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In “City at the Edge of Forever,” Peter Lunenfeld explores Los Angeles in a series of essays about the idiosyncrasies of a place that defies categories.
City at the Edge of Forever: Los Angeles Reimagined by Peter Lunenfeld https://amzn.to/30ZkuiZ
Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA honored with Theaker's Quarterly Award
The Theaker's Quarterly Awards 2018 were recently announced with Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA garnering the prize on the books category.
As announced in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #62, these are the winners of the Theaker's Quarterly Awards 2018. Voting was open to the public from February 11 to 25, and people could vote for as many items as they wanted in each category. Items were eligible if they had appeared in or were reviewed in the previous four issues of the magazine. Here are the results!
Books
1st PIRATE UTOPIA, by Bruce Sterling (Tachyon Publications)
2nd I Am Providence, by Nick Mamatas (Night Shade Books)
3rd Metronome, by Oliver Langmead (Unsung Stories)
Roy Christopher’s annual summer book reading list compiled from diverse hands includes Peter Lunenfeld’s recommendation.
Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA (Tachyon, 2016) also interrogates culture’s tortured relationship with power, but from a deiselpunk perspective, creating an alternative past in which the Futurists take over the Regency of Carnaro to wreck havoc on their enemies. It was a nominee for the 2016 Sidewise Award, Best Short-Form Alternate History. In my alternate history, it won.
At LANGUAGE LOG, Mark Liberman’s discussion about Melania Trump's jacket choices includes this unexpected update.
Update — I should add that a semi-true history of Fiume/Carnaro/Rijeka in the period after WWI can be found Bruce Sterling's novel PIRATE UTOPIA.
In an Attempt to Reconnect
The anxieties which come in partnership with the ever-evolving technology of the west leaves one simultaneously viewing technology as our bodily extensions (as stated by Marshall McLuhan in “Understanding Media”) and also associated with a fear of losing “physical closeness and mutual interdependence” in relation to mechanical advancements (as expressed by Michael Heim in “The Cyberspace Dialectic”). As we continue to pursue paths of technological advancements which supposedly free us from some of the headaches and mundane tasks that we’d rather leave to emotionless machines – we are left to reconcile what this shift means for the average Joe. As easy as it might be to turn on your phone and flip through various screens which communicate an assortment of messages, what all is at stake when we rely on a hand-held device for information rather than our partner/spouse/friend/neighbor? What are the long-term repercussions for becoming even more stagnant and basking in the simplicity of having fast food, gifts, books, movies, groceries, etc. brought directly to your door. Even in the delivery of these things, one isn’t guaranteed a social encounter. While we continue to push and pursue the evolution of technology which is geared toward making life easier, there is something to be said for the daily challenges and problem-solving experiences that we designate as important for Kindergarteners but not for 20-somethings.
What I find the most thought-provoking in the whirlwind of bombarding technology is to distance oneself and pursue a life which is more connected with the world around you rather than the world of information (reliable or not) at your fingertips. As I pursue projects which are multi-modal in application, I am assigning more and more importance on the tangible, bodily experiences in relationship to technology rather than in contention with it. I think that this approach is one which will lead to a compromise which will reinstate a state of connectedness with our neighbors and peers – a connectedness which Heim states we fear to lose yet rarely act on in an attempt to regain.
For more on Heim and conversations around new media, see Peter Lunenfeld’s “The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media”
The more emotional and hopeful tale stars Mackenzie Davis and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
“Look at the peculiar philosophies of Southern California’s Extropians...One of their central beliefs is that eventually we will develop core memory technologies so sophisticated that we will be able to upload (their most positive and upbeat version of download) our consciousness into the ethereal realm of pure information, leaving our bodies behind and slipping from the clutches of death” (Lunenfeld 21).
Download mindfully and upload meaningfully.
Peter Lunenfeld, UCLA Design Media Arts, The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading
#new The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine
The computer, writes Peter Lunenfeld, is the twenty-first century's culture machine. It is a dream device, serving as the mode of production, the means of distribution, and the site of reception. We haven't quite achieved the flying cars and robot butlers of futurist fantasies, but we do have a machine that can function as a typewriter and a printing press, a paintbrush and a gallery, a piano and a radio, the mail as well as the mail carrier. But, warns Lunenfeld, we should temper our celebration with caution; we are engaged in a secret war between downloading and uploading--between passive consumption and active creation--and the outcome will shape our collective futures. #more
In The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading, Lunenfeld makes his case for using digital technologies to shift us from a consumption to a production model. He describes television as "the high fructose corn syrup of the imagination" and worries that it can cause "cultural diabetes"; prescribes mindful downloading, meaningful uploading, and "info-triage" as cures; and offers tips for crafting "bespoke futures" in what he terms the era of "Web n.0" (interconnectivity to the nth power). He also offers a stand-alone genealogy of digital visionaries, distilling a history of the culture machine that runs from the Patriarchs (Vannevar Bush's WWII generation) to the Hustlers (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs) to the Searchers (Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google fame). After half a century of television-conditioned consumption/downloading, Lunenfeld tells us, we now find ourselves with a vast new infrastructure for uploading. We simply need to find the will to make the best of it.
Peter Lunenfeld’s books include The Digital Dialectic (MIT, 1999), Snap to Grid (MIT, 2000) USER (MIT, 2005), and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine (MIT, 2011). As creator and editorial director of the Mediawork project, he produced a pamphlet series for the MIT Press that redefined the relationship between serious academic discourse and graphic design, and between book publishing and the World Wide Web. He holds a Ph.D. in Film, Television and New Media from UCLA. He is a professor in the Design | Media Arts department at UCLA.
Peter Lunenfeld - The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading € 25.50 | hardcover | 144 pages
Peter Lunenfeld is a professor in the Design Media Arts Department at UCLA. His books include The Digital Dialectic, Snap to Grid, USER, and The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine (2011), and he is the co-author of Digital_Humanities, which is coming out this fall from the MIT Press.
Here are Peter's first five...
"I read the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times on paper every morning. Some habits are hard to break. I go to Web sites when I’m pretending I’m working"
"I am addicted to the leftish flavor of ConventionalWisdom™. This election year, I obsessively cycle through Noah/Chait/Weisberg/Walsh/etc. even though I can’t tell one pundit’s style, opinion, or even publication from another (Timothy Noah worked at Slate for Jacob Weisberg until Jonathan Chait left for New York Magazine, opening a spot for Noah at the New Republic, blah, blah, inside baseball, blah)"
http://chronicle.com/
"For years, I’ve had an amateur interest in higher education policy, so I read the Chronicle of Higher Education, which should bear the motto, “academic politics for academic politicians.” I am also watching how the Chronicle is positioning digital humanities as The Next Big Thing"
http://www.theonion.com/
"The Onion’s particular comic genius is to start with the headline and work backwards to the “story.” The reviews section, known as the A.V. Club, introduced me to the new generation of critics who see no distinction at all between media. Film, television, literature, music, comics, Web sites – it’s all just content to them. This approach makes me profoundly uneasy"
http://LAObserved.com/
"I like hyperlocalism, and Kevin Roderick’s LAObserved delivers a great mix about Los Angeles and its environs culled from mainstream as well more obscure sources. I am writing an alternate, connectionist history of Southern California’s cultural life, so Roderick’s obsession with local color, especially stories about the San Fernando Valley, really resonates"
http://www.google.com/
"Of course I use it for research, and now can’t imagine teaching without Google Image and Video results. But when I’m really at the end of my rope, I use it to auto-google, narcissistically tracking down any and every mention or influence of me or my works. This is definitively not a healthy thing to do and finally gets me back to work"
P.S. You can click on the images above to take you to the site…
Too much of new media aesthetic practice apes the market, using the art object as the excuse to demo the system, software, or network of the moment. Indeed, the new media art world too often resembles a huge Wunderkammern that thinks it is a museum, filled with novelties it mistakes for meaning.
Peter Lunenfeld, Snap to Grid: A user’s guide to digital arts, media, and cultures. MIT Press, 2000.
