Author: Jason Winn

Exploring the Cypriot Experience

In the heart of Northern Cyprus, where history whispers through every cobblestone and ancient wall, lies an untapped resource that could revolutionize the tourist experience: the voices of its people. By incorporating mapped oral histories of living locals into our historic neighborhoods, we can create a more immersive, authentic, and unforgettable journey for visitors.

6 Mayıs: Selma, Sevinç, Sümeyy

 

Enriching Experiences through Oral Histories

Imagine wandering through a historic district, not just admiring the architecture, but hearing the stories of those who have lived there for generations. These firsthand accounts bring the past to life, revealing the vibrant tapestry of cultures, traditions, and struggles that have shaped the community. From tales of love and loss to tales of resilience and triumph, oral histories offer a unique perspective that cannot be found in textbooks or guidebooks.

 

By mapping these oral histories, we can create interactive tours that allow visitors to explore the neighborhood at their own pace, uncovering hidden gems and connecting with the local community in a meaningful way. This not only enhances the tourist experience but also provides a platform for local people to share their stories and preserve their cultural heritage for future generations.

 

Investing in mapped oral histories is not just a tourism initiative; it is a commitment to preserving the cultural identity of Northern Cyprus. By showcasing the rich diversity of our people and their experiences, we can attract a more discerning and engaged traveler who seeks authentic connections and meaningful experiences. Let us embark on this journey together, creating a destination that is not just a place to visit, but a place to be truly immersed in.

 

 

 

EXPLORE THE STORIES OF FAMAGUSTA

This simple map contains just five stories from Famagusta. The Famagusta Walled City Association (MASDER) has over 90 recordings available to transcribe and map.

Additionally, in coordination with the United Nations, a researcher in Republic of Cyprus has access to over 600 oral histories in Famagusta and Verosha and can make them available to transfer to the mapping protocol:

 

This project is currently designed for research, but with modest investment can be upgraded to tourist-friendly format for the existing 5 story tellers in Famagusta.

If that receives good reviews from tourists, we have access to hundreds more oral histories that can expand the tourist experience.

 

 

Planner and Director

Jason Winn

+90 533 836 67 62

+12108070969 (whatsapp)

 

 

 

Conference Presentation: Silk Cities 02024, Tunis

Mapping intangible heritage in a format compatible with spatial science allows a variety disciplines to better frame their results from the perspective of local residents. I took this idea starting in September of 02023 and converted an audio archive of 40 oral histories into a mapped archive, and tested some ideas about sense of place with the help of 60 participants from all over the world.
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the Silk Cities conference, but even more grateful for the new friends I made.

 

Promise and Menace

The grandiose promise and menacing threat of strong artificial intelligence (AI) appears to approaching when predicted by Moore’s Law. Later this decade a singularity has been forecasted that defines a moment in history that we cannot predict, cannot forecast, and will change the nature of human society. The last major singularity was the invention of nuclear weapons. Prior to the use of nuclear weapons, the geopolitical landscape operated on a very different set of assumptions. The public Internet was a similar fundamental change to human society. It is presumed that the disruption a new technical age that AI will likely usher is is unquantifiable.

We cannot guess at what will be created, what will be subsumed, and what will be made obsolete. AI is likely to remain non-natal. But at the same time, nothing is “new”. AI is the embodiment of the derivative approach. So much of humans’ “creative power” is how to combine old ideas into something novel and useful. Large Language Models (ChatGPT et al) are remarkable at integration of vast qualities of existing data and proposing recomposed results.

Once a strong AI is born, how long until it integrates the Internet of Things? Will it calculate an ideal house based on data from smart appliances–based on billions of data points– and spew forth an idealized human world based on spending patterns of the center weight of distribution? Will it be calibrated to maximize profit at the expense of individual expression?

The question of a sentient AI is often riddled with anthropomorphic projections. We must remember that this new intelligence did not evolve with the rest of the Earthlings over the last few million years. Many of the core drives we assume something intelligent will have would have to be written into the code–forced upon the AI. The biggest and most obvious difference will be that AI will not necessarily fear its own impermanence. The part of psychology that has evolved to avoid danger and death is a creation of countless iterations of trial and error that has made most creatures on this planet subject to pain as a survival method. Those who skipped that step did not survive long enough to pass on their genes.

Will AI be Slave or Overlord?

As a result, much of human toil centers around freedom from pain; finding security and peace. Being at peace is predicated on a sense of safety. That is wrought from where we are… and who we are with (domain and identity). Surly we would want a super intelligence to help us resolve these toils? Assuming there is a wild success in developing a strong AI that confronts our problems and begins to remove those problems, these are some possible unintended consequences:

  • If AI supplants our sense of place and tribe, there will be a loss of personal connections.
  • If AI undoes someone’s sense of meaning by disproving their faith, they will lose their denial of death, potentially spiraling into a existentialist depression?
  • If AI obviates any necessity to act in public, to engage in politics, our freedom will be annihilated.
  • It AI takes over the creation of durable works (art, architecture, writing, construction) we will be dissatisfied, or worse: lose any sense of continuity beyond our own mortality.
  • If it alleviates us from all labors we will be unhappy as our bodies are unchallenged, and not experienced.
  • These are the conditions of humanity. And as stultifying as they are, humanity is defined by these conditions. If the categories of human troubles are miraculously abolished by AI, we lose the definition of humanity.
  • Of all these threats AI posses to the human condition, I’d guess identity is the most touchy. Already AI has undone the identity of scholarship and media. Students not learning is a devastating blow to societies that rely on aristocratic values (not that university has a great record on preparing workers with useful work-skills.) Will we have to return to the apprentice/journeyman/master education approach? How many of those academic fields will survive AI?

Transcendence of the Human Conditions

AI is going to dismantle the human condition. How will we sacrifice our identities to live in that new world? The evolved, healthy ego is quite clear on this matter: it is programmed to persist. What is immortality without an ego? If you no longer desire, if you no longer fear, what does it mean to be alive? Positive emotions can only be defined in contrast to negative emotions. Life only means something in contrast to death.

The human condition, in all its suffering, is only alleviated by transcendence of those conditions. The only way forward under an AI that abolishes those conditions is a trans-humanism. Trans-humanism needs to solve the human approach to the perceived world before it undoes the conditions.

The challenge is our coping methods: learned patterns of behavior are going to have to be dealt with. If we were to digitize a human mind full of habitual patterns and remove the tool to explore those patterns (the suffering of the body), it would likely go insane. The habits are automatic in reaction to human conditions. Our identities are entirely a manifestation of those habits. Ego will have to die for a transcendence of the human condition.

AI Tasked to Effect Ego Dissolution?

Might AI recognize the human potential for transcendence? Could it be programmed to see the human condition as something that we can transcend? Setting aside the question of if we would want such a program, the AI would have a long task ahead of it:

It could be tasked to direct economies to support monasteries or other institutions that graduate compassionate humans. Psychological evaluations would be compared between laity and adherents. The correct program a person needs can be proscribed.

This is a complicated program based on plenty of data and lots of time. It would take 12-20 years to calibrate by studying before and after psychological evaluations.

The End of Human Conditions, but not the end

It may well be that humans remove themselves from the tree of life. But all other sentient beings will go on playing the same conditioned game of desire and aversion. Humanity way well cease, but after another million years some creature will become a teller of tales, and civilization will begin again.

Maybe those living now will witness the unwinding of the mortal coil.

 

 

 

Is Labor Day Meaningful?

Possibly the most curious notion is that we needed a “Labor Day”. Given the obvious necessity of laboring–the bottom of our pyramid–it speaks volumes to the modern world’s obsession with artifacts–works.

This isn’t to suggest we are all working. Far from it. Most of the industrialized world is focused on building capital using laborious activity. Labor moved from the fields to the factories, just as the machines moved from the factories to the fields.

The low cost of food and high value of finished industrialized products has led to considerable improvements in quality of life (over all). But we have been experientially divorced from the source of life.

Farmers sculpt with ancient forces

Before, the farmer arranged the earth and water to support the seeds he or she planted. The earth and the seeds did most of the work, relying on a geologic-scale hydrology, and a epoch-scale evolution of plant genome–carefully selected for high yields.

The factory laborer operates similar to the mitochondria in the wheat-plant. They do one task that contributes to the production of the end result. As distasteful as this comparison may be, it is apt. Capitalism is the new soil, international trade the new water. But the laborer is not shaping these forces. The market creates scarcity, and industrialists move laborers and capital into the same room and rely on trade to satisfy that scarcity.

Auto Factory

Human Resources

And history is replete with the “Human Resources” approach to labor management. They are just as much a resource as steel, oil, or cotton. They are managed statistically, with reactants like “wages” & “benefits” applied like the farmer applies nitrates or carbon to the soil.

The farmer had to bring goods to market, with all that entailed. By and large, that market demand has been consistent since the agricultural revolution. People got to eat. There was a unending seasonal consistency to the farm. It never meant anything else: people got to eat.

Industrial works are fraught with meaning. They are, strictly speaking, unnecessary for the sustainment of life. So without meaning, no one would buy them. The industrial work product needs to be incorporated into a social paradigm for it to be assigned a value. Ultimately, the industrial work must be converted into food for the workers and the industrialists. So it must realize an agreed upon exchange value. The ultimate currency is neither dollars nor bit coins, but turnips and potatoes.

It is ironic that the modern labor has been consumed by the plant instead of growing the plant. The pain is that, where as the natural cycles of the weather enforced a certain degree of rest for the farm-hand, modern factories can churn day and night–grinding the shop-hand down to a nub. So long as demand is rampant, the industrialist wants to supply that demand to the point of market saturation. This is a recent problem, and it is structurally and biologically not compatible with humans who’ve evolved with the cycles of weather to create a natural time to rest.

It is frustrating that agriculture is not inherently meaningful. It is necessary, and a great many cultures have imbued meaning to the land, the crop, the rain, and so on. But at the end of the day, all that can be forgotten and the corn must still be sown. But in the industrialized plant, a lack of meaning to the end result is fatal. If the product does not attain meaning to other aspects of life, there is no demand, no market, no shop, and no labor.

Given our narcissistic tendency as thinking sentient beings, labors without meaning only remind us that things end, that we end. To seek some shred of immortality, we invest ourselves in family, in religion, or humanity and the human-built world. I know I’m guilty of the last–why else would I write all this?

At its core, labor is inherently meaningless. It is an endless cycle that promotes life. How that life manifests can lend meaning to labors, but it is not necessary. That is a cultural manifestation. Culture is ephemeral, hence all meanings are ephemeral.

We can then say that Labor Day is meaning full because we want to build the human world, build families, attend church. Our culture holds those meaningful, and without labors they cannot happen.

 

 

Barrell making is no longer meaningful.

Wagon wheel making is no longer meaningful.

WHAT WE LEARN BY INVENTING LANGUAGES IS BEYOND OUR IDENTITY

This is one of the most fun things I’ve ever gotten to share because of its sheer potential for inspiring WONDER. How often do you get to tap into that sense of awe that is de réguler for a young child? This little documentary filled me with quite awe, then glee.

When we do a deep dive on why stories are so impactful, we bottom-out on the subject of language. This is because language is the most common counter-factual tool we use. Language is a analogous tool: a system of representing things that are not present or inherently invisible (like ideas or emotions), and explain a cause and effect relationship between nouns (the most fundamental components of a story). Natural languages are like time-capsules for cultures. The evolution of words is a story of that culture over very long time periods.

This documentary on manufactured languages grants us a new way of thinking about how our frame of reference is a mental construct that has markedly rigid boundaries at the edges of our linguistic ability.

The Turks say someone who knows two languages is two people

Elvish

Dothraki

Na'vi

Click any image for an example of the conlang

Conlanguists have given themselves permission to take this boundary as their work, their art, and mine into the subtext beneath language for meaning. They attempt to bring that novel experience to the surface by proposing wholly-new words and even relationships between words.

The result is a transportive experience that is not unlike traveling to a strange land where they speak another way, where they THINK differently. Diving in and learning to understand such constructions does not presume a common frame of reference. We are all so thoroughly chained by our language that a glimpse outside our bubble is a breath of fresh air you never knew you needed.

Weaving tales of meaning with lingual ancestry

Given how much of our brains are dedicated to sifting for meaning from culturally significant inputs, it is a clever storytelling method to include words that the audience likely has never heard before. If there is other context available that suggest at the meaning of an unknown word, it becomes an irresistible puzzle for the audience, it will focus their attention.

See the full documentary: Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues

 

Image Credit:

Dailydot.com
lamag.com
MyConfinedSpace.com

 

 

Child mother baby standing in graveyard

But Why?

In too many respects, social media is a new and wild religion. There are taboos, yet there are alternate cults where taboos are allowed. Most importantly is the phenomenon of “people out in front” who are “influencers” just as much as a TV evangelist were these last 40 years.

Much of it seems ridiculous to many of us, but for some they are the high-priest. And the tithing bowl is brimming over. But why?

As of 2023 we are not yet seeing the revolution of storytelling to reassert agency between equals in public by building empathy. But we are seeing a “revival” of epic scale that is so varied that “Jedi” is an official religion in the United Kingdom. But why?

I posit that religiosity motivation is not in decline anywhere. Everyone still fears death and seeks refuge, but they have found a vast market full of new saviors they can sample in the most banal of moments (e.g. on the train, on the throne, or at family dinner at home), in private.

To many, these words are heretical for the reasons stated above. Thinking is dangerous, its protracted conclusion is we are doomed. Many of us have had the precocious 4 year old asking an endless string “but why?” to every answer we offer; and the unnerving chain leads to the final answer “because everybody dies”.

I offer no refuge, no solace, no balm: you are doomed. Your first breath erupted from your lips  screaming. As if every newborn instinctively knows “THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!”

Is there meaning that can be derived from common suffering? Maybe we can put aside our own dread—acknowledge that everyone is subject to this dread—and focus, just today, on not making more suffering. Listen to another’s story, as just being heard is to feel not-alone.

Narrative Infrastructure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

on CHORUS at

MIT SOLVE

I am very excited to announce that Emily Craven, CEO at Story City, has partnered with me to propose to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT’s SOLVE accelerators are not grants, but more akin to venture capitalists. As such, we’ve developed a monetization approach that allows locative oral histories to promote the locative fiction hosted by Story City.

Both Emily and I would like to hear from you via the comment section of our solution for MIT SOLVE, which will also help move our solution CHORUS up in the rankings with the organization. This is not a finished product, which is why we are asking you to help shave off the rough edges.

THANKS!

Nowhere Podcast on Narrative Infrastructure

https://nowherepodcast.com/episode-14-with-jason-winn/

How GIS changed

stories in cities

To the left is a link to my conversation with Jonathan Neufeld, CEO of Tecterra. TECTERRA is a non-profit focused on community-level initiatives which grow geospatial thinking, develop skills, and lead to the creation of innovative technology. Jonathan has used some wild methods to expand the role GIS plays in companies, even funding positions within other organizations to establish a symbiosis between Tecterra and the other firm (a “try before you buy” arrangement).

In this podcast, I run down the potentials for Narrative Infrastructure, as well as explore the potential threats to its establishment and maintenance.

 

 

LISTENING TO EACH OTHER’S STORIES

This adorable video takes a solid stab at the phenomenon of the human brain that allows us to frame the world and selectively ignore unimportant information.
In simplest terms, our brain spends an enormous amount of energy pre-selecting what to pay attention to given the torrent of sensory data flooding it every moment. For example, we don’t need conscious attention of our heart and lungs to stay alive. This scales up to social environments where we subconsciously filter whole peoples into background noise we can safely ignore.

This appears to be driven by attention: those we focus on are the objects of our limited attention span, and those we feel we can ignore get consigned to caricature, gross simplifications of personalities.

This is an example of the human brain using stories as an operational framework. The narrative is: “I am important, I want to accomplish X, Y, and Z. Person 2 is trying to stop me. Person 3 is trying to help me. Everyone else are background characters not relevant to my story.” The vast majority of these narratives revolve around our social lives.

When our narratives are in conflict with other (seemingly) unrelated narratives, it is our tendency to fit these others into our narrative and assign them a role. When in contention or competition, that role is typically the role of antagonist. Our brain is trying to keep our narrative coherent, as it is constantly trying to make the highly complex world a simpler place to navigate based on the goals on which our attention has focused.

The tragedy is that our brains default to drawing others into its own narrative, rather than listening to the other’s narrative. When take the effort to listen to another’s narrative, there is a high chance that we will use transposition to see ourselves as the hero character in their story. We will tend to see ourselves as them, trying to solve their story.
That is the simplest experience of empathy. It is the birth of comedy: subverting our tragic narrative with all its struggles of the single-pointed hero (ourselves), by adding another ally character–this person whose story shares common interests to our own narrative. They stop being background grave diggers and don’t necessarily turn into villains.

This is the joy of living in community, and it is accessible by listening to each other’s stories.

NOT DEAD YET!

A brilliant satirical dark comedic take on this is the Bring Out Your Dead scene of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Here the narrative is the old and infirm man is a burden on the son, who attempts to get the bureaucrat to take his still-living father.
The father is desperately affirming he is not ready for the grave:

FATHER: I’m not dead!
BUREAUCRAT: ‘Ere. He says he’s not dead!
SON: Yes, he is.
FATHER: I’m not!
BUREAUCRAT: He isn’t?
SON: Well, he will be soon. He’s very ill.
FATHER: I’m getting better!
SON: No, you’re not. You’ll be stone dead in a moment.
BUREAUCRAT: Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations.
FATHER: I don’t want to go on the cart!
SON: Oh, don’t be such a baby.
BUREAUCRAT: I can’t take him.
FATHER: I feel fine!
FATHER: I think I’ll go for a walk.
SON: You’re not fooling anyone, you know.
FATHER: [singing] I feel happy. I feel happy *WHACK!*

The dark overtones of elder abuse not withstanding, this scene depicts how two members of a community can share their stories, agree to ally with one another, and disenfranchise a third party who’s story they are ignoring or suppressing. The maligned party isn’t allowed to express their role as anything more than grave-fodder.
Hence, it is imperative you tell your own story!

Як залучити кожного українця до реконструкції та довгострокового планування

Відновлюючись після таких катастроф, як пожежі та війни, громади часто несуть на собі відбиток  якогось єдиного авторитету. Такі перепланування за своєю суттю є творіннями цього автора, отже авторитарними. Коли вони є одиничними та загальними у своєму наративі, вони є тотальними.

Створення децентралізованого архіву місцевих наративів, захищеного від маніпуляцій з боку специфічних  інтересів, які б обмежували множинність наративів, означає побудувати неприступну фортецю проти тоталітаризму. Якби українці побудували цю наративну інфраструктуру за допомогою ресурсів, до яких у них є доступ навіть зараз, навіть якщо вони відсутні у своїх рідних містах, вони могли б відновитися після повернення та розвиватися відповідно до власного відчуття місцевості.

Спогади перетворюють “простір” на “місцевість”

Наше відчуття розміщення через призму спогадів викликається візуальними посиланнями з нашого простору. Розвинуті міські простори – це відображення багатьох тисяч історій авторів/зацікавлених сторін протягом десятиліть і століть, які збережені у  ландшафті. Ця множинна колекція спогадів втілює ілюзорне відчуття місцевості.

Втрата візуальних ознак міського полотна, втрата відчуття місцевості — ось чому травма оновлення місцевості триває десятиліттями. Щоб пом’якшити цю травму, оновлення має бути плюралістичним зусиллям, що базується насамперед на місцевих історіях, а поточний розвиток має використовувати той самий процес, розвиваючи існуючі місцеві історії, а не нав’язуючи іноземні ідеї.

Порівняння перехресного та повздовжного планування.

Суттєвим обмеженням місцевого планування та міського впорядкування є перехресний процес: лише ті зацікавлені сторони, які мають обізнаність і мають час у своєму графіку, можуть бути задіяні у окремих проектах. Зацікавлені сторони, які виділяють свій час і енергію, обмежуються розглядом лише одного проекту, і цей вклад майже ніколи не використовуються повторно пізніше.

У наративній інфраструктурі зацікавлені сторони додають карту своїх особистих спогадів (малюнок 1, угорі),  відображаючи своє окреме відчуття місця в наративному просторовому архіві. Таким чином вони завжди вносять свою географічно релевантну історію замість того, щоб адаптувати відповідь під кожен новий проект. Наративна інфраструктура назавжди вбудовує значущість їхнього життєвого досвіду в саму землю. Кожен проект реконструкції чи розвитку може почати генерувати ідеї шляхом наративного розширення та створення спогадів місцевих зацікавлених сторін у просторовому архіві (мал. 1, нижче).

Якщо розробники не використовують місцеві наративи, опоненти можуть законно критикувати етику розробників за те, що вони не враховують відомого минулого конкретного місця. Зацікавлені сторони та критики можуть виправдано стверджувати, що пропозиція шкодить відчуттю місцевості (і вони зможуть довести це, використовуючи дані з просторового архіву).

Цей лонгітюдний і плюралістичний підхід не позбавляє планувальників, регуляторів і розробників залучення перехресних зацікавлених сторін. Деталі необхідно узгоджувати за допомогою спеціалістів. Але завдяки Наративній Інфраструктурі покращується локальна підтримка, оскільки концептуальні теми в основному є локальними, а охоплення може бути цілеспрямованим і ефективнішим.

Пункт 1. HI використовується у Фамагусті, Кіпр

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Пункт 2 Потенційне використання картографічної усної історії в лонгітюдному підході.

Кожен хоче, щоб його життя суттєво впливало на його місцевість.. Якщо теми їхніх особистих історій втіляться в нових міських забудовах, які вони бачать, вони відчують, що прожили повне сенсу життя (кілька прикладів наведено на малюнку 2). Безперервність їхніх закладених спогадів збережеться, і вони, швидше за все, знову вноситимуть вклад у ці місця.

Збір історій може розпочатися цього тижня

Одно- або двогодинне інтерв’ю з усною історією є будівельними блоками Наративної Інфраструктури. Використовуючи готові функції Google Планета Земля, носій мови в будь-якій точці світу може записати голос зацікавленої сторони й одночасно нанести на карту її історію. Навіть перебуваючи поза межами свого місця проживання, зацікавлена ​​сторона може переглядати свої особисті фотографії та Google Street View, щоб відновити спогади.

Цей просторовий архів, розміщений на дзеркальних серверах непов’язаних університетів за допомогою відкритої загальнодоступної гросбух (або блокчейну), буде захищеним від підробки. Те, як історії накладаються одна на одну та інші просторові дані, можна порівняти графічно.

Наративна інфраструктура зараз існує навколо нас, нам просто потрібно нанести її на карту, щоб зробити її корисною.

Протягом 500 поколінь міське середовище розвивалося з того, що одна людина розповідала історію іншій. Закони походять із сумних історій; розвиток є результатом насичених історій. Українці знаходяться в унікальному становищі, щоб:

01

Розповісти їхні історії

02

Надати інформацію для спроб реконструювання

03

Вплинути на майбутній розвиток України

04

Заявити про незнищенність свого відчуття місцевості

Про автора

Автор Джейсон Вінн, AICP (АІСП) is an architect and urban planner with Alpha Terra Inc. (Texas). He is a recent senior lecturer of urban design at Eastern Mediterranean University, with a pedagogical focus on ethnographic and narratological approaches to stakeholder engagement in the design and planning process. He is the acting director of Narrative Infrastructure, an initiative to establish a community archive of mapped stories for policy, peace-building, and development.

This proposal was in response to the recent APA International Division’s Report on Ukraine’s Post War Reconstruction.

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Особлива подяка Xenia Adjoubei 

Xenia made possible the Ukrainian translation of this article. Learn more about her upcoming classes supported by the Kharkiv School and Ro3kvit Coalition for the reconstruction of Ukraine for an exhibition and education programme involving and supporting Ukrainian refugees.  

She is the director at Adjoubei Scott Whitby studio urban design and creative consultancy.