Cool Politics: Ideology and the Revolutionary New Technology (original) (raw)
Since the events in North Africa and the Middle East, collectively known as the Arab Spring, there appears to have been a profound resurgence of the term revolution. Nonetheless, while in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt the application of the term clearly had political implications, here in North America and Europe the term has primarily been used to refer to the development of new commodities and technologies. Even the Arab Spring, insofar as it can be thought of as a revolution, has been understood in the North American context as a product of the "social media revolution". The reference to technologies as revolutionary, however, is not entirely straightforward. Previous theorizations of revolution had all insisted on at least some element of subjective response to objective conditions, even if objective forces were, in the "final analysis", responsible for the conditions. One may not be able to plan a revolution, but as Brinton Crane argued and as Marx clearly implies one can prepare for a revolution. Some element of human agency would appear to be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for all revolutions, even, it should be noted, the Copernican (Kant; Kuhn).
Related papers
REVOLUTION TALK AND MEDIA HISTORY
Academia Letters, 2021
Recent decades have faced the significant increase of media historical studies. The obvious reason for the contemporary popularity of media history studies is undoubtedly the need to understand our digital culture. One manifestation of the development is the increase of media history overviews published since the 1990s. The overviews often highlight the development of media as a series of "revolutions." 1 Although the rise of propaganda in the forms of "trolling," "disinformation" and "post-truth politics" related to social media has stifled utopian digital revolution talk, it is alive and well especially in connection with algorithms, artificial intelligence, the Internet of things, and so on. For instance, the search words "digital revolution" get over 30,000 hits in JSTOR digital library. Even more than usual, the historical context of a historian is crucial in interpreting media history. For instance, the rise of the media-deterministic Toronto School since the 1950s was a product of a new electronic age. Particularly television looked a "revolutionary" new media. Television was the Internet of the 60s: a "revolutionary mass media" and a McLuhanian "extension of man." 2 The father of the school, economic historian Harold A. Innis, looked at the entire history of civilization from the viewpoint of the history of media. According to Innis, communication tends to change political, juridical, religious and economic structures.
Technologies of liberation and/or otherwise
A year and a half after the Iranian uprising in 2009, unprecedented popular uprisings in several Arab countries provided some of the most evocative moments of power meeting its opposite, in decisive and surprising ways. In a matter of weeks, powerful hereditary/republican regimes in the region, including in Tunisia and Egypt, crumbled under relentless pressure and opposition from highly mediated "street politics." The uprising and revolts that shook Iran in the aftermath of the 2009 electoral coup, and the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled the governments in these countries in twenty-eight and eighteen days, respectively, had three significant similarities. First, the Arab revolutions, like the 2009 uprising in Iran, were, in the first place, revolts against dictatorship and in direct opposition to the ruling regimes. These uprisings, like many such movements against despotism, were also marked with demonstrations and the visible participation of young people. Second, all three happened at a time in which, unlike 1979 (the time of the Iranian Revolution), the world was not divided into two camps, but rather was confronted with US hegemony and globalization of financial capital. And finally, they all happened at a time when advances in communication technologies, and in particular the Internet, have allowed for a much faster circulation and dissemination of information-hence the constant association of these revolts with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and so forth.
Revolutionary Technologies: A Critical Analysis
This article argues that, although Andrew Feenberg recasts the problem of reification in his secondary instrumentalization theory as an extension of Heidegger's dwelling-in-the-world, this project will ultimately fail without due consideration for naming revolutionary technologies that has given rise to virtual relations. It argues that by recognizing the fundamental relationship between praxical time and dwelling as a matrix of interweaving modes of being, society can subvert the potential reification of humanity by technology. This can be only be achieved through a democratic process that involves actors and agents in future inventions. By looking at the work of Alain Badiou, it is shown how a fusion of Heideggerian-inspired phenomenology and speculative ontology is critical for the advancement of social theory, as revolutionary technologies become increasingly immersive.
Nextopia? Beyond Revolution 2.0
Oriente Moderno, 2011
Research on the impact of the Internet in the Middle East has been dominated by a focus on politics and the public sphere, and oscillated between the hope for ‘revolutionary’ change and the admission that regime stability in the region has not easily been unsettled by media revolutions alone. Obsession with the new and with the latest technologies has helped to obscure more long-term sociocultural developments. This contribution is a plea for a shift of paradigm: to study more seriously the social and cultural effects of internet and mobile phone use; to find out what impact the use of these media has on conceptions of the individual and its role in the construction of knowledge and values; and how these dynamics are embedded in more long-term historical developments promoting a greater role for the individual vis-à-vis established authorities.
A deconstruction of the term “revolution”
Koers - Bulletin for Christian Scholarship
The precise meaning of the concept of (political) revolution remains semantically contested. According to Arslanian (2013:127) this concept "is often used liberally, applied to everything from the 'Social Media Revolution' to the 'Sexual Revolution'". Brinton (1965:1-4) agrees, referring to revolution as a concept that "troubles the semanticist not only because of its wide range in popular usage, but also because it is one of those words charged with emotional content". In some instances revolution even becomes a "holy word" with an a priori moral force which sets preconditions for moral righteousness. It seems that "the revolution" can become just as important as a religion would be. This same revolution/religion also provides the opportunity to gain material and immaterial goods for humankind (Marcuse, 2001:123). Koselleck (as quoted by Marinelli; 2014:8) argues that the semantics of the concept revolution is by no means unequivocal. The goal of this article therefore is to address the semantic vagueness of the political concept of revolution through a literature analysis, subsequently listing observable characteristics of the phenomenon. As such, this article is a theoretical effort contributing to what Babbie and Mouton (2008:113) call the hermeneutic cycle of ever-deepening understanding in which the different observables of revolution will be arrived at via the deconstruction of various definitions from wide-ranging schools of thought and ideas of revolution.
Synesis, 4, 2013
It goes without saying that the change we experience today, which is fuelled by a series of new technologies, differs from other profound changes that have defined our culture in the past. The current change affects our everyday lives, but the new tools it offers us can be seen as an extension of our senses, of our various modes of communication and, to a certain extent, of our brains (since the question about whether one regards machines as extensions of living organisms or living organisms as complex machines seems to be a topic of exploration as well). Nowadays, the proliferation of the fields of knowledge, the often vague distinction between art, technology and science, and the "immaterial" form of the new tech-nologies compel us to widen the field of our traditional research disciplines, and most crucially the field of ethics. The debate around the morality of technology has given rise to special moral categories -regarding for example the issues of responsibility, safety and risk -which had not been as important in premodern moral philosophy.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.