These postcards

begin

with a text,

but soon move

to a deeper

understanding

of what I and we need

to do.

Worrying

St. Augustine pier offers a moment to consider what it means "to worry," whether "worrying" is healthy, productive, and if there is a better word describe "worrying."

"I've been working on my aesthetic attitude."
"What does that mean?  Can you put that in everyday people's language?"
"Well, what does "aesthetic" mean?"
. . .
"And what does "attitude" mean?"
. . .
"I think you should give more credit to everyday people to be able to think in complex ways.  While academic jargon is at times exclusive and unproductive, I don't think these complex ideas should have a simplified language.  And I think everyday people should push themselves to better understand the ideas and learn the language.  They have the capacity."



"All men [humans] are intellectuals, one could therefore say; but all men do not have the function of intellectuals in society" - Antonio Gramsci (The Modern Prince & other writings 121).

Part Two refresher

Part two of Dr. Ulmer’s seminar Ubiquitous Imaging situates us (he and the graduate students, as well as various communities: University of Florida, Gainesville, Alachua county, Florida, the United States, the World) in front of prudence. One of our jobs (Ulmer and the graduate students in this seminar) is to konsult the community (analogous to dialogue in the academy in Athens) about lifestyles: the desire for taste has (had) implications far reaching.  Thus, we also need to address how a community makes decisions in globalization. In order to understand this prudence, we first begin with Einstellung (aesthetic attitude) and konsult with daimon: the split of identity formation. When our daimon says “NO,” our avatar functions to inform us on prudence.  And such konsulting becomes a genre that enables us to affectively live, to feel our capacity for limitation, as well as reclaim (or show others how to reclaim) agency as the microcosm (part one of the seminar) connects explicitly with the macrocosm.  

The Konsult develops through Ulmer’s method ― CATTt (Contrast, Analogy, Theory, Target, tale). This method provides a heuretic for (re)articulating group/collective identity (or a self-help konsulting for individuals to make decisions collectively).  For Ubiquitous Imaging, Ulmer chose the five texts which fit into these slots:  Contrast: Universal Experience Analogy: Robert Smithson –Learning from New Jersey and Elsewhere Theory: Avatar Emergency Target: Ubiquitous computing on behalf of well-being tale: Once.  These texts allow us (graduate students) to work within electracy (the apparatus that produced new institutions, new practices, and new kinds of experiences in the industrial revolution) and with pervasive computing, which should allow us to move toward well-being in everyday life, public deliberation, and public policy formation.