Group 1 - Jason, Etienne, Brent, Jonathan, Bastien, Mohannad

The disciplinary society we are embedded in permits access to only a selected few. The world created for us, demands an accumuilation of knowledge to achieve this hierarchal deserved access. In his essay entitled, ‘Society of Control’, Gilless Deleuze is interested in the notion on how we can resist this control, inspired by the dominant functions of capitalism. He further explores on how things are connected and related, arguing that there is no centralized power that is decentralized. Essentially the molecular traits embody society, establishing its structure to be rather fluid. The molar disciplinary’s dictate the rules and activities in which society must participate, and the behaviors that which constitute an acceptable status. If an American refuses to go to war, than it is assumed that he must not stand by the patriotism of his country. Fascism is the most ideal control of society.

Nations have a tendency of demonizing their opponents through mediation of images imposed through the media. “… twin Fascism is new or can make something new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its own health: fear, denial, and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the will to fight” (Morrison, 760) In her address to Howard University on March 2, 1995, Toni Morrison indicates that racism is fabricated through provoking fear through images of other cultures. Our understanding of a culture or the objectives revolving around war, are solely understood through subjective representations depicted through the mass-media. The images alienating effects on our imagination establishes a world developed through an artificial depiction. Racism is determined through the fascist rules of our planet. The representative images symbolizing ideology of a particular nation haunt the spectator, not permitting them a chance to resist.

"Society of control" and "Racism and Fascism" - Group 7

Group 7 (Andrea, Alex, Dominic)

Society of control

Many author presented in our class have discoursed on the idea of a society of control. In ''society of control'', Gille Deleuze bring further the analysis of authors like Foucault and Virilio and apply them to a modern society.

For Deleuze, the control of environment is no longer modular and particular to some institution but generalized, mixed and deeper than before. The system of control are repeated in the different levels of society (home, work, school, institution) and the modules of control have become a single deformable mold. According to Deleuze, this new mold is more visible to individual but, because of it changing nature, it has also become impossible to undo. For the author, this change is reflexted in the capitalist society by the change from industry of production to industry of marketing. The power structure is no longer physical, just like data is invisible in a computer.

Racism and Fascism

In ''Racism and Fascism'', Toni Morrison explain how racism is still very present and enforced by our society and institutions. He list 10 solutions to ensure the survival of racism in the society. He make us realize how much these ''solutions'' seems to be used in our current institutions. For him, these fascism's ideas are present in all our different political party. Because of this, the problem is not associated to a particular political party but to global policies. In the last part of the text, Morrison explain how a merge of the different structures of society is an excellent way to ensure the survival of the racism and fascism ''regime''.

In conclusion, this merge and uniformication of the different structures of society appear very close to the one described by Deleuze in ''society of control''. This idea is somewhat frightening because it imply the possibility that specific individuals have put in place the actual ''society of control'' in order to enforce some fascist agenda.

God save US!

"Society of control" & "Racism and Fascism" - Group 9

Born in the 17th arrondisment of Paris 1925 Gilles Deleuze was a great French philosopher. His educational background is as follows;

Schools

• Attended public schools before the Second World War.
• Attended school in Normandy for a year.
• Returned to Paris – attended the Lycée Carnot and then he studied at Henry IV.
• 1944-1948 – Studied Philosophy at the Sorbonne.
• 1948 – Gained his agrégation in Philosophy.

Teaching

• 1948 – Began teaching philosophy in various Paris Lycées (high schools).
• 1957 – Taught history of philosophy at the Sorbonne
• 1960-64 – Researcher with the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.
• 1964-69 – Taught at the University of Lyon and then took a position as professor of philosophy at Vincennes.
• 1969 – Deleuze took a teaching position at the experimental University of Paris VII, and he continued to teach there until his retirement in 1987.

Other Facts

• While studying, some of Deleuze’s professors included Ferdinand Aliquié, Georges Canguilhem, and Jean Hyppolite.
• Gilles Deleuze was married to Denise Paul “Fanny” Grandjouan in 1956.
• He became very good friends with Michel Foucault in 1962.
• Deleuze experienced his first major incidence of pulmonary illness in 1968.
• 1969 – Gilles Deleuze became friends and started a partnership with Félix Guattari.
• Deleuze took his own life on November 4, 1995.

Society of control

The text deals primarily with control in a time- sequence manner, the distinction between disciplinary societies and the society of control. The text can be associated with Foucault’s work regarding the old disciplinary systems and the “closed environment”. According to Deleuze

• A disciplinary society is characterized by scheduled control such as tests.
• A control society is characterized by constant surveillance.

Other aspects the text centers on are:

• Deleuze illustrated the change between the two different societies by the constant reform. For example: The Quebec school reform
• Surveillance brings instability
• Signature vs. id number to identify individuals
• Modulation (surf) of the control society brings the individual production in a wave movement, as opposed to production/ leisure.
• Sovereignty made use of simple machines while disciplinary societies use machines involving energy and control societies use machines called computers.
• The mutation of capitalism and how marketing is the new form of control
• Continuous forms of control: prison, schools, hospital and corporation.

Morrison

Toni Morrison whose original name Chloe Anthony Wofford was
born on February 18th 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.
Morrison is a African American writer noted for her examination of black experience (particularly black female experience) within the black community. lToni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. lIn 1965 she became a fiction editor. From 1984 she taught writing at the State University
of New York at Albany, leaving in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University.
She currently holds a place on the editorial board of The Nation magazine.

Books and texts
The central theme of Morrison's novels is the black American experience; in an unjust society her characters struggle to find themselves and their cultural identity.
Love (2003)
Paradise (1999)
Jazz (1992)
Beloved (1987)
Tar Baby (1981)
Song of Solomon (1977) ; its publication brought Morrison to national attention.
Sula (1973)
The Bluest Eye (1970)

Racism and Fascism

In her work Morrison discuss marketing and the consequence on our mental state. “Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing – marketing for power.”

Fear and denial are an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the fight. Control is the central idea; Fascism is control, marketing is control.

Morrison describes the process used to attain a sense of racism and the fascism system of control. Racism and fascism are described as viruses and we have become the carriers.

Group 5, "Society of control" and "Racism and Fascism"

"Society of control"

We live in the place which operates by disciplines. The difference is that, in the old day, we are disciplined at the factory, school, and hospital. However, in the control of society, the corporation replaces them. In the society of control, everything identified by code; thus, we no longer find ourselves dealing with mass/ individual pair. Individuals have become “dividuals” such as masses, data, banks. Substitute for the individual or numerical body of a dividual material to be controlled.

The text also mentions that "scandals" are arising from technology, "with the passive danger of entropy and the active danger of sabotage; the
societies of control operate with machines of a third type, computers, whose
passive danger is jamming and whose active one is piracy or the introduction
of viruses."

Not only that, while technology is freeing us, it is trapping us as well, as in this example, "Felix Guattari has imagined a city where one would be able to leave one's
apartment, one's street, one's neighborhood, thanks to one's (dividual)
electronic card that raises a given barrier; but the card could just as
easily be rejected on a given day or between certain hours; what counts is
not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person's position--licit
or illicit--and effects a universal modulation."


Society is shifting from "disciplinary societies" (foucault-ian society
where we are constantly "passing from one closed environment to another,
each having its own laws..." pp.1) to "societies of control".
(process analyzed by Virilio)


"Racism and Fascism"

This text discusses marketing and it's effects on our minds.

There is a "final solution" ( pp.1) reference to Hitler's final solution, which is genocide.
Outlined that final solution(genocide) is last step, involves other means to reach that end.

The "enemy" referred to in article could be anything:
-Jews in Nazi Germany ?
-Terrorism/ terrorists/ unamericanism-unpatriotism in modern US
-Opponents to racism in modern society

It is outlined that fascism is carrying out the article's 10 steps on us.

Society of control vs. Disciplinary societies

G11( Ron, Mazi, Ramy, Yung-Hoon)

Deleuze recognizes disciplinary societies as an ended system which has given its place to the society of control, a new intellectual way of applying control over the society. This happens according to Deleuze by blending what Foucault calls “closed environment”. Also other methods like specializing, dividualizing (password replacing signature) are key points in this process.

Today every person has a personal password which is recognized by a machine; a machine that works with a program designed for dealing dividually with individuals.

Delueze notion of the capitalism in the today’s society of control is also very interesting as he calls it a capitalism for the product rather than capitalism for the production, as most of the products are made in the third world where there is cheap labor. And this is why marketing have become the core of the financial society, to an extend where Toni Morrison recognize Fascism a marketing for power rather than just an ideology. By making people paying their tax and debts, today were are enclosed to these methods of control through power where we are consumers in form of .numbers and statistics

Virilio & Minh-Ha

Group 7 (Andrea, Alex, Dominic)

Environment Control

We believe that some of the key ideas in Virilio's text are our present-day perception of time, how our concepts of speed have affected the evolution of technology, and how this is all connected to our relationship with our surroundings. The effect is that humankind is becoming a part of its surroundings, and we are losing the core of what it means to be human by losing touch with what is reality and relying too much on technology. Everyday technologies are reducing daunting tasks to a series of small, simple motions, which shows how these two happenings are intertwined causing the blur in reality.(e.g. the click of a button turns on a television... you believe the reality is that you turned on the television when in fact the reality is that you only pushed a button).

When the Moon Waxes Red

One of the main focuses of this text was the mechanical eye, or rather the camera. Minh-Ha explores the notions of reality and subjectivity when recorded through the lens of a camera. She goes on to describe how most commercial movies are artificial and not a true representation of reality because it is a completely planned production, with each shot carefully taken into account and produced in an aesthetic final product. Whereas, in a documentary, it is, or should be, more subjective in that one is recording and reproducing reality onto film, choosing to include all elements of the reality, perfect and imperfect alike.

Lost post retrived again-------------------Blogger.com (we are sorry, for any drawbacks)

--Romain---Audrey--M-A Brunelle- Miles

Baudrillard--------------------------------

Baudrillard in this rather fatalist text introduces three of his main themes: the hyperreal, the simulacra and its orders and the notion of orbital.
First of all, Baudrillard explains his idea of hyperreal. It is the “real without origin of reality.” For example, a line of cars manufactured according to a model. There is no original car nor fake car. He even goes further than supposing there is no difference between the real and the simulacrum, he assumes that the real has disappeared. The simulation has not only taken over, but destroyed the notion of real. Just as the map of the empire in Borges fable destroys the empire itself.
He also depicts several orders of simulacra. First of all, there is the symbolic order. Society is organized as a fixed system of signs (for example, the king wears the crown. He who has the crown is the king.) Then there is the first order simulacra. A competition of the meaning of the signs appear. The art perverts the basic reality, but there is still a well defined original. Then appeared the second order simulacra, with the notion of mass production. There are reproductions, but no counterfeits. They are all originals. Basic reality becomes prototype, but there is still a difference between a prototype and a product. Finally there is the third order simulacra which represents the death of the real through simulations. Through the digital, art bears no relation to reality at all.
Baudrillard’s notion of orbital illustrates very well his fatalism. Our control over this simulated world can be compared to the control a satellite has over his trajectory.

M-A Brunelle, Romain, Miles, Audrey-----------------------

Paul Virilio. “Environmental Control”


First, after the reading of Virilio, we all aggree that the way Virilio think remind us the text of Oosterling. And some of the ideas of Oosterling emmerge in the Virilio text. First he is very critical on new technologies and like Oosterling he denounces our dependence to them. He also bring that, our notions of speed follow the evolution of the technologies. One of the key idea of the text is how technologies affect the way we deal with objects into a distance perspective. We do nothing anymore. Like we don’t use our legs anymore, we are always encapsulating into traveling machines. We do not cook. We buy all ready meal that you just have to heat up, to save time or because we are lazy. We do not construct our stuff anymore like our grand father did. Like knitting, or harvesting foods. We don’t do anything, so we don’t live anymore. So in General, like Oosterling, Virilio denounce the fact that we are alienated by technologies and at the end it kills our true essence.


Trihn. Mihn-Ha, “World as a Foreign Land”


We found that, the critical look she has on cinema was the most interesting issue of the text. I don’t know why. Maybe, that’s because we are all surround by movie and television so it reach more our interests. She declares that, cinema is far from reality. She claims that a good true documentary should not be aesthetic. Because the more you play with the image, in order to improve its quality, the more you hide the reality. And she also denounces the rules in cinema. Who write them and who decide what is good and what is not. Movies are a very great propaganda device. That’s why we should all have a critic look on them.

Forgotten Post - - Licklider/Flusser

Group 7 (Andrea, Alex, Dominic)

Man-Computer Symbiosis

Licklider proposes the symbiotic relationship between man/woman and computers where computers would be able to interact intelligently with its human operators; moreover, it would operate as an equal, providing valuable feedback in the problem-solving process and not merely be a tool for solving complex equations.

In this respect, we do not believe that there is a true symbiosis with computers today. The computer still remains a tool for helping us accomplish difficult tasks, however, they still do not possess the ability of abstract or interpretive thinking, or thinking at all for that matter. They are simply the some of their parts and programming. We provide variables and scenarios for them to process but they do not actually ponder these circumstances. They are completely logical and process information in a linear fashion all based on their original and edited programming. Despite the fact that much of what computer systems do is daunting and complicated, it is still nonetheless a product of our programming capabilities, even when we extend it into the realm of artificial intelligence. Although some of these A.I. programs are capable of learning, they are still based in programming and are not sentient, nor do they have personalities of their own. Furthermore, their learning capabilities only extend as far as programmed algorithms within their matrix(not the movie), as opposed to living beings where we merely learn from experience whether we've encountered these circumstances before or not. We have no choice but to adapt or perish.

A New Imagination

In this text, Flusser talks about human imagination and thought, and how these are complicated abstract concepts, which have been subsequently demonstrated through several different writing constructs (i.e. alphabet, numeric structures, and what the author refers to as digital code).

Basically, as I understood it, Flusser uses 'digital code' to refer to the representation of our thoughts and imagery in its base form, or rather numeric computer codes, which consequently is the only way our creation, the computer, would be able to understand it.

All this made me think of how the total value of the chemicals in the human body is only worth something like 13$. Although chemically, a human being is not worth much, it is more a measure of the essence of a human being, i.e. the sum of its parts, being worth more than the individual pieces. That is my problem with Flusser's idea. Although imagery can be represented by digital code, will the transfer into that representation lose something along the way? Does the actual image hold more meaning than the digital code?

G2: Vir & M-Ha

by Anthony and Raed

Virilio explains how our existence in relation to our surroundings is not only mediated by our classical seeing with light, but is forever affected by time. Our relation is becoming transparent and we are hybridizing with our surroundings. Thus, we become our surrounding, and alienate ourselves from our perceived “reality” to live in our produced “reality”. Our drive to control everything (including our existence) becomes mechanical and we end up being in the cogs that we turn. Sensing a strong feeling of alienation from media, we become burning fuel for the latter. We do not ameliorate or prolong our existence but render us in a state of prolonged estrangement and death: empty capsules.

M-Ha dips in notions of re-creating reality in an objective way. Technology used in this manner should be non-existent for the latter image to be real because technology isn’t natural, and when filming something natural, its presence produces a subjective image. We think that nature is perfect; when it is truly imperfect. So when recreating reality through video (example), one should show the imperfections so as to have amore honest view of everything that is going on, not a mediated one.

M-Ha 2: The notion of “reality” is debated through media and our existence. And when we mediate its existence, reality is changed. One has to be aware of this process because he or she could easily feel separated from the produced “reality”. Ones existence is then shaped by misinterpretation. One must be able to want to see the differences and be able to disconnect from the produced “reality” to be able to define objectively him or her self and perceived “reality”. Media as an alienator can also serve as a tool for understanding our existence. Tools such as “film, television, journals and radio” promote the textures of our existence to ensure an overall sight of what constitutes us. We are all strangers in different realities, one must hope to be able (and want) to process it and re-construct your own.

Image and representation (Virilio and Minh-Ha)

(Mazi, Ron, Ramy, Jo)

Virilio tries to express reality through speed of light and time. How the speed of light affects our notion of reality, the fact that we perceive every incidence at the moment it occurs. We also argued about the idea of trans-appearance, and how time plays an important role in our perception rather than the space. Therefore the speed of light which is related to time is more important than the light itself in the way we conceive the reality of appearances. And that is why the image is what Virilio calls shadow of time, referring to Plato.

Virilio also cites Walter Benjamin’s idea of “aura” and discusses how technology made us so close to the things that we are no longer affected by it. We are trying our best to develop systems of control where we are able to do everything simultaneously without necessary being present in different spaces, and here is the notion of mobility which doesn’t necessarily refers to space.

In the second reading Minh-Ha argues how we are subjective and the technology is absolutely objective; that is why when we hide technology as much as possible, the images we are presenting become far more detached from the reality.

Discussing Minh-Ha, why do we think that the reality is neutral? Can the reality itself be biased as well? Reality, Being untouched and raw whether it may seem biased, it is neutral.

Also, if “a bad shot is guaranteed of authenticity" then is a beautiful piece of art, even if it is reflecting reality, always a lie?

Group 5

“Environment Control”

Our concept of "real-time" has changed over time. Even more so with the advent of technology controlling every bit of our lives. One example of this is our time-span.

Caveman example:
Hundreds of years ago, they didn’t have as much occupations, games, entertainments. Whereas, nowadays, it is harder to keep our attention with all the things we have. If someone from long ago somehow lived in our world, they would not be able to capture everything going on, because our perception of “real-time” has changed.

Also, we want to be omnipresent everywhere and control everything but without any physical movements involved. Technology is going too far in certain ways and it is agaisnt our physical nature. For example, humans need to exercise, they need fresh air, the outdoors, and natural foods to stay healthy. This is not saying that all technology is bad, since much of it has aided us.



"Mechanical Eye"

Trinh T. Minh-Ha speaks of the "mechanical eye" which is really our cameras, and film. Since the camera is mechanical in nature, it's bound to be objective and neutral in whatever its showing to the world.


She gives an important point that over-worked shots in film are indeed beautiful, but are "fake" and represent a false reality. As for the rough, uncut shots with natural sounds, are the ones who are true and stick to reality. Is it really necessary to capture life down to the slightest detail?

"The world as foreign land"

Trinh T. Minh-ha refers to post-colonialism, feminism, and minorities. Western culture has it's stereotypes and constantly tries to know it all, despite not being in the "other"s shoes.

The post-colonial other is here caught in the regime of visibility as deployed by the west in a wide range of humanistic and anti humanistic discourses to its leading position as subject of knowledge.

"The place of otherness is fixed in the west as a subversion of western metaphysics and is finally appreciated by west as its limit-text, anti-west… colonial fantasy is the continual dramatization of emergence as the beginning of history which is repetitively denied” ( HOMI K. Bhabha)." Minh-ha writes about the constant repetition of the white race's stubborness in dominating minorities. A stubborness which is simply that, a fantasy. Again there is the need to see "the light".

:. Group One :. Paul Virilio & Trihn T. Mihn-Ha :. Mohannad, Jason, Etienne, Brent, Jonathan, Bastien

:. Group One :. Paul Virilio & Trihn T. Mihn-Ha :. Mohannad, Jason, Etienne, Brent, Jonathan, Bastien

:.Environment Control , Paul Virilio :.

“It is less light than speed which helps us to see, to measure and therefore to conceive the reality of appearances.” Speed is the key concept of our hectic lives, we crave for it, the more we consume it, the more we want it. This may explain our fascination by information versus knowledge. Knowledge take too much time to acquire and we are bombarded by information, the fact that information is faster to understand than knowledge make it therefore more popular. If knowledge would take less time to acquire then information it would be preferred. This last statement will somehow sound obvious in our fast pace society, but what makes us choose fast information rather then slow knowledge ? Why always going for the fast option ?
Our movements, with the help of technology, can defy time and space. We can talk to the other side of the planet with only a few seconds of delay, we don’t even have to leave our home to buy clothing, food, or accessories from around the world. Why ever leave your home, if you can do now whatever you could do before, but now without leaving your property.
There is a key concept that I fail to grasp which make people very open to any technology that make old things go faster. Maybe a desire of control, if information is send and received faster, the power control will benefit this acceleration of communication.


:.When The Moon Waves Red , Trihn T. Mihn-Ha:.

I believe she criticizes about the perceived notion of the documentary, how there attempt to duplicate reality is vain and “un-imag-inative”. By trying to present life with the less apparatus as possible is presenting a grey, dull and objective world, while it is quite the contrary.
In a way, a documentary try to erase it’s medium just like movies are doing and pretending to represent reality. While cinema uses lighting, montage, actors, etc., the documentary uses non of these apparatus, but it non the less still has to power to pull the viewer into it’s web just like movies by the use of naturalism.

M-A, Audrey, Romain, Myles, Alex

Guy Debord :: La society of the spectacleSo the spectacle is the domination of the economy on the social life…

The spectacle is the image of consumption of the material (the objects). It's the domination of the economy on the social life. Means that people bring importance to what they have and what they look like. In the spectacle, the real world is an image where the human behavior is hypnotic, related to the view and the image. There is no speaking, it's only about appearance. There is nothing related to a personalize aspect; it seems to be oriented to a kind of life where everybody is manipulated in any way (politic, media, appearance, consummation…)

To me the Debord's society image is really against consummation society. By bringing importance on people's possession and specially by creating that kind of minimum materialistic life style, that society and media have control on; it keeps the people working enough to keep them happy with what they believe it's good (The spectacle … what we show them). People become omnibuses by the society and don't ask more question about them life.

To work, the society of spectacle must keep his people in a dream, sleeping and be inactive in order to admire what they see. They must keep a minimum of happiness in them life in order to work… People forget what they are by wanted to be like is neighbor. More people desire things less they life.

Society separates the population to have more control on them and it's where social classes are organized. Spectacle separates people to make sure to not creating power between them. (It's oppose to the syndicat). Jules Cesart: "Il faut diviser pour régner". By division nobody except that governor have the total view of what's really happening in the society, country, company or organization… There is 2 socials class which are the proletariat, the inferior class and the superior class. Ex: just the Canada First minister have the global view of what's happening in the country, but it still so well done devise then he lost it's control with Le scandale des commendites.

The empire is only a concept (not concrete), each region is independent (this is the reality) ex: the spectacle is all unites put together as the Romain empire was.

That same division is applied to company where labor is devise in small part in a big process. Ex: make in China and set up in USA . Before the workers was making everything from A to Z. In that case, each person had a really important place in the social implication.
Ex: A shoes maker was not making 2 exactly similar pairs of shoes. Each activities or work was personalized and an entire community could be advantage by having them own specialties
.
All the material selection created and promote by the spectacle of society (from television to car…) reinforce the population isolation. It's a spinning wheel between activities, works, productivity, desire, and consumption.

The spectacle is artificial. It keeps people in an illusion of happiness.

Existence and survival. The creation of new needs become the essential survival condition to help the production and the economy to grow up. In other word we need to produce things to give us jobs and money to follow what the spectacle show us to get. Still those need are often far away to be essential, there are superficial, but they become essential for the industry because they give us jobs and work. The human work is needed to serve the economy.

Class division and work = get material = power and reason of living . Essential needs are economy. More we consume more we produce and it brings, alienation
Before the proletariat worked for just survive… really basic. Today because of the economic grow up, the superior class needed more and more the cooperation of the proletariat, so they start to treat better employees.

With minimum comfort the people don't mind to be manipulated by the spectacle because whether what is it, they have every thing they need without working more.

Debord / Baudrillard

Maimouna - Aaron - Anouk - Ghina

Debord's Society of the Spectacle and Baudrillard's Precession of the Simulacra:

We can make an analogy between Debord's idea of the spectacle affecting our real life with Baudrillard's concept of Hyperreality which is the result of the simulation of something that never really existed in reality.Thus, it is this simulacra or spectacle that determines our perception of reality and BECOMES THE REAL.
Our perception of reality is totally affected by the information presented through the media. So for these 2 authors, freedom becomes a simulation of freedom, and power a simulation of power, where culture industry imposes choices on us. With democracy and capitalism, we think we are free but it is only a simulated freedom, only a matter of consumption where the choices offered to us are predetermined.
In the world of hyperreality,Baudrillard saw the death of Foucault’s theory of the Panopticon, the boundaries between knowledge and information, between real and virtual, between dominance and resistance, are all blurred.It is no longer knowledge that rules but media information.

---Lost post retrieved---

Marc-André, Romain, Miles, Audrey, Alex

The first extract entitled “Man-Computer Symbiosis” talks about the interaction between man and computer. According to J.C.R Licklider, the computer should obtain a certain freedom of action instead of always depending on human intervention, to be most efficient. The computer should be “capable of programming themselves contingently” as man can. Much time is lost in searching for the information rather than processing it. If computers could research the information more accurately without the permanent intervention of man, then we could concentrate on reflection. He talks about “thinking centers”, which would contain tones of information and have the necessary functions to retrieve the information effectively. We have nowadays a massive “thinking center”: the internet. But the functions meant to retrieve the information (mainly search engines) are not perfect. The “thinking” is still limited to medium complex functions such as link popularity (for internet sites). One could say that the internet’s capacity for storage has largely surpassed our technology in information mining. The next step could be developing such powerful functions that computers would be able to adapt their thinking methods when unexpected elements appear. But how can one program the unexpected without expecting it?
The second extract focuses on the imagination. Flusser explains how mankind evolved from one type of imagination to another. At first we took a step back from the existing world to imagine it. Then we described this imagination, and then analyzed this description. Finally, the new imagination appeared when “man projected synthetic images out of analysis” (when numeric code became digital code). This last step is essential in this extract. Man had to break free from linearity to critique imagination. Numeric code was attached to alphabetic code which is linear. But digital code detaches itself totally from the image. Instead of taking the information from the four-dimensional life-world, images are projected from the zero-dimensional world. This last reflection is very interesting. Through digitalization, we have managed to reverse imagination. At first we went from our image to the representation. Now a machine represents the image for us to imagine and analyze it.
The only link we found between these two texts is the impact of computation on human beings, the impact on our way of thinking, of working and of imagining.

Walter J. Ong / Friedrich a. Kittler

Group. 9
~ Sabreena, Laureance, Kathryn and Ryan~

Walter Ong's text "Orality and Literacy" looks at the differences between primary oral cultures and those that don’t have a system of writing. It looks at how the shift from an oral-based stage of consciousness to one dominated by writing and print changes the way we humans think. Ong also discusses a “secondary orality” of present-day high-technology culture which is definitely where we fit in. This secondary orality is one dominated by electric modes of communication like the telephone, radio, television, etc. All of which depend on writing and print to function and exist.

The text is not only interesting and filled with interesting research and facts; it’s also a bit shocking. To think that even among the 3,000 or so languages which currently exist, only 78 have a writing system or literature. It’s something you never really think about, and when you hear about it, you don’t know how to react to it. Is it a bad thing? Who knows? We’ve lived our whole lives reading and writing so we don’t know what it would be like without it, it’s really hard to even imagine. Our culture has become a very visual one and is moving further and further away from being one that is oral-aural-based

Group 2 // Ong & Kit.

by Anthony, Elio & Raed

The conflict generated between orality and literacy produce confusion on which is the better “medium”. Any being should think that one grows from the other. Orality is ancient in its form, and exists through oral transfer. It is alive, but can disappear quite easily. Only in its passing on can give it its existence. Nevertheless, through literacy (the capacity of writing) can one truly permeate the oral culture and any new culture into a more present existence. Ong speaks of literacy in comparison to death, a temporal state that alienates the human being from him or her self, but that this phenomenon is quite essential for the being. A person must be able to distance himself from any production or reproduction, just as Plato’s beings in the cave. Literacy is intricate depending on where it is being developed and still keeps it relations to orality. When speaking of common literacy, we think of a language shared by many nations, and progress to discuss the place of computable languages and mathematics as a common ground for many societies.

Kittler also shares his thoughts on this notion of death in the presence of written or printed words and discusses it is contextually when hand written or printed. One style can produce a humanized (sensualysed) persona, where as the other is mechanical and dehumanizes the text. Both speak of literacy in time and space, and discuss the power of the written word to create history, and again the notion of the word permeating itself through time.

The written word is a technology, a medium, and a tool that becomes at some point an extension to the human being. As much as it is separate from us, it comes from us and helps create a common place for us. The point where all written words become the same to all people is an utopist thought. Ong proves this point, when he describes the word being similar, and yet so different depending on its social context and time. Just as the Korean’s started of their own written language, one should think of a common place other than of literacy where people do not need to translate to understand. Kittler discusses this notion when he writes, “In computers everything becomes number: imageless, soundless, and wordless quantity.”

Myles, Marc-Andre, Audrey, Romain, Alex

In the first text, Walter J. Ong talks about the differences between oral cultures and ones that use writing. He believes that there are certain values that are lost when transitioning form an illiterate culture to a literate on. He also refers to the transition from writing to print, and print to the electronic age. He first reviews history and how the importance of oral cultures have been more or less ignored and devaluated, putting too much emphasis on the written text as being constant. However, he notes that oral cultures have an acoustic value which is now resurfacing through the new technological electronic revolution. He analysis the evolution of writing, from pictorial drawings to scripts (memory aids), to the alphabets of different cultures.
We found Ong’s approach very interesting, talking about something we take for granted, such as reading or writing as being something that we put too much faith in and overvalue. He studies the difference between oral language and the written language almost Darwininien in nature, comparing different cultures in order to study the evolution of language(through oral, pictorial, textual, print and electronic examples). His thoughts also partially coincide with McLuhan, in which Oral Language is a form of technology that becomes amputated for language. Both those tools soon are replaced by the electronic age of television and radio.]

In the subsequent texts, Friedrich a. Kittler analyses the new tool of fiber optics, and how it brings us into an age where all visual, auditory and information data can all be more accessible through the new age of electronics. He makes reference to almost every famous author conceivable, weaving his point together through his interpretations of very small quotations. Though entertaining, and well written, it is more of an analysis than the previous text of Ong, which had a lot more of his own thoughts and research, and had a much deeper analysis on a more specific theme.

Group 1, Week of March 6th.

Ong and KittlerGroup 1: Jon Kebe, Etienne, Mohanad, Jason, Bastien, Brent

Walter Ong tackles quite an interesting topic: the "Technologizing" of the world through questioning the real interrelation between The Literate mind and the Oral past. We believe that remembering how guiding our lives as a human society quite a few centuries ago, although it still brought evolution to us, we could see the increasing technological an scientific evolutions when we actually started embracing books and literature. It is important indeed to know a language because it all evolves into power and influence (through CONTROL), and that is most likely the way humans have made their way through in their lives (whether powerful and influential or modest and insignificant): By mastering their language skills with people and using it for their advantage. In other words, Politics. Yet the written word has brought monstruous changes in our world and nourrishes the constantly changing scientific panorama. In the end, we obtain quite a good overview on how language itself, in a way or other, has been the key to creating the path we've followed while writing our own history.

Kittler's text was quite more challenging to assimilate in load of ideas, maybe because it tackles a more technological approach to things and applies it to the human perception to technology. What is fascinating about Kittler's text (which probably made it worth reading) is the things he questions; how does the input and output work when using a computer for our benefit and why doesn't that work differently? He also illustrates how we have changed our lifestyles and changed them into the digital era. This can bring some parallelism with Ong text. Is digital the new litterature? Is this a good shift? Will this bring development and evolution? These are questions that are valid and whose answers cannot be given completely, as we're still evolving and defining the way all this mass technology is going (or taking us). The examples provided by Kittler of our own history, like Goethe's Werther, Guttenberg and Laurie Anderson, also draw a good map of human perception and mass reaction towards "new" or "different" things, interesting enough to solidify his text "Gramophone, Film, Typewriter".

Group11:::::: ONG & KITTLER

(Mazi, Ron, Rami, Yung-Hoon)

We started our group discussion with this question that whether the writing is a tool for remembering or a limitation to our thoughts? Without a doubt writing has been essential to human evolution and development, because it not only enables the author to save his thoughts but it also makes his ideas accessible to others and particularly next generations. On the top of that with recording ideas one enables others to analyze and criticize his thoughts!

Writing as a technology has also the problem same as radio referring to Brecht: it is a one-way communication. The question that rises here is that “ will the technology and new media fill this gap and by connecting people create a two way literacy?”

What we were also concerned was when Kittler argues: ”A total connection of all media on a digital base erases the notion of the medium itself.” Having Marshal McLuhan’s Arguments in mind, does this means that by a total connection of media where everything is delivered through one medium, there won’t be any message as the notion of medium is erased?

Ong and Kittler

Dominic, Alex and Andrea

In the first text, orality and literacy, Walter Ong present the influence of the orality and literacy in a society. The author suggest that any new media will make an important power shift in a society. The whole text come out as an historical record of time during which the orality and literacy have played important role. Based on the reading and after group discussion, it was agreed that writing or oral language could develop strong power structure. Whether for good or bad, people in control of a language gain much influence in a society and can easily isolate other. Most of the time, these power structure become very hard to modify once they are in place as they become deeply anchored in our culture.

For the second text, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich Kittler push the first text concept and make a generalization for all medias. While not only anchored in our culture, he goes as far as saying ‘’Media determine our situation’’. For him, media are subtly feeding us without us noticing. Also, media have a lasting power of influence and become the basis for our culture as we store our memory in them. Later he suggest that medias creates new medias in a recurring loop which is for most part out of our direct control. In the second part, There is no software, he give a discrete example of this with the computer software and hardware evolution. With this statement he suggest the close relationship between computer and man in what they have become.

Whether it is for good or for bad, both text strongly make us feel that media change history itself!

Kittler and Shannon

Here is the last piece in the Kittler puzzle (Shannon's information theory)

http://www.lucent.com/minds/infotheory/

Kittler and Turing

To alleviate more mysticism from Kittler re: Turing Machines:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/

Kittler and Lacan

For those struggling to understand who (and what) Kittler is talking about when he compares the three types of media (grammaphone, film, typewriter) with psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's notion of the real, imaginary and symbolic).

http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/glossary2004/symbolicrealimaginary.htm