For School

[iliveforschool-blog]

Cyclonopedia & Deleuze

For me Cyclonopedia has been a slow read to say the least, and I've had to read many passages multiple times before I think I've begun to understand. That being said that parts I do understand have been very insightful and I can see how this book offers a lot of interesting ideas. (Perhaps if a had two months instead of two weeks I would feel more confident in understanding this book :) 

One part I did like was towards the beginning on pg. 50-52.

"The half-man-halfscorpion of the Gilgamesh epic is such an avatar, guarding the gate to the Outside. Scorpions are burrowers, not architects: They do not build upon the compositions of solid and void, they devour volumes and snatch spaces; for them the holey space is not merely a dwelling place, a place to reside. More than that, it is the Abode of War, the holey space of unselective hunting." (pg. 50) 

"If archeologists, cultists, worms and crawling entities almost always undertake an act of echumation, it is because exhumation is equal to ungrounding, incapacitating surfaces ability to operate according to topologies of the whole, or on a mereotopological level. In exhumation, the distribution of surfaces is thoroughly undermined and the movements associated with them are derailed; the edge no longer belongs o the periphery, anterior surfaces come after all other surfaces, layers of strata are displaced and perforated, peripheries and the last protecting surface become the very conductors of invasion." (pg. 51-52)

"exhumation proliferates surfaces through each other." (pg. 52)

The last line especially to me made the past few pages all the more clear, and it made me think so much of Deleuze when he talks about the how "The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill." (pg. 7) That the coils create more coils, and greater and greater complexity is created. I would try to sum it up more but for a rare instance I think Negarestani has actually said it best. 

[dev0508-deactivated20130707]

The topic of authenticity reminded me of this clip from the movie Garden State where Natalie Portman does a weird little dance complete with strange sound effects and tells Zach Braff that he has just witnessed a completely original moment in human history that no one will ever copy again throughout human existence. Is that a way of defining your authentic self? At least for a moment….? 

[iliveforschool-blog]

I liked your example, and I liked the irony in it too. It's funny that in the film this is suppose to be an authentic moment no one else will see or ever copy, yet as a movie the whole purpose is that other people see it. I understand that in the story or the plot of the movie it is an original authentic moment. However the fact that this moment is in a movie seen by thousands of people taking away from the authentic-ness of it only being seen by one person seems ironic. It brings up the question of a viewer or a reader changing what they see or read, simply by seeing it or reading it. If I'm understanding everything correctly this kind of touches on some of the things we've talked about with Latour.

Thanks for sharing the video!

[iliveforschool-blog]

Thinghood

I really enjoyed the Bennett reading and was intrigued by one of the passages on pg. 4:

“The story will highlight the extent to which human being and thinghood overlap, the extent to which the us and the it slip-slide into each other. One moral of the story is that we are also nonhuman and that things, too, are vital players in the world. The hope is that the story will enhance receptivity to the impersonal life that surrounds and infuses us, will generate a more subtle awareness of the complicated web of dissonant connections between bodies, and will enable wiser interventions into that ecology.”

I felt like this was a great summation of a lot of what she talks about throughout the rest of the reading. The first few lines got me thinking about the extent of “thinghood” and how it relates to us humans, especially when she says “we are also nonhuman and that things, too, are vital players in the world.” This reminded me of Varnelis and how he talks about MMORPGs; how “Even though they are still rather early in their development, MMORPGs seem to have the capacity to feed back into real culture.” The avatar of a MMORPG is an extension of the person or the player behind it, but couldn’t the avatar be considered just a thing as well? Would Bennett say that the avatar is a thing that makes us nonhuman, a thing that plays a role in the world as well but is still just a thing? Maybe somebody could help me understand this better?

[iliveforschool-blog]

Project Idea

In thinking about our next paper I keep coming back to Shaviro and his writing style. I think I would like to try and imitate this somehow with Rainbows End, connecting different passages and showing common threads throughout both the class readings and the novel.

[iliveforschool-blog]

"Mitsuri-->Braun, Vaz:<sm>That damned bunny. We can't stop him. He just keeps coming and coming and coming.</sm> (ch.27)

[iliveforschool-blog]

All the talk of remixing made me think of this.

[iliveforschool-blog]

J.D. Salinger & Girl Talk

I found the documentary we watched in class to be very thought provoking especially when looking at the subject of authorship and piracy and the networks. I was reminded of a controversy I remember hearing about from my dad. Fredrik Colting is a Swedish author who wrote a book called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which was viewed as an unofficial sequel to J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Salinger's estate sued Colting over this. In talking with my dad he brought up the idea of whether Holden Claufield as a character should be controlled under the idea of copyright. Obviously Holden Claufield is a character of Salinger's creation but Colting never uses the name anywhere his book, instead calling his character Mr.C, an old man who acts similar to the young teenager. So the question becomes whether Holden Claufield belongs to Salinger not just as a name, but as a character. It reminds me of what Shaviro says:

"What does it mean to own a sound or an image anyway? What are the implications of reproducing one? For that matter, how do we even delineate a single image or a sound? Where does one end and the next begin? Given a pre-existing visual or sonic source, how radically must it be changed before it is turned into something new?"

A character is no different from a sound, what if someone were to write a novel about a young wizard boy with a noticeable scar, where is the line between copying J.K. Rowling and creating a new piece of work? How much would a new author have to change is wizard character to be considered a new and different? The questions are the same with the Salinger and Colting.

Overall I think this is a really interesting topic.

Here are some of the links I used in looking at the Salinger/Colting issue:

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/60-years-later/?scp=3&sq=coming%20through%20the%20rye%20J.D.%20Salinger&st=cse

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090615/books-salinger/

[fallingivpeace-blog]

“I exist for the network. I am predestined to it. From the moment I get connected, I am irreversibly bound to its protocols and its finality. Once that happens, it scarcely matters whether I am stuck…’ -Steven Shaviro, 39.

While reading the first 60 pages of “Connected, or What It Means to...

[iliveforschool-blog]

I really liked your examples from South Park. I have been thinking a lot about this same thing, how once you opt into any network you're exposed to countless other networks with out much of a choice. I tried to limit my Facebook account but was kind of disturbed when I realized it wouldn't really matter, since I was friends others and networked with others who didn't want to limit their account, to gain access to me you just had to go through them. More and more it seems like there isn't a choice as to whether you participate in a network. If you live in a networked society at all you're part of the network whether you want to be or not.

[iliveforschool-blog]

"Even though they are still rather early in their development, MMORPGs seem to have the capacity to feed back into real culture." (Varnelis & Friedberg) I thought this article highlighted a good example of that.

[iliveforschool-blog]

This reminded me of the lines painted on roads we talked about in class, how a couple lines of paint can exert so much control. This example might be a little exaggerated but applies none the less.

[iliveforschool-blog]

Ender's Game

So much of what we have talked about in class reminds me of the book Ender’s Game, hopefully there are others in this class who have read it and know what I’m talking about.

Ender is raised in a completely controlled society, disciplined in everything he does, much like what Foucault talked about. He is taught most of what he knows by running the same games or simulations over and over again. He lives in a school where students are given a color coded sequence which determines how they are trained, or what they are taught, much like Deleuze’s societies of controls where “what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code”  where the codes are what “mark access to information.” I especially thought Galison’s The Center Will Not Hold was relevant, where in the battle rooms Ender finds that he and his army are safer if they can create space around them, and achieve greater dispersion by reducing the area they take up and only expose their feet to their enemies.  Not to mention the Buggers who function within their own closed and instantaneous network of communication, and adapt to a situation almost immediately.

Hopefully others have read this and hopefully I’m not reading too much into Ender’s Game or misunderstanding any of the other texts.

[iliveforschool-blog]

A Fixed Point

While reading through the Galison text (War Against the Center) I kept thinking of fixed reference points like we have talked about in class and what they can mean. Galison talks about bombing in WWII, specifically aimed at Germany's means of production, and how "aerial warfare worked when it hit concentrated, centralized production standing at a functional node. . .bombing failed when the Germans effectively dispersed their factories." The lack of a certain fixed reference point can lengthen the existence of any network, just as Galison seemingly alludes to. It reminds me of all the revolutions that happened this past year in the middle east, like in Egypt and Tunisia, and how many of these revolutions were spurred onward through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. These social networks, and the revolutions that followed, lacked a certain and specific fixed reference point, making it harder for them to be targeted or shut down. I wouldn't say that social media and social networks are entirely responsible for these revolutions but there is no denying they contributed significantly. 

Overall I think with increasing technology it is becoming more important to look at the loss of exact and fixed reference points and how this contributes to the longevity of a network.

[fallingivpeace-blog]

When I think of networks, and the emergence of a new kind of college English, this is what I picture Jeff Rice’s argument to be.

[iliveforschool-blog]

The very first day of class I came away wondering how studying English in college could be so connected to networks and the idea of networks, but as I started reading through Rice's piece it started to make more sense. I thought back to all my English classes and how the subject matter taught in each one connects to so many different things and other fields of study. I think this chart you posted accurately fits with what Rice was describing I'm glad you posted it!

[iliveforschool-blog]

E5950: Rice

At first it was a little bit difficult to wrap my mind around this idea of a network being more than what I typically think of when I think of networks, but being instead part of nearly every interaction that ever takes place. Looking at it from that angle I can see how it then becomes a fascinating topic.

I think it is really interesting to look at the temporality of networks, how Rice quoted Hayles that networks “are never the same twice, for they exist in momentary configurations”. In class today when Professor Boyle went through the differences of Topos and Chora, and discussing how the two act differently; how with the Topos the connections are linear whereas with Chora the connections are much more vast with broader connections.The Chora part made me think of online search engines, and the networks created there, and how quickly they change. You can search for the same thing online and have different results come up with each search, highlighting that exact temporarily, showing just how easily different networks can be created and how quickly they change.

[orangesphynx]

Having thought about the network theory for a while, it is difficult to imagine anything that is not involved, at least in some way, with something else. Obviously, anything in society represents a connection pretty much by default, as a “society” could be seen as almost synonymous with a...

[iliveforschool-blog]

I like what you’ve said, that “no one person lives exclusive and apart from the world.” I think this is really true, and brings light to just how necessary networks are. More than networks being nearly unavoidable, they seem necessary to progression and growth on an individual level as well as a large group level.