[iDC] So far

[Trebor Scholz]

So far, we talked about the need to envision the future. We need plans. We
need analysis of the world around us. We need to think and feel. And through
the recognition of what does not work we dream up alternatives. At a time
that is dominated by techno-social networks we need to look them in the eye.
Some will turn away, unplug. Others will grab the corporate knife and turn
it around. Reverse imagination. We make our own media. We need to write our
own algorithms for the societal software into which we are socialized. We
not to be blip that we want to see in the world. The personal is political
(that did not cease to be true in the 80s). Resistance may be in the
realization that we are not so different after all. Resistance here is
seeing the alien in our own thorax (think Giger's "chestbuster"). The
self-interest and cynicism is not completely outside of us. We are part of
what's wrong. Our bodies are potraits of capitalism. The question concerns
the cure of what Brian describes as terminally ill society. The model should
not be the seer among the blind. We don't own the truth based on which can
degradate others for their supposed opportunism or lack of radicality. The
fitting image is more one of moments in which people detox and recognize
each other in that process, and, however temporarily, join forces. (Ricardo:
"Make a Vaccine! Stick a needle in a meme!") We alluded to the Major Tom
Syndrome (ground control to...) of much culture jamming and art activism
online or "in the streets." We traded arguments about the value of extreme
sharing networks and media activism, political theater in general. There is
the "take to the street" vs. "the streets are dead." Matt Fuller takes CAE's
1994 statement as an example of a privileged "white flight into cyberspace"
away from the physical problems of actual communities. Now there are
boundless hybrid strategies. We did not talk about the symbolic flickers of
tactical media yet. What should be retained and what needs to be thrown off
the truck? We talked about the incessant double-sided sword of technological
renewal a la Debord. We mentioned the constant confusion with the warp-drive
holodeck projections of technologies and their clumsy realities in front of
us. We talked about systemic windows of vulnerability that we need to be
prepared for. Radicality with a capital "R" often comes with conceit. Megan
talks about a no-nonsense approach to faithful accounts of the "real" world.
We hardly talked about art.

Trebor