The Liminalist # 131: The Question of Presence (or the Curse of Social Media)

First of two-part audio recording of the third Liminalista Video Meet-up (from October 14th 2017), with Frances Hutchens, Nick Kalani, and Christopher S, on what people want from Auticulture, being burned out on geopolitics, social liberation & liminality, focusing on Jasun’s books, mind and body, Frances recovering  from sinusitis, Jasun triggered by Seen & Not Seen royalty figures, Vincent van Gogh syndrome, shooter syndrome, wanting to quit & redoubling efforts, generating a response from the world, asking for help, emotions that can’t be acted on, sounding too guru-like, group interaction, the power of listening, the rarity of intelligent conversation, the value of one-to-ones, the idea of presence, how patterns show up when we don’t, programmed responses, speaking to bots, Chris seeing Blade Runner 2049, the censoring of negative thoughts, expressing ennui, Prisoner of Infinity, Occult Yorkshire and the courage of tackling difficult issues, the curse of social media, ideological messaging, responsible action in the Alternate Perceptions Community, calling “bullshit” on other writers, the legitimacy of academia, the imaginary risk of speaking the truth, letting people know they are not alone, Nick on language and bodily expression, how we talk about truth, cynicism as a defense, talking to large groups, a multitude of opinions, the danger of miscommunication, the difference between intimate and group interaction, a guarantee of misunderstanding, where are our souls going when programmed responses of social media take over our interactions?

Songs:  “The Kommema and his Religion”  by SunWalker; “Mind Shield 17,” by Thee Knaves; “Full Moon in My Soul” by Robyn Hitchcock; “Plateau,” by Meat Puppets.

 

4 thoughts on “The Liminalist # 131: The Question of Presence (or the Curse of Social Media)”

  1. @33:00 I’m reminded of the Turing Test; Alan Turing, the genius who cracked the Hitler Code and a mathematician, set up a test that has become a criterion of when a computer has become indistinguishable from a human in a two-way conversation. For the last year, I’ve been getting promotional calls from very human sounding voices who even make jokes but I’m not fooled because I have a keen ear for dialectal anomalies–I had a speech impediment as a boy, a lisp, and received special classes to correct it. I was fascinated by the films we watched of various regional dialects and, because of my keen ear, I was able to astonish my little league baseball coach by placing his Brooklyn accent. I told him, “You’re from Brooklyn,” and he said, “How do you know that?!” “Because of the way you talk,” I said. It was quite validating, I was 10 years old, to see the look of astonishment on an adult’s face. But I’m afraid that soon I will eventually be fooled given the astonishing progress in voice recognition and production, a subset of artificial intelligence.

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    • when i was 17 and loitering in a local bookstore I correctly identified a dareisay milf’s accent from new zealand, when she randomly approached me and said “excuse me you look rather noble sitting there”, and then responded “wow most americans think i’m australian.” maybe my foibled experience has lain me on the techno-pessimist side of the spectrum….john michael greer>>>ray kurzweil.

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