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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It was a link from last month's
readinglists led me to Shoshana Zuboff's opinion piece in the NY
Times: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/facebook-surveillance-society-technology.html">You
can have surveillance society or you can have democracy but you
can't have both ... [sorry, that's we]</a></div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">and I think she's right about the scale
of change, that it's epistemic (if we think of episteme after
Foucault). That it's a coup, or takeover, and whether it's really
about surveillance, I'm not so sure.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">I like that she calls it an information
civilization we're heading toward, and her linking of post 9/11
(politicoaesthetic or imaginary) desire for absolute information
transparency to the unregulated and unaccountable rise of ...
what? Arturo Ui? ... A--automatic, automated and animate
I-intelligence? (the three A's are from Greg Flaxman's work on the
spiritual automaton of the cinematic eye)</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">She makes the link of knowledge to
power, which is Foucault's; and that of capital to data: she also
says data is agnostic to meaning or information--in this sense it
is a raw material, like capital. But its power is as capital. Just
as the power of science is from the aggregation of data. And I
suppose this is the confusing bit, the bit about confusion.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It is the confusion of knowledge,
information, technology and science. This goes as far as the
episteme, then. Meaning, it goes further than a description or a
change, or the description of a change, or the question of
democracy, or the answer given by corpocracy. (which is the
wishful takedown of democracy, given in the formula: Trump exists
to discredit democracy. COVID-19 exists to discredit democracy)</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">... I suppose what I'm trying to say is
that the thinking has already been done, objectively speaking, by
the <i>science</i> (in its confusion with technology, knowledge
and information). The data does not lie. So just as capital <i>thinks</i>
the ISSO (Intra-Species Social Organisation problem--Eugene
Holland) or the <i>elemental imperative</i> (to which it is <i>answerable</i>
(Lingis)). Just as capital <i>thinks</i> problems, including the
problem of tactical intervention or digital revolution. How does <i>data</i>
think the problem?</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Because this will be how power thinks
the problem.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It will be how science thinks the
problem.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">It will be how technology and
information think the problem.</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">How does <i>data</i> think? the
episteme?</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Best,</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Simon<br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix"><br>
</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 6/02/21 9:57 am, Renate Ferro wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:436F9746-909B-47B9-AF18-CB480DDE4375@cornell.edu">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
Thanks to Alan, Tim, Domenico, Leo, Geert and Ben for sharing their posts thus far. Our interrogation of tactics, strategies, utopias for immediate solutions and long-term utopias continues until Sunday when we introduce a new set of guests. I invite our guests and subscribers to post freely but it is clear we have the opposites of two extremes: tactical intervention or digital revolution.
Just to review where we are thus far, Ben pointed out that there are two important concerns to consider: surveillance systems built into online social platforms and the capitalistic profit algorithms that feed and grow social media companies. He proposed that many artists have used tactical media obfuscation interventions to challenge these conventions as well as general plug ins for consumer use like Go Rando and Not For You to name two. Leo shared a net project from 2012, YouAreMe.net, and another URME Surveillance which seeks to manipulate the materials of identity.
While Ben and Leo believe that obfuscation creates aesthetic/artistic information this alsoa allows the infestation of big data by proliferating noise which is likely to encourage critical discussion and engagement.
Domenico responded: “The scale of what we are discussing is huge, considering the amount of people, billions, interested and influenced by our online day by day, everyday emotional scrollacoaster.”
She posits a different approach: a call for emotional interrogation into vanity, ego and culture. Is it not time to invest a bit into critical digital thinking? I think about this quite seriously myself especially with the recent news of US Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rants of QAnon conspiracies that she learned about via Twitter and You Tube. She consistently questioned school mass shootings and instead promoted the fact that they were staged by gun control activists, she openly endorsed Pelosi’s execution, among other outlandish beliefs.
There is a never-ending spiral of this round robin of misinformation that reminds me of the kindergarten game we used to play called “telephone” where one person says something, whispers it to another, and as it goes around until the information gets shifted, expanded, blown out of proportion and context. In the case of the current condition, lives are at stake, governments are in chaos, election systems are being questioned.
Geert’s five-year proposition seems like the only alternative: abandon the past and start fresh, develop a culture of refusal, assert political pressure to break up the monopolies, build a public internet, ban the corporate, pave the way for the socialization of data centers and ocean cables, and subvert geo-political regions.
This month we continue to consider algorithms, untruths, and insurrection and how an environment of cynicism, distrust, and distain has allowed communication and the network flows to organize, promulgate, and maneuver through the citizenry in real time.
Looking forward,
Renate
Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rferro@cornell.edu">rferro@cornell.edu</a>
-empyre- curatorial moderator
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://empyre.library.cornell.edu">https://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a>
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://empyre.library.cornell.edu">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu</a></pre>
</blockquote>
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