User:Darija Medic/annotated bibliography

• Outline of essay + 2000 words + annotated bibliography

Annotated bibliography:

Rheingold, H. and Kluitenberg, E. (2006), Mindful Disconnection:Counterpowering the Panopticon from the Inside, OPEN no. 11: Hybrid Space.

Eric Kluitenberg and Howard Rheingold in the essay Counterpowering the Panopticon from the inside, discuss the (im)possibility of disconnecting in a networked society. They argue that the constraining technological surrounding is the opposite of freedom and throughout the text try to locate a strategy of mindful disconnection. I find it useful and inspiring, as a setting out of constructive problematics concerning habituated acceptance of connectivity that came from a need to change the landscape of the digital divide, but has now become a ruling condition. I will leave aside their account on how connective technologies facilitate an unprecedented amount and variety of surveillance, because it is not of particular relevance to the lines of thought gathered in my subject.

Cramer, F (2005) Words made flesh, Code, Culture,Imagination, Rotterdam Media Design Research, Piet Zwart Institute Institute for postgraduate studies and research,Willem de Kooning Academy Hogeschool Rotterdam

In his book, Cramer gives a precise explanation of forms of magic in order to further draw comparisons with computational imagination. By looking at formal characteristics of code as executable language Cramer locates its inherent similarity to magic, not observing magic as a pejorative term. He also observes this subject in relation to performative and poetic language, and brings in subjectivity and imagination as inseparable elements of code. I have not yet read the entire book, though already from the introduction have relevant citations for my topic. The wider the gap between code and perception, the wilder the imagination. The more abstract a code, the more speculative the meaning that may be read into that code. Long before Steven Seagal, codes stirred up cultural imagination just because they were open to any reading. Western culture believed Egyptian hieroglyphs to hold divine powers until the Rosetta translation stone, found by Napoleon’s army in the early 19th century, debunked them as ordinary writing. (p.8) Ever since computer programmers referred to written algorithmic machine instructions as “code”and programming as “coding,” “code” not only refers to cryptographic codes, but to what makes up software, either as a source code in a high-level programming language or as compiled binary code, but in either case as a sequence of executable instructions. (p.9) Magic wasn’t considered occult until religion and later science and technology rivalled and marginalized it. The technical principle of magic,controlling matter through manipulation of symbols, is the technical principle of computer software as well. It isn’t surprising that magic lives on in software, at least nominally. (p.15)

Chandler, D (1995) Technological or Media Determinism Aberystwyth University, http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/

Chandler's writing is a diverse outlook on the term technological determinism, historically semantically and logically, briefly describing important theories and views. He brings in the problem of reductionism and reification, stressing the ease and danger of generalizing when speaking about technology.

Popper, R, Karl (1982) The open Universe-an argument for indeterminism,Hutchinson London,Century

The segment on Karl Popper in the essay is what I noted as the annotated bibliography: Karl Popper explains his critique of scientific determinism by arguing the logical flaws through which causality grows into determinism through the idea of universality, contrasting human will. The difference is that in science the law of nature may be discovered by human reason, by rational methods. Popper gives determinism the form of a linear film, which relies on conditions that the future is fixed. The causal explanation of an event implies that the causes are determined. One of the many logical problems that arise is if the future was determined and predictable, our actions of tomorrow would be known to us today. One of his examples against the universal principle is the realization that two clocks from the same assembly line, from the same factory are never completely the same, therefore technology can never be truly objective.

Shouse, E (2005) Feeling, Emotion, Affect, MC Journal, Vol. 8, No. 6, http://journal.mediaculture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php

In his text Eric Shouse writes about the distinction between affect, feeling and emotion, stating that affects are precognitive, feelings are personal and biographical, and emotions are social. He sees affects as abstract, which makes them “transmittable and provides a powerful social force”. The mechanism of affects is closely connected to naturalizing technology and behavior around it. Cunningham, G (1999) Religion and magic: approaches and theories, Washington Square: New York Cunningham provides a detailed history of approaches to magic and religion, from which the first chapter deals mostly with various theories on magic. Explanations of practices such as animism, totemism, fetishism and naturalism can be found here, as well as Frazer's division between homeopathic magic based upon the laws of similarity, and contagious magic, based upon the law of contact.

Rutsky, R, L (1999 )High techne- art and technology from the machine aesthetic to the posthuman, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press

Rutsky approaches the world of high tech aesthetics through the prism of artistic practice, the ontological problem of the machine that comes to life, the difference between the modern and postmodern conception of technology, from the position of the year 1999. She argues that the basis for the modern conception of technology is its instrumentality and that it hides the broader view of techne' from antiquity, which Heidegger refers to, questioning the universality of an instrumental conception of technology. High technology maintains a difference between those who have a high level of access to technology, and those who do not, bringing in class distinction. The democratizing discourse of how participation and universal access allowed by technology still differentiates classes. I will not be specifically interested in continuing this argument looking at the technological "others", because it is a topic that rises other issues, although important. In matters of distinguishing social classes, as the author writes that high technology distinguishes high and low culture (p.3), possibly at this moment it is rather that higher knowledge of utilizing technology distinguishes social classes. The scientific technological conception of the world continuation of the Renaissance rise of rationalist conceptions defined by its distinction to mythical, magical thinking, perceiving the world enchanted by a spirit or essence beyond human control. Technology is enlightenment of a dark superstitious world, a disenchantment. Technology substitutes magic, it is based upon the death of magical thinking which the author connects to modernism being based upon the death of the artisic aura (Benjamin:"autonomous living spirit that animates the work of art") (p.10-11)

Kluitenberg, E (2006) ed. Book of imaginary media. Excavating the dream of the ultimate communication medium. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers

The book of imaginary media offers a broad specter of approaches to imaginary media, from Bruce Sterling's concept of dead media, to Zielinski's analysis of Kircher's innovations, appropriations, on the example of the acousticon-the predecessor of the Panopticon, and the figure of Kircher being the embodiment of power and imagination, between the Catholic church and the people. Errki Huhtamo wrote about "artificial magic", that took part in the Middle ages as the "use of human made contraptions to demonstrate various phenomena found in nature" (p.86) This was parralely indoctrinating masses into observing the beauties of God's creations, serving to demystify natural magic, and as an empowering strategy by those who were free to experiment. This is from my point of view, an interesting connection between science, and the empowering experiment in the service of science. Kluitenberg's contribution deals with the concept of the myth of technology as a promising compensation machine, its strategies of depoliticizing and mystification.

Hayles, K (2005) My mother was a computer, Chicago, University of Chicago Press Hayles, K (1999) Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers, in How we became posthuman:virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics, Chicago, University of Chicago Press

Katherine Hayles writes on the relation between language, writing, code through the examples of computation and literature. The chapters Speech, Writing, Code, and Performative code and Figurative language, and in How we became posthuman:virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics, Virtual bodies and flickering signifiers deal with linguistic/conceptual structures surrounding the digital realm and text, presence, mediation and feedback. “Changes in bodies as they are represented within literary texts have deep connections with changes in textual bodies as they are encoded within information media, and both stand in complex relation to changes in the construction of human bodies as they interface information technologies. The term I use to designate this network of relations is informatics. Following Donna Haraway, I take informatics to mean the technologies of information as well as biological, social, linguistic, and cultural changes that initiate, accompany, and complicate their development.” (Hayles, p.73, 1993) “Information technologies do more than change modes of text production, storage and dissemination. They fundamentally alter the relation of signified to signifier. Carrying the instabilities implicit in Lacanian floating signifiers one step further, information technologies create what I call flickering signifier, characterized by their tendency toward unexpected metamorphoses, attenuations, and dispersions. “ (Hayles, p.76, 1993)

Guattari, F (1992) Chaosmosis,University of Indiana Press

Chapter Machinic heterogenesis is, in the context of my topic, an interesting discussion on linearity and alterity of the technical machine. Like Rutsky, he refers to techne, and Heidegger. The machine depends on exterior elements to be able to exist as such. The machine implies complementarity. (p.37) The phylogenetic evolution of machinism is expressed, at a primary level, by the fact that machines appear across generations, one suppressing the other as it becomes obsolete. Guattari argues not for historical causality, but for heterochronic datings in a rhizomatic history. (p. 40) "The wear and tear, accident, death and resurrection of a machine in a new copy or model are part of its destiny and can become central to its essence in certain aesthetic machines.” (p. 41) Smoothing of the materials that constitute the technical machine lead to a loss of singularity, differing it from living beings. (p. 45) He talks about different meanings of alterity within the machine, claiming the ontological modalities of alterity to be infinite, arguing for machinic autopoiesis. (p. 43) He refers to Heidegger's example of the airplane, being a "standing reserve" always waiting for a state of activating, as a universalistic view. (p. 47) He defines and distinguishes different bases for linearity, from code to semiology, which block us from observing in assemblages. (p.48) What he offers instead is a multivocal machinic assemblage of being, introducing residual objectivity, which takes into account the relativeness of the Universe outside our particularized earthly point of view.

Further to read:

-Paolo Virno, and Paul Virilio, -consumer theories -Baudrillard -continue reading High techne, by R.L.Rutsky, Words made flesh by F Cramer, S Zielinski-Deep time of the media -Frankenstein, Mary Shelley