"a person is a snapshot of continua"
Beltis Steamburton
Works
Beltis is accredited with a number of short monographs, theories and even an early book of short stories. Lesser known are his collaborations with avantgarde popular musicians. As with his fiction, his unconventional audio output (e.g. "chaotic blast talking", "triangulated rythm creep", etc) usually contained some kind of cybernetic unfluence. He is also responsible for several conventional and conceptual artworks.
Autonomous Portals
This volume brings together a collection of various notes, musings and papers with the common thread of Organisational Consciousness, the concluding chapter being Beltis's lighthearted summary comments on what seems to be the logical but radical conclusion of this body of work - that all 'aware mechanisms', including humans, are little more than conduits of a larger, singular consciousness.
This book touches on Beltis's early theories, from first basics of simple cybernetic awareness (e.g. the thermostat) through his opinions on 'thinking machines' and on to his pithy summary in language that both the practicing cybernetician and the layperson will appreciate.
Sample Extracts:
Introduction
Chapter 1: "Primer"
Chapter 6: "Decisions - Ideas - Free Will"
Chapter 12: "Reification of a Synthetic Persona (some notes)"
Chapter 18: "Cognition Testing"
Not in Print
Regeneration and other stories
A collection of all of the known original short stories, or 'cybernetic allegories', including the 'Regeneration' of the title.
'Regeneration' is about Mr Butterworth, a council officer who returns to work after bereavement. His office deal with the clearance and rebuilding of property in a so-called 'deprived area'. In what was once a lively, inner city community, there are just now acres of silent streets; boarded and empty terraced houses, flats and shops, waiting for demolition - with just one elderly resident remaining. The meeting with her provides a memorable dialogue about the nature of dispersed consciousness and variety reduction (Beltis seldom refers to 'death').
This story led to a collaboration with 'politically poisonous and last of the counter culture authors' Woodward S. Breaker on an experimental collection of short stories which all featured the same characters, setting and opening lines as 'Regeneration'.
The collection includes:
"The Shell of Infinite Thinness" - the boundary where 'self’ and 'all else’ meet, as discovered by an unsuspecting postman who suddenly becomes acutely aware of his connectedness to every other thing in the universe
"The Sentient and The Psycopath" - what happens when human logic is pitted against emotionally intelligent machinery
"The Billion Dollar Tricycle" - the CEO of an international conglomerate wakes to find he has only the handlebars of a child’s tricycle to try to control his empire
“Big in a Small Room, Small in a Big Room” – flatly titled story of a student volunteer trialing a new cough medicine who finds herself in a strange equilibrium
...and more
Not in Print