Re: <nettime> [SPAM] Re: More Crisis in the Information Society

["michael gurstein" <gurstein@gmail.com>]

I am finding it very interesting if a bit discombobulating to see my initial provocation turned into the stuff of common room chat. As one who has only one or two tremulous toes dipped in the sacred waters of academe the self-absorption that this represents is quite astonishing if not deeply saddening.

I think that Ted goes to the river but doesn't in the end immerse himself (sorry, I've just been briefly spending time with the 100???s of thousands of Shiva devotees braving a semi-torrential up-stream Ganges in search of something--but certainly not academic enlightenment...

The "crisis in the Information Society" dear friends is not simply a crisis of potential conscience (consciousness?) among "new media" faculty however important in the great scheme of things that might be. 

It is as I was trying to point out, a deep, dare I say existential crisis, for Western democracies and their camp followers.  The technologies which were to have taken them/us to a new stage of economic/social/cultural/political liberation are now demonstrated to be doing exactly the opposite and our addiction (to the digital) is so profound and so integral that there is no ???work-around??? ??? we have seen the Surveillance/Control State and it is us???

So unless we can figure out and implement a way of controlling the ???deep (digitally empowered) state??? we had better all get out our well-worn and now (???it???s so 80???s???) discarded volume of 1984 and get our Newspeak lexicon up to speed (I???m wondering when it might be added as a language for Google translate ??? no time like the present and somehow it seems profoundly appropriate.


M

-----Original Message-----

From: nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org [mailto:nettime-l-bounces@mail.kein.org] On Behalf Of t byfield
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 12:16 AM
To: Nettime-l
Subject: [SPAM] Re: <nettime> More Crisis in the Information Society


One curious thing about this discussion is that most of the people
involved are speaking from their experiences on faculties involved,
broadly, speaking, in 'digital culture.' This field sits in an odd
conceptual space between design, art, 'technology' (e.g., computer
science), and critical fields grounded in somewhat politicized
humanities (as opposed to, say, political science). Certainly, many of
the main ideas proposed are shaped by different disciplinary
inflections, which are mainly institutional in their orientation: they
seem to look outward, but they remain tacitly inward-looking in that
constant reference is made to the experiences and prospects of
graduates, new classes to taught, and so on.
 <...>


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