Stuart Moulthrop and Dene Grigar
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035972
- eISBN:
- 9780262339018
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035972.001.0001
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
Many pioneering works of electronic literature are now largely inaccessible because of changes in hardware, software, and platforms. The virtual disappearance of these works--created on floppy disks, ...
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Many pioneering works of electronic literature are now largely inaccessible because of changes in hardware, software, and platforms. The virtual disappearance of these works--created on floppy disks, in Apple’s defunct HyperCard, and on other early systems and platforms--not only puts important electronic literary work out of reach but also signals the fragility of most works of culture in the digital age. In response, Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop have been working to document and preserve electronic literature, work that has culminated in the Pathfinders project and its series of “Traversals”--video and audio recordings of demonstrations performed on historically appropriate platforms, with participation and commentary by the authors of the works. In Traversals, Moulthrop and Grigar mine this material to examine four influential early works: Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger (1986), John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (1993), Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) and Bill Bly’s We Descend (1997), offering “deep readings” that consider the works as both literary artifacts and computational constructs. For each work, Moulthrop and Grigar explore the interplay between the text’s material circumstances and the patterns of meaning it engages and creates, paying attention both to specificities of media and purposes of expression.Less
Many pioneering works of electronic literature are now largely inaccessible because of changes in hardware, software, and platforms. The virtual disappearance of these works--created on floppy disks, in Apple’s defunct HyperCard, and on other early systems and platforms--not only puts important electronic literary work out of reach but also signals the fragility of most works of culture in the digital age. In response, Dene Grigar and Stuart Moulthrop have been working to document and preserve electronic literature, work that has culminated in the Pathfinders project and its series of “Traversals”--video and audio recordings of demonstrations performed on historically appropriate platforms, with participation and commentary by the authors of the works. In Traversals, Moulthrop and Grigar mine this material to examine four influential early works: Judy Malloy’s Uncle Roger (1986), John McDaid’s Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse (1993), Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl (1995) and Bill Bly’s We Descend (1997), offering “deep readings” that consider the works as both literary artifacts and computational constructs. For each work, Moulthrop and Grigar explore the interplay between the text’s material circumstances and the patterns of meaning it engages and creates, paying attention both to specificities of media and purposes of expression.
Margaret Ronda
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781503603141
- eISBN:
- 9781503604896
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9781503603141.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End discusses postwar poetry as an essential archive of ecological thinking in the era of the Great Acceleration, a period of rapid and unprecedented change to ...
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Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End discusses postwar poetry as an essential archive of ecological thinking in the era of the Great Acceleration, a period of rapid and unprecedented change to various planetary systems. While North American ecocriticism has tended to focus on narrative forms in its investigations of environmental consciousness and ethics, this book highlights the forms and themes of poetry as it imaginatively engages with various aspects of ecological crisis across this period. This book examines how works by poets including Lorine Niedecker, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Ashbery, Gary Snyder, and Juliana Spahr offer representations of remainders, from obsolescent goods to waste products and toxic matter, that explore the lingering consequences of productive relations. In their attention to these material forms, these poems explore unresolvable affects and sensations of living on amidst ecological calamity. This book’s method of reading for remainders redirects attention from postwar historical frameworks that stress social progress and economic development toward an emphasis on their socioecological effects, developing an ecomaterialist approach that draws on the critical historiography of natural history developed by Lukács, Benjamin, and Adorno. This approach also provides a distinctive account of the investments of postwar American poetry. Through its figurations of materials and activities cast adrift by capitalist modernization, poetry across this period develops a powerful ethos of untimeliness. Remainders argues that this ethos reflects on poetry’s own increasingly marginal status as a cultural form.Less
Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End discusses postwar poetry as an essential archive of ecological thinking in the era of the Great Acceleration, a period of rapid and unprecedented change to various planetary systems. While North American ecocriticism has tended to focus on narrative forms in its investigations of environmental consciousness and ethics, this book highlights the forms and themes of poetry as it imaginatively engages with various aspects of ecological crisis across this period. This book examines how works by poets including Lorine Niedecker, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Ashbery, Gary Snyder, and Juliana Spahr offer representations of remainders, from obsolescent goods to waste products and toxic matter, that explore the lingering consequences of productive relations. In their attention to these material forms, these poems explore unresolvable affects and sensations of living on amidst ecological calamity. This book’s method of reading for remainders redirects attention from postwar historical frameworks that stress social progress and economic development toward an emphasis on their socioecological effects, developing an ecomaterialist approach that draws on the critical historiography of natural history developed by Lukács, Benjamin, and Adorno. This approach also provides a distinctive account of the investments of postwar American poetry. Through its figurations of materials and activities cast adrift by capitalist modernization, poetry across this period develops a powerful ethos of untimeliness. Remainders argues that this ethos reflects on poetry’s own increasingly marginal status as a cultural form.
John Darwin
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198205661
- eISBN:
- 9780191676741
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205661.003.0034
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History, British and Irish Modern History
Before 1914, although Britain encountered many Imperial setbacks, there had been no occasion for a general theory of decolonization. The historiography of Imperial decline begins with the crisis of ...
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Before 1914, although Britain encountered many Imperial setbacks, there had been no occasion for a general theory of decolonization. The historiography of Imperial decline begins with the crisis of Empire that followed the First World War. Four different definitions of decolonization, at least, can be identified in the historical literature. The end of the British Empire was part of a systemic failure, or change; and theories of British decolonization should depend for their plausibility on how far they can accommodate not merely its constitutional but also its ideological, economic, demographic, and cultural aspects. Two familiar explanations for British decolonization need to be dealt with summarily. The first has sentimental charm: the disintegration of the British Empire as a case of ‘planned obsolescence’. It is stated in this chapter that even if the international setting played a key role in the breakup of the British Empire, it could only do so in interaction with British thinking about where their international priorities lay.Less
Before 1914, although Britain encountered many Imperial setbacks, there had been no occasion for a general theory of decolonization. The historiography of Imperial decline begins with the crisis of Empire that followed the First World War. Four different definitions of decolonization, at least, can be identified in the historical literature. The end of the British Empire was part of a systemic failure, or change; and theories of British decolonization should depend for their plausibility on how far they can accommodate not merely its constitutional but also its ideological, economic, demographic, and cultural aspects. Two familiar explanations for British decolonization need to be dealt with summarily. The first has sentimental charm: the disintegration of the British Empire as a case of ‘planned obsolescence’. It is stated in this chapter that even if the international setting played a key role in the breakup of the British Empire, it could only do so in interaction with British thinking about where their international priorities lay.
Jan L. Logemann
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226660011
- eISBN:
- 9780226660295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226660295.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This short segue sketches aspects of the growing importance of commercial design for consumer marketing.
This short segue sketches aspects of the growing importance of commercial design for consumer marketing.
Richard Sturch
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198261988
- eISBN:
- 9780191682278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198261988.003.0012
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter argues in defence of traditional Christology against criticism of obsolescence. It explains the commonly known causes of obsolescence, including new discovery, a shift in ethical ideas, ...
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This chapter argues in defence of traditional Christology against criticism of obsolescence. It explains the commonly known causes of obsolescence, including new discovery, a shift in ethical ideas, and literal unintelligibility. It explains that none of these apply to traditional Christology because it is clearly not true that people have forgotten the meaning of the words used or that moral changes have affected their plausibility.Less
This chapter argues in defence of traditional Christology against criticism of obsolescence. It explains the commonly known causes of obsolescence, including new discovery, a shift in ethical ideas, and literal unintelligibility. It explains that none of these apply to traditional Christology because it is clearly not true that people have forgotten the meaning of the words used or that moral changes have affected their plausibility.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199593569
- eISBN:
- 9780191739385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593569.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Language Families
Unlike their Andean neighbours, Amazonian languages tend to have just one liquid phoneme (frequently, a flap). Some have no liquids at all. There are usually more affricates than fricatives. A ...
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Unlike their Andean neighbours, Amazonian languages tend to have just one liquid phoneme (frequently, a flap). Some have no liquids at all. There are usually more affricates than fricatives. A typical Amazonian vowel system includes a high central ɨ, something not typical for the Andes. We start with a bird’s eye view of consonants in Amazonian languages, and move on to unusual and rare sounds and sound systems. We then turn to syllable structure. Some Amazonian languages have large systems of nasal vowels; in others, nasalization, and glottalization are phonological processes. Many Amazonian languages have stress systems. Tones tend to be found in areal clusters, to the north and to the south of the River Amazon. There are very few Amazonian languages with more than just two tones. Some languages lose their tones as they become obscolescent. In Appendix, ‘How Amazonian languages compare with their neighbours’, we discuss South American languages spoken in the vicinity of Amazonia.Less
Unlike their Andean neighbours, Amazonian languages tend to have just one liquid phoneme (frequently, a flap). Some have no liquids at all. There are usually more affricates than fricatives. A typical Amazonian vowel system includes a high central ɨ, something not typical for the Andes. We start with a bird’s eye view of consonants in Amazonian languages, and move on to unusual and rare sounds and sound systems. We then turn to syllable structure. Some Amazonian languages have large systems of nasal vowels; in others, nasalization, and glottalization are phonological processes. Many Amazonian languages have stress systems. Tones tend to be found in areal clusters, to the north and to the south of the River Amazon. There are very few Amazonian languages with more than just two tones. Some languages lose their tones as they become obscolescent. In Appendix, ‘How Amazonian languages compare with their neighbours’, we discuss South American languages spoken in the vicinity of Amazonia.
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199593569
- eISBN:
- 9780191739385
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199593569.003.0013
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Language Families
Every Amazonian language has a remarkably rich lexicon, and a plethora of genres with their varied stylistic features, as befits essentially oral cultures. Shamans, with their supernatural powers, ...
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Every Amazonian language has a remarkably rich lexicon, and a plethora of genres with their varied stylistic features, as befits essentially oral cultures. Shamans, with their supernatural powers, have their own distinct way of speaking. Some relatives cannot be spoken to directly—an avoidance style is then required. Elaborate speech formulae are often used to greet, and to farewell. As the modern world with its novel realities encroaches upon the speakers, ways of saying things in Amazonian languages change and adapt. Counting and number words in Amazonian languages stand apart from what speakers of familiar Indo-European languages take for granted. Amazonian languages are relatively poor in underived number words. In many Amazonian societies counting did not used to be a cultural practice. The lexical wealth of Amazonian languages lies in the terms for flora and fauna, and the verbal lexicon. Sadly, as many languages become endangered, these terms pass into oblivion. A number of languages (especially those in the Xingu Indigenous park) have special avoidance styles. Men’s speech is different from women’s speech in Karajá, a Macro‐Jê language, and a few others. Mixed languages include a curios Carib-Arawak Pidgin (now extinct), Media Lengua, and Callahuaya, a language of itinerant healers in Bolivia. New realities of the modern world are ioften expressed through loans, and also through semantic extensions of already existing words.Less
Every Amazonian language has a remarkably rich lexicon, and a plethora of genres with their varied stylistic features, as befits essentially oral cultures. Shamans, with their supernatural powers, have their own distinct way of speaking. Some relatives cannot be spoken to directly—an avoidance style is then required. Elaborate speech formulae are often used to greet, and to farewell. As the modern world with its novel realities encroaches upon the speakers, ways of saying things in Amazonian languages change and adapt. Counting and number words in Amazonian languages stand apart from what speakers of familiar Indo-European languages take for granted. Amazonian languages are relatively poor in underived number words. In many Amazonian societies counting did not used to be a cultural practice. The lexical wealth of Amazonian languages lies in the terms for flora and fauna, and the verbal lexicon. Sadly, as many languages become endangered, these terms pass into oblivion. A number of languages (especially those in the Xingu Indigenous park) have special avoidance styles. Men’s speech is different from women’s speech in Karajá, a Macro‐Jê language, and a few others. Mixed languages include a curios Carib-Arawak Pidgin (now extinct), Media Lengua, and Callahuaya, a language of itinerant healers in Bolivia. New realities of the modern world are ioften expressed through loans, and also through semantic extensions of already existing words.
Augusta Rohrbach, Adam Heidebrink, Kellie Herson, Aaron Moe, Charlie Potter, David Tagnani, and Stacey Wittstock
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042232
- eISBN:
- 9780252050978
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042232.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Augusta Rohrbach details her collaborative work with six graduate students to build Digital Emerson: A Collective Archive. Rohrbach uses a set of theoretical and critical readings that engage ...
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Augusta Rohrbach details her collaborative work with six graduate students to build Digital Emerson: A Collective Archive. Rohrbach uses a set of theoretical and critical readings that engage students in reflections about Emerson’s conscious rupture of pedagogical barriers and how his philosophy might be realized in digital environments. Rohrbach and her students think outside argument-based rhetoric and explore the importance of visual literacy and design thinking. With these techniques, her graduate students imagine an audience beyond academia for their work, one that includes a broad community of interested readers.Less
Augusta Rohrbach details her collaborative work with six graduate students to build Digital Emerson: A Collective Archive. Rohrbach uses a set of theoretical and critical readings that engage students in reflections about Emerson’s conscious rupture of pedagogical barriers and how his philosophy might be realized in digital environments. Rohrbach and her students think outside argument-based rhetoric and explore the importance of visual literacy and design thinking. With these techniques, her graduate students imagine an audience beyond academia for their work, one that includes a broad community of interested readers.
Fernando Domínguez Rubio
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780226713922
- eISBN:
- 9780226714110
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226714110.003.0012
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter focuses on the relationship between digital technologies and art in museums. It explores the challenges that digital objects pose to museums and the kinds of institutional ...
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This chapter focuses on the relationship between digital technologies and art in museums. It explores the challenges that digital objects pose to museums and the kinds of institutional transformations that museums have undergone to accommodate them. The chapter shows how digital media are pushing museums to be organized around a different regime of objecthood, one that produces endlessly circulating, disseminating, regenerating, and distributed objects that can be simultaneously past and present, originals and copies, unique and multiple, owned and not-owned. The chapter concludes by asking whether this new digital regime of objecthood is an opportunity to create new forms of imagining, practicing and collecting art, or is simply further extending and entrenching existing logics.Less
This chapter focuses on the relationship between digital technologies and art in museums. It explores the challenges that digital objects pose to museums and the kinds of institutional transformations that museums have undergone to accommodate them. The chapter shows how digital media are pushing museums to be organized around a different regime of objecthood, one that produces endlessly circulating, disseminating, regenerating, and distributed objects that can be simultaneously past and present, originals and copies, unique and multiple, owned and not-owned. The chapter concludes by asking whether this new digital regime of objecthood is an opportunity to create new forms of imagining, practicing and collecting art, or is simply further extending and entrenching existing logics.
Stuart Moulthrop and Dene Grigar
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035972
- eISBN:
- 9780262339018
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035972.003.0001
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
This chapter explains the occasion for the book, the threatened obsolescence of key works from the first modern generation (or “Golden Age”) of digital writing. The authors attempted to preserve not ...
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This chapter explains the occasion for the book, the threatened obsolescence of key works from the first modern generation (or “Golden Age”) of digital writing. The authors attempted to preserve not just the material form of the works, but the experience of their operation or performance, recording encounters with the works on vintage equipment. Traversals represents a second stage in this process, reflecting both on insights gained in the preservation effort, but on the interventions themselves and the cultural meaning of obsolescence.Less
This chapter explains the occasion for the book, the threatened obsolescence of key works from the first modern generation (or “Golden Age”) of digital writing. The authors attempted to preserve not just the material form of the works, but the experience of their operation or performance, recording encounters with the works on vintage equipment. Traversals represents a second stage in this process, reflecting both on insights gained in the preservation effort, but on the interventions themselves and the cultural meaning of obsolescence.
Mark H. Lytle
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- October 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197568255
- eISBN:
- 9780197568286
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197568255.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In some ways, The All-Consuming Nation is an autobiography of the baby boom generation since it highlights the consumer culture and rising environmental consciousness that have been central to that ...
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In some ways, The All-Consuming Nation is an autobiography of the baby boom generation since it highlights the consumer culture and rising environmental consciousness that have been central to that generation’s lived experience. This focus should appeal to a wide audience of regular readers. Those who are sensitive to such current issues as wealth inequality, climate change, and the environmental consequences of mass consumerism will also find the book as a way to see how the United States reached its contemporary crisis points, as well as possible ways to curb current excesses. The book alternates chapters on the evolving consumer economy with chapters on environmental critiques of mass consumerism. It considers the technologies that have fueled consumption, strategies such as planned obsolescence that sustain consumption, and the shift in retailing from brick and mortar to online shopping. Environmental critics have viewed every shift in patterns of increasing consumption as ultimately unsustainable. Finally, the book should serve as text for post–World War II surveys in American history, environmental history, as well as business and marketing courses.Less
In some ways, The All-Consuming Nation is an autobiography of the baby boom generation since it highlights the consumer culture and rising environmental consciousness that have been central to that generation’s lived experience. This focus should appeal to a wide audience of regular readers. Those who are sensitive to such current issues as wealth inequality, climate change, and the environmental consequences of mass consumerism will also find the book as a way to see how the United States reached its contemporary crisis points, as well as possible ways to curb current excesses. The book alternates chapters on the evolving consumer economy with chapters on environmental critiques of mass consumerism. It considers the technologies that have fueled consumption, strategies such as planned obsolescence that sustain consumption, and the shift in retailing from brick and mortar to online shopping. Environmental critics have viewed every shift in patterns of increasing consumption as ultimately unsustainable. Finally, the book should serve as text for post–World War II surveys in American history, environmental history, as well as business and marketing courses.
Marcelo G. Kohen
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199588916
- eISBN:
- 9780191728938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588916.003.0021
- Subject:
- Law, Public International Law, Human Rights and Immigration
This chapter addresses the topics of desuetude and obsolescence of treaties. These grounds for the termination of treaties were not included in the Vienna Conventions on the Law of Treaties neither ...
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This chapter addresses the topics of desuetude and obsolescence of treaties. These grounds for the termination of treaties were not included in the Vienna Conventions on the Law of Treaties neither at the behest of the International Law Commission nor during the Vienna Conferences. It analyses whether the failure to include these grounds of termination in the Vienna Conventions is justified. It concludes that the Vienna Conventions rightly did not include desuetude, which does not find a place in international law. In contrast, obsolescence of treaties is a ground for the termination of treaties that exists outside the regime of the Vienna Conventions, and it applies when a change in the legal framework of a treaty renders whole or part of the treaty inapplicable.Less
This chapter addresses the topics of desuetude and obsolescence of treaties. These grounds for the termination of treaties were not included in the Vienna Conventions on the Law of Treaties neither at the behest of the International Law Commission nor during the Vienna Conferences. It analyses whether the failure to include these grounds of termination in the Vienna Conventions is justified. It concludes that the Vienna Conventions rightly did not include desuetude, which does not find a place in international law. In contrast, obsolescence of treaties is a ground for the termination of treaties that exists outside the regime of the Vienna Conventions, and it applies when a change in the legal framework of a treaty renders whole or part of the treaty inapplicable.
Judith H. Anderson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823228478
- eISBN:
- 9780823241125
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823228478.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
In our century, the words antique and antiquity normally have a resonance different from what they had for late sixteenth-century readers of Spenser's Faerie Queene and these words suggest not only ...
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In our century, the words antique and antiquity normally have a resonance different from what they had for late sixteenth-century readers of Spenser's Faerie Queene and these words suggest not only age but also antiquation. But the EOD cites two instances of negative meaning of these words; they say the negative sense cognates obsoleteness or obsolescence rather than age. The second negative cognate, the verb antiquate, is first noted in Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland, which is putatively written in 1596. Irenius, one of Spenser's personae, declares certain statutes of Ireland. Linguistically and perceptually this declaration is striking. Irenius' use of antiquated to mean thoroughly useless and his awareness of the effects of changing temporal contexts on legal statutes are unmistakably modern.Less
In our century, the words antique and antiquity normally have a resonance different from what they had for late sixteenth-century readers of Spenser's Faerie Queene and these words suggest not only age but also antiquation. But the EOD cites two instances of negative meaning of these words; they say the negative sense cognates obsoleteness or obsolescence rather than age. The second negative cognate, the verb antiquate, is first noted in Spenser's View of the Present State of Ireland, which is putatively written in 1596. Irenius, one of Spenser's personae, declares certain statutes of Ireland. Linguistically and perceptually this declaration is striking. Irenius' use of antiquated to mean thoroughly useless and his awareness of the effects of changing temporal contexts on legal statutes are unmistakably modern.
David Ehrenfeld
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195148527
- eISBN:
- 9780197561867
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195148527.003.0016
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Social Impact of Environmental Issues
At the end of the Cretaceous period, the last dinosaurs disappeared from the earth, setting off an evolutionary jubilee among the Milquetoast-like mammals that survived them, and preparing the ...
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At the end of the Cretaceous period, the last dinosaurs disappeared from the earth, setting off an evolutionary jubilee among the Milquetoast-like mammals that survived them, and preparing the ground for what was to become, 65 million years later, a permanent source of gainful occupation for scientists whose job it is to wonder why the dinosaurs died out. Scores of reasons have been given for this remarkable concatenation of extinctions. Global climate and sea level were changed by a city-sized asteroid striking the earth near what is now the Yucatan, or by a massive set of volcanic eruptions, or by the solar system passing through the core of a giant molecular cloud, perhaps colliding with a supercomet loosened from the Oort cluster, which orbits the Sun beyond Pluto. Theories of catastrophic extinction abound. Some of the most daring even conjure up the specter of an unseen companion star to our Sun, named Nemesis, whose eccentric orbit brings a wave of potentially deadly comet showers—and extinctions—every 26 million years. But there are also paleontologists who argue that the dinosaurs went away gradually, not suddenly, over a period of millions of years, and that toward the end they coexisted with the earliest hooved mammals, including ancestors of horses, cows, and sheep. If extinction was gradual, a different line of thought opens up: perhaps the dinosaurs died out because they couldn’t adapt and compete in a changing world. The big lummoxes were obsolete. I heard about the dinosaurs’ obsolescence back in my student days. It was as satisfying a notion then as it is today, especially if you didn’t think about it too hard. Here were these lumbering, pea-brained reptiles, barely able to walk and chew gum at the same time, while all around and underneath them, cleverly hiding behind clumps of primitive vegetation and cleverly burrowing in tunnels in the ground, were the nerdy but smart little mammals about to emerge from the shadows and begin their ascent to glory—somewhat, it occurs to me now, like Bill Gates in the waning days of heavy manufacturing.
Less
At the end of the Cretaceous period, the last dinosaurs disappeared from the earth, setting off an evolutionary jubilee among the Milquetoast-like mammals that survived them, and preparing the ground for what was to become, 65 million years later, a permanent source of gainful occupation for scientists whose job it is to wonder why the dinosaurs died out. Scores of reasons have been given for this remarkable concatenation of extinctions. Global climate and sea level were changed by a city-sized asteroid striking the earth near what is now the Yucatan, or by a massive set of volcanic eruptions, or by the solar system passing through the core of a giant molecular cloud, perhaps colliding with a supercomet loosened from the Oort cluster, which orbits the Sun beyond Pluto. Theories of catastrophic extinction abound. Some of the most daring even conjure up the specter of an unseen companion star to our Sun, named Nemesis, whose eccentric orbit brings a wave of potentially deadly comet showers—and extinctions—every 26 million years. But there are also paleontologists who argue that the dinosaurs went away gradually, not suddenly, over a period of millions of years, and that toward the end they coexisted with the earliest hooved mammals, including ancestors of horses, cows, and sheep. If extinction was gradual, a different line of thought opens up: perhaps the dinosaurs died out because they couldn’t adapt and compete in a changing world. The big lummoxes were obsolete. I heard about the dinosaurs’ obsolescence back in my student days. It was as satisfying a notion then as it is today, especially if you didn’t think about it too hard. Here were these lumbering, pea-brained reptiles, barely able to walk and chew gum at the same time, while all around and underneath them, cleverly hiding behind clumps of primitive vegetation and cleverly burrowing in tunnels in the ground, were the nerdy but smart little mammals about to emerge from the shadows and begin their ascent to glory—somewhat, it occurs to me now, like Bill Gates in the waning days of heavy manufacturing.
Sreedeep Bhattacharya
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190125561
- eISBN:
- 9780190991333
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190125561.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Psychology and Interaction, Culture
This chapter studies the afterlife of the discarded lot more closely in a metal junkyard located in Mayapuri, Delhi. It elaborates why the consumerist landscape needs to fetishize the ‘new’ and ...
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This chapter studies the afterlife of the discarded lot more closely in a metal junkyard located in Mayapuri, Delhi. It elaborates why the consumerist landscape needs to fetishize the ‘new’ and encourage compulsive discarding. It maps the trajectory of the discarded and simultaneously analyze the consumers’ changing relationship with the obsolete. It claims that junkyard is a liminal space between usefulness and the lack of it, or use and reuse, where things constantly move and change hands. It also observes how life is induced into the apparently lifeless and value is extracted from waste in ‘operation theatres of inorganic transplants’ by migrant labourers in the margins of the city. It asserts that these operations are directly in conflict with mainstream global models of consumption that rest on doctrines of ephemerality. It also argues how imposed norms on obsolescence produce more discards and reduce the demand for waste, making obsolescence intrinsic to consumer culture.Less
This chapter studies the afterlife of the discarded lot more closely in a metal junkyard located in Mayapuri, Delhi. It elaborates why the consumerist landscape needs to fetishize the ‘new’ and encourage compulsive discarding. It maps the trajectory of the discarded and simultaneously analyze the consumers’ changing relationship with the obsolete. It claims that junkyard is a liminal space between usefulness and the lack of it, or use and reuse, where things constantly move and change hands. It also observes how life is induced into the apparently lifeless and value is extracted from waste in ‘operation theatres of inorganic transplants’ by migrant labourers in the margins of the city. It asserts that these operations are directly in conflict with mainstream global models of consumption that rest on doctrines of ephemerality. It also argues how imposed norms on obsolescence produce more discards and reduce the demand for waste, making obsolescence intrinsic to consumer culture.
Sreedeep Bhattacharya
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190125561
- eISBN:
- 9780190991333
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190125561.003.0010
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Psychology and Interaction, Culture
This chapter explores an abandoned industrial site—a jute mill— and its material decadence. It argues how an industrial ruin subverts several normative modes of movement, vision, and arrangement. It ...
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This chapter explores an abandoned industrial site—a jute mill— and its material decadence. It argues how an industrial ruin subverts several normative modes of movement, vision, and arrangement. It draws attention towards how things lose their ‘material sovereignty’ as they degenerate. It makes sense of how technological shifts and restructuration of capital lead to the abandonment of productive space. It also argues that the ruining materials that are endowed with visuality of decay and the visuals that convey the transient nature of deterioration overlap each other conceptually and physically. ‘Visuality of materials’ and ‘materiality of visuals’ intersect and interact to create a unique visual and material identity of ruins.Less
This chapter explores an abandoned industrial site—a jute mill— and its material decadence. It argues how an industrial ruin subverts several normative modes of movement, vision, and arrangement. It draws attention towards how things lose their ‘material sovereignty’ as they degenerate. It makes sense of how technological shifts and restructuration of capital lead to the abandonment of productive space. It also argues that the ruining materials that are endowed with visuality of decay and the visuals that convey the transient nature of deterioration overlap each other conceptually and physically. ‘Visuality of materials’ and ‘materiality of visuals’ intersect and interact to create a unique visual and material identity of ruins.
Stuart Moulthrop
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035972
- eISBN:
- 9780262339018
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035972.003.0004
- Subject:
- Information Science, Communications
This chapter reflects on John McDaid’s author traversal of his 1993 hypermedia novel, Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a groundbreaking work not just for its comprehensive exploration of Apple’s ...
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This chapter reflects on John McDaid’s author traversal of his 1993 hypermedia novel, Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a groundbreaking work not just for its comprehensive exploration of Apple’s HyperCard authoring system, but also because of its principle of “modally appropriate” presentation, involving non-digital artifacts as well. Built around the science-fictional notion of time travel and multiverses, the Funhouse thus invites consideration of his own curious history, in which it figures as a kind of broken time machine. Comparing McDaid’s work with later, similar projects from the video game world, the chapter argues for an understanding of digital culture that moves beyond the harsh binaries of obsolescence. As McDaid says: “We win by losing.”Less
This chapter reflects on John McDaid’s author traversal of his 1993 hypermedia novel, Uncle Buddy’s Phantom Funhouse, a groundbreaking work not just for its comprehensive exploration of Apple’s HyperCard authoring system, but also because of its principle of “modally appropriate” presentation, involving non-digital artifacts as well. Built around the science-fictional notion of time travel and multiverses, the Funhouse thus invites consideration of his own curious history, in which it figures as a kind of broken time machine. Comparing McDaid’s work with later, similar projects from the video game world, the chapter argues for an understanding of digital culture that moves beyond the harsh binaries of obsolescence. As McDaid says: “We win by losing.”
Dipankar Dasgupta
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198069966
- eISBN:
- 9780199080458
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198069966.003.0007
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Macro- and Monetary Economics
This chapter considers an element of randomness in the arrival of ideas and recognizes the fact that older inventions are often made obsolete by the arrival of new ideas which makes economic growth a ...
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This chapter considers an element of randomness in the arrival of ideas and recognizes the fact that older inventions are often made obsolete by the arrival of new ideas which makes economic growth a process of economic destruction. Each new generation of idea presumably arrives with a specified increase in productivity, but the growth is exogenously unknown because the date of arrival of each idea is also unknown. This results in the replacement of a deterministic growth rate by an expected growth rate. This chapter examines the link between uncertainty and obsolescence, the role of labour input in determining the probability of success in research, drastic or non-drastic innovations, growth rate of the command economy, and a quality ladder model introduced by Grossman and Helpman.Less
This chapter considers an element of randomness in the arrival of ideas and recognizes the fact that older inventions are often made obsolete by the arrival of new ideas which makes economic growth a process of economic destruction. Each new generation of idea presumably arrives with a specified increase in productivity, but the growth is exogenously unknown because the date of arrival of each idea is also unknown. This results in the replacement of a deterministic growth rate by an expected growth rate. This chapter examines the link between uncertainty and obsolescence, the role of labour input in determining the probability of success in research, drastic or non-drastic innovations, growth rate of the command economy, and a quality ladder model introduced by Grossman and Helpman.
James Leach and Lee Wilson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780262027168
- eISBN:
- 9780262322492
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027168.003.0012
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Information Technology
This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation ...
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This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation to the design and use of ICT’s. Firstly, we note that while attention in new media studies has focussed on the use and reuse of content and meaning, the studies collected here offer a consideration of hardware and technology's potential for re-purposing, redesign, even subversion, in its uptake by different users. But for this to make positive sense, attention must be given to the different value systems, interests, and cultural worlds in which people live. We focus on the theme of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge is local knowledge, and as such, is both vulnerable to, and informative for, the designers of technologies. Imaginaries are highlighted as guiding design and use, and holding possibilities for important innovations and developments of appropriate technologies. The issue of reuse and redesign is approached through an idea of open technology, guided by actual knowledge of different ways of knowing and modes of life.Less
This chapter draws together contributions to the volume Subversion, Conversion, Development. Cross-Cultural Knowledge Encounter and the Politics of Design to make several novel arguments in relation to the design and use of ICT’s. Firstly, we note that while attention in new media studies has focussed on the use and reuse of content and meaning, the studies collected here offer a consideration of hardware and technology's potential for re-purposing, redesign, even subversion, in its uptake by different users. But for this to make positive sense, attention must be given to the different value systems, interests, and cultural worlds in which people live. We focus on the theme of knowledge, arguing that all knowledge is local knowledge, and as such, is both vulnerable to, and informative for, the designers of technologies. Imaginaries are highlighted as guiding design and use, and holding possibilities for important innovations and developments of appropriate technologies. The issue of reuse and redesign is approached through an idea of open technology, guided by actual knowledge of different ways of knowing and modes of life.
Soete Luc
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199686346
- eISBN:
- 9780191766251
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199686346.003.0006
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Innovation, Strategy
Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily ...
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Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily benefit society at large. It may also be of the “destructive creation” type, as the chapter puts it, i.e., benefitting the few at the expense of the many. Prominent cases of such “destructive” innovations may, in the financial sector, include cases allowing actors to realize large gains in the short term while invoking even greater costs for society as a whole at a later stage. In manufacturing, examples include innovations involving planned obsolescence, and innovations leading to unsustainable consumption growth and environmental degradation. All this raises an important problem for policy and scholarly work, namely how to design mechanisms – or selection environments – that prevent such socially destructive innovations from spreading while at the same time stimulating socially constructive innovations.Less
Over the years, there has been a widespread tendency in the innovation literature to make the assumption that innovation is always good. Yet as this chapter observes, innovation does not necessarily benefit society at large. It may also be of the “destructive creation” type, as the chapter puts it, i.e., benefitting the few at the expense of the many. Prominent cases of such “destructive” innovations may, in the financial sector, include cases allowing actors to realize large gains in the short term while invoking even greater costs for society as a whole at a later stage. In manufacturing, examples include innovations involving planned obsolescence, and innovations leading to unsustainable consumption growth and environmental degradation. All this raises an important problem for policy and scholarly work, namely how to design mechanisms – or selection environments – that prevent such socially destructive innovations from spreading while at the same time stimulating socially constructive innovations.
