Sunday, October 31, 2010

Alder thicket: World University & School is incorporated, & as a service, What, most enjoyably, would you like to teach or learn?

World University & School is incorporated,

& as a service,

wants to facilitate teaching & learning possibilities

of YOUR creating, -

and also with free degrees.


It's like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware,

& is potentially in all 3000-8000 languages.


What, most enjoyably,

would you like to teach or learn?


Treat us :)

.... Edit this page, or any of the other pages at WUaS: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/alder-thicket-world-university-school.html - October 31, 2010)

Saturday, October 30, 2010

Moon over canyon: Methodology, Articulations and Disjunctions between Actual and Virtual Harbins

Harbin ethnography:

... What's going on here, and how are we going to ask this?

My choice to focus on both actual and virtual 'Harbins' highlights not only seeking to understand ethnographically the culture (Boellstorff 2008:61) of virtual Harbins, but also what emerges virtually from actual Harbin, as this place and fabric of life have emerged from the 1960s especially vis-a-vis countercultural processes. In seeking to examine both unreified ('un-thingified') 'culture,' as well as 'counterculture,' in relation to actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, as both distinct and interactive processes and temporalities (Cerwonka and Malkki), I assert that ethnographic methods provide a best set of approaches for representing precisely their articulations, disjunctions, and new emergences. Here place, and the placelessness of virtual Harbin, the virtual in general, as well as the ideas of these in people's bodyminds, find new form, both independently of one another, and as a whole. Certainly, in an virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, we will find individuals and avatars who have never met on-the-ground, and, based any where in the world, or even in space, only come to relate via virtual Harbin; in this sense, virtual Harbin may come to be understood as a completely separate, isolated world – as another planet.

While I suggest here that it's possible to conceive of a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator as a kind of separate planet, which we can understand ethnographically in its own terms, as we shall see, I also have and will explore ways in which individuals and end users and in-world avatars on virtual Harbin, relate, examining, in particular, the relationship between residents and visitors to actual Harbin in northern California, and there engagement in both making and being on virtual Harbin. ...













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/moon-over-canyon-methodology.html - October 30, 2010)

Friday, October 29, 2010

Moon sea: Come into the open space Of freedom, of freedom

Come into the open space
Of freedom, of freedom,
At Harbin, at Harbin.

The garden, the garden,
has so many forms there,
of abundance, of shape,
so many species & breeds,
In autumn, in the garden,
in the space which is Harbin.














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/moon-sea-come-into-open-space-of.html - October 30, 2010)

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Blue bubbles: Actual Harbin residents and visitors are already familiar with some virtual Harbin residents and visitors, All constitute each other

Harbin ethnography:



... In its own terms, virtual Harbin, involves, in addition to Techne, both generativity of communication processes, and new forms of the Harbin experience.

Methodologically, actual Harbin residents and visitors are already familiar with some virtual Harbin residents and visitors, not in a virtual Harbin in Open Simulator or Second Life, but, for example, on the Harbin Hot Springs Ride Board email list (e.g. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/harbinrideboard), various Harbin email (and mailing) lists, the Harbin tribe at Tribe.com social networking site, various Harbin web pages on Facebook, and a variety of some other web and social networking sites. The ways in which folks at actual Harbin engage these social networks, produce information there, make virtual Harbin worlds, and interact with each other vis-a-vis these networks, opens possibilities for new ethnographic methodologies, especially vis-a-vis the actual Harbin pools. The directionality of such articulations, comparisons and contrasts begins, here, with actual Harbin as place, and moves toward a group-made, virtual Harbin in Open Simulator, as methodological approach. Even ideas in Harbin residents' bodyminds of friends, and their ways of thinking, reflecting this directionality of actual (including the physical) to virtual (including interactive representations), inform a range of research questions and methodologies vis-a-vis this actual / virtual Harbin ethnography. The context this Harbin ethnography assumes is the internet galaxy (Castells 2001), starting with actual Harbin as place vis-a-vis its pools and pool area, and especially Harbin residents and visitors. The communication that emerges in multiple ways among all of these 'Harbins,' as a word with significance, in its own terms, is what these methodologies help explore. All constitute each other in an ongoing whole now here be one of one-ness. What's going on here, and how are we going to ask this?

My choice to focus on both actual and virtual Harbins …






















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/blue-bubbles-actual-harbin-residents.html - October 28, 2010)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Wild Flowers' Sunrise: Grateful Dead (1965-1995) played their own, novel, bliss-producing music, as a rock band, Deadheads, Improvised throughout

The Grateful Dead (1965-1995) played their own, novel, bliss-producing music together, as a rock band, gave form to Deadheads, and improvised throughout.


A model for novel, group, bliss elicitation -


start by jamming the blues with a friend? -


WUAS has a music school with jamming possibilities (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Music_School),


as well as a Loving Bliss elicitation subject (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_(eliciting_this_neurophysiology))



as well as a Grateful Dead subject ....


with an invitation to improvise with loving bliss teaching & learning :)










(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/wild-flowers-sunrise-grateful-dead-1965.html - October 27, 2010)

Moonset: World University and School and VIRTUAL WORLD CREATION, In Open Simulator, For open Teaching & Learning

World University and School and VIRTUAL WORLD CREATION.

WUaS would like to develop a very easy-to-use, probably Open Simulator-based, virtual world - which is earth-topographically realistic (building on the photo realism of holodecks in SL) - where individuals and end users could host their own islands, regions, etc. on their own computers (perhaps this would even ship with machines), and which would easily network with a variety of virtual world islands, beginning with other Open Simulator islands, as well as Second Life islands - expressly for open, free, teaching and learning classrooms, and idea exchange (voice and text chat), - at both the university and school levels.

A Firefox or Chrome browser add-on for such a virtual world has merit, vis-a-vis ease of use.

Building a virtual world, from the kernel of Open Simulator, would allow World University and School to incorporate both the WUaS virtual hospital and medical school (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Medical_School_and_Hospital), as well as integrate all the various museums (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Museums) with significant amounts of online content, from around the world, as well as resources on the other WUaS main and subject pages (e.g. wiki-like science laboratories in virtual worlds).


(There's a paragraph on this page about this at WUaS: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University).
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/moonset-world-university-and-school-and.html - October 27, 2010)

Tulip tree: Actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs in their own terms, Similar and different forms of participant observation, as ethnographic method

Harbin ethnography:

... While participant-observation is key here – being there, and watching, as it were - especially in the Harbin pools, what's novel methodologically in this ethnographic 'water work,' includes the clothing-optionalness, and the amount of ease, and qualities of intimacy and connectedness, explored and experienced in the pools.

To understand actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs in their own terms, however, involves both similar and different forms of participant observation, as ethnographic method. Actual Harbin Hot Springs, in its own terms, involves, for example, immersive, bodymind water work, talking and perhaps traveling far symbolically in bodymind with a Harbin friend like Heartsong, camping out on the redwood sleeping deck or on a tent platform, walking up by, and perhaps going to a dance in, the straw bale temple, or workshops or dances in the conference center, and being in the beautiful Harbin valley, at the end of a rural, California road, a few decades after the 1960s gave rise to multiple questions about freedom-seeking. Virtual Harbin Hot Springs, in its/their own terms, involves here crafting it using digital, virtual world technologies, in this instance, an island in Open Simulator, then exploring, and experimenting with, ways in which Harbin-related community, pools, clothing-optionalness, language, and fabric of life, may grow there. Then, eventually, being in the virtual Harbin warm pool with other avatars, in one's own bathtub, for example, becomes possible. In its own terms, virtual Harbin, involves, in addition to Techne, both generativity of communication processes, and new forms of the Harbin experience.













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/tulip-tree-actual-and-virtual-harbin.html - October 27, 2010)

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Yukon: Studying virtual Harbin, or virtual Harbins, vis-a-vis an ethnographic interpretation of actual Harbin and its pools, New approaches

Harbin ethnography:


... In the context of Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church, interpreting both 1960s language, as well, as New Age processes significantly given form by hippies, in some ways may involve developing relatively unexplored, anthropological connectednesses – in the pools.

To study a virtual Harbin, or virtual Harbins, in relation to an ethnographic interpretation of actual Harbin vis-a-vis its pools, as well as its emergence from the 1960s, involves relatively new approaches to ethnography vis-a-vis cyberspace, and comparison. Building on, and coming into conversation with, Boellstorff's “Coming of Age in Second Life” (2008) and his argument for Techne (craft or making), I engage questions of communication (exchange of information), especially in relation to the Harbin pools, Watsu, and the language of Harbin, vis-a-vis participant observation and 'pool work,' or 'water work,' but not, here, 'water dance' (in Harbin's development of a new form of water movement vis-a-vis Watsu). Methodologically and ethnographically, 'Techne' and communication come together here vis-a-vis virtual Harbin in the form of questions about ways that digitally making things creates new kinds of human communication, and, where both human communication, and computer languages, give form to generative ways of making things virtually, all vis-a-vis, here for example, the experience of release, and intimacy, in the clothing-optional, warm pool at actual Harbin Hot Springs. Here, communication allows us to understand both processes further, as well as how they articulate, in ongoing, generative ways (both with language, as well as with crafting things digitally). While participant-observation is key here – being there, and watching, as it were - especially in the Harbin pools, what's novel methodologically in this ethnographic 'water work,' includes the clothing-optionalness, and the amount of ease, and qualities of intimacy and connectedness, explored and experienced in the pools.

To understand actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs in their own terms, however, involves both similar and different forms of participant observation, as ethnographic method. ...











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/yukon-studying-virtual-harbin-or.html - October 26, 2010)

Phlox Actaea: Updates to World University and School, New WUaS wiki activity page, Invitation to add great subjects

Updates to World University and School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity -

like Wikipedia with MIT OCW -


where you can teach, learn, add, create and edit ...


Open Teaching and Learning ...


add great subjects ... http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects to the open Subjects' page.












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/phlox-actaea-updates-to-world.html - October 26, 2010)

Monday, October 25, 2010

Sierra river & illumination: What can ethnography tell us about actual and virtual Harbin in the present vis-a-vis method?

Harbin ethnography:

... To engage Harbin on its own terms, the ethnographic methods I develop here involve reading Ishvara's first impressions in historical record, as actual place and emerging milieu.

What can ethnography tell us about actual and virtual Harbin in the present vis-a-vis method? While understanding some of Ishvara's low-key influence at Harbin over the years opens many possibilities for exploring the remarkable fabric of Harbin life vis-a-vis its emergence from the 1960s, the community, and ways of life, which have emerged at Harbin, since 1972, are especially significant in fathoming Harbin's unique fabric of life and its vision. In addition to one far-reaching interview with Ishvara in 2008 (MacLeod 2008), as well as interviews with a number of long term residents, the significance, in particular, of the Harbin pool area, and especially of the pools themselves, is central to the understanding on-the-ground Harbin. And pool work, emerging out of the practices of ethnographic field work, is a new, anthropological method emerging here, finding form in fluidity and release in an warm aqueous environment, vis-a-vis participant observation. In the context of Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church, interpreting both 1960s language, as well, as New Age processes significantly given form by hippies, in some ways may involve developing relatively unexplored, anthropological connectednesses – in the pools.

To study a virtual Harbin, or virtual Harbins, in relation to an ethnographic interpretation of actual Harbin vis-a-vis its pools, as well as its emergence from the 1960s, involves relatively new approaches to ethnography vis-a-vis cyberspace, and comparison. ...












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/sierra-river-illumination-what-can.html - October 25, 2010)

Rain Forest, CA: Free, online Public High School in California, Added to Free High School resources at World Univ & Sch, Free Harvard Doctoral Degree

Free, online Public High School in California, through San Jose Unified's online school - (http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15937948 = http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_15937948)

I added to Free High School resources at World University & School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Free_High_School_Diplomas - It's free high school, - with teachers ... and it's virtual!


It's called Liberty Online - for students in grades 6-12 in Santa Clara County, California - and interested students would call the school district - 408-535-2314 - for further information.


*

Check out World University and School's free degrees - with a link to a free on-the-ground Harvard University education doctoral degree for 25 in 2011 and 2012, as well as to Liberty Online (free, online, grades 6-12 public education in Santa Clara county, California) ... and SO MUCH MORE :) - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Free_Ph.D.s
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/rain-forest-ca-free-online-public-high.html - October 25, 2010)

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Hydra: Chapter 3 - Harbin in its own terms - Anthropological participant observation – Interviews, pool work & virtual field work in the pools

Harbin ethnography:


... How does the virtual generation of the generative virtual here, now, vis-a-vis Harbin communication & language, especially in relation to floating in the warm pool, emerge?



Chapter 3: Method

Harbin on its own terms - Anthropology and ethnography – Participant observation – Interviews, pool work and virtual field work in the pools – Ethics – Claims and reflexivity – Actual Harbin and virtual Harbin compared and contrasted – In warm waters - Virtual world, countercultural communication in a virtual Harbin – What flows between, observationally – Soaking in the waters – Watsu


Harbin on its own terms

Fascinated by the freedom-seeking movements of the 1960s, and the alternative living developments in Haight Ashbury and elsewhere, Bob Hartley (now called Ishvara) moved to Berkeley in 1966 at the time to study, with a dream to start a community vis-a-vis Summerhill (Klages 1991:281). When Ish first arrived at Harbin in 1971(?),

“His first view of the property was the bullet-riddled car and, as he made his way up the road, while he saw the abandoned buildings, the roads rutted by run-off from heavy rains, and the obscenities painted on the sides of the buildings, he also saw what he'd been looking for. The place was a wreck, but it met everyone of the ten criteria on his wish list” (Klages 1991:283).

Ishvara's wish list of ten attributes for the ideal property were: “reasonably priced; not too far or too close to a town; good road access, but no through traffic; no close neighbors, so that nudity would not be a problem; phone, electric and water lines; within a two hour drive of the Bay Area; existing housing and - definitely an ideal but no a necessity – a hot springs” (Klages 1991:282).

Ish's continuity and longevity at Harbin, in addition to his having bought Harbin in 1972, and then sold it to Heart Consciousness Church in 1975, are defining in terms of Harbin's ongoing vision.

To engage Harbin on its own terms, the ethnographic methods I develop here involve reading Ishvara's first impressions in historical record, as actual place and emerging milieu.



What can ethnography tell us about actual and virtual Harbin in the present vis-a-vis method? …









(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/hydra-chapter-3-harbin-on-its-own-terms.html - October 23, 2010)

Friday, October 22, 2010

Duck and Ducklings: Lovely music - Synchronized Brains, Guitar Four-hands, Enjoyment, Singing as Synchronizing Brains? Culture, too?

Lovely music:


İşte Gitarı Konuşturmak Ben Buna Derim

İşte Gitarı Konuşturmak Ben Buna Derim by dj_atheros
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaavt9_iste-gitari-konusturmak-ben-buna-de_music



Are their brains synchronized? I would say so.

Their bodyminds are synchronized, as well.



Do choral music and choirs also synchronize brains in multiple voices, and is this one understated aspect of the enjoyment of singing in a choir?



*

Is 'culture' also a process of synchronization - for example, are Japanese or Scots synchronized in thinking in some ways?


(Is this another underexplored aspect of 'identity,' anthropologically?)






(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/duck-and-ducklings-lovely-music.html - October 22, 2010)

Dodonaea fruit: In the next chapter, I examine the methodological implications for studying 'Virtual Harbin Communication,' Virtual generation

Harbin ethnography:

... What's significant about these technologies vis-a-vis virtual Harbin, in this reading, is the possibility to, not only explore but, generate qualities of the neurophysiology of loving bliss, now in emergent virtual places, such as virtual Harbins. 'Virtual Harbin Communication,' then, refers to the possibility, too, to create new kinds of salutary, imaginative and beneficial connectedness, from the comfort of one's own home, and in a virtual world on a computer.

In the next chapter, I examine the methodological implications for studying this {'Virtual Harbin Communication'} thesis, ethnographically. The significance of a placeless, Harbin virtual place, connecting bodyminds-to-bodyminds, even across species, and cyber-hippies-to-cyber-hippies – and here connectible by bodyminds, language and internet protocols to other virtual worlds - makes possible new understandings of counterculture, emerging from the 1960s. We'll have to go in to the aqueous world of the Harbin warm pool, a fluid 'place,' to participant-observe ways in which counterculture finds freedom in intimate, connected, together, naked releasing, - from narratives of Bonobo chimpanzee culture to present, in-world, New Age, digital, interactive representations of Harbin – to explore aspects of free, bodyminds' culture. Welcome to approaches to thinking about and being in virtual Harbin – virtual world, digital address http:// . What is this ease and freedom-generating Harbin, New Age space of connectedness via multimedia? While anthropology has historically generated much knowledge about peoples and cultures around the world, what would happen if ethnography began to generate not only modes of digital communication among all peoples of the world, but in the context of the freedom-seeking explorations of countercultural oneness. In what ways can ethnographic approaches to communication, now digitally mediated, give form to generative readings between 'cultures' and peoples, now vis-vis information technologies, where the making of virtual Harbin Hot Springs as ethnographic field site in Second Life and Open Simulator (MacLeod 2009) becomes a place of anthropologically-represented, bodymind connectedness, as well as mutual learning, – and from one's own, home bath-hub, for example? How does the virtual generation of the generative virtual here, now, vis-a-vis Harbin communication & language, especially in relation to floating in the warm pool, emerge?



Chapter 3: Method

Harbin on its own terms - Anthropology and ethnography – Participant observation – Interviews, pool work and virtual field work in the pools – Ethics – Claims and reflexivity – Actual Harbin and virtual Harbin compared and contrasted – In warm waters - Virtual world, countercultural communication in a virtual Harbin – What flows between, observationally – Soaking in the waters – Watsu ....











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/dodonaea-fruit-in-next-chapter-i.html - October 22, 2010)

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Sierra winter: Coined 'Virtual Harbin Communication' to characterize sociocultural processes in virtual place & time, 1960's freedom seeking movements

Harbin ethnography:


... potentially from your own bathtub as well, vis-a-vis the relaxation response (Benson, 1972 - who was scientifically studying Transcendental Meditation), and is informed by novel and singular, digital processes, vis-a-vis language and communication.

I coin the phrase 'Virtual Harbin Communication' here to characterize sociocultural processes in digital place and time, emerging out of the freedom seeking movements of the 1960s, and giving rise to the emergence of virtual Harbin, with which the pools (as well as psychedelics, for example – e.g. mushroom picking in the autumn in some parts of the world) in conjunction with developing, virtual world technologies, may give form to, vis-a-vis multiple, new kinds of communication, connectedness and beneficial symbolizating processes, understood in a freeing sense, as consciousness – especially vis-a-vis the relaxation response. Information technologies' contribution to these seminal processes - where technology is the use of scientific knowledge to replicating information, and information, “what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things” (Apple Dictionary 2007 – v.2.0.3), here, signs – electronic, binary 1s and 0s – used to create meaningful representations used for communicating. What's significant about these technologies vis-a-vis virtual Harbin, in this reading, is the possibility to, not only explore but, generate qualities of the neurophysiology of loving bliss, now in emergent virtual places, such as virtual Harbins. 'Virtual Harbin Communication,' then, refers to the possibility, too, to create new kinds of salutary, imaginative and beneficial connectedness, from the comfort of one's own home, and in a virtual world on a computer.

In the next chapter, I examine the methodological implications for studying this {'Virtual Harbin Communication'} thesis, ethnographically. ...











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/sierra-winter-coin-virtual-harbin.html - October 21, 2010)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Gentiana crinita: DIFFERENCES between WIKIVERSITY and World University & School, Joseph Reagle's New Book on Wikipedia's Culture (MIT), Nesson & Wiki

Dear Joseph,

Thanks for your reply and question, and thanks again for a fascinating Harvard talk (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2010/10/reagle). Your new book - "Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia," also partly available here in free dissertation form http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/social/wikipedia/annc-in-good-faith - on the culture of Wikipedia looks fascinating, and very relevant to WUaS ahead. Here are a few, main differences between Wikiversity (which like Wikipedia, is part of the Wikimedia project) and World University and School.

Here's Wikiversity's Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity. Its primary goals are to

* "Create and host a range of free-content, multilingual learning materials/resources, for all age groups in all languages.
* Host scholarly/learning projects and communities that support these materials.

The Wikiversity e-Learning model places emphasis on "learning groups" and "learning by doing"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity)."


World University & School is different from Wikiversity (http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page) in the following ways, as far as I know:

World University & School is planning to offer free, online degrees for some matriculating classes in 2014 - B.A. Law, M.D. and Ph.D. degrees. This can occur in video, and interactively in virtual worlds like Second Life, where WUaS becomes a kind of meta-directory. To do this, WUaS is planning to collaborate with Berkeley Webcast, MIT OCW and other great open course ware for academic standards. In January, WUaS will offer, concurrently with U.C. Berkeley, a Biological Anthropology course for WUaS credit, but not yet for degrees. WUaS already links a free, on-the-ground Harvard doctoral degree in education for 25 students in 2011 and 2012 - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Free_Ph.D.s .

World University & School also facilitates free, people-to-people teaching and learning. If you, for example, want to teach a course to your web camera, or in a virtual world, post it to a video-hosting site, and add it here: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Individual_courses . So on the first, main page (*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses), WUaS is course-centric, unlike Wikiversity.

World University & School already has many open, free teaching and learning resources which are quite different from Wikiversity current content, that I have seen. Unlike Wikiversity, World University and School's main pages are focused in specific ways; here are the main pages:

*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Languages
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Nation_States
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/You_at_World_University
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Museums
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Research
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Hardware_Resource_Possibilities
*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Foundation

*http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE

The openness of the WUaS Subject Template, where one creates a new subject at WUaS, allows individuals to develop a new interdisciplinary subject in ANYTHING. The Subject Template is also key to understanding WUaS. MIT OCW, Berkeley Webcast, Yale OYC and Stanford Engineering Everywhere, for example, are anchors for WUaS' academic focus at the Subject Template, and ANY subject is possible. The Subject Template will become a basis for Musical Instruments (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School) and Languages.

WUaS would like to list links to all open, free libraries (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Library_Resources) and musems in the world (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Museums) as teaching and learning resources. And World Univ. & Sch is generating a great list of free, open Educational Software (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software), none of which Wikiversity has that I know of. World University and School also has a main Research page: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Research

In addition, World University & School is planning to be in all 3,000-8,000 languages, unlike Wikiversity, which is in just a few. Wikipedia, by way of comparison, is in around 272. And World Univ & Sch would like to plan for and develop a Universal Translator building on Google Translate, starting with the current Wikipedia languages.

World University and School lists Wikiversity and a variety of other open educational resources here: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Course_listings.27_aggregates.

World University and School, for its academic side, focuses on these great universities' open course ware: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#University_course_listings but it's open to all great university content. World University and School aspires to come into conversation with great universities.

While like Wikiversity, WUaS will link all levels (elementary, middle school, high school, etc.), of great, open, free, course ware, its main focus is on the University level, with a further focus, again, on great universities' open course ware, as well as networking with these, for web cameras in classrooms.

These are just a few differences between Wikiversity and WUaS.

As an expert on Wikipedia, I'm curious about some of your thoughts about this, and WUaS.

Thanks again for a fascinating presentation on your book at Harvard.

Sincerely,
Scott


http://scottmacleod.com



*

Here's Harvard Law Professor Charlie Nesson's blog post about Reagle's "On Good Faith Collaboration" - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/nesson/2010/10/19/community-of-good-faith/










(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/gentiana-crinita-differences-between.html - October 20, 2010)

Eastern Sierra Autumn: What's new about communication in digital, virtual worlds, Qualities of communication, Free from Modern Conditions

Harbin ethnography:

... The implications, digitally, for western philosophy in terms of understanding, with veracity, ideas, knowledge generation and representations of reality, and thinking, vis-a-vis epistemology, metaphysics as well as ontology – in the one now - are linguistic in terms of new kinds of narrativity, vis-a-vis the creative and generative possibilities of words and language, and, for example, especially metaphor (Rorty 1989:48), currently mediated digitally, - with the possibility for ongoing conversations about anything that finds form, for example, in a virtual Harbin, - emerging, as it does, out of the milieu of the radical 1960s.

What's new about communication in digital, virtual worlds on the internet, vis-a-vis this ethnographic history of actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, are the qualities of communication possibilities in multimedia virtual worlds, now making possible brain-to-brain, bodymind-to-bodymind, and so consciousness-to-consciousness communication with headsets, all in real time, via a distributed, worldwide, communication network ,as conversation, - giving new significance to the concept of virtual. While biological, communication processes are very old, across multiple species, the 1960s in response to modernity, Harbin Hot Springs' emergence from this, as well as the conversations about virtuality which emerge in interactive, digital worlds are new, and 'converse' with each other in unique ways, due to their emergence, both temporally and processually (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007). While at times free from the modern conditions emerging from a technological, rational, bureaucratic, legal order (Weber), inclusive now of capital and knowledge 'regimes,' especially in their virtual, liminal aspects (Victor Turner), the virtual nevertheless, here, vis-a-vis clothing-optional, virtual, Harbin Hot Spring's New Age retreat, gives form to ongoing oneness, in the here and now, in the Harbin warm pool, and potentially from your own bathtub as well, vis-a-vis the relaxation response (Benson, 1972 - who was scientifically studying Transcendental Meditation), and is informed by novel and singular, digital processes, vis-a-vis language and communication.

I coin the phrase 'Virtual Harbin Communication' here to characterize sociocultural processes in digital place and time, emerging out of the freedom seeking movements of the 1960s, and giving rise to the emergence of virtual Harbin, with which the pools (as well as psychedelics, for example – e.g. mushroom picking in the autumn in some parts of the world) in conjunction with developing, virtual world technologies, may give form to, vis-a-vis multiple, new kinds of communication, connectedness and beneficial symbolizating processes, understood in a freeing sense, as consciousness – especially vis-a-vis the relaxation response. ...














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/eastern-sierra-autumn-whats-new-about.html - October 20, 2010)

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Crustose lichen: Connecting consciousnesses (Tan Le's Headset), Avatar agency (e.g. Rorty example), Communication, Language, Virtual Worlds

Harbin ethnography:

... Thus agency, imagination and the milieu originating out of the 1960s give form to ongoing, potential generation of countercultural Harbin, as well as cyber-hippy, avatar agency.

Not only can these digital, communication technologies via the internet make possible connecting consciousnesses (e.g. Tan Le's “Tan Le: A headset that reads your brainwaves” TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html, and Andrew Junker's Brainfingers - http://brainfingers.com) – as well as make potential avatar agency (e.g. in the Rorty example above), and now potentially in virtual worlds, they also open the possibility for developing, digital communication creativity and innovation via computer languages. Using Tan Le's headset, one could conceivably be creating virtual objects, or mentally articulating words which are then digitally represented, directly with one's mind in real time in a virtual world, together with other end users, even while on psylocybin in mushrooms. For example, in virtual Harbin, with your brain on a headset, you could be building the Taj Mahal, while I create the Ganges river, streaming from the infinite distance of way over there, coiling around, kundalini-serpent-like your Taj Mahal, and streaming off into infinite timelessness up there some nowhere. While I have suggested that languages' emergence in human primates (vis-a-vis Professor Terrence Deacon's “The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Brain and Language“ (1997)) is perhaps the starting point for these current, remarkable, digital developments in communication processes, especially virtual worlds like OpenSimulator and Second Life, the influence of human language, vis-a-vis the expressions of virtual, now digital, beyond-the-significance-of-signs' signifiers can now become a Harbin melody in the form of virtual Harbin. Vis-a-vis virtual Harbin, a kind of New Age, digital, Om oasis, from one's home bathtub especially – for the relaxation response - and with a brain-computer head set, the ongoing generation of virtual worlds with actual Harbin as a seed, becomes possible, similar to the way Vedic traditions (in India) have imagined (which Upanishad, or Veda, and heard about at Harbin?), now instantiated in multimedia (Packer and Jordan 2001 – e.g. interactivity, integration, immersion, hypermedia and new forms of narrativity) forms, especially in virtual worlds. The implications, digitally, for western philosophy in terms of understanding, with veracity, ideas, knowledge generation and representations of reality, and thinking, vis-a-vis epistemology, metaphysics as well as ontology – in the one now - are linguistic in terms of new kinds of narrativity, vis-a-vis the creative and generative possibilities of words and language, and, for example, especially metaphor (Rorty 1989:48), currently mediated digitally, - with the possibility for ongoing conversations about anything that finds form, for example, in a virtual Harbin, - emerging, as it does, out of the milieu of the radical 1960s.

What's new about communication in digital, virtual worlds on the internet, vis-a-vis this ethnographic history of actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, are the qualities of communication possibilities in multimedia virtual worlds, now making possible brain-to-brain, bodymind-to-bodymind, and so consciousness-to-consciousness communication with headsets, all in real time, via a distributed, worldwide, communication network ,as conversation, - giving new significance to the concept of virtual. ...











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/crustose-lichen-connecting.html - October 19, 2010)

Monday, October 18, 2010

Tibet valley: Digital communication technologies give one the ability to shape oneself, Cyber hippy subjectivity?, And to shape virtual worlds



Harbin ethnography:


... The ability to use language – in actually creating virtual Harbin in OpenSim and Second Life, as well as communicating in this virtual Harbin - to create new forms of New Age, hippy 'spirituality,' where actual, physical, intimate, fluid, aqueous forms like Watsu (water shiatsu), dance, drumming, and even scripting and computer coding, can find enjoyable form, with new social interactivity, now digitally, and will allow Harbin consciousness to communicate itself further.

These digital communication technologies give one the ability not only to shape oneself – new forms of cyber-hippy subjectivity? – but also, concurrently, to shape virtual worlds, as well as communicate in them in multiple ways (e.g. text chat, by voice, by building things, and even rudimentarily with brain-computer devices). These expressions of agency, as I see it, which can be freeing, find novel expression in the milieu of both actual Harbin and virtual Harbin, in their emergence from the 1960s, where in, for example, the Harbin warm pool, or in being oneness or exploring the 'now' in Harbin's valley, multiple possibilities emerge, but particularly, perhaps, in relation to the bodymind, and intimacy, especially in the clothing-optional warm pool, and pool area. Such creative possibilities, due to communication technologies, allow one, too, to explore kinds of freedom through conversation, both in the Harbin pool area, as well as potentially in virtual Harbin, from one's bath tub, and, for example, while digitally building, programming or scripting innovatively. Hippies did what they wanted to in the 1960s and early 70s – in relation to modernity, in this interpretation of counterculture – including take a lot of LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms, smoking pot, and making art, some of it political, as well as making music, for example. As examples of agency, hippies' sometimes wild explorations of, and orientations to, freedom and creativity in the 1960s can fascinatingly inform developments of avatar agency, or freedom of choice for interactive, digital figures/representations. Hippies in the 1960s did this with enough money, for example, to go to a lot of rock and roll concerts and buy a lot of LPs/records/vinyl, so, in the context of modernity, the kinds of freedom here refer to individual agency as radical, far out, and revolutionary responses to consumerism, environmental pollution and multiple other negative aspects of the modern world, but as part of modernity (only a few hippies went to the mountain top to live); hippies were free agents, and were neither docile (Foucault) nor alienated (Marx) – (but perhaps sometimes overdosed:). Cyber-hippy avatar agency here refers, then, to the possibility of – see the Rorty example in this blog url: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/avatar%20agency. So agency here refers to the human agency to create avatar agency – cyber-hippy, avatar agency in this book - through programming, and perhaps writing, too, as in this example. Thus agency, imagination and the milieu originating out of the 1960s give form to ongoing, potential generation of countercultural Harbin, as well as cyber-hippy, avatar agency.

Not only can these digital, communication technologies via the internet make possible connecting consciousnesses (e.g. Tan Le's “A Headset that Reads Your Brainwaves” - http://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves.html, and Andrew Junker's Brainfingers - http://brainfingers.com) – as well as make potential avatar agency (e.g. in the Rorty example above), and now potentially in virtual worlds, they also open the possibility for developing, digital communication creativity and innovation via computer languages. ...











*





https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Tibet


(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/tibet-valley-digital-communication.html - October 18, 2010)

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Witch hazel: met someone today who had been at Harbin Hot Springs in late 60s & early 70s, he was Director of the U.C. Davis Experimental College, and taught a 'class' on Harbin called 'Hydro Thermo Dynamics' :) ... about Harbin and, it seems, soaking in the Harbin warm and hot pools, There are no texts or student papers from that time, he said - no records that he knows of. UC Davis provided the vehicles, Silver Space Ship near Harbin Warm Pool, Friendly Gathering


... met someone today who had been at Harbin Hot Springs in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. For about 2 1/2 years, from 1970-1972, he was Director of the U.C. Davis Experimental College, and taught a 'class' on Harbin called 'Hydro Thermo Dynamics' :) ... about Harbin and, it seems, soaking in the Harbin warm and hot pools. There are no texts or student papers from that time, he said - no records that he knows of. UC Davis provided the vehicles, and the course went over to Harbin from the Sacramento area as much as once every 2 weeks. Both this Experimental College (I found this brief history of Experimental College online - (this link no longer works - http://ecollege.ucdavis.edu/index.cfm?page=Pubs&Pub_id=102 - but here as of Oct 7, 2017 is a mention of the history - https://asucd.ucdavis.edu/units/experimental-college/) and such a class are totally a thing of the 1960s. :) He remembers a silver space ship on the hill to the north of the Harbin warm pool during that time. No such space ship 'art' is there today, although there is a fair amount of other art around the warm pool these days. I met William at College Park Quarterly Gathering, a Quaker retreat not far from Grass Valley this weekend. It's quite a fortuitous meeting, because I'm interested in that time at Harbin, and haven't met many people who were there and enjoy talking about it, - and especially at a Friendly Gathering, as an unexpected context and a kind of serendipity. We met at lunch on the last day of this retreat (where I had asked a nontheistic Friend on a panel (of four people) on the subject of nontheistic Friends a question about eliciting loving bliss, as a biological process), and after we had just met, he asked if I knew of Don Hamrick who was at Harbin in the late 1960s. At first I didn't know whom he was talking about, but later remembered Hamrick's name from the Harbin history "Harbin Hot Springs: Healing Waters, Sacred Lands," as someone - kind of a hippy and 'scientist' - who had been involved with psychedelics and the 'Frontiers of Science" at Harbin in the late 1960s, in a time when Harbin may have been a little dilapidated, chaotic, and financially unstable, with some hippies (and Hells' Angels) coming for visits. As mature, friendly and informative William was telling me about the silver space ship near the warm pool, he pretended to put a hit of acid under his tongue. I suspect that there was a lot of tripping on acid and other drugs at Harbin at that time.

William lives in northern California, not as far north as Black Bear Ranch (a well-known commune especially in the 60s and 70s in northern California, but pretty far north, and off the grid - (meaning he generates his own electricity, and has his own water supply) and seems to live a pretty sane life. Not a Friend (Quaker), he came with a friend who is active in a Quaker Meeting on the north coast. William gets internet from a satellite dish and uses it for managing his money, etc., was unsure what he'd find at a Quaker Gathering, and was pleasantly surprised by the easy-goingness of this gathering, I think. As a hippy in the 1960s and 70s, he is still living as a kind of hippy. (I lived from 1979-1987 in Portland, Oregon, in collective houses, while studying at Reed College, and know the culture of the west coast of which we are both are a part, - especially influenced by the forests everywhere from the north coast of California well into British Columbia; I was active in the Cathedral Forest Action Group which was engaged in nonviolent activism to preserve Old Growth forests in the Pacific NW in the mid-1980s).

I was delighted to meet William, and we may meet at Harbin at some point to see how being at Harbin jogs his memory, and what else I can come to understand particularly about the late 1960s and early 70s vis-a-vis Harbin. He spent a fair amount of time at Harbin throughout the 1970s and some of the 1980s, he said, and was last there in 1991. He remembered the Village Path, and mentioned an old bridge perhaps near the warehouse. I would guess that much of Harbin was similar then to today, since Ishvara and Heart Consciousness Church and folks at Harbin then inherited the existing guest buildings. A room cost $8-10 a night in the late 70s, William said.

I want to learn about the silver space ship near Harbin warm pool. I would guess it was there for tripping, and as an evocative symbol.




(Some links about Don Hamrick I've found:
http://www.archive.org/post/259704/missing-1969-shows
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/73722
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbinger_Community ... now ... https://web.archive.org/web20171229013054/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbin_Hot_Springs ... ).











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/witch-hazel-met-someone-today-who-had.html - October 17, 2010)

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Seed pod: Models for Social 'Bliss Elicitation,' Ravi Shankar, Raga, Guitar Four-hands, Two Brains Together

Both videos below are social and remarkable examples of peaking, and are the best examples of loving bliss elicitation at editable World University & School's 'Loving Bliss eliciting' subject page -

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_%28eliciting_this_neurophysiology%29 ...



Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and Alla Rakha Khan - RAGA -




They're listening to each other and listening here :). And they're improvising.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsrJvGBkfKk ... a model for bliss like the Raga above and the guitar four hand below).


I can elicit bliss with both of these, on my own, with computer, wherever I am (so, alone), and I see these videos as models of social blissing - both musically for musicians playing or singing together, and also in inventive ways. I also see 'Loving Bliss' brain chemistry in these musicians.




İşte Gitarı Konuşturmak Ben Buna Derim



Guitar Four-hands? Now, wait a minute ... cross-handed, too :)

Lovely music, as well ...

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaavt9_yyte-gitary-konuyturmak-ben-buna-de_music ...

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1107177801715 :)


Are their brains synchronized? It seems so.




Both videos are social, interactive, mutual, musical-as-model and harmonious. They're examples to play with, to move toward, as how-tos, and as models for ways in which tones and full engagement can lead to great enjoyment.






How might we learn from these to create new 'blissing' forms? ...

Here's one way:
http://scottmacleod.com/GuidelinesPracticingLovingBlissvavMusicalInstrument.htm

and here are 'Loving Bliss Practices':)
http://scottmacleod.com/LovingBlissPractices.htm


Other ways?








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/seed-pod-models-for-bliss-elicitation.html - October 16, 2010)

Friday, October 15, 2010

Bulrush: Ability to use language to create virtual Harbin in OpenSim & Second Life, as well as to communicate in this virtual Harbin

Harbin ethnography:


... Significantly, vis-a-vis the internet and the world wide web, this communication can be now carried out via a distributed, real time, worldwide, communication network, - especially via a nascent, virtual Harbin.

The ability to use language – in actually creating virtual Harbin in OpenSim and Second Life, as well as communicating in this virtual Harbin - to create new forms of New Age, hippy 'spirituality,' where actual, physical, intimate, fluid, aqueous forms like Watsu (water shiatsu), dance, drumming, and even scripting and computer coding, can find enjoyable form, with new social interactivity, now digitally, and will allow Harbin consciousness to communicate itself further.

These digital communication technologies give one the ability not only to shape oneself – new forms of cyber-hippy subjectivity? …












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/bulrush-ability-to-use-language-to.html - October 15, 2010)

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Wilderness plant community: With respect to Foucault, Communication practices I'm interested in, Creative New Age forms in virtual Harbin

Harbin ethnography:


... Both writing (ethnography) and programming (vis-a-vis virtual world building), as practices, could then contribute to problematizing the care of the self in new ways.

With respect to Foucault, (as well as vis-a-vis his studies of sexuality, the communication practices I'm interested in, vis-a-vis actual and virtual Harbin, emerging out of the freedom-seeking movements of the 1960s, are communal, idea-sharing oriented, and emerge into a new space – the Harbin pamphlet “Living the Future” (1996) is one example of this – through the creation of both actual and virtual Harbin, where life at actual Harbin may find novel, creative, New Age forms in virtual Harbin. Significantly, vis-a-vis the internet and the world wide web, this communication can be now carried out via a distributed, real time, worldwide, communication network, - especially via a nascent, virtual Harbin.

The ability to use language – in actually creating virtual Harbin in OpenSim and Second Life, as well as communicating in this virtual Harbin ...








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/wilderness-plant-community-with-respect.html - October 14, 2010)

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Wild onsen: Harbin dance

Harbin Dance


Evening

In the beginning of the dance,
people move easily, slowly & freely.

I see a lot of yoga poses this eve,
and creative asana, too - O, Harbin ...

... and, here, some friends.
People start to stand & sway,

and amis move widely,
their beautiful clothes

flowing freely all the while,
dancing, dancing, dancing.

This music moves me not,
so as {hippie} Harbin,

dance freedom
unfolds, all around -

people exploring moving
energy, in their freedom -

I head for the pools,
to soak.

My ear, my right ear,
has had pressure for days,

so, this eve - a first -
I don't submerge,

thinking babying my ear
seems clear-ly sensible.

It's different - head under
for me, is transformative -

I miss going under,
yet my ear is thankful.


To bed, after the hot pool,
and what ideas came in water?

Add the nontheist Friends'
Google Docs' correspondence to

World University & School's
nontheist Friends' subject?

Generate loving bliss communications,
similar to these,

as correspondence conversations,
as well ? :)



Day

The day is autumny,
cool, fresh, but not cold.

How can we all get to loving bliss,
secularly, when and as we want it,

because we are content & well,
and bliss's qualties are elicitable,

by music, a series of tones, MDMA,
affection from & for another?

Loving friends seem to be the limiting thing,
and sex can help with bliss.

Friends can generate this, but,
furthur, what practices lead

to rocking out?



To submerge in the waters soon,
this poem's monologue may

move to curious, silent communication,
with others, in the warmth, communally,

and voice-free, ~
in the Harbin warm pool,

with its own music.


People's nakedness here
is welcome, freeing & beautiful.

Thank you, Harbin,
for your warm pool's voice,

your countercultural music,
your real freedom

via naked bodyminds, and intimacy,
all around, and warm water's

relaxation response,
via - dare I say ... meditation,

natural & watery? Nay, -
the relaxation response is apropos,

and better, yea, just
soaking in the warm pool.


How to soar, to fly, neurophysiologically ...
and with Harbin as music ~

in new ways?


Don't just read this,
I invite you

- wherever you are -
to elicit loving bliss anew. :)


To the pools - now -
Is this ethnography?
Is this anthropology

of warm water meditation,
of traveling to the onsen


for freedom & regeneration?
To the waters, now ...












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/wild-onsen-harbin-dance.html - October 13, 2010 & October 12, 2010)

American wilderness: Michel Foucault, Care of the Self, How it would work in Virtual Harbin

Harbin ethnography:



... Residents in the actual Harbin Village may well go in and out of their houses, if they choose to, in virtual Harbin, while participating in these far-reaching, digital, communicative practices, especially by participating in the building of virtual Harbin, perhaps like building the Harbin Temple in 2005.


Foucault's Care of the Self and Harbin Hot Springs

In examining how caring for the self functions, Michel Foucault, in the 'Course Summary' in his "Hermeneutics of the Subject," problematizes how caring works. For Foucault, care of the self - epimeleia heautou and cura sui (Foucault 1982: 491) - refers philosophically to taking care of oneself and being concerned about oneself. For Foucault, this involves a kind of therapeutic practice, and also having free time to further this. For Foucault, even as a philosophical activity, it's “a form of activity, where the term epimeleia itself refers not just to an attitude of awareness or a form of attention focused on oneself; it designates a regular occupation, a work with its methods and objectives" (Foucault 1982:493). So the questions I'll problematize in this essay are: “How would care of the self 'function' on-the-ground at Harbin Hot Springs?” What does the concept of self-knowledge (Foucault 1982:494), in caring for the self, refer to for Foucault, using Harbin as a site of inquiry? And what does the concept of askesis (Foucault 1982:498) refer to, also in relation to Harbin. Lastly, what are examples of practices of care of the self at Harbin? Harbin is significant as a site of inquiry because it's an unique assemblage that may make possible specific ways to care for the self.

Foucault uses the metaphor of a farm as his first example of how caring for the self would function, presumably referring to farming practices - caring for and raising plants and animals, presumably as one would oneself. Engaging this metaphor, the aspect of how caring for the self 'functions' that I'm most interested in, vis-a-vis Foucault, has to do with the flourishing and effortlessness that farms at certain times of the year exhibit, to which the practice of farming as a form of caring would give rise.

Foucault's starting point is the “Alcibiades,” concerning the care of the self, in relation to politics, pedagogy, and self-knowledge. With regard to pedagogy, engaging the practice of philosophy – thinking as an activity - provides a method for caring of the self at all ages. For Foucault, this consists of three functions: 1) a critical function (unlearning), 2) struggle (engagement) and 3) the culture of the self which is therapeutic and curative (Foucault 1982:495-496).

For Foucault, care of the self occurs through askesis (self-formation) – training as an athlete would (Foucault 1982:498). For Foucault this includes 1) listening, 2) writing, and 3) taking stock of oneself (Foucault 1982:500). These activities of self-formation engage then the activity of thinking – the practice of philosophy. The purpose of these care of the self techniques, through askesis, is to link together the truth and the subject.

So, the problematization that interests me most, in terms of caring for the self, vis-a-vis the metaphor of the farm, and the practices of self-learning and askesis (self-formation), is how one might cultivate this flourishing which a farm exhibits at certain times of the year, through pedagogy and askesis, informed by philosophy, as a set of practices, in relation to Harbin Hot Springs.

As a farmer can help a farm to flourish through practices that shape it, caring for the self at Harbin Hot Springs, a hot springs' retreat center in northern California that emerged from counterculture in the early 1970s, occurs in a specific assemblage of practices for caring of the self. Fieldwork is one important approach to understanding this assemblage. In addition to examining Harbin ethnographically as a field site, I'd like to problematize the care of the self vis-a-vis Harbin additionally by creating a virtual Harbin - an interactive assemblage - in the form of a field (farm) or even a field site. Creating a virtual Harbin Hot Springs might then even make possible a cultivation of comparable assemblages - actual and virtual Harbins - both of which might lead to an understanding of the care of the self vis-a-vis flourishing, in the ongoing examination of how caring for the self functions.

To further this problematization, and in conclusion, if one constructed a virtual Harbin using OpenSimulator (using open access virtual world software which engages the Second Life library of resources) as open equipment (Koopman et al 2007), how would care of the self function, in terms of pedagogy and askesis in this context? Both writing (ethnography) and programming (vis-a-vis virtual world building), as practices, could then contribute to problematizing the care of the self in new ways.

With respect to Foucault, (as well as vis-a-vis his studies of sexuality, the communication practices I'm interested in, vis-a-vis actual and virtual Harbin, emerging out of the freedom-seeking movements of the 1960s, are communal, idea-sharing oriented, and emerge into a new space – the Harbin pamphlet “Living the Future” (1996) is one example of this – through the creation of both actual and virtual Harbin, where life at actual Harbin may find novel, creative, New Age forms in virtual Harbin. ...









*

Masanobu Fukuoka (pioneer of ‘natural farming’ in Japan and author of "One Straw Revolution") and Bill Mollison

http://www.newint.org/features/2007/07/01/10_mollison.jpg












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/american-wilderness-michel-foucault.html - October 13, 2010)

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Butterfly-Flower: Am curious how to bring eliciting Loving Bliss neurophysiology (subject) at WUAS with the budding wiki Music School

... am curious how to bring eliciting Loving Bliss neurophysiology (subject) at WUAS (http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/) with the budding wiki Music School - and facilitate both music-making and bliss-elicitation in additional creative ways .... there are already a lot of interactive resources on these pages already.


Loving Bliss (Eliciting this neurophysiology)


http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Loving_Bliss_%28eliciting_this_neurophysiology%29


AND


World University Music School

http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School.




There are so many possibilities here via the Internet, especially :)












(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/butterfly-flower-am-curious-how-to.html - October 12, 2010)

Creek bed: The actual Harbin village is a road with homes on it, for residents, called 'The Village'

Harbin ethnography:

... These now, multimedia, communicative practices give form to new kinds of ongoingly, creative, communicative practices.

The actual Harbin village is a road with homes on it, for residents, called 'The Village,' which is near the Harbin Warehouse, and which feels a little like a row of houses that were planned to be part of a village at one point but didn't generate the fabric of life, including commerce which some villages do, - nevertheless, it is the “Harbin Village,” both in name, and actually; as 'place,' the so-named 'village path' leads along a beautiful hillside and creek bed from the Harbin pool area to these dwellings in “The Village”. The Harbin residents here, and in the nearby Trailer Park, have television, and internet access has become available in at least the Trailer Park in the last year or so. While Virtual Harbin may well become a global Harbin village, for ongoing actual Harbin practices, such as Watsu (water shiatsu), accessible by anyone around the world with one gigabyte of RAM (random access memory) and a video card on their computer, as a communicative practice, it will make it possible for all of us in the future to don headsets which read brainwaves, and interact together in a Virtual Harbin in Second Life, and potentially while making music together. Residents in the actual Harbin Village may well go in and out of their houses, if they choose to, in virtual Harbin, while participating in these far-reaching, digital, communicative practices, especially by participating in the building of virtual Harbin, perhaps like building the Harbin Temple in 2005.


Foucault's Care of the Self and Harbin Hot Springs

In examining how caring for the self functions, Michel Foucault, in the 'Course Summary' in his "Hermeneutics of the Subject," problematizes how caring works. ...














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/creek-bed-actual-harbin-village-is-road.html - October 12, 2010)

Monday, October 11, 2010

Humanity: WUaS as an open teaching & learning WIKI will benefit potentially all 6.7 billion of us, and 9 billion to come

World Univeristy and School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/ - as open teaching & learning wiki will benefit potentially all 6.7 billion of us. Teach, Learn, Create Here


... and Now, in your language.


(Wikipedia, by way of comparison is in around 272 languages). :)


‎... and 9 billion to come ....














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/humanity-wuas-as-open-teaching-learning.html - October 11, 2010)

Zuni land: Let's make WUAS become the accessible database for every archaeological and museum objects in all languages

Let's make WUAS become the accessible database for every archaeological and museum objects in all languages in the world. Check out the open Museum's http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Museums page for online collections that are substantially free & open ...


‎...for online collections that are substantially free & open.


We can change the WUaS Subject Template (with which you can add a SUBJECT about anything you want to teach and focus on) to an OBJECT TEMPLATE :) Here's the http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/SUBJECT_TEMPLATE as a basis - it's also a key ...














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/zuni-land-lets-make-wuas-become.html - October 11, 2010)

Primate Village: The significance of the medium as the message, Marshall McLuhan, Television, virtual Harbin as Global Village



Harbin ethnography:

... Vis-a-vis virtual Harbin in this ethnography, the …

In highlighting the significance of the medium as the message, in relation to actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, the prescient, difficult-to-understand, Toronto-based media theorist and philosopher Marshal McLuhan suggested, in the mid 1960s, that the advent of television represented a qualitative change in the way society shares information and communicates with its citizens, especially since Gutenberg's printing press, and the growth of literacy around the world. Television diffused faster than any other medium in history and transmits information in a fundamentally different way where what the viewer takes away is not every image displayed -- there are too many -- but an overall impression. McLuhan's well-known dictum that “The Medium is the Message” emphasized the dominance of TV as a conveyor of information to a mass audience and not the individual TV messages themselves. In suggesting that "We are going to live in a global village," he presciently suggested that all of society would experience a sense of the ‘whole’ through the electronic medium of TV and later through other technological mediums. In assessing why TV should have such a major impact, one of McLuhan's researchers suggested three reasons: i) TV was a powerful sensorial simulation of reality; ii) TV produced stories allowing the viewer to relate in easy ways to an old human story telling tradition; and iii) TV is a medium that requires the least amount of personal effort, the path of least resistance. TV offered a passive system that disconnects individuals from the rest. The massive use of TV required a very little amount of psychological effort. Television helped to define what mass communication is: information from one source to many receivers. While radio was also significant as a form of one-to-many mass communication, it was also connected with other activities such as commuting and working, and not solely for passive reception (MacLeod 2001a). As McLuhan said in the mid 1960s:

“After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man - the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media” (McLuhan, https://web.archive.org/web/20100725072458/http://www.utoronto.ca:80/mcluhan/marshal.htm .... was:  http://www.utoronto.ca/mcluhan/marshal.htm#McLuhan_downloads).

McLuhan’s arguments help shape an understanding of the significance of the internet as a mode of mass communication. Actual Harbin Hot Springs has a village, where residents live, and is a village itself, in that people live in homes there. And with emergent headset technologies that allow individuals to interact with digital 'objects' and processes without words or language (Andrew Junker and Tan Le), Harbin residents, and all of us, may connect our nervous systems (McLuhan) in real time consciousness with each other, vis-a-vis McLuhan, in a virtual Harbin OpenSim or Second Life environment, at present. These now, multimedia, communicative practices give form to new kinds of ongoingly, creative, communicative practices.

The actual Harbin village is a road with homes on it, for residents, called 'The Village,' which is near the Harbin Warehouse, and which feels a little like a row of houses that were planned to be part of a village at one point but didn't generate the fabric of life, including commerce which some villages do, - nevertheless, it is the “Harbin Village,” both in name, and actually; as 'place,' the so-named 'village path' leads along a beautiful hillside and creek bed from the Harbin pool area to these dwellings in “The Village”. ...













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/primate-village-significance-of-medium.html - October 11. 2010)

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Nova: World University & School is in a tradition of neo-pragmatism with wiki

World University & School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com - is in a tradition of neo-pragmatism with wiki vis-a-vis knowledge production, where you can teach, add, learn or create.


*

WUaS Pragmatism: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Pragmatism




*

Pragmatism - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/nova-world-university-school-is-in.html - October 10, 2010)

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Darwin's Ascenion Island: Long welcome spells in the waters

Long welcome spells in the waters :)
Long Welcome Spells in the Waters


Naked & ur,
Primal, & free from clothes,
Head into Harbin's waters,
Into the welcome, warm pool ~
Now.


{I saw a woodpecker,
black & white,
as I awoke in my car,
skating up the
lower side of a trunk -
light taps reverberating
through the air -
at work,
making a living}.


Everybody is heading
to Burning Man's
freedom in the desert,
and I head to Harbin
which is quieter now,
mid-week, - still summer.


In the cave-like,
temple's rest room,
I stand on an
amazingly beautiful,
stone floor,
while floating on
its deep-wavey, ocean walls,
rose-ocher in color,
looking through
its three round windows -
two of which are portals -
and its one round mirror,
and see Harbin,
beautiful Harbin.
A domed, peaked door,
a copper banister snaking
behind the toilet,
one timber post,
supporting the wood slat ceiling,
irregularly shaped,
I revel in its loveliness.


Up to the pools, soon ...



My anthropological
field site,
Harbon's warm pool,
becomes a water site,
where water work
tranforms field work
~ poolside ~
into pool play,
ethnographically.


... took at least
three spells of long,
welcome lingering
in the waters
to release into ease, -
to free into bodymind,
floating, flying,
lotus brain.














(2 September 2010)









(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/darwins-ascenion-island-long-welcome.html - October 9 2010)

Friday, October 8, 2010

Planet Orbit: Liszt - La Campanella (Kissin), Performance of extreme confidence, What means "neurophysiology" v-a-v Bliss

Liszt - La Campanella (Kissin)






JDM (a professional music writer and critic):

From beginning to end, that was a performance of extreme confidence. Really amazing. I found the camera shenanigans distracting, to say the least. I suspect Liszt himself would click "Like."



Scott:

While this could be code for bliss, I found myself absorbed, enjoying the performance, but my neurophysiology didn't go into orbit.



JDM:

Am a Martha Argerich/Glenn Gould fan myself. Don't know what means "neurophysiology." Was just an undergrad English major.


Scott:

Moi aussi ... I think of neurophysiology sometimes in relation to the experience of taking ecstasy (MDMA) ... and how that feels (in love), as well as how scientists might characterize such neurochemistry, objectively, but with better tools, and language, than we have now. Here's the neurophysiology label from my blog: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/neurophysiology. Similarly, when I'm listening to raga or the Dead, and I'm into it, and know I'm enjoying it, I think of this raga as having an effect on my neurophysiology.













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/planet-orbit-liszt-la-campanella-kissin.html - October 8, 2010)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Cacti & Thunderstorm: World Univ & Sch is like SF's EXPLORATORIUM museum w its hands-on SCIENCE, WUaS Music, Brautigan's Poetry, Relaxation Response

World University & School is like San Francisco's EXPLORATORIUM museum with its hands-on SCIENCE. Teach, Add, Learn & EXPERIMENT online at http://worlduniversity.wikia.com - like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, Berkeley Webcast and facilitating people-to-people idea sharing.


Here's World University & School's open, editable Research subject - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Research


... and with (potentially) an ALL instrument Music School:
worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University_Music_School





*

Richard Brautigan:

"I'll affect you slowly as if you were having a picnic in a dream. There will be no ants. It won't rain." ... http://twitter.com/#!/Kool_Aid_Wino/statuses/26681764474


:) and Brautigan's poetry is at World Univ & Sch's Poetry page:
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Poetry




*

The Relaxation Response is a boon & a balm at Harbin in the warm pool & at home. Teach, Do & Learn about it via http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Relaxation_Response and http://relaxationresponse.org/steps

World Univ & Sch is free, open and editable. :)

Teach and Learn about anything ... {& from the relaxation response:}














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/cacti-and-thunderstorm-world-univ-sch.html - October 7, 2010)

Bristlecone in winter: Knowledge, and ideas, in Plato's allegory of the cave are virtual forms, Prometheus

Harbin ethnography:


... ... In the field of anthropological linguistics' focus on communication, especially vis-a-vis ethnography and the 3000-8000 language's in the world, virtual Harbin's possibility and emergence adds new instantiations of what is actually signified by a sign – in the form of interactive, digital representations - extending Saussure's and many others emphasis on, what I interpret here, to be parallels between the signifier and the virtual.

Conversation leading to new knowledge, as such, emerges as a concept in the ancient Greek world (reference), vis-a-vis Platonic dialogues (reference), as intimacy-filled as some of the Symposium, for example, was (Plato and Wikipedia). And knowledge, and ideas, in Plato's allegory of the cave are virtual forms, in this interpretation, in a variety of ways (see ethnography above). And the ancient Greeks codified an aspect of the significance of language in the Promethean legend (a demigod, one of the Titans, who was worshiped by craftsmen. When Zeus hid fire from man, Prometheus stole it by trickery and returned it to earth. As punishment, Zeus chained him to a rock where an eagle fed each day on his liver, which grew again each night; he was rescued by Hercules – Apple Dictionary 2007 – v2.0.3 (51.5)), where Prometheus steals fire from the Gods, and gives it to people, in the form of language in this interpretation, thus freeing people from their ignorance, especially vis-a-vis authority. Vis-a-vis virtual Harbin in this ethnography, the ...

In highlighting the significance of the medium as the message, in relation to actual and virtual Harbin Hot Springs, the prescient, difficult-to-understand, Toronto-based media theorist and philosopher Marshal McLuhan suggested, in the mid 1960s, that the advent of television represented a qualitative change in the way society shares information and communicates with its citizens, especially since Gutenberg's printing press, and the growth of literacy around the world. ... ...













(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/bristlecone-in-winter-knowledge-and.html - October 7, 2010)

Lotus seed pod: Modern linguistics, Not evolutionary biological, Language as object, virtual Harbin new instantiations of what is signified

Harbin ethnography:


... In Deacon's view, vis-a-vis this Harbin ethnography, symbols and words are virtual, which have far-reaching evolutionary consequences on biology, making possible language use.

Modern linguistics, while not developing an evolutionary biological-related focus in detail yet, makes language its object of examination, highlighting, for example, the significance of the sign and signifier (de Saussure) as well as its structure, its morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. Its well-developed specializations in multiple fields such as sociolinguistics, dialectology, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, historical-comparative linguistics, and applied linguistics add to theorizing communication here vis-a-vis actual and virtual Harbin as field sites by providing approaches to studying language use on the ground and in virtual worlds (UCLA). In the field of anthropological linguistics' focus on communication, especially vis-a-vis ethnography and the 3000-8000 language's in the world, virtual Harbin's possibility and emergence adds new instantiations of what is actually signified by a sign – in the form of interactive, digital representations - extending Saussure's and many others emphasis on, what I interpret here, to be parallels between the signifier and the virtual.

Conversation leading to new knowledge, as such, emerges as a concept in the ancient Greek world (reference), vis-a-vis Platonic dialogues (reference), as intimacy-filled as some of the Symposium, for example, was (Plato and Wikipedia). ...














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/lotus-seed-pod-modern-linguistics-not.html - October 7, 2010)

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Lion cuddle: Hippy to the Hot Springs

Hippy to the Hot Springs


Hippy to the Hot Springs
meets hippies in the hot springs - floats.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
greets hippies in the hot springs
without song - they do Watsu.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
seeks hippies in the hot springs.
She's interested - Love.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
finds hippies in the hot springs -
cuddle puddle.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
at Harbin Hot Springs, -
plays, easing home.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
comes home
in warm waters &
generates kindness.










(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/lion-cuddle-hippy-to-hot-springs.html - October 6, 2010)

Atlantic Sturgeon: Symbolization and language use both give form to kinds of virtuality, as well as are a shared process among human primates

Harbin ethnography:




... The significance of such history will highlight, I hope, what's mind-expanding about Harbin in a variety of ways, and complement Boellstorff's emphasis on Techne in understanding virtual worlds.

Symbolization and language use both give form to kinds of virtuality, as well as are a shared process among human primates, in particular. In Terrence Deacon's book, “The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of the Brain and Language,” many species have sophisticated communicative processes. Human language emerges building on these communicative process, due to information process among proto-human primate groups. Deacon suggests that ideas transformed the brain – that is, the biological organ in the craniums of homo - to make it bigger for communication. Returning to the example of headsets which read your brain waves (Tan Le 2010 - url) and the psylocybin mushroom example vis-a-vis a virtual Harbin, above, where this device connects with your cerebellum, I'm curious about ways in which such new communicative processes might give rise to new communicative approaches; (effects on brain evolution would occur in populations over thousands of generations, and will be thus impossible to effect). In Deacon's view, vis-a-vis this Harbin ethnography, symbols and words are virtual, which have far-reaching evolutionary consequences on biology, making possible language use.

Modern linguistics, while not developing an evolutionary biological-related focus in detail yet, makes language its object of examination, highlighting, for example, the significance of the sign and signifier (de Saussure) as well as its structure, its morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics. ...



















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/atlantic-sturgeon-symbolization-and.html - October 6, 2010)

Milkweed beetles: Hippy to the Hot Springs & India



Hippy to the Hot Springs
meets hippies in the hot springs,
- floats.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
greets hippies in the hot springs
without song. They do Watsu.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
seeks hippies in the hot springs.
She's interested - Love.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
finds hippies in the hot springs, -
cuddle puddle.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
at Harbin Hot Springs, -
plays, easing home.

Hippy to the Hot Springs
finds waters &
generates kindness.




This is a main theme for my Harbin ethnography.


In many ways, folks in India - Hindus and others - are Ur, or first, hippies, in their taking life lightly, in their colorfulness, in their belief in many Gods and Goddesses. Why not? - the more the merrier.

It's culture ...



I come to Harbin and learn.











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/hippy-to-hot-springs-and.html - October 6, 2010)

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Goat Rocks Basin: COMMUNICATION, complementing Techne, as thesis, Multimedia & Virtual

Harbin ethnography:



... There's a continuity of hippies living at Harbin since at least the 1960s.


COMMUNICATION

To complement Boellstorff's argument for Techne (from the ancient Greek for 'technology' and 'technique'), as craft or art, brought from the actual world into virtual worlds, I develop here an argument for 'communication' – which is more of an argument for information, language and communication – the information aspect of 'information technology' - than for crafting or making things as what is significant about virtual worlds such as Second Life (per Boellstorff), – where information gives form to the 'virtual' via multimedia. Vis-a-vis an ethnography of actual and virtual Harbin, the history of virtual Harbin, this occurs both in terms of the symbolic richness of actual Harbin especially with respect to hippy, New Age thinking and articulations, as well in the way computer languages and codes gives form to virtual Harbin, and here the Making an Ethnographic Field Site vis-a-vis virtual Harbin (MacLeod 2009 – url), for the emergence of new countercultural and linguistic forms and processes. Furthermore, I'd like to argue that more fundamental than 'Techne' being brought in from the actual to virtual worlds (Boellstorff 2008:54), is the extension of communication and symbolizing processes due to multimedia narratives in virtual worlds. As a consequence, I'd like to offer a cursory history of communication vis-a-vis emergent multimedia virtual worlds here, beginning with Terrence Deacon's “The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of the Brain and Language” (1997), proceeding through the ancient Greek world and the beginnings of Western knowledge production, via Gutenberg and the printing press, Marshall McLuhan, the academic discipline of linguistics, then Manuel Castells' “The Internet Galaxy,” (2001) and then to colorful and multiple Hindu expressions of divinity, New Age explorations of the divine at Harbin (Heart Consciousness Church), for example, and to the Harbin waters themselves. While theoretical, such an historical examination highlights the significance of symbolic communication vis-a-vis underlying cultural logics of language vis-a-vis virtual Harbin. The significance of such history will highlight, I hope, what's mind-expanding about Harbin in a variety of ways, and complement Boellstorff's emphasis on Techne in understanding virtual worlds.

Symbolization and language use both give form to kinds of virtuality, as well as are a shared process among human primates, in particular.








(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/goat-rocks-basin-communication.html - October 5, 2010)

Goat Rocks: Continuity of hippies living at Harbin, Other Ethnographies about Harbin?

Harbin ethnography:


... The social and conversation aspects that Ish found so enjoyable at Harvard, and which he had in mind in envisioning a community, take place all around Harbin, but especially on the sun deck in the pool area, in my experience.

Other than Chloe Conger's Stanford undergraduate honors' thesis on Harbin, “Ideals in Action” (Conger 2001), I know of no other ethnographies of Harbin Hot Springs besides this one, which in many ways is two, or at least an actual and virtual two. Conger, ethnographically, finds two, imagined systems of Counter-Cultural-Spiritual and Capitalist Culture, the former giving way and combining with the latter. She looks “at the ways in which people at Harbin construct, polarize and integrate a communal, countercultural lifestyle and the dominant capitalist culture — not in theory, but in action and personal narratives” (Conger 20LLa). Klages' history comes closest to providing a kind of historical ethnography. In Klages' history, hippies were around at Harbin since the 1960s. After Ishvara bought the land, as the sole owner, in 1972, she writes “There were grumblings and heated rumors locally that another bunch of hippies was going to take over Harbin, and the county's health and building departments quickly made it clear that no one could move in and no repairs or new construction could be done in the Main Area until the sewage and water systems were brought up to code (Klages 1991:281).” There's a continuity of hippies living at Harbin since at least the 1960s.


COMMUNICATION

To complement Boellstorff's argument for Techne (from the ancient Greek for 'technology' and 'technique'), as craft or art, brought from the actual world into virtual worlds, I develop here an argument for 'communication' – which is more of an argument for information, language and communication – the information aspect of 'information technology' - than for crafting or making things as what is significant about virtual worlds such as Second Life (per Boellstorff), – where information gives form to the 'virtual' via multimedia. ...














(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/goat-rocks-continuity-of-hippies-living.html - October 5, 2010)

Spider Web Droplets: Inter-disciplinary & Multi-disciplinary Subjects & Disciplines moving beyond Knowledge Disciplines of the last centuries

Let's explore new knowledge-foci, beyond current disciplines, at the editable, World University & School's open SUBJECTS' page - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Subjects. WUaS is like Wikipedia with MIT OCW, Berkeley Webcast and other great, free, open course ware, and facilitates people-to-people teaching and learning. There are a lot of resources at WUaS already. Add a subject to create a new interdisciplinary focus.






















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/beautiful-spider-webs-inter.html - October 5, 2010)

Monday, October 4, 2010

Wilderness Pools: Examination of the effects of the pools, particularly the relaxation response, An ethnography of a culture of pool meditation

Harbin ethnography:


... Ellen Klages' “Harbin Hot Springs: Healing Waters, Sacred Land” is the most focused endeavor, tracing Harbin's history from the Lake Miwoks to the early 1990s, the last chapter focusing on Harbin since Ishvara bought the property in 1972, and then sold it to Heart Consciousness Church.

In this actual / virtual ethnography of Harbin Hot Springs with its focus on characterizing Harbin's culture, Klages' history hints at cultural aspects there, since the Lake Miwoks. Her last chapter on Harbin's recent history since Ishvara bought the property in 1972, while highlighting aspects of the 'tribe' that has emerged there, doesn't consider, for example, in depth Harbin's pools' culture. In my anthropological field work, turned water work, turned examination of the effects, particularly the relaxation response which the pools cause, of the Harbin pools where clothing-optionalness is normal, I develop, too, an ethnography of a culture of pool meditation and emergence of Watsu, which history “Harbin Hot Springs: Healing Waters, Sacred Land” doesn't consider in detail. In conjunction with these processes, I'd like to suggest, in an historical sense, that the emergence of the Harbin Warm Pool and the pool area itself, as well as the community which has emerged at Harbin as a whole since 1972, has given form to a kind of tribe – residents, one main historical record of which can be seen in the Harbinger. Klages' history does focus on Ishvara's vision of community, citing Ishvara:

“'I had a dream of community. The most ideal living situation I'd ever had was in college (Harvard). Each [350-person] House had its own dining room, and I used to spend four or five hours there, hanging out with people and discussing things. It was a very creative, very enjoyable period for me. I wanted to have that kind of environment.'

More and more radical changes were developing in California, and in 1967 the Hartley's (Ishvara and his wife) moved to Berkeley, living a few blocks from Sproul Plaza and the anti-war protests for eight months before buying a home in nearby Kensington. Bob had read all of Fritz Perls' work on Gestalt therapy years before and, after two years of training, was accepted at the Gestalt Institute of San Francisco for continued training and study” (Klages 1991:281).

As a 'formal' history, written nearly 20 years ago, probably in conversation with Ishvara himself, it provides a founder's first-hand account, emerging from the 1960s of Harbin's vision, giving rise to the ongoing community, where Ish still lives on property. While I know of no direct Gestalt therapy practices occurring since around 1994 – Ish didn't like the unequal relationship between therapist and patient (Klages 1991:281) – the sense of realizing the whole may have found form in the pools themselves, naturally, as place, although Klages doesn't suggest this. The social and conversation aspects that Ish found so edifying at Harvard, and which he had in mind in envisioning a community, take place all around Harbin, but especially on the sun deck in the pool area, in my experience. I know of no other ethnographies of Harbin Hot Springs other than this one, which in many ways is two, or at least and actual and virtual two. Klages' history comes closest to providing a kind of historical ethnography.

In Klages' history, hippies were around at Harbin since the 1960s. ...











(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/10/wilderness-pools-examination-of-effects.html - October 4, 2010)