"For immanent criticism, the successful work is 'not one which resolves objective contridictions in a spurious harmony, but one which expresses the idea of harmony negatively by embodying the contridictions, pure and uncompromised, in its inner-most structure.'" p18
Is there a difference between art which points out contridictions that exist in a harmonious reality and art that points out contridictions from an inharmonious worldview. Yes. I think one of them utilizes irony. If that one is the former, that makes the latter as either cynical or very droll.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Definition of ideology
I'm reading the culture industry book by Adorno. They talk about a
definition of ideology as a socially necessary appearance. I'm
wondering if they mean that society/culture is set up such that people
need categories and heuristics which then operate to maintain
stability. The particularization of life(style) into types--where
people are socialized to the same cultural schema--actually keeps them
acting relatively uniformly. For example, this act is classified as
deviant, so I won't engage with it, or I will, based on what my
ideology is. If Ideology dictates behavior, controling the definitions
attached to all ideologies means you control the boundaries of
behavior; and also the ability of all people within each division to
see themselves holistically.
definition of ideology as a socially necessary appearance. I'm
wondering if they mean that society/culture is set up such that people
need categories and heuristics which then operate to maintain
stability. The particularization of life(style) into types--where
people are socialized to the same cultural schema--actually keeps them
acting relatively uniformly. For example, this act is classified as
deviant, so I won't engage with it, or I will, based on what my
ideology is. If Ideology dictates behavior, controling the definitions
attached to all ideologies means you control the boundaries of
behavior; and also the ability of all people within each division to
see themselves holistically.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Sensors
Sensors
The app should be judging the distance to your destination and letting
you know when the next bus is coming. It factors your eta by an
average of your usual pace and matches that with the info on the bus.
Don't hurry, you still have ten minutes. Stay outside.
The app should be judging the distance to your destination and letting
you know when the next bus is coming. It factors your eta by an
average of your usual pace and matches that with the info on the bus.
Don't hurry, you still have ten minutes. Stay outside.
The program stays silent for a week while it develops a baseline of
data. Then it starts anticipating your actions based on past behavior
and gradually narrows down to taste.
Thesis possibility
Thesis possibility
What are the effects of the dependence of academia on the printed word?
What are the effects of the dependence of academia on the printed word?
Mutable texts:
What does it mean that a paper can be updated? Investigate the effects
of updating on blogs. Does the mutability of an idea over time change
how we think about the idea? Compare this to cognitive, psychological,
and philisophical changes from oral to literate culture. Memory
Zeno's arrow:
Investigate the importance of the transition state. What is the
significance of the phase transition in science? What can we gain from
representing data in motion? What limitations are internalized when
researchers limit themselves to snapshot windows of data?
Visibility:
Why is human rationality so wrapped up in sight? Doubting Thomas is a
well-known folk personality.
Media is the message:
What was McLuhan talking about? How do media properties shape our
thinking? If they do shape our thinking, why can't we invent a medium
that would engender the type of society we would like to see? What
would that look like?
Limits of paradigms:
How do the limitations of our medium manifest into our epistimology?
What if we design a limitless paradigm? One that would be designed to
give people the tools to check it for false limits and rapidly
assimilate new ideas.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
When all you have is a hammer, all problem look like a nail.
I just read this article at readwriteweb today. This is the type of communication data analysis and visualization that I would love to go back to graduate school to do. The use of dynamic visualizations which strip data out of static charts and graphs and the way it will change the patterns in which we think are the future.
The dependency of human reason on the faculty of sight is fundamental. This dependency is acknowledged in the development of graphs in the first place. What these new visualization tools (and, importantly, their creative application toward data) bring to this old system is a better connection with the interdependencies of time/space and data.
As we discussed over the weekend, the limitations of our research tools over time can prejudice what is known, knowable, or, most devastatingly, what is worth knowing. Because, for better or for worse, academics have been judged on their publications, research that did not translate to the print medium was simply irrelevant. If you can't get it published, it can't help you, so move on.
As McLuhan suggests, it is the medium of expression that dictates the content of the expression (and the epistemological limits of the thought behind the expression). In this case, the static nature of printed publications creates a snapshot mindset. It over-weights the value of an event description at a point in time. If a researcher discovers information that changes their perspective on something they wrote, they do not rewrite or update the existing work, they leave it intact and create another work over the top of it.
This static limitation of print has also affected our understanding of events as depicted in charts and graphs. Since the printed text can not accurately display transition states, researchers were forced to represent them instead as moments in time. This sacrifices part of what is knowable to what is representable and it engenders, over time, a false sense of completeness to the research which is presented.
The philosopher Zeno (500 BCE-ish) famously denied the existence of motion by demonstrating that as an arrow is actually continually at rest if its flight is viewed as individual moments, because in each of these moments, the arrow remains unchanged in it's dimensions in space. This research approach may give us plenty of useful information about the arrow such as the type of tip, the size, and general construction, but it denies access to crucial pieces of information about the arrow--namely where it came from and to whom is it headed.
With regard to the arrow, we can easily derride Zeno's logic as too narrowly focused to be useful. Unfortunately, the utility of this same approach applied to academic research which is chained to the static medium is much harder to dislodge.
The availability of computers to build dynamic data simulations coupled with a mutable medium like the internet represents a new paradigm in research. In the same way that the old system definied the limits of academic thought, this new system could open the way for much broader mindset which has access to tools that can model the world in terms that are truer to the way it functions.
But to gain this freedom, researchers will have to access these new tools. Unfortunately, academics are slow to change; in part because the university system is structured such that each new product is largely a copy of a master stored in their tenured faculty (who was, in turn, a copy of another master). These copies are made (warts and all) and inserted back into the machine to mint "new" copies of their own.
The problem is finding academics who can speak the new languages. When i read articles like the one linked here, I feel like there may be a place in academia for me. (yeah yeah, now i just have to finish my thesis).
Anyway, if you made it this far in my rant. I thank you for participating. Expression is an important part of the thought process and it is helpful to me to have a destination to drive the process.
now get back to work! :)
rc
The dependency of human reason on the faculty of sight is fundamental. This dependency is acknowledged in the development of graphs in the first place. What these new visualization tools (and, importantly, their creative application toward data) bring to this old system is a better connection with the interdependencies of time/space and data.
As we discussed over the weekend, the limitations of our research tools over time can prejudice what is known, knowable, or, most devastatingly, what is worth knowing. Because, for better or for worse, academics have been judged on their publications, research that did not translate to the print medium was simply irrelevant. If you can't get it published, it can't help you, so move on.
As McLuhan suggests, it is the medium of expression that dictates the content of the expression (and the epistemological limits of the thought behind the expression). In this case, the static nature of printed publications creates a snapshot mindset. It over-weights the value of an event description at a point in time. If a researcher discovers information that changes their perspective on something they wrote, they do not rewrite or update the existing work, they leave it intact and create another work over the top of it.
This static limitation of print has also affected our understanding of events as depicted in charts and graphs. Since the printed text can not accurately display transition states, researchers were forced to represent them instead as moments in time. This sacrifices part of what is knowable to what is representable and it engenders, over time, a false sense of completeness to the research which is presented.
The philosopher Zeno (500 BCE-ish) famously denied the existence of motion by demonstrating that as an arrow is actually continually at rest if its flight is viewed as individual moments, because in each of these moments, the arrow remains unchanged in it's dimensions in space. This research approach may give us plenty of useful information about the arrow such as the type of tip, the size, and general construction, but it denies access to crucial pieces of information about the arrow--namely where it came from and to whom is it headed.
With regard to the arrow, we can easily derride Zeno's logic as too narrowly focused to be useful. Unfortunately, the utility of this same approach applied to academic research which is chained to the static medium is much harder to dislodge.
The availability of computers to build dynamic data simulations coupled with a mutable medium like the internet represents a new paradigm in research. In the same way that the old system definied the limits of academic thought, this new system could open the way for much broader mindset which has access to tools that can model the world in terms that are truer to the way it functions.
But to gain this freedom, researchers will have to access these new tools. Unfortunately, academics are slow to change; in part because the university system is structured such that each new product is largely a copy of a master stored in their tenured faculty (who was, in turn, a copy of another master). These copies are made (warts and all) and inserted back into the machine to mint "new" copies of their own.
The problem is finding academics who can speak the new languages. When i read articles like the one linked here, I feel like there may be a place in academia for me. (yeah yeah, now i just have to finish my thesis).
Anyway, if you made it this far in my rant. I thank you for participating. Expression is an important part of the thought process and it is helpful to me to have a destination to drive the process.
now get back to work! :)
rc
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Critical Theory
"There [Adorno] states that both high art as well as industrially produced consumer art 'bear the stigmata of capitalism, both contain elements of change (but never, of course, the middle between Schoenberg and the American film). Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which, however, they do not add up.'" - The Culture Industry (Introduction)
When I read this, I think about darwin and the challenges to the theory of evolution. The flat-earther argument goes, complex systems can not evolve because that would mean that every step in the transition of an organism from simple to complex would have to be the fittest. I wonder about the absence of this middle ground art which synthesizes the two extremes and see where maybe this principle that is proven misguided in evolution, may actually be valid.
At it's face, it seems to be such that the middle ground art would not be as palatable to audiences because those preferents at each extreme may not have the requisite exposure to the other to appreciate the referencing statement. Therefore, it would follow (from darwin!) that this middle art would not find an audience and would whither from neglect.
However, as with the theory of evolution, this application of the transitional state problem does not account for significant factors which offer counter solutions. Namely, that the statement assumes a pre-existing predilection for high or industrial culture. If this is true, then people seek out what is most gratifying and ignore the rest. The assumption that people make reasoned decisions (even to the extent that of choosing based on their own tastes) of culture is extremely suspect.
The idea that cultural creation and preferences exist in an objective framework is false in that, the mechanisms we construct to create these judgments are compromised because they themselves are children of that system they seek to evaluate (appreciate). Therefore, the statement that there is the culture that we choose by virtue of the fact that what thrives will multiply is based on the assumption that we choose culture rather than settling for some of the culture that there is.
It is absurd to suggest that we choose some culture and then it is created for us. More likely, people within a system decide (guess) what will be interesting to an audience (the characteristics they seek to use to base their analysis on will impact the final product also) and put it out there for consumption. The consumer waits at the end of the tube (literally) for whatever is going to plop out next onto the livingroom floor. They then can vote for it or change the channel.
In this incremental way they are building their culture in the same dyadic way that your eye doctor figures out your prescription. "Ok now, which image is clearer? Is it this one? or this one?" This might be an efficient way to make a measurement, but it is not an efficient way to make a decision. The use of this method in the decision making process will inevitably lead the judgment down one path or another, but a path (linear) none the less. All roads lead to somewhere, but that's not always where you need to be headed.
gotta run.
When I read this, I think about darwin and the challenges to the theory of evolution. The flat-earther argument goes, complex systems can not evolve because that would mean that every step in the transition of an organism from simple to complex would have to be the fittest. I wonder about the absence of this middle ground art which synthesizes the two extremes and see where maybe this principle that is proven misguided in evolution, may actually be valid.
At it's face, it seems to be such that the middle ground art would not be as palatable to audiences because those preferents at each extreme may not have the requisite exposure to the other to appreciate the referencing statement. Therefore, it would follow (from darwin!) that this middle art would not find an audience and would whither from neglect.
However, as with the theory of evolution, this application of the transitional state problem does not account for significant factors which offer counter solutions. Namely, that the statement assumes a pre-existing predilection for high or industrial culture. If this is true, then people seek out what is most gratifying and ignore the rest. The assumption that people make reasoned decisions (even to the extent that of choosing based on their own tastes) of culture is extremely suspect.
The idea that cultural creation and preferences exist in an objective framework is false in that, the mechanisms we construct to create these judgments are compromised because they themselves are children of that system they seek to evaluate (appreciate). Therefore, the statement that there is the culture that we choose by virtue of the fact that what thrives will multiply is based on the assumption that we choose culture rather than settling for some of the culture that there is.
It is absurd to suggest that we choose some culture and then it is created for us. More likely, people within a system decide (guess) what will be interesting to an audience (the characteristics they seek to use to base their analysis on will impact the final product also) and put it out there for consumption. The consumer waits at the end of the tube (literally) for whatever is going to plop out next onto the livingroom floor. They then can vote for it or change the channel.
In this incremental way they are building their culture in the same dyadic way that your eye doctor figures out your prescription. "Ok now, which image is clearer? Is it this one? or this one?" This might be an efficient way to make a measurement, but it is not an efficient way to make a decision. The use of this method in the decision making process will inevitably lead the judgment down one path or another, but a path (linear) none the less. All roads lead to somewhere, but that's not always where you need to be headed.
gotta run.
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