La NuiT's Surfing

Abundance not Scarcity is the law of productivity

2006-10-26T12:02:00.000-04:00

Ross Mayfield expresses what has been in my mind for some time:"Abundance, and Five Years of Blogging".

As a student of economics, I felt the same frustration with the assumptions of that discipline. I find that it is even more absurd nowadays, when people like George Bush use its logic to wage war in order to gain control over oil fields.

Google buys Utube

2006-10-10T12:30:00.000-04:00

Boom: Google buys YouTube for $2.2b

Pink Orchid

2006-10-03T00:06:00.000-04:00

This was my fourth term lab project. It was great fun to make, wrote the script, directed and edited myself. I had real actors and a complete crew working for me too.

Canada's media control

2006-10-01T13:31:00.000-04:00

From FAIR, May/June 2002 Canada's Media Monopoly

from Freedom to read censorship

and from Media Awareness Network Canadian content rules

Film School

2006-05-23T23:01:00.000-04:00

Here's why I disappeared and a good reason to come back again. Last summer I went to Europe. Last September, I joined the Toronto Film School. Main reason, what better way to understand media, learn it from inside out, if you can't be an academic about it. I always thought the TV lacked the documentaries I wanted to see. Why not make them myself?

So here's my first vdo make from my new PalmOne Treo phone.

It's all still a really elementary learning process for me.

Some lessons learnt from Tai Chi

2005-05-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

Two months ago, I started my first session of Tai Chi lessons with Ann Phillips, a Canadian teacher, who visits the sports facility in my condo. Compared to other physical centering techniques I've tried (yoga, thai massage, sports) I find this form of exercise appropriate for the stage of life I'm at. When I go through the Tai Chi routine that blends together slow and soft martial movements with a tone of spiritual focus, I find that I can shift from a dominant mental mode of being to a body-centered mode of being. I've learnt that the body has its own amazing kind of intelligence, one that is difficult to describe and explain via language which is a mental mode. The body simply "does" in its movements. I didn't think I could learn the seemingly complicated sets of movements demonstrated by my teacher during those first weeks.

"Drop" your mind, move your body, take action and move forward. AI (artificial intelligence) hardliners are missing an important point if they think we can exist on the mind alone without a body.

Tai Chi is an energy play. Some level of consciousness is required for any kind of meaningful energy play. Consciousness and centering is very linked, and Tai Chi helps me become aware of my centering.

The Tipping Point

2005-02-02T20:08:00.000-05:00

When the "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell was promoted as a bestseller last year, I didn't pay much attention to it. A reference to it somewhere got me curious enough to buy it now. Discovering these quick-to-catch words like this "tipping point" which communicate certain characteristics of a new awareness in the public mind gives me a real optimistic feeling about social change. This particular new catch word is applied by Malcolm to marketing and has emerged out of that field of "scientific" thought on Complexity that any regular reader of my blog knows I'm fascinated with. Malcom's more recent book "Blink" also is a nice catch word, but browsing through the new book, I think "Tipping Point" was more well-written, with a clearer message.

Canadian Philantrophy

2005-01-31T17:58:00.000-05:00

On January 11, Mr. and Mrs. Pindoff gave in a single private donation of $5 million to the Canadian Red Cross. Their story captured the imagination of many and did much to help in relief efforts of the Boxing Day South Asian Tsunami. Aside from the traditional concerts and media fund-raising events, Canadians have been pretty innovative in finding ways to raise funds. There was the very Canadian hockey events. A most admirable event were the children's joint effort in the Toronto School District that raised $1.32 million in response to a challenge put forward by a nine-year old. According to FM Pierre Pettigrew, Canada's estimated financial donations for tsunami relief as of Jan 3 was about $80 million, out of which $38 million were individual's donations. I think that is much more than US has been able to raise. Considering the population size of Canada (32 million), this has much to say about Canadian's philantrophic tradition.

The participatory edge of meaning making

2005-01-31T17:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, (Sun, Jan 30) I went to a session of UofT 's Sunday Philosophy Cafe. This session was titled "Mythological Representation of the Person", the speaker was Dr. Jordan Peterson who wrote the book "Maps of Meaning". He told the story of how he got interested in myths as a process to understand his recurring nightmare during his 20s of a nuclear holocaust. In our currently secure environment of post cold war era, it was odd to hear someone's personal experience of a time when we weren't so sure of the future. Dr. Peterson posed some very strong questions about human nature. What is it in us that doesn't stop us from tearing ourselves and each other apart? He recounted a Mesopotamian myth of their God Murdoch who won a battle over Chaos. What was most enlightening was his conclusion that Chaos could not be overcome by primordial archetypal forces such as anger, but could be overcome by voluntarily engaging in its chaotic nature thus transforming it into new "worlds". Participation is the process in which we personally come about making sense or meaning out of that encounter.

Paradise Lost

2005-01-07T21:34:00.000-05:00

Cushioned as I am by distance, and comforted by news from home that none of my immediate family were affected, I remain, one week after, still shell-shocked by the magnitude of the Tsunami's destruction on December 26. So many lives lost, so many homes destroyed, villages wiped out, so many families inconsolable. For the Thais, who have rarely suffered calamities, their confidence in their secure environment has been dented. For humanity as a whole, we are humbled by Nature's power over the fragility of life. That, I guess, is why people from all over the world have responded so immediately, so overwhelmingly. December 26, 2004 will be marked in many people's memories as the day Paradise was lost. I pray for all those who have died, and I pray as well for those left behind who suffer. May all be delivered from suffering.

Today is Loy Kratong Day

2004-11-26T20:47:00.000-05:00

Happy Loy Kratong, folks! On this November, full moon shine day, in Thailand we give our yearly thanks to the spirits of Water for nourishing our lives, and ask forgiveness for any transgressions we have made against her or nature. In these modern time, we can add our prayers of intention to preserve the environment. May our spirit of offerings bring forward a happy new year.

Following photo "borrowed" from 2Bangkok.com

Please correct the cliche: The Medium is the Message"

2004-11-10T13:32:00.000-05:00

My emerging approach to understanding McLuhan has been to find out what content he consumed to produce the messages he gave us. So I've been discovering guys like Edward T. Hall, and Harold Innis. Especially, H. Innis! Reading him has been like an "Aha!" After a while, I realise, "Hey, there's a lot of valuable things here McLuhan skipped over." A larger framework for understanding media and communication can be found in Innis's work.

Well, as part of that reading and some conversations I've had with friends trying to convince the worth of McLuhan's message, resulted in my looking at the above cliche critically. It's a great cliche, and many people use it to actually cover up the message or to cover up their misunderstanding about media. My complaint about the above cliche, I think, is that it doesn't say anything about the receiver of the message. Did McLuhan assume that the receivers, listeners, readers, watchers, were faceless? What was their role in receiving of the message?

So with the receivers of message in mind, I thought the cliche could be improved if it was expanded to: "The medium is the message which becomes the content of a new media." This actually is nothing new and comes from McLuhan's own words. I'm just inviting you to change the meme a bit here. The emphasis on the expanded cliche is to say, that the receivers actually negotiate with the message, and take action in translating the old message into content, using it in a new medium. Literacy consumed speech or orality, print consumed the alphabet, tv consumed print, etc. The expanded cliche also reflect Innis's concept of balancing the bias of commincation. I find it interesting to note that Innis was actually more oral than McLuhan was, and McLuhan in this sense was more linear than Innis... but that's arguable. Maybe, it's just one balancing the other...

I wonder, what will the new medium that consumes the electric medium (tv, radio, wireless phones and internet) as its content?

Media control, less quality news

2004-11-02T20:31:00.000-05:00

Torn and frayed in Manila writes a good post about the demise of two quality English language weekly magazines, Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek that suffered the mismanagement by media monopolies and the region's readers are now deprived of reliable news sources. The other two English language newspaper, my other sources of news about Thailand have also suffered a similar situation. Both newspapers have had to open their shares to foreign ownership and news reporting has changed since then. An article published by The Nation: Ominous paradigm shift in the Thai media.

My paper and blog: "Orality and Literacy in Thailand"

2004-10-29T13:56:00.000-04:00

As part of a course, Comparative Orality and Literacy, that I'm auditing at the University of Toronto, I was asked to set up a blog: Orality and Literacy in Thailand as part of my research file for which I am producing a term paper. I will be developing my ideas about Thailand's oral tradition and some aspects of early literacy in that blog, so if anyone is interested, please give me a visit there....

The mistake of western epistemology

2004-10-25T08:41:00.000-04:00

Its preoccupation with origins, the need for discovering and proving of the beginning of whatever they wish to classify, seems to come from its logic of linear cause and effect. What if reality actually exists in cycles of creation and recreation? Isn't it foolish to suppose that people who lived 2500 years ago were less advanced than we are? Can't we see that all of this bias in our view of history happens because we've put a beginning point at the year "0"? Separation of a few thousand years seems to excuse our insensitive ignorance and carelessness when we tend to overlook evidence that suggests a contrary picture of our past especially when it threatens our perception of our present.

Why can't we say frankly when we study our artifacts that the discoveries of archeology is based on chance, and by our decision of where we are going to chose to dig? What about all the evidence we haven't been able to dig up yet? Let's also declare clearly that history depends on who's writing it, it is usually written to justify the writer's point of view.

Maybe if we changed this basic and central assumption that there must be a single beginning, we can be released from the heavy burden of there having to be an end. Then we won't need to go into apocalyptic frenzy every a century or millennium ends, and we won't have to spend so much energy trying to prove that true or false beginning and actually start a much more engaging process of discovery.

Knowing and doing

2004-10-16T13:04:00.000-04:00

(For the guy with square glasses who spoke about the distinction between knowing and doing)

We’re in a process of writing to speak better,
We used to write to record what we spoke,
Before that we just spoke.
At some point in the future we will revert back to just speaking,
Where speech is an action and not simply an externalized thought.

“Si che dal fatto
il dir non sia diverso”
Dante’s Inferno 32.12

Ann Galloway on "Drexlerian dreams and other politics of science"

2004-10-15T13:06:00.000-04:00

Anne Galloway provided some interesting links on"Drexlerian dreams and other politics of science".

Some weeks ago, I subscribed Howard Lovy's Nanobot with Bloglines. Interesting reads, excellent coverage of the nano-world. Just for records, I stumbled on this field because of my son's declaration that he wanted to study nanotechnology when he goes to university in 4 years time. At about the same time, a Thai friend recommended the book "As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces Are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth" by Juan Enriquez showing me his "Thai!" version of the book. Digging in, I found that I had to check out the incredulous things this guy was saying. That took me to "Nanocosm" by William Illsey Atkinson. That was followed by a read of this very interesting: Atkinson-Phoenix Nanotech Debate With that I was convinced that I'd have to follow this microcosm.

What is the reversal of McLuhan’s tetrad?

2004-10-15T12:20:00.000-04:00

Last night, I attended a session of Mcluhan Extreme which is part of the McLuhan Festival of the Future in Toronto. The above thought provoking question was raised at the end of the session. I'm attempting an answer, "a la McLuhan", by suggesting that one then needs to ask, what did the tetrad retrieve?

My answer to that question is that it retrieves the I-Ching, a philosophy of change. The Tetrad is a different form of this philosophy of change designed by McLuahn. I believe that they carry the same message.

(I’m not so sure that the origin of the I-Ching is Chinese. Its origin goes so far back in history I believe it is placed at sometime around 3,000 BC. Saying I-Ching is Chinese would be like saying that science is an American discovery because the language of science is English and since the Americans speak English, therefore the origin of science is American. Origin seems to become irrelevant when we talk about something that is very, very ancient.)

Why do I say it retrieves the I-Ching? The I-Ching is based on the concept of reversals of 2 major forces: the Yin and the Yang. Too much yin “accelerates”, or flips into yang, too much yang moves into yin. Nothing quantitative about the process, it’s all qualitative. It becomes possible to divine at what point of change one finds oneself in because the underlying philosophy in this world of change is that everything is connected. Hence, the development of the 64 symbols of change. However, reading that process of change correctly is an art form.

So if the tetrad retrieves this knowledge of change, once it accelerates, it reverses into… an amalgation, a re-wholing of all knowledges of change, in some newer form of understanding change in relevance to our times. It could appear in the form of a complex computer program. It could just as well appear as a human social structure where individuals understand their connection with the unknowable whole and act in the context of their valuable place in a complex complexity. I’m not selling the idea of a utopia, but saying that we can find perfection in imperfection.

The Tetrad reverses into a new understanding of the processes of change. That understanding may be the herald of a new renaissance of human discoveries.

Orality and Communications, the short way

2004-10-02T02:51:00.000-04:00

Orality and communications is new stuff for me. I'm trying to make sense of the confusion I've launched myself in again with this new McLuhan course. I've been give a bunch of reading materials, about five inches of photocpied materials written by academics several decades ago. (Anybody tried the frustrating task of trying to make sense out of old English?) We're expected to read at least 4-5 'theorists' in 7 days, doesn't matter what else you do in your day to day life. Sigh, the pace of academics. I'm taking shortcuts. I don't know, maybe there're actually long cuts. I google the guys' names and try to read what other people have gisted about what these guys have been thinking about. At least on the net, they use simple English. What's really important for me is to understand the context (social, intellectual, cultural environment) of which these intellectual giants have shaped their thoughts.

Some links that really helped clarify stuff for me, for future references:

Theories of Communication -Wikipedia

Oral History - Wikipedia

"Innis: The Bias of Communications & Monopolies of Power" by Marshall Soules

"Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word" Ong, Methuen

" Towards an Ecology of Understanding:
Semiotics, Medium Theory, and the Uses of Meaning" by Marc Leverette

"From Orality to Teleliteracy" by Steven Mizrach

A much delayed essay: "Emerging Paradigm", promised to a friend

2004-10-02T02:41:00.000-04:00

This is something I promised a friend I would write for her. It's still, maybe, a first draft. I feel as if I keep repeating myself, but since I've started taking this class on orality, I understand that its common practice in this tradition, so no sea mi culpa. Also everytime I tell this story it always gets said in a different way.

A fundamental shift in perspective has been happening in the world of scientific theories. In 1687, Newton’s “Principia” laid the ground rules for scientific inquiry. These rules stated that “(1) we are to admit no more causes of natural things such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances, (2) the same natural effects must be assigned to the same causes, (3) qualities of bodies are to be esteemed as universal, and (4) propositions deduced from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict them.” To understand how he came about these rules, one has to understand Newton’s time, environment, the evolution of philosophy and science before that.

Newton put firmly into place a “scientific method”. His three laws of motion: inertia, action and reaction, and acceleration proportional to force was a crystallization of a linear worldview that had begun to take shape since the Greek invention of the western phonetic alphabet. In the following four hundred years, this “scientific” methodology influenced the birth of some new scholarly line of thoughts, such as, evolutionary theory, economics, marxism, (just to name the few I am somwhat familiar with).

This linear worldview included concepts such as, independent agents, reductionism, individuality, privacy, and specialization. It sprouted numerous specialists and specialties. For 400 years, competition, survival of the fittest led us to a point of near total annihilation with the two World Wars, and the subsequent Cold War. The world became increasingly complex, chaotic, and interdependent.

Everything became linked through communications, supported by the new electric medium. A scholar who invented world famous clichés such as “the global village”, “the media is the message”, Marshall McLuhan, saw how electricity produced a revolutionary effect in transforming our world, and tells us that with the acceleration of our print and media oriented culture, there comes a reversal into a new oral culture.

This reversal and signs of its shifted paradigm started to emerge in the public mind only after nearly one hundred years since its discovery by the quantum sciences in the 20s. These scientists discovered that in the world of the subatomic level, particles (aka, matter) were paradoxically behaving as waves (aka, energy). Since then, new multidisciplinary studies developed new theories of Chaos (50s), Complexity (late 80s), Nanotechnology (70s), Genomics (80s).... During the 80s, and 90s, an emerging group of writers made such scientific insights popular: Fritjof Capra, Steven Hawkings, James Gleick, etc. Research Institutions and some open-minded institutions were already applying the new discoveries into management, forum organization, structuring of information.

This new worldview, or as some choose to call it ‘paradigm”, informs us that life is basically non-linear, complex, interdependent, and ever changing. The implications of this new worldview clash against outdated strategies and policy attitude of an industrial linear world. How does one reorganize factories to take into account of small effects causing big influences, if they want to reorganize at all? Or how does one reconcile that 1+1 does not necessarily equal to 2? What happens to economic models when equations do no need to equalize in 0?

We are at last awakening from the sleep of linearity, that alphabets, literacy and Newton’s deterministic laws has given us.

The perspective that is demanded by this new worldview is frightening to many, mostly for those who have invested heavily in the old worldview, the status quo. It implies letting go the old ways of doing things. It requires that we try to understand laws of chaos and complexity. This is a world of seemingly endless possibilities, and every changing change, what can we use as guides?

The prophet of this effect, McLuhan, may have pointed to us the direction to find answers for these questions. Maybe collaboration, listening to each other, and orality, the reversal of literacy can help us find a way. Oral cultures taught us that redefining ourselves moment for moment, revisioning ourselves with each new perspective gained could be a good way to move with change. This does not necessarily mean that we must wipe the board clean. Values that have proven themselves may needed to be reworded, those that cannot apply may need to be discarded or put in secondary place, understanding the circumstances when we can use which values. Most important of all, maybe it can teach us to let go of dichotomy, of duality and allow us to be more comfortable with paradox. Strangely enough, the philosophies of the East seem to be quite familiar with these modalities of being.

During these coming years, it seems to me that what will be most crucial of all will be constant and intense conversations among many and all, to reword, to create new vocabularies, to speak in many different ways this new worldview until we are all well acquainted with it. Those cultures that adjust faster will gain an advantage, just as those that understand it deeply will be ones who bring it forward farther.

For Thailand:

I shudder in horror when I listen to news that Thailand’s leaders sometimes go all out in support of Western modernity, blindly applauding its technological advances, and overeager to buy into whatever lowly crumbs so-called high tech multinationals throw out at us. I am afraid that we will end up locking our future capacities by being dependant on rapidly going out of date technologies and science. The beauty of such this pioneer world of new sciences is that information is the key advantage. We do not need to follow the linear footsteps of Newtonian science in order to advance. We can jumpstart from things that have been tested and disproved as not working. Science is an undeniable future necessity, but let’s use discrimination. Our Buddhist philosophy proves familiar in this new paradigm. Its core values have always stressed the eternal nature change and the highest of learning by one’s own experience. We don’t need to drop all of the old ways to adopt new ones. We need to explore what old baggage might actually fit with new ideas and if they don’t, to see them clearly for what they are. What can be done to raise generations who will be able to quickly deconstruct the underlying assumptions of what used to be and reconstruct a successful vision for the moment that will eventually affect our future?

Not blogging means I'm doing too much

2004-10-01T21:24:00.000-04:00

When I'm not blogging it means that I'm doing too much and am overstressed. Actually, I should make an effort to blog during these times because it's when I get lots of inputs and ideas. Too many and too fast that I don't know how to write them all down. What's going on? I'm taking another McLhuhan Program course, Comparative Orality and Literacy. It's three hours of intensive lecture-discussion on Thursday evenings. It has a pretty demanding reading program as well as tough expectations for a paper/presentation. Then I also passed my French exam that placed me in the intermediate level, and I'm doing two classes of French a week. I like the groups I'm studying with, but meeting too many people at once gives me a lot of new information to digest, so that ups my stress level. My kids also started school. My son entered Grade 9, which in Canada is seperated from Gr 1-8, and he had locate to a different school. It was exciting to help him adjust to another stage of life. (I don't know who was more excited, me or him?) When I'm doing too many things outside of the house, I don't get the housework done the way I like, ... that makes me grumpy. One of the things I do not enjoy with life in Canada is that maids are expensive and not practicle, you've just got to do your own housework.

On n'a plus le temps

2004-08-29T14:43:00.000-04:00

I found this with languagehat:

On ne lit plus, on n'a plus le temps. L'esprit est appelé à la fois de trop de côtes; il faut lui parler vite où il passe. Mais il y a des choses qui ne peuvent être dites, ni comprises si vite, et ce sont les plus importantes pour l'homme. Cette accélération de mouvement qui ne permet de rien enchaîner, de rien méditer, suffirait seule pour affaiblir et, à la longue, pour détruire entièrement la raison humaine.

Félicité Robert de Lamennais, 1819.

(Translation: "We have stopped reading, we have not the time. Our mind is solicited simultaneously from too many sides: it has to be spoken to quickly as it passes by. But there are things that cannot be said or understood in such haste, and these are the most important things for man. This accelerated movement, which makes coherent thought impossible, may alone be sufficient to weaken, and in the long run utterly to destroy, human reason.")

Some news about wikis and blogs

2004-08-29T13:25:00.000-04:00

I found Ross Mayfield's reference about investments in Wiki- and Blog-mania quite interesting to note here for my future reference. I've just signed myself onto to Wikipedia yesterday, hope I'll be able to contribute something there. There's the Thai Wiki to keep an eye on. These past two days, I've also found Wiki's city, weblogs, slashdot (very interesting!), social networking, nanotechnology pages useful.

My other internet "identities"

2004-08-29T02:32:00.000-04:00

For the sake of transparency, I thought I should point out my other internet identities. Google's new services encouraged me to start two new blogs: my Thai History Blog, a subject I'm planning to be more deeply invovled in; Manila Galleon, a blog I initiated for my husband's baby book, (I'm pressuring him to get it on published, he's not doing much about it).

Then I'm regularly posting with the community at All About Thailand, my alias there is globalwoman. I've just starting posting with the discussion forum at 2Bangkok.com. In my previous post, I wrote about how I started logging in at Wikipedia.

Lastly,there's the MMS2 group/class blog. And of course, this blog was started as part of MMS1 course.

Still struggling to make my blog a transparent medium of my thoughts

2004-08-29T01:12:00.000-04:00

I haven't been blogging much lately because there's just too many things going through my mind, too many life events I'm trying to integrate, too many books I'm reading. When I log on to the internet, I prefer reading my Thai newspaper, my alternative news source: 2Bangkok.com, looking for websites or blogs on subjects that interest me, and posting on "All About Thailand" Forum. I'm also taking French lessons. I have an exam next Monday, which I haven't studied for. There's also a bunch of projects in my "To Do" list. Even without a 9-5 job, there's too little time to do all I want to do, especially for a dreamer like me. I need time to write in my morning journals, to think over things I experience by reading up on the various topics, the books being my little looking glass, so blogging comes at the bottom of the list of all that.

Through the years, I think I've deepened my multi-tasking skills in real life. Now I wish I could multi-task with the use of computers. It's so time consuming. So instead of writing what I want to write with care, I rush through my posts (when I do post). Then what concerns me is that what I write can't express the variety of things that interest me. Transparency is what I hope to achieve, I wonder if it's hopeless? Hmm, maybe a better goal is clarity?