Speculating

Louisa found the idea of ‘speculating‘ to resonate. First response, dumbfoundedness. Then use yoga as an example in terms of how it started and then speculating about its changes, and by implication future changes.

William uses my speculative writing, and thinks:

Though really we could be moving in any direction; forward, preferably, but also backward, sidewards, or if we have a really bad semester, down. But we’re always moving, and that’s what counts

Works for me. Movement, flow. The internet is an enormous system that is

  • not still
  • about the movement of (information, knowledge, data, media)
  • it is the movement and exchange of this that creates the web
  • and its ‘maps’

Imagine a cinema. It is still and things come to it. Imagine your blog. Where is it? And when I view it, it (literally), comes to me.

On the other hand he suggests this could describe any subject. Maybe, though control systems in engineering? No. Control systems require closed feedback loops, the internet, in that language, has some feedback loops, but this isn’t fundamental, and it is open, not closed.

Chantelle expects things to be blown around a bit, and yes, I think the way to think about this is that we are the boat, or on the boat. It is a boat awash, surrounded, bobbing there. But as William notes, over there is as good as over here. So direction becomes, well, interesting.

I like Arthur’s observation that some will want to float about, others row furiously (my question though is where to?), but generally we are to, well, learn what it is to be in this flow, on this swell of ocean, as it is. Without insisting it be other. As Edward observes “we just have to adapt to the current and go where we want to”, to which I’d add, and to go where it also takes us.

Victoria, pessimistically, finds the boat metaphor unhelpful. Perhaps don’t treat it as a metaphor, instead it is the subject. So, if your boat sinks, what do you need to know to not drown? That is one of the things that this subject and the others in the digital stream are about. Again, not specific content (I can tell you that you need to swim but that is learning how to swim is it?)