[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment: week 2

[John Hopkins]

A few morning musings -- before picking up a hammer.

> Finally, last week, I’m glad Alan mentioned “critique of the corporate”.
> Getting to occasionally glimpse behind the curtain of industry and

For me this is the most crucial point -- one that, in the 'traditional' 
consideration of the virtual -- aka VR technologies -- it is the sourcing of 
those technologies that is most problematic.

As I previously described the flow-altering character that is the virtual, one 
must consider how and why a flow is being altered and who is driving the 
alteration for what ends. It is no trivial detail that these technologies have 
arisen out of a military-industrial context. It is in the interests of that 
fundamental area of the techno-social system to devise systems that deflect 
damaging flows (defense) whilst creating systems for projecting concentrated 
energies outward at its 'enemies' (offense). Both these functions are necessary 
to ensure the viability of the particular techno-social system. Anything that 
aids in this, especially the widespread support of the population of a State, it 
beneficial to that techno-social system.

When a population 'uses' the products (protocols) of the techno-social system 
they are explicitly supporting the system that controls the protocols.

The whole regime of the 'cyber' as it is integrated on/sourced in prior 
technologies (protocols), is one means (among others) to harness the energies of 
a population in support of the techno-social system they are part of.

The general principle behind all corporate/state posturing is to gain attention 
in the form of the population spending/expressing life-time and life-energy 
using the protocols of those particular systems. In doing so, we are giving very 
real energized support for that system ... without this attention those social 
structures would collapse...

FYI

A couple books that look closely at the roots of Silicon Valley et al. The 
exhibition last summer "The WHole Earth" at HKW in Berlin curated by Diedrich 
Diederichsen & Anselm Franke was a very good look into some of these exact points.

http://tinyurl.com/oj2f5uj (documentation... there are some talks online, one 
given by  Fred Turner and I think the catalog is probably quite good, although I 
have not gotten a copy yet)

and Turner's book --

Turner, F., 2006. From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, theWhole 
Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism, Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press.

is a provocative exploration of this, but there are deeper and more profound 
roots (for example, this book):

Leslie, S.W., 1993. The Cold War and American Science: The 
Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford, New York, NY: Columbia 
University Press.


Cheers,
John

-- 
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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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