Empulse-bursts is not a typo - Electrical impulses, was thinking of cloudbursts... I realised that when I force myself to focus when I run, I am in actual fact, meditating. And here's the 'rain':
1. I think there is a different way to conceptualise knowledge and academia, and I was thinking of this as friends were debating about psychology and sociology. I realise that different subjects are more like points in a network of knowledge, and that every point emanates influence from a metaphorical origin. Imagine waves radiating outwards from a pebble being dropped in the pond. Semiotics becomes the study of how these waves form, and what happens when they intersect - how knowledge is being created, perhaps.
Less metaphorically, semiotics is a thread that connects the different fields, in the investigation of how raw sense-data becomes knowledge, of how things become known and have meaning. It is both cognition and social constructions - because nothing in the material world has any meaning-in-itself, the meaning is given by people, and I think its a place where semiotics comes in and becomes part of the explanation.
2. Was thinking about pedagogy, was thinking that USP students are a demanding lot, and will demand high quality instructors as well. While we have always taken charge of our own education, what I'm trying to get at is that, where is the line where students decide what is being actually thought? And this leads into the next point...
3. If USP instructors are facilitators of knowledge, then this must mean, in certain instances, that students are, together with the instructors, co-creating knowlege together. Continuing on, where is the space of criticism of instructors by students? This criticism must necessarily be based on respect and decency, but I was wondering, how would instructors come to terms with this criticism? And this leads to...
4. Alan Kay said that the best way to predict the future is to make it. If we at USP are in the process of co-creating knowledge, might not we take the next step and begin to shape the future? While students can be thought of as future-in-waiting, I'm really wondering, to what extent can that future be realised? And so, on a not-so-unrelated point,
5. I'm struggling with myself, and still figuring out what is 'smartness'. My current thought is this: Social Darwinism, social engineering will fail, because genetically, getting people of the same phenotype (smartness) together would sometimes mean the meeting of genotype. Exercising social darwinism leads to some degree of inbreeding, and in some instances, retardation. I take the view that people are all smart, but that their smartness lies in different areas, and it is up to institutions to develop, and nurture those smartness. (was wondering about those government scholars - how 'smart' are they? they must definitely, certainly be very smart. so how do i 'compare' to them? they certainly can't think the thoughts i do!)
6. Which leads to the conception of democracy: in the naive case, democracy is meant to be a system of debate, of a marketplace of ideas, where ideas are debated, and thought true, and the belief is that the best ideas, by their own 'best-ness' will prevail. But that does not happen, and we end up with the belief that certain people are more worthy than others to weign in on a debate, which leads to inequality, exploitation, oppression...
7. Media technology is then, a way to level the playing field, perhaps... Which leads me to the recurring idea that socialism will come not because of revolution, but because socialism will be preferred over capitalism (stone age didn't end because we run out of stones; capitalism won't end because we run out of capital). Perhaps if we can find different perceptions of capital...
8. What we want isn't better, or newer technology - what we want are engaged, more-informed tech! And it is that socially, humanly-informed technology that might get socialism started...
9. And a world system: first started thinking about money, about how a single piece of paper note is really a contract of payment, that a $2 notes does not mean that the paper alone is worth $2, but is in fact, a promise of payment to be paid something worth $2. Extending the concept to the limit, then, international process can be thought of as things-in-process, waiting to become things-to-be. This process is never really complete. Eg., international aid: where assistance if offered to countries with the hope that these countries will develop. (aware of complications, but for the time being...) a semiotic conception of this system would look into how aid in itself becomes a sign-relation, that the sign 'aid' means within it, the outcome of development. But since things are evidently not so, aid is then, in actuality, a process of things-to-be. Thinking of Novogratz's notion of patient capitalism, where funds are not simply 'things' that arrive at a particular client, but instead carry along with it the whole development process that needs to be followed through... .