http://machinemachine.net/stream/feed en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Sweetcron therourke@gmail.com http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rlrutsky/RR/Consumption.pdf  Although information spreads, virus-like, through replication, this replication, as Walter Benjamin foresaw, involves a dispersion that allows images or data to be seen in different places, in different contexts (what Benjamin (1969) called “exhibition value”). It is, however, only through the process of consumption that this reproduction and dissemination of data can occur. Consumption, in short, is the means by which information, whether expensive or free, reproduces and spreads. Information, in fact, depends upon consumption for its very existence. Without being consumed, it ceases to be information in any practical sense, becoming merely a static and inaccessible knowledge, an eternal… ]]> Wed, 03 Aug 2011 06:00:18 -0700 http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rlrutsky/RR/Consumption.pdf http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html I believe that by extrapolating from past and future stories about "islands in the net" we may collect evidence to suggest that a certain kind of "free enclave" is not only possible in our time but also existent. All my research and speculation has crystallized around the concept of the TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONE (hereafter abbreviated TAZ). Despite its synthesizing force for my own thinking, however, I don't intend the TAZ to be taken as more than an essay ("attempt"), a suggestion, almost a poetic fancy. Despite the occasional Ranterish enthusiasm of my language I am not trying to construct political… ]]> Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:43:13 -0700 http://hermetic.com/bey/taz3.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know * News
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The internet: Everything you ever need to know

In spite of all the answers the internet has given us, its full potential to transform our lives remains the great unknown. Here are the nine key steps to understanding the most powerful tool of our age – and where it's taking us

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* John Naughton
*]]> Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:38:00 -0700 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know http://www.bruno-latour.fr/presse/presse_art/P-129-THES.html by Bruno Latour

’Who would know how to love without having read novels?” This saying seems to take on a new meaning with the multiplication of virtual worlds, even though the adjective “virtual” may be greatly misleading. It would be very odd to say, when thinking of the young hero of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, who spends whole days utterly absorbed in the fictional landscapes painted by his favourite novelists, that he resided in a “real” world, while a youngster of today who buys rather expensive equipment to play with buddies on the… ]]> Wed, 19 May 2010 07:18:00 -0700 http://www.bruno-latour.fr/presse/presse_art/P-129-THES.html http://nymag.com/arts/all/aughts/62514/ It seems significant, somehow, that Infinite Jest—the big buzzy signature meganovel of the nineties—was set at the end of the aughts. Most of the book’s action appears to take place in 2009, which means that we’ve all just survived the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. It also means that David Foster Wallace’s prophetic window has now (at least in the most literal sense) closed forever, in the same way Orwell’s did when we reached the actual 1984. And in fact Infinite Jest’s vision of the future does, these days, look slightly dated. One of the book’s nightmare scenarios is… ]]> Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:21:00 -0700 http://nymag.com/arts/all/aughts/62514/