Re: [-empyre-] Is Modernity our Antiquity

[saul ostrow <sostrow@gate.cia.edu>]

master narratives are myths in other words they are the rails that we
run our box cars on

Christophe Bruno wrote:
> 
> >- master narratives need rails to run their fiction on, nazism the ruins of
> >WOI and the economic disarray of the twenties, stalinism equally so
> >worsened
> >by post-tsarist chaos in the Soviet empire. Do you see global terrorism and
> >its consequences of a culture of surveillance serving as a rail to run the
> >Benthamian panopticum of semantic capitalism (BPSC) on?
> 
> Well, situations are not identical. In one case we are at the end of some
> modernist process. But in the case of BPSC, we are at the end of a
> Postmodern phase (if ever what I said has some pertinence), which ironically
> allows the achievement of some of the trends of the modernist process. One
> of the ?rail? here is the story of the Web that everybody knows: first, at
> the beginning there is a huge hope that concentrated many ideals: sharing
> media, freedom of speech etc. anybody feels he could become his own
> publisher, share its intimacy etc. There is also a strong postmodern
> component in 'some' renewal of the concepts of identity, space, time, social
> networks etc; this is the time of net.art. Then there is the rise of the
> ?old? capitalism: they still think the Web as if it was part of the
> spectacle society, and that's a big failure; in 1998 net.art commits suicide
> and in 2000 the bubble bursts. Just at the same time, or a little before,
> Google appears. They come from the universitarian world, linux guys, basic
> unix interface, they are the nice guys with an ethical position about  free
> speech. But in fact, this attitude allows them to make an amazing deal with
> the internet users who just give up the exploitation rights of their
> intimacy to Google and it is the triumph of the society of control. The aim
> here is to scientifically predict the behaviour of the users in order to
> optimize the adwords/adsense machinery (on which Google IPO is based).
> Google claims it?s a fair deal, I don?t believe so; this is the idea of
> ?fair use? behind which they hide during their trials about Google Books
> (formerly Google Print). Considering here blogger as producers of speech
> that give up their production to Google, I sometimes think of this new phase
> of capitalism (which by the way still weights absolutely nothing when
> compared to the traditional market capitalism) as witnessing a change of
> nature in the way surplus-value operates. Because producing speech is not
> exactely the same thing as producing cars. May be...
> 
> >How about
> >justifications for the BPSC in view of our need to avert actual and
> >impending catastrophes (global warming, reigning famines in Africa
> >untsoweiter) originating from science?
> 
> I really don't know
> 
> >- do you think of the BPSC as a closed event? It happened, so we're done
> >for? Or are we in its concluding phase, wrapping up the remains of the day,
> >closing up the façade with laws on sedition, cleaning up the mess of
> >intimacy in the Big Brother house, locking down the gaps in the defense of
> >our savezones?
> 
> we?ll see...
> 
> >- do you think of your own work as somehow fighting the BPSC, are you
> >developing strategies towards that, or do you limit yourself to commenting
> >it, exposing it?
> 
> I?m a minimalistic-sado-masochistic artist ;-)
> 
> >- has the BPSC got the rise of the Asian empire covered (ouch)?
> 
> clearly it will be interesting to see how China is going to deal with all
> this...
> 
> >I read your Cosmolalia proposal prior to the discussion, must say there's a
> >lot there resembling my own thinking, up to the use of Mallarmé's ptix
> >(very
> >funny, i already considered it to be somewhat 'my ptix', so i feel a bit
> >bereft of it). There are, however,differences in degree i think, so,
> >knowing
> >most of the answers are contained within the text at
> >http://www.cosmolalia.com/readme100/, perhaps you could expand on the
> >questions here nonetheless? I'm asking a lot, i know how exhausting these
> >exercises can be, but it would be nice if we could bring the views there to
> >relate to the problem we're attempting to tackle here.
> 
> why don't we start by you telling me what are these "differences in degree"
> ? In the mean time I read your article
> 
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