https://www.crofton.black/contact daily 0.75 2021-12-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1582019389169-2RNAX85XSH6NOQ9S3UT0/hamburg+show.jpeg Contact https://www.crofton.black/war-taxonomies daily 0.75 2020-05-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590148070792-5S4G7353J74U1SQ1GFGE/Bosch-Creation-Of-The-World.jpg War Taxonomies - These numbers, and other numbers like them, are in some sense too big to understand. And the data which they are drawn from are themselves too big to be visible. Every encyclopaedic project represents an attempt to deal with the problem of what, these days, we might call big data. It's a problem that is more central to us as humans than you might at first imagine. We are data-processing entities, and our foundational myths are data-processing myths. The Genesis narrative is one such. At the start of the narrative, the "beginning", everything is confusion: tohu-va-bohu, translated as formless void in the King James Bible ("the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep") but commonly glossed by kabbalist interpreters as including the inherent potential for form, the acknowledgement that some inchoate form existed within it. The process of creation is a process of drawing out this form through distinction, division, demarcation, the creation of categories and nomenclature: light is divided from darkness, one is called day and the other night; the waters are divided by the firmament, and one division of these is then subdivided into land and sea, the land itself divided into herbs and fruits, and so on. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590167835717-VK3YRIX9ICSDGU258XPJ/borgesdesmazieres2.jpg War Taxonomies - The process of creation, then, is a narrative of a process of knowledge: an account of the human mind getting to grips with the mass of data that surrounds it. Attempts to represent knowledge regularly come up against the problem of scale. It is a problem that Borges memorably portrayed in his Library of Babel [slide]: the vertiginous library contains everything and its opposite, everything that has been, will be or could be and paradoxically everything that is not (which therefore is). "It contains all knowledge but it cannot be accessed". Historians sometimes portray the transition to modernity in terms of the transition away from mimetic encyclopaedic forms. Or to put it another way: the transition from complex structures, supposed to represent something imitatively, to lists, which have no imitative or signifying function. In the Middle Ages, it was typical for works which attempted to contain the world's knowledge to do so by a mirroring or mimetic structure: works were frequently divided thematically, into the seven liberal arts or themes based on this (the Margarita philosophica); into logical attributes (Ramon Llull’s Ars magna) or into the cosmic hierarchy of being (Giovanni Pico’s Heptaplus). The sixteenth-century esotericist Francesco Zorzi, who is an extreme example of this tendency, structured his very large multi-volume "harmonia mundi" - the harmony of the world - after a complex system of “canticles, tones and modulations". https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590226931711-YS8AAOCHLD746HQB1DJZ/diderot%252Bsystem%252Bfigure.jpg War Taxonomies - Diderot and D'Alembert did conceive of knowledge as following a certain structure. And they placed this structure at the start of their book on a large fold-out page. But this structure was not to be the controlling arrangement of their book. D'Alembert spoke at length about the structure in his introductory remarks; he also spoke about its limitations. "Object of the encyclopaedic order: to gather [material] in the smallest possible space, and place the philosopher above the vast labyrinth from where he can look down on the principal arts and sciences at the same time; to see with a glance the objects of his speculations and the operations he can carry out on these objects; distinguish the general branches of the human knowledges, the points which separate or unite them, and even the secret paths which join them." He makes a specifically geographical analogy: "It is a type of world map, which must show the principal countries, their position and mutual dependence, the straight path from one to another; a path often cut by a thousand obstacles which are unknown except to inhabitants or travellers in each country, and which can only be shown on more detailed charts. These more detailed charts are the different articles in the encyclopaedia [i.e. the bits in alphabetical order] and the tree or figured system will be the world map." And he notes the role of the observer's perspective: "[But because the world map depends on the perspective from which it is drawn ...] we can imagine different world maps, different projections and almost all knowledgeable men place the knowledge that is their speciality at the centre of all the sciences. "There is of necessity something arbitrary in the organisation. The most natural arrangement would be that objects follow one another through insensible nuances which serve to unite and divide them. But the small number of entities known to us does not allow us to mark these nuances. The universe is nothing but a vast ocean, on the surface of which we perceive certain bigger or smaller islands, of which the link to the continent is hidden." Scholars and readers of the Encyclopédie are always delighted to examine its entry for itself - "Encyclopédie" which falls between “ENCROUÉ (adj. (Jurispr.) terme d'eaux & forêts, qui se dit d'un arbre lequel en tombant s'embarrasse dans les branches d'un autre arbre qui est sur pié)” and “ENDECAGONE (Voyez Hendecagone)”. Diderot, in this entry, described his brainchild as "simultaneously overstuffed and starved": "Here we are swollen and exorbitant, there meagre, small, paltry, dry and emaciated. In one place we resemble skeletons ... we are alternately dwarfs and giants, colossi and pygmies..." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590164780486-JRGT7ZIRE4B7B7EVD93O/westinghouse+capsule.jpeg War Taxonomies - The audience of an encyclopaedic project is often the learned, or just the average, people of the day. But sometimes it is explicitly something else: the people of the future, or the people of another planet. Diderot envisaged one use of his encyclopaedia as being a tool for recovery from a disaster to come: "some catastrophe so great as to suspend the progress of science and interrupt the labours of craftsmen and plunge a portion of our hemisphere into darkness once again". (How to ensure that the Encyclopaedia itself survived the catastrophe is something he did not make clear.) In this case, the creation narrative would turn backwards: things would lose their categories and distinctions and would revert to chaos, tohu-va-bohu. A twentieth-century encyclopaedic project was the burying, in 1965, of Westinghouse Electric Company's "Time Capsule II" in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, a record of twentieth-century civilisation comprising 17 cans of microfilm: "encyclopaedias, magazines, newspapers, technical papers, pamphlets, catalogs, transcripts, and 29 texts written especially for the capsule by international experts". It also included "Articles of common use": "a kind of cold war consumer survival kit including filtered cigarettes, tranquilizers, contact lenses, plastic wrap, freeze-dried food, detergent, credit cards, a bikini, and a Beatles record, all encased in a leak-proof, argon filled envelope". The capsule weighed 211 kilos and looked like a missile. (In the 1990s and 2000s Westinghouse Electric Corporation was in the throes of a long restructuring process. Parts of it became CBS and were then bought by Viacom. Parts were sold to Siemens. Parts were sold to British Nuclear Fuels which in turn was sold to Toshiba. Parts of it went to Northrop Grumman, the defence contractor, now one of the most frequently cited and highest earning corporations in the defense data repository: a company which in 2016 made 10,535 transactions with the government - 28 a day - for a total of 10,575,996,507.36.) More recently, the artist Trevor Paglen has developed his own version of this future-anxiety-encyclopaedia, entitled The Last Pictures: "a micro-etched disc with one hundred photographs, encased in a gold-plated shell, designed withstand the rigors of space and to last for billions of years" and launched from Kazakhstan into geostationary orbit on communications satellite EchoStar XVI in November 2012. "The satellite will spend fifteen years broadcasting television and high-bandwidth internet signals before maneuvering into a 'graveyard' orbit where it will become a ghost-ship, carrying The Last Pictures towards the depths of time.” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590168254500-B3WFBHNF1ZFDJ3BN4PUA/Slide14.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590168354683-89T0C89PWY8M1HJ0TJI5/Slide13.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151701105-0SHMJJRNARFP4C3KGFKG/Boeing.jpg War Taxonomies Boeing https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590167171568-5P496OCC8TGAE8IILL10/Slide30.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151737075-YIOP7I1KR5S5GB00S7DC/Harris.jpg War Taxonomies Harris Corp https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590167190186-93OHOFR0DR6VVOXKM0C4/Slide31.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590261891061-D4OVNZ3BVQDP0MSIK4SF/Slide45.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151761814-FVOPT35P571LQYFLR6UW/Lockheed.jpg War Taxonomies Lockheed Martin https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590167220444-1U1UUML3F3DG0C5ZOSEC/Slide34.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590261909619-O1DZYR1ZYCQS0MCUDFN8/Slide46.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151787388-YNB04KWQY6BWFVE19JVV/MSG.jpg War Taxonomies MSG https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590261919045-4093AT7K09ZMXO5S6MIY/Slide47.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151815120-6NQN5YRKGAJHQMIGT9IN/Royal+Dutch+Shell.jpg War Taxonomies Royal Dutch Shell https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590261934488-6186SN0HR0WQD5NX92IT/Slide48.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590151840623-HURDPL6B39SQ5FSIPII5/General+Dynamics.jpg War Taxonomies General Dynamics https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590261942927-64BXMUW9RL8NCZ0UX3S1/Slide49.jpg War Taxonomies https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590165297797-750M3EQAQ44LIH30S7T3/McKesson.jpg War Taxonomies McKesson https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590165339177-P6357PIMJD2HNLZUWEGN/Johns+Hopkins.jpg War Taxonomies Johns Hopkins https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590165365125-SUTHYOYYG1UAYYEALPXO/Raytheon.jpg War Taxonomies Raytheon https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e4abd16386d0459c865a37e/1590165396733-2ILWQAHKDYQ2X35743SI/Professional+Contract+Services.jpg War Taxonomies Professional Contract Services https://www.crofton.black/new-page daily 0.75 2020-05-22 https://www.crofton.black/projects daily 1.0 2025-02-04 https://www.crofton.black/projects/signal-and-noise monthly 0.5 2023-06-13 https://www.crofton.black/projects/signal-and-noise-hpnd2 monthly 0.5 2023-06-13 https://www.crofton.black/projects/signal-and-noise-zwmcb monthly 0.5 2023-06-14 https://www.crofton.black/projects/knowledge-theories monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/outsourced-war monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/negative-publicity monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/and-other-stories monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/decision-machines monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/black-sites monthly 0.5 2020-02-18 https://www.crofton.black/projects/what-i-do monthly 0.5 2020-02-18