Re: <nettime> Post-digital

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

Rousseau comes fleetingly to mind:

"The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and
protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each
associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may
still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before."

And a short extract from my dissertation that resonates with that
question of how to proceed while propping up the wider techno-social
system *less*:

"We most impact the power concentrations of the Regime by cultivating
an understanding of where our energy comes from, at all scales,
where it goes, and most importantly, where our attention is engaged:
on which signals, on which flows. In the process of paying close
attention to the highly mediated, amplified, signals of the Regime,
directed by its protocols, we confirm our reciprocal role as its
optimized energy source. By (re)turning our creative attentions to
the granular sources of the Regime's energy -- to the individual
Others around us -- and spending our life-energy, our life-time in
less mediated Dialogue with them via our own protocols, we immediately
begin draining the Regime of its primary power source. We preserve
those limited life-energies for more local and immediate encounters.
It is within these energized encounters, these Dialogues between the
Self and the Other, where transformation, (r)evolution, and change
are ultimately sited. As a media artist, it is this generation of
localized protocols that is perhaps the most effective strategy to
mitigate or even reverse the slide toward hierarchic centralization
[and consequent surveillance!!]. It should be some solace that though
we cannot escape the ultimate destiny of Life on the planet: in the
mean while we may choose to go with the flow of dialogue, embracing
change in the Self and in the Other, here, now."

and this aside, crucially: http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199

Cheers,
John



--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
photographer, media artist, archivist
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++




#  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: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org