Re~ports

The book of responses to the events that happen within the periphery.

  • How to Boost Your Mind Viral Immunity

    In a recent Joe Rogan interview, Elon Musk expressed his sympathy for the anti-globalization movement. One of the main reasons, according to Musk, was that the increasingly interconnected world created a fertile ground for all kinds of memes, concepts, and mind viruses that could “infect” a large portion of the population. We don’t know whether […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin May 24, 2020
  • The Magic of Feedback Loops: AI Takes Over

    The world is gripped by the collective anxiety proliferated by live death-count dashboards, exponential charts, and frightening headlines that promise the imminent apocalypse. The real extent of the problem, however, is not really known. The decisions are made based on incomplete data. Worst-case scenarios are used to implement social and economic policies without a proper discussion or long-term implications assessment.

    Dmitry Paranyushkin March 20, 2020
  • We were in more danger before Coronavirus even started…

    If you think that practicing “social distancing” is the right thing to do, you should have stayed at home before you even heard of Coronavirus. Your chances to kill someone with a normal seasonal flu are higher than with Covid-19. … Coronavirus is dominating the news and the collective consciousness. People are panicking and practicing […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin March 16, 2020
  • Cognitive Stimulants

    Cognitive stimulants are the things that alter perception and stimulate imagination and sensitivity. Their main importance is in bringing different points of view and expanding the phase space of possibilities available at every moment of time, acting as a deterrent against stagnation, boosting innovation and evolutionary development. Any form of expression can manifest itself as […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin April 25, 2017
  • Changing the Picture

    The report below was written in response to Changing the Picture – the conference on storytelling and technology that took place in Berlin’s Babelsberg studios in November 2016.  … Everyone lives in the stories they’re telling themselves. Many of those stories are imagined and told by somebody else and that’s where the one who speaks can have […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin November 24, 2016
  • Software Takes Command

    A post on Facebook says “there was 9/11, now there is 11/9”.  The scale of disaster is almost comparable: who could have predicted that Donald Trump would become the next president of the US? A recent piece from NiemanLab (a leading think tank on journalism) asks if this election is the turning point for media’s […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin November 9, 2016
  • Body/Mind Operating Systems

    We already have operating systems for machines, but what we really need are the operating systems for humans. A working proposal of the new body/mind operating system for human beings.

    Dmitry Paranyushkin August 17, 2016
  • Ignore Terror

    This article was written as a response to terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015 and in Brussels in 2016. Terror works when it instills fear (from Latin terrere ‘frighten’). When something works there will be more and more of it (positive reinforcement feedback loops are everywhere). Therefore, the reaction to terror is its fuel and its […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin March 23, 2016
  • Their War

    A state of war is a state of exception, which pushes one to take a position: to fight back, to pray, to protect, to hide, to escape, to start acting and change the world, to be afraid and stay immobile, to give blood, to learn first-aid, to learn self-defence, to pretend like nothing is going […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin November 14, 2015
  • The System of Improper Conduct

    “This is morally incorrect” they might say. // declaration of variables Morals are about the proper conduct, the customs. Ethics is the science of morals (meta-level zoom out). … Interestingly, the interest towards ethics increases, while the interest towards morals decreases. (especially since 1940) After all, what is right and what is wrong in the […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin July 9, 2015
  • Special Agents and Special Agency

        Everybody is special and everyone is an agent.     Every human being is special   even if just because they are unlike anyone else –   hence, the “special”.     Every human being acts in the world –   hence, the “agency”.     So even if you don’t yet know it,   you are […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin February 5, 2015
  • The Pessimism, Despair and Hypocrisy of Berlin’s Street Art

    As I am writing these words this beautiful artwork that has over the years become the landmark of Berlin is being painted black. All over. Right now it looks like this: and by tomorrow it’s going to look like this: or like this: or finally like this: And it is not the city of Berlin […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin December 11, 2014
  • Throwing the Violence Back onto Itself

        Gregory Bateson proposes a very interesting example in his description of the double-bind phenomena as a cause for schizophrenic reaction. A plane passenger faces the situation where she has a neighbor who really wants to talk to her. She cannot escape before the flight ends, she doesn’t want to engage into a conversation, […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin August 11, 2014
  • Branch by Abstraction (or how to quit a bad habit)

    Branch by abstraction is a technique for making large-scale changes to a system without disrupting its operations. (quitting a bad habit, changing a job, repairing software, etc.) There may be various parts of the system dependent on an old pattern, module, component, one wants to replace. First, an abstraction layer needs to be created. It […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin January 9, 2014
  • Friction and Evolution

    One can say     that beauty         is almost always     an effect of limitation. … A maple tree leaf looks the way it does because it had to fold itself in order to fit inside the bud. // genetic code meets the environment Human brain is the same. So is cauliflower. Its shape is the result of […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin October 26, 2013
  • Will She Will He

    If we attempt to illustrate the above intentionality, it would look something like that: Therefore, for the majority of those who are interested in “Will She”, there is definitely a concern that somebody might leave beyond the vicinity of the agreed border. For the majority of those who are interested in “Will He”, however, there […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin September 22, 2013
  • Interfaces for Cognitive Reconfiguration

    Interfaces for Cognitive Reconfiguration. That is, language, software, music, clothes, situations, images and everything else that has the capacity. In other words, if there is a relation and then there is an interface that mediates this relation, then the interface affects the appearances. It is a question then whether the interface is merely translating or […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin September 22, 2013
  • Sovereignty

    “An act is sovereign when it realizes itself by simply taking away its own potentiality not to be, letting itself be, giving itself to itself” – Giorgio Agamben They took away my first country again. Again, because it’s happened many times before. Sometimes I’ve taken it back. Mainly when I was somewhere at the countryside […]

    Dmitry Paranyushkin July 19, 2013