[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> internetontology[ Diderot, Cyc, Deleuze, McLuhan, and Star Trek ]

[josh zeidner <jjzeidner@yahoo.com>]

Hello Brian,

    As a result of these messages, I have been playing
with a few ideas( much thanks to Jeffrey Fisher's
comments provided in private correspondence ).  Im
sorry if I didnt quite get so many clear ideas from
your verse.
  
    It seem that historically, projects such as these(
Cyc, as in encyclopedia ) have served to subvert the
dominant thought regime.  The most famous( and first )
encyclopedist was a French Enlightement thinker named
Diderot.  Diderot compiled the first encyclopedia,
which was eventually banned by the Catholic ministry
on the grounds that it was the work of the devil.

    Also, my friend Tim Gilmore pointed out a Star
Trek episode in which the crew comes across a planet
where the inhabitants are under the control of a
computer( and have red skin and groovy gray bouffant
hairdos ).  The inhabitants had no memory of the
computer being a machine at all and regarded it as a
god( also, the people were opressively prohibited from
loving one another ).  In the case of Cyc, I can
imagine all sorts of sci-fi scenarios where in the
future literacy is almost non-existent, knowlege is
derived from the output of machines, and contradicting
the words of the machine is punishable by death( oh
wait this isnt sci-fi, its medieval history ).  Of
course, attempting to make one particular ontology or
thought system the one and only thought system is not
at all a new phenomenon.  But I think that the level
to which this could be done with tools such as Cyc is
particlarily disturbing.  Cyc could dictate knowledge
to people who have little or no investment in the
tools of intellegence( literacy ), it would be
possible today to interface with Cyc through natural
speech( this is one of the intended profit areas for
Cyc, as well as the subject of my own professional
interest ).

  I have also been thinking about Deleuze.  Of course
the theories of Deleuze would explain of ways to
subvert or otherwise deconstruct ontologies like that
of cyc.  What people keep asking on this thread is
"what happens where there are conflicting points of
view"?  Damn, if I knew the answer to that question I
would have found the solution to a lot of things. 
What Deleuze explains in his books, is that existing
alongside the arborescent ontological structures are
RHIZOME, a connection that subverts the vertical
structure of hegemonic thought.  The rhizome's form is
that of a FIELD, rather than a vertical one present in
most of what people term "knowledge".  The rhizome
field has no real center, is without spacial
dimension.  The arborescent structures, on the other
hand, have a VANISHING POINT, a beginning from which
all signification derives.

  Now you may be asking: "Yes, but what does this have
to do with McLuhan?" ( if you really were asking that
then you get my congradulations ).  McLuhans work
dealt a lot with how our culture, or western/literate
man is highly visually oriented and tends to use
vision as his/her primary perceptual apparatus( "I see
what you mean."- this also relates to NLP if you are
familiar with the field ).  He explains this as the
primary and fundamental difference to tribal man,
whose primary mode of perception is aural( the
phonetic resemblence to Oral is one of McLuhans many
subtle revelations ).  McLuhan also had many theories
about history and the relevance of modern times.  He
says that "electric technology" is moving western man
back into aural space from his highly visual space
that he has thrived in for centuries.  Hence the
"global village"( aural perception is fundamental to
tribal/village life as mcluhan would state ).  Now,
the characteristics of visual perception as they
differ from aural perception are mainly in that visual
perception has a vanishing point, whereas aural
perception is more environmentally submersive- its
more subjective and participational.  These same
characteristics apply to "arborescence"( vanishing
point ) and the "rhizome" field( multidimensional
all-encompassing immediate sonic rythym, ect. ).  Were
Delueze and McLuhan talking about the same thing?

  Also- after reading the interview Max Hermann
posted, I retract my comment that there is nothing
good on the internet.

  -jmz


> 
>   hi Josh, interesting URL and ideas you share.
>   my language abilities are faltering, so i will
>   be abstractly brief in my observations...


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