Hi James -- (sorry on the re-post, I thought this would make it to the listserv...)

> Looking at the PiratePad notes all I would like to add is an extension to
> the theme:
>
> Bricolabs and "Facing North / Facing South"
>
> Bricolabs are uncovering ways of engaging with technology which are critical
> and empowering. In the Global North, Bricolabs may manifest as creative
> responses to individual dislocation, community disintegration, unemployment,
> increasing precarity and post-industrial decline. In the Global South
> Bricolabs often address similar issues, but in underdeveloped or rapidly
> industrialising contexts. The centralising tendency of techno-capitalism
> creates similar problems wherever it operates, and Bricolabs approaches to
> individual and local empowerment, community building, and acquisition of
> technological and cultural capabilities may be applicable in the North and
> the South. This event will share these approaches and seeks to understand the
> critical factors that make engagement with technology genuinely empowering,
> sustainable and positive.
>
> Does that sound appropriate or useful?

Since you ask, that thematic did come up, see the IRC chat log @
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/62375 about 2/3 of the way in...

my objection to that dialectic is that imho brico very much transcends & goes
beyond that very common Cartesian/materialist dichotomy that you frame, and for
that reason I see it as a step backwards (invoking Cartesian is to empower that
model of the world which then sets up spatial dichotomies, which then ... etc)

the idea of resonance transcends those old models ... and it does not carry such
a heavy load from any other particular models (or actually, it carries many
different views from many wildly different models!)

"Resonance allows the universe (or any of its parts) to influence a human being"
(Kaptchuk, 2000, p.45)

from scientific - http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/62161

to yogic - http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/60166

or such hybrid ideas: "As mindfulness scans a region of mind, resonances appear
as bright spots of particular order in a dim background. Resonance is a
fundamental indication of higher or concentrated energy states. Fundamental
quantization of resonance will cause distributed peaks and troughs in the
strength of resonance. The subtlety of resonance guides our movement through the
flows around us." from http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1708

Just my 2-cents on that -- Felipe expressed some other points on that, Tapio as
well...

Cheers,

John
--

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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
Watching the Tao rather than watching the Dow!
http://neoscenes.net/
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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