MachineMachine /stream - tagged with book

The Trouble with Scientism

Thu, 17 May 2012 03:42:13 -0700

The conflict between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften goes back at least two centuries, and became intensified as ambitious, sometimes impatient researchers proposed to introduce natural scientific concepts and methods into the study of human psychology and human social behavior. Their efforts, and the attitudes of unconcealed disdain that often inspired them, prompted a reaction, from Vico to Dilthey and into our own time: the insistence that some questions are beyond the scope of natural scientific inquiry, too large, too complex, too imprecise, and too important to be addressed by blundering over-simplifications. From the nineteenth-century ventures in mechanistic psychology to…

Interview with Umberto Eco: 'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die'

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 09:35:40 -0700

Umberto Eco - "The list is the origin of culture... What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible" : http://t.co/daRqmUvj

“God,” Eldritch said, “promises eternal life....

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 17:17:47 -0700

“God,” Eldritch said, “promises eternal life. I can do better; I can deliver it.”

Classic Movies Subtitled for Bros

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 03:24:05 -0700

The Democracy of Objects

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:44:45 -0700

THE DEMOCRACY OF OBJECTS by Levi R. Bryant (@onticologist) http://t.co/70IAcpRF | #Book —via @agfa8x @ethel_baraona – Laurent Sauerwein (larrysa) http://twitter.com/larrysa/status/176790787634380800

Life after Papyrus: The Swerve

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:05:50 -0700

Life after Papyrus: A review of Stephen Greenblatt's "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern" : http://t.co/Ck96u2WN #books #clinamen

It's time for science to move on from materialism

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:35:54 -0700

It's time for science to move on from materialism | Mark Vernon http://t.co/p65QfBe0

Re:Thinking Games

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:50:56 -0700

Artists Re:Thinking Games | Editors Catlow, Garrett, Morgana | only a few left http://t.co/SmCu4kxu

"How to Do Things with Videogames" by Ian Bogost

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:50:57 -0700

"How to Do Things with Videogames" by Ian Bogost (@ibogost) - book review by @serial_consign | http://t.co/CSJkki2Z

On A History of the World in 100 Objects

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:59:54 -0700

Objects 101 by Roger Sandall What interests me here however is something else—the profoundly paradoxical position of MacGregor himself. When resisting Greek calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles, he is on record as saying that it is his museum’s duty to “preserve the universality of the marbles and to protect them from being appropriated as a nationalistic political symbol.” They belong to mankind, they are part of the human heritage, and though the Greeks may wish to regard them as an integral part of their national identity, the Greeks, alas, must be seen here as the deluded victims…

Threshold science

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 06:51:34 -0700

Threshold science: How walking through a doorway increases forgetting : http://t.co/npVLfW8H

Is mental time travel what makes us human?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 10:32:53 -0700

A stonishing animals show up everywhere these days. Cooperative apes, grief-stricken elephants, empathetic cats and dogs crowd our bookshop shelves. It’s all the rage to plumb the cognitive and emotional depths of the animal world, rejecting sceptics’ sneers of “anthropomorphism” to insist that we’re finally coming to see animals for who they really are: not so different from us. Pushing against this tide of animal awe is a competing cultural trope, the relentless seeking of human superiority. It’s from this second camp that Michael C. Corballis, a professor emeritus of psychology from New Zealand, has written The Recursive Mind: The…

Music moved on after modernism, but whatever happened to fiction?

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:54:22 -0700

The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage. At the securely comfortable end of the emotional spectrum we have those zeniths of song, the German lieder tradition, and high opera. In the best examples of both forms words and music appear utterly and indissolubly comingled. However, at the other end of this spectrum we have those kinds of music that attempt to be literary – so-called programme music – and those forms of literature that attempt, either through descriptive representation…

Book review - Media, New Media, Postmedia - we make money not art

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:58:22 -0700

Media, New Media, Postmedia - mapping the postmedia perspective : http://j.mp/nX8rlH #Book #Review #Postmedia #digital #art #theory #x

Media, New Media, Postmedia

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:58:21 -0700

Media, New Media, Postmedia - mapping the postmedia perspective : http://j.mp/nX8rlH

#Book #Review #Postmedia #digital #art #theory #x

The Objectuals

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:47:00 -0700

See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception, by Madeline Schwartzman, is the first book to survey the fascinating relationship between design, the body, science and the senses. Over the last 50 years, artists, architects and designers have been experimenting with the boundaries of our senses, altering the way we experience the world.

How to survive the age of distraction

Sat, 25 Jun 2011 05:21:36 -0700

The book – the physical paper book – is being circled by a shoal of sharks, with sales down 9 per cent this year alone. It's being chewed by the e-book. It's being gored by the death of the bookshop and the library. And most importantly, the mental space it occupied is being eroded by the thousand Weapons of Mass Distraction that surround us all. It's hard to admit, but we all sense it: it is becoming almost physically harder to read books.

In his gorgeous little book The Lost Art of Reading – Why Books Matter…

New 'Solaris' translation locked in Limbo

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 05:29:33 -0700

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem's 1961 masterpiece, has finally been translated directly into English. The current print version, in circulation for over 4 decades, was the result of a double-translation. Firstly from Polish to French, in 1966, by Jean-Michel Jasiensko. This version was then taken up by Joanna Kilmartin and Steve Cox who hacked together an English version in 1970. Lem, himself a fluent English speaker, was always scathing of the double translation. Something he believed added to the universal misunderstanding of his greatest work. After the relsease of two film versions of the…

Man Is Not Cat Food

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 08:12:05 -0700

In the last decade, human vanity has taken a major hit. Traits once thought to be uniquely, even definingly human have turned up in the repertoire of animal behaviors: tool use, for example, is widespread among non-human primates, at least if a stick counts as a tool. We share moral qualities, such as a capacity for altruism with dolphins, elephants and others; our ability to undertake cooperative ventures, such as hunting, can also be found among lions, chimpanzees and sharks. Chimps are also capable of “culture,” in the sense of socially transmitted skills and behaviors peculiar to a particular group…

The Art of the Accident : Institute for the Unstable Media

Sun, 15 May 2011 06:04:52 -0700

Failure and malfunction are inherent in all technological products. In The Art of the Accident, the concept of “accident” contains not just the idea that each machine brings with it its own form of disaster but also the suggestion that in a world of network technologies the old distinction between timeless form and time-dependent processes is becoming increasingly unclear.

Ars accidentalis recognizes the creative potential of the accident, the fall, and the instability of digital media. The book maps the transformation of space, time bodies, machines and architectures through the conceptual and noninstrumental use of the computer.