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<TITLE>Re: [iDC] Strategic usage of folksonomies: a case study</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Hi John<BR>
<BR>
Of course what you say is the case, and there are tragic consequences. If you read Garcia or Ortiz you will find that their arguments emerge out of their concerns about colonial and post-colonial cultural imperialism. Ortiz, in particular, writes eloquently about the impact of the tobacco and sugar trades on Cuban society. In my referencing these authors I am also taking into account these concerns.<BR>
<BR>
Regards<BR>
<BR>
Simon<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
On 14/1/09 22:36, "john sobol" <john@johnsobol.com> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>On 11-Jan-09, at 5:51 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN><FONT COLOR="#0026DC"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>A central premise of pluriliteracy is that people are becoming polyglot not just with spoken/written languages but also other linguistic forms, such as those associated with a mediated world and that for each individual the function of each language they employ can have very different value. So one language might be the one through which they socially interact, another through which they exchange goods and yet another the means by which they navigate power and governance. Garcia does not argue that these value relations are necessarily heirarchic (although they might be) and he points out that such value is motile. We see this evidenced on the streets of our big cities and in the geo-political collisions that typify our age. In this respect pluriliteracy is a useful concept for approaching the more general idea of globalisation and can even be seen as linked to some aspects of post-modern relativism (eg: Foucault’s argument that power, and its use/abuse, is exercised by us all – established as primarily a linguistic activity).<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Hello Simon,<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>your articulation of pluriliteracy is interesting. Here's my take...<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>You say:<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN><FONT COLOR="#0026DC"><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>A central premise of pluriliteracy is that people are becoming polyglot not just with spoken/written languages but also other linguistic forms, such as those associated with a mediated world...<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>People 'are' becoming polyglot. But the story is much more conflicted, much more tragic, and much less new than this. For example, the historic colonization of orality by literacy is reaching its climax as we speak, as we write. In our lifetime half of the world's oral languages will disappear. Something like 3,000 languages, cultures, histories, geographies, knowledge systems and sacred worlds will vanish in the next few decades.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>It's cultural genocide on a massive scale but almost nobody cares to notice<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>(note that we are losing not only these specific peoples, languages and cultures <BR>
but also ways of knowing that have shaped us over 99.9% of our history as a species<BR>
losing forever our primordial ways of knowing beyond the bookish world)<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>today literacy is triumphant<BR>
and it calculates the end of the ancient irrational <BR>
the last breaths of countless gods and goddesses<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>although as we know the irrational 'will' win out<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>for we are human after all<BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>in fact science turns out to be the unlikely culprit responsible for literacy's looming fall<BR>
via the coming conflagration of our industrially overheated planet –<BR>
for though writing's powers of abstraction have enabled a vast rationalization of the earth's resources<BR>
they are also pathologically inward-looking and self-consuming <BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>the factory belches smoke<BR>
and death<BR>
as we have known for centuries<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>and it is a creation of paper and ink<BR>
the mechanical drawings the ledgers the blueprints the maps the money the inventories the deeds<BR>
they unlock it all<BR>
without writing the system fails everywhere<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>so we are living in a great literate age <BR>
experiencing at once<BR>
its most glorious vanity and hegemony<BR>
in architectures of space and thought<BR>
but witnessing also the twin threats <BR>
of its own worldeating tail <BR>
and the patricidal infant it has birthed through its mathematical mouth –<BR>
the Internet<BR>
whose destiny is to usurp literacy's hegemony with hyperefficiency<BR>
just as literacy extinguished original orality with superefficiency<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>it is important<BR>
i think<BR>
for people to understand this story<BR>
to see how we are poised at this very strange and potent moment in the history of our species:<BR>
the end of bluesology<BR>
the apex of printopolis<BR>
and the dawn of digitopia<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>the 3 great killer apps of human evolution in crisis<BR>
and we with them<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>and to understand that <BR>
if anything is to be done to change our most likely future<BR>
(ecocide i.e.the end of the world)<BR>
then it may well start <BR>
with finding compelling ways and reasons for members of these very divergent cultures <BR>
that 'are' becoming polyglot<BR>
that 'are' in need of each other's knowledge and ways of knowing<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>but which cannot collaborate because they do not understand each other<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>to work together <BR>
out of a sense of common interest, common need <BR>
and common advantage<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>instead of being driven<BR>
as they are now<BR>
by distrust and hostility<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>towards mutually assured destruction<BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>So to me that is a useful model for pluriliteracy. Can you sing, write and code? Then maybe you can make a difference, build a bridge, be an interactivist.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>That is where I am trying to work, or at least to strike a light.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>Cheers,<BR>
John Sobol<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>--<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
</SPAN></FONT><FONT SIZE="4"><FONT FACE="Helvetica, Verdana, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14.0px'>new website soon<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><BR>
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<BR>
Simon Biggs<BR>
Research Professor<BR>
<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">edinburgh college of art<BR>
</FONT>s.biggs@<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">eca</FONT>.ac.uk<BR>
www.<FONT COLOR="#FE7700">eca</FONT>.ac.uk<BR>
www.<FONT COLOR="#FD7600">eca</FONT>.ac.uk/circle/<BR>
<BR>
simon@littlepig.org.uk<BR>
www.littlepig.org.uk<BR>
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk<BR>
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