Jeffrey C. Alexander
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195160840
- eISBN:
- 9780199944156
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195160840.003.0022
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter examines the information machine in the context of cultural sociology. It argues that the theory underlying the proposition about the possibility of a purely technical rationality is not ...
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This chapter examines the information machine in the context of cultural sociology. It argues that the theory underlying the proposition about the possibility of a purely technical rationality is not correct because both human action and its environments are indelibly interpenetrated by the nonrational. It discusses socioscientific understandings of technology and suggests that far from being empirical accounts based on objective observations and interpretations, they represent simply another version of technocratic discourse itself.Less
This chapter examines the information machine in the context of cultural sociology. It argues that the theory underlying the proposition about the possibility of a purely technical rationality is not correct because both human action and its environments are indelibly interpenetrated by the nonrational. It discusses socioscientific understandings of technology and suggests that far from being empirical accounts based on objective observations and interpretations, they represent simply another version of technocratic discourse itself.
Jussi Parikka
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748638376
- eISBN:
- 9780748652662
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638376.003.0008
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter looks at the new information machines increasingly running our lives and addresses the question of coding within recent software art. It argues that the invisible and viral nature of ...
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This chapter looks at the new information machines increasingly running our lives and addresses the question of coding within recent software art. It argues that the invisible and viral nature of code exemplifies the new aesthetic paradigm where a politics of practice can only operate through experimentation geared towards the unexpected, the imperceptible. The chapter attempts to contextualise some Deleuzian notions in the practices and projects of software and net art through thinking code not only as the stratification of reality and of its molecular tendencies, but as an ethological experimentation with the order-words that execute and command.Less
This chapter looks at the new information machines increasingly running our lives and addresses the question of coding within recent software art. It argues that the invisible and viral nature of code exemplifies the new aesthetic paradigm where a politics of practice can only operate through experimentation geared towards the unexpected, the imperceptible. The chapter attempts to contextualise some Deleuzian notions in the practices and projects of software and net art through thinking code not only as the stratification of reality and of its molecular tendencies, but as an ethological experimentation with the order-words that execute and command.
