Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0910201459160.3992@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: rough guide REVISED (apologies for earlier version)
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 14:59:49 -0400 (EDT)
rough guide to connected / disconnected society : REVISED (more wholes and holes here) stages of networking: A degree zero to telegraphy: cohering with the obdurate/analogic real. to get from here to there: move from here to there. cross the rubicon. slip- pages: smoke signals, voice, military bugles, etc. but not enormous. this is the world before the jump-cut. industrial revolution. local knowledge. bullae, tablet, mail. analogic truth values located in obdurate-inert. there is here here. use value conflated with exchange value. B degree 1/2 to telephony: linear non-redundant communication, voiceless, abstracted. where wire is, communication is; the obdurate/analogic appears in the form of linear connectivity: from here to there, is wire. morse and other codings tending on one hand towards universal standards and on the other towards local compaction. mass industrialization. regional know- ledge. visual telegraphy, telegraph, pony-express. digital loom, early digital constructs. diorama, inert real-time special effects. concepts of class consciousness, alienation. truth values located in obdurate-inert - hermeneutics of truth. there is there there. exchange value, capital. C degree 3/4 to internet: multiplexing, voiced, incipient digital communi- cation. beginnings of satellite technology. party-lines, cb and ham radio - carriers are abstracted, but voice returns the analogic, presencing of the body. connection almost always appears to be one-to-one. start of internet, fidonet, bbs, buffered news including radio and television. the social characterized by intensifications and delays. fordism, beginnings of post-fordism, communication-mode community. nation-centrism, patriot- ism. airmail, telegram, tickertape. vacuum tube, mercury delay lines, mainframes, beginnings of protocol suites. role-playing games. inert and buffered special effects. concepts of mass society and culture industry. truth values entangled with media, embedded in obdurate-inert, protocol statements. there is here there. abstract exchange, trans-capital. D degree 1: internet: universal abstracted digital connectivity, construc- ted truth and truth values. web 2.0, beginnings of universal interfacing, community, connectivity. hidden costs of industrialization 'elsewhere': universal exploitation as well. (inauthentic) transparency of time and space, collapse of histories into micro-histories. what might have been the simulacrum or society of the spectacle becomes everyday life. capital, communication, data-base, and body are one. universal knowledge for those who have both economic and cultural capital. email, online communities and virtual worlds. digital special effects, buffered and non-buffered. concepts of identity theft, conspiracy, matrix, singularity. truth values sublimated, ostensibly located in obdurate-inert, protocol statements. truth values surface as binary constructs. on one hand, digital universal abstraction - on the other, the truth (setting) of the pixel or smallest element. the analogic returns in the form of the pixel within its potential well. there is no there there. there is no here here. phantom capital. E degree > 1: information-mass, mass individuation, encapsulation of history, tottering eco-systems, populations, massive extinctions, mass starvation, and so forth. 'the wobbling pivot.' truth values mediated and remediated from the obdurate inert. there is no there. there is no here. remediation of capital, phantom capital. degrees of disconnect: this is a mapping of 'degrees of separation' with dual tendencies: 1. towards the elimination of alterity in favor of protocol-relationships. complex relation with capital, personal accumulation; local, national, and international knowledge, sequestered fundamentalisms. accommodation to power. (exceptions abound.) 2. towards clandestine, hidden, or effaced alterity and analogic labor, governance, regional knowledge. top-down multinationals, regional con- flicts, gangsterisms, overpopulation, open fundamentalisms. (exceptions abound.) as with lyotard, we find entanglement among 1, 2, and network degrees A-E.