[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Information Cannot B[audrillard, etc]

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David Teh a *crit :

> b more paranoid,
> josh zeidner
> wrote:
>
> >  keywords: CYBERPOLITICS, CONSTRUCTIVISM, BAUDRILLARD
> >  I agree with  you.  "Information" cannot be free, it is entirely on
> >  the part of the subject to put it( data/messages ) in formation.  As
> >  Ritchie pointed out, there are any number of ways at percieving reality
> >  ( constructivism ), but the proclimation "information wants to be free"
> >  is one-sided, and fails to see the whole equation.
>
> Baudrillard, sounding (incidentally) about as much like Foucault as he ever
> would, <objectivity is a plot> reminds us that "scientificity is doubtless
> only the space of " a discourse. (cf eg Foucault's Archaeology of
> Knowledge).  So science's discourse is but the "political and strategic
> speech", the veil of 'objectivity' cast over things - and it is "never
> innocent".
>
> > It seems to me that it is not "information" that people want to be
> free, but rather the data or messages.  Implying that mediation is the >
> imperative, a manifesto that has numerous critics (Baudrillard).
>
> Information does not want to be free.  Information does not want.
>
> Perhaps people do want messages to be free, but what would that mean?:
> 'free' as in Liberated  or  'free' as in You don't have to pay for it?  Is
> there a difference any longer?  To liberate information is to make it
> circulate, and things circulate best when you don't have to pay for them -
> then you can be sure that you will move units.  Information need not be
> freed, just made to circulate, redistributed.  We will watch it circulate.
> That will be enough freedom for us.  [On these matters, see Baudrillard's
> 'Symbolic Exchange and Death' (1976), particularly Ch's 1&2...]
>
> Information need only circulate.  Forget about production:
> production = regulation; consumption = regulation
>
> This circulation is what Baudrillard would call simply 'reproduction',
> which we all know no longer needs to be predicated upon some prior
> 'production' - especially now that even *we* may be reproduced by this
> same spontaneous reproduction of the code - to think we held this
> fractal capacity in every cell, right from the start! For information,
> the code, is apt to produce itself, to reproduce (by) itself.
>
> not production, just reproduction. what need have we to produce
> anything?  once we said: machines will do the work;  now: the code will
> do the work. we can sit back, and start with the real work of
> regulating, of making things circulate.  we make information circulate
> without knowing or trying.
>
> the market-research "focus group" is the exemplary form of
> '(re)production' in our age.  no surprise that it is supposedly a place
> where information is produced.  like the laboratory with its rats,
> information is thought to be emitted (or 'generated') by this
> 'research'.  even rats are free if there is a bar for them to press.
> stimulus/response : question/answer  -  a good riff on this is
> radiohead/donwood's <airbag> EP, itself lab-rat white - and who's it
> pitched at?  Baudrillard says Benjamin sensed this, but that
> reproduction is no longer mechanical. (it is "structural" - not
> 'biocybernetic', as WJTMitchell argues); and no more exchange value, for
> what would such value 'refer' to when there's no longer any
> referentiality, only tactically orchestrated differences?
>
> in the lab information is not just produced, it undergoes that (no
> longer) miraculous transmutation, mere 'data' (dumb information) becomes
> science i.e. marketable information.  and not just marketable, but
> liable to change the world. The accidental heroism of information.
> So too is science made to reproduce and circulate.  Every new mutation
> is another patent, to be named, licenced in preparation for the next
> forced mutation.
>
> the scientist's idea, of course, is silenced, made dumb again.  but science
> itself proliferates regardless [unto noise] scienctific knowledges may turn
> out to be the best model for understanding the ineffable worthlessness of
> information.  the sciences have long been bloated - "one trips over truths,
> one even treads some to death - there are too many of them" [Nietzsche in
> 1888]
>
> obscene concentrations of information will result in spontaneous
> disintegration, the spontaneous combustion of the heap.  like the demise
> of the publishing industry which, like pimps at the orgy of science, try
> greedily to hoard this intellectual 'property', the apocalypse of
> information will come not through any scarcity it tries to impose (in
> the name of value, and production), but on the contrary, through the
> over-production of information, through over-stimulation (hypertrophy) -
> grotesquely bloated, the corporations will drown in their own value, and
> that of their intellectual capital, the company bursting with its own
> cleverness.  here comes one now [a word from our sponsors, Asera of San
> Francisco <they do E-biz solutions... thanks to Matthew Fuller>]
>
> <snip>
> hey, hey!   from the starting blocks.
> hey, hey!   asera rocks!
> [verse two]
> every day we invent our way
> to our greatest goal.
> we create, never hesitate,
> always in control.
> <snip>
>
> as information --> infinty ; its value --> zero ; geek -->
> footballer/soldier
>
> [aside] incidentally, it will be the same for art as for science -
> Jarry's 'National Department Store' of official painters, who are also
> drowned in their own exchange value...
>
> focus group - cross-section - 2-dimensional sample - polling
>
> Baudrillard, quoting Sebeok's "Genetics and Semiotics":
>
> "The Soviet mathematician Liapunov demonstrated in 1963 that every
> living system transmits a small but precise quantity of energy or matter
> containing a great volume of information through channels laid down in
> advance.  This information is responsible for the subsequent control of
> large quantities of energy and matter... [I]nformation appears in large
> part to be the repetition of information..."
>
> But a train is not much good to us anywhere but on the tracks.
> Baudrillard now:
>
> "Science explains things which have been defined and formalised in
> advance and which subsequetly conform to these explanations, that's all
> that 'objectivity' is."
>
> Not exactly revolutionary for the mid-70s, of course.  And while his
> attention (in this text and elsewhere) to the burgeoning
> discourses/industries of information processing shows some pretty
> astounding foresight, what's really most remarkable about this book is
> his slick conflation, as one fertile metaphor, of  DNA  with  Binary
> Information (under the auspices of the CODE).  Baudrillard manages to
> tease out alarming similarities - not the least of which is a certain
> CONTENT-LESS-NESS - which further tie these two CODEs to the other
> vacuumed spaces of the once social: production; the polling obsession of
> 2-party democracy; illusory competition between corporations.
>
> it's especially urgent now: binarity and digitality are a plot, and are
> never innocent. like the WorldTradeCentre's twin towers, (each can only
> be referred to its special 'other' which is identical to itself...this
> enclosed referentiality is only play)
> DUOpoly is MONOpoly that has figured out how to conceal the end of
> competition.
>
> campaigns for the freedom(s) of information will ultimately disappoint.
>
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