Notes + Links / Casey A. Gollan

We are alive at a time when huge systems—industrial, infrastructural—are being remade, and I think it’s our responsibility as we make choices both commercial and civic—it’s just a light responsibility, don’t stress—to extrapolate forward, and ask ourselves: Is this a system I want to live inside? Is this a system fit for humans?

Mark Twain, once a steamboat captain on the Mississippi, developed techniques for navigating the river. While the passengers saw "pretty pictures" of landscape scenes, he was extracting information from the changing "face of the water." A little ripple. eddy or "faint dimple" signaled turbulence or obstacles in the complex and potentially dangerous organization below the surface. These were markers of unfolding potentials or inherent agency in the river—what can only be called its disposition. Disposition is the character or propensity of an organization that results from all its activity. It is the medium, not the message. It is not the pattern printed on the fabric but the way the fabric floats. It is not the shape of the game piece but the way the game piece plays. It is not the text but the constantly updating software that manages the text. Not the object form but the active form. ... Only multiple deformations of rubber signal the material’s disposition to elasticity, and only after time can one observe that it has lost its elasticity. Just as the ball that does not need to roll down the incline, glass does not have to be shattered in order to be brittle. There is no need for movement or event. Disposition remains as a latent potential or tendency that is present even in the absence of an event.