aron
@aronshelton
aron
@aronshelton

The landscape of information online is time-independent yet observer-relative. My interaction with content is shaped by my unique digital context – my online habits, frequented sites, and chosen links. This reminds me, in an unscientific manner, of Einstein’s relativity, where time and space are relative to the observer's position. The meaning and significance of online information change based on the viewer and their vantage point. No wonder the internet feels like a vast, contentious discussion space, with everything existing in all states and variances simultaneously. In real life, things change over time, but perhaps in the physics of the internet, it's all about the relational dynamics of data, defined by its current network of relationships and connections.
When I post online, I add basic metrics to track views. But I never know the contexts or the viewers. Suddenly, this information exists in multiple states of interpretation and misunderstanding, yet in a seemingly timeless way. It appears in various timelines and communities, creating different contexts and associations by proximity alone. This makes me think of information entanglement, where separate pieces of content, or even fragments, once removed from their original context, become intrinsically linked in the minds of others, existing all at once in myriad forms. The data becomes the medium. Like a quantum particle, understood only in layman's terms, it exists in multiple states of interpretation, misunderstanding, and relevance simultaneously, collapsing into a specific state only upon interaction (viewing, sharing, commenting, etc.).
I post this quote from Peter Block's book "Community" every year. It doesn't get much attention because it's not built for social media: it's thick.
But there really isn't a better explanation of the "why" behind the work I do, and its encouragement for communities to move away from blame, apathy, and entitlement and towards possibility,
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A Future In Sync and
Web 3.0 and Co-Creation
Artificial Intelligence and Humans In The Loop
Real thinking is to an AI like waves are to a lattidue line.
In an AI, there is genuinely no one home. It’s all model. No reality.
the map is not the territory; but neither is the model
“Communication is not what has been said. It is what it is possible to say— and that is guarded by the implicit messages inherent in the relationships.” - Nora Bateson, Combining
Seven thoughts on ritual:
Rituals are the feedback loops we construct to construct ourselves.
Rituals shape the medium of time.
Rituals orient us.
Rituals are protocols.
Ritual is a form of play.
Rituals take place in a world set apart.
Rituals make meaning.
We need ritual technology. Technology designed for ritual use. Why? Most of the software we use daily is designed to engagement-max. Social media feeds, loot boxes, compulsion loops, gang gang yes yes yes ice cream so good. You’re caught in a feedback loop with the algorithm, and you are the squishiest part of that loop. Ritual technology operates on a different timescale. Underneath the fast twitch of compulsion loops is the slow thrum of ritual. Elder feedback systems. An antidote to algorithmic engagement addiction?