Re: <nettime> Your question

[Are Flagan <areflagan@transcodex.net>]

Re: 9/18/03 20:48, "t byfield" <tbyfield@panix.com>:

> is this a rhetorical question?

Is it? Mine was certainly a question asked with an answer already in mind,
and it may thus be considered redundant or insincere. The fact that it can
be threaded by dredging through the archives for an already-made snippet of
text dated 1997 certainly indicates that it adds little to the "discourse"
and instead reaffirms it as, indeed, rhetorical. Then again, what gesture,
today, in the realm of new media, code and software, is not at heart
rhetorical (eloquent and fine-sounding yet dangerously tinny and hollow)?

Your positioning of the "discourse" as awkward (momentarily?) way back in 97
is probably even more accurate today. The ancien methods of extracting some
truths have not gone away; instead their proponents have become regimental
stalwarts, inventing categories where the old machinery tortuously breaks
new ground -- again and again and again to perpetually grind away tedium and
erosion. Software art is the current case study in vogue; run me and read me
proliferates all over the place, chatted up by the same buddy-listed icons.

Fuller, for example, must have nodded yes, without recognizing his own pun,
when asked if he was writing a book on software culture. Any spikes on SETI
yet, anyone?

-af
 
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