Glancing at a wikipedia article about cut-ups, I ran into an interesting idea. Coined by the CrimethInc. collective in their book, Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook, behavioural cut-ups are a method of changing one's life by performing activities which are thought to cut up two socially acceptable, mundane behaviours and combining them to form a creative, amusing activity.

Although we specifically cut up language by physically cutting paper and rearanging fourths of pages and copying and pasting on plurk, these class activities are merely symbols of the greater cut-up structure of our nanotext class. Even The Ticket that Exploded, while intrinsically valuable, is merely a vehicle to illustrate the overall class concept.

Specifically, the class cut up the elements of time, space, and leadership hierarchy to question the arbitrary social norms within academia.

From the begining of class, Doctor Prichard told us that he wanted class to exist outside of the specified time frames of Mondays, Wednessdays, and Fridays from 1:00 to 2:20 PM. By providing blog and plurk assignments, he has encouraged us to communicate with each other when ispiration strikes, regardless of the time of day. By taking class communication outside of chosen time frame, Nanotext has cut up our typical homework behavior with our classroom discussion behavior to question the existing educational paradigm and propose a new learning tool.

Additionally, Doctor Prichard frequently questioned the space where we hold our tri-weekly class meetings. He encouraged us to look for other spaces to have class, searched buildings to see if other rooms would be available, and suspended his voice for a day to have class via plurk. Each of these statements and activities forced us to question our notion of environmental constantcy for class activities and cut up the spaces for our class, our homework, and our everyday lives.

Perhaps most importantly, Doctor Prichard is trying to cut up his own profession. By generating reasons for students to come to the front of the room, allowing students to guide the class discussion, and openly questioning the teacher-student relationship, Doctor Prichard is helping to cut up our categories of teachers and students, and the roles that individuals should play in college.

Although cutting paper and copying and pasting to create language cut ups is significantly interesting, behavioral cut ups are the most salient tool for our class to open the acedmic box.

Economic Crisis

In times of crisis, people are left with a couple options. They can open their mind to new perspectives and lobby on behalf of ideas and solutions or they can shrink to the crisis, providing a vaccuum for a few select leaders to attain more power.


The current economic crisis has led people to do both. Overwhelmed by the economic collapse and realization of the complexity of the global financial system, people have chosen to put more faith in the government, specifically federal icons, to solve our problems. After the excitement of Oboma's election dissolved, government oversight has decreased and become more ambiguous.


Along with this reduction in government scrutiny, people seem to be more open to an economic paradigm shift. While the capitalist system was promoting growth through competition, it seemed impossible to drastically change our system while the media (particularly the arrows that point up or down representing stock market fluctuations) presented positive ideas about our economic position. People seem more open to socialism when their ability to use the capitalist system to their advantage appears more difficult. With greater uncertainty about their investments and less security in their jobs, people's economic paradigms shift closer to the ideal of equity proposed by John Rawlings writing about the veil of ignorance. If people are unsure about what end of the economic totem pole they will wind up on, they are more willing to equalize compensation.

Perhaps Marx was right all along and we'll eventually move towards socialism. Perhaps the market of ideas will open to a brand new economic system. Perhaps capitalist tradition will hold. But goddam are people scared right now.

Determinism

In his description of fate, the Flouroscopic Kid claims that, "the house know every card you will be dealt and how you will play all your cards" (The Ticket that Exploded, 159). In this paradigm, one who plays a card that was not dealt is an exception to the rule.

But from my vantage point, there seems to be enough agency and absurdity in the unraveling of events to dismiss the idea that a symbolic house determines our every day lives. For example, my decision to go to class today instead of staying in the sun may have been influenced by environmental factors and previous conditions, but ultimately I held complete autonomy over that decision. By choosing to skip class I would not be breaking any fatalist rule, but rather simply making a different choice. Since decisions like this rest within the agent, any form of fate is ultimately self imposed.

Although recorded material is incredibly popular and taken for granted, the accumulated effects of listening to past conversations are difficult to measure. In The Ticket that Exploded, William S. Burroughs suggests that "after analyzing recorded conversations, you will learn to steer a conversation where you want it to go" (208). Indeed, analyzing the cues and transitions in human conversations from an objective perspective helps us learn how to emulate, avoid, or strengthen certain comminication tools.

Perhaps, the average person with access to recorded media does not utilize this learning tool well enough. In our every day media outlets, such as movies, television, and youtube, we rarely watch or analyze our own previous conversations to become conscious of our communication tactics. In a media world where our analysis of recorded actions and conversations develop our schema about how the world works, it would be helpful to include ourselves within that representation. Our metaphors of ourselves cannot exist intraveniously through other people alone.

The End of Work

As a major theme in part one of Technocalyps, people are dissatisfied with the biological status quo. In an age where technology can outperform us in many areas and potentially could outperform us in every practical area, our biological mechanisms feel inadequate. To compete with our virtual representations and artificial intelligence in general, we need to modify our biological functions drastically.

In our discussion of the potential affect of future technology on our way of life, several people suggested that the necessity of work is essential to humanity. Supposedly, without work, humans would have nothing to strive for. But throughout history, people have tried to delegate work to others or create inventions that can complete the tasks faster. Within this process, we have not gotten bored. We have merely transferred a large portion of our work into information technology and research investigation. Without complex organization and technology, we could not practically focus on fields such as philosophy and psychology or entertain ourselves with recreation such as football or baseball. Perhaps at a stage of human existence where work is completely unnecessary, people could find joy in the acts themselves and challenge themselves physically and intellectually for fun. Without obligations, the contrast between the ideas of work and play would dissolve and true human nature could be revealed more openly.