[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment: week 2

[Simon Biggs]

I agree with you John about the STS angle. The books you point to are also very good.

N.K. Hayles recent book How We Think also looks at the origins of such protocols, going back before Brand and people like that (the Whole Earth thing was only one thread leading to the emergence of the Silicon Valley hybrid monster - there were some stranger bedfellows in that mix) to look at some of the 19th and early 20th Century control-system origins for our modern techno-culture. Idealism turned very nasty. Latour's work is also very important here.

I like the term Socio-Technical System and in some ways when I've used the term dispositif I've meant something like this. However, the way STS is sometimes conceived sets up another dualistic social model (us and them) which I find difficult to handle. That said, the people who developed the Socio-Technical Studies field tend not to indulge such dualism.

best

Simon


On 10 Jul 2014, at 01:10, John Hopkins <jhopkins at neoscenes.net> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 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
> 
> -- 
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
> grounded on a granite batholith
> twitter: @neoscenes
> http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> 
> 
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Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk  |  @_simonbiggs_ 
http://www.littlepig.org.uk  |  http://amazon.com/author/simonbiggs

simon.biggs at unisa.edu.au  |  Professor of Art, University of South Australia
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/staff/homepage.asp?name=simon.biggs

s.biggs at ed.ac.uk  |  Honorary Professor, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php

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