Archive for October, 2006
Modern society, particularly modern American society, is endlessly patting itself on the back. It thinks of itself as a spectacular society, a fantastic society which is more or less the most fantastic place which there is or ever has been on Earth to make one’s home. These things are partly true. What does it mean, [ READ MORE ]
One of the most mysterious and wonderful things about physics for me is the ‘electromagnetic spectrum.’ I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that this huge spectrum of divergent phenomena — the light we see, the radio we hear, the TV we watch, the magnetism we feel, the microwaves that cook our food, et cetera [ READ MORE ]
about ‘how to steal an election’ in the electronic era. definitely worth a read. [ READ MORE ]
right now, i am sitting in class behind an individual whom i do not know. however, i can see his computer monitor from here – as can the individual behind me see mine – and i can see that he has someone on his MSN list who is also on mine. thus, my being-in-the-world is linked to [ READ MORE ]
so, i’m at work. and despite the title of this post and our reading of this week, working does not, in fact, rule. but i’m reading this article and i’m going to jot down some comments informally whilst i do so. this blog will be my pharmakon. one interesting aspect of CCTV surveillance, for example, is that by [ READ MORE ]
I like this paragraph, from this week’s readings. It features that grand signal word – supplement! That’s my cue to pull out my worn old copy of de la grammatologie and give the text a wee deconstructive shakedown. Let’s see what falls out. “CCTV catches criminals. It spots crimes, identifies lawbreakers and helps convict the guilty. [ READ MORE ]
Deleuze’s ‘postscript’ raises some interesting questions about the contemporary validity of the kind of disciplinary, panoptic model of social control outlined in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Deleuze posits that these kinds of disciplinary societies, having succeeded the ‘societies of sovereignty’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are now undergoing a transformation into what he calls [ READ MORE ]
…wondered what foucault meant by calling the Panopticon a “Columbus’s egg in the order of politics,” perhaps this story will be somewhat illuminating. obscure though it may be, it’s a quite lovely little allusion. in the highly apocryphal tale, Columbus was getting somewhat piqued at the gentlemen who were proposing that “anyone” could have done what [ READ MORE ]