New Media Theory 2

• Norbert Wiener "Men, Machines, and the World About": Origin of cybernetics emerges from "two converging themes of ideas" focused around automatic computing and antiaircraft defense. Negative feedback and homeostasis--machine capabilities inspired by biology and medicine. First Industrial Revolution uses machine's to replace man's energy (the engine). New Industrial Revolution to use machine to replace man's judgment (machines that can learn). The moral problem of magic and the danger of "worship of the gadget."

• J. C. R. Licklidder "Man-Computer Symbiosis": Cooperation and "close coupling" between humans and machines. Division of labor: men will "set the goals, formulate the hypotheses, determine the criteria, and perform the evaluations." Machines will do "routinizable work." Symbiosis to require "developments in time sharing, memory hardware and software, programming languages, and human-computer interface (HCI). Cf. Wiener (cybernetics).

• J. C. R. Licklidder "The Computer as a Communication Device": Communication as a process in which on participant knows something that he did not know before communication. Communication entails a reconciliation of disparate models/patterns. Economic feasibility of networking computers. Possibility of new kinds of networked communities. Evaluation of social impact.

• Katherine Hayles "Intro and Ch. 1 of How We Became Posthuman". Historical, narrative account of the separation of information and embodiment and the creation of the cyborg. Liberal humanist subject vs. posthuman. Development of cybernetics in stages defined by homeostasis, reflexivity, and emergence of self-evolving programs. "Platonic Forehand" and "Platonic Backhand" approaches to theorization. Technological development as "seriation." Adoption of technology and "skeuomorphs". Methodological focus on literature as a means of embodiment and addressing the ethical and cultural demands of studying cybernetics.

Definition of the Posthuman:

1. Privileging of information over material instantiation

2. Consideration of consciousness as the seat of identity

3. Regarding the body as a prosthesis (or even an ornament)

4. Configuration of the human body as seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines--denying an essential difference between cybernetic mechanism and biological organism

Cf. Moravee (Morvaee test vs. Turing test), Wiener (Macy conference, origins of cybernetics), Kubie (psychoanalysis, subjectivity, compare with Austin on utterances), Shannon (information as pattern, vs. McKay on the definition of communication), Bolter and Grusin (hypermediacy)

New Media Theory 1

• Mark Hansen "Media Theory": Theoretical oscillation between one approach that explores the experiential dimensions of media" and "another that excavates the technical logics of media." Conceptualization of medium as "an environment for life: by giving concrete form to 'epiphylogenesis', (the exteriorization of human evolution)". "Concrete media find their most 'originary' function not as artifacts but via their participation in human technogenesis (our co-evolution with technics. Cf. Foucault (historical a priori) Deleuze (transcendental empiricism), McLuhan (technology as prosthesis), Stiegler (technics vs. thinking/philosophy), Lacan (registers of real, imaginary, symbolic), Massumi (superiority of the analog), Husserl (temporality), Hansen (presencing)

• Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin "Remediation": "Double logic of remediation...Our culture wants both to multiply its media [hypermediacy] and to erase all traces of mediation [immediacy]...ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them.

• Lev Manovich "What is New Media?": New Media as the "convergency of two separate historical trajectories: computing and media technologies. Both begin in the 1830's with Babbage's Analytical Engine and Daguerre's daguerreotype.

Principles of New Media:

1. Numerical Representation

2. Modularity

3. Automation

4. Variability

5. Transcoding.

Outline of what New Media is not as illustrated with cinema.

Terry Jones and Questioning Motive

The media frenzy over Terry Jones, a pastor who had been threatening to burn the Quran in commemoration/protest of 9/11, recently caught my eye. People of practically every background and political persuasion agree: it's a terrible, terrible idea. So why would he even consider it? Cui bono?

As far as I can tell, there are exactly 2 constituencies who would benefit in any concrete way:

1. Anti-Americans, who could use frame this incident as an emblem of how Americans feel about Islam to recruit and inspire insurgents and terrorists.

2. Terry Jones, whose audience has increased from a congregation of 50 to everyone who is plugged into the global media. I think it's fair to presume that there would also be a financial benefit to his ill-gotten fame.

So here's where I think it gets very interesting: is Jones a man of faith, trying to strike a symbolic blow against a religion he sees as evil, or is he a media-savvy cynic who saw an opportunity for fame and fortune? Should we ignore the words of Mike Mansfield, who warns us to "never question another man's motive--question his judgment, but never his motive."

I think it's clear that every American has the right, if not the duty, to question Terry Jones' judgment, but should we be questioning his motive?

Justice and Instinct

I quoted Coetzee recently on the subject of justice. In that post I was most interested in whether there are concepts that are too subjective to possess a Platonic form. Perhaps it is not necessary that justice be mathematically absolute; perhaps a lower standard suffices: that the accused accept his society's definition of justice. Coetzee may be suggesting this in Disgrace:

"It was a male. Whenever there was a bitch in the vicinity it would get excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity, the owners would beat it. This went on until the poor dog didn't know what to do. At the smell of a bitch it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail between its legs, whining, trying to hide...

...there was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offense like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that, a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts."

I recently read an engrossing New Yorker piece about the Mazoltuv Borukhova case. She certainly seems to be refusing to accept the justice for following her maternal instincts.

I also think it's interesting that Coetzee thinks it best to use animals to describe justice (the donkey in Waiting for the Barbarians and the dog in Disgrace). Coetzee may think animals do not self-justify the way humans do.

Ofermod and Cowardice

When I was taking Emily Steiner's class on Beowulf, we talked briefly about the Battle of Maldon. A quick summary: an English leader named Byrhtnoth refused to pay tribute to Vikings, so the Vikings attacked. The Vikings had the larger force, but Byrhtnoth had a good chance because the Vikings had to cross a narrow causeway, which rendered their numbers useless. Maldon could have been tactically similar to the Battle of Thermopylae, in which Gerard Butler and a handful of Greeks were able to hold off a larger Persian force by forcing the large force through a narrow patch of shoreline.

But instead of taking advantage of the causeway, Byrhtnoth decided to let the Vikings off the causeway before fighting. Why? Byrhtnoth was struck with ofermod: one of my favorite concepts of all time. (Predictably, the Vikings won the day; a lot of people on both sides died, Byrhtnoth lost his head, and the English began paying Danegeld.)

A lot of ink has been spilled about ofermod, including a famous essay by J.R.R. Tolkein, but here is a brief summary: ofermod is an Old English word, but its parts are familiar to us: "ofer" just means "over" and "mod" gives us the modern word "mood"--it means something like spirit and it connotes things like heart, pride, and courage.

History is full of Byrhtnoths--leaders with a surfeit of mod; we may even have a few still around. Are these people heroes or idiots? Or both? What is the difference between prudence and cowardice, and why is cowardice considered especially despicable, especially in men? Is any discussion on this topic colored by cultural lenses?

Pop Culture and Race Loyalty

One of my mentors recently posted a critical review of Tyler Perry's most recent film, Why Did I Get Married Too? Having not seen the film, I was most interested her description of Perry's appeal to "a demographic of women—working-class, Christian African Americans who identify as heterosexual—who do not have movies specifically marketed to them."

One interesting issue is that Black viewers would like to applaud Perry's success, even as they question the real quality of his work. This conflict is symptomatic of a broader ambivalence: what we like isn't necessarily what's good for us.

To what extent is a Perry a trailblazer, and to what extent is he a profiteer of poor taste?

A World of the Second-Best

In Waiting for the Barbarians, Coetzee's Magistrate recalls lecturing a young offender. I will paraphrase some, but quote it at some length because I think the language is beautiful:

"You think you know what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know...all creatures come into the world bringing with them the memory of justice. But we live in a world of laws...a world of the second-best...all we can do is uphold the laws, all of us, without allowing the memory of justice to fade."

He says "a world of laws," but he may as well have said "a world of flaws." I think Coetzee's invocation of this Platonic system is interesting. I am accustomed to thinking of the "intelligible world" in terms of hard, scientific absolutes: triangles and such. An ideal triangle I can wrap my head around. Ideal justice is harder to conceptualize.

If our world is a world of the second-best, how do laws get us any closer to the world of the best?