It's Deja Vu All Over Again
Saturday, November 08, 2003
Smart Mobs - The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold
Smart Mobs - The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold As we begin Smart Mobs I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at HR's Smart Mobs blog if you haven't done so already.
More later?
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Chinese "Yin and Yang" symbol-- a visual for interplay
I wanted to mention this in class but it was too complex to explain in a few minutes. The Chinese Yin and Yang symbol seems to be a good visual for our understanding of interplay. For those who are interested, here is a link about Chinese Yin and Yang philosophy principles and you can see the symbol there as well:
http://asiarecipe.com/yinyang.html
back from the grave, but not at home
Hayles' arguments and coverage of posthumanism has sucked me in because I lack so much of what she's covering--outside of cyberpunk and Powers' Galatea 2.2 (good and depressing book about the "humanities"; you should all read it before starting, ending, or considering a relationship with another person or univeristy). So while I'm slowly reading what she has to say/summarize/synthesize, I had a Karl moment (as he himself had during our reading of Nakamura, I think) where a concept popped out, smacked me, and told me to take notice: "at home."
I didn't notice this phrase until chapter nine, where it informs Hayles' discussion of the computational universe and its dangerously non-heuristic directions in research. For Hayles, in this chapter, material is the body is home/at home. I need to unpack the narrative of home-liness arcing through her analysis of "being" narratives. And I can't help but think of Heidegger's imagery in The Principle of Reason of language as "the house of being." But the translation here is house, not home. I'm disturbed (punny, punny) by the comfort-able language that Hayles puts out there in this chapter. I have a suspicion that it's a calculated way to steer her argument away from the tech-emphasizers.
yet disturbing nonetheless...telelogically and utopically connotative, don't ya think?
interface, interplay, and insight
It is strange my post about interplay and writing center practice appeared only in blogger but not in the public version. Anyway I do want to say more about interplay and interface.
Actually I have been reading McLuhan’s “Media and Cultural Change” and found the following in his discussion of Innis:
He changed his procedure from working with a “point of view” to that of the generating of insights by the method of “interface,” as it is named in chemistry. “Interface” refers to the interaction of substances in a kind of mutual irritation. In art and poetry this is precisely the technique of “symbolism” (Greek “symballein”—to throw together) with its paratactic procedure of juxtaposing without connectives. It is the natural form of conversation or dialogue rather than of written discourse. In writing, the tendency is to isolate an aspect of some matter and to direct steady attention upon that aspect. In dialogue there is an equally natural interplay of multiple aspects of any matter. This interplay of aspects can generate insight or discovery.
Hayles did major in chemistry. Remember she also discussed language as a trap in Chapter 6? It is interesting to see how much scientific language has found its way in social science and humanities. Is that also materiality?
