<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hey Trebor and IDC:<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">I have been observing the postings of the last week or so with somewhat of a morbid fascination. I have to admit that this is my first online wake and it has left me with somewhat of a feeling of marked discomfort, as may be expected in any wake. However, somehow I am bewildered. The perhaps overdetermined irony of this simulated wake is appreciated - yet uncanny.</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">Somehow … and curiously …. one of Baudrillards’ earlier books, The System of Objects, is striking a nerve right now as I follow these posts. Within his category of the metafunctional, he extends his focus to the useless, the aberrant and the “schizofunctional.”</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">Within that broad context, I offer the following passage:</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">“ We may thus trace functional mythologies, born of technics itself, all the way to a sort of fatality in which the world-mastering technology seems to crystallize in the form of an inverse and threatening purpose. At this point it behoves us to do two things. In the first place, we must reframe the problem of the fragility of objects, and of their defection; for although in the first instance objects present themselves to us as reassuring, as factors of equilibrium, albeit of a neurotic kind, they are also in the end a factor of continual disillusionment. Secondly, we must challenge our society’s implicit assumption that a rationality of ends and means governs the sphere of production and the technological project itself.</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">The object’s dysfunctionality, its counter purpose, is governed by two parallel set of determinants: a socio-economic system of production and a psychological system of projection. It is the reciprocal involvement of these two systems, their collusion, that we need to define.”</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, first published 1968, pg. 123 – The Transformations of Technology.”</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"> </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">Perhaps it is now time for us to acknowledge our own conduit of collusion….</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">All best,</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal">Chris</DIV><DIV><DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"> </BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV> <DIV style="text-align: center;">Christiane Robbins</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">- JEITZEIT -</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">... the space between zero and one ...</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">Walter Benjamin</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">LOS ANGELES I SAN FRANCISCO</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">The present age prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance to the essence for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane.</DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872, </DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;">German Philosopher </DIV><DIV style="text-align: center;"><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></DIV> </DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>