Daemon Davis’ favorites
Recently commented on
Brief story: This afternoon, I, Matthew Wade Davis, a living human creature of the date January 18, 2008 realized that a very dear friend of mine has a name that loosely translates in English to "Little Zero". Intrigued, I soon found myself drawn to a computer wherein I would seek out the information that led me down the following path referenced below. As I am well aware that this message will be archived from now until oblivion: Please read it... Respond to it... Read. Respond. Read this page. Reid & Paige could be the name of your future children. There are no rules. There are no pond.
01.18.08 MWD//PATH:
http://www.littlezero.com
http://www.cognisphere.com/
http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/7-8/159
excerpt:
N. Katherine Hayles
English Department, University of California, Los Angeles
The cyborg that Donna Haraway appropriated in ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’ as a metaphor for political action and theoretical inquiry has ceased to have the potency it did 20 years ago. While Haraway has turned from a central focus on technoculture to companion species, much important cultural work remains to be done, especially in networked and programmable media. Problems with the cyborg as a metaphor include the implication that the liberal humanist subject, however problematized by its hybridization with cybernetic mechanism, continues as a singular entity operating with localized agency. In a word, the cyborg is not networked enough to encompass the emergent possibilities associated with the Internet and the world-wide web and other phenomena of the contemporary digital era. Instead I propose the idea of the cognisphere. As operational concept and suggestive metaphor, the cognisphere recognizes that networked and programmable media are not only more pervasive than ever before in human history but also more cognitively powerful. It is closely associated with what many researchers regard as a major insight: the idea that the physical world is fundamentally computational. While these scientists regard computation as a physical process, the cultural critic is apt to see it as an over-determined metaphor. The binary choice between seeing the computational universe as a literal description of the physical world and reading it as an over-determined metaphor misses a crucial aspect of contemporary cultural dynamics: the interaction between means and metaphor, technology and cultural presupposition. Taking this dynamic into account leads to a more complete understanding summed up in the aphorism, ‘What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.’
Key Words: computation Europe • emergence Europe • evolution Europe • networks Europe • technoscience
01.18.08 MWD//PATH:
http://www.littlezero.com
http://www.cognisphere.com/
http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/23/7-8/159
excerpt:
N. Katherine Hayles
English Department, University of California, Los Angeles
The cyborg that Donna Haraway appropriated in ‘Manifesto for Cyborgs’ as a metaphor for political action and theoretical inquiry has ceased to have the potency it did 20 years ago. While Haraway has turned from a central focus on technoculture to companion species, much important cultural work remains to be done, especially in networked and programmable media. Problems with the cyborg as a metaphor include the implication that the liberal humanist subject, however problematized by its hybridization with cybernetic mechanism, continues as a singular entity operating with localized agency. In a word, the cyborg is not networked enough to encompass the emergent possibilities associated with the Internet and the world-wide web and other phenomena of the contemporary digital era. Instead I propose the idea of the cognisphere. As operational concept and suggestive metaphor, the cognisphere recognizes that networked and programmable media are not only more pervasive than ever before in human history but also more cognitively powerful. It is closely associated with what many researchers regard as a major insight: the idea that the physical world is fundamentally computational. While these scientists regard computation as a physical process, the cultural critic is apt to see it as an over-determined metaphor. The binary choice between seeing the computational universe as a literal description of the physical world and reading it as an over-determined metaphor misses a crucial aspect of contemporary cultural dynamics: the interaction between means and metaphor, technology and cultural presupposition. Taking this dynamic into account leads to a more complete understanding summed up in the aphorism, ‘What we make and what (we think) we are co-evolve together.’
Key Words: computation Europe • emergence Europe • evolution Europe • networks Europe • technoscience
1 comment
| Promote (1) |
|
Add to favorites
|
| Create synapse |
|
