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It was a link from last month's readinglists led me to Shoshana Zuboff's
opinion piece in the NY Times: You can have surveillance society or you
can have democracy but you can't have both ... [sorry, that's we]
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/opinion/sunday/facebook-surveillance-society-technology.html>
and I think she's right about the scale of change, that it's epistemic
(if we think of episteme after Foucault). That it's a coup, or takeover,
and whether it's really about surveillance, I'm not so sure.
I like that she calls it an information civilization we're heading
toward, and her linking of post 9/11 (politicoaesthetic or imaginary)
desire for absolute information transparency to the unregulated and
unaccountable rise of ... what? Arturo Ui? ... A--automatic, automated
and animate I-intelligence? (the three A's are from Greg Flaxman's work
on the spiritual automaton of the cinematic eye)
She makes the link of knowledge to power, which is Foucault's; and that
of capital to data: she also says data is agnostic to meaning or
information--in this sense it is a raw material, like capital. But its
power is as capital. Just as the power of science is from the
aggregation of data. And I suppose this is the confusing bit, the bit
about confusion.
It is the confusion of knowledge, information, technology and science.
This goes as far as the episteme, then. Meaning, it goes further than a
description or a change, or the description of a change, or the question
of democracy, or the answer given by corpocracy. (which is the wishful
takedown of democracy, given in the formula: Trump exists to discredit
democracy. COVID-19 exists to discredit democracy)
... I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the thinking has already
been done, objectively speaking, by the /science/ (in its confusion with
technology, knowledge and information). The data does not lie. So just
as capital /thinks/ the ISSO (Intra-Species Social Organisation
problem--Eugene Holland) or the /elemental imperative/ (to which it is
/answerable/ (Lingis)). Just as capital /thinks/ problems, including the
problem of tactical intervention or digital revolution. How does /data/
think the problem?
Because this will be how power thinks the problem.
It will be how science thinks the problem.
It will be how technology and information think the problem.
How does /data/ think? the episteme?
Best,
Simon
On 6/02/21 9:57 am, Renate Ferro wrote:
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Thanks to Alan, Tim, Domenico, Leo, Geert and Ben for sharing their posts thus far. Our interrogation of tactics, strategies, utopias for immediate solutions and long-term utopias continues until Sunday when we introduce a new set of guests. I invite our guests and subscribers to post freely but it is clear we have the opposites of two extremes: tactical intervention or digital revolution.
Just to review where we are thus far, Ben pointed out that there are two
important concerns to consider: surveillance systems built into online social
platforms and the capitalistic profit algorithms that feed and grow social
media companies. He proposed that many artists have used tactical media
obfuscation interventions to challenge these conventions as well as general
plug ins for consumer use like Go Rando and Not For You to name two. Leo
shared a net project from 2012, YouAreMe.net, and another URME Surveillance
which seeks to manipulate the materials of identity.
While Ben and Leo believe that obfuscation creates aesthetic/artistic
information this alsoa allows the infestation of big data by proliferating
noise which is likely to encourage critical discussion and engagement.
Domenico responded: “The scale of what we are discussing is huge, considering
the amount of people, billions, interested and influenced by our online day by
day, everyday emotional scrollacoaster.”
She posits a different approach: a call for emotional interrogation into
vanity, ego and culture. Is it not time to invest a bit into critical digital
thinking? I think about this quite seriously myself especially with the recent
news of US Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rants of QAnon conspiracies that
she learned about via Twitter and You Tube. She consistently questioned school
mass shootings and instead promoted the fact that they were staged by gun
control activists, she openly endorsed Pelosi’s execution, among other
outlandish beliefs.
There is a never-ending spiral of this round robin of misinformation that
reminds me of the kindergarten game we used to play called “telephone” where
one person says something, whispers it to another, and as it goes around until
the information gets shifted, expanded, blown out of proportion and context.
In the case of the current condition, lives are at stake, governments are in
chaos, election systems are being questioned.
Geert’s five-year proposition seems like the only alternative: abandon the past
and start fresh, develop a culture of refusal, assert political pressure to
break up the monopolies, build a public internet, ban the corporate, pave the
way for the socialization of data centers and ocean cables, and subvert
geo-political regions.
This month we continue to consider algorithms, untruths, and insurrection and
how an environment of cynicism, distrust, and distain has allowed communication
and the network flows to organize, promulgate, and maneuver through the
citizenry in real time.
Looking forward,
Renate
Renate Ferro
Visiting Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Department of Art
Tjaden Hall 306
[email protected]
-empyre- curatorial moderator
https://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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