A long article has been making the rounds, which at first catches the eye because of the copious (if mis-directed) use of a great many technospheric buzz words, popular smart phone app titles, and a splattering of post-modern philosophy, but then when unpacked devolves into all-too-typical post-Baudrillard simulacrap. BUT, just because it is misdirected, doesn’t mean that we can’t learn something from it, and take this opportunity to redirect. The author of the above has a problem with a particular sort of digital photo. It is a sort of digital photo that somehow violates the glorious rules of reality, by mimicking something from a time that it is not. Time has come unstuck, and not in a good way. A bad, fake, inauthentic, faux-vintage way. It might sound similar to another buzz word: “atemporality”. The author of the above link didn’t use the word atemporality. But, the words he used are responsible for directly the sort of miscommunication that obscures what atemporality is, and…

I’ve read several reports of the celebrations that spontaneously occurred after the announcement last night. (One, Two, Three, Four,Five) And while I respect the effort that goes into writing about something that is not easy to write about, I must say I’ve been disappointed by all of them. It is far too easy in the face of a tough situation, to remark upon the fact that it is a tough situation, and withdraw with that as lackluster synthesis. “There’s a lot going on here.” The five essays I cited above say more than that, but in the end it boils down to this: calling a crowd a crowd. I’m not writing this with the intention of saying that a crowd is not a crowd, or that the death of a particular person is politically/historically/culturally/emotionally relevant in a way that everyone has missed, and that I will grace you with that revelation. I’m writing to say that from the perspective of the human species, to throw up one’s hands and murmur something about the wisdom of crowds is…

With the news that Friendster is deleting old profiles as part of a reboot, I’ve decided to write a piece that I’ve been thinking about writing for about two years. Friendster is one of those old social networking sites of the first wave, like Live Journal, Myspace, and others, where many of the tech-elite cut their teeth by posting embarrassing photos and basically conducting the passive-aggressive life of a post-teenager via the “web”. Pre-Facebook stuff. Dinosaur, ancient stuff. The stuff of Onion spoofs. When you say “social networking”, and then look at this stuff, it is kind of like walking down the jetway to find Leonardo Da Vinci’s paper spiral helicopter thingy with a Jet Blue logo on it waiting for boarding. But I never joined one of these sites, and so I can’t share in the nostalgia. I did learn my Internet chops on an early social network, but it one you’ve never heard about. Let me introduce you to Plans. I went to a small, Midwestern liberal arts college called…

We’ve told the story before, and we’ll tell it again. More than a quarter of a million people have marched through central London to deliver a powerful message about the government’s cuts in public spending. The generally good-natured mood was soured by violent and destructive attacks on symbols of wealth including the Ritz, banks and a luxury car dealer; and an occupation of the upmarket food store Fortnum and Mason. [...] Last night police appealed to people not involved in the disorder to leave Trafalgar Square as they came under increased bombardment from a group of protesters who said they planned to stay there all night. The protesters were throwing items such as coins and water bottles. Scotland Yard said that light bulbs filled with ammonia had also been thrown at officers earlier. But Commander Bob Broadhurst, the Scotland Yard officer in charge of policing the protests, said the TUC had done an excellent job in ensuring that the march was “very professional, very well…

It irritates me when people say something along the lines of, “Unions in America are good in principle, but…” The “but” is followed by some sort of criticism about how the institutions of unions are corrupt, or inefficient, or outdated, or not applicable to all industries. This is then followed by most often by an anecdote about a cousin’s friend’s father in New York who was a union member who was really lazy and overpaid and was then cheated out of his inheritance by his union that was supposed to protect him. Or something of the kind. It irritates me because people who say this are wrong. People who espouse this sort of caveat are hurting us–all of us. They are tools of our society’s downfall, whether they wish to be or not, and every time they open their mouths to rehash this sort of argument, they should be shouted down and told to shut up. I’m going to tell you why. My argument is not about the 40 hour workweek, or about the weekends, or anything else you might see on a…

This post is one of the 50 Posts About Cyborgs, curated by Tim Maly. The series commemorates the 50th anniversary of the coining of the term, “cyborg”, with 50 unique instances of current thoughts and ideas about cyborgs, which are, it would seem to be proven, alive and well. I’m proud that POSZU could feature among them. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” Theses on Feuerbach, XI * * * * * A cyborg is haunting the torrent networks of Europe, queuing files and running checksums. The saved files are in ebook format, and she syncs them to her handheld screen device. Meanwhile, she finishes a phone call, stands up from her desk, unplugs her device and put it in her bag. She shoulders the load and leaves to catch the train home. There, after eating, she will open her device, and begin to read. Over mornings of mundane meetings, afternoons of spreadsheets, and finally, these evenings of critique, a pattern is…

I’m going to go ahead and lay my anti-thesis bare: The Terminator IS a cyborg. The anti-thesis is a counter to this thesis, one of the excellent offerings over at 50 Posts about Cyborgs. (If you don’t know, then go.) Now, I am not the major Terminator fan that is nailing his ass to the wall. Well, at least not exactly. You see, I am not a fan of the Terminator, that is to say the T-800: not even as an anti-hero. What I am a fan of, is the film, The Terminator. And this is the ambiguous technicality on which I will make my case. Not the technicality that Jonah Campbell mentions in his footnote–that in fact, yes, there is dialog in the film explicitly referring to the T-800 as a cyborg. I am referring to the film itself–the film, The Terminator, is a cyborg. This is the ambiguous part. Because, a film is not a cyborg any more than the character of the T-800 is a cyborg. In the same way that the T-800 is not so much a classic cyborg as it is a special effect, a movie melange of…

If I may, a bit of military-industrial-punk. Military-industrial-punk? Why yes. Why would I link the military-industrial complex–the domain of imperialism, violence, multinational corporations, pork barrel spending, secrecy, and often world-threatening technology–to punk: the realm of anti-authoritarianism, anarchy, DIY culture, and a shoddy, tattooed knuckle-grip onto material possesions at best? Well, because the world is filled with problems. Some problems are small, like how to have fun when all the music on the radio is catatonia-inducing commercial crap and all the kids in your school think athletic prowess is the only personal trait worth celebrating. Other problems are relatively big, like how to figure out what your opposing superpower is up to when their terrain spans a continent bristling with fighter aircraft and surface-to-air missiles, and they have just gotten the Bomb. Problems are relative of course, but what is not relative to the problems is their solution. A…

Here’s the passenger list: Hurcho Canino was seated at the front of his flock, next to the co-head of the church, Betty March. Canino was formerly in M&A. His long life of flying perhaps pre-disposed him to be the pastor of the church, but to his followers he was certainly embued with the word, and his oratory skill, not to mention his oracular abilities, came straight from heaven. Ms. March had formerly been in ad sales management, and it was her skill with books, and certainly, with a sort of evangelical sales process that led her to be Canino’s organizational partner as well as spiritual partner, and of course, sexual. Across the aisle sat Mrs. and Mr. Davis Wright, who had sold all their property and donated the money to the church. In their late 60s, both of them were in poor health, and sort of looked on the church as a surrogate for the “lifestyle centers” into which many of their generation were transitioning. They were certainly taken care of by the congregation, and…

Dear 1959 (or thereabouts), Somewhere across the limited expanse of your body, the poet Jack Spicer was mailing and receiving letters with James Alexander. He thought of them as poetry. Maybe Alexander was a lover; maybe the poems were published during his lifetime, or perhaps not. I would be someone knows the answers to these questions—someone still alive. Or it even could be written down some place. To my edition of The Collected Work of Jack Spicer there is a lengthy introduction. Maybe it says there, but I read the introduction several weeks ago, and I cannot remember now. But I read letter #5 in this edition just now—what do you mean, what “just now”? When? Just now. I don’t understand your question. But this is some of what it said, if I may reproduce it here for you: It is not the monotony of nature but the poems beyond nature that call to each other above the poets’ heads. The heads of poets being a part of nature. It is not for us to make the lines of nature precise.…