Just came across the following:
Loops / Open source
This project addresses cultural memory as endangered by the computer age
Isn’t it the opposite? That the computer age actually saves / preserves / enables cultural memory? That we’ve never seen such a cultural reservoir as now? Maybe it is - as openendedgroup continue, - an age that perhaps offers a solution.
response (0) | filed under: information or knowledge? :: cultural diversity and otherness
Looking at the UNESCO/WSIS Declaration of Principles for the internet, it becomes clear that the declaration rejects the bifurcation of, on the one, the information society as part of globalization on corporate terms and the subsequent increase in the digital divide and, on the other, knowledge societies that rely on affordable, free and open-source software and diversity in formats that enable global accessability regardless of the underlying technology.
Governments have been quick in picking up the information society and The Declaration claims that the governments of the first world are responsible for the ways in which the Internet will develop. The choice of software is a political choice. No matter how much you argue for measures to bridge the digital divide, no matter how much money you put into building new infrastructures, the fact remains that the choices made set the example.
response (0) | tagged: cultural diversity :: knowledge filed under: the other :: cultural diversity and otherness :: information or knowledge?
In 1999, William H. Gass wrote in his “In Defense of the Book” that readers of books will become increasingly better readers as the net would be the end to ‘good’ reading. He also regretted the loss of browsing in the sense that you can browse the book shelves in a library and, by serendipity, find what you never would have looked for in the first place.
At the time I disagreed with him, I found browsing the net a series of serendipitous events - I discovered many texts I never would have come across otherwise - and I still basically do disagree. Yet today, I can see his point as the web interfaces increasingly are made for targeted clicking at the pace of the development of corporate industrial standard. The user is only made to focus / focused on finding a piece of information. What once promised to be the evolvement of some kind of hypertextual consciousness has today regressed into targeted infomania. This is also the point when reading stops.
response (0) | filed under: the new screen :: net architecture :: information or knowledge? :: net.textuality
Sculptures includes 3 digital sculptures, Genocide Memorial Wall, Leonardo and Zen of Being. They were made primarily with online tools. [View]
A short piece of writing on the polysemy of the prefix hyper and the interface as excess. [»»]
[net]textualities is our common name for all the different kinds of digital writing that exist today. Letters are no longer carved in stone, the Word died with post-structuralism. Instead we have texts that flow between expressions, media, software and platforms, 'the play of the signifier' in action.
