Digital Media Theory articles

[borderpolice]

I don't think so. I'm a software developer and very interested in media theory. Of course CS is were the action is, but it's important to evaluate this from another perspective than the purely technological point of view.

i agree with you that it's important to look at things from another angle. I doubt that the media theory canon gives you much in this regard.

 

[dHarry]

But why would a CS person want to read this media theory stuff? it is pedestrian! all the stuff wirtten by the media theory crowd about virtuality, hyperreality ... completely failed to anticipate how the internet would work out, let alone help shape, influence the development. media theory tends to be reactive, summarising what the programmers created a few years earlier. the creative side of things is really the programmers! why bother with media-theorists who renarrate?

of course some media theory is good, i don't want to diss the whole field. just wanted to point out that if you have the choice between CS and modern media theory about internet and the like, it's got to be the former every time, becaue that's where the action is.

Are you maybe conflating the media theory of the "I predict, that by 2003 we'll all be having 3-D holographic sex in cyberspace" type with this more technically philosophical approach to the implications of new technologies (for subjectivity, social relations, politics, epistemology, etc.)?

 

[nomadologist]

It's funny you say that, borderpolice, because hypertext theorists/novelists anticipated the internet in 1970, exactly as it would be formed. "Links" are something hypertext theorists were talking about for decades. You couldn't be more wrong. Have you ever read the early cognitive scientists? Turing machines? Hello??

(Incidentally, I think CS and media theory diverge GREATLY around 1985-1990. Neither replaces the other--media theory studies/maps out/track broad cultural trends that happen to include changes in computer technology. Computer science can't really replace this study with lines and lines of javascript can it?)

 

[nomadologist]

Thanks Nomadologist, this is great! (This reminds me of Deleuze's point that a society isn't defined by its structures but by what escapes, flees, leaks!)

Some of the stuff is obvious to anyone with an interest or background in this area (Baudrillard, Deleuze - Postscript on the Societies of Control is fantastic, and is on the web in a couple of places, Lyotard), but others less so, and it's nice to have them organised thematically.

The readings get less and less "obvious" as the semester wears on--that's why I offered to put them up, they're not articles you see floating around everyday, some of them...

 

[nomadologist]

Agreed. That's true for the Frankfurters. Apart from Benjamin, I would probably not classify them as media theorists though.

Kittler and Bolz do write about digital media and if you wouldn't know them -although I assume you do- check them out. Especially Kittler is a rocking badboy academic par excellence. For some examples of his idiosyncratic writing, check here.


Edit: I don't know in what program this course is organised, but I wished every university had at least one such seminar. Sounds really too cool.

I'm in the MA program in Media Studies at the New School in NYC.

 

[dHarry]

I'm in the MA program in Media Studies at the New School in NYC.

Incidentally, do you have an idea of what this will qualify you for, or what doors it's likely to open (if that's relevant to you) - teaching?

 

[nomadologist]

well, I was just offered a job by one of my professors (also a CEO) that I'm considering taking in editing medical journals/proposals/grants. some people i know who've completed the program work in advertising, media buying, media planning, etc. most of them took the more production- and management-oriented track. i've been focusing on the theory courses because my new plan is to get a Ph.D. i'm really interested in NYU's Media Ecology doctoral program, McGill's Art and Communication Ph.D. program, New School's Sociology doctoral program, a couple of Columbia's doctoral programs, and a bunch of others. I'm open to suggestions if you have any--I'm looking to avoid the dinosaur-like overly canonical programs (Yale, anyone?)

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

It looks pretty interesting, but you accuse Joanna Newsom of self-indulgence and fiddling while Rome burns!?!

 

[nomadologist]

HmGovt--isn't it important for people to be educated? It's one of our last hopes, right? I will probably end up teaching on the college level and getting a doctorate. For now I work in non-profit (at a large university) raising money for AIDS and biomedical research.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Maybe, but why not learn something that would prove useful outside a seminar, online forum or dinner party? The academic circle jerk. At least Joanna Newsom's songs mean something to her and are alright to listen to - but this stuff is means nothing to anyone, is about itself and nothing else. Basically, a humungous waste of time and energy. Those Watt hours could be warming some hobos toes not lighting a classroom full of self-regarding nerds.

But like I said, it's kinda interesting. keep posting this stuff up. And lay off newsom.

 

[nomadologist]

Excuse me? I hope you realize that anti-intellectualism is ridiculous. You could say the same of any academic subject. You could say the same of plasma physics, because the average person will never need to understand the subject. What you're saying is patently absurd.

 

[nomadologist]

I do as much as I can on a daily basis to raise money for research that I think is crucial to our future as a society. I think learning about how culture works has a very direct effect on the population and its well-being, especially politically. Virilio may not mean much to you, and Newsom's music might, but that doesn't mean that our culture's literature is not important *at all.*

How ridiculous.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Plasma physics. Yeah, that's so useless. What a waste, cutting the keys to free energy and interplanetary travel.

I'm saying that no-one will ever need to read a critique of post modern theory, but it's great that someone had the time to write one rather than sustain themselves by hunting rats by candlelight. That's about all you can say for the entire canon of literature on that subject. No amount of writing about the internet and its consequences, post hoc, matters one shit. It's the execution that's important.

 

[nomadologist]

Like I said, I work in non-profit in an office that has raised over $400 million dollars for biomedical research in the past three years. What have you done for plasma physics lately?

 

[nomadologist]

I'm saying that no-one will ever need to read a critique of post modern theory, but it's great that someone had the time to write one rather than sustain themselves by hunting rats by candlelight. That's about all you can say for the entire canon of literature on that subject. No amount of writing about the internet and its consequences, post hoc, matters one shit. It's the execution that's important.

I'm sorry--what do you mean? This makes no sense. Applying your logic, nothing matters "one shit." How could writing somehow be hierarchically lower in cultural significance than music, even if regarded only in the strict Freudian sense as sublimated libido?

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

How have Virilio's writings on culture affected culture or anything else lately? That's the more pressing question. If they are for their own sake, fair enough, but to criticise Joanna Newsom for daring to omit Palestine or AIDS research from her songs before skipping off to a class on this stuff - - - THAT is ridiculous.

 

[nomadologist]

That is not what I criticized her for at all. Read more carefully. And you're in the wrong thread.

Virilio's writing has been hugely significant in academia for a long time now. If you don't think higher education is important; fine. But this class I'm taking has nothing whatsoever to do with my dislike for Joanna Newsom's music (which is based on AESTHETIC, not ETHICAL preferences of mine that are avowedly based only on my own OPINION.) If you'll note, I said that I don't like explicit references to political realities in music, but I don't like music that is based on diary-entry level navel-gazing, either.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I'm sorry--what do you mean? This makes no sense. Applying your logic, nothing matters "one shit." How could writing somehow be hierarchically lower in cultural significance than music, even if regarded only in the strict Freudian sense as sublimated libido?

I'm sorry, I get the strong impression, and it has been touched on in this thread, that all these earnest, well-meaning theorists are CERTAIN that the Internet and meshworks and hierarchies are REALLY, REALLY significant, but lacking the knowledge or skills to make a material contribution, all they can do is write portentous but epistemologically featherweight papers about how REALLY, REALLY significant this stuff is and will be. Which is why this stuff is only significant to other theorists who depend on the debate for their pay cheques. It's a nice racket, but Jesus, don't expect anyone to give it any wider respect.

 

[nomadologist]

I'd love for you to prove how epistemologically featherweight these theorists are for us, HMGovt.

Go for it. We're listening.

Did I ask you to care about theory? What is this about? Will you please take it to the other thread: some of us here wanted to use this one to talk about the papers I was going to upload for INTERESTED parties.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Hey, I am interested. I downloaded a bunch of this stuff - I've been looking for the Vannevar Bush paper since time. And I find Manuel Delanda's books, his materialist take on it all, fascinating and stimulating. But it's just context-setting, none of it matters.