Desire paths

[hmg]

We've all seen them in public spaces, but what common desire paths mark out our internal world? The mental shortcuts that defy our masters, the dynamic behaviours that render us illegible, and so on, and so forth.

 

[hmg]

See also https://www.dissensus.com/threads/18287

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

It's not an internal example, but piracy's the first thing that comes to mind looking at that comic strip. They keep looking for ways to paywall things, block things off, but people always find ways around.

 

[hmg]

Yes, that is a great example, the best example in the digital world.
But I've a nagging feeling that there's a prime example of this in our thoughts and instincts. Theory of mind in other people, perhaps? That's definitely a cognitive shortcut.

 

[hmg]

Or recreational drug taking cutting paths through the mental thicket to take a short cut to moksha.

 

[sus]

I guess snowballing is another metaphor that gets used, re: the Synthetic Emergences cross-link

Or "stigmergy," which is a word entomologists use to describe the way that termites or ants can build elaborate structures without explicitly planning/communicating. Rather, they build on one anothers work organically, bottom-up.

 

[sus]

There is a Wikipedia game where you try to get from any Random Page to Hitler in as few clicks as possible, using the links (i.e. not search).

Sometimes I wind up navigating Dissensus hypertextually--going from thread to thread just by backtracking Quotes--never touching the What's New feed.

It would be interesting to map these paths. See the common routes. Have visual/UX systems that showed the strength of various routes through webspace, in the same way that a Desire Path records the history of its travelers, can tell you how popular a shortcut is.

 

[sus]

One modern design/architecture practice. which is very aligned with the Jane Jacobs/localism/Chris Alexander school of design philosophy. is to wait before paving your paths. So if you eg build a new university campus, you just do dirt or woodchip or gravel paths, and you wait to see where people go and how they cut across. And then you make the desire paths official paths by paving them.

A metaphor in there somewhere I think. "Beneath the paving stones, beach!" The formalization of paths and routes through a space as marked by concrete.

 

[hmg]

That technqiue reminds me of Physarum slime molds working out the optimal routes between Tokyo subway stations

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

There is a Wikipedia game where you try to get from any Random Page to Hitler in as few clicks as possible, using the links (i.e. not search).

Sometimes I wind up navigating Dissensus hypertextually--going from thread to thread just by backtracking Quotes--never touching the What's New feed.

It would be interesting to map these paths. See the common routes. Have visual/UX systems that showed the strength of various routes through webspace, in the same way that a Desire Path records the history of its travelers, can tell you how popular a shortcut is.

I like that these Burroughs threads themselves are now stacking up and overlapping. It's like looking at a cork board with crisscrossing strings connecting everything. That's why I'm into linking to threads within threads. The forum becomes a denser and denser network and you can follow ideas around the place and back through time.

 

[sus]

The nodes are always sphere/circles and the links are always tubes/lines.

Tyler Volk talks about this in Metapatterns. Archetypal geometries. Spheres are cells. Tubes/lines are tunnels/bridges/cables/cords.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

The nodes are always sphere/circles and the links are always tubes/lines.

Tyler Volk talks about this in Metapatterns. Archetypal geometries. Spheres are cells. Tubes/lines are tunnels/bridges/cables/cords.

There's a thread running through Cyclonopedia discussing plot holes in a text as tunnels leading to its true content, the surface just being camouflage for what Negarestani terms 'Hidden Writing'.