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Norbert Wiener is the founder of cybernetics, a field that formalizes the notion of feedback and has implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, philosophy, and the organization of society. He traveled to Europe in 1914, to study at Cambridge University under G.H. Hardy and Bertrand Russell, and then at the University of Gottingen, Germany under David Hilbert and Edmund Landau. With the outbreak of WW ! he was invited to work on ballistics at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. From 1917-18 Weiner wore a uniform....but he was eventually to become a pacifist. After the war Wiener was invited to become an instructor at MIT, where he spent the remainder of his career. In 1926 he returned to Europe as a Guggenheim scholar. His time being spent mostly at Gottengen and with Hardy at Cambridge, working on the Fourier integral, Tauberian theorems, Brownian motion, harmonic analysis, and Dirichlet's problem. During WW II his work on the automatic aiming and firing of anti-aircraft guns led Wiener to communication theory and eventually to formulate cybernetics. When the war was over his notoriety helped MIT to assemble a research team in cognitive science, made up of researchers in neuropsychology and the mathematics and biophysics of the nervous system, including Warren Sturgis McCulloch and Walter Pitts. Thses men later made pioneering contributions to computer science and artificial intelligence. Not long after the group was established, Weiner ceased all contact with its' members. Even today no one is quite sure why. He continued to make breakthroughs in cybernetics, robotics, computer control, and automation India recognized his influential ideas and sought his advice during the 1950's.
Weiner was asked to join the Manhatten Project but declined. After WW II he became more and more concerned with what he saw as political interference inthe community of scientific research and the militarization of science. He wrote "A Scientist Rebels" in the Atlantic Monthly's issue of January 1947 asking scientists to be aware of the relationship between ethics and their profession.
Needless to say, the "Hold the Mustard" was a big walk-by quip from 2004 to 2006 with the "Are-Cans".......
The conflict in Yugoslavia in the 1990's gave rise to individuals renowned for their brutality as they held military positions. One such individual was 47 year-old Zelijko Raznatovic otherwise known as "Arkan". During 1991, Arkan's Serb Volunteer Guard or "Tigers" became the most powerful paramilitary unit in eastern Slavonija, the part of Croatia that borders Serbia. In a massive operation of plunder and slaughter in the villages surrounding the besieged town of Vukovar, Arkan established a veritable corporation in Erdut, his local headquarters. He repeated ths strategy in Bosnia and Hercegovina, driving out or murdering Muslims from eastern Bosnia, and then establishing strong commercial links with the wartime Bosnian Serb parastate. Born in Brezice, a small Slovenian town 12 miles west of Zagreb, the Croatian capital, he was the son of a senior officer in the Yugoslavia airforce. He spent some time in Europe and returned to Belgrade in 1986 to open his to become famous, ice-cream shop, located opposite the stadium of Serbia's most successful football team, Red Star Belgrade.
Arkan soon became chairman of the Red Star's fan club, Delije (The Warriors). He was arrested in the village of Dvorna Uni by Croatian police and charged with unauthorized possession of weapons. He returned to Belgrade after six months in custody. He boasted he would soon "be back in Zagreb to open a cake shop on Republic Square". The then Croatian interior minister, Josip Bolijkovac, has revealed that the Belgrade authorities bought Arkan's freedom from imprisonment for 1m German marks, a trade-off which many Croats would later regret - though, at the time, the Croatian government was desperate for hard currency to purchase weapons. On January 15, 2000, Arkan was gunned down in Belgrade.
Hence the term "Game-Boy Arkans" as one of many pseudonyms used by groups using this invasive cybernetic technology. A satirical motto in English meaning "Are-Can" also because their English in not exactly perspicuous.
Teleology (Greek: telos (τελος): end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design, purpose, directive principle, or finality in nature or human creations. It is traditionally cntrasted with philosphical naturalism, which views nature as lacking design or purpose. In opposition to this, teleology holds there is a final purpose inherent in all beings. The subject of teleology spans a great deal of time in its' connection with the unraveling of technology by mankind. Observance of "teleogical mechanisms" in machnery (i.e. machnes with corrective feedback) dates back at least to the late 1700"s when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor. Which brings us back to the origin of the word Cybernetics. Cyber, as I stated earllier, in Greek means to "Govern", a steering mechanism..... - the Greek word being "κιβερνισι" - cyvernisi. The root of the governng concept burrowed in Greek ideology which ironically epitomizes freedom. This dichotomy is also a walk-by in "Are-Can" being "Die-caught-o-me-o-my".
Julian Bigelow, Arturo Rosenblueth and Norbet Wiener cnceived of teleogy in machnery as being a feedback mechanism. Wiener coined the word "cybernetics" to denote the study of the communication and control of regulatory feedback, both in living beings and machines, and in combination of the two.
So you see this attitude of "Are-Can" has unleashed the horrific episodes at the turn of the 20th Century. Undoubtedly its definition of using licentious recourse devoid of due process has led paths of destruction throughout the history of mankind....but not with the technology available at this point in time. Proper comprehension and exploration of this phenomena will require persistant analysis and critical acuity.
I took a freind on July 17, 1996 to the Athens airport, who was on Flight 800 with TWA from Athens to NewYork where my friend changed planes and flew on to San Francisco. It was then, more than ever before, that I was receiving a good deal ofharassment in the way of loud voices in the distance or passers-by either walking or on motorbikes....(or scooters-which I remember especially because of the nickname "Scooter" given to Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby who was assistant to former President George Bush and Chief of Staff to former VicePresident Dick Cheney and Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005). It was summer, July 10th, 1996 and I woudltalk everyday now almost with my girlfriend. She and her daughter were going to San Franciscoto visit her father on July 17th.. So I was going to give her a ride to the airport. They were very excited as her daughter then was only 12 and had not been to the United States yet. They were going to go to Hawaii and visit an old friend of hers who had lived in San Francisco and later relocated to Hawaii. She had been trying to encourage her to come and move there as it was so beautiful. We had to be at the airport three hours ahead of time...this was at the old Athens airport....the new one for the Olympics having yet to kick off and no one knew the 2004 Athens Olympics were coming yet. I had my hesitations, though as she was traveling with TWA....I said,"Why are you going TWA? You know the history with the airline in this area"....She said, "Oh, come on, it'll be alright. My travel agent said it was the best one for connections otherwise we'd be stuck forever in a couple places. What would I do with my daughter..she is so young and she'll get so tired. She's so excited and I don't want her to get disappointed by dragging our feet for hours waiting in a transfer." The day our Jeep was "marshmellowed" in the explosion she was shocked.and walked over to it before they removed it to the garage...she smelled the charred metal and melted plastic still eminati ng from it there on the side street in fornt of the high school....just two small streets from our apartments...we used to live in the same building...the same as where the Commander lived....she on the first floor and I on the thrid...she lent us money to fix it...there were no automatic tellers at that time and Tom had to go to the bank and wait in long lines....he didn't have the time what with the patterns...material being delivered and having to make deadlines for Christmas orders....I preferred to let him handle the finances as the "Are-Cans" folowed me everywhere...the thought of waiting in a long line at a bank listening to this voice "τεσσερα κατες, τεσσερα κατες, τεσσερα κατες τεσσερα κατες" (which means "four cats, four cats, four cats, four cats") on and on made me want to throw up. I didn't mention the voices to my friend...she never said she heard anything and as they really just started all the time I thought I would just follow through to see what happened... she lent us money to pay the garage when the car was repaired because Tom could cash some checks that had just been given us for some clothing we had just delivered. She was so very generous....I didn't want to alarm her and she was so excited about going. She too had moved the previous year as they had sold her apartment ot a psychiatrist who would make it his office. She now lived a few streets away, as a matter of fact, she now lived exactly across our old apartment...the one we lived in for some seven years before we moved into the apartment building where we met. Kind of like a circle. A street with a lot of little souvenir shops and tourists.
So on the morning of July 17, 1996 we went to the airport and we arrived three hours before on time....my mind running so concertedly on how I would eventually write what was happening that I completely forgot about the time lots of times...I often offered to give lifts to peope but eventually stopped because it became very difficult for me to function with the system of time....I am unable to work in anyway except with my painting and writing...it is all that had been impenetrable to the hostage taking "Are-Cans".....I wanted desperately to thank my girlfreind for her help and I usually liked going into the airport...the atmosphere of travel being so immediate...people from so many different places...peoples expressions varying so...excitement...business oriented...confusion...perturbed...but this time I had no intention of going in...My friend thought it would be a nice idea to come in for a coffee and sit for a while...but I couldn't...I just explained that I had a few things to do...my world was literally spinning and primarily from the fact that it was becoming clearer and clearer at what was actually happening.
She opened the door,,,,it was still early...TWA Flight 800 was leaving at 1:30 and it was just close to 10 am...but you could feel the hot day beginning....the sound and smell of the jet engines filled the air as well as their vibrations tingling through the body as they zoomed off into the air....There were many cars on the arrival ramp...it was summer...`..Greece....the middle of July.....I got out and helped her daughter climb out of the back of the jeep and remove the luggage...they were taking gifts...I waited with her while her Mom went to find a baggage cart and we piled the four pieces of luggage on top of one another...her daughter straightening her clothes after being so crumpled in the back, fixing her hair a little bit...but smiling... saying there wouldn't be so many connections....Her Mom very visibly excited and happy especially to introduce her daughter to all her former friends when they got to San Francisco........soooooo.....we looked at each other, hugged and kissed and hugged again.......and having hugged her daughter she gave me a big smile and put her hat on. Together they started off for the terminal, looking left and right to cross the lane in front of the airport which was only for offcial purposes....There was a breeze picking up and as I watched them go in the building I heard "τεσσερα κατες", "τεσσερα κατες" τεσσερα κατες" "τεσσερα κατες""...I slowly turned and closed the back door of the jeep...locked it....and then noticed the tanks and the anti-terrorist guards with their machine guns...the tanks being not those of the large fighting category...more the malicious militia suburban model...and I swore, as I got back in the the jeep and began to drive, I heard the guards saying: "Yea, it's all the "Man from Bogota" and his "τεσσερα κατες" being carried on the wind.....The chatter never stopped.......
By the time I got through the morning traffic it was almost afternoon and it was hot.....I actually had a few things to do...I turned on the air-conditioner and fixed a few orders for swimwear that were to be delivered that evening....Later, I would have to pick Tom up at the studio and possibly someone would have to be at the studio as rolls of material we were waiting for might be delivered...and in the evening around 9 pm Tom would play chess and help out at the "Gallery" across the street from us that was run by a friend of ours who is an excellent sculptor. so no definite schedule....always fluctuating.......but hardly anytime except for a yogurt, an apple or coffee. There in the house, the voices always reverberating through the walls...it was almost four months now and still showed no signs of abating but was actually picking up speed...If I followed it I would be left short of breath...but the thought of not following it was incomprehensible...Who would ever devise an idea like this? What kind of program was this?...assuming that it could be a computer projection of an ever repeating phrase...the Casio Digital Watch has a ten year battery life...and various groups such as security companies and terrorists and their interweaving connections are connected, if you will paron the reiteration, to state-of-the-art invasive technology throughout the world and as to the consequences that would come to the fore some 10 years later in Iraq....private security companies are everywhere. Where would the "Are-Cans" find the equipment? Where would they find the time?....Wouldn't they be paid for it....somehow I couldn't see it being volunteer work...I finished tying up a few packets of swimsuits....and arranged them in their delivery orders....CNN was on the television...I always had it on...always listening to the news on Bosnia and Kosovo...for the three hours I had been home the voices were ever adjacent to my home....The phone rang. . It was Tom.....he wanted me to come and pick him up at the workshop (where we sewed the clothing) as he had things that were ready to be packaged....Traffic would be heavy...it was 3:30 pm...the workshop was about a twenty minute drive...the cool air still on my clothes as I made my way to where I parked the jeep and I looked up at the blue sky and knew my girlfriend and her daughter would be making their way too.
The evening came cool and quiet after a long afternoon of hustling and bustling.....Tom decided to have dinner with our sculptor friend at a taverna we frequented near-by the "Gallery" later that evening as there were the stewardesses arriving from the Delta flights and they all enjoyed each others' company...The girls regualrly bought gifts from the "Gallery" and they were super nice and fun...Tom had known them well for the last five years...the winter months we would see them occasionally...being summer and Delta just expanding into Europe covering some of the former Pan American flights we saw them almost every two weeks. I was relieved from having not to think about what to fix for dinner...it was around 8:30...Tom took a shower and left...I plopped down with my cats on the bed...the cool fresh air from th garden breathing new life into my being and I turned on the television. What was on I have no recollection...the screaming and repetitive sounds of "τεσσερες κατες", τεσσερες κατες", "τεσσερες κατες", "τεσσερες κατες". "τεσσερας κατες", "τεσσερες κατες",...what can I say?...disproportionate to the surroundings? I just read yesterday (this being 2007) that the 6,000 page file concerning the findings of Princess Diana's death is missing. The lawyer of one of the defendants in the case against the motorscooters that chased her car asked to review the file and no one could find it...They do have a copy that was sent to the British authorities who will now resend it to Paris...hard to believe that one month from the time this was initially written, (having happen in July 1996 but I wrote it the following year in July 1997) on August 31st, 1997, this horrible accident would happen Gianni Versace will have been bid adieu by the Fashion world on July 15th (1997) of this year with Princess Diana having been able to personally express her condolences. And Princess Diana having met Mother Teresa in the Bronx, New York that June (1997) would later holiday in Greece for a short time and then travel to Paris in August. Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania on August 26, 1910, would herself pass away the following week of Princess Diana' death, on September 5, 1997.......and today as I write this now...September 6, 2007...six years after and five days before 9/11...I listen to the voice of Pavarotti.....who has died today.
6,000 pages....in the years of 1993 to today 2007 this voice that has never stopped ...24/7.. it is literally impossible to express the time scale involved...seconds...minutes......and although this is a major point,...the illness from which this originates is another section of the event. Channeling in its' pure sense is one of the most exhausting things the human mind can do. And with my experience as to whether one is actually channelilng or not is a major question...the voices outside my window...permeating the walls...this Saturday evening (now meaning back on the evening of July 17, 1996) were not unlike those of our other flat on 23 Nicodimou (where the Commander had moved into just around the corner from 5 Agia Sotira where we were living in 1996).....the Saturday night fun loving groups...the tinkling of glasses at the tavernas..the soft rustle of the leaves....sometimes the tourists would sing a song from their country...the Italians were very good at this....the would fill the tavernas full of spirit, hold hands or put their arms around each others' shoulders and break out in song...the only thing different was the "τεσσερες κατες", "τεσσερας κατες", "τεσσερες κατες" and sometimes now I could hear a word here and there...that would follow into a conversation....when the voices recognized I was tracking their train of thought...there would be a moment of silence...to see if I woud move my thoughts to something....but I would remain passive as well....from this time period up until six months later when I went to speak with the FBI who came to investigate the downing of TWA Flight 800 the voices never really went into more than mere words or a sentence....let alone overdrive...but its' encephalos (main brain center, let's say) was tracking....trying to find out how I would follow their auto-suggestions on their remote fMRI/ThruWallSensors-TWS ( which cannot be deinied here, there could be no doubt, no question as to how I could follow them - rather than consider it part of a sub-conscious reasoning....1.) Their conceptual framework being of an ignorant nature 2.) totally alien in culture and 3. )being absolutely out of contact with Reality) But at the risk of sounding too psychoanalytic...I must admit I did have some obvious help. For example....trhe voices undercarpeting "tessera cats" would speak in Greek....and I would listen comtemplatively....eventually I would sit listening to them with a Greek dictionary as I did not understand someof the words...hence during those initial 6 months before I went to the FBI I learned quite a few new words much to the voices dismay...this was also unexplicable...I mean the voices were not there to educate or create or I could have become fluent in five languages by now or have been able to have completed quite a few more canvases. And this is how it went.... I would follow their suggestive, completely-automated auto-suggestive fMRI tracking systems...procedures...words....complacency....more words....complacency, as I would wait to see where they were trying to go...or trying to lead....for what purpose?...and the "tessera cats", "tessera (four) cats". "tessera cats" would remain as well for the next six months....once I consulted with the FBI the tracking system began systematically and ferociously to follow every thought I might be thinking...coupling with every body movement in another voice sometimes male, sometimes female...from How I might want a drink of water or planning what clothes I would wear the next day...the "four cats" now being replaced with what would almost be a loudspeaker repeating everything I would think...which is where not onlythe thermographic sensitive machinery was put nto play but also the fMRI automatic monitoring of the brain. A complete monitoring system of the soma (body)...the voice xeroxing my thoughts was vindictive, disgusting, quasi-make....and when I clamed my thoughts...as I could, primarily because I was raised to be a professional golfer but also because my studies in meditation helped, the voice would continue on into some diatribe of monotony expecting my mind to pick up some of the suggestive garbage it kept relaying.....so now there were several tracks available...the report in Artificial Intelligence on July 19, 2007, nextbigfuture.com/2007/07/hardware-for-artificial-intelligence.html where 100 billion neurons can be simulated and the cost of acquiring the technology .So it was not a question of whether the voices were there or not anymore...but why....and what were the health risks of this somatic consumption.
Els Quatre Gats (The Four Cats) was the name of the Cafe frequented by Picasso It opened in on June 12, 1897 and became one of the main centers of Modernisme in Barcelona. The Cafe was reconstructed in 1978 and was reopened in 1989.... The "Cocktail party effect" describes the ability to focus ones listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises, ignoring other conversations. This effect enables us to talk in a noisy place. For example, when we are talking.with our friend in a crowded party, we can still listen and understand what our friend sayseven if the place is very noisy, and can simultaneously ignore what another nearby person is saying. Then if someone over on the other side of the party room calls out our name suddenly, we all notice that sound and respond to it immediately. The hearing reaches a noise suppression from 9 to 15 dB, i.e. the acoustic source, on which humans concentrate, seems to be three time louder than the ambient noise. A microphone recording in comparison will show a big difference.
Another aspect of the Cocktail -Party-Effect is de-reverberation. In a normal room a listener perceives much less echo and reverberation than a microphone recording does. The human auditory system seems to ignore most of the reflected sound because it arrives from the other directions than the directed sound.The auditory system can also switch the direction of attention and turn from one sound to another.
The Binaural effect, which requires the hearing with both ears, The cocktail party effect is closely related to a localization of sound. Experiments have shown that the auditory system is able to localize at least 2 sources simultaneously and assign the correct sound souce characteristics to these sound sources simultaneously too. In other words, as soon as the auditory system has localized a sound source it can extract the signals of these sound source out of a mixture of interfering sound sources.
It is assumed, that the auditory system performs a kind of cross-correlation between both ear signals. A cross-correlation function projects signals onto an axis which corresponds to the difference between both ear signals. For example, a sound with an interaural time difference of 0.3 ms is projected onto the 0.3 ms correlation of the axis. If multiple sound sources are present, then complex correlation patterns appear. The statistical parameters of these patterns, like mean varience and value, depend on the directions and levels of the sound sources. The auditory system is obviously able to analyze these patterns anddetermine the signals of a dedicated sound source.
Attempts have been made to simulate the Cocktila-Party-Effect by technical means. Cocktail Party processors have been constructed, which can extrect the signal of a single sound source out of a mixture of sound sources. There are Cocktail-Party_Processors, which are based on correlation functons, evaluating the interaural time differences, but there are also Cocktail-Party-Processors which are for interaural level differences. However, the principles of the human Cocktail-Party-Effect are not fully investigated. Technical Cocktail-Party-Effect processors do not yet reach the capabilities of the human auditory system.
The auditory system does not only use the methods for a direction specific signal processing it also uses monoaural effects for reduction. If the characteristics for the desired signal is known (like the characteristics of speech) or can be estimated (like expected phenomes at observed mouth movements), then all signal components, which do not match the expected characteristcs can be suppressed and the disturbing effect of this noise can be reduced.
Since the human auditory system can localize and process several sound sources simultaneously, it has to decide, to which of these direction attention shall be paid. The Franssan effect gives more auditory system works.The cocktail party effect can occur both when we are paying attention to one of the sounds around us and when it is invoked by astimulus which grabs our attention suddenly. The effect was first described (and named) by Colin Cherry in 1953. Much of his early work in this area can be traced to problems faced by air traffic controllers in the early 1950's.At that time, cntrollers received messages from the pilots over loudspeakers in the control tower. Hearing the intermixed voices of many pilots over a single loudspeaker made the controllers task very difficult. Cherry conducted attention experiments in which subjects we asked to listen to two different messages from a single loudspeaker at the same time and try to separate them. His work reveals that our ability to separate sounds from background noise is affected by many variables, such as the gender of the speaker, the direction in which the sound is coming, the pitch, and the rate of speech.......
In the 1950's Broadbent conducted dichotic listening experiments: subjects were asked to hear and separate different speech signals presented to each ear simultaneously (using headphones). From the results of his experiment, he suggested that "our mind can be conceived as a radio receiving many channels at once". The brain separates incoming sound into channels based on physical characteristics (e.g. perceived location), and submits only certain subsignals for semantic analysis (deciphering meaning). In other words , there exists a type of audio filter in our brain that selects which channel we should pay attention to from the many sounds perceived. Broadbent proposed that the filter was hypothesized between the sensory-buffer and the short-term store(what is now called the working memory) that prevents the overloading memory. This is called Broadbent's filter theory. There is some empirical evidence to support this theory, though it has been criticized by some. There is evidence that it is just not dependent on the physical charateristics of the stimulus. There are stimuli such as calling someones name which will be processed. Treisman (1967) found evidence to suggest that the filter just increases the threshold of unattended stimulus and can be processed if it is particulary important or has a relevant meaning. Deutsch to Deutsch (1963) also offered an alternative theory to Broadbent's filter theory arguing for late selection depending on whether the stimulu needs to be responded to. This phenomena is still very much a subject of research, in humans as well as computer implementations (where it is typically referred to as a source separation or blind separation) The neural mechanism in human brains is not yet fully clear.So as you can see there has been extensive research in projecting, receiving and comprehending sound signals as well as those which I haven't mentioned here , which give no sound whatsoever.