see Gek Opels post... I was just up for a debate about the validity of critical theory. But it's one thing you're not allowed to criticise.
Digital Media Theory articles
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this is so funny
why is it bothering you so much that you are taking your displeasure into a completely unrelated discussion? nomadologist even wrote a long (and considered, far more than my own) post in the flowerpixie nuisance thread yesterday
this seems even more plausible now (lmao gek)
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nomadologist
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Anyone's allowed to criticise anything they want. We're just waiting for you to make a good point about critical theory, HMGovt: Mistersloane was able to do so. I can think of arguments pro and con spending vast amounts of time reading critical theory myself. Yours seem to amount to: "boo hoo you don't like Joanna Newsom BUT YOU READ THEORY." Two things that do not at all add up to some kind of hypocrisy or heresy on my part.
Guybrush, what do you mean? It seems, if you barely even glance at his posts, that HMGovt did not come in here to talk about critical theory, as he claims, but to try to derail a thread people were trying to build about a shared interest because he was upset about a criticism I levelled at Joanna Newsom's music. I do think it's rather funny if you're older than 12 to get so angry about a music opinion that you come and try to rail accusations against someone for sharing some course packet articles online. What are you talking about "used against anyone anytime"?
Guybrush, what do you mean? It seems, if you barely even glance at his posts, that HMGovt did not come in here to talk about critical theory, as he claims, but to try to derail a thread people were trying to build about a shared interest because he was upset about a criticism I levelled at Joanna Newsom's music. I do think it's rather funny if you're older than 12 to get so angry about a music opinion that you come and try to rail accusations against someone for sharing some course packet articles online. What are you talking about "used against anyone anytime"?
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borderpolice
Well-known member
No.
The first node of the ARPANET (later to be called "internet") went live in 1969 at UCLA.
I'm not sure what you mean by "cognitive scientists" in this context. Turing Machines are the invention of one of the founders of CS, not media theorists.
I agree with you. however, as a working computer scientist with a strong interest in sociology, i find that the "mapping/tracking" that media studies has done to be lame and reactive, consisting of little to nothing that the CS crowd hasnt discussed before. That doesn't mean media studies as i see it isn't worthwhile, on the contrary, they do a translation job, making parts of the CS discourse digestible and available to the general public. But my original post was targeted as a working programmer (and mostly regarding the, for want of a better word, French school of media studies).
Finally: this stuff is quite interesting, by all means, go and read!
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nomadologist
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here's the thing, border: i just don't see either at odds with the other, but i also think your'e misunderstanding media theory and its scope if you think it's about programming languages and virtual architectures exclusively. it isn't. the ARPANET is not exactly what the hypertext writers were foreseeing/talking about--they were predicting a global network trafficked by billions and a million ways this would shape society. i brought up cognitive science and its use of turing machines in some of the early models of cognition to show that there was a lot of parallel development. media studies is not simply derivative of computer science.
read the virilio from "Lost Dimension": we're talking radical new "urban" structures, or lack thereof, new ways of delimiting things like the "body", things that have intellectual repercussions that seem to be much wider in scope than what you'd talk about sitting in a boardroom talking discussing how to build a company's networks.
i don't think "cs" discourse comes anywhere near a lot of the topics media studies delves into qua philosophy and sociology. where do you leap from talking about practical solutions and technological capabilities to, say, psychoanalysis?
read the virilio from "Lost Dimension": we're talking radical new "urban" structures, or lack thereof, new ways of delimiting things like the "body", things that have intellectual repercussions that seem to be much wider in scope than what you'd talk about sitting in a boardroom talking discussing how to build a company's networks.
i don't think "cs" discourse comes anywhere near a lot of the topics media studies delves into qua philosophy and sociology. where do you leap from talking about practical solutions and technological capabilities to, say, psychoanalysis?
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borderpolice
Well-known member
Neither do I
I don't. The CS crowd doesn't just discuss "programming languages and virtual architectures", on the contrary.
I didn't say so. Media study is most interesting where CS is only one point of comparison (or was barely on the horizon).
Again, I don't want to dismiss media studies. It is interesting and worthwhile.
As an aside, let me point out that the field of AI (artificial intelligence) is part of CS, has spawned cognitive science (together with psychology and biology). As other examples of CS influence, the theories of formal languages lead to generative grammars in linguistics, CS grandee Simon was very influential in Economics and the sociology of organsations and so on. There is plenty on CS going on apart from corporate networks. OK, maybe nothing about psychoanalysis, but that's probably because PA is a bit whimsical. [Well, Eliza seems to have had some success as a therapist!]
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No.dHarry said:
so what were you referring to when you said that the theorists' predictions were wrong?
borderpolice
Well-known member
I made a glib statement that i hereby retract
, partly because there is so much stuff that any summary judgement will be inappropriate. My general feeling is this: what i consider the heart of the (visible) changes in popular culture due to the internet (google, myspace, IM, blogs, podcasts, P2P, filesharing, IP wars) has not really been anticipated very well, at least in the literature i have seen (mostly french or french inspired),which can only be a tiny fraction of what has been written).
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nomadologist
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now I'm curious about which Frenchies you've been reading...can't think of distinctly French media theorists right now for some reason... de Certeau maybe? not a flaneur?
de Certeau maybe? not a flaneur?
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borderpolice
Well-known member
now I'm curious about which Frenchies you've been reading...can't think of distinctly French media theorists right now for some reason...
All the frenchies in your reading list, and de Certeau, using the term "media theorist" loosely.
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nomadologist
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I would probably associate them more closely with continental philosophy and the mainstream of philosophy before people started distinguishing this from "critical theory", so I understand why it would be of less interest to a computer scientists than some of the more technical stuff...
I made a glib statement that i hereby retract
i think this is very true.
most of the time, this stuff is always 4 steps behind the actual practice of the internet, the thing is changing all the time, the way people interact, exchange information, buy and value goods, the kind of goods they buy and value etc..
I am glad that this discussion takes a more interesting course. What you write here, mms, is -for me, at least- a most fundamental question. One that has not been treated (enough) by media theory, namely: what are the consequences of such rapidly changing technological infrastructures on the status of knowledge/information. What does it mean that there is a continuous decay in the organisational structure of knowledge?
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nomadologist
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m99--those are the questions at the very core of "Media Studies" as a discipline
Umm, might I ask exactly what that means? Surely the trend of the internet is an increase of the organizational structure of knowledge? Especially with things like google's attempt to digitize all the world's books and i dunno, just pretty much the efforts of every large technology company out there. And please don't just say "entropy"
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
Originally Posted by m99188868 : What does it mean that there is a continuous decay in the organisational structure of knowledge?
Turtles response: Umm, might I ask exactly what that means?
Something to do with the decline in its Symbolic Efficiency (as we might conclude about the position of some posters here viz-a-viz Media Studies) ...
[BTW, Turing, Weizenbaum, Simon, Newell, von Neumann et al would have loved this (GM advert) fantasmatic paeon to AI (and classical Hollywood dénouements). More on this later, elsewhere (with plenty of Meeja theory)].
]
Turtles response: Umm, might I ask exactly what that means?
Something to do with the decline in its Symbolic Efficiency (as we might conclude about the position of some posters here viz-a-viz Media Studies) ...
[BTW, Turing, Weizenbaum, Simon, Newell, von Neumann et al would have loved this (GM advert) fantasmatic paeon to AI (and classical Hollywood dénouements). More on this later, elsewhere (with plenty of Meeja theory)].
]
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Umm, might I ask exactly what that means? Surely the trend of the internet is an increase of the organizational structure of knowledge? Especially with things like google's attempt to digitize all the world's books and i dunno, just pretty much the efforts of every large technology company out there. And please don't just say "entropy"
Internet surely increases the organizational structure of knowledge. But what I meant, is that at the very same time the continuous innovation in the field makes the organization of knowledge through this medium very instable.
Ah, thanks you two. I made the typical CS mistake of forgetting to think about the humans
That said, do you people know about things like the Web Ontology Language (OWL)? It's essentially an attempt to create a language that will give the internet a standard, computer-readable semantic structure. Seems pretty much precisely aimed at fighting the decay of organizational structure of knowledge. Though again, it's aimed at making the computers have better structured knowledge, not the humans. The humans get trickle-down benefits by having access to the better structured knowledge...which i suppose in a lot of ways is how the interet really works anyway...
That said, do you people know about things like the Web Ontology Language (OWL)? It's essentially an attempt to create a language that will give the internet a standard, computer-readable semantic structure. Seems pretty much precisely aimed at fighting the decay of organizational structure of knowledge. Though again, it's aimed at making the computers have better structured knowledge, not the humans. The humans get trickle-down benefits by having access to the better structured knowledge...which i suppose in a lot of ways is how the interet really works anyway...