Information – Technology = Society?

Information – Technology = Society? COMN 2312 (6 or 9 Credit)

Agenda: • Next to last class? Exam next week • Last lecture for this term

Housekeeping related to exam • Exam next week • Today’s lecture for this term will tie up some loose ends related to exams • Housekeeping related to exam • Exam materials: bring extra paper • Exam protocol: once exam handed out, no talking • Academic Integrity • Make sure you id exam properly • Exam grades after winter break • Consider being early • Bring watch • 110 min: • 1 Essay (30-40 min), • 3 short answer (24-30), • 16 mc/fib/matching (32-40 min)

Alphabet-Count-Value • Sumerian (26 letter alphabet) translated sound into abstract symbols and worked because it was abstract enough to be used efficiently • This allowed sound to be converted into a “thing” an object • Prior to this sound was one of the dominant media upon which cultural memory rested • Cultural memory = transmission of what is valued • Sound was cued through certain shapes

Ong: Sound = breath = presence = present • Sound is connected to ancient concepts of time: past/present/future connected to idea of speaking presence • Sound can be activated in its relationship with memory through certain cues, smells, shapes and patterns • Cultural memory is dependent on these shapes and images – mythology can be called the story shape of cultural memory, it is entangled with ritual (as pattern of cultural memory involving gestures, objects, use of space and performance in connection with music and stories told in patterns: musical shapes, story-scapes)

Ong: Sound = breath = presence = present • Sound is connected to ancient concepts of time: past/present/future connected to idea of speaking presence • Sound can be activated in its relationship with memory through certain cues, smells, shapes and patterns • Cultural memory is dependent on breath: it is dependent on a speaker and listener; • It is dependent on community

Ong: Chirographic culture • AS Sound is connected to writing: the concept of a word as a thing (that you look at) slowly comes into play • This takes a while because though writing is now a technology with some cultural currency – most are illiterate • Writers (Scribes) can conduct writing in sealed environments • Texts are sounded. • Reading is reading aloud • The reading of a book – is activity few in a culture can engage • The writing of a book even less so. • Books are written in the main to satisfy the interpretation text • Cultural memory is dependent on this “read” text

Ong: Print culture • AS Sound is able to uniformly be connected to writing: • the concept of a word as a thing (that you look at) • READing as a visual activity starts to influence culture • Books allow texts to travel outside of scribal communities • Texts are encountered individually • Texts enable the rise of a rational discourse which travels alongside a culture that up till now has been organized by mythologic • Instead of the patterns of the gods and their stories the book enables the cultural influence of the idea and “lines of thought” • This was previously the realm of the few; now cultures become readers • Cultural projects center on literacy • Cultural memory starts to gather around storage based in the book as a culturally transferable object • In early phases of the book reading is still reading aloud: It takes time and schooling for literacy to take root and for reading to become a silent and individual activity rather than a communal and spoken one

Ong: Print culture • As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence • Word becomes disconnected from presence • Word becomes something you think rather than hear • Word becomes connected to past to printing that solidifies the past • Word becomes disconnected from present • Word is no longer “event” an exchange between persons

Ong: Heidegger: Derrida • As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence • Word becomes frozen • Authors are gone (dead) • Thinking as dependent on word- becomes “sentenced to the sentence” • Thinking becomes a technology driven by the sentence and its subject object grammars • Or by the mathematical sentence and its penchant for formulas • Meaning is the only remaining myth, author’s intended meaning is buried with them

Ong: Deleuze • As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence • Word becomes frozen • Authors are gone (dead) • Thinking as dependent on word- becomes “sentenced to the sentence” • Thinking becomes a technology driven by the sentence and its subject object grammars • Or by the mathematical sentence and its penchant for formulas • Thinking dependent on technology is electrified when the technology of reading becomes electrified

Ong: Deleuze • Thinking dependent on word dependent on reading word is dependent on technology • When the technology of reading is electrified • Reading becomes electrified • This electrification is temperate • It can blow fuses • Dependent on currents • The fluidity of meaning: oceans, lavas, land-flows, erosions • This electrification is able to restore the wave like quality of words and meaning to public space • Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by weather and geological events

Ong: Deleuze: Grosz: Spigel • Cultural memory dependent on this electrified reading • Returns to architecture to cope • If • Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by weather and geological events • Then the house becomes important – to survive cultural meaning • Economics are also adrift on this electrified cultural memory –fluid and thus resort to a mythological “house” to cope • Technology is adrift on a cultural memory that is melted and can capitalize on the memory of capital” • Word is replaced by capital as site of refuge:

Ong: Deleuze; Grosz: Spigel-alphabet: count: value • Cultural memory dependent on this electrified reading • Returns to architecture to cope • If • Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by weather and geological events • Then the house becomes important – to survive cultural meaning • Economics are also adrift on this electrified cultural memory –fluid and thus resort to a mythological “house” to cope • Technology is adrift on a cultural memory that is melted and can capitalize on the memory of capital” • Word is replaced by capital as site of refuge: • Evidential world established by the book • Technology is evidence of survival: accumulated as a kind of library • Old books/old technologies store cultural memories no longer valued • Cultural memory depends on bringing back this storages (stories) and bringing them alive in a fluid world

Sensorium: The economy of the body in its sensory ecology • As word was unpacked in a “community” and unable to be imaged without a community of listeners • So also the other senses were configured as a model of community, and imaged as such • Thus though the idea of individual senses existed – there was a way in which they were until recently – consider as a kind of community – a “governing” body to consult – the sensorium is a reference to this internal community

Digits + number + count • Digits are the alphabet of number • Connected to the body through the activity of counting • Like word is connected to a body memory through sound • So numbers are connected to a body memory (as if it is a ghost) through fingers and toes which establish the activity of counting and numerical value

Digits + number + count • Digits are the alphabet of number • Count equal taking in towards body, choosing • Count also meant bringing into this sensorial community (internally and externally) • Value as establish by number takes many years as a concept to develop, value is established in relationship to a conversation – democracy of the senses • Value as established by “capital” is a abstract system that becomes culturally dominant in concert with the rise of print and its affect on “word” • Next term: Sensorium + Value

Advertising Vs “legitimate” learning • Advertising learns that senses are important to selling (while at the same time official learning becomes focused on learning as disconnected from the sensual) • Advertising learns that the connections between numbers and senses are important • Official learning is reading and thinking and the sensorium is not considered the site of official learning for technology unless it is mediated through the world of numerical value • Thus in a strange turn of events: advertising becomes a means of marking time – of finding historical periods in cultural memory

Advertising Vs “legitimate” learning

Advertising Vs “legitimate” learning • More next term • Reading on sensorium for today will be moved to first reading next term

Information – Technology = Society?