<nettime> RE: Wolfgang Schirmacher: Cloning Humans With Media

["Steven Meinking" <meinking@earthlink.net>]

Wolfgang:

First and foremost, let me tell you how much I enjoy your contributions to
this list.  Thank you for taking the time to post here.

Regarding Lady Di, Cloning, and the Media Machines:

I found your lecture to be very astute.  However, I have a couple of
questions regarding the extent to which cloning reaches, and I am interested
in what you think of them.

While I was sad at the passing of Lady Di, I did not mourn this passing,
either personally or with the rest of the world.  In fact, I read, watched,
and heard almost nothing at all about it doing all I could to ignore the
media deluge.  Of course, I did see her images at times on television, and
saw her face on the covers of countless magazines and papers.  Yet I did not
look beyond the surfaces of these things.  You might say that I was on the
periphery of the Lady Di media blitz.  There I was in the midst of it, but
due to a lack of participation in it, was existing on the periphery, or
fringe, of its wake.  My first question then is this:  To what extent does
media cloning as a process inflict those whose being-in-the-world carries
them along the fringe?

I am a Los Angeles Lakers fanatic and never miss a game.  When I watch the
Lakers on television I can be assured of the marketing clamor that
accompanies every major sports event.  Commercial segments of these games
regularly consist of some beer and car ads that promote, in the least,
drinking and driving (a pairing that is both interesting and diabolical).  I
do not buy beer, nor do I shop for cars.  I do watch many of these
commercials, but do not directly participate in their daily consumerism.  I
bring this case up because the cloning you describe in your lecture sounds
almost entirely passive.  What about the case of the individual who actively
does not participate in one or more of the channels that stream with the
process of media cloning?  If individuals pick and choose among these media
variances, to what extent are they really cloned?  To what extent are they
the same?

I look forward to your response.

Yours,

Steven Meinking

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