[-empyre-] Mediated matters and design abjections

[Johannes Birringer]

thanks for your very interesting reply, Davide,
to some of the comments. And your reply, if we had time here, would raise further questions, naturally,
but I am hesitant to ask them as I feel that somehow the monthly debate has not involved very many discussants
on our list. and it worries me not knowing whether anyone is reading the conversations or wanting to participate
or wanting us to stop?


>>
I don’t think (at least for me) that the transmissional model of cause and effect of influence (which is also the model of coercion) is sufficient for our day and age (maybe it was never enough). Hence my lack of pursuing (also) of questions about biopolitics and subjectivity - which aren’t uninteresting questions to raise and follow through; they’re issues that I don’t feel equipped to deal with well enough - or rather, I should say, that the issue of control always already has a moral answer built into it; namely, the one who controls is the one (or it) that simultaneously exploits....
But once we’ve established this moral/ethical trajectory – let’s call it critical thought’s a priori - what can we say about the structures of association in our contemporary condition? ..

The disregarding of interest seems like a unique dynamic of datapolitik that distinguishes it ..... >>  [Davide]


Your (aesthetic?) belief in the healthy disinterest of "datapolitik" (how can disinterested algorithms have or form a politics or have strategies if we associate the latter with Politik?) is peculiar
as you did, earlier, speak of a transmission model, and you called it contagion. But surely contagious spreads and swarming affects are opportunistic, no? they are Machiavellian?  at least as far as i understand the biomedical
metaphor or epidemiological process and your zombie allegory -- "viral algorithms spread, contaminate, and affect influence through contagion -- how then do the immune systems respond and how to political tactics and strategies
become re-thinkable and rethought in such an algorithmic culture of associationn? You argue that data have/imply no politics, but call that a data-politik? Are you being ironic?

regards
Johannes Birringer