When I went for one of my multi-daily feedings at the Metafilter trough yesterday, there was a post linking to a 1993 article by Huntington on the "clash of civilizations". One of the comments linked to a series of articles from their archives on issues relevant to what happened on 9-11. Funny, but I received an invitation to subscribe to Foreign Affairs yesterday too. Maybe the marketing department of Foreign Affairs saw a great opportunity to expand their subscriber base, and did a mass mailing of a subscription offer. I don't mention this cynically: the First Law of Memes states that information is survival.

When is information harmful? I’ve passed by articles on the web post-9-11 that wonder what effect the repetition of tragic events have on the people glued to the tube. Being stunned by the 9-11 events was normal; even without a TV I remained glued to the internet for days. The deep emotional root has been struck in either case of media. The difference is perhaps like that between an endless tunnel and a maze. In the former, the information is streamed to you, surrounding you with its repetition and its and controlling way. There is enough variation to keep you going along the path, and there is a promise of understanding infinitely deferred. In the latter example of the maze, you are left alone amidst a universe of information, organized to be sure; but the experience is one of frustration, delay, imprisonment, and confusion. There is a goal – being centered within an understandable universe – but each bit of information could be an opening to that goal or a wall preventing you from reaching it.

The terrorist network that planned and implemented the recent tragic events chose their targets carefully: they realized the information overload that would result from the destruction of these two icons: the monolithically erect landmarks of rationalized economic productivity on the one hand; and the massive pentagular sprawl of military might on the other. These terrorists were our Information Overlords in the attack and its immediate aftermath. In order not to become enmeshed in the snare of the information maze nor captured within the endlessness and futility of a controlling media, we must rebuild our information networks for survival advantage. That’s what I call information architecture: not creating maps for a fly stuck in a bottle, but, a la Wittgenstein, helping the fly navigate a way out of the bottle.

(Maybe I subscribe to Foreign Affairs.)

There have been more than enough words already about what happened on 9-11, and we can expect even more. I really don't feel like plugging the complex of emotions, thoughts, and apprehensions I am experiencing into any pre-existing framework like memetics, journal writing, and the like. Maybe later. For now, I'd just like to suggest a few links that might help achieve some understanding about this unravelling situation:

This article provides a context for understanding Mideast terrorism, and envisions at least the possibility of a reasonable and substantive solution. I found it on the community weblog Metafilter.

Robert Fisk of Independent.co.uk met with bin Laden a few times beginning in 1996 and has written an excellent profile on him. Also from the same source, Mary Dejevsky wrote an insightful profile of George W. I look forward to reading other profiles from The Independent, as they try to get at the heart of character and to some degree succeed, a hard thing to do.

I didn't have a TV during the Iraqi war, so I missed CNN's world stage debut and all those videos of smartbombs. I still don't have a TV but now there's the internet, and CNN's site makes it easy to access the most recent news, and reminds you how repetitive and obsessive TV news really is. I assume the news is updated just as frequently as on TV – when there is new news. Instead of watching the same images or talking heads over and over, I can bring up Metafilter, allowing me to filter through many links from the "official media" myself, along with commentary from individuals in the community, first-person accounts, and any background material anyone has sought to bring forth.

I found Stratfor through Metafilter, which is an excellent source for intelligence and analysis on a wide range of subjects, with special concern given now to the recent attacks. It was probably there that I came across this article by an Army analyst from several years ago, on the difficulties the Soviets found in fighting a war in Afghanistan.

Whatever recession analysts might be predicting, it won't be of information. There will be a wealth of words, a dearth of meaning. Finding something amid the dross that can encapsulate our new experience and our new fears will be our challenge.

I discovered, or re-discovered the Principia Cybernetica Web. I vaguely remember being here before, but I suppose I wasn't ready for it. Maybe I'm not even ready now. As a patriotic American everyman, I distrust philosophy: it's just so many words. I prefer PRAGMATIC can-do suggestions over arcane, inaccessible theorizing. Ah, but...

It's at least worthy as a cheap thrill. Browsing through the Principia was a great way to pass a morning, pondering the Essential Questions. Where do I join? Maybe I'll unsubscribe from a few of my ClickZ lists and add one on the Global Brain from the Principia.

I'm really a sucker for philosophy, especially when it seems "real," and not merely academic. Like encountering an installation of sculptures at Bergamot Station in Los Angeles, not so interesting in itself, but for the pencil-scrawled philosophizing on the wall. The artist teaches philosophy in Southern California, and came by his "thought-system" during a time in his life that his father was very ill. There is a sort of urgency in his philosophy for it to actually DO something. Like, "let's THINK real hard so we can REDUCE SUFFERING." Sort of the opposite of Buddha's "let's NOT think so we can escape the whole mess" (a paraphrase, obviously).

One philosophical text that had a big influence on me when I was in art school was Theodore Adorno's Negative Dialectics. At least the first sentence was (which was probably the only part of the text I read and possibly understood, and which, again, I paraphrase): "Philosophy lives on, because the moment to realize it has been missed." I based a small video piece on that, lugging our 3/4" video camera around to different locations in San Francisco (like Fisherman's Wharf) reciting that sentence like a TV news talking head. Clever or not, I think engaging in acts like that –i.e., purposeful art activity – has the effect of insinuating a group of concerns within our psyche, that can resonate in our life for years to come.

I guess I still hold onto that grumbling phrase, written after the experience of a world war by a German Marxist: "Philosophy lives on, because the moment to realize it has been missed." Is this why I turned to design from art? ("Design lives on because art and philosophy messed up.") Is it why I turned to business and brand from design idealism?

Design lives on because it can only be realized – through the power of the possible. What will be, already is. The problem is seeing it, thinking it through, stewarding it though its evolution, towards fruition.

Theodore Adorno, please forgive me.

Richard Dawkins, the inadvertent founder of Memetics, gave an acceptance speech recently for an honor he was awarded by the Foundation for the Future in Seattle, written up in Reason magazine by Ronald Bailey. The author suggests that not only was Dawkins' talk interesting for the insight he brought to his subject matter, the evolutionary capacity of humans to plan for the future, but also was revealing for how he was trying to grapple with how "the institutions of free markets and property rights can help humanity plan for the future better."

This is a reassuring hint to me that the relationship between brands and memes is not really so specious.

Robert Clark wrote a wonderful book on the Columbia, called River of the West: A Chronicle of the Columbia, which is an engaging semi-fictionalized account of the river, beginning from the first salmon to the more recent struggles over fishing rights of the Yakima Indians. In between, it covers the early exploration of the Spanish by boat, the explorations of Lewis and Clark, and the colonization by fur traders. Good history and storytelling.