the current state of the intitiative with plenty of resource material including video footage of their Open Day conference in Genoa, Italy, July 14th 2005.

Background of this research on cognitive systems is based on issues relating to various approaches from AI, symbol computation and connectionism to embodied cognition. Their approach, because of failures in cognitivist robotics is towards an embodied learning system, imitating, simulating, and emulating mammalian child development.

Sandini (2004) writes: "In most cognitivist approaches concerned with the creation of artificial cognitive systems, the symbolic representations are the product of a human designer. This is significant because it means that they can be directly accessed and understood or interpreted by humans and that semantic knowledge can be embedded directly into and extracted directly from the system. However, it has been argued that this is also the key limiting factor of cognitivist systems: these designer-dependent representations are the idealized descriptions of a human cognitive entity and, as such, they effectively bias the system (or 'blind' it70) and constrain it to an domain of discourse that is dependent on and, a consequence of, the cognitive artifacts of human activity."

He continues saying that emergent systems, embracing connectionist, dynamical, and enactive systems, take a very different view of cognition as a process of self-organization whereby the system is continually re-constituting itself in real-time to maintain its operational identity.

Thinking Machines

2005-11-27T13:51:00.000+11:00

Human-computer interaction and distributed computing is capable of enhancing learning and intelligent information management. There would be a lot to say about intelligence, but obviously, some of the basic assumptions are that long-term memory plays an important role in remembering conceptual building blocks for intelligent reasoning.

The ability to combine these building blocks into new concepts, allows for intelligent reasoning and behaviour.

However, the validity and stability of concepts will determine whether the conceptual bridge will hold or collapse. Looking at the brain’s capacity for memory, Joseph LeDoux (LeDoux 2002, pp 132) in his book “Synaptic Self” mentions Shacter’s “Seven Sins of Memory” showing convincingly how memory can fail us. The seven sins are transience, absent-mindedness, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias and persistence.

Computers allow us to bring conceptual objects in close proximity (temporal? vectorial?) allowing for quick analysis of validity and assessing relationships. Proximity can easily be enhanced through 2D or 3D geometry  This can lead to cognitive reinforcement, making new synaptic changes possible and reinforcing these for long-term memory potentiation (LTP pp 139)

So, what could we get?

A simulated classroom for example, with 3-D avatars interacting audio-visually, a  useful tool for intelligence development and education.

The hypothesis would suggests that a simulated virtual classroom would perform better than a real class room. This would need to be verfied.  It is still unclear what all the advantages could be – cognitive, learning, social advance – or the disadvantages ?

We enforce learning processes by enhancing stimulus intensity, looping pathways, and stimulus frequency, a process of continuing enforcement and rehearsal.  With computers we can validate our progress through immediate validation and verification procedures by accessing databases, encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference journals, computer simulations or ‘live’ expert knowledge.  This gives immediate feedback on whether the bridge will hold, or collapse.

The ZiF: Research Group 2005/2006, Bielefeld is currently working on embodied non-symbolic information transfer and in face-to-face communication. An interesting endeavour indeed. Integration of research in embodied AI, robotics, and human-machine-human communication is still lacking. Avatar interaction in virtual worlds could bridge abstract symbol transfer mechanisms in communication to a cognitive higher level, possibly an extended phenomenal self model (Metzinger 2003)

References:

LeDoux, J 2002, Synaptic Self: How Our Brains become Who we Are. Penguin Books, New York.
Metzinger, T 2003, Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Writing

2005-11-27T00:03:00.000+11:00

Writing today, it seems, is more difficult than in the past. We are not only swamped with information, we also have to churn out information in various formats, and fast!
Like the recently observed gorilla in a natural habitat in Africa, poking a walking stick into a swampy section of rainforest, the writer today is surrounded by a data swamp with data flushing in from all directions, bombarding auditory and visual cortices. Computers have become our walking sticks.

Absurdities ?

2005-11-26T17:54:00.000+11:00

Buying real estate in a large international multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) seems like an absurd idea.

Normally such games operate by purchasing the client software and pay a subscription fee every 30 days, “while the internal game economy is just that –- a game economy.”

But in project Entropia, “the gamer, Jon Jacobs, who bought a virtual space station for $100,000 (£56,200) says he wants to turn it into a nightclub to change the face of entertainment”, according to the BBC News Site He wants to call it Club Neverdie and sees it as the perfect vehicle to bridge reality and virtual reality.

Now this may not be such a bad idea. Virtual 3D nightclubs, with awkwardly dressed friends to chat with, listening to celebrity DJs while sipping your cocktail (mixed at home in your kitchen of course) … or what about “live” VR concerts with celebrity bands ? Imagine Madonna as 3D avatar in front of a virtual crowd, and you’re one of them. No sweat!

Or what about watching a virtual movie, that has been produced “virtually” with virtual 3D characters, with virtual cameras in a virtual forest …ok ..too much virtual here.. but nevertheless we are quite familiar already with "virtual" environments, grabbing articles, books, music, watching video clips online while chatting away with friends.

A multiplayer online environment doesn’t have to be for playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time. You could also attend lectures, virtual concerts, buy and sell on a virtual stockmarket, or visit the general assembly of the United Nations. Chat rooms or even graphical chat environments (The Palace) have been around for several years. What’s fairly recent is that there is a 3D character under your control acting in a 3D environment, who opens the bank doors, walks to the teller and actually talks to a person - you embodied by an avatar.

Thanks to broadband and enhanced PC graphic cards 3D interactive environments are growing. They are here to stay. I see plenty of work for future 3D designers, modelers, information architects, digital film producers, audio engineers, DJs, etc.

According to founding Wired editor Kevin Kelly by 2015 the internet as we know it will be dead, killed by a globe-spanning artificial consciousness, writes the SMH. He predicts that the web continues to evolve from an entity ruled by mass media and mass audiences to one ruled by messy media and messy participation.

We all become authors, producers, 3D actors, musicians, and writers as well as simultaneously consumers.

The real transformation under way, however, is more to what Sun Microsystem’s John Gage had in mind in 1988 when he famously said: “The network is the computer.” The destiny of the web is becoming one big megacomputer not only wired to our personal devices but also to our minds. We will think, feel, interact, command, control, play, relate, love and hate through this brain.

Kelly reminds us that “this gargantuan Machine already exists in a primitive form. In the coming decade, it will evolve into an integral extension not only of our senses and bodies, but our minds.”

Beyond the hype, there no doubt that there will be plenty of new opportunities.

Just never forget. You can always switch off, go outside and smell the grass again.

Critical Thinking

2005-11-26T17:45:00.000+11:00

If creation is to last at all, it can only do so on the condition of becoming far more critical than it is at present. The old roads and dusty highways have been traversed too often. Their charm has been worn away by plodding feet, and they have lost that element of novelty or surprise which is so essential for romance. He who would stir us now by fiction must either give us an entirely new background, or reveal to us the soul of man in its innermost workings. - Oscar Wilde

Over a hundred years ago Oscar Wilde, in his essay “The Critic as Artist”, pointed out that for modern society to become truly cosmopolitan we need to develop critical thinking, not only in the sciences but also in the arts. He said: "Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices, by insisting upon the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms. If we are tempted to make war upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular."

Getting back into blogging

2005-11-26T15:51:00.000+11:00

I'm finally getting around updating my blog..more to come