Yale has a network studies club for grad students but I think it's mostly about robots. They don't approach it as an avenue for undergrad liberal arts, where I think it belongs better. This is largely because undergrad curriculum is controlled by faculty, who have a vested interest in protecting their own departments as departments, their garments so to speak. So intro courses perhaps are "the last to know." It will be a brave school that first offers a Network Studies major in undergrad liberal arts. But it will pay off, because it is between and among the disciplines that future progress will primarily occur. Network Studies also fosters G, which is needed most for both prosperity and for disaster management. One institution is interested but they want me to write the curriculum for them and that is time-prohibitive, myself lacking a PhD period much less one in curricular design.
I do wonder if Plant described the ML as a network map with technology as a garment for the human agent. Whether or no, I think a true network map interpretation of the ML could be a significant Netbehavior product and starting point for a Network Studies major in honor of Leonardo's 500th year. I will try to read the Plant book but my reading list and brain capacity are rather full through May, and to be honest I quail before much digital theory. Perhaps because it sometimes seems to gaslight me that there was never an analog network, or one before humans, but if a loom counts as a computer maybe Plant does not partake of that too much. As to the Gibson, which I have also not read and probably cannot bring myself to before writing my own ML essay, I sometimes suspect what I am envisioning is more like underdrive. 🙂 ________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on behalf of Rob Myers <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 9, 2020 6:24 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Links On 2020-03-09 3:38 p.m., Max Herman via NetBehaviour wrote: > > Conversation-worthy links as always! Thank you! > Regarding the story about Yale changing their intro to art history > course, it makes sense to me. Yes I think this is a good thing for much the same reasons you give. Putting my "They Live" glasses on for a moment, it's interesting to me that such a key site of the social reproduction of American hegemony feels that it must change what art means to that culture in order to satisfy the needs of its ruling- and administrative- class consumers. Or to put it another way: "Art means different things to different cultures", yes, go on... ;-) > I wonder if the Sadie Plant link on technology (art and science) as > weaving might corroborate that those are mapped to ML's garment via the > bridge, rivers, cognitive-historical cycles, etc.? According to some > traditions clothing was literally the first technology. 🙂 Plant's work is long overdue a wider rediscovery, and I think you identify a great link here. Plant discusses the Mona Lisa (and of course William Gibson's "Mona Lisa Overdrive" given the era) in "Zeros and Ones". - Rob.
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