[microsound] Digital Culture/Digital Technology

[Phil Thomson <philthom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"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. 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. 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."

Charlie Gere, _Digital Culture_ (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), pp. 13-14.

Comments? Questions? Objections?

Phil

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