combinatorial exploration, part 1

what are the catalysts of new genres or new categories of ideas?

Hello friends,

Originally, this was going to be one article but I’ve already written about 2,000 words and I could probably write 3,000 more so I’ve decided that this will be the first in a five part series and I will limit myself to ~1,000 words each.

The main theme of this series is combinatorial exploration: iterating on ways to shape my environment to be more productive, to enjoy life more, or even for the discovery of novel ideas.

In this first article I will try to provide some context for the following newsletters which will be slightly more like information dumps compared to this one.

If you haven’t seen a version of this video, I highly recommend you check it out. If you have seen it but it’s been a while, you can watch a version of it which I made eleven years ago: everything is a remix remix.

My purpose in sharing this is not to debate the validity and soundness of intellectual property law but rather as main argument: everything is built upon everything else. In order for something to have meaning it needs to be connected to something else. This is semiotics: symbolic and interpretive anthropology.

Information without context is uninterpretable: like the greetings on Voyager 1 and 2. Aliens would be able to understand that the voices are different people saying hello if they have the context that it is an object made by intelligences from a far place. Without the concept that people have different sounding voices it would be a long recording that would be difficult to interpret.

Information with little context is difficult to interpret. Researchers spend decades scraping at the edges of the human comprehension to discover new ideas and possibilities. The deeper people need to dive into fields of information the more context must be built up to understand the relationship between systems of meaning (webs of symbols).

This momentum of context is recognized as expertise. Information that is deep within a system of meaning has to be simplified and re-contextualized if it is to be reproduced and remembered through generations of people. This means that humans must have access to more abstractions in order for new things to be created.

Creation is always some form of reproduction: extraction from source material, re-orientation, and integration into an output material. A lot of this happens sub-consciously. We dream what we observe so that we can anticipate and react to time-sensitive events and inquiry that is demanded in the human social world.

But is it possible to create something truly new? For example, cyberpunk: the media genre that combines high-tech and low-life. Is cyberpunk new?

It might seem obvious that cyberpunk didn’t exist 10,000 years ago but perhaps it mostly existed by then, at the very edges of human imagination.

If cyberpunk was invented 10,000 years ago I imagine that it might seem very old to us, but we may be able to recognize Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a continuation of that category of story.

I don’t want to downplay the struggle of the author to create new genre, but many people seem to agree that Stonehenge seems very cyberpunk.

We can’t create something from scratch—but we can mine away at the edges of meaning to create new understanding. New synthesis. Creative projects which reproduce the established norms (innovations which already have a market) are more likely to be successful. Creating a new market or a new appetite in people is traditionally more difficult and is often not worth the short-term effort.

However, if you have the resources to define and curate a new genre, you can have a monopoly on that genre for at least 5~10 years. The risk is in whether or not your genre is palatable enough for people as they are now—and how elastic is the economy for the new market to exist. See the consecrated avant-garde.

It makes me wonder, what things will we take thousands of years to imagine which are well within our grasp today? Why don’t we dream and imagine more?

Recently, I asked Claude (an “A.I.”) to continue this list with as many items as it can:

• work

• play

And the A.I. said:

• sleep

• eat

• exercise

• read

• write

• learn

• create

• explore

• travel

• relax

• meditate

• reflect

• connect

• appreciate

• imagine

• dream

• hope

• inspire

• lead

• follow

• teach

• care

• share

• give

• receive

• laugh

• cry

• listen

• observe

• understand

• question

• grow

• change

• forgive

• thank

• serve

• volunteer

• contribute

• advocate

• vote

• participate

• organize

• perform

• compete

• cooperate

• empathize

• love

And then I asked, “is this an exhaustive list?”

No, this is not an exhaustive list. There are many more activities, verbs, and aspects of life that could be added. Here are some additional thoughts:

• The list focuses mainly on common day-to-day activities, emotions, and interpersonal actions. Many other possibilities exist related to hobbies, skills, careers, creativity, adventure, activism, spirituality, and more.

• Even for the categories included, there are countless more specific examples that could be listed for each one (types of exercise, sports, games, art forms, ways to learn, etc).

• New activities are constantly being invented, discovered, and created as culture evolves over time. So no static list could ever be fully exhaustive.

• Experiences are highly subjective, so each person would likely want to add their own personalized activities that reflect their interests, values, and how they find meaning.

• Ultimately, life is extremely broad, varied, and open-ended. While this list captures some of the common human experiences, an exhaustive accounting of "things to do in life" would be constantly expanding and updating over a lifetime. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination and willingness to explore.

So in summary, while this list provides a thoughtful starting sample, it represents only a fraction of the nearly limitless activities and modes of experience that make up a life fully lived. There will always be more that could be added to such a list.

If the A.I. is right, what new everyday activities will people do in the near future? In the distant future? It could be profitable to brainstorm (oooh~ the profit motive).

Be the first to imagine these things!

In the next few articles, I will go over the struggle of how to stimulate creativity in a world dominated by recommender algorithms and some of the systems I’ve set up for curating and consuming content: news, blogs, articles, music, movies, television, and other media.