Barthes' Rhetorical Machine: Mythology and Connotation in the Digital Networks / A máquina retórica de Barthes: mitologia e conotação nas redes digitais (original) (raw)
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Barthes' rhetorical machine: Mythology and connotation in the digital networks
2015
This article explores the social representation of Information Technology and Network Society from Barthes’ semiology, using his ideas about myth creation and the connotation of ideological discourses through naturalization. Supplemented with some concepts from Peirce and Santaella, we try to identify and understand these mystification mechanisms and how they affect the creation of an information order; in this case, a digital order. We conclude that we are before an evangelizing discursive alignment based on mythical elements arisen from our aversion to uncertainty, the energy-saving principle, and an engineering discourse guided by the urgency of profit and power. We highlight the presence of a reckless narrative that permanently repeats the urgent need for information technology and digitalization without considering side effects or costs.
The Early Period of the “Digital Revolution” from the Point of View of Intellectual History
NORDSCI Conference proceedings Book 1 Volume 1, 2018
At present, in the literature that are devoted on social life, it has become commonplace to claim that we live in the era of the "digital revolution". Our paper deal with computer science in the period from the late 40's to early 60's of the twentieth century, which is considered from the point of view of "intellectual history". We concern with, in the main, two problems. First is self-consciousness of members of computer science community in relation to other spheres of scientific and engineering-practical activity, including the question about the correlation of theoretical and applied components in the structure of the knowledge. Secondly, we tell about interactions of a new sphere of professional activity have been occurred in this period with various social practices-scientific, industrial, political and so on. Based on the texts that reflect the incipience of computer science in the West and in the Soviet Union, we reveal some features of the "philosophy" of the early period of the digital revolution in the context of the existence of two ideological systems.
Beyond Information Revolution: Postlude to a Past Future - Vassilis Galanos
Information Revolution is a term frequently mentioned yet roughly defined. It’s apparent as a ghostly scapegoat that haunts or justifies anything that has to do with ICT’s and new technical media. Starting by the hypothesis that the term is misconceived, this paper is a thorough analysis of Information Revolution’s different occurring degrees – daily usage of ICT’s, economic, political, environmental, and ontological aspects - and concludes with a proposed unified general definition of the term. The reason, coinciding with the aim is multifold: Understanding Information Revolution means being able to define it. Defining it means it’s almost or already over. The feeling that it’s not over means misconception. Information Revolution is treated here as a descendant of a technical and ontological revolutions chain that by changing the techniques and the ontologies have also changed the very notion of “revolution.” The observation is divided into three main chapters: (1) The term is first examined through its indicating symbols in everyday life, and particularly how it has already affected the notion of “revolution.” The new political “augmented revolutions” are highly defined by ICT’s. (2) The second part is a comparative navigation between what was before Information Revolution, how it was expected, and how it was actually realized. Here is shown how the term was – and still is to an extent – misconceived, and how this generates an amount of crucial political and environmental struggles. To treat Information Revolution as a successor and not as an opposition to industrial capitalism causes the regeneration of industrial problems – political class differentiation and pollution – through the filter of information. Information flood and partial information directedness causes an identity loss which can be cured through the development/awareness of a new ontology that treats information as information – not as capital. (3) The third part shows this inforgian ontology of entities living “in” Information Revolution, and possibly beyond it. This description, supported by and supporting the previous chapters, leads to the final concluding definition. The discussion is open, like the discussion of every past or almost gone revolution. Yet, a new “revolution” seems to be expected.
The ontological revolution: On the phenomenology of the internet
SOCRATES, 2016
Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the 'mechanization' of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize 1 , even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late '60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata 2. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the worldwide web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. Abstract Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the 'mechanization' of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize 1 , even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late '60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata 2. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of human cognition to cybernetic systems. The emergence of the worldwide web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities.
The dialogue develops arguments for and against adopting a new world system–infocomputationalist naturalism–that is poised to replace the traditional mechanistic view. We try to figure out what the info-computational paradigm would mean, in particular its pancomputationalism. We discuss steps towards developing the new generalized notion of computing that is necessary here which includes both symbolic and sub-symbolic information processing, and its relation to traditional notions. We investigate whether ...
Digital Technology as Matrix for Constructivism and Verdinglichung
2010
The pervasion of digital technology fosters also the pervasion of radical constructivistic thinking associated with systems theory and cybernetics. It is argued that this gradually changes the way objectivity in science is comprehended even in fields where constructivism does not yet play a major role. Stored data or information gains an ontological status comparable to mass and energy. The signifiers and significata thus are identified. Media art, thereby, is a driving force. It is shown by means of striking examples that the objectivisation of the subject leads to a kind of dialectic endless loop that in turn results in an absurd counteraction against the "system" of which the subject is a reified part. It is furthermore argued that this triggers society by and large into a "cosplay-society" infiltrated by paranoia and conspiratorial thinking. Human beings no longer encounter with themselves. Throughout the article, I refer to Martin Heidegger's fundamental ontology that I regard as relevant as perhaps never before. However, it is not so much the application of Heidegger's philosophy to a contemporary field but rather the other way round. Suddenly, Heidegger's extremely complex philosophy can be understood much better in the light of digital technology. I think that a hermeneutic circle can be triggered where the analysis of digital technology and Heidegger studies cross-fertilise. At least in this sense, the anti-toxic character of digital technology as a very strong pharmakon enfolds its agency.
Revisiting the Early Discourse of the Information Age and Its Interplay with Humanity
This paper examines scholars' discourses on the coming of the Information Age. It starts by discussing scholars who measured the emergence of the Information Age in the early 1960s. Machlup and Galbraith used economic indicators, followed by the exploration of network and knowledge sharing, which is a crucial process in the formation of the Information Age. Ellul (1964) paralleled humanity with technology as a "system," and Mumford (1966) coined the term "megamachine." These early arguments were pessimistic that humans were considered as inevitably confined by uncontrolled structures due to information and its byproducts-technology. However, in the 1980s, Nora and Minc considered the Information Age optimistically by introducing the concept of "Decentralization" to indicate the freedom of "choices" for modern people.