"Poïesis (Ancient Greek: ποίησις) is etymologically derived from the ancient term ποιέω, which means "to make". This word, the root of our modern "poetry", was first a verb, an action that transforms and continues the world.[citation needed] Neither technical production nor creation in the romantic sense, poïetic work reconciles thought with matter and time,[citation needed] and person with the world.[citation needed] It is also used as a suffix, as in the biological term hematopoiesis, the formation of blood cells.[citation needed]

There are two forms of poiesis: Autopoiesis and Allopoiesis

In the Symposium (a Socratic dialogue written by Plato), Diotima describes how mortals strive for immortality in relation to poiesis. In all begetting and bringing forth upon the beautiful there is a kind of making/creating or poiesis. In this genesis there is a movement beyond the temporal cycle of birth and decay. "Such a movement can occur in three kinds of poiesis: (1) Natural poiesis through sexual procreation, (2) poiesis in the city through the attainment of heroic fame, and, finally, (3) poiesis in the soul through the cultivation of virtue and knowledge."[1]

Whereas Plato, according to the Timaeus, regards physis as the result of poiesis, viz. the poiesis of the demiurge who creates from ideas, Aristotle considers poiesis as an imitation of physis. In short, the form or idea, which precedes the physis, contrasts with the living, which is the innate principle or form of self-motion. In other words, the technomorphic paradigm contrasts with the biomorphic; the theory of nature as a whole with the theory of the living individual.[2]

Martin Heidegger refers to it as a 'bringing-forth', using this term in its widest sense. He explained poiesis as the blooming of the blossom, the coming-out of a butterfly from a cocoon, the plummeting of a waterfall when the snow begins to melt. The last two analogies underline Heidegger's example of a threshold occasion: a moment of ecstasis when something moves away from its standing as one thing to become another.

In literary studies, at least two fields draw on the etymology of poiesis: ecopoetics and zoopoetics. As "eco" derives from the root "oikos" meaning "house, home, or hearth," then ecopoetics explores how language can help cultivate (or make) a sense of dwelling on the earth. Zoopoetics explores how animals (zoo) shape the making of a text.

In their 2011 academic book, All Things Shining, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly conclude that embracing a "meta-poietic" mindset is the best, if not the only, method to authenticate meaning in our secular times: "Meta-poiesis, as one might call it, steers between the twin dangers of the secular age: it resists nihilism by reappropriating the sacred phenomenon of physis, but cultivates the skill to resist physis in its abhorrent, fanatical form. Living well in our secular, nihilistic age, therefore, requires the higher-order skill of recognizing when to rise up as one with the ecstatic crowd and when to turn heel and walk rapidly away."[3]

Furthermore, Dreyfus and Dorrance Kelly urge each person to become a sort of "craftsman" whose responsibility it is to refine their faculty for poiesis in order to achieve existential meaning in their lives and to reconcile their bodies with whatever transcendence there is to be had in life itself: "The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there."[4]"

"What is the difference between scientific and non-scientific thinking? Thinking within a consistent theory versus thinking haphazardly?

I'm crucially interested in the problem of representing theory such that intuitions are fruitful and theoretically sound, and representations suggest analogies that stay true to the theory. That's not diSessa's problem, but I feel that his viewpoint has some powerful clues."

…

"Hofstadter says that all thinking runs on analogy-making. Sounds good to me! If he's even partially correct, then it seems to me that a medium for powerful thinking needs to be a medium for seeing powerful analogies. And a medium for powerful communication needs to be designed around inducing the dance he's talking about up there."

…

Kieran Egan: "Thinking about education during this century has almost entirely involved just three ideas—socialization, Plato's academic idea, and Rousseau's developmental idea. We may see why education is so difficult and contentious if we examine these three ideas and the ways they interact in educational thinking today. The combination of these ideas governs what we do in schools, and what we do to children in the name of education.

Our problems, I will further argue, are due to these three ideas each being fatally flawed and being also incompatible with one other."

Bret Victor: "If you're going to design a system for education, it might help to understand the purpose of education in the first place. Egan points out how modern education is implicitly driven by a cargo-culty mish-mash of three lofty but mutually-incompatible goals. Good luck with that!"

…

"The cultural importance of the printing press doesn't have much to do with the technology -- the ink and metal type -- but rather how print acted as a medium to amplify human thought in particular ways.

Print was directly responsible for the emergence of a literate and educated society, which (for example) made possible the idea of societal self-governance. The US Constitution could only exist in a literate print culture, where (for example) the Federalist papers and Anti-Federalist papers could be debated in the newspapers.

As you read and watch Alan Kay, try not to think about computational technology, but about a society that is fluent in thinking and debating in the dimensions opened up by the computational medium.
Don't think about “coding” (that's ink and metal type, already obsolete), and don't think about “software developers” (medieval scribes only make sense in an illiterate society).

Think about modeling phenomena, modeling situations, simulating models, gaining a common-sense intuition for nonlinear dynamic processes. Then think about a society in which every educated person does these things, in the computational medium, as easily and naturally as we today read and write complex logical arguments in the written medium.

Reading used to be reserved for the clergy, to hand down unquestionable Revealed Truths to the masses. Today, it's just what everyone does. Think about a society in which science is not reserved for the clergy, to hand down unquestionable Revealed Truths to the masses, but is just what everyone does."

…

[Reading tips from Bret Victor:]

"Reading Tip #1

It’s tempting to judge what you read: "I agree with these statements, and I disagree with those."

However, a great thinker who has spent decades on an unusual line of thought cannot induce their context into your head in a few pages. It’s almost certainly the case that you don’t fully understand their statements.

Instead, you can say: "I have now learned that there exists a worldview in which all of these statements are consistent."

And if it feels worthwhile, you can make a genuine effort to understand that entire worldview. You don't have to adopt it. Just make it available to yourself, so you can make connections to it when it's needed.

Reading Tip #2

Carver Mead describes a physical theory in which atoms exchange energy by resonating with each other. Before the energy transaction can happen, the two atoms must be phase-matched, oscillating in almost perfect synchrony with each other.

I sometimes think about resonant transactions as a metaphor for getting something out of a piece of writing. Before the material can resonate, before energy can be exchanged between the author and reader, the reader must already have available a mode of vibration at the author's frequency. (This doesn't mean that the reader is already thinking the author's thought; it means the reader is capable of thinking it.)

People often describe written communication in terms of transmission (the author explained the concept well, or poorly) and/or absorption (the reader does or doesn't have the background or skill to understand the concept). But I think of it more like a transaction -- the author and the reader must be matched with each other. The author and reader must share a close-enough worldview, viewpoint, vocabulary, set of mental models, sense of aesthetics, and set of goals. For any particular concept in the material, if not enough of these are sufficiently matched, no resonance will occur and no energy will be exchanged.

Perhaps, as a reader, one way to get more out of more material is to collect and cultivate a diverse set of resonators, to increase the probability of a phase-match.

Reading Tip #3

Misunderstandings can arise when an author is thinking in a broader context than the reader. A reader might be thinking tactically: :How can I do a better job today?" while the author is thinking strategically: "How can we make a better tomorrow?"

The misunderstanding becomes especially acute when real progress requires abandoning today's world and starting over.

We are ants crawling on a tree branch. Most ants are happy to be on the branch, and happy to be moving forward.

[image]

But there are a few special ants that, somehow, are able to see a bigger picture. And they can see that this branch is a dead end.

[image]

They can see that if we really want to move forward, we'll have to backtrack a long ways down.

They usually have a hard time explaining this to the ants that can only see the branch they're on. For them, the path ahead appears to go on forever.

[image]"

"Taking another look at yesterday's future"

"Though the example product seems a little far-fetched; growth assembly could be quite revolutionary. Worldwide shipping of manufactured things is very inefficient. Why not ship devices and utensils in a single envelope? As seeds."

"Multitasking, when it comes to paying attention, is a myth. The brain naturally focuses on concepts sequentially, one at a time. At first that might sound confusing; at one level the brain does multitask. You can walk and talk at the same time. Your brain controls your heartbeat while you read a book. Pianists can play a piece with left hand and right hand simultaneously. Surely this is multitasking. But I am talking about the brain’s ability to pay attention. It is the resource you forcibly deploy while trying to listen to a boring lecture at school. It is the activity that collapses as your brain wanders during a tedious presentation at work. This attentional ability is not capable of multitasking."

"If you’re trying to get a better experience out in the world, the best proof of your ideas is probably just doing it. It can take months & years to plan, spec & align organizational bureaucracies around a strange new idea. But making your idea concrete enough to be used by real people can remove obstacles, win hearts & create real traction. The San Francisco city government is like other governments, not particularly known for its speed & nimbleness. But recently they’ve discovered the power of calling projects “pilots” to eschew the normal policies and procedures in favor of quickly learning if an idea is in fact a good one. ... #To get permission, call it a “reversible pilot”. Worst case = learn a lot & you’ll know the idea...isn’t worth pursuing. Best case = hot new experience on your hands. #Clarify what you want to learn. It’ll help you focus on what to pilot & for how long. #Control costs, not details... [no] need [for] perfect implementation. # Plan the next step."

"This is a prototype of an iPhone media player that uses physical objects to control media playback. It is based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) that triggers various iPhone interactions when in the range of a wireless tag embedded inside a physical object. ... RFID is becoming more common in mobile phones (under the term Near Field Communication or NFC) from manufacturers such as Nokia. By looking at Apple’s patents we know that the technology is being considered for the iPhone. With the iPhone SDK 3.0 external hardware accessories can be accessed by iPhone software, so third party RFID or NFC readers are also possible. ... Compared to other mobile handsets the iPhone is a particularly media-friendly device, with a large, bright screen and high quality audiovisual playback. What if this screen could act as a ‘lens’ to content that resides in the world?"

"In addition to the social networking and tracking software, MIT is developing a “Smart Bike” that uses regenerative braking to charge a battery for a motor that supplements peddling power. The battery, motor and regenerative braking system are all integrated into a rear wheel and could be retrofitted to existing bicycles.

"“Robometer” is a robot that monitors your robot level by GSR, voice and locomotion, in the position of a watch. After the seventh level, it will start talking to you in robot language, try to recommend you how to feel happy."

"...she falls & flails in categories: a specially-made low-run piece, either hand-tooled or machine-made, that would lose its context as a mass-produced item, and is not viable to produce in large quantities. And/or an item that is in concept stage as a byproduct of the previous""

[See also: http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/interview_with_designer_sruli_recht_part_1_macrobiotic_fractal-based_production_methods_and_more_16315.asp ]

[New links:
http://srulirecht.com/category/non-products_2008/
http://srulirecht.com/category/non-products_2009/
http://srulirecht.com/category/non-products_2009/ ]

"The intent was to create a device made from nothing new....use of reclaimed and upcycled materials that could ultimately change the way we make things...designed to help inspire and stimulate discussion on how mobile devices might be made in the future."

"Current State system is made up of two parts, a mobile application for you cell phone, which allows you to control and monitor electricity use from anywhere, and a series of Plug-Ends that give you control over the products around your house."

"Designer Sungwoo Park has created the "EazzzY", a USB drive / digital camera with no buttons, no LCD screen and no viewfinder. The idea is that every time you plug the camera into your PC to download your pics, you will be surprised as to what's on there

"It’s not that I don’t appreciate being appreciated for our brains (which is a little like being told you have a great personality). But divorcing “thinking” from “making” reduces design to “concepting.”

"Conceptual Map Index"

"Reducing the movement of matter - whether goods, or people - is a main challenge in the transition to sustainability. Technology, in this context, can help us use resources in a radically more efficient way - and by 'resources' I do not just mean matter

"The Navitas can charge it's on-board, 24-volt battery in three different ways: Strength, Sun and Wind. The device, which I imagine doubles as extra storage space as well, uses the attached rear wheel to charge the battery when the bike is moving."

"SUSA opted for neither and chose the style of the working man--blue collar chic!--designed specifically to mimic ear protection gear that blocks out the noise, except they totally pump up the jamz crazy style!"

"a hybrid bicycle using wood as a main material--unexpected but sensible since wood is lightweight and incredibly strong, used for many kayaks and sailboats"

"Human Beans create provocative concepts. We make fictional products by hacking commercial culture and we design new services by working with real people"

"Full-length feature introduces animated versions of two concept vehicles"

"Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can't be learned from reading a manual."

"Locksit is a design-against-crime influenced saddle that immobilises the bicycle and avoids the need to carry your saddle around with you."

"There are terms from computer science, cosmology, neuroscience, environmentalism, sociology, biotechnology, philosophy, astrobiology, political science, and many other fields."

"Today's intelligentsia, in order to qualify for such a designation, must have the requisite vocabulary with which to address valid social concerns and effectively assess the future."

"By proposing different real installations which would work within active or abandoned public transport structures and a series of conceptual designs a dialogue should be raised that engages in questions about the reality and "real fiction" of traffic. "

"Nokia has released a number of short videos that explore how mobile phone design may change in the next three or four years. There is a video for each of the four categories, or put more simply different lifestyle, that Nokia focuses on."

"Traipse round the house and clean the carpet at the same time – genius!"

"Researchers at Delft University Technology in the Netherlands have created this aerodynamic bus that can go as fast as 155 mph while running on electricity. The SuperBus will have roughly 30 seats with individual entrance/exit doors and rather than make

"This site features the ways in which people modify and re-create technology. Herein a collection of personal modifications, folk innovations, street customization, ad hoc alterations, wear-patterns, home-made versions and indigenous ingenuity. In short -

"parole is a dynamic dictionary of the contemporary city, or at least this was the intention when it was launched in June 2000 in occasion of the 7th International Exhibition of Architecture at the Biennale in Venice, Italy."

"A unique combination of a warm aura and bold, perfect technology. From a technological product to a personal companion that keeps notes, stories, thoughts, fragments and impressions...a confidant. ...something as easy to use as a book! Each of the 3 chap

"ack presented the results of trials involving her reading-cum-driving simulator, the Speeder Reader, at this week's O'Reilly's Emerging Technology conference, where she described how streaming text to a fixed spot on the screen allows the reader to elimi

"The Halfbakery is a communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users. It was created by people who like to speculate, both as a form of satire and as a form of creative expression. (To learn more about what ideas are appropriate,

"Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user interactions on a graphical interaction surface."