Scott Lash: Critique of Information (2002)
Filed under book | Tags: · critique, information, information society, media theory, technology
This penetrating book raises questions about how power operates in contemporary society. It explains how the speed of information flows has eroded the separate space needed for critical reflection. It argues that there is no longer an ‘outside’ to the global flows of communication and that the critique of information must take place within the information itself.
The operative unit of the information society is the idea. With the demise of depth reflection, reflexivity through the idea now operates external to the subject in its circulation through networks of humans and intelligent machines. It is these ideas that make the critique of information possible. This book is a major testament to the prospects of culture, politics and theory in the global information society.
Publisher SAGE, 2002
ISBN 0761952691, 9780761952695
234 pages
Key terms: phenomenology, Husserl, conceptual art, semiotic, information society, Heidegger, media theory, Derrida, Dasein, exchange-value, metanarratives, intellectual property, critical theory, dualism, intersubjectivity, ethnomethodology, ontological, reflexive modernization, dead zones, technoscience
PDF (updated on 2013-4-16)
Comment (0)Armin Medosch: Technological Determinism in Media Art (2005)
Filed under thesis | Tags: · art, art criticism, critique, media art, technology, technoscience
“Technological determinism is the belief that science and technology are autonomous and the main force for change in society. It is neither new nor particularly original but has become an immensely powerful and largely orthodox view of the nature of social change in highly industrialised societies. In this paper I analyse the presence of technological determinism in general discourses about the relationship between social change and science and technology.
I show that techno-determinist assumptions underlie developments in what is called technoscience, a term describing new practices in science and technology with particular relevancy for the related fields of genetic engineering and computer science. Those areas create a specific set of narratives, images and myths, which is called the techno-imaginary. The thesis of my paper is that the discourse on media art uncritically relies on many elements of the techno-imaginary. A specific type of media art, which is identifiable with people, institutions and a period in time, is particularly engaged with the tropes of the techno-imaginary. This strand, which I call high media art, successfully engaged in institution building by using techno-determinist language. It achieved its goals but was short lived, because it was built on false theoretical premises. It made wrong predictions about the future of a ‘telematic society’ and a ‘telematic consciousness’; and it missed the chance to build the foundations of a theory of media art because it was and is contaminated by the false assumptions behind technological determinism.”
Keywords: technological determinism; media art; techno-utopianism; artificial intelligence; artificial life; cybernetics; art; progress; critical theory
Master’s thesis
Ravensbourne College / Sussex University
57 pages
PDF, PDF (updated on 2015-7-23)
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