Wiardgroup

Hi All,
     To my great horror and embarrassment I discover that I misspelled 
 my SUBJECT line…
The ONE piece of text most often repeated-
Oh well, lest I succumb to the sin of pride.

First off: THANKS
Thanks to all of you who posted your thoughts so far
And no less THANKS 
To those of you who have READ them…
A receiver is just as much work as a transmitter

This expands on my motivation for the original post.
It was the member list that moved me. I wanted to do something that 
would give us all something to READ; something with a little meat on 
the bone. And y'all have done us proud in no more than 24 hours!

Liquidcolor said:

It's a testament to the allure and  mystique of the Wiard modular that 
there are more members in this group than the Serge group.

!!! - that's interesting , and  my surmise is that this list is as 
deep as it is wide. I just sprinkled the surface with a little bit of 
food and look what surfaced!!!!!
I observe that there are also many more members than there are 
'customers' (and my inner Tom Poston urges me to theorize (at the risk 
of Grant's justifiable irritation) that this is a testament to the 
price of the modules) but I  think that non-Wiard folks have PLENTY to 
say about Wiard and it is to the benefit of everyone to hear it - most 
particularly the 'the designer'. IMO  The open nature of this group 
comprises it's greatest potential to do good. There was not a single 
response to my original post that did not contain something useful to 
me. 
 


Aurealialuz said:
idiocy posted to the web is eternal now, i'm  sure as shit not going 
to try to negatively immortalize myself  anymore than i already have. 
95% of my posts or replys to people get composed and then deleted. 
"oh, no one cares anyway and i'll  probably just end up looking 
stupid." 

Point taken. 
These groups are publishing - plain and simple. And there is risk in 
exposing oneself. The comment above bowled me over with it's full-on 
honesty. Aurealiuz NAILS a serious issue there. How much of that 95% 
aborted posts would have helped a reader further down the food chain? 
On the other hand I've seen groups so submerged in trivial flotsam 
that syntht's ratio of:

"it's like mining diamonds (10 tons of earth moved per carat)."

Is generous.

Clearly balance is required for these forums to work.
 I submit that a strategy for balance could be founded on the 
principles of fair debate. 

Bill said:
A good critical exchange should leave both (or multiple) parties with 
valuable information of the points of view exchanged, and should 
enable them to choose in the future based on  info they did not have 
before. This enriches everyone.

This is great stuff. Herein contained is a pretty good litmus test for 
deciding whether to post a remark in a public forum. In a word:
CONTENT. Is there INFORMATION in what you are about to say? 

But dr…..
Anything I think is information Right? Virtue or Vitriol- 

In my view , if your opinion contains no information other than 
X=scumlicking imbecile, (especially if this august assertion is 
unsupported by evidence) then it contains no information  and I think 
that it should be confined to private channels. Now everything can be 
twisted semantically (even math)(!) but I believe that anyone who, in 
good faith, wishes to communicate and not merely insult can discern 
for themselves whether  a remark contains INFORMATION or not. I would 
add my own  clarification to Bill's remark above and that is that , in 
a public forum, one never knows what 'info they did not have before' 
and so the basics can't be repeated enough and anyone who sneers out 
loud at even the most trivial and basic contributions do great harm to 
the medium.

In deference to reality I make a BIG distinction between public forums 
and private email though. I feel that duty binds to participation in 
an open public forum. But, in the realm of private communication, I'm 
an anarchist. In that realm (to quote Henry V): "a man's soul's his 
own"

With the barest tap on the faucet this group produced a whole pond of 
ideas overnight. My personal opinion is that Grant started Wiard as a 
message in a bottle to find out if anyone is out there. If nothing 
else, this thread proves that we are out here and there are a LOT of 
bottles in the water.
Thanks again for proving it

Heh...you are right, I forgot about the good ol' cybernetics trap of
information content.  :-)

Regards,

Bill
______________________________________________________________________
 Bill Sequeira, Ph.D.
 Principal, Axon Hillock


> From: "drmabuce" <drmabuce@yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: wiardgroup@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 22:07:41 -0000
> To: wiardgroup@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [wiardgroup] re: web groups: salons OF erudition or walls of
> grafitti?
> 
> Hi All,
> To my great horror and embarrassment I discover that I misspelled
> my SUBJECT line

> The ONE piece of text most often repeated-
> Oh well, lest I succumb to the sin of pride.
> 
> First off: THANKS
> Thanks to all of you who posted your thoughts so far
> And no less THANKS
> To those of you who have READ them

> A receiver is just as much work as a transmitter
> 
> This expands on my motivation for the original post.
> It was the member list that moved me. I wanted to do something that
> would give us all something to READ; something with a little meat on
> the bone. And y'all have done us proud in no more than 24 hours!
> 
> Liquidcolor said:
> 
> It's a testament to the allure and  mystique of the Wiard modular that
> there are more members in this group than the Serge group.
> 
> !!! - that's interesting , and  my surmise is that this list is as
> deep as it is wide. I just sprinkled the surface with a little bit of
> food and look what surfaced!!!!!
> I observe that there are also many more members than there are
> 'customers' (and my inner Tom Poston urges me to theorize (at the risk
> of Grant's justifiable irritation) that this is a testament to the
> price of the modules) but I  think that non-Wiard folks have PLENTY to
> say about Wiard and it is to the benefit of everyone to hear it - most
> particularly the 'the designer'. IMO  The open nature of this group
> comprises it's greatest potential to do good. There was not a single
> response to my original post that did not contain something useful to
> me. 
> 
> 
> 
> Aurealialuz said:
> idiocy posted to the web is eternal now, i'm  sure as shit not going
> to try to negatively immortalize myself  anymore than i already have.
> 95% of my posts or replys to people get composed and then deleted.
> "oh, no one cares anyway and i'll  probably just end up looking
> stupid." 
> 
> Point taken. 
> These groups are publishing - plain and simple. And there is risk in
> exposing oneself. The comment above bowled me over with it's full-on
> honesty. Aurealiuz NAILS a serious issue there. How much of that 95%
> aborted posts would have helped a reader further down the food chain?
> On the other hand I've seen groups so submerged in trivial flotsam
> that syntht's ratio of:
> 
> "it's like mining diamonds (10 tons of earth moved per carat)."
> 
> Is generous.
> 
> Clearly balance is required for these forums to work.
> I submit that a strategy for balance could be founded on the
> principles of fair debate.
> 
> Bill said:
> A good critical exchange should leave both (or multiple) parties with
> valuable information of the points of view exchanged, and should
> enable them to choose in the future based on  info they did not have
> before. This enriches everyone.
> 
> This is great stuff. Herein contained is a pretty good litmus test for
> deciding whether to post a remark in a public forum. In a word:
> CONTENT. Is there INFORMATION in what you are about to say?
> 
> But dr
..

> Anything I think is information Right? Virtue or Vitriol-
> 
> In my view , if your opinion contains no information other than
> X=scumlicking imbecile, (especially if this august assertion is
> unsupported by evidence) then it contains no information  and I think
> that it should be confined to private channels. Now everything can be
> twisted semantically (even math)(!) but I believe that anyone who, in
> good faith, wishes to communicate and not merely insult can discern
> for themselves whether  a remark contains INFORMATION or not. I would
> add my own  clarification to Bill's remark above and that is that , in
> a public forum, one never knows what 'info they did not have before'
> and so the basics can't be repeated enough and anyone who sneers out
> loud at even the most trivial and basic contributions do great harm to
> the medium.
> 
> In deference to reality I make a BIG distinction between public forums
> and private email though. I feel that duty binds to participation in
> an open public forum. But, in the realm of private communication, I'm
> an anarchist. In that realm (to quote Henry V): "a man's soul's his
> own"
> 
> With the barest tap on the faucet this group produced a whole pond of
> ideas overnight. My personal opinion is that Grant started Wiard as a
> message in a bottle to find out if anyone is out there. If nothing
> else, this thread proves that we are out here and there are a LOT of
> bottles in the water.
> Thanks again for proving it
> 
> 
> 
> 
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> wiardgroup-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
> 
> 
> 
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
> 
> 
>

--- In wiardgroup@y..., Bill Sequeira <bill@a...> wrote:
> Heh...you are right, I forgot about the good ol' cybernetics trap of
> information content.  :-)
> 

ah yes! the TRAP of cybernetics.
- a trap i would gladly escape more often.... it's my 'day gig'
and lemme tell ya - it ain't the sci-fi vision that folks think-
Arthur Clarke really got it wrong. In reality, all Dave Bowman would have had to do on his trip to Jupiter is WAIT... for HAL9000's MSWindows v2001 OS  to encounter a trivial registry conflict and... DOINK!.... he would have de-installed himself and forced a reboot. On average this would occur ....ummmmmm
twice a day (three times if there were deadlines)
It would have made for a MUCH shorter movie.
;'>

actually I want to clarify a point that i made in my original post:

I said:
>cults of personality formed around design concepts of the gadgets from which the nature of the designers is extrapolated (with a predictably-high degree of inaccuracy, I think)<

Bill said:
>I think there is a significant amount of mixing of an individual's
identity with what they have/bought/use/do.<

aurelialuz said:
>i'd have to disagree here. the ford-chevy rivalry is as old as the
hills, as is the coke-pepsi rivalry, as is...etc. etc. the thing
about americans (and i know this is an international forum, but i can
only speak for americans) is for some reason, they seem to equate the
things they buy with who they are. look at the early rap movement,
it was all about kangols, gold chain, cars; it's the same in a lot of
segments of our society.<

Now right from the get-go. I really can't tell whether either Bill or Aurelialuz are addressing my point about the fallacy of discerning the nature of the DESIGNER from that which is designed. I kinda suspect that their statements are NOT addressed to my specific remark. But their points got me thinking a little further on the issue. 

First I want to state that both fellows assert that people identify with what they buy... and I agree entirely. America (with all due deference to our international forum) votes with it's dollars and a new identities are are on sale now at ALL your local outlets. Skuenel pointed out that wide access via the internet has exacerbated this endemic consumerism. Again, I agree completely. 
More specifically I observe that the tribalism which attends the analog synth web groups is composed of the -consumers- of the gear (or the desire for the gear)
But I want to make a distinction here...
my remark refers to observations about the ostensible 'chiefs' of the tribes, the designers themselves. (I call them chiefs because the tribes rally around them. I'm emphatically NOT trying alluding to anyones REAL position)
I have had the privilege (the curiosity- well, OK, the nosey-ness, the pushiness) to meet and talk with a few of the designers of analog gear. 
(this is a footnote: and I am SO grateful that it is still POSSIBLE to meet designers, as opposed to the COMMITTEEs.... so far....)
Their personalities do not mesh at all with the characteristics ascribed to their gear and in many ways countermand them. I'm not at all claiming that a sole designers personality has NO influence over a design (to do so would be absurd) I'm saying that the 'archetypes' that the webgroups synthesize of a 'Bob Moog' or 'Don Buchla' just AIN'T like the real guy. 
   This makes me happy because anyone trying to assemble a notion of me based on the very scanty information about my DIY designs on the web would presume that I am transparent, addicted to Vactrols, and inconsistently color-coded. All of which is untrue. (I can quit using Vactrols any time I want). 
But more seriously, I get nervous when people blithely declare that: someone IS [any adjective here] 
when all they know is that person's work. I realize that some designers elect to expose more of themselves through their written opinions and that is another matter entirely.
 
   At the brain-dead corporation where I work, the 'geniuses' in QA are found of posting a motivational poster that says: "Each piece of work is a portrait it's maker" 
   
   Phooey says I!.... Phooey pure and complete!
    
   The artifact reveals a bit but I think it is a mistake to assume that a person's work reveals anything even approaching a complete portrait. 
Better to talk about the art than the artist.

-dm.



(footnote about those nitwit posters:) I do agree with the slogan insofar as.... the work ie: pinning-up pithy ineffectual posters, is a portrait of it's maker ie: ineffectual QA droids whose skills are limited to hanging posters about what they lack the savvy to actually fix!
(can you tell this is a hot button???)
doubly ironic is the background picture: a violin bathed in lustrous golden sunlight amidst curled spruce shavings. The photographer failed to conceal the corner of a label that identifies the fiddle as machine-made plywood, as cheap as you can get, and the sunlight is strong enough to expose gaps in the joining of the top to the sides
now that's the REAL message!

Comments below.

> From: "drmabuce" <drmabuce@yahoo.com>
> Subject: [wiardgroup] the man behind the curtain (was erudition vs grafitti)
>
> ah yes! the TRAP of cybernetics.
> - a trap i would gladly escape more often.... it's my 'day gig'
> and lemme tell ya - it ain't the sci-fi vision that folks think-
> Arthur Clarke really got it wrong. In reality, all Dave Bowman would have had
> to do on his trip to Jupiter is WAIT... for HAL9000's MSWindows v2001 OS  to
> encounter a trivial registry conflict and... DOINK!.... he would have
> de-installed himself and forced a reboot. On average this would occur
> ....ummmmmm
> twice a day (three times if there were deadlines)
> It would have made for a MUCH shorter movie.
> ;'>

Or, if you are in a real hurry, tap into the hacker website of your choice
(directly from Jupiter), get the MSWindows 2001 Preferred Backdoor List,
and tap into HAL.  No hassle, no need to displace HAL's holographic memory
modules.  Never mind all life support systems going down with HAL, but,
hey, you were in a hurry.  :-)

BTW, I was always impressed by the fact that HAL didn't have a plug.  :-)

> I said:
>> cults of personality formed around design concepts of the gadgets from which
>> the nature of the designers is extrapolated (with a predictably-high degree
>> of inaccuracy, I think)<
> 
> Bill said:
>> I think there is a significant amount of mixing of an individual's
> identity with what they have/bought/use/do.<

> Now right from the get-go. I really can't tell whether either Bill or
> Aurelialuz are addressing my point about the fallacy of discerning the nature
> of the DESIGNER from that which is designed. I kinda suspect that their
> statements are NOT addressed to my specific remark. But their points got me
> thinking a little further on the issue.

Although not explicitly I was pointing at the identification with the object
and consequently with the designer - if I as a consumer know the designer of
the object I love, and have access to the designer somehow, I can then
quote what the designer says to me to others, which elevates my status in
in the tribe.  What I call the messenger from god syndrome.  It's all tied
up.

Commenting on the rest of your post, what folks do is not who they are, as
what they do can change on a whim.

But, and here is the conundrum, you are known to people by what you do, so
they derive conclusions.  It is your business card so to speak.

Hence the paradox, made worse by disintermediation, as you can go from
un-informed to mis-informed in 0.1 seconds.  :-)


Regards,

Bill
______________________________________________________________________
 Bill Sequeira, Ph.D.
 Principal, Axon Hillock