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[microsound] Relevance returns?
I feel all of what you're saying, and appreciate greatly that someone
managed to work some _civility and relevance_ back into the thread.
But I still fail to see how 'a tool is a tool' is anything but a purely
experimental expression -
If you have an (x) and it suits your purposes, use it how you see fit,
hopefully to the benefit of all.
We don't have the biggest claws or teeth or armor plating..
We are tool using primates that use our minds and our technology to survive
and thrive, be it bone flutes or supercomputers.
Just how it is.
And whether it be good or bad is all in the choices we make with what we
have.
If that's determinism, believing in the possibility of progress...
Determinism it is, I guess.
~ !J!
http://www.endif.org
http://www.crunchpod.com
http://www.thirdwavecollective.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen Green" <owen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "microsound" <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 5:52 PM
Subject: Re: [microsound] Elitism is next
Jason Hollis wrote:
a tool is a tool is a tool.
The problem with this attitude towards technology - by far the dominant
one - is that it leads to one of two false conclusions. If you hold it to
be non-value laden and subject only to its own logic in development you
end up with a determinism where we have to meekly accept what technology
(now a supposedly autonomous force) foists upon us, for better or worse;
OTOH, if you believe technology to be non-value-laden but in the control
of human development you're left putting your faith in an idea of
'progress', itself basically another form of determinism.
I find a lot of what Andrew Feenberg has to say on the subject
interesting:
http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/
In the case of myspace, one very obviously value-laden aspect irritates me
intensely (aside from the amount of personal data they're desperate to get
one to part with), which is that when setting up a music page you're
corralled into choosing a genre from a pre-selected list of nonsense
industry-created labels, with the result that one gets shoved into
'experimental', 'electronica', 'ambient' or some such. This is value-laden
in that it both discourages people who don't feel comfortable slotting
themselves into one of these pigeon holes from signing up at all, but
moreover, by clumping all square pegs into a undifferentiated glob under
generic headings, the heading's meaning is (further) diluted, the search
function basically just doesn't work as well (because you could end up
with just about anything under those banners), and as such the
functionality of site is trammelled for those people.
--
Owen
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