appreciated your thoughts on nettime. to me there's a noteworthy affinity between post-structuralism in the continental tradition and pragmatism in the analytical tradition: both counsel us to ask 'how?' instead of 'why?' - or as jackson pollock put it, 'it's like looking at a bed of flowers; you don't tear your hair out over what it means'.
...however, there's a potential criticism for which i'd be interested in reading your response: even when we focus solely on the surface, depth remains inevitable - that is, meaning is inescapable. indeed it might be that it's precisely when we think we've put universals aside that we're at our most universal - or as zizek might say, the claim to leave behind ideology is the quintessential ideological gesture (as when politicians accuse their opponents of 'playing politics'). there's no such thing as neutrality, no such thing as meaninglessness, no such thing as functionalism which doesn't also have a purpose, however hidden. it's not only that we should ask 'why?' (and we've seen horrific examples of what happens when people only concern themselves with doing what's asked of them without sufficient questioning) -- it's also that we can't not ask 'why?'. this is what i'd call, following heidegger, "the silent call of conscience", which occurs even if we fail to heed its call. google's motto 'don't be evil' then might be precisely the self-narrative it needs to justify its evil acts (like the u.s. says, 'we don't torture; therefore, what we're doing isn't torture'). the web is not a blank slate for connectivity. even if there's little meaning per se at the level of content (that is, there's a thousand flowers blooming), the form that structures that content has meaning - it frames our world in a certain way (that is, there's a canvas). and if we ignores this, we risk white-washing the very totalizations we thought we'd dispelled. a jumbled reply i know, but thanks for reading. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
