Open Source Democracy | Page 9

and Southpark.
The joy of such programs is not the relief of reaching the climax of the
linear narrative, but rather the momentary thrill of making connections.
The satisfaction is in recognising which bits of media are being
satirised at any given moment. It is an entirely new perspective on
television, where programs exist more in the form of Talmudic
commentary: perspectives on perspectives on perspectives. We watch
screens within screens, constantly reminded, almost as in a Brecht play,
of the artifice of storytelling. It is as if we are looking at a series of

proscenium arches, and are being invited as an audience to consider
whether we are within a proscenium arch ourselves.
The great Renaissance was a simple leap in perspective. Instead of
seeing everything in one dimension, we came to realise there was more
than one dimension on which things were occurring. Even the
Elizabethan world picture, with its concentric rings of authority - God,
king, man, animals - reflects this new found way of contending with the
simultaneity of action of many dimensions at once. A gamer stepping
out onto the internet to find a cheat code certainly reaches this first
renaissance's level of awareness and skill.
But what of the gamer who then learns to program new games for
himself? He, we might argue, has stepped out of yet another frame into
our current renaissance. He has deconstructed the content of the game,
demystified the technology of its interface and now feels ready to open
the codes and turn the game into a do-it-yourself activity. He has
moved from a position of a receiving player to that of a deconstructing
user. He has assumed the position of author, himself. This leap to
authorship is precisely the character and quality of the dimensional leap
associated with today's renaissance.
The evidence of today's renaissance is at least as profound as that of the
one that went before. The16th century saw the successful
circumnavigation of the globe via the seas. The 20th century saw the
successful circumnavigation of the globe from space. The first pictures
of earth from space changed our perspective on this sphere forever. In
the same century, our dominance over the planet was confirmed not
just through our ability to travel around it, but to destroy it. The atomic
bomb (itself the result of a rude dimensional interchange between
submolecular particles) gave us the ability to author the globe's very
destiny. Now, instead of merely being able to comprehend 'God's
creation', we could actively control it. This is a new perspective.
We also have our equivalent of perspective painting, in the invention of
the holograph. The holograph allows us to represent not just three, but
four dimensions on a two-dimensional plate. When the viewer walks
past a holograph she can observe the three-dimensional object over a

course of time. A bird can flap its wings in a single picture. But, more
importantly for our renaissance's purposes, the holographic plate itself
embodies a new renaissance principle. When the plate is smashed into
hundreds of pieces, we do not find that one piece contains the bird's
wing, and another piece the bird's beak. Each piece of the plate contains
a faint image of the entire subject. When the pieces are put together, the
image achieves greater resolution. But each piece contains a
representation of the totality. This leap in dimensional understanding is
now informing disciplines as diverse as brain anatomy and computer
programming.
Our analogy to calculus is the development of systems theory, chaos
math and the much-celebrated fractal. Confronting non-linear equations
on their own terms for the first time, mathematicians armed with
computers are coming to new understandings of the way numbers can
be used to represent the complex relationships between dimensions.
Accepting that the surfaces in our world, from coastlines to clouds,
exhibit the properties of both two and three-dimensional objects (just
what is the surface area of a cloud?) they came up with ways of
working with and representing objects with fractional dimensionality.
Using fractals and their equations, we can now represent and work with
objects from the natural world that defy Cartesian analysis. We also
become able to develop mathematical models that reflect many more
properties of nature's own systems, such as self-similarity and remote
high leverage points. Again, we find that this renaissance is
characterised by the ability of an individual to reflect, or even affect,
the grand narrative. To write the game.
Finally, our renaissance's answer to the printing press is the computer
and its ability to network. Just as the printing press gave everyone
access to readership, the computer and internet give everyone access to
authorship. The first Renaissance took us from the position of passive
recipient to active interpreter. Our current renaissance brings us from
the role of interpreter to the