[microsound] Re: Digital Culture/Digital Technology

[Phil Thomson <philthom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Adern said:
> On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 16:48:54 +0000 (UTC), a Bad Day on the Midway, Phil
> Thomson wrote:
>> "It would be more accurate to suggest that digital technology is a
>> product of digital culture, rather than vice versa. As Gilles Deleuze
>> points out,'the machine is always social before it is technical.
>
> IMHO there's a mutual influence between digital technology and culture
> because one can see digital culture as the product of the machine
> possibilities applied to culture. I think the machine is tecnical,
> people who use it makes the machine social.

I actually agree to some extent. I think there is more of a dialectical or
dialogical relationship between the technology and its social context. But
I don't agree that "the machine is technical, people who use it makes the
machine social," because I think Deleuze's (and Gere's) point is that
there is always already a social context that determines particular
aspects of how technology is developed. Like how the computer might not
have developed in the same way had it not been for the context of
militarism and capitalism. Gere gets more into this later on in the book,
though I'm only on the first chapter at this point.

>> There is always a social machine which selects or assigns the
>> technical elements used.''Digital' refers not just to the effects and
>> possibilities of a particular technology. It defines and encompasses
>> the ways of thinking and doing that are embodied within that
>> technology, and which make its development possible.
>
> Everyone use the technology usable for him, technical elements are
chosen
> by the manifacturer of technology. The social machine (i suppose the
> term is referring to the users) can have a sort of preference but non a
> direction capability.
> Users try to use the machine rather than use it.

But "social" doesn't just refer to the users who interact with the
technology once it's already been produced; this seems to me to ignore the
fact that technology is always produced within an environment which is not
value-free by default. If you mean that technology only acquires a social
meaning once it actually comes into the world, then that leaves unanswered
the question of how, leaving aside purely technical considerations, the
technology assumed that form to begin with. For example, why is the
computer based on a binary system, if not for the fact that Western
rational thinking has for centuries tended to be binaristic in character
(e.g., Aristotle's Law of the Excluded Middle)? It may be possible to
conceive of a computer that operates, for example, on a ternary system
(three terms instead of two), so the question is, aside from purely
technical considerations (if there is such a thing), why the binary basis
for digital technology?

>> These include abstraction, codification, self-regulation,
>> virtualization and programming. These qualities are concomitant with
>> writing and, indeed, with language more generally, and, inasmuch as
>> language, written or spoken, is digital in that it deals with discrete
>> elements, then almost all human culture may be said to be digital."
>
> This is the application of computer programming concepts applied to
> human language, from this sentence it seems human language is "digital"
> and influence the machine while i think the opposite is true.

Yes, I can see that you think the opposite is true. But to scupper the
binaristic terms of our debate for a moment, what if both assertions are
true in some measure?

Phil

>> Charlie Gere, _Digital Culture_ (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), pp.
>> 13-14.
>
> bye
> --
>  (     mailto: adern@xxxxxxxxx
>  ))    http://digilander.iol.it/adern      (GnuPG key available on url)
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> |__|-' "Sometimes in a fight it's best to just stay down" (A. Innes)


===========
Phil Thomson
home: http://www.sfu.ca/~pthomson/
label: http://centibel.vze.com/

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