This is cool, especially the visual layout, the integration of text and graphics. I’m thinking through the philosophy of change. Does it feel at all like a bit of a set-up, to oppose deep change to the material and cyclical? From a different standpoint, couldn’t one argue that nothing in the material and natural world is truly a straight line, or even a circle, for that matter, that everything spirals – which is to say that the potential for deep change lies in all things, even, for that matter, in the changing of a diaper, which is cyclical to be sure (omg do I remember those days and nights) but also mobilizes the helix of development, which is open-ended for both child and parent alike? Bogost’s argument seems to somehow smuggle back in a disparagement of mere nature.
heh, I’m going to answer quickly because I literally have to change a diaper. My read was that deep change integrates the linear and circular. As you say even changing diapers are never quite pure stasis as the child grows. By the same token the fetish for the new and disruptive is somehow never as linear and novel as it seems–there’s always a precedent somewhere. Uber comes to mind: a wholly new ‘disruptive’ business model that was actually just about old fashioned exploitation of disorganized labor.
But if its just a question of emphasis than you are surely right that deep spiraling change lurks in all, you just have calibrate the right ratio of circle and line.
I don’t know if this is really meant as a metaphysical model of three different mechanisms change, or if it’s more of a metaphor against oversimplified linear and circular models.