838 posts, notes, and Quips originally published on Patreon and now available here after the archive's public-release period.
danah knows what she is talking about Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media danah Boyd "When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protoco…
https://bit.ly/augmentedcollective (https://bit.ly/augmentedcollective)
https://www.validatingtruth.com/my-book (https://www.validatingtruth.com/my-book) " Learn how to quickly identify misinformation (the inadvertent spread of false information without intent to harm) and disinformation (false information designed to mislead oth…
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Peeragogy_Handbook (https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Peeragogy_Handbook) Peeragogy is a word for a techniques that self-motivated learners can use to connect with each other and develop stronger communities and collaborations. This…
I intrigued myself with the technique: underpaint acrylic on a small canvas, divide it into small, irregular portions with black overpaint. I feed these to the Little Free Art Gallery in front of my house
I've long been interested in the idea that the architecture of an enterprise can enable individual self-interest to add up into a public good. Napster -- ethical arguments bracketed -- is an example: If you want to swipe music from another Napster user's comp…
When I wrote about virtual communities in the late 1980s (https://jvwr-ojs-utexas.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/293) and early 1990s (https://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/), the Internet was spawning a variety of communities. In 1996, we created a "Virtual Community…
A college course on strengthening skills of thinking independently, critically, collaboratively, creatively in the age of cognitive offloading.
I asked chatGPT to create a concept map of the pedagogy we developed, based on two literature reviews of research into cognitive impact of LLM use and what to do about it. The image above is a jpeg export of the cMap, which should be clickable in its native f…
Now working on the next book in the series: how to think independently, critically, creatively in the age of AI -- for teenagers
Now available. $31 including shipping. I take no profit. https://www.blurb.com/b/12900560-kas-thinking-system (https://www.blurb.com/b/12900560-kas-thinking-system)
I've been referencing and writing about metacognition lately, specifically in regard to cognitive hygiene in the face of ai use. I have been interested in the subject for close to two decades because of its relationship to attention training in the age of soc…
Recent research that I have covered here (https://www.patreon.com/posts/thinking-about-156285478) strongly reinforces the notion that immunization against cognitive decline caused by use of LLMs to brainstorm and write starts with metacognition -- self-awaren…
First of seven books in the adult version:
Starting on an adult version...
In the olden days, we curated the Web for each other, sharing our bookmarks with identifying tags. It started with del.icio.us (https://del.icio.us) and was expanded with diigo.com (https://diigo.com). I wrote about social bookmarking here (https://www.patreo…
For those who don't want to download the whole curriculum guide, this will convey the pedagogical scaffold for the seven books. This guide explains the pedagogical arc of the seven-book Kas Thinking System and provides a concise learning guide for each volume…
Another work in the bandsaw-acrylic-poplar medium.
Using Pixamotion app
Here is the complete learning guide to seven illustrated books I prompted chatGPT to create in order to teach my 5 year old grandson how to think in the age of AI. Learning guide is 7 pages. It will give you a detailed description of the pedagogical arc and s…
I've prompted chatGPT to create a complete curriculum guide (https://rheingold.com/READ_FIRST_Thinking_System_Curriculum_Intro.pdf) (https://rheingold.com/ThinkingCurriculum.zip)to the 7 illustrated books for teaching independent and critical thinking (https:…
Back to acrylic. Fine detail acrylic pen. Background brush. Bandsawed poplar. About a foot high.
chatGPT knows my interest in metacognition for young people and suggested this I've been teaching my 5 year old grandson science, so chatGPT made this colorable page.
Brad Delong's Substack hits the note I sounded two decades ago in my TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_the_new_power_of_collaboration): Humanity’s unique superpower is its twin abilities to collaborate in the creation and development of kno…
I wrote this in 1994: When two attorneys enraged millions of Internet users by publishing identical advertisements on six thousand unique network discussions known as "newsgroups," they were attacking a tradition of cooperation. Now the same attorneys are flo…
To others, these paintings probably look alike, but to me they are getting closer to achieving the look I have in mind. I'm moving to an acrylic pen project for a while.
Dr. Marina Jovic developed the VERIFY framework to help students use AI critically while preserving their own thinking. The framework consists of six steps: Verify sources and facts, Evaluate logical flow, Review rhetorical strategies, Identify biases and ass…
This is from Dario Amodei, cofounder of openAI and now CEO of Anthropic: The Adolescence of Technology (https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology) As with many issues, it’s helpful to think through the spectrum of possible answers to thi…
If you don't know who John von Neumann was, I highly recommend The Man From The Future. (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61089520-the-man-from-the-future) I also devoted a chapter to him in Tools for Thought. (https://rheingold.com/texts/tft/04.html#Chap0…
I'm beginning to achieve luminosity. These two go to a recent generous patron.
I think I've taken a step toward mastery of my recent small canvas technique of underpainting in colors then overpainting in black. This one looks to me like it's more coherent -- beginning to find my way into this method. So I underpainted three canvases in…
acrylic, animated
I have these two inch square canvases that I use for my little free art gallery. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/little-free-art-52758609) I decided to try a stained glass effect by painting the canvases in different (acrylic) colors, letting them dry, them pa…
The cover of the 7 stories teaching metacognition and independent thinking to 5 year olds. The stories, a curriculum guide to the whole series, and brief learning guides to each story are available as a free 60 MB download. (https://rheingold.com/ThinkingCurr…
Like it or not, this is the information battlespace. https://youtu.be/ucIHK_57qAQ?si=oOuoUCaL1_IjYttD (https://youtu.be/ucIHK_57qAQ?si=oOuoUCaL1_IjYttD)
Based on recent research literature into the negative effects of AI use ("cognitive offloading") and what can be done about it, I've uploaded a free 60 mb file that contains 8 illustrated teaching stories, about 10 pages each, suitable for 5 year olds and abo…
I've been thinking and studying the possible erosion of thinking abilities by the undisciplined use of artificial intelligence, especially by the very young, so I wrote what may be the most important thing I've ever written. I took my analysis and research-ba…
(The image at the top of this post depicts my mindmap about thinking. The clickable mindmap can be found here (https://go.bubbl.us/6a28a3/238a?/Thinking).) I've been thinking about thinking for a while. It grew out of my interest in attention to attention (ht…
After asking chatGPT for a literature review of research into whether use of LLMs degrades thinking (https://www.patreon.com/posts/is-ai-eroding-153932626)(it does if it isn't done in a disciplined manner), and asking what to do about it (the "disciplined man…
I asked chatGPT to use its new image generating capability to create an illustrated metacognition story for a 5 year old. The old image generation would be laughable: ask for a dinosaur and get a rectangle. Images 2.0 works well, but chatGPT continues to be i…
I'm not the first painter to get hung up on a style. At least I haven't taken years painting only with blue. But I'm drawn to watercolor dot painting because it dances on the border between intention and accident. The more I do it, the more intention I am abl…
I made and used my first book (https://rheingold.com/ToddlerMetacognition.pdf) for teaching metacognition to toddlers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/metacognition-5-154808535) with my five year old grandson. I am following up with a few games: Challenging him…
Here is the brief story (http://rheingold.com/ToddlerMetacognition.pdf) (http://rheingold.com/ToddlerMetacognition.pages)teaching metacognition to a 5 year old for others who seek to help their children or grandchildren learn to think for themselves in the er…
People who don't try to get LLMs to do what they want fail to understand how stubbornly inept ai chatbots can be. You can view the last part of this chat (https://chatgpt.com/share/69c5d67a-598c-83e8-a48b-b4ed40ea9019) about teaching metacognition to young ch…
I'm one of the (former) educators who feels that the advent and near future evolution of large language models is already driving a radical shift in pedagogy at all levels, and in particular in higher education. Like the rest of discourse about the evolution…
I recently read that millennials (the students I taught!) might be the last generation to be able to think and write without using AI. So I gave chatGPT the following prompt: generate a literature review with links to sources and an extensive executive summar…
For my grandson, of course
Yes, painters can obsessively explore a technique, subject, medium. I think I am beginning to achieve some luminous effects with watercolors and business-card-size pieces of watercolor paper, working at the boundary of intentional and random. It's been decade…
It started when I took a Chinese brush painting class in Portland's Chinatown in 1964. I later learned that Charlie Leong had been Gary Snyder's teacher a decade earlier. The first thing a brush painter does is rub an inkstick on a stone with water until the…
I switched to acrylics because it's easier to deal with water than spirits and it's less toxic, but I still like this one. Sometimes a painting is a rendering of something in the world or my imagination. Sometimes I start painting and watch what emerges. This…
I promise not to turn this into a running commentary on my grandson projects, but for those who are interested (lmk pro or con), I've started doing more planning for our Friday afternoons together. I pick him up at school, take him to get a smoothie on Missio…
AI agents are proliferating -- semi-autonomous LLM agents that can roam the web and local machines and take actions on behalf of the human who creates and/or uses them. And recently, an experiment with "a social network for ai agents (https://www.tomsguide.co…
Athena Aktipis submitted this proposal to the Templeton Foundation. (https://athenaaktipis.substack.com/p/leveraging-the-science-of-cooperation) We are both Reed graduates. I sent her a link to the online course I used to teach on cooperation theory, (http://…
Grandson's best friend at preschool requested a dragon with hearts on it and Kas asked me to fabricate it because "I love her." It's white so he can paint it. I will help cut out small hearts to glue on it. Some fancy bandsawing involved.
One of my patrons sent me this substack (https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/when-we-walk-away-from-the-lying) by Margaret Killjoy, thinking it would ring my bell. He was right. Six years ago, I wrote here about how democracy is losing the war against comp…
This story was a milestone on my path to making a living as a writer. In the 1970s I worked a series of dayjobs — typist, file clerk, babysitter, warehouse worker, temporary office worker — while writing query letters to magazines, hoping to land an assignmen…
I made this drawing 40+ years after the Kierkegaardian drawing. They both look....concerned.
Doodle from my 1964 religion class at Reed. I might have been on acid.
Today's Pataphysical Studio (http://pataphysics.us) descends from The Mindshaft Society (https://www.flickr.com/photos/arewereally/2601387754/in/photostream/) (we made large sculptures for Burning Man) in the 2000s and the Art Police (https://www.flickr.com/p…
I have written here previously about AI for IA (https://www.patreon.com/posts/extended-mind-1-15577090) and AI and the extended mind. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/extended-mind-1-15577090) Now, 40 years after the publication of my book Tools for Thought, (h…
Wordpress borked my website a couple of years ago, and my friend Justin Hall has been helping me put it back together. Right now, you might find the landing page (http://rheingold.com) amusing. More importantly, we have been tracking down all my books and art…
Bloomberg News recently published an article with that headline (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-09/what-s-the-best-way-to-think-of-ai-look-to-democracy-marketplaces). Unfortunately that article is behind a paywall, but I found a gift link. I…
Three business-card size paintings. I think I am getting better at the control-random interface to create multidimensional images with splattered watercolors. I use a simple app, Pixamotion (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixamotion-3d-photo-video-loop/id14617…
Quick weekend project. I left sides unpainted so grandson can personalize. Next up is probably a periscope. One of the benefits of being an organized hoarder is that I know where I stashed mirrors of the right size. I've been a hoarder of fine wood for a long…
I have long been a fan of Alison Gopnik because of her research and writing about infants (https://www.alisongopnik.com/ThePhilosophicalBaby.htm). She is also part of UC Berkeley's AI group. Along with Henry Farrell, Cosma Shalizi, and James Evans, she publis…
This one didn't turn out the way I wanted. I regard mistakes in art as opportunities. So I added a layer. Still didn't like it. Keep in mind that it has to dry for at least an hour between layers. Third layer...looks interesting
The word "curation" is used a lot these days to designate things that were hand-picked or personally chosen. In regard to our use of the Web, it means something slightly different. It's about managing the information flow: bringing to oneself the information…
https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow.html (https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow.html) The "Tomorrow" link is from my syndicated column about the future. I got some things right.
I used watercolor paper as dropcloths for my splatter-painting on notecards. After a few months I started treating them as paintings. Then I cut up the result and glued onto a cardboard box.
This interview with me, over an hour long, also features my office-studio-workshop-laboratory. You can find an annotated 3D tour of this space here (https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=H7pByHtQizK). (Hold down mouse to move around, click on large circles to nav…
Because I enable it to remember my chats, chatGPT knows of my interests in learning, metacognition, making, and my grandson, it suggested scenarios where I can build in metacognition and scientific thinking: "you are building thinking habits, not marble runs.…
Just getting started on cardboard skills with box cutter, scissors, and glue gun. First up, a marble maze that I will use with almost five year old grandson. Modeling scientific method and metacognition (more on that in a future post), first I ask him what he…
I'm making cardboard toys for my grandson, largely to model making rather than buying toys and to involve him in construction. I spent hours making a prototype "robotic hand" out of cardboard, glue, and string. It didn't work perfectly, so I made a larger one…
This New York Times article, "Opinion: The Starving Artist vs A.I Guess Who Is Winning? (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/opinion/artists-creative-work-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1._E8.XkcA.4bFC12MLLBom&smid=url-share)" is an insightful look at one of th…
I have these pieces of watercolor paper that have backstopped my small splatter paintings for months. As part of my policy of paying attention to as much of the painting process as possible - metartcognition (https://www.patreon.com/posts/painting-as-18828426…
I've been using watercolor paper as groundcloth for my splattering, consistent with my policy of regarding the objects I wipe my brushes on as also works of art. Note that I am wearing my terrycloth jumpsuit that is ideal for brush wiping.
I saw a short video on instagram about making a rubber-band powered car toy out of coke bottles. I spend a LOT of time trying to get it right. It turns out to be very difficult to poke a hole in the bottom of a plastic coke bottle, for one thing. Not even a p…
After a couple of weeks looking for relevant research, I will have to revise my opinion: although I have not found massive studies with thousands of subjects, I have found dozens of peer-reviewed studies. Again: I'm not going to attempt a comprehensive lit re…
Sometimes painters obsessively paint the same subject (water lilies, anyone?) and I believe that I am perfecting -- in my own mind -- this technique of working on the edge of randomness and intention. Backgrounds of concentric gradients dry before I add a for…
I love that Patreon's business model doesn't rely on surveillance capitalism. I wish more of the Internet adopted his model. The World Wide Web was introduced some three decades ago. Describing in 2019 the hopes that had been projected onto the internet at it…
(Previous post on this topic (https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-making-and-1-142289869)) Digging into the literature, it looks like there are studies of art-making in a wide variety of settings: dementia care, cancer care, depression and anxiety treatment. I…
One of my watercolor cards, animated by use of an app, Pixamotion (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixamotion-3d-photo-video-loop/id1461756384) (IOS) Pixamotion (https://pixamotion-loop-photo-animator-photo-video-maker.en.softonic.com/android#google_vignette) (…
Patreon recently enabled me to group my posts into thematic collections: AI (https://www.patreon.com/collection/1370096?view=expanded) Cooperation Theory (https://www.patreon.com/collection/222756?view=expanded) Social Media (https://www.patreon.com/collectio…
I've been doing a lot of these. I think they are getting "better" in the sense that I have learned to balance the randomness of paint that isn't brushed but splattered with deliberate design: in this one the background is a purple gradient that starts out dar…
Some years ago, I realized that whether I pay attention or not, the cloth I wipe my brushes on can be seen as a work of art (https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-smock-85589532). Upon reflection, my awareness of where to put attention while painting started more…
Twenty years ago, I gave a TED talk calling for an interdisciplinary study of cooperation (https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_the_new_power_of_collaboration). Fifteen years ago, I taught an online introduction to cooperation studies (complete syllabus…
Teaching at UC Berkeley and Stanford, I quickly understood: - If I wanted to grant more agency over their learning to students, I would have relinquish authority. - If I wanted students to become co-learners, I had to overcome my fear of disclosing that altho…
(Part One (https://www.patreon.com/posts/32282276)) Six years ago, I wrote about the way a paintbrush brought life back to my mother (https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-making-and-32282276)after catastrophic surgery that left her unable to move or speak. It ha…
I am not sure what to do with them, but I've been watercoloring these small cards. I will put a couple out in the free art gallery. Any patron want one? Let me know!
Animated watercolor.
When my daughter first started using search engines when she was in middle school, I sat down with her and demonstrated how she could summon millions of answers to any question within a couple seconds, but that now there was no guarantee that any of them woul…
I'm still sending out three-packs of "thinking of you" cards. I've sent out several dozen of these three-packs Strangely, only 2 people acknowledged receipt, and nobody has sent me one of my cards! The are actually more interesting than they look in photograp…
My prompt: A cinematic animation of a steampunk alchemist traveling through interdimensional portals inside a brass time machine, inspired by the uploaded image. The alchemist, with intricate green-tinted skin and golden robes, pilots a glowing machine filled…
h/t @bryanalexander "The Next Four Years is the first novel that rewrites itself daily per the 24 hour news cycle. All writing, news analysis, and content modifications are performed by AI with no human intervention."
I wrote about this wood previously, when I used some for a painting. My friends were in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 1960s. When they had their belongings shipped home, they discovered that they were crated in African Mahogany. They saved the wood for 50+…
Sora2 captured a "cameo" of my face and I asked it to make a video showing me riding a cyberpunk time machine.
I wrote here six years ago about my interest in computational combinatorial oracles (https://www.patreon.com/posts/computational-29657523) that throw together random dictionary words to create messages from the future. The great pioneer in this field was Will…
Bandsawed wood and acrylic, for a friend I've known since I was 19 and is still here for us in every way.
My friends who were in the Peace Corps in Africa in the 1960s had their possessions shipped home and discovered that they were crated in African mahogony. They saved it all these years then gifted it to me. So this piece became the subject of more fancy bands…
Guardian of the Gate
Here it is. I did not change a word. Very interested in opinions. This is ALL by chatGPT. I merely prompted , scolded, guided, and directed. I may publish a small paper edition. lmk if you are interested in a copy. The Furnace of Reason (http://rheingold.com/…
This will give you an idea of the size:
by Mariana Mazzucato AI Should Help Fund Creative Labor (https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/how-ai-profits-can-help-fund-cultural-production-by-mariana-mazzucato-and-fausto-gernone-2025-07) Do click through the link if you are concerned, as I am, at th…
Annaka Harris seems to agree with Chris Bache (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lsd-and-mind-of-136436577): We already have science that shows our intuitions about consciousness are wrong, but scientists continue to operate as if those intuitions are correct. It…
I finished prompting chatGPT to draft 147 pages, 12 chapters of The Furnace of Reason (chatGPT's title). Including epigraphs for each chapter, with links to sources, chatGPT's narrative of the public domain sources it claimed to use, annotated bibliography, m…
I grow these everry year, but these are taller than ever before.
I've been waterpainting continuously, but I took a break and did some fancy bandsawing and acrylic painted this bug. It's about 7 inches high. I'm working on a different, larger bug. This is not based on any real insect.
(PART ONE (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lsd-and-mind-of-136417424)) 've read Huxley, Watts, Leary, Alpert, McKenna, and Pollan. While each of these authors have valuable insights, Bache demonstrates a kind of phenomenological depth (phenomenology="the study…
Psychedelics have been a shaping force in my life since my teenage years. My initial experience was unfortunate in one way -- I picked one of the worst days in US history. My friend and I discovered that if we sent $5 to "Margaret Jones" in Texas, we would ge…
This is the face I asked chatGPT to use in the time traveler pic. I used an app named Dreamscope to make it.
(chatGPT produced)
Chapter II – Soldier of Fortune Prague, November 1620. The morning began with the brittle crackle of frost beneath boots, the acrid scent of powder clinging to the air, and the low hum of thousands of men shifting into lines they scarcely understood. I, Isaac…
I have long wanted to write a historical novel about Rene Descartes, his dream, the Rosicrucians, and the mystical roots of the Enlightenment. At 78, I know it is too low on my to-do list to really accomplish. So I've asked chatGPT to write it. I have not yet…
I did a zoom convo with one of my patrons, and she used a note-taking app called Motion (https://usemotion.com/?utm_source=recap): Action Items Email Follow-Up Questions to Howard Chloé Lee will write and send an email to Howard Rheingold with her follow-up q…
Patreon notified me that I had more than 100 free members. I've always appreciated that people want to pay me with attention even if they aren't paying even $2/mo. So I sent out a message to all of them, mentioning rewards for upgrading (postcards of my art,…
My friend Are We Really (https://arewereally.com/) is an OG prankster (as in rode with Kesey on the bus), and cannot resist obtanium. He found this old desk and stripped the old paint, so I painted this for him:
The collage on the top of my table saw cover deteriorated, so I painted it. The collages on the side are still in good shape -- they are a collaborative work, directed by Dr Skids of the pataphysics.us (https://pataphysics.us) crew. The table saw is situated…
Learning: https://www.patreon.com/collection/240723?view=expanded (https://www.patreon.com/collection/240723?view=expanded) AI: https://www.patreon.com/collection/1370096?view=expanded (https://www.patreon.com/collection/1370096?view=expanded) Technology Crit…
Just found this -- my address to BBC online communities day, around 20 years ago. A brief excerpt: The quality of community in tomorrow's wired world is an important concern. It is not, however, the first question we need to ask. The prefix "cyber," from the…
Of the more than a dozen books I've had published, the one I co-authored with Steven LaBerge in 1988, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-World-Dreaming-Stephen-LaBerge/dp/034537410X), is the only one that has consistently…
I rarely post videos of others, but this is the biggest thinking I've encountered maybe ever: In her Long Now Talk, astrobiologist and theoretical physicist Sara Imari Walker explores the many dimensions of that seemingly simple question. Starting from the si…
About 400 people showed up in our little suburb -- others at other intersections. In 2003 I first used this sign: I made a new one for this year:
I've written about peeragogy and a new culture of learning (https://www.patreon.com/posts/peeragogy-and-of-24709239) and more recently about the peeragogy chatbot (https://www.patreon.com/posts/peeragogy-126381651). Here is the latest report from the peeragog…
Also exploring this space.
Still exploring this space.
Sitting and painting, getting up for barefoot on the lawn dance breaks. Thank you to everything from exploding stars to biocultural evolution that got me here.
Of the (more than a dozen) books I've written over the past 40 years, the one that still generates royalties in different countries was one I co-authored: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/96900/exploring-the-worl…
The watercolor obsession is evolving. First, I've started stacking watercolors into collages: Then I use a simple app to animate.
My grandson's Montessori school has a poster that says "help me do it myself," and that certainly was his attitude even before preschool. I like to provide construction tools, from lego to erector sets, like his latest Brio construction set (https://www.brio.…
In 2011, in an invited Regent's Lecture at UC Berkeley (https://vimeo.com/35685124) (video), I explained how teaching social media issues and literacies using social media had helped steer me to a "co-learning" pedagogy. (https://clalliance.org/blog/co-learni…
I used a large piece of watercolor paper as a dropcloth when I splatterpainted watercolors. Before the page was filled, I started treating it as a painting, dropping specific colors in specific places. Like John Cage and other artists, I let the magickal sere…
I made this video in 2011 -- 14 years ago. The value of the Internet/Web, before it was swamped by corporate-algorithmic control of what we viewed, was created by millions of people who made their own choices about what sites to recommend to their communities…
My quote: What I fear is that antisocial individuals and groups will gain the power to create weapons of mass destruction that heretofore have been reserved for states: already, the same tools have been used to solve the protein-folding problem and to suggest…
I was asked to do a 20 minute version on my presentation about my use of social media to teach courses on social media issues and social media literacies, and how it pushed me to a more student-centric co-learning pedagogy.
I think I'm getting better at this
I painted a couple of small watercolors and mounted them with archival glue on oiled poplar blocks. If you are a free member and upgrade to $5/mo for a year, I'll send you one now.
h/t Bryan Alexander (https://bryanalexander.org/): Why not train an LLM on all the literature regarding collective decision making? Could it help democratic governance?
I'm not sure I fully understand or agree with this, but it's a strong attempt to think ahead about how the use of generative ai and machine learning tools might affect individuals, community, and society. And I like that it goes deep to a fundamental: neural…
I think I am getting better at this watercolor process of quasi-controlling the uncontrolled splatter of paint from my brush -- better at aiming, better layering wet over dry. Dimensional Creamo is the name of Hugh Romney's 24/7 LSD delivery service. LSD was…
Let's hope this is true! I previously wrote about the need to preserve "green space" communities (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lets-grow-online-35091994)amidst the ugly giant social media. Discourse.org (https://Discourse.org), an excellent 21st century foru…
I love mindmapping as a thinking, learning, teaching tool: I asked my college students to mindmap themes we were exploring (https://www.evernote.com/client/web#/note/9b31fe7b-a8c2-4d0c-8032-31af000a871c). Here is an AI mindmapper. I asked it about two subject…
I've designed a dozen courses and put in a lot of work on the syllabus for each one. This would have been a great help. Jeremy Caplan of CUNY's Newmark Graduate School of Journalism shares how AI helps him refine a syllabus, structure a class session, and des…
The "augment rather than replace" frame that I've discussed here (https://www.patreon.com/posts/ai-for-ia-large-118120516)seems to be getting some traction. Stanford's explicit use of the word "augment" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/stanford-on-ai-120280378)…
I think I'm getting better at this. My odd technique combines out of control and control. It's not Jackson Pollock -- his was "action painting" that followed the movements of his body, complete with streaks and splatters. I deal with dots -- dots that spread…
Michael Garfield, formerly of Santa Fe Institute, and I had a long convo about a lot of things.
Several friends have been extraordinarily kind to me and my wife, so I made them postcards. Two of those friends had been in the Peace Corps in the 1960s and when they had their belongings shipped back home from Africa, they discovered that the crates were Af…
I asked chatGPT to summarize, then elaborate on, "The Impact of Gen AI on Human Learning: a research summary literature review of the most recent & important peer-reviewed studies" https://drphilippahardman.substack.com/p/the-impact-of-gen-ai-on-human-learnin…
I avoided watercolors for decades because I couldn't control it the way I know how to control oils and acrylics. So I recently started playing with out of controlness -- splattering on wet canvas. I'm learning to subtly introduce colors to splatters with a br…
I wrote about changing the narrative from "intelligent agent" to "thinking tool" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/ai-for-ia-large-118120516)and it looks like Stanford is paying attention (https://provost.stanford.edu/2025/01/09/report-of-the-ai-at-stanford-advi…
Still playing with watercolor. I amped the saturation on this one digitally
I have avoided watercolors since I first tried them because I was frustrated trying to render the images I had in mind. I'm turning my wife onto watercolors so we can make art together, so I started painting with her. I decided to abandon any thoughts of rend…
I asked Storm (https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/) about cooperation theory (https://storm.genie.stanford.edu/article/cooperation-theoroy-438748). Compare to the syllabus of my online cooperation course (http://rheingold.com/texts/IntroToCooperationStudies.pdf…
30 years ago I was interviewed about the future of what we called computer mediated communication. Recently, the same interviewer and I talked about a wide range of subjects, from the fate of social media to AI, cultural evolution, learning.
The "Attention! Earthlings!" part dates back to the 1970s, when I first arrived on this planet on an anthropological investigation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU02D6Pg1RE). The "Other dimensions nearby" goes back to my adventures with Terence McKenna (ht…
I have long been interested in Descartes' dream and the fact that he and the Rosicrucians were contemporaneous, so I've asked chatGPT to compose a historical novel (https://chatgpt.com/share/676b34c2-5a3c-8007-887e-a298bf875e11): I first saw him at dawn, a so…
Cardboard, bottlecaps, googly eyes, gaffer's tape, glue. Grandson likes robots, so I am introducing him to the idea of making his own topys.
https://rheingoldart.etsy.com (https://rheingoldart.etsy.com)
tl;dr Asking "are LLMs sentient?" is not as valuable as "how can LLMs extend human cognitive and communicative capabilities, and how can we avoid this new cultural technology's pitfalls? Tools to Think With I've been thinking about the use of technology to au…
You can now gift my Patreon membership to friends, family, and anyone else you want to invite into our space! Your gift helps grow our community and support my work, while giving you and your friend one more thing to talk about. Plus, you don't need to deal w…
I stitched together four Sora videos with iMovie. I started with prompt" "Aliens riding mammoths" then asked chatGPT how to improve my prompts, ended up with Prompt: "Radiant, ancient aliens with intricate glowing tattoos descend from flying saucer to command…
I painted the seat of a chair I had started painting months ago. The design is from the Alhambra. "In 1891, Evgraf Fedorov proved there are precisely 17 plane crystallographic groups" And each one of those groups is represented in the tiles of the Alhambra. (…
Thank you, free members, for your attention. I try to make around half my posts publicly available. I am not destitute, but the few hundred dollars a month I make here are helpful -- and enable me to think big about art supplies and projects. So it would make…
I've written here about attention and metacognition and about painting as metacognition. I've written here about attention and metacognition (https://www.patreon.com/posts/attention-and-15097490) and about painting as metacognition (https://www.patreon.com/po…
I plan to put this up for sale on Etsy. The design on the seat is the Islamic geometry pattern known as "breath of the compassionate."
I prompted chatGPT to create a 4 panel coloring book about a 4 year old who decides to build a robot 1. Kas decides to build a robot 2. Kas decides to use PVC pipes to build his robot 3. Kas assembles his robot 4. Kas' robot is complete! What will Kas make ne…
I liked the pair I made for a friend. Another friend gave me black shoes, so I painted a pair of lotuses for myself.
America and the world are experiencing a crisis of meaning in a social media saturated world, a crisis that is shaking up politics, social norms, communities and societies. Certainly the world is a better place in many ways because of ubiquitous many-to-many…
Americans are too ignorant and easily misled to democratically govern a complex modern society. That is not my statement, nor is it recent. A century ago, a young media star of the day by the name of Walter Lippmann, wrote Public Opinion (https://en.wikipedia…
I made these for someone I have known online for nearly 30 years, communicating nearly every day, although we have only met face to face three times.
I wrote previously about art making and the life force (https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-making-and-32282276). "Research shows that art experiences, whether as a maker or a beholder, transform our biology by rewiring our brains and triggering the release of…
My friend Freddy is a prankster -- as in he rode in the bus with Kesey. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furthur_(bus)) As the Art Police, we made big floats for Grateful Dead shows. When the newly elected Bill Clinton raised the joint to his lips, his glasses…
Maybe I overpriced it, but I saw painted chairs on Etsy selling for thousands, so I thought I'd give it a try.
In 1998 -- six years before Facebook sucked all the attention from general purpose online communities -- I started Brainstorms (http://brainstormscommunity.org), a web-forum-based virtual community where it was possible to get tossed out if you act like an as…
Cinema was a camera on a stage until Griffith introduced close-ups, montages, and other vocabulary native to the emerging medium. We are in the pre-Griffith phase of this form. h/t Bryan Alexander
Kokopelli, The Green Man, and Pan seem to me to be different refractions of the same archetype. I plan to offer it for sale on Etsy.
I'm on a chair painting kick. This is an old rocking chair we never knew what to do with. I stripped the old paint and painted this with acrylics. I plan to offer it for sale on Etsy for $777. We'll see. Next one up goes further in the green man direction, co…
Moved it from the garden and set it up next to my little free art gallery.
I've been trying to make kinetic sculptures from plastic forks. When heated to just the right temperature and grasped soon enough with the right implement with the right degree of firmness and pulled carefully like taffy with exactly the right speed, the melt…
I had to cut down the beanstalk you see in the foreground because it was climbing up the tree you see in the upper right.
Remember the video of the solstice garden in June (https://www.patreon.com/posts/106749219)? Here we are, less than two months later.
I had a small chair, so I painted it for my grandson. I have collected a few larger chairs and I'm painting one. I plan to open an Etsy shop when I have three or four to offer. I tried to get him to call me grandpa, but Kasra decided pretty soon after he lear…
Plastic forks, lighter -- not as easy as it looks. Made it for the little free art gallery on my 77th birthday, 7/7
Another old chair that we didn't know what to do with. I've looked at the painted chairs on Etsy that are going for four figures and I think I can compete. I captured a couple of pix at the beginning of the process:
I was sitting in my happy place, painting, when I looked up at the glory of the garden and realized it was the solstice. Took a peak at the seedlings and seeds I planted in APril.
This chair is a green shoot from old roots. I've written here before about art-making and the life force (https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-making-and-32282276). There is a community version of that. Try to picture the button-down-ness of public middle school…
This is a departure for me -- I don't post about politics. But I don't have to elaborate about the stakes of the 2024 election. We have postcard parties, decorate the postcards. Get a half dozen friends together and you can generate hundreds of postcards in a…
I thought these two figures perfect for shoes for Jack Conte, co-founder of Patreon. I first encountered Kokopelli in my youth, growing up in Arizona: a graffito found on rocks throughout the southwest, dating back centuries. Some folklore contended that he w…
I've written before about Art and the Life Force (https://www.patreon.com/posts/art-making-and-32282276)-- and my mother the art teacher's philosophy: while some people are especially talented, art is not just for the talented, but is a human birthright. All…
Kasra enthusiastically painted the blank side of the butterfly. When I asked him what else he would like to collaborate on, he requested a snake. It's about 8 inches long.
After working indoors in my dream studio during the indoor months, I am back in my happy place. I painted a small butterfly for my grandson. He watched me draw it on a piece of wood and cut it out on a bandsaw. I left the backside blank so he can paint it. I…
Found a way to convey how these paints from Culture Hustle, recommended by a patron, change color, depending on your viewing angle. I make these tiny paintings for the Little Free Art Gallery
A decade ago, a friend of mine recommended his retirement account manager. We took his advice and they have done well for us. So I painted him these shoes. He sent me pix of his acoustic and electric guitars.
“Emergent Properties of Balinese Water Temple Networks: Coadaptation on a Rugged Fitness Landscape (https://www.jstor.org/stable/681181?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)” is a summary of the work Stephen Lansing reported in his book, Perfect Order (https://press.…
My friend Tim is the guy Google calls when they have Wi-Fi issues. He set up the wireless network for Burning Man, too. So it was something of an overkill imposition when I got him to spend hours getting my new Xfinity gateway working. He talked to three succ…
The study of human cooperation is necessarily interdisciplinary: cultural practices like intermarriage or the inclusion of in-laws in the family circle intersect with agriculture. Title: Gregor Mendel, Meet Florence Nightingale: Summaries and Findings Pub: Sa…
I liked the pair I painted for my brother in law, so I made a pair for myself. Tried some new treatments for the sides and back.
Title: Darwin's Cathedral Pub: University Of Chicago Press Publication Date: October 1, 2003 URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3623162.html (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3623162.html) Authors: Wilson, David Sl…
Compendium of podcast interviews with me. (https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=%E2%80%9CHoward%20Rheingold%E2%80%9D&sort_by_date=0&scope=episode&offset=0&language=Any%20language&len_min=0)
Title: Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation: Summaries and Findings Pub: Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, ed. Peter Hammerstein, MIT Press, in cooperation with Dahlem University Press Publication Date: 2003 URL: http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/fac…
I made the Kierkegaard title page doodle in my first year of college in religion class. What I remember from Kierkegaard: "life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." The next sketch is from one of the moleskins I used in my travelin…
When I was Howard K. Martian (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU02D6Pg1RE), I had a tiny wearable space ship that i used to race cable cars on Nob Hill. I made one for my grandson. He steps into it and holds it by handles as he runs around. It has to be super…
A couple of small canvases, using Culture Hustle pigments, for the little free art gallery (https://www.patreon.com/posts/little-free-art-39153892)
I painted this on request from my brother-in-law. I like them so I plan to paint myself a pair.
For nearly two decades, I've been writing (https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/crap-detection-101-3227013.php) and teaching (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pIxVqXT6EO_CoxCCD3tj9uYujVzhHzGWcYgT31LGQhc/edit?usp=sharing) about the skills and mindset (htt…
I painted these shoes and a prese (https://www.patreon.com/posts/presentation-box-88200796)ntation box (https://www.patreon.com/posts/presentation-box-88200796)back in August, and gave them to grandson today. Pleased that my guess about his size six months ag…
The most important pedagogy I started to learn over 10 years teaching college students was how to help learners help me teach. It's no secret nor a new revelation that active learners who inquire, debate, seek, problem-solve do better than passive students wh…
In 1976, Jim Neidhardt put one of the first Sony Portapaks in a backpack and used a telephoto lens. Equipped with a radiomike, I roamed the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area, posing as Howard K. Martian, extraterrestrial anthropologist. (https://youtu.be/…
Grandson has been mentioning aliens in his space ranger discourse, so I made this and attached it to the back side of (https://www.patreon.com/posts/to-infinity-and-95693174)his space ship. Working on a design for something like this that he can fly around wi…
I'm starting to play with the $50/year version. Maybe I will upgrade to the $20/month version. I've written about "newsradars" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/news-radars-and-95887210)-- Robin Good's term for setting up specific, filtered information flow on d…
Every few years, I get the urge to paint a new pair of shoes. Decades ago, I uploaded pix of my shoes (https://flic.kr/s/2Jfq)in various places.
I've (https://www.patreon.com/posts/justins-block-95082571)written here before about my friend, Justin Hall. Today is the 30th anniversary of his extremely candid website, links.net (http://links.net). It was the extraordinary amount of traffic to that site i…
Why did Massachusetts Route 128 -- fat with government contracts and home to industry giants such as DEC -- lose out to Silicon Valley? Anno Saxenian (who was dean of UC Berkeley School of Information when I taught there), made her reputation by demonstrating…
When I started teaching college students, I had confidence in my knowledge of the subject matter, and I was already making a living as a speaker, but I had no training as a classroom teacher. The first book I turned to was Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner…
In the olden days, many of us online curated for each other the best online info we found on a cornucopia of topics; a big part of what was then known as "the blogosphere" adhered to the original format of the "web log" -- a link (or more) and an explanation…
My grandson insists "I'm not a kid. I'm a space ranger!" So I built him a rocket ship. The completed exterior: The completed interior with control panel, port hole, steering wheel, and gear thingie. The control panel and gear thingie are from Montessori toys.…
Google has introduced a new online utility for writers and students that promises to be a powerful think-know tool. I probably don't need to remind people who pay attention here that I've had a long-standing interest in "Tools for Thought (https://www.rheingo…
This is the last paragraph of "Disinformocracy (https://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html)," the final chapter of my 1993 book, The Virtual Community (https://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html): Those who would use computer networks as political tools must…
Leonardi, Robert ; Nanetti, Raffaella Y.; Putnam, Robert When I worked with Institute for the Future on catalyzing an interdiscipline of cooperation science, one of our actions was to create a number of summaries of key documents in different disciplines, so…
I painted this 4 inch wooden block for my friend Justin. All the designs are from Islamic sacred geometry except for one, derived from my experiments with small canvases. Acrylic. It's a gift for Justin's 49th birthday. I was 49 when I met Justin and he was 1…
Fifteen years ago, I gave a TED Talk about a new narrative (https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_the_new_power_of_collaboration?language=en)about how humans get things done and called for an interdisciplinary study of cooperation. At that time, it didn'…
I've been playing with the culture hustle paints and 2 inch square canvases for the little free art gallery. It's hard to photograph because the spots are three dimensional and the color of the paints change, depending on the angle of light.
My grandson admires Buzz Lightyear and exclaims "to infinity and beyond: often. When told he is a big kid, he says: "I'm not a kid. I'm a space ranger." So I made this for him. I made the helm with papier mache on a balloon, layered with canvas soaked in wood…
Painted on my 60th birthday, back when I mainly painted on square canvases.
video interviews plus blog posts about pioneers in digital media and learning
Posts about learning, teaching, pedagogy
Dear Dr. Poen You and your team cured my cancer 14 years ago. Since then, I walked my daughter down the aisle, have spent quality time with my grandson for the past three years, celebrated our 55th anniversary, published two books, and taught five more years…
A collection of my technology criticism posts (https://www.patreon.com/collection/226191?view=expanded).
Patreon has enabled "collections." Here are all the posts about cooperation theory (https://www.patreon.com/collection/222756?view=expanded), including the syllabus of the online course I used to teach.
Grandson is way into Buzz Lightyear and shouts "to infinity and beyond" often. I try to stay away from branded characters. Elmo was an exception. So I made this generic astronaut. I cut it out of 1/2 inch mahogany. Some friends of mine had been in the Peace C…
Cherrywood bowl I made for a wedding present.
Thank you for your attention! I try to keep a good percentage of my posts publically available, and periodically I go through old posts restricted to paying members and open them up for everybody. In lieu of bugging you through email: If you are paying attent…
I'm going to start posting useful links. Maybe I will save them up and consolidate into a weekly or bi-weekly post. This one enables you to select any spot on the globe and hear radio from that spot. http://radio (http://radio.garden/).garden (for some reason…
Still tiny canvases, but a new direction. Difficult to capture these in photographs because the silver is highly reflective so you can see a tiny reflection of your face when you peer lose enough. And the Culture Hustle paints are different colors, depending…
I moved the design I've been messing with on tiny canvases to a larger piece of wood.
This is a tiny painting with a backdrop of cloth made from a tiled image of a previous tiny painting.
I've posted a number of items about cooperation theory (https://www.patreon.com/howardrheingold?filters[search_query]=cooperation%20theory). I've compiled the syllabus (with links to text) of the paid online course I taught for years on cooperation theory (bi…
Yes, it's been obsessive. So....? It's not like I painting only blue or rose colored paintings for years at a time. A couple of these don't photograph well because I used the Culture Hustle paints that change colors depending on the angle you view them.
I made a painting for Jack Conte, founder of Patreon. He is and always has been a talented musician and extremely nice person. If you watch his videos (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXuc4N_UKi5IXNGtHZY8qQA), that's Jack. I've known him since he was my daug…
Made this for a merry prankster friend: Joker, Krusty the Klown, Ubu, Pataphysical Questionmarks. Open it and the face of the prankster appears:
I tiled one of my paintings on spoonflower.com (http://spoonflower.com) and they will send me a cotton sample swatch for 6 bucks. I usually order just fabric for projects, but I see they offer a number of products. I'll check it out.
Reflection, figure-ground double awareness, the dome of the Taj Mahal, complementarity, the Breath of the Compassionate.
Turned redwood. Kas is excellent at destroying flimsy objects, so instead of gluing on fins, I carved them in a kind of art deco shape, using a Japanese pull saw, sharp chisel, dremel, file, and sandpaper. Painted acrylic, the whole thing sealed with beeswax.
I painted a presentation box for the shoes I painted for Kasra's third birthday in February.
This was a seedling when I posted a video of the garden in July (https://www.patreon.com/posts/garden-july-7-85761104). I have a long association with sunflowers. I celebrated my 48th birthday dancing with a sunflower in an African nightclub in Tokyo (https:/…
Arrangements by Judy Rheingold.
Or "obsessive-compulsive exploration of a visual design space." I get on these jags. It is entirely not rational-conscious. I just feel good doing something over and over. A few decades ago, it was painting spiderwebs white on canvas in layers. The spiderweb…
Micromandalas that are created in a contemplative state, which I hope are also objects of contemplation.
For Kas' third birthday in February.
Twenty days ago, I posted a short video of my vegetable garden (https://www.patreon.com/posts/garden-july-7-85761104). I will never be ceased to be amazed at what can happen on this planet. This update is 29 seconds long.
The shoes I painted more than a year ago fit him now.
I've been working on tiny paintings, 1 1/2 inches square. You can see some resemblance to the top of my painted table. First these spawned the design ideas for the table, then I returned to the tiny canvases.
I had this old wood table next to my bed for years. Then I had it next to my painting setup out in the garden for years. It started to deteriorate, so I decided to art it up. I sanded, gessoed, and started. I did not have a plan in mind. (Photos by Fabrice Fl…
The possibility of a garden is a big part of why I knew this was the place as soon as we saw it in Spring, 1986. The previous owner kept two large dogs in the back yard, which was impacted dirt. All along the perimeter were blackberry vines. To really remove…
I have written before about treating the cloth I wipe brushes on as a work of art. About 5 years ago, i started with a dark blue lab coat. I didn't consciously arrange my brush-wipings as a painting, but I tried to be conscious of what I was doing when I wipe…
I started out with an idea for the border of a 2 inch square painting, then ended up making four variations, which propelled me into a much larger project that I've been working on for a couple weeks and hope to finish in a week or two.
I wrote Smart Mobs (https://www.edge.org/conversation/howard_rheingold-howard-rheingold-smart-mobs) nearly a quarter century ago because I saw that computers, the Internet, and mobile telephones were merging into a medium that would dramatically accelerate th…
Knowing how to cultivate and use a personal learning network is an essential online skill. eCampusOntario, a non-profit, translated an excerpt from Net Smart into French Conseils d’Howard Rheingold sur la création d’un réseau d’apprentissage personnel Si vous…
I made a bee for my grandson. Poplar, acrylic, bandsaw
I made this treasure chest for my grandson. 8 inches across, 6 inches deep, 8 inches high. I filled it with crayons and washable color pens and a box full of small blank books for him to color. Not only can he color outside the lines, there are no lines.
I plan to put these in the little free art gallery (https://www.marinij.com/2021/06/19/tam-valley-man-known-for-virtual-communities-creates-tiny-interactive-art-gallery/) tomorrow, but if any patron wants one, let me know and I will send it to you. The larges…
Thought I would drop of a few pix of the garden in Spring, will follow up at end of summer. The first one above is the back fence of the veggie beds. Here are the veggie starts: beans, tomatoes, strawberries, eggplant, onions, garlic, potatoes, zucchini: Thes…
Periodically, I post one of these summaries of research findings related to cooperation theory. The summaries used to be available in an online database. I like to surface them for people interested in cooperation theory (I used to teach an online course; syl…
I planted the Banksia (yellow roses) 35+ years ago and they have sucked our well dry and devoured a 40 foot tree. The pink roses, Cecile Brunner, have been engulfing space for almost as long. I prune the parts that try to swallow the garden, so they have cove…
In theory, knowing the elements of cooperation theory ought to be applicable to real-world dilemmas -- conflict and cooperation between nations, ending civil wars, for example. Here are two summaries: a broad view of the mechanics of international conflict an…
I found out about storystones (https://happyhooligans.ca/story-stones/) through the grandparent grapevine. Kas is not quite ready for complex stories, but he loves his simple books. In six months I think he'll be ready to pick out a stone and have me start a…
As I may have mentioned before, my grandson named me "Barka." And I posted previously (https://www.patreon.com/posts/light-cleanse-of-78335448) about my double painting of Elmo, which Kas named "Barka Elmo." I just threw this together with no editing elegance…
I made a busybox for Kas. It's a foot square; poplar with walnut splines. The black side is covered with two coats of blackboard paint. The other side is covered with three coats of magnetic paint. Inside is a small painting of mine attached via velcro so it…
When I was working with Institute for the Future on what we called "the cooperation project," we recognized that insights regarding human cooperation were fragmented among different disciplines that were often unaware of converging work. So we created these s…
I had to create a magical ward to protect the patch of earth around the apricot tree in front of our house. Nine inch square piece of Poplar.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are tingling my antennae a lot -- the way the Alto (https://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/10.html#Chap10)and the Web did. But I think this evolution is going faster. Without getting into too many details I don't understand, the larg…
My grandson is two. I am 75. Odds are that I'm not going to be around to guide his first psychedelic journey, as I was with my daughter. He is at Elmo age. So I made this two-sided Elmo -- one side close to the original, the other side Rheingoldianized. A lig…
Justin's daughter Delia, older sister of Emmett, is also brilliant, curious, mischievous, strong-willed, and a writer/illustrator of stories at age 6. She wanders our garden in the summer, stuffing leaves into bottles of water that she calls potions, so for h…
I made a smaller engine for Kasra, aka Kas, who will be 2 next month. For some reason, he decided that my name is "Barka."
My friend Justin's son Emmett, 3 1/2 is brilliant, curious, audacious, mischievous, verbally advanced, strong willed, and divides the world into things that roll and things that don't roll. When he exclaims "it rolls," it's like a stamp of approval. So I made…
Twenty years ago, a mighty mobile phone near-monopoly, based in Helsinki, was known as Nokia. How Nokia and Kodak both failed to react adaptively to markets they had created is another story. In their heyday -- before 2007 and the advent of the iPhone -- Noki…
Part of a larger project to be unveiled soon.
Anno Saxenian, who was Dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information when I taught there, made her name by challenging the theory that firms were the foremost unit of success or failure. Saxenian pointed out the importance of networks and regional culture. Rout…
My grandson has a great talent for lightening his mood when he hears the appropriate music. His favorites are Blackbird, Here Comes The Sun, and Hey Jude by the Beatles and I saw her standing there by Jerry Garcia band. So I made a box with a button. When he…
In my Pinterest-searching for projects to build for my grandson, who will be two in February, I came across this idea for using slotted cards as construction elements. So I spent too many hours cutting out a dozen cards from slotted cardboard with a bandsaw (…
For eight years I taught an online interdisciplinary course on introduction to cooperation studies. When I stopped teaching the course, I turned the syllabus into an annotated reading list (posted here). Now I've scaffolded the reading list with my own descri…
My grandson's favorite song is "Blackbird," and one of his first words. The sound of it can change his mood for the better in an instant. We see ravens and crows on our visits to the park and his visits to our garden. They are all blackbirds. So I made him a…
I've been thinking about thinking about technology since at least 1993, when Virtual Communities was published, and faced criticism by scholars as being "technoutopian" despite "Disinformocracy (http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html)," the concluding chapt…
We live in a society that is networked socially, technologically, politically, economically. I try to tease out the social-cultural changes associated with different shapes and scales of networks.
I created this when I was working on social media literacies, 10-12 years ago. I just realized that I never posted it here. Will follow up with part 2
Made a wood rocket ship for a three year old friend.
I asked an angelic rheingoldian patron what he wanted on a pair of shoes and he said something about mushroom mind. The other shoe is about rational, self-reflecting, mind. The tree theme is something I've returned to over the years -- the above and below, al…
I've used up all my free attempts at creating generative art via Midjourney. Should I dive into this rabbit-hole to the tune of $10/month? C.F. Deco Mayan Satanic Robot (https://www.patreon.com/posts/deco-mayan-robot-73135152)
You don't have to be an economist or into open source programming to appreciate this lucid explanation of how computers and networks and new norms of "peer production" present a novel alternative to the market or the firm (the two modes of production Ronald C…
Because my woodworking mentor cut the angles on my big treasure box, I decided to make a small one of my own -- the top is made of 15 pieces of walnut, cut on each side at a 5 1/2 degree angle. A sharp handplane and a lot of hand sanding, shellac. My daughter…
This was pretty easy -- all cut from a one foot 2X4
Walnut, poplar, brass. The curved top is made from 16 inch long, 5/8 inch high pieces of walnut, cut at 5 1/2 degree angle along both sides of each piece. I could not have done it without my wood guru, Geo. I think I can do it again myself. Then the long piec…
Norms are part of what glues groups and societies together -- informal agreements about behavior that are enforced by populations through social disapproval rather than by laws and law enforcement. Saying "excuse me" when bumping into someone, or queuing up a…
In May, 2021, I wrote here about (https://www.patreon.com/posts/ai-writing-50912728) the use of "large language models" such as GPT-3 in AI-assisted writing. Now AI-assisted image generation is taking off. This is what midjourney (https://www.midjourney.com/h…
A couple years ago I made a cutting board of alder and walnut for my daughter. She broke it, and I saved the pieces. I used one of them to make a ping-pong ball catapult, rubber band powered, for her son. Base is 6 inches long.
Am I going to pretty much be making toys for my grandson? Maybe. I have some other things in mind, but when he gets enthusiastic about something -- like rolling toys -- I start thinking.
Whenever my grandson is in my back yard, he is fascinated by the wooden sun painting on one of my planter boxes. It has sharp points, so he can't play with it. So I made him one without sharp points and put his name on the back.
I made and painted a wagon that my grandson probably won't be big enough to drag around for a few years. It can serve as a toybox until then.
When I taught digital journalism at Stanford, I became aware that although I knew more about tools such as WordPress, RSS, wikis, forums, Google Maps, persistent search, than the majority of the students, there were students who were far more technically savv…
Kevin Kelly has been a friend, mentor, and inspiration to me for decades. He recently invited me to talk about four of my favorite tools for his video podcast. We ended up talking about a lot more! If you are interested in my thoughts about augmenting human i…
After 10 years of teaching college students, I can think of one thing I wish I had done earlier: including learners in shaping the curriculum. Of course, I'm the expert on the subject matter, and (because the subject matter involves social media) how to use s…
The thing about these colors is that the way they look depends on how the light lands on them, and the angle you view them. I tried to capture a little of that in this short video.
The lettering on my little free art gallery (https://www.marinij.com/2021/06/19/tam-valley-man-known-for-virtual-communities-creates-tiny-interactive-art-gallery/) is too small to attract attention from passing flaneurs, so I made a sign. I love to paint sign…
I've been playing with the paints I posted about last week. Sitting in my painting spot, I couldn't help but notice that the Green Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Man) I painted maybe 15 years ago was looking a bit worn: So I stood on a chair and rep…
A generous patron has nudged me into some fun creative directions by sending me magical paints. These "potions" from Stuart Semple (https://www.culturehustleusa.com/collections/potions) are metallic pigment emulsions that change color depending on the light a…
Pan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_(god)) and Kokopelli (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokopelli) playing the universe to each other. Kokopelli has been part of my visual vocabulary for a while and I only recently realized how similar Pan is. Twenty years…
Four years ago, I affixed what I called "heartveillance devices" (https://www.patreon.com/posts/nine-martian-in-19615202)to a beam holding up the rose bush in my garden, based on what I had called "martian hieroglyphics (https://www.patreon.com/posts/martian-…
I made a bowl for a family that has been very kind to my family. Alder and Walnut. The usual procedure: I bandsaw circles, glue them together with grain facing the same direction, then turn them. Turning bowls is a scary procedure. If I inadvertently get the…
I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been working on a big project. Each block takes about 25 hours to sand the sharp edges, drill holes, install magnetics, gesso, and paint. My grandson won't be ready for these for a while so we will display the…
My good friends' 5 year old daughter is precocious and witchy. She wanders the garden and picks flowers, puts them in bottles with water, and calls them "potions." So I bought her a perfumer's starter kit and made a Smell Potion Kit Box for her.
39 second video of something I made fairly quickly out of mostly off the shelf parts. I'm working on several other projects -- a quartet of 3 inch magnetic cube blocks in Islamic geometry patterns, a small box to hold a custom perfume-making kit for a 5 year…
I've been working on this for months. 6-8 hours per block -- sanding edges and corners, drilling and gluing in strong magnets, covering with wood filler, sanding, four coats of gesso, then design and paint. The box came together relatively quickly. Most of th…
35 years ago, I planted Lady Banks and Cecile Brunner roses. What a planet!
I made a bunch of blocks. I like the process. It makes me happy to sit in the garden and paint these for my grandson. I was surfing for toys online and found that there are expensive magnetic blocks. So I procured wood blocks in 1, 2, and 3 inch sizes, drille…
A very short slice of life at the beginning of Spring, 2022
Because why not?
3D tour of my office-studio-workshop-lab -- drag with mouse to navigate, click through big circles to zoom, click on small circles for text, video. I have the nagging feeling that i already posted this, but can't find it among previous posts.
Nitrous Oxide, imbibed in the right set and setting, is definitely a psychedelic -- a baffling one. Although one of the insights of all psychedelics is that the experience of being conscious of the universe through a wider than normal aperture cannot be adequ…
I found this idea online: I glued together 4 Jenga blocks into a frame, made another frame, then glued the two frames together with a sheet of mylar in between. Then I painted and inscribed. The other side of the blue block says "WORDS ARE MAGIC INSTRUMENTS"…
Poplar wood. To hold all the other stuff I create for my grandson. 28 inches wide.
I started out painting blocks (https://www.patreon.com/posts/blocks-in-action-58910980) for my grandson to play with. Then I glued eight 3X3X3 inch blocks into a 6X6X6 inch megablock. Sanded and gessoed. When I started looking at designs, I found myself creat…
https://www.dailygrail.com/2020/05/the-cias-secret-documents-about-soviet-black-magic-assassins/ (https://www.dailygrail.com/2020/05/the-cias-secret-documents-about-soviet-black-magic-assassins/) According to émigrés and intelligence reports, the KGB and GRU…
In 2012, TED asked me to write an e-book. I decided that designers of mind-amplifying tools for thought needed to know more about Ivan Illich, Walter Ong, Eleanor Ostrom -- the non-electronic, non-software contexts for thinking tools, from speech and writing,…
Obviously, this block painting exploration has some legs and this time it is carrying me up a dimension of scale: I glued eight 4X4 inch blocks together. You can see one of the designs I've painted, based on the Islamic geometric pattern known as "breath of t…
Anno Saxenian (https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/people/annalee-saxenian) was dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information (https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/) when I taught there: A wonderfully interdisciplinary community, then and now, housed in the oldest b…
Exclusively for my patrons! A video tour of the toilet in my office-studio-lab-workshop. But wait! It's really more interesting than it sounds.
Humans learn from each other by observation and active teaching; social learning is known in other species, but active teaching seems to be a particularly human trait. What do we teach each other? What we have learned about how the world works, both in the ph…
On Spring and Summer Saturdays, half a dozen to a dozen people show up. In the short, cold December days, only the hardcore pataphysicians show up. Dr. Fabio, our documentarian, made this short video.
If you've been following the way this has evolved, I started out painting wooden blocks for my grandson. Then someone who watched me painting and saw the wall of illuminated objects behind me remarked that the blocks might look good in a lightbox. So I made a…
With the generous tutelage of my pataphysical colleagues Dr. Heatshrink, Dr. Geo, and Dr. Noname, I made this box of maple, alder, walnut controlled by an Arduino Feather connected to ultrasonic sensors, making it possible to change colors by waving a hand or…
Online learning, done right, can be a delight -- and achieve learning objectives. It appears that teaching online by necessity rather than aspiration has led to a many online attempts at learning that have fallen short of the mark, leaving those who were forc…
I promise that this site is not devolving into a grandson gallery. You won't see him again for a long time. But I thought you would appreciate seeing the blocks in action. The voice is Judy's -- she is on grandma duty today.
When I brought the last four to Kas' room, I saw that I needed one more to even up the stacked blocks on either side of metapattern recognition (https://www.patreon.com/posts/metapattern-2-41914764). So this is the final one of the patterned blocks. I have nu…
Another one of the summaries I did with Institute for the Future (http://iftf.org) of key texts regarding cooperation. We initiated the project to help catalyze an interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action, which I had called for in my 2005…
In 1991, San Francisco Chronicle had a real book review section. They sent me Leonard Shlain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Shlain)'s first book. I didn't know him then, but I met him a few years later and who wouldn't love me after this review of his…
My painted block project for my grandson topped out at 16 because when I stack them next to the painting, that many blocks reaches the top of the painting. This last one deserves a video. The designs are not my originals, but hey, the kid doesn't know that! M…
Because my quest for the meaning of what I came to call "smart mobs" led me to literature about collective action, of course Elinor Ostrom and her workshop at the University of Indiana Bloomington (https://ostromworkshop.indiana.edu/) became a central interes…
One more to go on this set. Then I think I will make a set of number blocks.
I've been interested in online collective intelligence for some time. Think of the new ways for humans to do things together that social media have catalyzed: virtual communities, smart mobs, social production, crowdsourcing, emergent response to disasters...…
(I would like to think) I wouldn't namedrop like this in public, but for patrons only: Years ago, I painted a pair of shoes for Larry Brilliant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Brilliant)'s birthday. A few weeks ago, he asked me to paint a pair for Marc B…
(https://michael.muthukrishna.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/muthukrishna_henrich_2016.pdf)https://michael.muthukrishna.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/muthukrishna_henrich_2016.pdf (https://michael.muthukrishna.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/muthukrishna_henr…
Ronald Coase (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Coase) won the economics Nobel in 1991 for articles on "The Nature of the Firm" and "The Problem of Social Cost," which examined the real-world mechanics underlying the organization of people and transactions…
Aloha, Patrons! It is probably obvious to most, but I want to make sure nobody misses this: you can search through old posts by tag. There is a list of them on the home page, and a link to more. Each tag search will return a list of posts tagged with that wor…
I don't normally post links to podcasts/interviews here, but this is a rich one -- especially because the transcript is full of useful links. Back in the age of chatrooms & digital bulletin boards, few took the internet seriously. But while others scoffed at…
I've been making lightboxes that enclose paintings (https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-lab-at-night-23645264) for some time. Lately, I've been painting blocks. I put a painted block in one of the lightboxes for fun and it looks like I can illuminanimate three d…
Is there a universal human sense of fairness? Initial experiments with the Ultimatum Game seemed to lean that way: Two participants who do not know each other's identity and are not allowed to communicate are held in separate rooms. The first participant is g…
A former student from my online cooperation course -- and recent patron -- sent me this. I really don't understand the DAO-blockchain part well. Do any of my patrons understand this better than I do? It certainly seems important. What I'd like to see would be…
Remember metapattern recognition (https://www.patreon.com/posts/metapattern-2-41914764)? I ended up making a 4X4 matrix of these paintings to hang on the wall in my grandson Kasra's room -- to groove in his vision. I had an earlier black and white set because…
Title: Foundations of Human Sociality (Introduction and Overview Source: Foundations of Human Sociality Pub: Oxford University Press Publication Date: 2004 Authors: Boyd, Robert Bowles, Samuel Camerer, Colin F. Fehr, Ernst Gintis, Herbert Henrich, Joseph McEl…
My grandson is now sitting up and likes to play with toys arrayed in front of him, so I made a little desk he can put his legs under. Poplar wood, finished with food-grade mineral oil.
Alder, Walnut, Poplar
I hand painted (non-toxic paints) 1 1/2 inch square alphabet blocks for my grandson. You can see the top of the box I am making for them. I need to make a top, hinges, catch, folding carrying handle. Will post when I finish that.
Dr Geo made a lightweight birch plywood cover for the table saw that resides under the apple tree outside Pataphysical Studios -- where the Pataphysical Time Machine is under construction (progress is being made!). A dozen Doctors of Pataphysical Damage colla…
Cory Doctorow called it "sheep that shit grass" -- when acts of self-interest benefit the commons The thing that defines peer-to-peer, I think, is the degree to which the power of the technology depends on Metcalfe’s Law. In the end, a word processing program…
I used this example when talking with business-oriented audiences about the new paradigm of cooperation. Instead of forcing suppliers to compete against each other, Toyota created a network of suppliers that they supported -- and who came through for them in…
One of several control buttons for the Pataphysical Time Machine (https://pataphysics.us/time-machine/). This one opens an iris aperture (like a camera shutter) to reveal Albert Einstein projected and texture mapped onto a 3D white mask with a changeable back…
Shaped poplar wood, 7"X9" and acrylic.
Shaped poplar wood and acrylic, about seven inches wide and nine inches high. This one is probably my favorite painting, both for the way it looks and the power it emanates for me. It is almost entirely channeled, although of course I made conscious decisions…
Will post pic of full time machine gallery of tiny paintings when it is finished, which is months away.
From The Virtual Community (https://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html), circa 1993: Hyper-realists see the use of communications technologies as a route to the total replacement of the natural world and the social order with a technologically mediated hyper-r…
The Pataphysicians usually meet in person on Saturdays in our studio and my garden. We lost a year to Covid. During that time, we started making tiny 2X2 inch paintings to go next to the console. You will notice a round window to the left of the console with…
I never cease to be amazed. I put these tiny dry seeds in the ground in April, and this happens in less than three months!
For my birthday, my grandson Kasra wore the onesie I painted for him and the booties I painted for him.
My friend Phyllis makes custom birthday images for all the Pataphysicists.
The complement to Geo's Right Shoe (https://www.patreon.com/posts/52895117). He wanted a neuron, so this is my rendering of an awakened brain cell.
Compare with garden in May (https://www.patreon.com/posts/my-garden-may-50988950)!
I'm painting a pair of shoes for my friend Geo. The design is from the logo for Tam Makers, an organization Geo co-founded with the designer of the logo, Fabrice Florin (https://fabriceflorin.com/about/). The color scheme is mine. Geo taught me how to make th…
Reporter did a good job condensing a 50 year career.
This fella first manifested in 1965: My Familiar Spirit (https://www.patreon.com/posts/painting-of-my-17930420). Like some kinda Saturn return thingie, he wanted to be recreated in 1994. Recently, a friend, mentor, and patron asked for a sculptural version fo…
I started messing with digital graphics as soon as Macpaint came out. Remember "Fatbits," where you could magnify and edit at scale? I made this one as soon as Macpaint supported color, and have used it in various contexts ever since. I love that it tells the…
In 1997, I proposed to Playboy an article on the future of consciousness. They said they would assign the article if I made it about future highs. The scientist called "G" in this article is the late great Sasha Shulgin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexande…
I submitted My Familiar Spirit (https://www.patreon.com/posts/painting-of-my-17930420) to Google's AI Deep Dream generator (https://deepdreamgenerator.com/) and iterated a few times. There are a number of AI art generator tools (https://aiartists.org/ai-gener…
Turned this from hard maple. I took it on as a challenge -- undercutting those rings is scary!
The last of my baby shoes for quite a while. If you look at the side view, you will see that I included the rocket he might take to Mars, and an alien abduction scene for the fun of it.
Actually not baby shoes. These are smaller than the first ones, but still years away. The last in the series will be "booties" really small ones for toddlers that he could be wearing within a year.
When I was working on cooperation theory with Institute for the Future, we observed that scientists and scholars working on cooperation issues in different fields were often not aware of converging work, so we set out to write a series of summaries. One work…
It will be years until he can wear them. I'm working on smaller ones.
I made these for a pal I've known since 1964, and who spent the late 60s in India and environs. (Using Black 2.0, contributed by an Angelic Rheingoldian patron)
I plan to return to the scene in August.
Everyone reading this is familiar with predictive text when typing a text message, and most would agree that the relevance of the predicted text seems to be more and more relevant over time. The basis for this capability is the use of large language models (h…
Walnut and Alder. I cut squares, bandsaw them into rounds, glue the rounds into a cylinder before turning. It's a bit of work.
I made this for my grandson. I didn't program the LED array -- I deconstructed a mask that uses an app to make messages. The box is maple with walnut splines.
Black 2.0 background
A few weeks ago, an Angelic Rheingoldian patron sent me a bottle of the new super-black paint: Black 2.0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuILnYJlWcI). I'm painting a pair of shoes for one of my oldest friends. Space Ganesh. I painted the black part first. It…
I sold my first NFT for the reserve price, netting about $200. I just listed this one, with a reserve price of around $500. I sold the first one because a couple I know was so desperate to get an invite that they met the reserve price; I refunded them half, t…
Source: The Drama of the Commons Pub: National Academy Press Publication Date: 2002 Authors: Kopelman, Shirli Messick, David M. Weber, J. Mark Findings: - Many perceptual factors of the commons situation had significant influence over the choice behavior of i…
Animated photo of Dr. Rindbrain, 'Pataphysician. I plan to attempt to mint this as an NFT.
When you anger at line-cutters and experience the desire to punish them -- you may be experiencing the glue that holds societies together. Pub: Nature, 415, 137 - 140 Publication Date: January 10, 2002 URL: http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nat…
I plan to experiment with NFTs. Here is a GIF I made from four paintings animated that I am thinking of offering for auction. The smaller one is a 16 canvas animated gif. I think I like that one better.
The Web itself, originally build not by corporations or the government (although benefitting from government funding in the development of the Internet), but by millions of people who published websites linking to one another, together with open source softwa…
Pub: Perseus Books Publication Date: 2001 Author: Benzon, William Nobody knows for sure and probably can never know for sure, but it seems likely that music and rhythm preceded language. Benzon, a musician and cognitive scientist, makes the case that music-ma…
The black part is Black 2.0, a surprise gift from an Angelic Rheingoldian patron. Thank you! The black paint has a story (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuILnYJlWcI). It's REALLY black.
I've been interested in the co-evolution of technology, media, and mind for a while. My 1968 Reed College thesis (http://www.rheingold.com/texts/HowardRheingoldReedThesis.pdf) was on the emerging field of neurofeedback as both a means of observing consciousne…
Remember My Familiar Spirit (https://www.patreon.com/posts/painting-of-my-17930420) ? Sometimes, entities just pop up and demand that I capture them. I've been rethinking "the devil" lately. I read a quote years ago to the effect that "the devil is what white…
How should online communities be governed? I'm not concerned here with Facebook and Reddit, which have special problems because of their size and volume of interaction. Despite all the attention that the gigantic social media platforms attract, the Web is ful…
I made these bowls for two angelic rheingoldian patrons.
Pub: MIT Press Publication Date: 2003 Authors: Ostrom, Elinor Dolsak, Nives Findings: - "Instantly renewable" resources are distinguished from resources that require recovery time. For instantly renewable resources (spectrum, airplane landing slots, internet)…
A good, empirical explanation of why people voluntarily contribute to Wikipedia, open source software projects. Title: The Success of Open Source Pub: Harvard University Press Publication Date: 2004 URL: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674018…
Title: Silent Theft: the Private Plunder of our Common Wealth Pub: New York: Routledge Publication Date: 2004 Authors: Bollier, David Excessive corporate control over information restricts the potential rewards of collaborative research ventures. New laws con…
Title: Cultural Evolutionary Theory: A Synthetic Theory for Fragmented Disciplines Pub: Submitted for inclusion in Bridging Social Psychology, Paul Van Lange, ed. Publication Date: 2005 URL: http:// www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/richerson/Bridging%20final.pdf A…
Alder, Walnut, Pine
Title: An Evolutionary Approach to Norms Source: Robert Axelrod, The Complexity of Cooperation, Princeton University Press, Pub: American Political Science Review 80, No. 41095-1111 Publication Date: 1997 URL: http://pscs.physics.lsa.umich.edu/Software/Comple…
For a three year old friend and a tiger for her one year old brother
In my 2005 TED Talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_the_new_power_of_collaboration?language=en), I called for an interdisciplinary science of cooperation. 15 years later, the Cooperation Science Network (https://www.cooperationscience.org/) exists…
Why do we get upset when someone cuts to the head of the line? Social arrangements are shaped and maintained more by norms than laws. One interesting series of experiments (https://www.pnas.org/content/100/6/3531)showed that people will pay from their winning…
I wanted to improve on the shading, so I made another one. This one goes to pending grandchild, other one is reserved for my 8 year old friend.
Poplar wood, acrylic paint
Many people think Facebook was the beginning of social media. When Mark Zuckerberg was five years old, people who had met and knew each other through the WELL (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-the-wells-rise-and-fall-tell-us-about-o…
September 2005, I took my daughter to Burning Man, where every night was Prom Night at Black Rock High. I doubt that either of us will return...if Burning Man returns to the Playa.
For the Little Free Art Gallery (https://www.patreon.com/posts/little-free-art-39153892)
When I worked with Institute for the Future on creating foundations for an interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action, we realized that many researchers were unaware of convergent work in different disciplines. We created more than 50 summar…
In June, 2006, I was invited to deliver a keynote in Singapore. I had always wanted to visit Bali, so I spent a week in Ubud after my keynote. Before I departed for Singapore, I learned that the international organization of commons researchers was meeting in…
Another summary of key findings in interdisciplinary understanding of cooperation Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation: Summaries and Findings Summary of: Cultural Evolution of Human Cooperation: Summaries and Findings Author(s) / Editor(s) Boyd, Robert, H…
Read the Mother Jones story, linked above, for his full history. A real American hero. In 1970, I was in LA to buy some pot to bring back to Stony Brook, where I was doing graduate work. I met a friend of mine in LA, Ralph, who was working for a left wing thi…
In 1996, Electric Minds combined user-generated content and social media -- ten years too early. Our business model depended on a human selling advertising, and I hired the wrong guy. Time Magazine named Electric Minds one of the ten best web sites of 1996 (h…
Poplar wood, cut on jigsaw, painted with acrylic
This planter needed a painting. So I added the solar face on the right side. This painting has been on this side of the planter for a few years
In the mid 2000s, I worked with Institute for the Future (http://iftf.org) on interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action. One of the obstacles to such an enterprise was that scientists and scholars in one field often were unaware of converge…
Dr. Are We Really, Prankster and Pataphysician (http://www.arewereally.com/), constructed and launched a troll into Coyote Creek, under the Traffic Jam Valley bridge.
Steve Hargadon asked me to contribute to his extensive, timely, and useful compendium, 2020 Learning Revolution (https://www.stevehargadon.com/2020/04/the-2020-learning-revolution-daily.html), so I condensed what usually takes me an hour into a 20 minute vide…
Further experimentation
I'm pretty sure that I have not posted this before. Click on the picture, then click on the big circles to zoom in.
I spent a lot of time on the texture of the brushstrokes, which you can see if you enlarge the image. I've been working on putting consciousness into multiple layers: I try to put awareness into mixing the paint; I try to be conscious about how I wipe my brus…
An animation of my latest. For Patrons only.
(For only my patrons). A look into my creative process. I've talked before about my distinction between seeing and looking in my painting: Seeing is when I get a notion or mental image of something I want to paint; then I start rendering it. Looking is when I…
Part of an ongoing series. Acrylic on 4X4 inch canvases.
For patrons only, I used Pixeloop to animate these four 4X4 acrylic paintings, part of an ongoing series.
So I sent out a query to all my patrons about what they liked to see here. About a dozen responded. I'll get to some of their suggestions later, but several people said they liked the little glimpses of my little creative paradise. So here is a closer look at…
I'm making 2 inch square paintings for the little free art gallery every couple days. I realized I should document them.
I'm on a compass and straightedge kick. This is acrylic on 5 X 5 inch canvas. I'm planning to make a bunch of variations on 4 X4 and tile them -- maybe make a fabric.
Despite the new-agey name, there's nothing woo-woo about sacred geometry ("the universe may be a mystery, but it's no secret"). It's about the architecture of the universe. The best thing about this discipline is that you can begin to understand the mathemati…
Three by three canvases, painting with acrylic, attached to round thin plywood (laser cut) with Velcro -- and therefore rearrangeable.
Part of a larger project that I will talk about later.
On Saturday, a couple Pataphysicians (Dr. Really & Dr. Tout Suite -- Dr. Figurine brought the chalk but isn't in the video) dropped by with sidewalk chalk, so we did a little publicity for our Little Free Art Gallery.
Poplar, walnut, alder.
Turning a bowl on a lathe is satisfying and scary -- if my chisel catches on the turning wood, it can fly apart and send pieces flying toward me at high speed.
I did a quick tour of my garden in April (https://www.patreon.com/posts/garden-april-36586603) and June (https://www.patreon.com/posts/garden-june-2020-38242442). I am amazed and thankful every day that I live on a planet where this can happen. Here is the ga…
Four paintings, 4"X3" for a secret project to be revealed later.
This is what I've been working on the past few weeks. I plan to set it out on the street in front of my house. I've been making tiny works of art and others are contributing. We'll see what happens! I was inspired by the Little Free Library phenomenon, of cou…
Part of a larger project, which I hope to unveil next week. Hoping to catalyze a movement.
I've been working on a big project that I hope to unveil here in about a week. In the meantime, here is a podcast. Jim Rutt was the interviewer. I know him as a provocateur on the WELL, didn't know at the time that he was CEO of Network Solutions and Chair of…
This is only for patrons. I'm not showing this to the world. Everything I painted on it has a meaning to me. I plan to use it as an altar for invocation of the muse. It's mostly what I've been doing for the past couple weeks. The heptagonal design on the bott…
I did a brief video of my garden in April (https://www.patreon.com/posts/garden-april-36586603) (a lost world of yesteryear, before the plague, depression, massive civil protest changed a lot of things forever). Here it is in June. Every day I give thanks for…
This is actually not the elaborate art project I've been working on. Dr Really met Michael Chandler and brought him by and he captured this in less than half an hour. Click on the picture above to launch the site. Hold your mouse down and drag around to see i…
In 1964, upon arrival at Reed College, I ate too many morning glory seeds and was unable to attend orientation, so I stayed in my dorm room and painted. This fellow, who I recognized as Howard's Familiar Spirit (https://www.patreon.com/posts/painting-of-my-17…
A brief tour of my garden in early Spring. Will return in summer.
So the Pataphysicians under shelter in place have not been able to work together on the Pataphysical Time Machine on saturdays. But we have a weekly Zoom cocktail hour. It was proposed that we each work on 2 inch square canvases that we could velcro and arran…
Five minute video tour.
Pataphysical Studios is working virtually. We are each painting 2 inch by 2 inch canvases that will fit together, probably with velcro, on a board that will fit in the time machine some way.
A few years ago, I worked my way through A Beginner's Guide to Constructing The Universe (http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/). It has a lot of information about the historical, mystical, mythic, psychological, mathematical, biological aspects of squares,…
I often write about the Pataphysical Studios gang and our art projects. Since we can't gather in the studio on Saturdays, we have Saturday evening cocktail parties. I made a paper bag to cover my head while I take my walk in the countryside.
A brief tour of the Pataphysical Time Machine (http://pataphysics.us/time-machine/), a work in progress
Got this working after some electronic and mechanical debugging and jury-rigging. Next step is to install it in the 'Pataphysical Time Machine (http://pataphysics.us/time-machine/). Work on the Time Machine has been suspended during the plague, since a half d…
A while back I made a table based on sacred geometry. I am adding some doodads to it and will post pix of the whole thing when I finish.
The wooden cylinder is hand-turned and hollow. The tiny motor is from China -- it took a while; I ordered before Covid. Power supply and terminal blocks from Adafruit. I found the hand, which looks to be made out of some kind of clay, and made the eyeball out…
tl;dr Now that so many are forced to use online media to communicate, let's use this opportunity to create many smaller virtual communities and social networks outside the enclosed world of Facebook. With hundreds of millions of people around the world forced…
At the time of this writing, the entire world's population is in a state of crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the absence of rapid and coherent action from the highest levels of official governance, and in coordination with official responders, citiz…
These are the resources I added to my previous post about teaching online (https://www.patreon.com/posts/34742477). Resources: (The most important resources in my judgement are at the top) "Transforming Your Online Teaching From Crisis to Community (https://w…
Pandemic is causing universities and high schools to close down face to face gatherings and move to online media. The good news is that tools are available, free or inexpensive, and (most) don't require a software engineer to set up; the not as good news is t…
The spread of coronavirus has caused the cancellation of multi-thousand-person conferences. The world of online, many-to-many communication media -- audio and video, forums, blogs, mail lists, collaborative documents, slideshows, whiteboards -- is like a supe…
It's the time of year when plum blossoms fall like snow.
For a new edition of Tools for Thought in 1999 (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought), I re-interviewed Bob Taylor, who had been the ARPA funder who supported Doug Engelbart and who brought together the band of geniuses at Xerox PARC who invented pers…
I painted these a few years ago for my friend Are We Really, a Prankster of the Kesey tribe.
Plywood, Fimo, Acrylic. Over 52 years, Judy has accumulated enough of my valentine art that she makes a display table in February.
Photo by Fabrice Florin
I was asked to write something for The New School's Public Seminar (https://publicseminar.org/) . Here it is Democracy is threatened by an arms race that the forces of deception are winning. While microtargeted computational propaganda (http://www.iftf.org/fu…
Foreword for David Preston’s Open Source Learning (Not yet published) By Howard Rheingold Thank you, Mrs. Burch, for re-igniting my passion for learning by starting me out with something I was already eager to learn. Although sixty years have passed, I still…
When we moved into this house in 1986, the back fence consisted of some ancient redwood planks, held firmly together by ivy that must have been growing since the house was built in 1920. I was fine with it. The ivy had grown high enough to create a visual bar…
A large piece, a little short of 3 feet high. The image and name just came to me. This is one of those instances when an image formed in my mind's eye and I endeavored to render it. The other way is to start somewhere and see where the image takes me.
This one just came to me. Combines a number of my themes. Name came to me, too. It's a big piece -- too big for the bandsaw, so I used the jigsaw. Plywood.
This is a bigger one. It just flowed. Too big for the band saw so I used the jigsaw.
I am proud to have assisted a person who meant a lot to me -- my mother -- come back to life from near-death by making art. In a way, I gave her what she had given me. I've written elsewhere about my mother, the art teacher, and her philosophy of art: Here is…
I made a wooden box. Inside the box is a Raspberry Pi wired to a thermal printer. When I push a button, the Pi runs a Python script (https://pastebin.com/USAs10vB) that concatenates in order a random verb, adjective, and noun from lists I made, then prints ou…
Making art in any medium is a mind-expanding tool and spiritual exercise of great power for any human being. This is a strong claim that you can test with no more than a pencil and paper. That creative expression should be reserved for the guild of talented e…
Ken Bauer interviewed me for his podcast and is allowing me to post the video, unedited, from our 46 minute interview in which we talked about digital pedagogy, flipped learning, co-learning, mind-amplifiers, and more.
A pair of acrylic paintings on poplar. Until I sell them I will use them for the psycho magickal practice I had in mind. I will position them in my bedroom so I will see flame cosmo head before I go to sleep as a reminder to remember my intention to wake up i…
So long ago, I had hair...and it was red. And lovable infant social media had not mutated into a Lovecraftian horror.
A commission for a patron: the first time in more than a decade that I've worked on a square canvas.
A commission for a patron: the first time in more than a decade that I've worked on a square canvas.
I taught courses on virtual community, social media issues, social media literacies, digital journalism at UC Berkeley and Stanford 2005-2015. The website for the last course is obsolete, so I thought I'd paste in here the instructions for my learners. How th…
Acrylic on Poplar. Some fancy bandsawing involved.
If you were to ask me how this came about, I would point to the work itself. As soon as I finished the last one, this just...sprouted...in my mind.
Sometimes, as soon as I finish a piece, the idea for another one just sprouts. I planed a piece of poplar to about 3/8 inch thickness and undertook an intense bandsaw session. I kinda like the way it looks as is, but there's more to the image that manifested…
Acrylic on gessoed Poplar.
Acrylic on gessoed Poplar. If you have observed my work for a while, you'll see certain themes combining and recombining and morphing: eyes, lightning bolts, hands, flames, question marks, spirals, vines, leaves, Garuda, pentagrams, crows, stars, planets, sho…
Shoes, Pixelated
Twenty years ago this February, I presented a TED talk (https://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration) (1 1/2 million views so far), calling for an interdisciplinary study of cooperation. Fifteen years ago, Andrea Saveri and I presented a series…
In the first installmen (https://www.patreon.com/posts/technoutopianism-29319473)t, I pulled passages from the last chapter of The Virtual Community. Here, I delve into a variety of my published writing over the past 20 years, to pull on the thread throughout…
I painted a Foo Dog guardian figure (that I didn't make), mounted it on a six-sided base that I did make, and added guardian paintings on five of the six sides. Detailed explanations of the psycho-mytho-magickal symbolism of each guardian figures are in a pre…
Link to Guardian Art Video (https://www.patreon.com/posts/guardian-art-29869221) (Read through this whole post and reference all the links, and you will have completed a mini-course on the nature of the internal and external universe in the language beyond wo…
"The extraordinary is what art is about. Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge. The occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything." - Mary Oliver About 15 years ago, our Westie, Pearl, came…
My friend Justin Hall likes to document my art making. Here is a rear view of the project and me in normal summer art making garb. I plan to post a public gallery of stills and a video of the completed work for patrons only.
I've always been interested in random oracles. In the early days of the WELL, Ramon Sender cut up a dictionary into fortune-cookie size strips and put them in a big bag. People would log onto the WELL, pose a question, and Ramon would reach into a bag, pull o…
I've been called a "techno-utopian" by various academics since at least 1993, when The Virtual Community was published. Lately, I've been looking through my writing about media and technology, and yes, find more than a few instances of enthusiasm for many-to-…
After 50 years of birthdays, anniversaries, Xmases, & Hannukahs, it isn't easy to come up with a present for Judy. I was sitting in the living room and noted that there was room on the wall where Judy has collected paintings of trailers. It's about 7 inches w…
I carved this alabaster bird 15 years ago. It guards the entrance to the back garden and pataphysical studio.
I've long been fascinated by the idea of random advice. I started using the I Ching as a teenager. I was part of the team that built the 'Pataphysical Slot Machine (http://pataphysics.us/pata-slot-machine/). I made a wooden box. Inside is a thermal printer an…
I love this sun-blessed spot and feel the sanity flooding back in as soon as I am able to spend most of the day barefoot in the garden.
I carved these out of white and green alabaster with rasps and sandpaper. They are my dogs' spirit animals.
A few years ago, Justin Hall put together a compilation of phone videos to show me making art: painting spiderwebs, sculpting stone, illuminating boxes, turning wood, installing electronics, etc. He captured video when I wasn't looking and gave me the video a…
Inside the box is a collection of slips of thermal printer paper, rolled into a scroll. With the help of my more Python literate friend Luis, I fed the printer a script that randomly selected a verb from a list I provided, then added an adjective from a list…
...in late July, 2019. Under the plum tree. You can see 'Pataphysical Studio in the background toward the end. We ate the last juicy plum last Sunday.
In 2005, I helped my Burning Man crew, The Mindshaft Society (http://www.mindshaftsociety.com/frames.html), turn an old Toyota Corolla into Huracan (https://www.flickr.com/photos/fabola/sets/911083/show/) -- the Mayan god of fierce winds. It has survived many…
She's my dear friend and my wife's best friend. I've known her since she was 14. Her son is my godson, and he is my daughter's godfather and was her babysitter. Now she is in a rehabilitation facility after fighting for her life in the wake of extensive abdom…
Fresh Air just made their archives (https://freshairarchive.org/)available, so naturally I searched for my 1993 interview (https://freshairarchive.org/segments/new-networked-frontier)about my book, The Virtual Community: Writer Howard Rheingold. In his newest…
i-See, The Institute for Applied Autonomy (USA). (Technology criticism, circa 2006) Howard Rheingold (https://www.onlineopen.org/mindful-disconnection#contributor-bio-0), Eric Kluitenberg (https://www.onlineopen.org/mindful-disconnection#contributor-bio-1) No…
Gifted from Judy for this purpose
Tulip Poplar
In 1999, Kevin Kelly sent me to Amish country near Lancaster, PA, to investigate rumors that the famously technology-avoiding Amish were using mobile phones. What I found was a community with a sophisticated understanding of how to evaluate technologies in th…
Turns out that I've been making a vertical tryptich. Looking at upper deck from the lower deck where I usually paint. (Patrons only)
Shaped MDF, acrylic paint, acrylic modeling paste
In 1995, I wrote a weekly column, originated in the San Francisco Examiner (thank you, David Talbot, who got it started), syndicated by King Features. Communication is Political (https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/compol.html) By Howard Rheingold We he…
Cut it out of MDF with a bandsaw, built up the 3D part with acrylic modeling paste
“One of the things I did not understand, was that these systems can be used to manipulate public opinion in ways that are quite inconsistent with what we think of as democracy”*… (h/t patron Lawrence Wilkinson, who published this on his Instagram (https://www…
In 2002, the Reed College alumni magazine published this biographical profile of me: In the spring of 1968, with the world expected to end any minute, Reed College relinquished a bachelor’s degree to Howard Rheingold in exchange for a senior thesis titled Wha…
The Tragedy of the Electronic Commons (https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/tomorrowcommons.html) (1994) By Howard Rheingold (Obviously, I had a bad feeling about this -- but I didn't realize it was the first drops of what became a tsunami of spam.) When…
For an Angelic Rheingoldian patron who is also a role model and inspiration.
A panoramic view for patrons only
Go to Whole Earth Collection Index (https://ia601502.us.archive.org/30/items/Index_20180423/Index.html) On the Millennium Road (https://ia802900.us.archive.org/1/items/millennium-road/Millennium-road.html) by Howard Rheingold, published in Whole Earth Review…
I was concerned about dataveillance in 1995 (https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/highway.html). Few other people were concerned. Ominous steps have been taken recently, steps that perhaps move us all closer to a global surveillance state, but few people…
"Imaginal Cells" (http://imaginal-labs.com/imaginal-cells/) After a period of ravenous consumption, a caterpillar finds an appropriate perch and forms a chrysalis – so far so good. The end result, we know, is a butterfly, but the truly astonishing thing is th…
A person on Twitter drew my attention to something I had forgotten, that is sharp to read in today's context. So I decided to start posting here some of my olden forecasts from time to time. Yay or nay, patrons? How Will The Internet Influence Democracy? (htt…
In 1999, I wrote a new afterword to the MIT Press edition of Tools for Thought (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought), originally published by Simon & Schuster in 1985. I re-interviewed Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, Bob Taylor. Here is the unedited text o…
Initiate flaming fractalization procedure
Another interview I did for the 1999 MIT Press edition of my 1985 book, (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought)Tools for Thought (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought). Interview with Bob Taylor, August 2, 1999 By Howard Rheingold Bob Taylor (h…
In 1999, I wrote a new afterword to the MIT Press edition of (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought)Tools for Thought (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought), (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/tools-thought) originally published by Simon & Schuste…
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower!
The plot thickens
About two feet wide. Acrylic on shaped MDF.
Some fancy bandsawing involved.
"Psyche" is the Greek word for butterfly.
A larger version of the one I did for my son in law.
I turned this bowl recently. Bowl turning is scary because it is easy to catch the chisel, break the bowl, and send it flying toward my face -- which is why I wear a full-face mask. I finished with a food-safe oil, buffed it up, and plan to use it when I eat…
I made this for my son-in-law, whose name, Kayvon, means "Saturn" in Farsi. It's a surprise -- Mamie, keep this sekrit. It's shaped plywood and acrylic, about 6 inches high and 7 inches wide.
Acrylic on shaped plywood.
The plot thickens.
So, I got through this far without destroying it. The interior is hollowed and the fitted lid fits fairly tightly. I still have a chance to destroy it, but the most dangerous parts of the procedure are over. I need to resand it to remove those rough patches y…
What to do with the face? I call it "exporting a problem to the future." I knew how I wanted to paint the leaves. Next is to figure out the palette for the rest of it -- or continue in the same manner by doing the eyes and mouth or forehead and worrying about…
Starting on the outside and working in with a design causes what is called envagination.
I still have many opportunities to destroy it. Next, I cut the lid off, then cut a mortise into the box in a way that makes the lid fit tightly. Then -- and this is where I often have trouble -- I need to hollow out the box. Once that is done, I fit the lid o…
Some concentrated bandsawing, then sanding, then gesso.
This is what I mean by "relief cuts." You know how you calculate the area under a curve in calculus by making a bunch of rectangles? The smaller the rectangle, the more accurate the estimate? It's like that. Bandsaw blades have a little flexibility, but if I…
Plywood, about 8 inches square. It begins. Next step -- bandsaw.
So I went to the lumber store and stocked up on cherry, maple, alder, and walnut. $225! Yikes! But that's what Patreon income is for. Spent some time cutting out 7 1/4 X 7 1/4 inch squares and finding a place to stash the wood I didn't cut up. My wood hoard i…
So....when I was hollowing out the inside, my gouge caught and the bowl got loose and crashed against the tool rest, creating a gouge in the top of the bowl where the lid fit. So I carefully carved the lid past the gouge and trued it. That destroyed the morti…
I used 100, 150, 220, 320, 400, 600, 800 grits sandpaper, then steel wool, then applied a mixture of shellac and wax and polished with a cloth. Still need to carve out the interior of the bottom, cut off the tenon on the bottom -- the part gripped in the chuc…
I used a bowl gouge to reshape it with the lid on.
You know the story about Edison? "I have not failed -- I've discovered 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb." So a number of lessons from this. First, I need to make it larger if it is going to be a canister that has any internal volume, because I lose a lot o…
First step is to run the lathe very slowly with a roughing gouge to make it cylindrical.
I broke the container I keep coffee beans in, so I'm going to attempt to turn a wooden box with a tightly fitted lid. I cut out seven circles from pieces of poplar, cherry, alder, and mahogany I had lying around. The mahogany is a story. Some friends of ours…
I wrote this about dreamwork for Oui magazine around 1979-1980. I had to pitch it this way because it was a men's magazine. I was a contributing writer 1978-1980 or so. Spirit In The Dark By Howard Rheingold (Originally published in Oui Magazine, circa 1979-1…
I was invited to write a review for Reason (https://reason.com/) of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (https://www.littlebrownspark.com/titles/nicholas-a-christakis/blueprint/9780316230032/), which I will post for patrons only when I finis…
Vase I made, on a bowl I made, holding the first spring flowers from my garden. I appreciate the opportunity to exist in a situation where this is possible: On a planet with breathable air and plenty of liquid water; no bombs raining on my village; healthy AF…
About a foot wide. Shaped plywood, acrylic paints
Patreon enables me to set up a server exclusively for me and patrons. Discord is like Slack, but more fun: It's like chat in that each "channel" is a single thread; it's like a forum because you can have multiple channels for different topics and because post…
I've got themes -- outer space, mythical figures such as kokopelli, ganesha, the green man, garuda. And I have methods -- wiggly gradients, shaped wood, sometimes elaborate illumination.
I teach at most 1 online course each year. If a minimum of 25 co-learners, max of 30 sign up, I will facilitate "Augmented Collective Intelligence: Theory & Practice" May 3-June 7. If interested, email howard@rheingold.com Draft syllabus: bit.ly/mindamp (http…
Enter: the cosmos
There isn't an exact word for it, but there's a feeling associated with an element of an artwork in progress that just bugs me. It's like a kind of aesthetic itch. I just didn't like the eyes I had sketched in. So the cosmos jumped in, as it often does. That'…
(Link to Part 1 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/peeragogy-and-of-24709239), Link to Part 2 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/24935041)) After teaching students face-to-face and online long enough to feel like I knew what I was doing, I decided to push empowerment…
Although I am not Hindu, like many non-Hindus, I have a fondness for Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, who is also a god named Vinayaka in Buddhism. Known as the foremost remover of obstacles, some accounts have him sitting in the doorway between time and spa…
(Link to Part 1 (https://www.patreon.com/posts/peeragogy-and-of-24709239)) The more I explicitly gave some of my teacher-power to learners and asked them to take more responsibility for their learning, the more it seemed to work. Somewhere around the third or…
Three minute look at some of the office furniture I made to support my making of stuff.
Gardner Campbell blogged about our 45 minute interview (https://www.gardnercampbell.net/blog1/?p=2915), and here is a video. Campbell had organized a group annotation of Engelbart's all-important 1962 paper, Augmenting Human Intellect (https://via.hypothes.is…
Made with a wooden sake box, LED, microntroller. Acrylic paint.
Source: http://www.tomaszhueckel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Doctors-in-Paris.png (http://www.tomaszhueckel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Doctors-in-Paris.png) I don't remember where I first heard it, but during my first classroom sessions, I used to tell…
My friend Paul put a handrail on the deck outside my office. I turned redwood finials and added painted wooden mojo objects.
A quick (59 second) look at the various guardians and cthonic spirits at the entrance to my office-studio-lab-workshop. The objects I did not make myself were gathered on my journeys to Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Hawaii, Mexico.
The interior and exterior of the Pataphysical Time Machine (http://pataphysics.us/time-machine/) have panels that we are filling with contraptions and art. This is about one quarter of a panel. We're just starting to add words and images and will invite time…
For the newel post at the entrance to my office.
Smart learners have always sought out mentors, but social media -- especially Twitter -- offer a unique opportunity. If you want to learn about a topic and know one or two people who you consider knowledgeable about that topic, you can seek, cultivate, and ha…
An excerpt from my panel appearance at the 50th anniversary of the (https://www.wholeearth50th.com/)Whole Earth Catalog (https://www.wholeearth50th.com/). (https://www.wholeearth50th.com/)
In a maple enclosure, walnut splines, with brass hinges and catch.
My friend Paul installed a handrail on the steps up to my office, so I mojoized it. Note the San Pedro (https://thethirdwave.co/psychedelics/san-pedro/) (remember that St. Peter holds the keys to paradise).
My friend Dr. Heatshrink definitely took over the task of programming the Pi. I assembled a Raspberry Pi with 2.8inch screen, usb connector with switch, and a big battery that is usually used for mobile phones, and loaded a bunch of psychedelic GIFs from http…
In 1996, I started Electric Minds with $2 million from Softbank. The idea was to create a high quality online magazine about technology and issues around technology, with assigned, edited articles. Each article had a forum thread attached -- we used one of th…
I've turned dozens of click ballpoint pens and am now beginning to turn fountain pens. The lower one is made of spalted oak that a friend brought from Arizona. When I cut the log on a big band saw, wiggly white grubs emerged. I had to round them all up and di…
How it ended up
The universe just jumped in there, the way the hearts and skulls did -- as it is wont to do. There is something called a quantum vacuum fluctuation. According to the equations of quantum mechanics, it is possible for a particle and anti-particle to spontaneou…
I'm fascinated with John Dee, the court physician to Queen Elizabeth 1, rumored to be a successful alchemist, said to have something to do with the mysterious "Rosicrucian Furor. (https://www.quora.com/Who-founded-the-Rosicrucians-What-were-they-about)" You m…
I was looking for an idea by image googling and pinteresting when I saw an hour glass. It's a widely recognized symbol of passing time. And I'm part of a crew building a time machine. So I drew an hourglass. Here's the less rational part: I started sketching…
On impulse, I made a quick video of what my office-studio-lab looks like at night. I grabbed a toy synthesizer and played the background music with one hand and held the camera with the other hand, so it isn't the world's greatest production value.
"Information overload" is another way to describe the inability to manage information abundance. For most people these days, the Web is an overwhelming flood of incoming information that we are forced to navigate. There is another way: tune the web. Specify i…
I'm reading Against The Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300182910/against-grain) by James C. Scott "An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available that contradicts the standard narrative for t…
Still playing with Pixaloop app. I love seeing paintings come to life like this.
Signed on the back. Shaped wood & acrylic.
This is becoming compulsive.
The second in a series about network literacy.The value of networks shifts as they scale, and as the networks accomodate human social activity as well as interconnection of machines.
Oh boy. Remember the backpanel I made for our artcar, Huracan (https://www.patreon.com/posts/huracan-back-22814081)? It's been some years since I actually rode in it, and I guess I was blessed by St. Stupid that day, because...I painted it upside down! Probab…
I've become convinced that understanding how networks work is an essential 21st century literacy. This is the first in a series of short videos about how the structure and dynamics of networks influences political freedom, economic wealth creation, and partic…
My friend Dr. Fabio took the original photo of me in 'Pataphysical regalia, and I processed it through Dreamscopeapp and Pixaloop. Probably the last of these little animations for a while.
You can tell that this is an older painting -- more than a decade -- because it is on a square canvas. For the past ten years I've been painting on wood that I've shaped with a jigsaw.
From drawing to wood sculpture to painting to video.
The last time I tried this, we had some interesting conversations. So...anything you want to ask, say?
This less than one minute video with haphazard production values is a sneak peek at the 'Pataphysical Time Machine (http://pataphysics.us/time-machine/) in progress. This is a collaborative effort of 'Pataphysical Studios. It's located in the studio in my bac…
As soon as the Apple digital camera was available, I started experimenting with digital versions of my oil and acrylic paintings. I love using digital media to add dimensions to tangible media. The original of this one is acrylic on shaped wood. Animated with…
Huracan, Mayan God of Mighty Winds, is the art car that the Mindshaft Society drove around (https://vimeo.com/1518613?pg=embed&sec=1518613)the playa. I redid the back panel, where the passengers sit.
When I make art, I pay attention to the medium and to the ongoing conversation with my inner voice -- but I always (now) have in mind the small but mighty population who appreciate what I do enough to support me on Patreon..
I generally work outside, but am moving inside because of the air emergency (San Francisco Bay Area has the distinction of the worst air pollution in the world today)>
This way of engaging seems to be more popular than Discourse or Reddit, so I'll post a thread-starter again. Do you want to ask me questions, talk about my creative process, or any of the topics I know something about (cooperation theory, art-making, augmente…
This is for the refurbished back panel of Huracan (https://vimeo.com/1518613), art car of the Mind Shaft Society. The old back panel was scoured by years of playa dust.
The origins of 'Pataphysical Studios (http://pataphysics.us), launchpad for the 'Pataphysical Slot Machine, (http://pataphysics.us/pata-slot-machine/) instigators of 'Pata Dada Haha (http://pataphysics.us/pataphysics-of-dada/), constructors of The 'Pataphysic…
Esteemed Patrons. Forgive the hiatus in posting. With winter approaching, I've been on a major reorganizing spree in Pataphysical Studio. So I haven't been working on new art pieces. I have been drafting a text post about RSS, but it won't be ready soon. I th…
I had stashed a piece of nice redwood for years -- from our deck construction. I made this, using this instructable (https://www.instructables.com/id/Geometric-Stool/).
Experimenting again with this way to engage with my Patreons: the first attempt -- a Discourse forum -- didn't achieve critical mass necessary for ongoing forum conversations. But a short(er) lived comment thread on a text post like this doesn't require a cri…
I've been painting a pair of shoes for each of the regular participants in Pataphysical Studios (http://pataphysics.us). It takes 30-40 hours per pair, so I only do one or two a year. This is for Dr. Heatshrink.
Will somebody put together a free and open source social media classroom? Together with developer Sam Rose (https://www.linkedin.com/in/samrose), I instigated the creation of a SMC in 2008, but it's grown old and obsolete. Time for someone to step up and crea…
Hello Patrons -- I'm always eager to engage with people who are interested in what I am doing. I failed to get a critical mass of patrons conversing in a forum, but maybe it would be easier if people just posted comments on posts like this. So...is anybody in…
I painted this in a frenzy the day after I returned from Bali
For comparison. In 1973 I was intrigued by the iconic image of a bird on a postage stamp from Nepal. I didn't know about Garuda, but something attracted me about the image. No, I did not knowingly make either the 1973 or 2018 versions as self-portraits.
about 10 inches high and 20 inches across -- acrylic on shaped plywood
The reason for my Patreon silence of the past week. As soon as I finish one, another one pops into my head.
(Patrons only!) It layers nicely on the first painting I put in the lightbox. I stick them together with blu-tac -- that stuff that museums use to stick things in place. Can you read the message?
About 7 inches across. Acrylic on baltic plywood. (Next, patrons can see what it looks like in the lightbox).
Box made of walnut, mahogany, poplar, padauk, with arduino feather remote-controlled music player.
Now with remote control
I also made the painting inside detachable, so I can create different paintings and swap them in and out.
I was inspired to do this so quickly that I neglected to document the process: sketch on paper, transfer to plywood, cut with bandsaw, sand, gesso, paint. I might mount it on a mirror. It's about 7 1/2 inches in diameter.
Fabrice Florin cut out the dashboard with a laser cutter, turning my drawing into vector files. Fabrice and other members of Pataphysical studios got the multimedia server going.
As you can see, the rest of it is under construction, but it actually works now.
Next, I glue in wooden prisms, cut to size, to aim the light strip toward the painting. This is the bottom, where the light strip comes up from the controller box.
I decided to make another lightbox like this one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ika3vi5Avb4&t=5s). This time, though, I realized that I shouldn't permanently affix the illuminated painting inside: why not hang the paintings inside, the way I hang them on th…
In a series of previous posts (https://www.patreon.com/howardrheingold/posts?tag=cooperation), I presented an annotated list of readings for people interested in understanding the multidisciplinary study of human cooperation. In my 2005 TED talk (https://www.…
It will make more sense when the lower layers are completed and it is installed, complete with control screen and buttons. Might take a couple weeks to get to that point.
The plot thickens
And now for something different. For patrons only! This is the control panel cover for the 'Pataphysical Time Machine (http://pataphysics.us/time-machine/), a collective enterprise involving carpentry, painting, electrical and software engineering, multimedia…
If you look close, you will see there are symbols inside the pentagon. And the artist's shiny head.
This might have worked better in a larger size, but I have a pretty good idea of where to go from here.
As soon as I finish one, another one wants to manifest.
I didn't understand until the end that this could be a dimensional portal if I filled the negative space with mirror.
The gradient in the center was a leap. I think I know a way to add a dimension.
Writer Alexis Madrigal wrote about posters full of quotes (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/the-charming-infinite-dystopia-of-contemporary-e-commerce/567452/)from writers, available from Walmart and Amazon, which directed me to this site…
Sketch took a couple minutes, refining it took maybe 15 minutes, cutting the wood took about 40 minutes. Painting this way is painstakingly slow, though. It takes an hour or more for each layer. I had a brainstorm about what to do with the negative space. It…
Another one begins.
One of Facebook's most grievous sins is the way Facebook groups have killed or severely dampened the art of the online forum among most of the online population. Many special interest groups, from fan communities to political organizers, use forums. But it ap…
About 30 inches across, a foot high. 3/4 inch plywood. Acrylic.
One more step. This was another instance of pushing past the maybe-fuck-it-up line. I decided to try to shadow the feathers and paint them in a straight gradient instead of a gradient of layers of wavy lines. I wasn't sure it would work at all until I finishe…
This part was a lot of painstaking fine brush work. I don't know yet how the feathers will go.
It's hard to see in these pix, but the texture of the paint strokes is a big part of this.
As soon as I finish one, another one starts to manifest. About 30 inches across, 8 inches high.
This one goes out to my latest patron at the Rheingoldian level. Thank you! I put consciousness into it.
Acrylic on shaped plywood, approx 18" by 12"
My painting has been influenced by Jung (see The Red Book (https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html)!), Huichol (http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/190-mexico-s-huichol-resource-page-their-culture-symbolism-art), Balinese (https://en.wikipedi…
At many decision points, I confront an option to possibly veer into a new dimension -- or fuck up all the work I've done so far. My rule of thumb is to always go into the unknown: better to fuck up a lot of work than shrink rather than continue to expand my r…
The palette emerged. Now I have to be deliberate about how to integrate the different colors and gradients.
Starting to come to life. I knew the overall shape when I began, but the details of colors and patterns emerge as I go along.
Another one begins
Part of the Quetzalcoatl-Time-Machine-Industrial complex
Design, painting, by me. Vector files and laser cutting by Fabrice Florin
It's got that throbbing energy circulation thing going.
Getting there. The hot approaching the cool.
Briefly unpacking the notion of "augmented collective intelligence" each word refers to a unique human set of characteristics: Much has been made about the "intelligence" part -- the brain of our species has developed metacognitive (self reflective), learning…
Wiggly caterpillars glow with cherenkov radiation.
It comes to life quickly, but there's a ways to go.
It begins. Quarter inch plywood. The figure is 12" in diameter. It grew out of my Martian hieroglyphic explorations.
Everyone who enters the art garden is triangulated by mojo accumulators and heartveillance devices. And informed by martian hieroglyphics.
I've been making magickal surveillance devices for the perimeter of my garden. This is acrylic on poplar, about 4 1/2 inches wide.
The new redwood structure holds up the very large rose bushes (Banksia and Cecile Brunner) at the entrance to my art garden. It tells a story. I haven't figured out what it is except that Space Anubis appears at the beginning and takes off in a flying saucer…
Each tile is 3 1/2 inches square. Acrylic on Baltic birch plywood. To be tiled across the new rose arbor at the entrance to my art garden. I don't know what the message is...yet. I channeled them.
In 1996, there was no social communication on the Web -- it was about pointing and clicking and navigating from slow-loading web page to slow-loading web page. We started Electric Minds (http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/) to jump-start "the Social…
Technologies of Cooperation Humans are the dominant species on this planet because we learned to use verbal communication to organize and coordinate collective action: Collective defense by diminutive primates who lacked muscles, speed, claws, fangs and colle…
About 3 inches across. Poplar wood and acrylic. For a patron.
The large one is destined for a friend and patron. This smaller version is about a foot wide and is destined for the gate to the art garden and 'Pataphysical Studios. Shaped Baltic birch plywood and acrylic.
Institutions for Collective Action Co-learners in my online course join it because they want to DO something about cooperation. The course takes its time getting there in order to lay an interdisciplinary foundation in the biology of complex interdependencies…
To show the size
Finished!
Finished a commission. Baltic birch plywood, jigsawed, acrylic paint
Closing in.
I knew I wanted to do something fractal-leafy on the fractal leaves, and I knew I wanted to start with dark green on the outside. That didn't mean I knew what the pattern would look like and what would happen when I ran out of green. When you start at the out…
A close-up of the hole into outer space -- a recurrent theme, I know.
Often, I start out with an idea that poses the problems of how do I render the image in my mind's eye, in what media, what size, what colors, what patterns. I make a decision about one dimension and start drawing, cutting, painting, and that acts as a constra…
When one starts paying attention to attention, and using that attention to attention intentionally, the practice is called "metacognition (https://www.patreon.com/posts/attention-and-15097490)" and has been shown to amplify learning. Painting is an attentiona…
This large piece (see previous pix) is a commission. I estimate it will end up requiring around 50 hours. 50 happy hours, as far as I'm concerned -- painting in the garden, listening to music. I'm grateful for this.
From 1994-1996, I wrote a syndicated column about the future (https://people.well.com/user/hlr/tomorrow/). I warned about dataveillance, spam, enclosure of the Internet, commodification of community. Nobody really cared. It appears that people become alarmed…
Link to Clickable Concept Map --> here (http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1JM4WR2T6-2NJYN2-1BQB/social%20dilemma.cmap) Social Dilemmas It's more convenient for you to hop in your car to drive somewhere, rather than waiting for public transportation, walking, or…
I think this will end up being called "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower." (h/t Dylan Thomas)
By the end of part four in this series, (https://www.patreon.com/posts/introduction-to-18386779) I had introduced the role of symbiosis and other cooperative arrangements in the living world, theories about how competitive Darwinian evolution could have led t…
Jigsaw skills are improving.
Starting from the earth up. This one is about "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower."
Drew figure onto large piece of baltic birch plywood.
Starting to paint
I'm making the big one for a couple of dear friends and patrons. I decided to make a smaller one while I'm waiting for them to deliver a large piece of baltic birch plywood. I made many relief cuts with my bandsaw, but did almost all the cutting with a jigsaw…
I started the syllabus with symbiogenesis, synergies, and other complex biological interdependencies to establish how life itself is grounded in cooperative arrangements as well as competition. The second module is about the ways culture (everything we learn…
The start of something. I sketched it out on a big piece of paper and cut it out. Will trace outline onto plywood. As you can see, I did only half -- will mirror. Also, as you can see, it's about two feet high and three-four feet wide.
I painted the feathered serpent on the side of the car; the plywood forms were laser-cut from vector files that Fabrice Florin created from a photo of my original art (there's another one on the other side). As you can see, it tows a float that includes a spe…
There's another one on the other side. It's held on with strong magnets.
The online course on cooperation studies (http://socialmediaclassroom.com/host/cooperation7/lockedwiki/main-page) that I've taught 8 times over the past 10 years started with cooperative arrangements in biology, then moved on, respectively, to the biological…
Photo by Fabrice Florin. Next step is to attach the feathers to the infrastructure you see behind the head
At first it was called "@wired," then Hotwired. The first commercial digital culture webzine. I was the founding Executive Editor, but quit with a bunch of other people shortly after launch. Gary Wolf's book, "Wired, A Romance," and a briefer mention in Kevin…
Drs Rindbrain, Mindtoast, Toutsweet, Really, Heatshrink, painting Quetzy feathers.
Fabrice Florin's rendering of the art car with Quetzy on both sides of the car, towing a float with a speakers platform, an electronic message display, and a rotating platform of community-contributed art.
Fabrice Florin is organizing an art car that will tow a float that we plan to bring to California's Central Valley to induce young people to vote. You can see the feathers in the process of being painted. Although the design is mine and I painted the head and…
Part of the register and vote art car project.
The clickable version (http://cmapspublic3.ihmc.us/rid=1JM1F3253-10P3TPN-YFL/Toward%20a%20literacy%20of%20cooperation.cmap) also provides access to fundamental documents -- click on the little document icons in the linked document.
In the first part of this series (https://www.patreon.com/posts/intro-to-studies-18001549), I outlined the interdisciplinary study of human cooperation and linked to resources I developed on my own and with Institute for the Future. Now I will begin to introd…
Climate change, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, environmental protection and remediation, preservation of human rights...all the biggest problems of our time are problems of cooperation, the lack of it, obstacles to it, and ways to work around t…
I'm definitely up for engaging patrons in any way you'd like. Feel free, please, to comment here or on any other posts.
This is the first part of an eight foot long Quetzalcoatl, complete with feathers, that will go on both sides of an art car float that my friend Fabrice Florin is organizing to go to California's central valley to encourage young people to vote.
This video, a little over one minute long, tells the story of a painting I made under unusual circumstances in 1964, which I still have, and which I recreated in 1994. If you have received one of my postcard packages as a reward, you have a reproduction of th…
Poplar, acrylic. For the next Rheingoldian level Patreon patron.
Sanded and gessoed.
I cut out the basic shape with a bandsaw.
Cut out a piece of paper. It's about the size of the palm of my hand.
I wanted to make a little painted wooden thing for my next Rheingoldian patron. A sketch.
Patrons only!
Only for patrons!
Top view
Francisco Rivera made this short animation at my direction a long time ago, when I used it as part of presentations about what I foresaw to be "the social web (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_web)."
Artobiography, continued Since my teens I’ve continually and ritually explored parts of my mind that can’t be sensed through words. There’s a part of art that involves seeing in new ways and manifesting that way of seeing in an artifact that has some effect o…
Quetzalcoatl, my acrylic painting on shaped plywood of the mythical mesoamerican plumed serpent, found its place in my studio.
It's about 18 inches across, a half inch thick, six inches high. Gessoed plywood, shaped with a jigsaw, painted with acrylic.
Almost there
I don't plan the colors completely. I start with what grabs me, and each color presents a design problem to solve when I get to the next part of the painting. After this -- the feathers. Quetzalcoatl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl) was the feathe…
For years, my pal Justin Hall (https://www.patreon.com/justin/posts)surreptitiously captured video when I was absorbed in art-making. He gave it to me as a birthday present.
Painting begins
I made this when Macpaint was first available in color, which means they are probably more than 30 years old!
I cut out the design with a jigsaw. Next, I will sand and gesso.
I draw the design on plywood
An artobiography The Past Futures of Howard Rheingold: A Retrospective of Art and Ideas Part 1 1964–1977 My art-making always has been a subconscious divination ritual that I’ve invoked in parallel with the rational techno-social forecasting I have done for f…
I use tracing paper to iterate and improve my preliminary sketches.
This first draft was too friendly and not feathered enough.
This is actually the second draft. I'm documenting the creation of this, which may end up on an art car to be used to attract young people to register and vote. It will probably also end up as a shaped wood painting. It looked more like a Quetzalcoatl (https:…
What do you consider valuable to you? Curated links? Very occasional blog-like text posts? Stills of my art? Videos of my art in progress? Anything else you'd like to see? (And followers -- I'll always make about half my posts public, but if you consistently…
Space Anubis emerged as a character while we were putting together the 'Pataphysical Time Machine.
When I spent a lot time writing books, I found social bookmarking services such as Diigo (https://www.diigo.com) to be helpful in organizing resources; later, I began to look at who was bookmarking links I found to be useful and explored what other links they…
A chair in which I wrote books, conducted online classes, made art, in the corner of my garden.
I painted the sides, too.
My Reed undergraduate thesis (http://rheingold.com/texts/HowardRheingoldReedthesis.pdf)(1968) was about neurofeedback and consciousness -- and the possibility that electronics could be a more precise way of exploring conscious states than psychedelics.
Shaped wood, about 9 inches across, 3/4 inch thick.
Shaped wood, about 9 inches across, 3/4 inch thick
I've been concentrating on a new shaped wood painting. I expect to have images for the public next week, and a 10-15 second time-lapse video for patrons.
After the bandsaw, before sanding, gessoing, painting.
The start of something. I'll compile a very short video when it's finished.
For a lucky future patron
One of the last paintings I did before abandoning rectangular canvases for shaped wood and swapped acrylics in for oils. For the center portion, I loaded the brush with several colors simultaneously. The whole painting process took just a few minutes.
Spirit In The Dark By Howard Rheingold (Originally published in Oui Magazine, circa 1979-1980, reprinted in Excursions to the Far Side of the Mind, 1988 (now an ebook (http://stillpointdigitalpress.com/book/excursions_to_the_far_side_of_the_mind/)) – Howard’s…
The next patron who supports me for a year at $25/month, gets this, along with the other rewards.
I'm thinking of running my online course on intro to cooperation studies again. Last time was 2015. This will be the eighth time. I'll need 30 co-learners. Five weeks. $300. Here is the syllabus (http://bit.ly/introtocooperation) -- ignore the schedule. It wo…
Michael Nielsen's Reinventing Discovery (http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/reinventing-discovery/) is a must read if you are interested in the ways collective intelligence and networked media are changing the way science is done. Nielsen recently tweeted this th…
The other side of the mojo
For now, just for my patrons: I painted this object and am going to offer it as a reward for the first person to pledge $25/mo for a year.
I was asked to write this review by one of my patrons, so how could I turn him down. This is a pre-publication version that is available exclusively for my patrons. Review of Tom Wolfe’s “The Kingdom of Speech” (portions of this have appeared in Howard Rheing…
Esteemed patrons -- if you pledged $10/month or more I invited you to a private forum I set up for this purpose. It was linked to Patreon, so only a single sign-on was required. It has become clear that the Patreon link to the forum software, Discourse, is br…
When I share curated links, it's usually a group of related links, but this is important. Note that Ted was talking about hypertext in 1967. I am proud to be one of the few journalists who has covered Ted's work that he is still talking to. In fact, I invited…
In 1976-77 I was a Martian anthropologist, reporting from the streets of San Francisco.
I've always been interested in what is now being called "big history" -- from the Big Bang to the evolution of cognition. One of the most compelling aspects of the recent spate of books, lectures, and videos is that research from a dozen different disciplines…
If you approve, John, I will prepare for shipping. Otherwise, I'll see if I can stretch them and wear them myself.
For a 10 month commitment at $100/month, I paint a pair of custom shoes for you.
I didn't return to the secret rebel ethnobotanical base in Hawaii, but I spent some time with Terence in Occidental, about an hour's drive north from me, and he spent some time at my place. He introduced me to a fellow who sold me plants of (legal) ethnobotan…
What do you say, John?
I wrote and recorded a foreword to my friend's wonderful book on creativity, and she illustrated.
I'm standing in the kitchen of his ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii, watching Terence get another batch of Ayahuasca ready to brew. "Why don't you get your friend at Whole Earth to help do something about the plants?" I knew what he was talking about -- it w…
I painted these shoes for my prankster buddy, Are We Really. I'm working on a pair of shoes on a new theme for one of my Angelic Rheingoldian patrons -- will post pix when I finish. I have a collection of my painted shoe pix on Flickr. (https://www.flickr.com…
Coming along...
Terence was somewhere in the house. I was on the porch, queasy, lying on a pad, wearing a shift. I knew what the bucket was for. The battle was to keep the brew in my stomach long enough to absorb the psychoactive ingredients; projectile vomiting was inevitab…
For one of my Angelic Rheingoldian patrons.
For patrons only -- a video peek at the martian hieroglyphic panels for the 'pataphysical slot machine.
A panel for the 'Pataphysical Time Machine. This 3D flythrough visualization of the time machine in progress (https://vimeo.com/210330823) was created by Dr. Meccano (a.k.a. Edward Janne) in collaboration with Dr. Fabio (a.k.a. Fabrice Florin). There's a mess…
Yes, Terence was a stoner -- in a book about cannabis and spirituality, his wife, Kat Harrison McKenna (accomplished ethnobotanist in her own right), wrote that sheand cannabis were "sister-wives" to Terence. If your internal image of someone who smokes stron…
Next step for Angelic Rheingoldian
Sometime in the late 1970s, I came across a series of audiotapes that told an amazing and hard to believe story of ethnobotanical and psychedelic adventuring. It was called True Hallucinations, now a book (https://www.amazon.com/True-Hallucinations-Extraordin…
Olivia Goldhill, Scientists Say Your Mind Isn't Confined to Your Brain or Even Your Body (Dec 24, 2016, available online (http://qz.com/866352/scientists-say-your-mind-isnt-confined-to-your-brain-or-even-your-body/)) No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly im…
Many of my paintings on shaped wood are polyurethaned and live in my garden year round.
The beginning of the Kokopelli shoe -- don't know yet what goes on the other shoe -- for Angelic Rheingoldian patron John Laing.
A crude time lapse of my latest painting. It's about 8 inches high and 24 inches wide and 3/4 inch thick. It's enclosed in a cabinet I built of maple, walnut, alder, and poplar. Inside the frame of the cabinet are two microcontroller-controlled LED strips.
To understand how value is created in networks, Microsoft Envisioning and PopTech decided to connect with experts and practitioners from around the world. Join us on our journey of discovery. (Howard interviewed). See also my unsorted collection of links abou…
If you are interested in my experience designing, hosting, advising online communities, this is a good source.
Wonder what JCR Licklider (https://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html) would think of this? From Deloitte: Talent for Survival: Essential skills for humans working in the machine age (https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/tech-trends…
For patrons only, a look at the creative process.
About 2 1/2 feet wide, 8 inches high, 3/4 inch thick -- shaped, painted plywood.
I participated remotely in an event held in Germany and talked about a student-centered pedagogy that uses social media to encourage more learner agency and peer collaboration.
I painted this tabletop according to principles of sacred geometry learned from A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe (http://www.constructingtheuniverse.com/).
I'll be posting curated links about this subject periodically Wonderfully, this post addresses three subjects I track because I know they are important: metacognition and its role in infotention, augmented collective intelligence, and the relationship of huma…
This painting was commissioned as an album cover for a studio improv album by David Gans and the jam band -- Chocolate Coffee Pot (https://dgans.bandcamp.com/album/chocolate-coffee-pot)
I cut and painted these pieces of wood for patrons who pay $25/month or more. Thank you!
More recommended readings about extended mind theory. These readings situate extended mind in a cultural evolution that extends back beyond the printing press to the alphabet and spoken language as affordances for thought. Michael Nielsen, “Thought as a Techn…
After a 40 year hiatus, I took LSD again a few years ago. While tripping, I did some automatic drawing; that is, I just let my hand move the pen without consciously directing it. This is the result. I've made it into fabric and we're re-upholstering our dinin…
I introduced the subject of technology-augmented thinking and communications in Intro to Mind Amplifiers (https://www.patreon.com/posts/introduction-to-15283970). The envisioning and engineering of Licklider, Taylor, Engelbart, and PARC led to today's regime…
Sekrit reverse side -- for Patrons only
(Patrons can see the sekrit back side of this)
I wrote this (http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/tom_rheingold_1110.html) in 1996, part of Electric Minds (http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/home.html), a publication/community that combined social media and user generated content ten years…
This is the back side of the Angelic Rheingoldian mojo accumulator -- only for the eyes of patrons.
I made this for our first Angelic Rheingoldian patron. Also ordered him a pair of shoes to paint.
The video is from my interview with Robin Good. Here is what I wrote about curation in my 2012 book, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online. (Here's a PDF of the introduction (https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262017459_sch_0001.pdf)).…
I'm painting these little wooden thingies for Rheingoldian and Angelic Rheingoldian patrons. 5-6 hours per thingie.
I doodled this in religion class at Reed in 1964.
Space Crow has becoming a recurring character. She first appeared when I painted a pair of shoes on commission for David Gans -- "it's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one she knows" is a lyric from the Grateful Dead song "Uncle John's Band." Th…
Space Crow has becoming a recurring character. She first appeared when I painted a pair of shoes on commission for David Gans -- "it's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one she knows" is a lyric from the Grateful Dead song "Uncle John's Band." Th…
Esteemed patrons. One of you, a smart and thoughtful fellow, remarked that one new public post and one new patron post every day constitutes a daunting flow. I want to balance feeding you valuable knowledge, stimulating discussion, displaying my art and creat…
It's not true that "digital natives" know all there is to know about managing information online. Knowing how to use tools and techniques for tailoring your information flow is an essential survival tool these days, so I created a mini-course on what I called…
https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/more-time-on-social-media-is-not-linked-to-poor-mental-health/15185572 (https://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/research-news/all-english-research-news/more-time…
The Shape of the Universe By Howard Rheingold Originally published in Whole Earth Review. If you are fortunate enough to share a neighborhood with a leafy elm, a gnarly oak, a soaring redwood, take another look at its silhouette against the sky. That self-sim…
Concept map about concept maps (source (http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm)) My students and I used a computer-based tool for mindmapping/concept mapping, but you can do it with a pencil and paper or st…
First of four panels to adorn the outside of the 'Pataphysical Time Machine. (https://youtu.be/TeiPE0oWBTU)
As part of my ongoing exploration of the combination of reflected light (pigment) and radiated light (LEDs), I used an LED, controlled by an ATTiny microcontroller, embedded in a wooden sake box that I painted with acrylic.
Social Bookmarks and Tagging With the adve (http://delicious.com)nt of the first online social bookmarking service delicious.com and Diigo (http://diigo.com), the terms tagging, folksonomy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy), and social media entered th…
I've been interested in mind amplifiers for nearly 50 years. In 1968, my senior year at Reed, I chose as my thesis (http://www.rheingold.com/texts/HowardRheingoldReedthesis.pdf) topic the future of consciousness technology. Researcher Joe Kamiya at Langley Po…
Animated version of my heartfelt foreword for Intention: Critical Creativity in the Classroom (https://smile.amazon.com/Intention-Creativity-Classroom-Amy-Burvall/dp/1945167327) by Dan Ryder and Amy Burvall. Narrated by me, drawn in Paper 53 by Amy Burvall an…
As my Patreon public grows, I plan to make more time-lapse videos of my creative process
In 2009, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone visited my UC Berkeley class "Virtual Community/Social Media" and talked with my students. We start out discussing social capital before Biz joins in.
In the early 1980s, having read Alan Kay's 1977 article (https://mnielsen.github.io/notes/kay/micro.pdf)about the work at Xerox PARC on what he called "the Dynabook," I decided/realized that Xerox Palo Alto Research Center had to be the coolest place for a wr…
I love working soft stone. I don't know if I have the patience for marble. And alabaster is translucent. I captured video during the sculpting practice. Eventually, I'd like to make a camera stand so I can do better time-lapse of my creative process -- someth…
Now that the appropriation of online social networks Twitter and Facebook by weaponized AI propaganda (https://medium.com/join-scout/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine-86dac61668b) has raised alarms about the negative impact of social media on d…
I offered a quick video (https://www.patreon.com/posts/howards-familiar-15106998)a few days ago about the noetic emergence of this painting. The 1994 version is the source of one of the postcards that patrons at the $5/month level and above will get in the sn…
Ten years ago, I spent a week in Ubud, Bali. I was so inspired by Balinese painting that I spent a couple days painting this when I got back. I've always been interested in the iconography of Garuda (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda), who is visible in bo…
This is one of the postcards patrons get for $5+/month. I've ordered cards, so it will be a week or so before I start mailing them.
I've started to mindmap kinds of thinking (https://bubbl.us/ODAyODgvNTYxOTI1LzVlOTg4ZTYxODA5ZjZiZGM2NjEwMGVkMmUxMmVmMWMx@X?utm_source=shared-link&utm_medium=link&s=6957219), with links to source material. I've also collected, but have not yet sorted, miscella…
A painting I made in a state of heightened awareness in 1964 still exists. I made a new version in 1994, too.
I co-authored "Exploring The World of Lucid Dreaming (https://smile.amazon.com/Exploring-World-Dreaming-Stephen-LaBerge/dp/034537410X)" in 1988 and in 2014, I made and painted a box that contained dream-inducing herbs that I had grown, a hand-turned wooden pe…
When I wrote Net Smart (https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262017459_sch_0001.pdf) about social media literacies, I started with attention because it is the foundation of thinking and communication, because our mobile devices and…
Networks -- social, technological, global -- are increasingly important. People who understand how networks work, and how we are embedded in them and how we create and shape them, will fare better in our increasingly networked society. I created this mini-cou…
This is an example of the kind of objects I've been making lately (the last couple years). I'm interested in the interaction of pigment (reflected light) and illumination (radiated light). I used a heptagram as a template (more later on how I found the heptag…
For a recent birthday, my friend Justin Hall made this two minute video of me making things. Over a period of years, he had surreptitiously captured video of me while I was making art.
Creating art and sharing knowledge are what I've done my entire life. In fact, I recently wrote my "artobiography (https://medium.com/@hrheingold/the-past-futures-of-howard-rheingold-fac63abd5e70)ring and conversing with my readers, students, co-learners has…