Another one from the Archives…
I have this theory that digital technology marks the turning point of human communication.
I don’t think it’s ‘a’ turning point – I said ‘the’ turning point. Theorists argue whether or not the internet is revolutionary. If they’re talking revolutionary in the sense that it’s turned things around so they start to move in the opposite direction, then I’m inclined to take the affirmative.
The history of communication has moved through seven main stages, as far as I can figure it. At the different stages, a human’s ability to communicate, for example, ‘something to do with apples’ would appear like this:
- facial expression and body language of hunger, perhaps some crying
- pointing to the apple and grunting enthusiastically
- saying ‘Would you mind passing an apple’
- drawing a picture of an apple, and a man pointing to his mouth
- leaving a handwritten note on the fridge saying ‘don’t forget apples’
- publishing a book about the health benefits of apples
- hosting a television reality show called ‘When Apples Go Bad’
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- Published:
- July 23, 2009 – 10:10 am
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- By Dubber
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Where do you want to explore today?
I’ve been going back through some of my earliest notes for this project, and struck this one, which raises some interesting ideas around online geography. It’s good to note that we have moved away from such overt travel and movement metaphors, which were always an ill fit, though a useful bridging metaphor until we worked out exactly how to conceptualise digital space as natives (or settlers) rather than tourists.
Wednesday, April 10, 2002
I said yesterday I’d give some thought to spatial relationships in as much as they reflect upon the question of how we know where an ‘Information Society’ starts. Manuel Castells seems a good kick-off point in this regard. His conception of the ’space of flows’ is an interesting one – far more so than the frontier metaphor espoused by the likes of John Perry Barlow, Alvin Toffler, Howard Rheingold, etc.
Despite the fact that the internet fails to stack up against ideas of ’staking a claim’ and ‘declarations of independence‘, you can’t get away from the point that human beings inhabit physical space. To go online does not obsolesce the human body, however much it expands or extends the human mind. Castells’ ’space of flows’ takes this into consideration, while observing that communication between parties happens in the space between – in the movement of information from physical place to place.
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- Published:
- July 19, 2009 – 10:15 am
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- By Dubber
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Here are some notes I wrote when I first started thinking about these issues (and, thankfully, started blogging so I still have those notes) back in 2002. As you might expect, I no longer agree with everything I wrote, and I’ve developed my thinking about this stuff over the last 7 years – but since I’m using this blog as a scrapbook and a single place to capture all this stuff, it would be useful to throw it up here.
If you can think of any texts that would be useful along any of these lines, or have any thoughts on any of this, please be sure to let me know in the comments.
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- Published:
- July 7, 2009 – 8:37 am
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- By Dubber
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I’m reading Ray Kurzweil’s ‘The Singularity is Near‘. It’s an interesting book. Fascinating, even. It’s full of insight and explanations of some of the most important technological advances in human history – and some of its predictions may well come to pass in some form or another. The man, frankly, is amazing.
But I’m reading it as speculative fiction rather than as a guide to the future, because I simply don’t believe that you can extrapolate like that.
Essentially, Kurzweil’s premise is that the way things are going, what with the exponential acceleration of technology, we will at some point in the very near future reach the point where artificial intelligence and human intelligence combine to provide a utopian world, where our thought, wealth and creativity will know no bounds.
I suspect an obstacle around the corner.
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- July 3, 2009 – 8:17 am
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- By Dubber
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I was particularly interested in a small article in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine, which outlined how the human brain understands tools as part of our physical body.
When we brush our teeth, for instance, the brain conceives of our limb being slightly longer, which is how we map the information about where the end of our brush is, so that we don’t knock our teeth out in the process.
It makes sense, of course, but this is, theoretically, the first instance of a scientific underpinning for McLuhan’s now 30+ year old assertion that media are extensions of ourselves. And in altering the media forms (ie: the tools we use) we thereby alter ourselves and the ways in which we understand our relationship to the world around us.
Cars are an interesting case in point. As we become familiar with driving and the brain is able to map the car onto our physical conception of our place in physical space, we actually have a sense of our width, velocity and proximity as if the car was a part of ourselves.
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- Published:
- June 27, 2009 – 10:54 pm
- Author:
- By Dubber
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