1. Symbol S For a closed thermodynamic system, a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work.
2. A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system.
3. A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
4. The tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
5. Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society.

[German Entropie : Greek en-, in; see en-2 + Greek trop, transformation; see trep- in Indo-European Roots.]

Source: The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright — 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

the human beatbox: gutturally reversing automation

graffiti, hydraulics, turntablism: turning the artifacts of modern industrialism into works of art

breakdancing: humans coming to terms with their roboticization

sampling: retrieval from the data banks of the posthuman memory

hip hop: the aesthetic response to the machinations of cyborg culture

so … what does that mean for basketball, the sport most closely linked to hip hop culture? It means that basketball is at a break boundary in its evolution (what biologists call a cladogenesis), with the aesthetic and process-oriented form of "ghettoball" or "streetball" emerging from the highly-disciplined lineage of ball that Naismith introduced a century ago, and subverting cyborgification while doing so.

Golf, one of the last bastions of men, is under siege — and the movement has been underway since long before Martha Burk arrived on the scene.

In many sports with a high degree of male bonding, one of the strongest unifying factors is the proverbial swinging dick, and so it is in golf. The driver in golf is nothing more than the extension of the male phallus, shooting Balatajaculate hundreds of yards in all directions (preferably straight) while onlookers go slackjawed or nod approvingly. Even with drivers made out of graphite or titanium or moonrock, or whatever, the man's always got the Number One Wood in his hands.

There's even a class of "golfers" out there who do nothing but hit long drives, evoking comparisons to the disembodied circus schlongs of the porn industry. Preying on our insecurities, both groups can sell our fears back to us, either as equipment to lengthen us on the tee, or in the sack.

If you can't grip it and rip it, then you're not a man at all — or so the subtext reads.

But this is where it gets confusing, yet interesting. Many women are gripping it and ripping it right along with the men. Now maybe they aren't as dick-swinging as the male pros, but the top 25 female players are averaging over 260 yards per drive, which is much further than most Joe Titleists out there. The female golf pro is hermaphroditic in the vast ecosphere of sport.

Or maybe not. Golf is indeed a sport with a high K/L ratio (which shall hereafter be known on sportsBabel as the cyborg ratio so as to differentiate it — and the individual it represents — from the capital-labor ratio of the firm found in classical economics). Golf is a cyborg sport. And as Donna Haraway notes in A Cyborg Manifesto:

The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.

So perhaps the female golfer isn't hermaphroditic, after all. Perhaps the golfer — any golfer — carries with them the withering remnants of a phallocentric Western culture as they enter the posthuman cyborg state of tomorrow.

the sport psychology concept of flow: an outering of the central nervous system into the cooling medium of the sporting event?

Of or relating to play or playfulness.

[French ludique, from Latin ludus, play. See leid- in Indo-European Roots.]

Source: The American Heritage? Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright — 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

As hormone flows control the stimulation of thought in each of our brains, so do electronic capital flows control advertising, the stimulation of thought in our collective virtual brain. Each of the above are examples of information, models of interconnected data themselves interconnected to form ever more complex patterns of knowledge and simulation.

* * *

McLuhan's concept of the Global Village may be one of his most misunderstood. Many have the mistaken impression that McLuhan was theorizing a global network where all people joined together in a utopian state of peace. While he was indeed optimistic about the future of electric man — if only we would heed his advice and become aware of the effects of our technologies — I do not believe that this is what he had in mind. Instead, he was pointing out that the 6 billion people on the planet were being drawn closer together by global communications networks, and therefore more aware of each other and more impacted by their actions, both good and bad.

* * *

Neuroscience research informs research on computer networks and vice-versa: our real and virtual brains are analogous. McLuhan was wrong, though, about equating our real bodies with our virtual ones, which is the implication of the Global Village. Instead, our real bodies, when outered into electric space, become the neurons of the virtual brain, of which there can only be one.

As we perform activities in real space that alter our information models — such as buying season tickets, filling out a consumer survey, or scoring 37 points for the Lakers — our action potentials are realized and a synapse fires in the global virtual brain.

This is the essence of Haraway's "informatics of domination."

* * *

We must recognize and emphasize the art inherent in our sport: for example, the first time we execute a skill; the high speed ballet that is WR and DB dancing down the sideline; the rat-tat-tat of the tic-tac-toe pass; the sound of mesh snapping as the ball arcs through the rim. This cyborg aesthetic is our only organic armour against the domination of — indeed, the annihilation by — the cybernetic.

With the increasing electronification of money, and indeed all other signs, it seems inevitably clever that Reebok's new sub-brand bears the same name — RBK — as its NYSE ticker symbol.

The transition from signs that dissimulate something to signs that dissimulate that there is nothing marks a decisive turning point. The first reflects a theology of truth and secrecy (to which the notion of ideology still belongs). The second inaugurates the era of simulacra and of simulation, in which there is no longer a God to recognize his own, no longer a Last Judgment to separate the false from the true, the real from its artificial resurrection, as everything is already dead and resurrected in advance.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p.6

Engineering for the environment in the new century … on now.

DANGER:

ethnic digestion tabernacles … on now.

privacy robotic doubles,
rolling rehab threat machines,
reformulators,
heightened insensitivity vehicles,
erotic invisible empires … on now.

DJ Spooky, Polyphony of One

The closer we get to the cities, that is to say, to the marketplace, the more the peasant's labor becomes labor for the market, that is to say, commodity production, and the more regulated and more or less stable his labor becomes, just as if he were working inside an industrial enterprise.

Ernest Mandel, An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory, p.14

It is play that cools off the hot situations of actual life by miming them.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, p.43

Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p.10

Thoughts from the preseason Monday Night Football tilt between the NFL defending champion Tampa Bay Bucs and the St. Louis Rams:

preseason football: watching the interview process from home

The Bucs' John Lynch, who was miked for Super Bowl XXXVII, didn't know at the time that the audio feed was "live" — that clips were being shown (delayed) during the actual ABC broadcast — instead believing that the feed was for later use by NFL Films. Is this misappropriation of the digiSelf?

It is reported that the Bucs' Warren Sapp bought $10,000 diamond-and-silver chain link bracelets for every member of the defensive unit to commemorate the Super Bowl win, recalling the "wastrels" of Baudrillard's consumer society. Quoth Sapp: "The defence is only as good as the weakest link."

New ABC fall series Threat Matrix: FEAR FEAR FEAR military-industrial-intelligence complex FEAR FEAR FEAR docile bodies FEAR FEAR FEAR (under direct orders from the President) FEAR FEAR FEAR

Thinking about John Bale's excellent books, Sport, Space and the City (1993) and Landscapes of Modern Sport (1994). The synthetic nature of the domed stadium is poignant. The synthetic action is less so.

Once again, I think to myself: Al Michaels is way too intelligent for John Madden.

Like their counterparts of today, cloned athletes (made from foreskin, no less), are predicted to fuck like rabbits.

Big things are predicted from virtual soldiers.

High performance cyborg athletes have a special gene.

Salon's King Kaufman questions the contributions of Little Leaguers to the posthuman sporting consciousness.

ESPN shifts its product mix towards virtual sport coverage.

PRODUCT ALERT: faulty pitching cyborgs may be repaired by biomechanical engineers.

smithers:

[Aside] Sometimes the best way to see the effects of a medium are to take it away for a while. A few thoughts on the electrical blackout from Toronto:

In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.

But when we lose grid electricity (and thus our umbilicus to the global village), we retrieve the city as our extended skin, and actually get outside to socialize.

When we lose grid electricity (and thus the ability to pump dinosaur juice into our cars), we retrieve biking and walking, thus shrinking our effective space-time potential, but also slowing down the pace of the evening.

When we lose grid electricity (and thus essentially the ability to use the television or networked computer), we retrieve battery-powered radio from cars, walkmans, or transistors to get the news.

When we lose grid electricity (and thus the ability to see, if it's too hot to light candles), we notice how comfortable it is talking to someone on the telephone that we cannot see, but that same conversation becomes odd/uncanny/disconcerting when it is face-to-face in the same room with someone that we cannot see.

[Exit]

Isn't it interesting how the evolution of certain sports into the third dimension (ie. vertical, to go with length and width) has radically changed their nature? In baseball, hitters began to take the defence out of play by hitting the ball over the fence, thereby shifting the desired player makeup in favour of power. In football, the forward pass became the deep threat, and the new requisite athletic skill became 4.3 speed. And in basketball, wing cutters stymied tough defence by elevating for the alley-oop, causing leaping ability to become that sport's holy mantra.

In each case, going over the defence caused a shift in the athletic ratio required for that sport, considering the components of athleticism to be speed, strength, power, agility, quickness, coordination, balance, and endurance.

Does this sound like a really weird request, or is it just my little ol' suspicious mind at work?

From: Sport Management On Behalf Of Christine Bolger

"Friends–I have been asked by The White House to help them find (immediately) candidates who would have an interest in spending six months in Iraq traveling the country and helping to establish grassroots sports programs. This is a paid position (I do not know how much). If you can help troll for candidates or help in any way, please have any interested parties contact me right away at dogrean @ usafootball.com Time is of the essence! Thanks."

The Prophecy of The Matrix: in the Western world's continuing reversal to orality, Florida creates "counterterrorism" database that will offer access to billions of records. The First War of the Cyborg continues.

Scientists in Italy have created the first cloned athlete, a horse named Promotea. Eschewing previous attempts that used mass media technologies to create cloned athletes, the Italians chose embryonic DNA technology instead. However, in an unusual "twist for the growing barnyard of cloned animals, the Haflinger mare that gave birth to Promotea was also the source of her DNA, meaning she and her foal are identical twins." Reproduction and traditional kinship ties are dead; replication rules the day.

The Prophecy of The Matrix, II: researchers in Japan develop a device that produces electrical power from human blood. Once again, I ask: how long before athletes at the local fitness club become fully integrated circuits (mitochondria?) into the global posthuman body?

Sometimes our Brains have simplistic notions of robot culture.

Electric technologies give man a hand for an ear …

Tampa Bay wins the "American Bowl," an attempt by the NFL to broaden the popularity of gridiron football in overseas markets. Is the NFL a threat to global security?

McLuhan (1964) on "Games":

"A game is a machine that can get into action only if the players consent to become puppets for a time. For individualist Western man, much of his 'adjustment' to society has the character of a personal surrender to the collective demands. Our games help both to teach us this kind of adjustment and also to provide a release from it. The uncertainty of the outcomes of our contests makes a rational excuse for the mechanical rigor of the rules and procedures of the game." (p.211).

References

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding media. New York: New American Library.

Despite my earlier post stating that sport is a globalanguage (based on the proposition that the Latin citius, altius, fortius is understood by athletes from all corners of the world), sport is in fact not a globalanguage, but it is a medium for a true globalanguage: Logos.

A little over a century ago, ranchers would sear the flesh of their cattle as a means of identifying one herd from another. Each ranch had its own sign that represented its own particular brand mark; the sign came to have meaning for those in the community that reflected the mores and values of that particular ranch.

Over time, corporations began to use brand marks to represent the mores and values of the firm, marks that we now commonly refer to as corporate logos. Conglomerates such as Nike, McDonald's and IBM spend millions of dollars annually to reinforce the meaning of these logos. And in a move that would shock the cattle before us, we voluntarily brand ourselves with these image-signs, either on the extended skins of our clothing or, less (dis-?) figuratively in some cases, by tattoo.

The difference in our case, of course, is that our herd affiliation has much less permanence that that of our bovine counterparts. Simply by changing a t-shirt, an athlete may go from the Nike stable to that of rival adidas. We live as transientities in the world of Logos.

The logo, in its iconographic nature, is highly contextual. For example, if one were to see this:

one might consider the mutually beneficial relationship between Nike and Michael Jordan during the NBA's phoenician rise from the economic ashes.

On the other hand, if one saw the same logo in this context:

one might ponder the transformation of the Olympic Games from homage to the gods, through allegiance to nation-states, to corporate servitude, and Nike's role in recruiting the world's best labour force to that end — citius, altius, fortius, copiosus.

Finally, the same corporate logo in this context:

might recall complaints from the 1990s about Nike's sweatshop labour practices in Vietnam.

In short, brand marks have extended themselves at electric speed to form a language of their own — what I have termed Logos. In a retrieval of iconographic forms of communication such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Sumerian cuneiforms, Logos is a highly-symbolic, highly-interpretive form of communication, unique in its global nature. The implosion of all meanings around the world down to the very level of the sign leaves the logo or brand mark trembling under its own energy.

What is dangerous in this scenario, however, is that we currently have very little control over the evolution of this globalanguage. Copyright and trademark law essentially prevent us, via the threat of (legal) force, from attaching any meaning of our own to a particular logo. This is radically different from the usual evolution of a language through common usage of words and phrases; what was once a public good has reversed into a medium of private ownership.

Artists have made their voices heard in response to the rise of Logos, through derivative artworks, such as "American Alphabet" by Heidi Cody, to more specific culture jamming exercises, such as "Consumer Whore" by Kieron Dwyer. Given that sport is a such a powerful medium to communicate via Logos, one can only speculate as to potential responses against the sportocratic apparatus.