stuck.within.its.self-perpetuating.hoop
I’ve been considering the feedback Loop; a principle mentioned in Lupe Fiasco’s post yesterday about his song ‘The Instrumental’.
In short, it details an “individual [who] constantly observes the box [tv or radio] under the faint pretext he will observe information that will instruct him on how to discontinue his obsession with the box.”
It made me think about RSS feeds and twitter and all the other streams we use to keep us ‘ahead of the curve’.
If the information sources are not good then Lupe has a point, but
the idea he puts forward here presupposes that all information is useless and the observer is doomed to some recursive prison of futility.
The takeaway for me was
1) Always evaluate the source.
2) Don’t stop hoping. The feedback loop works in positive and negative directions. Take compound interest for example, or imagine if Edmond Dantès, prisoner in the classic, The Count of Monte Cristo had given up on escaping the Chateau d’If because there was ‘no hope’ in observation; the book would have had a different title.
Picture by ?o??ƒx™ , Creative Commons
