cursor

I live like I assume I'm going to lose my memory at any moment.

this means that I leave workspaces primed for the next move, so that whoever arrives and regardless of what memory-set they happen to bring they have what they need to hit the ground running.

this also means that most of my time feels like a pinball machine on a particularly lucky shot:

• 1. I navigate space

• 2. as I navigate, I encounter something that is primed for its own next step

  • 2a. if I was already working on something, I physicalize the state of the step I was just taking, so that when I return, I will require zero memory retrieval in order to continue

• 3. I step in, embody the thing and its context

  • 3a. I take the next step

  • 3b. if the next step completes the thing, then I withdraw from that context.

    • 3b1. upon emerging: if the context I emerge into is primed for a next step, goto 3a

    • 3b2. otherwise, I rest. :) the function returns here.

  • 3c. otherwise, if the next step requires navigation, then I navigate space, goto #1

key: I don't pick up stuff that doesn't have a natural next step. ever.

(nuance: sometimes "natural next step" is an emergent property between a specific visiting cursor and the apparent context)

the ongoing practice of this results in a kind of emergent development of space. not a claiming of space, but a kind of... stable relationship with a space, maybe, and the perimeter does gradually expand.

I'm 15 years in on doing this on purpose, and me-doing-this-on-purpose now supports 12 full-time humans (and other dependencies downstream) who are doing this with me. we're a whole company, by all appearances, with 15k users and everything. our workspace is broad, and regular but not homogeneous. it breathes, I think I can say. stigmergy-as-business.

my experience of living is pretty much just an alternating sequence of flow and rest, at this point

I am a nonviolent resolver, I think

p.s. please note: 2a sets the scene for someone else running the same heuristic to happen by and then just handle the thing. feels like half the time (I don't measure this, but I feel lucky) I end up discovering that my next step is to just return to rest, at 3b2. let me be clear: this is recursion but with a chance of not having to climb all the way back [ up / down / out ] afterwards - and those odds get better as more agents join the party. it's a resolving process, but it's also .. I guess it's developmental for what I experience as my own story. my context is ever-new, in a way that just feels like fresh air and good circulation. I really like it here. :)

p.p.s. this documentation, btw, is a physicalization of my state. perhaps the next step is yours? this heuristic is very portable, and possibly (in a strict sense, not a colloquial sense) viral.

p.p.p.s.

• 2a1. every so often, if the physicalized state-form is something I can carry while keeping my hands fully free, and if that kind of thing feels good to both of me and to what I imagine of that-which-has-been-physicalized (I'm a rational animist) and to the context that created it with me, I take the physicalized form with me. almost like a companion. sometimes absolutely a companion. this kind of thing often leads to surprising possibilities later, as the physicalized moves with me from one context to the next.