The Rise of Network Culture

What is the difference between digital culture and network culture? Can we understand the digital culture is the development of physical object, and the network culture is the connection among all object? If this is the case, what kind culture will be the combination of these two? Or the idea of network culture is already the combination. “If appropriation was a key aspect of postmodernism, network culture almost absent-mindedly uses remix as its dominant form.” Remix of everything? Is there which connection between the postmodernism and network culture can happen at modernism and digital culture?

Network Fever

“Doxiadis’s basic image of a building is a minimal form, a single thick semicircular line defining a shelter containing a dense internal life that is extended out by the wandering tentacles of different forms of circulation. Buildings are but “shells” for movement patterns that reach out far beyond them. Whereas buildings house function, networks are pure function, function without shell. If modern architects are serious in their commitment to function, they will have to reduce their fixation on shells and become responsible for networks.”

If architecture is only the shell and which should be flexible, what will happen to typology? Maybe the typology is developing among the change of the shell. Will Doxiadis’s image have similar result/ product as the living bubble?

In both reading, at some points, they all addressed the idea that city as a growing object, such as the network communication and the organism. I agree this idea, but just like the organism, by the law of nature, any organism will die. Will a city die? What will cause decease? Lack of comminuting? Lose of population?

The question concerning technology

Question 1:

What does first paragraph on page 10, “the common and narrower of ‘occasion ‘ in contrast is nothing more than striking against and releasing , and means a kind of secondary cause within the whole of causality” mean? The instrumental definition of technology is related to causality. And there are four cause: material, form, end and efficiens. Also the example: sliver chalice and silversmith.

Question 2:

`              Page 14, “the revealing that rules in modern technology is a challenging, which puts to nature the unreasonable demand that is supply energy that can be extracted and stored as such”. The question is about coal and the hydroelectric plant. Does coal consider as modern technology, based on the character of revealing: setting-upon/ challenging-forth?

Question 3

Page 29, paragraph 2, what is the relationship between enframing and revealing, and enframing with human? “Each of these in its own way indeed belongs as stockpart, available source, or executer, within enframing, but enframing is never the essence of technology in the sense of a genus.”

Spring of mechanization

Question 1:

What is the definition of movement? Oresme’s recognition: “movement can be represented by movement, the changing only by the changing”. Perhaps, this is the definition of changing.

Question 2:

What is the real reason behind the lack of production at 1770? On article, he expressed that economic is the reason of lacking interest in production. But it cannot apply to all cases. There was shipping and cross continent international trading at that time. The earliest traces of merchant capitalism can be found at middle age.

Question 3:

What will be the end product of mechanization? More and more efficient for more mass production? Or now is the end of mechanization?

1. Medium is the message. Could the Phrase “This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another Medium” be further explained? To my knowledge is that there are medium/ reasoning within itself? the sequential reasoning of the medium is cause and effect? example. logic >writing>print>technology projection.
2. . Mechanical Reproduction. The explanation of “Aura” and how it relates to the replica and or reproduction the technology portrays. Is Aura by any means related to Essence? Which one has a deeper meaning?
3. Mechanical Reproduction. Does technology, Expressed in mechanization, dilute that truth, the original production of an element (Things) when creating/resulting in so-called “replicas”/”Reproductions” Is it really “fake” if it was reproduced to the exact measurements. It was interesting when the manifesto stated that the only thing different between the “original” and the exact replica is the matter of Time. “when the original was made in that time is the lasting difference between both. That is that last standing point to it has to differ from it being the same. Elaborate more on the subject.

1_Springs of Mechanization_pg30_Giedion concludes his discussion on movement with the following:

“…unaccustomed to translating thought into emotional experience, can do no more than pose the question: ‘Are the trajectories, as recorded by a production engineer…., in any way connected with the emotional impact of the signs that appear time and again in our contemporary art?’ Only in our period, so unaccustomed to assimilating processes of thought into the emotional domain, could serious doubt arise.”

Reiterating his point on differing schools of thought between the ancients and modern day, the author hints that the new, rational, objective, way of thinking and analyzing is lacking in emotional development, and that is indeed a problem.

Similarly to how the ancients were awed and amazed by a birds flight, now that we know how it happens, are we lacking an ability to be awed and amazed by the world around us? Were we better off prior, in a state of ‘equilibrium thinking’ than we are now with forward pushing, mechanized thought processes?

2_Springs of Mechanization_pg32_Giedion acknowledges that socioeconomic forces prevented mechanization from being developed earlier in human history. Specifically, he cites guilds as the major hurdle preventing mechanization of production. It wasn’t until societal will changed and guilds became ‘obsolete’ that mechanization was able to take hold.

Drawing a parallel to today, with the new age of technology, what are the ramifications when similar economic positions, such as the common factory laborer or uber driver, are invented out of existence and replaced with new technology? Will this socio-economic shift be a driver of progress, as it was before? or will it upend the system too dramatically, causing more problems than it solves?

3_Questions Concerning Technology_pg35_Heidegger arrives at the essence of technology:

“Because the essence is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on one had, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.”

This conclusion confuses me, especially with the nested definition of the essence of technology. What is meant by this definition that, to me, does not provide any clarity on the issue?

1. On page 5, of Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Modern Technology, he mentions that “The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control”. What does Heidegger mean by “slip from human control”? Is he implying that this loss of control would be due to a reduction of understanding (“mastery”) of it among the general population, a lack of self control of man’s ambition, or both (or by extension, perhaps even the currently fictional notion of a more extensive future Artificial Intelligence)? If by the given definition that technology is both a means to an end and a human activity, does this hypothetical impending lack of human control within modern technology somewhat contradict this, or do we merely act as ‘prime movers’ for modern technology as Heidegger implies (pgs. 18-19)?
2. On page 33 of “Springs of Mechanization”, Gideon mentioned the ability of Alexandrian inventors to combine simple machines to carry out complex functions for phenomenological and theatrical religious purposes (referencing “automated” temple gates and plays). Has this use of technology conceptually faded into the notion of mechanized production throughout history (as in, through the more generalized proliferation of technology over time), or does it have a place today?
3. On pages 42-43 of “Springs of Mechanization”, Gideon discusses the “birth of new values” and other sociological effects brought upon by mass-production technology (i.e. driving culture, the cinema, food packaging, etc.). Did mass-production act as a catalyst for these changes, or did it directly have a hand in creating some of them?

1. Mechanization – “Nicolas Oresme marks at a decisive point the schism between the ancient and modern world. ”  Is the Author taking poetic license with this quote, or in his opinion is Oresme’s work really that ground breaking? I do not necessarily disagree with his point, but it certainly stood out as a bold claim.
2. Modern Tech – “Technology is therefore no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm for the essence of technology will open itself up to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth”(pg 12) When the author talks about “revealing and truth” is he really talking about the solutions that technology provides to obstacles?
3. “Does this revealing happen somewhere beyond all human doing? No. But neither does happen exclusively in man, or decisively through man.” is Heidegger saying that technology at some level exists and functions without human interaction? and if not, what does he mean by this statement?

1- Heidegger’s concluding paradox (p35)

“Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.”

2 – Giedion writes about how “the ancients gave little thought to lending their inventive powers to practical ends” (p 34), and how their use of these tools was purely for pleasure, not utilitarian uses. How could this be reconciled with the abundance of distractions we create for ourselves with computers now? Think of phone apps that leverage powerful technology, but for simple entertainments. What are the practical ends we are missing?

3 – sort of trailing on question 2, Giedion also acknowledges that many of these tools were not applied to areas of (now seemingly) obvious use because the ‘ancients’ relied on slave labor and didn’t see a practical, task based use for them. Parallel this with “America’s original contribution, the mechanizing of the complicated craft” (p 39) that rose up after slavery was outlawed in the US. If we have a surplus of technology that isn’t being applied to a task, and there’s historical precedent that slave labor or indentured servitude are areas that could have been eliminated, or labor eased based on the technology at the time though no one thought to apply it, who today are we enslaving by not applying these tools in ‘utilitarian’ fashion? There’s a lot of rhetoric about people losing their jobs to automation and technology, but who is not benefiting from this?

A thought about the 2 required readings and their connections : Generally, I found a train of thought that flows from Heidegger’s musings on technology as a way of revealing (p12) and Giedion’s reference to Oresme’s recognition that “movement can only be represented by movement” (p16).  It reminds me of Bret Victor‘s argument for finding new ways of thinking about computation and interaction. Why should our low-level systems of interaction with computers be limited to traditional text based means of representation? Does this limit the potential of computers and our capability of ‘revealing’ or ‘becoming’ through them?

1
The specificities of ideological frameworks, determine emerging concepts not just in terms of the potential of their evolution but also their limitations. For instance, as Giedion notes, the nature of Movement was overlooked during classical antiquity, as it was irrelevant to the wider understanding of things as given and in a state of equilibrium (pp.14-15). In a similar manner, Mechanization was explored only up to a certain extent during the Hellenistic years in Alexandria, as marvelous machines where invented to serve cultural experimentation but were not used to address applied problems (pp.33) until after a paradigm shift toward a utilitarian ideological framework took place in the 18^th century (pp.34). And even then, Giedion writes, “ideas (such as the mechanization of production) arose that could become reality only in the 19th century, for they were unable to sink roots in Catholic France”.

The above suggest that innovative concepts are always ahead of the time of their emergence, and that they are arguably responsible for propelling history forward. If the Industrial society was irrevocably formed by the mechanization of production, what are the means that shape the Information society? Which of its concepts will the information society have to hand over to the coming generations?

2
Le Corbusier belongs to the interwar period that Giedion defines as “the time of Full Mechanization” (Giedion, 41), which enters the personal sphere and changes domesticity in radical ways. In this context, Le Corbusier declares that the house fails to respond to the pace of relentless change and so will perish (pp.33). The steamship, the airplane and the motor-car must serve as agents of change (pp.36) for the home, echoing the Modern mandate of change, roughly translated as the ability of movement, or mobility. Indeed, Giedion notes that the automobile is a personal lifestyle possession that comes to be understood as “the movable part of the household” (Giedion, 43).

In our times, the mandate of change is being manifest by an ever increasing immaterialization of things and processes. Which integral parts of the household that were cemented throughout Modernity are being immaterialized today?

3
It is apparent that the Agent (:craftsman/ artist/ builder… maker) holds a key position in the question of technology, as it is him or her that interprets the specificities of each occasion (“considers carefully”, pp.8) and transduces them, launching an output into being. It is the agent that embodies the full potential of the outcome: infinite possibilities may branch off the very same set of four causes because of the maker’s agency.
This entire process is what Heidegger defines as poēsis (bringing-forth). However, poesis is not exclusive to humans. It is interesting though, that poēsis also includes the occasions when something is brought-forth from out of itself (pp.10), which according to Heidegger happens when Physis (:nature) is the agent of change.

A contemporary school of thought led by sociologist Bruno Latour reflects on the ways in which non-human agents affect the course of occasions. It is not just Nature that holds the ability to bring-forth ‘presence’ from out of itself. Actor-network theory suggests that non-living things have agency too. How would Heidegger’s four modes of causality be re-imagined to include feedback loops of things that affect the presence of other things, feeding into other adjacent causality spheres?

1. Modern. I couldn;t picture the Muybridge’s experiment involving a hangar with black walls and ceiling and having seal gulls fly over a black floor. I wasn’t sure really what that was supposed to represent? A realm of vastness and the capture of 3-dimensional movability? If this could be further explained that would be ideal. (Modern-Tech pg. 22)

2. Mechanization. Was very unsure that certain phrases/ words such as essence, revealing, truth, correctness, occasioning, presence, appearance, forth, enframing had a personification tone to them. Not that they had human like features but seemed to represent feeling and emotions. These were the main repeated texts throughout the passage, what were there meanings? and what did that try to represent?  (throughout passage)

3. Mechanization. What is the meaning of “Technology is means to no end”? and what is the difference between modern technology versus ” “original technology” . seems like modern technology has no precedent. Don’t truly understand yet.

4. Mechanization. Examples were helpful but still unclear. Could the Silver and silver chalice example be further explained and how the’a\re many parts on making a “Technology” but how do they are related to each other and are within each other.

1. What does Heidegger mean by “modern technology?” What would he classify as “modern?” Giedion specifies clearly “modern technology” as technology that came around after the industrial revolution, but Heidegger is more vague in defining what he means by “modern technology.”
2. Heidegger spends some time explaining man’s role in the “setting-upon,” “revealing,” and “concealing” of the truth or aletheia, and he says that “man does not have control over the un-concealment [of the real] itself.” Do you think that through technology man can do more than just perceive the real, but actually determine or create what’s real? (P. 18)
3. What does Heidegger mean when he says, “Thus Enframing, as a destining of revealing, is indeed the essence of technology…?”