There are two kinds of offworld anthropology: Near Distance and Long Distance. With typical Earth-centrism, the “distance” is measured in light years from the Blue Marble. Try explaining to a Gorgolian that he’s “Long Distance” when you’re on his doorstep.

At least Gorgolians won’t spit in your face when you try to interview them about the meaning of bio-zeppelin design in their culture.  Read more…

(via Savage Minds)

In what I have reason to believe is a new campaign from the Yes Men, a web site has launched announcing a free trade-in program for the iPhone 4cf, a new “conflict free iPhone.”  See my previous blog post about some of the ethical issues of the iPhone manufacturing process.  This new site is a brilliant example of cyberactivism following up on the spoofed New York Times print and web edition the Yes Men created in November 2008.  And, it’s been timed to occur on the same day as an Apple event that was advertised as “. . . Just Another Day. That You’ll Never Forget” which turned out to be an announcement earlier this afternoon that Apple is including the Beatles catalog in iTunes.  On the same day John Lennon, the counter-culture musician who penned and sang “Give Peace A Chance” is plastered across the Apple homepage, this site launches asking consumers to engage with manufacturers, mining companies and lawmakers. Today, from your iPhone, you can consider the connections between genocide and mineral sourcing for technology production, and then go over to iTunes and purchase “Come Together” for $1.29 (Timothy Leary’s campaign anthem in his California Governor’s race challenging Ronald Reagan in 1969).  The power of the Yes Men campaign comes from this mind-bending juxtaposition, and the way that experiencing these two announcements draws the user into consciousness about the modes of production without ever using the term or even mentioning capitalism.

The Conflict Free iPhone site mimics Apple’s web presence precisely, the layout and style are indistinguishable from a site Apple might produce.  The text claims that the “new iPhoneCF guarantees to all its customers the same high quality phone as the original iPhone 4 with the added bonus of taking you one step closer to a world without conflict.” And further reports that Apple has decided to ensure the minerals used in the production of their devices are not sourced from mines in Africa “under the control of rebel groups further fueling a conflict that has has killed more than 5,000,000 civilians.”  Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, has previously answered questions from consumers about the sourcing of minerals used to manufacture the iPhone, stating that “there is no way to be sure” about the source of minerals.

The site can be seen at http://apple-cf.com and the following slide show contains screen shots of the pages, in case they’re taken down by the cease and desist that I imagine Apple’s lawyers are sending out right now.

Under the “Do” page, the site offers 7 steps consumers can take: 1. hold the technology industry accountable by calling for a code of ethics in manufacturing; 2. engage in consumer education, ask questions; 3. take steps to enforce S. 2125: Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006; 4. report violations of the law to the FBI; 5. perform citizen’s arrests of officials who are breaking the law; 6. perform citizen’s arrests of shareholders and officers of mining companies “implicated in pillaging the resources of the Congo and fueling the conflict in the Congo over the past 14 years”; and 7. support a class action lawsuit filed against a Canadian mining company.

The site was brought to my attention by a “press release” from “Apple” revealing the site as a hoax.  Another sharp example of the way the Yes Men frequently play both sides of the corporate vs. activist game, first acting as the corporation itself in making an announcement, posing as the company, and then posing again as the “real” company denying that the previous action was authentic.

The interpretation of symbolic structures is forced into an infinity of symbolic contextual meanings.

M. M. Bakhtin

Historically, Lions have been symbols of power from the Persian to the British Empires, from Hinduism (Narasimha) to Judaism, Islam and Christianity (see Kings, Judges, Proverbs, Samuel, Isaiah, Daniel, Numbers, Revelations, etc. and of course The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). In Meso and South American traditions Jaguars are associated with creation stories and shamanism.  From Mesopotamia to the Americas, cats and the divine have enjoyed an intimate relationship for  at least 10,000 years. Big cats (genus Panthera) have been deployed as markers for power, virility, nobility, the numinous, and more recently as mascots for Apple’s operating systems.

Apple Inc. has been naming (and code-naming) their operating systems after big cats since the release of OS X 10.0 (Cheeta) in 2001. Their newest release, scheduled for Summer 2011 is called “Lion.” It turns out they’ve chosen a stock photo of a Lion for their marketing materials that was also used by a Belgian anti-immigration nationalist party (Vlaams Belang) in 2007 along with the slogan “Flemish Force.”  Gizmodo reports that the photo, previously available from stock agencies Shutterstock and Fotolia, is called “The King” – though it’s now been removed.

Apple’s Lion (2010)

Vlaams Belang’s Lion (2007)

And, as ZDnet’s Apple Core blog points out, this isn’t the first unusual encounter Apple has had with stock imagery of big cats. For the current release of OS X, 10.6 aka Snow Leopard, they chose to remove blood from the predators mouth.

Snow Leopard

Snow Leopard, cleaned up

The message with Snow Leopard? OS X is fierce, but not too fierce.  Now Apple may be asking: how do you remove the ‘stain’ of an anti-immigration nationalist party from your cat?

A friend shared this series of Google autocomplete search results on a social network, it contains screen captures of Google’s autocomplete feature along with a venn diagram produced from the resulting terms:

I was curious if I would get the same terms, so I tried it. As soon as I found that my results for “Why are Buddhists” were different in than the screen capture in the image above I decided to take more of my own samples. I tried out a few religions that came to mind off the top of my head. Here are the results of my autocomplete searches, taken today between 11:11 and 11:15:

Google autocomplete is described as an “algorithm” that “offers searches that might be similar to the one you’re typing.” Based on the description below of how they are produced, you may have different results when you search:

As you type, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. All of the predicted queries shown have been typed previously by other Google users. The autocomplete dataset is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries. In addition, if you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, you may see search queries from relevant searches that you’ve done in the past.

The recent discovery of a possibly Earth-like planet, Gliese 581g, had me thinking about exo-/xeno-/astro-anthropology again and about the possibility of studying cultures on other planets.  Since the early 90s when I started my undergraduate education in biology and philosophy, I’ve been interested in the relatively easy acceptance of the ”hard sciences” approach to studying theoretical life on other planets. The astrobiology field has some internal debates about their own nomenclature, some arguing that xenobiology should refer to the study of life unlike that on Earth, and astrobiology be reserved for the study of carbon based life on Earth-like planets, including Earth. Either way, it’s considered a legitimate field in biology and astrophysics, NASA even has an astrobiology institute. So why not anthropology and religious studies?

I would propose, for now, that exoanthropology refer to the study of culture on other worlds (or other non-terran environments), including the interactions of terran and non-terran cultures – whereas astroanthropology refer to the study of terran culture as it moves into space.  I realize this delineation calls on some problematic othering, but I think it’s useful for now as the exo field is theoretical and speculative, while the astro field has some more concrete examples to work from, such as the existing space station projects and the study of UFO religions. One might ask if it’s premature to talk about how we would approach a study of culture (and especially the religions) in extra-solar civilizations. And without a “subject” to look at, we might wonder: what’s the point in even naming the field yet?  But these questions haven’t stopped astrobiologists from spending a great deal of time and energy looking at how life might form on other planets, especially in the theoretical consideration of what shape it might take given variation in environment. Why not apply this approach to religion and culture as well?  In many ways this is exactly what speculative fiction has done for a century, authors writing about alien civilizations often include detailed accounts of religions.  Some especially well crafted examples include Robert Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land,” and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series.  And of course, Philip K. Dick has his own special way of bringing the the exo into religion.

These authors’ approaches aren’t far off from what exoanthropologists might do, especially exoethnographers – using what we know about Earth cultures and our own species to imagine how changes might result in differentiation and variation. So, for example, how different would Earth cultures be if our day was 225 hours long, as it is on Pluto. What if one half of our planet was always dark, facing away from the sun?  What if gravity was lower, atmospheric pressure higher, the sun closer?  What if our civilization was entirely underwater, how different would our concept be of the “sky?”

I’m not proposing we use the methods or epistemology of the astrobiological sciences. Lévi-Strauss’s periodical chart of cultural elements, or anything similar, need not apply here. But if, as Geertz suggested, part of the process of our exploration of culture is trying to understand as many “imaginative universes” as possible, isn’t a speculative, theoretical, exoanthropology a valuable tool in that endeavor? There is also an argument to be made for the role that this kind of imaginative “play” has in formulating new theory about culture and religion here on Earth.

I suggest that we start imagining sooner rather than later.  There is a long history here on planet Earth of failed first-encounters, which we would certainly do over and do better if given the chance. Anthropology, and the precursors to religious studies have a long history of being put to work for the project of colonialism, starting with linguistics and continuing as anthropologists, theologians and missionaries provided imperialist powers with the information they needed to manipulate, control and commit genocide against indigenous people. The sooner we start considering how to prevent this from happening “next time,” the better. It seems inevitable that one day, maybe not for a while but eventually, scholars of religion and culture will be called on to interpret the elaborate religious significance of a welcoming ceremony staged by visitors from the Gliese system. Perhaps it will be up to us to mediate the beginnings of a respectful relationship and prevent interstellar conflict. And if we aren’t preparing for that day, who will be there in our place? Guy Consolmagno, an astronomer at the vatican, might be. “Any entity” he says,”no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.”

While exploring in Second Life, I came across the ISRVW apparently set up by Dr. John Traphagan.  You can visit the ISRVW here.  It’s set up as a meeting space, no resources and not very large, but interesting that it exists.  Also explored the LDS welcome center for a while, interesting to note that all the Mormon avatars I encountered were children.

Dr. Amit Goswami, professor emeritus of physics at University of Oregon, has a media rich web site where he discusses a “science of consciousness.” He calls himself a “quantum activist.” Just as modernist empirical science constructed a vision of reality as material, could the quantumn revolution construct reality as spiritual/religious?

“The forms of knowledge that technologies mediate is integral to both a society’s cultural information pool, and to the extramental reality in which they live. Technology itself constitutes an alteration of that relationship — especially as it intervenes in the experiential aspects of that relationship . . . Technologies are in a sense ‘artifacts of knowledge’ (Laughlin 1988b) — they are alterations in material reality that, accompanied by meaning in peoples’ minds, facilitate intentional acts. As such technologies become part of the extramental reality in which we are embedded and to which we must adapt.” (p. 158)

“We would suggest that a society’s technical knowledge is precisely that aspect of their information pool that facilitates an alteration of the relationship between experience and extramental reality through the mediation of techniques and artifacts. In other words, technologies combine information from the culture pool (as meaning) with material and energy in extramental reality that have been purposefully altered in order to afford novel intentional acts.” (p. 159)

One year ago I blogged about Pogo’s youtube video “Alice” – here’s an insightful post about his music on Poemocracy thanks to Our Future Environment for sending this to me.

You can download Pogo’s amazing creations on last.fm.

Does our perception create reality? Do we cause the world to become by observing it? This would seem to suggest so, and it’s not a creation myth.

It’s time to develop a reasoned argument for the rights of spirituality.

This is free-writing in this post, a list of ideas:

* Spirituality is a right.

* In the mode of historical pursuits of social justice struggle a new cafeteria-style liberation theology must be written.

* All states of consciousness, even those which do not directly obviously produce capital, must be allowed, protected and encouraged.

The only place I would disagree with McKenna here is when he says that the Shaman has the ‘paid’ version of the software – which is more advanced. In fact, we all have the ‘paid’ version and it is inferior to the open source version – which is openly available from nature’s pharmacy to anyone.