…ment: Journal for Contemporary Culture, Art and Politics, 2: Dénouement (2011)
Filed under magazine | Tags: · art, capitalism, catastrophe, labour, politics
“From the financial crisis to natural and man-made disasters via the wave of political extremisms, our times are patterned with catastrophes of all kinds. While the contemporary meaning of catastrophe is commonly associated to the idea of disaster and collective trauma its origin mostly refers to a sudden turn, or a reversal of what is expected. Catastrophe would therefore be this shift that allows us to explore spaces that could not be accessed, whilst breaking with the existing or the normative. Issue 2 of …ment explores the dis-ordering nature of catastrophe whilst celebrating the potential of its narratives and imageries.
…ment is a journal for contemporary culture, art and politics published in irregular intervals. Through a multi-disciplinary set of editorial forms, the journal aims to reflect on current societal issues and debates.”
With contributions by Tobias Scholz, Jean-Charles Massera, David Riff, Daniel Bürkner, Jens Meinrenken, Walter Benjamin, Bo Christian Larsson, Heather & Ivan Morison, Gustav Metzger, DOXA. Also included in the journal is an excerpt Walter Benjamin’s Theses on Philosophy of History. The printed journal includes a special edition by Bo Christian Larsson.
Editor-in-chief: Federica Bueti
Associate editors: Benoit Loiseau, Clara Meister
98 pages
HTML (updated on 2020-10-19)
PDF (added on 2020-10-19)
Langdon Winner: Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1978)
Filed under book | Tags: · politics, technics, technocracy, technological society, technology, technopolitics
“The truth of the matter is that our deficiency does not lie in the want of well-verified ‘facts’. What we lack is our bearings. The contemporary experience of things technological has repeatedly confounded our vision, our expectations, and our capacity to make intelligent judgments. Categories, arguments, conclusions, and choices that would have been entirely obvious in earlier times are obvious no longer. Patterns of perceptive thinking that were entirely reliable in the past now lead us systematically astray. Many of our standard conceptions of technology reveal a disorientation that borders on dissociation from reality. And as long as we lack the ability to make our situation intelligible, all of the “data” in the world will make no difference.” (From the Introduction)
Publisher MIT Press, 1978
ISBN 0262730499, 9780262730495
396 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-7-15)
Comment (0)Mapping the Arabic Blogosphere: Politics, Culture and Dissent (2009)
Filed under report | Tags: · blogging, culture, egypt, human rights, internet, islam, middle east, networks, politics, religion
“We conducted a study of the Arabic language blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs. We identified a base network of approximately 35,000 active blogs, created a network map of the 6,000 most connected blogs, and with a team of Arabic speakers hand coded 4,000 blogs. The goal for the study was to produce a baseline assessment of the networked public sphere in the Arab Middle East, and its relationship to a range of emergent issues, including politics, media, religion, culture, and international affairs.”
Authored by Bruce Etling, John Kelly, Rob Faris, John Palfrey, Internet and Democracy
Published by Berkman Center, June 2009
Internet & Democracy Case Study Series
Berkman Center Research Publication No. 2009-06
62 pages