Invasive Computing

Invasive Computing environments are growing quietly and quickly.  The architecture for these systems is as ambient as it is robust.  Quiet, ambient, networked…these are fantastic descriptions for the data-products shuttling between nodes and networks.  Not so fitting, however, for those caught in the tangled webs between real and virtual spaces.  The so-called meanderthals act as indicator species for the ubicomplications of emergent network cultures.

Meanderthals are a product of human error amplified and extended through networked technologies.  Oblivious to all but the demands of their personal data assistants, these wayward cyborgs call attention to the limits of a city’s infrastructure by way of unconscious collisions.

Tracking their movements across simultaneous environments may require access to schizogeographic information systems, schizogeographic positioning satellites and other such theory objects that have and are presently being hot-wired to contend with the non-euclidean event scenes of these bumbling hordes.

Still, their carbon footprints are readily identifiable, as evidenced in the niche opportunities billowing forth in all shades of grey.

New Probes

Data-mining the Shaver canon, with particular attention to the Deros, evokes a maligned form of the meanderthal. Mutant and mean-spirited, the deros or “detrimental robots” were allegedly borne of irradiation from e-waste left behind by negligent Titans and, or, Atlans millenia ago. From within the inner-Earth they accumulate attention capital by way of malevolent social networks—sabotaging and disappearing people, places and things on Earth’s surface.

“A man who is equipped like a territory is no longer an inhabitant; he becomes a habitat.” – Paul Virilio, Crepuscular Dawn.

Within Virilio’s critique of techno-accessorizing and auto-colonization is also a possibility space for more mysteries a la Shaver. E-waste as alien implant, a time capsule, an out-of-place artifact from a future imperfect. “History is spatial,” notes Tom Sherman, “there are going to be anachronisms in your neighborhood.” (Before and After the I-Bomb) The shadow economies of electronic refuse remain on the back of our minds, figuratively or literally, depending on how far we push this amazing story.

Confusion as Nest

In China, “a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb,” is found.  A tomb that “had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty four centuries ago” (Fortean Times, June 2009). Out of place artifacts persist in the excavation of ancient cities, while general displacement is rampant in modern metropolises by way of newfangled techno-accessories.

We are familiar with the Meanderthal, that wandering cyborg variant studied closely by Matthew Tiessen. Further analysis suggests the Meanderthal is in fact a megapod. Etymologically it is “large -footed” like its Bigfoot brethren, but emphasis here is on its carbon footprint, the sort sighted increasingly across e-wastelands. Alternately, we view the “pod” as vehicle or craft, the Meanderthal enclosed in the simultaneous environments of the Megapod.  Limited not just to the omnipresent iPod but all manner of other mobile tech…the mega pod/device as multitude become mesh…life in the cocoon.

Network culture by way of the megapod frees one from the immobility of desktop computing while promoting a local anesthesia, a numbness to the immediate world, as well. Worlds within worlds, cities within cities, echoes and splinter forms of Archigram’s insectoid armada and/or Martijn de Waal’s myspace urbanisms.

This is the tele-cocoon, lifeforce of the Meanderthal. Is there a next-level butterfly that will hatch one day? Insert post-human hybrids and signs of the Singularity here. Animals everywhere are drawn to urban environments to make their nests, a form of adaptation in hostile environments. Why should anyone wonder differently about bi-pedal humanoids seeking refuge in continuous partial attention?  Confusion is nest.