Felix Stalder on 26 Sep 2000 00:48:38 -0000 |
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Re: <nettime> Water-shedding |
>Perhaps because you don't need anything else to read a book, except a >knowledge of the language it is written in. A cdrom needs a cdrom >drive, computer and software, all of which must be compatible with the >cdrom. It also needs electricity and the technology that produces it. >In short its usefulness requires an *entire* infrastructure which is >itself changing rapidly. I'll go with the book. There is no such thing as a technology that can function in isolation. Sometimes, we just don't see all the work that goes into making a technology work because we have become used to relying on it blindly. A book needs much more than just a literate reader. It needs as much a production and a distribution infrastructure than CD-ROMs, and its production and the condition of access are as much mirrored in the general political economy as high tech. As any down-sized librarian can tell you, books do disappear from the public if the infrastructure (libraries) is not continuously maintained. It is true that a book or scripture, once written and stored safely, remains intact even if the rest of the infrastructure, including the language, disappears. But how does that compare to the fact that a book can only be in one place at a time, whereas an electronic document can be at many places simultaneously. This is, of course, not a question which is better, but a question of what kind of possibilities and constraints are inherent in the infrastructure necessary to make a technology work. I'll go with some books; and some CD-ROMs. Best. Felix --------------------++----- Les faits sont faits. http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/~stalder # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net