SpaceXponential

Rituals can be defined as temporal technologies for housing oneself. They turn being in the world into being at home. Rituals are in time as things are in space. They stabilize life by structuring time. They give us festive spaces, so to speak, spaces we can enter in celebration. As temporal structures, rituals arrest time. Temporal spaces we can... See more

Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash‐up and remix stands in the way of the digital revolution. Digital Humanities means iterative scholarship, mobilized collaborations, and networks of research. It honors the quality of results; but it also honors the steps by means of which results are obtained... See more

The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:

Why would anybody in their right mind want to watch a six-hour improvisation? "People did sit through the whole six hours. I think audiences are quite comfortable watching something coming into being. The process of it forming before it gels is as interesting as the gelling."

The serendipitous ingredients for scenius are hard to control. ...  What Camp 4 illustrated is that the best you can do is NOT KILL IT. When it pops up, don’t crush it. When it starts rolling, don’t formalize it. When it sparks, fan it. But don’t move the scenius to better quarters. Try to keep accountants and architects and police and do-gooders... See more

Objective systems seem desirable, relying entirely on machines and not fallible and opportunistic humans. There is, however, a catch – machines may be running the code, but humans are acting on it. A subjective system might be able to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate transactions in a way that an objective one could not. Concepts... See more

 Attention is a finite resource, and how we choose to spend our attention online is, in some ways, a direct reflection of where human culture has gone in an era where access to information is basically unlimited. We are very much in our teenage years—that is, we suddenly have all these new capabilities and it’s really easy to just run wild. But... See more

This is nothing new in the physical social world, but it is revolutionary in the digital social world, where groups and shared messenger threads have historically always been communal spaces.

Cult leaders are their own moderators

Cult leaders need mechanisms for elevating and blessing followers, as well as mutually reinforcing power

Cults need... See more