"But it’s all over the place, just termite mounds of poorly organized and extremely potent knowledge, quantifiable, interchangeable data with newly networked relations. We cannot get rid of this stuff. It is our new burden, it is there as a fact on the ground, it is a fait accompli."
"There are potential and new forms of collaborative art that have no single authors. Open source arts, multiplayer arts, multimedia collaboration. Online world building is of great interest. That was not physically possible before. It’s something we can do that nobody else can do."
"Becoming ‘multi-temporal’, rather than multi-cultural: it used to be a very big problem for historians that they supposedly could not divide themselves from the outlooks and interests of their own age. I think we are approaching a situation where the outlooks and interests of our own age make very little sense. They just don’t bind us to anything in particular. We don’t have a coherent outlook or interest that can enslave us. This means we are closer to a potentially objective history than anybody has ever been."
3 questions:
I'm slightly confused. Is the history put forth by people on the internet not as valid as other sources? Do we discredit those on the internet who do not have titles like Dr. or Professor, though they could be presenting real material?
What does it mean to create something new while thinking about it as if it had been made 20 years ago? Does that make the invention of lesser value?
What type of era will arise in 10 years? Will people be incapable of making something new, reinventing the past? Will we only focus on the now?
"How do we represent and explain history to ourselves?"
This is the soul of the speech. Its all about recognizing how history is now being constructed. Its not about what's write and what's wrong or better or worse, its about the unexpected shift from historical cannon and linear story telling from a few sources to the network of information that constructs our reality and therefore our history.
"Design a fiction that pretends that my problem has been solved."
This suggestion may only be relevant to our current times. Stepping away from trying solve problems to an emphasis on noticing, documenting, sharing and pretending-not as a way problem solving- but as an expression of possibility... maybe we don't want the problem to be solved. Maybe there are unforeseen outcomes to solving the problem- like creating new problems! I loved how he was all in on this new idea, suggesting we dress up and pretend that there is personal space flight. " By what standard can you be held to be ridiculous?" All new art is considered ridiculous even blasphemous at first. Why not!
Living in a time where there is " no single authoritative voice in history."
I find this interesting as an Art History major. Looking back from our current time, history is archived on paper and embedded in physical objects( art objects) its only recently that it has included photography, and video and sound recordings. These histories are taken at face value and widely accepted because we have no choice, its all we have. Now, with the added element of technology, such as social media, blogs, YouTube etc., history is a web of collective effort which incorporates the winners, the losers and everyone in between; it is contingent upon personal perception and opinion, truth of an event or a time period is ambiguous and subjective, and as Bruce states, "its a system from which we will not recover."
"I would like to talk about this slogan 'Futurity Now', and how the idea of 'futurity now' might become common sense." I hate it when a scholarly article starts with some made up terminology that they act like is some entirely new concept. We'll see how it goes, but this isn't looking promising. Also abusing 'common sense' a bit. Okay, this is really bad writing and this will be the last time I comment on that. I'm only on like the second paragraph and he has mentioned he is a novelist twice. I get it and at this point I am starting to suggest you are NOT a novelist. Also, you keep going on like novelist and philosopher are completely contridictory. I don't understand where this coming from. Because he "is a novelist rather than a philosopher, and [he] kinda like to tell stories." ...Philosophy uses anecdotes and stories to explain concepts ALL THE TIME. (If you don't get what atemporality is by the end of these few images, I probably can't help you) Uh, okay? Rude. So he does it again and this is annoying. Essentially he is calling the reader an idiot if they don't understand his point and that he is right and you are wrong and stupid for being so wrong. "I don't want to go on and on about the fact that this is a new historical situation. If you don't get it by now, you will be forced to get it..." Just shut up and move on. Make your point and move on. You do not need to constantly jump back and defend yourself by insulting the audience. It really makes it look like YOU realize you don't have a very good point and you're flailing. So he has been rambling on now, just jumping from one thing that interests him to the other and we come to this gem. "If, for instance, you think the future should offer 'personal space flight' (I don't know why that has to be in parenthesizes like it's an official term or a wild concept) ... why don't you dress up like an astronaut?" He goes on about people will find you odd, by what standard, and so on. Well, firstly, you're odd based on whatever the standard is. That's just what a standard is, " something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example." It's not some objective truth. There isn't even a strict moral tie. The word never claimed to be what you are implying it is. Furthermore, walking around dressed as an astronaut, doesn't get you any closer to flying around in space! You're just dressed up like an astronaut. He is essentially just promoting delusions over truth. It seems that the process for this writing was. Step 1: Find a subject you are angsty about but don't really understand. Step 2: Pull out some terms and references that fit your 'argument' and make up the rest. Step 3: Ramble on until you're tired and insult your audience if they don't agree with you.
1. Is "futurity now" really a slogan that's out their in the zeitgeist, or did Bruce make it up?
2. "Now let me start with an anecdote, because I am a novelist rather than a philosopher, and I kinda like to tell stories. So what makes an atemporal situation diferent from a post-modern situation, or a modernist situation, or a classicist situation, what’s really different about it? " ––– Does everything really have to be so categorized and compartmentalized?
3. "What is atemporality?" Yes, what is it? Not sure it was sufficiently explained for us layman non-artists.
"‘Step one – write problem in a search engine, see if somebody else has solved it already. Step two – write problem in my blog; study the commentory cross-linked to other guys. Step three – write my problem in Twitter in a hundred and forty characters. See if I can get it that small. See if it gets retweeted. Step four – open source the problem; supply some instructables to get me as far as I’ve been able to get, see if the community takes it any further. Step five – start a Ning social network about my problem, name the network after my problem, see if anybody accumulates around my problem. Step six – make a video of my problem. Youtube my video, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates around my problem. Step seven – create a design fiction that pretends that my problem has already been solved. Create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to my problem and see if anybody builds it. Step eight – exacerbate or intensify my problem with a work of interventionist tactical media. And step nine – find some kind of pretty illustrations from the Flickr ‘Looking into the Past’ photo pool.’ " ––– So, basically, "design thinking," or "divergent thinking."
"Now, history is a story. And to write down the story of the fourteenth century, to just ask yourself – “what happened in the fourteenth century?” — Feynman style — is a very different matter from asking the atemporal question: “What does Google do when I input the search term ‘fourteenth century?'” –––– History is written and rewritten by who is in control.
"There is no single authoritative voice of history." –––– Remember when they said coffee was bad for you? Now they say it is good for you. Did the coffee industry have anything to do with that?
"There is no single voice of history. Instead we get wildly empowered cranks, lunatics, and every kind of long tail intellectual market appearing in network culture." "This really changes the narrative."
"A crookes networked bazaar of histor and futurity, rather than a cathedral of history, and a utopia of futurity."
"They will not have to forget how things used to be."
I am very confused by what this speech is actually about. The only thing I got from it was that now that we have entered into an almost entirely digital era, we "will not have forget how things used to be" or theorize what life was like because we have enormous amounts of visual and digital evidence (assuming it all survives of course). Another thing I got from it was that history is now written by everyone and anyone (with access to the internet?). As he puts it, "a collective intelligence". I could even be misundering these two things!
Everything else pretty much went right over my head so I am looking forward to talking about it tomorrow, ha.
"why don’t you just dress up your vacation home as the seventeen fifties? Or just refit your own home, really, as with the devices and services of an earlier century. Why feel that it’s not modern? If they are all the same thing, why not just go ahead, get off the grid and make your own butter and use your own well? Just go there with a kind of immediacy and just experience it as a contemporary thing." - I think his message is that right now, humans are living in an age without an image, in a confused state, and that means now is a time where anything goes. You can take anything that has been done before and make it new by experiencing it in the present. Do you agree with Sterling's perception of modern society? If so, how could someone apply his ideas of atemporality into their daily life?
"The thing I like about generative art is that it drains human intentionality out of the art project." - Can computer generated algorithmic compositions be considered art? Or is human intentionality the very essence of what we consider to be art?
"Atemporality is a philosophy of history with a built-in expiration date. It has a built in expiration date. It’s not going to last forever. It’s not a perfect explanation, it’s a contingent explanation for contingent times." - Have cultures from the past, some eastern philosophies comes to mind, already explored the idea of atemporality?
3 quotes:
ReplyDelete"But it’s all over the place, just termite
mounds of poorly organized and extremely potent knowledge, quantifiable, interchangeable data with newly networked
relations. We cannot get rid of this stuff. It is our new burden, it is there as a fact on the ground, it is a fait accompli."
"There are potential and new forms of collaborative art that have no single authors. Open source arts, multiplayer arts,
multimedia collaboration. Online world building is of great interest. That was not physically possible before. It’s something
we can do that nobody else can do."
"Becoming ‘multi-temporal’, rather than multi-cultural: it used to be a very big problem for historians that they supposedly
could not divide themselves from the outlooks and interests of their own age. I think we are approaching a situation where the
outlooks and interests of our own age make very little sense. They just don’t bind us to anything in particular. We don’t have
a coherent outlook or interest that can enslave us. This means we are closer to a potentially objective history than anybody
has ever been."
3 questions:
I'm slightly confused. Is the history put forth by people on the internet not as valid as other sources? Do we discredit those on the internet who do not have titles like Dr. or Professor, though they could be presenting real material?
What does it mean to create something new while thinking about it as if it had been made 20 years ago? Does that make the invention of lesser value?
What type of era will arise in 10 years? Will people be incapable of making something new, reinventing the past? Will we only focus on the now?
"How do we represent and explain history to ourselves?"
ReplyDeleteThis is the soul of the speech. Its all about recognizing how history is now being constructed. Its not about what's write and what's wrong or better or worse, its about the unexpected shift from historical cannon and linear story telling from a few sources to the network of information that constructs our reality and therefore our history.
"Design a fiction that pretends that my problem has been solved."
This suggestion may only be relevant to our current times. Stepping away from trying solve problems to an emphasis on noticing, documenting, sharing and pretending-not as a way problem solving- but as an expression of possibility... maybe we don't want the problem to be solved. Maybe there are unforeseen outcomes to solving the problem- like creating new problems! I loved how he was all in on this new idea, suggesting we dress up and pretend that there is personal space flight. " By what standard can you be held to be ridiculous?" All new art is considered ridiculous even blasphemous at first. Why not!
Living in a time where there is " no single authoritative voice in history."
I find this interesting as an Art History major. Looking back from our current time, history is archived on paper and embedded in physical objects( art objects) its only recently that it has included photography, and video and sound recordings. These histories are taken at face value and widely accepted because we have no choice, its all we have. Now, with the added element of technology, such as social media, blogs, YouTube
etc., history is a web of collective effort which incorporates the winners, the losers and everyone in between; it is contingent upon personal perception and opinion, truth of an event or a time period is ambiguous and subjective, and as Bruce states, "its a system from which we will not recover."
right, not write!
Delete"I would like to talk about this slogan 'Futurity Now', and how the idea of 'futurity now' might become common sense."
ReplyDeleteI hate it when a scholarly article starts with some made up terminology that they act like is some entirely new concept. We'll see how it goes, but this isn't looking promising. Also abusing 'common sense' a bit.
Okay, this is really bad writing and this will be the last time I comment on that. I'm only on like the second paragraph and he has mentioned he is a novelist twice. I get it and at this point I am starting to suggest you are NOT a novelist. Also, you keep going on like novelist and philosopher are completely contridictory. I don't understand where this coming from. Because he "is a novelist rather than a philosopher, and [he] kinda like to tell stories." ...Philosophy uses anecdotes and stories to explain concepts ALL THE TIME.
(If you don't get what atemporality is by the end of these few images, I probably can't help you) Uh, okay? Rude.
So he does it again and this is annoying. Essentially he is calling the reader an idiot if they don't understand his point and that he is right and you are wrong and stupid for being so wrong.
"I don't want to go on and on about the fact that this is a new historical situation. If you don't get it by now, you will be forced to get it..."
Just shut up and move on. Make your point and move on. You do not need to constantly jump back and defend yourself by insulting the audience. It really makes it look like YOU realize you don't have a very good point and you're flailing.
So he has been rambling on now, just jumping from one thing that interests him to the other and we come to this gem. "If, for instance, you think the future should offer 'personal space flight' (I don't know why that has to be in parenthesizes like it's an official term or a wild concept) ... why don't you dress up like an astronaut?" He goes on about people will find you odd, by what standard, and so on. Well, firstly, you're odd based on whatever the standard is. That's just what a standard is, " something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example." It's not some objective truth. There isn't even a strict moral tie. The word never claimed to be what you are implying it is. Furthermore, walking around dressed as an astronaut, doesn't get you any closer to flying around in space! You're just dressed up like an astronaut. He is essentially just promoting delusions over truth.
It seems that the process for this writing was.
Step 1: Find a subject you are angsty about but don't really understand.
Step 2: Pull out some terms and references that fit your 'argument' and make up the rest.
Step 3: Ramble on until you're tired and insult your audience if they don't agree with you.
1. Is "futurity now" really a slogan that's out their in the zeitgeist, or did Bruce make it up?
ReplyDelete2. "Now let me start with an anecdote, because I am a novelist rather than a philosopher, and I kinda like to tell stories. So what makes an atemporal situation diferent from a post-modern situation, or a modernist situation, or a classicist situation, what’s really different about it? " ––– Does everything really have to be so categorized and compartmentalized?
3. "What is atemporality?" Yes, what is it? Not sure it was sufficiently explained for us layman non-artists.
"‘Step one – write problem in a search engine, see if somebody else has solved it already. Step two – write problem in my blog; study the commentory cross-linked to other guys. Step three – write my problem in Twitter in a hundred and forty characters. See if I can get it that small. See if it gets retweeted. Step four – open source the problem; supply some instructables to get me as far as I’ve been able to get, see if the community takes it any further. Step five – start a Ning social network about my problem, name the network after my problem, see if anybody accumulates around my problem. Step six – make a video of my problem. Youtube my video, see if it spreads virally, see if any media convergence accumulates around my problem. Step seven – create a design fiction that pretends that my problem has already been solved. Create some gadget or application or product that has some relevance to my problem and see if anybody builds it. Step eight – exacerbate or intensify my problem with a work of interventionist tactical media. And step nine – find some kind of pretty illustrations from the Flickr ‘Looking into the Past’ photo pool.’ " ––– So, basically, "design thinking," or "divergent thinking."
"Now, history is a story. And to write down the story of the fourteenth century, to just ask yourself – “what happened in the fourteenth century?” — Feynman style — is a very different matter from asking the atemporal question: “What does Google do when I input the search term ‘fourteenth century?'” –––– History is written and rewritten by who is in control.
"There is no single authoritative voice of history." –––– Remember when they said coffee was bad for you? Now they say it is good for you. Did the coffee industry have anything to do with that?
"There is no single voice of history. Instead we get wildly empowered cranks, lunatics, and every kind of long tail intellectual market appearing in network culture." "This really changes the narrative."
ReplyDelete"A crookes networked bazaar of histor and futurity, rather than a cathedral of history, and a utopia of futurity."
"They will not have to forget how things used to be."
I am very confused by what this speech is actually about. The only thing I got from it was that now that we have entered into an almost entirely digital era, we "will not have forget how things used to be" or theorize what life was like because we have enormous amounts of visual and digital evidence (assuming it all survives of course).
Another thing I got from it was that history is now written by everyone and anyone (with access to the internet?). As he puts it, "a collective intelligence".
I could even be misundering these two things!
Everything else pretty much went right over my head so I am looking forward to talking about it tomorrow, ha.
"why don’t you just dress up your vacation home as the seventeen fifties? Or just refit your own home, really, as with the devices and services of an earlier century. Why feel that it’s not modern? If they are all the same thing, why not just go ahead, get off the grid and make your own butter and use your own well? Just go there with a kind of immediacy and just experience it as a contemporary thing."
ReplyDelete- I think his message is that right now, humans are living in an age without an image, in a confused state, and that means now is a time where anything goes. You can take anything that has been done before and make it new by experiencing it in the present. Do you agree with Sterling's perception of modern society? If so, how could someone apply his ideas of atemporality into their daily life?
"The thing I like about generative art is that it drains human intentionality out of the art project."
- Can computer generated algorithmic compositions be considered art? Or is human intentionality the very essence of what we consider to be art?
"Atemporality is a philosophy of history with a built-in expiration date. It has a built in expiration date. It’s not going to last forever. It’s not a perfect explanation, it’s a contingent explanation for contingent times."
- Have cultures from the past, some eastern philosophies comes to mind, already explored the idea of atemporality?