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Reading/Writing

Computer: icon, object, metaphore about what it is to be human 

Machines, networks, programs, robots - all can process info and execute actions 
Cybernetic in that they complete tasks 

Automated but intelligent behavior 

"Just as the camera has come to symbolize the entirety of  the photographic and cinematic processes, the computer has come to symbolize the entire spec trum of networks, systems, and devices that exemplify cybernetic or "automated but intelligent" behavior. "

Transformations in relation to our ideal of the self 

to carry Benjamin's inquiry forward and to ask how cybernetic systems, symbolized by the computer, represent a set of transformations in  our conception of and relation to self and reality of a magnitude commensurate with the transformations in the conception of and relation to self and reality wrought by mechanical reproduction and symbolized by the camera. 

How to distinguish between human vs non human agents 

Data streams vs tools of mechanical reproduction 

  
Writing is a technology but after its long presence, we dubbed it "natural" and think of writing as something we do naturally but its a language which was created as a technology for communication 

Images becoming montages. Communication, visual language. Symbolic alphabet 

morality and ecstasy : walter ong 

Socrates: valued speech over writing 
Ironically, plato wrote these conversations down 
Writing tradition vs oral tradition 
Orality and literacy 

Levi strause: the savage mind 

We occupy mediative systems 

Walter bj: lets cut the bullshit-the aura of the object was an illusion 
But if you think this way, the world ( and art) loses its romance

Hermeneutics: how to interpret things 
The republic of letters
Suspicion and revelation 

Revelation: art is not spiritual but technological 
But this is a less beautiful way to interpret works 

But reproduction of these works made this more obvious and technically undeniable 

ontology: 

Epistemology : 

Ethics : what is right 

Aesthetics : what is beautiful 

" establish a central metaphor with which to understand thes e cybernetic systems, and then ask how this metaphor acquires the force of the real " -  how metaphors become real 

Our interpretations become representational of our surroundings 

In the photographic this can be interesting to look at because photos are considered to be representational if the real, but as a photographer, i look at photos as representational of the personal fiction of the author of the images 

Phenomenon: reality as it appears to us 

The real: 
The imaginary: 
The symbolic: 
Where those 3 overlap is where the"self " lies 


Accumulation of cultural data shape reality