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INFOWAR: information is shit
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ARS ELECTRONICA FESTIVAL 98
INFOWAR. information.macht.krieg
Linz, Austria, september 07 - 12
http://www.aec.at/infowar
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Joseph, I was quite taken by this paragraph:
>Perhaps we should take a better look at how today's information content might
>actually represent the state of the civilization! Apparently there is enough
>support for the worst of the junk and trash that hits the net for that stuff
>the thrive successfully. Else it would die out in a vacuum.
...mainly for the reason that it allows us to think about information and
cultural production in particularly scatological terms; for frequently,
when I look at the 'state of the civilization' here in Canada, North
America, and the capitalist West in general, I get the striking feeling
that information, like heavy industry, pop, high and low culture,
agriculture etc, is basically implicated in a widespread and wholesale
production of shit. Waste, detritus, pollution, excess; shit.
This is perhaps a 'waste-theory-of-world-civilization', and I would be keen
to know what others think about a shit-information conflation (I guess this
is kinda Artaudian). As Joseph suggests, the Internet might be seen to
function on the logic of a proliferation of waste; perhaps it is that the
internet produces 'useful' information (whatever _that_ might be) only as a
byproduct of a more serious 'desire' to produce vacuous exchanges of
vacuous information. Case in point; I have just gotten considerably pissed
off at a friend, who works for some horrible drilling company, who
constantly sends me 'humorous' chain emails and the little PC-based
applications that seem to go with this sort of working-world version of
networked communication - which is of course premised on steadfastly
avoiding ever saying anything REAL; Don't say anything, just FORWARD it
goddammit!
cheers,
Grayson Cooke
Grayson Cooke
gcooke@alcor.concordia.ca
(514) 937-5101
Humanities Doctoral Programme
Concordia University
Montreal
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