Now, if we go along with Socrates, all of this attention to small intervals may sound "ridiculous," and the harmonikoi could be said to take quite a beating in this Socratic definition of movement; however, as Socrates carries on, the accretive resonance of humor propels his analogy-sequencing brings to an object worthy of our attention, even and especially today. Socrates piles on, conjuring the image of harmonikoi, seriouslooking clowns hard at work, but to no good end. The harmonikoi, Socrates continues,

These small intervals are no small matter for Plato, nor should they be. Because although it seems to be a desire for order that compelled the Pythagoreans and the scrupulous katapuknosis practice of the harmonikoi, there science opens up the possibility for effacious selection and recombination of nonsemantic units, for ends persuasive and otherwise.

John Cage (1937) brought his characteristic optimism to these trends to these possibilities long after Plato's time but well prior to our present movement; now, digital technology has redefined creative production. John Cage in his work “Future of Music: Credo” in Silence, states: The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time.

Who is the composer in this infinitessimally perforated rhythmizomenon that Cage predicted and in which we are now immersed? One google query will show that science and marketing share interest in such questions about resonance. There is rhythm to the way these communities cluster, as well, and future research will collate and display these patterns. The “off-topic” nodes in a discussion forum are just one sign-post pointing out the crucial role of gaps, noise, and affect play in writing today.

John Collier and Mark Burch (1998) introduce rhythmic entrainment to describe emergence of regular, predictable patterns without or between systems. Rhythmic entrainment realizes symmetries of information by means of negentropic sharing and production of information. Collier and Burch offer this perspective to researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, measurement and communication, which suggests uses for writing instruction. Writers work with information so dense and ongoing in its generation and transformation, that the theoretical information theories of mathematics apply in everyday writing life. Writers, manage a kairotic space-time comprised of information, where "not just meaningful distinctions," but "any distinctions" take hold. In this attention economy, asignification and affect become important dimensions of community formation through writing. Collier and Burch's definition of information draws from logic, physics, and communications theory, and these three disciplines have in their own ways contributed to the precising if vertiginous techno-scientific discourse that emerges eye of intermezzo turbulence itself, Plato's "Nurse of Becoming," the insterstices between the discrete dharma of a granular ontology, the ineffible lacunae. At the same time, this definition of information seamlessly meshes with the geneology of protos chronoi we can trace from Aristoxenus through Bergson to Cage, whose "frame" seems to enunciate the discontinuous and granular palates afforded by the digital medium that mathematics, music, and the computer have brought into being. Collier and Burch (1998) offer an assessment of the role of entrainment in diverse discourses, and the same figure of the protos chronos we trace here also appears in their assessment. "The notion of information places a central role in our treatment,” they explain (p. 1). The basic idea of information is that of a distinction between two things. In standard language, the notion is restricted to recognized distinctions, or at least ones that are in a position to be recognized, but information theory, as it has developed in abstract mathematical form, does not restrict itself to just meaningful distinctions, but to any distinction.

Here, Colllier and Burch open up another geneological vector of the protoi chronoi. On the one hand, it could be argued that such geneological work would reduplicate the conceptual lacuna that constrains and fosters this voluminous discourse, one that relates to diverse metaphysical considerations of writing . On the other hand, inquiry into the function of the smallest cut increasingly shows the role of rhythm in the spontaneous symmetries that surprise us amidst the chaos. The conceptual space opened in such a scholarship will create new openings in exigent enjambements of our sciences and technologies where they intersect with our efforts to write with our students, particularly on the politically fraught issues impinging on teachers' ability to work with the premises of the evolution in formal educational contexts. Future research and writing-intensive courses could yield fruit by scanning the history of particularly technologies for the rhythmic dynamics of the rhetoric and discourse that emerge around the question, “Who is the composer?” on systemic levels. Indeed, as Prigogine and Stengers (1984) explain,

Experimentation with the rhythms that emerge in chaotic wikis allow writers to actively work with perennial questions, even in “mundane” technological contexts.

Code and Coda

drift studies

LimitUnlimited