<nettime> nettime as idea

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

  * is it possible that 'ideas' that are now institutionalized
    are part of the problem, in that they do not lend them-
    selves to building up shared views, and instead dividing
    ideas into categories, which narrows down potentials for
    building greater knowledge/understanding thru discourse?

    (i.e. maybe the thinking/conceptualization is rather weak for
    and detached from the actual situations, and that *silence*
    may be a testament to irrelevancy/inadequacy of academic
    systems of thought to engage situations as they now exist.
    and thus this could be an indictment of, say, theory itself?)

  * years ago i proposed Nettime as if a medium, by which to
    take on the New York Times, and would add that with all
    the tech/computer skills, the Listserv model itself should be
    hacked and modified and expanded to experiment with the
    _list as a functioning idea, by which to allow discourses to
    occur beyond the original designs, such as loops in which
    offlist discussions may still live, (go on), in the archives as
    live events, even if not on list, such as tying a BBS or RSS
    comments feed in with the List, whatever dimensions could
    be woven (that deal with technology assisting the content,
    and not simply becoming the content itself, meaningless.

    this is what i do not understand about the whole situation:
    there is probably more diverse talent on this list in terms of
    culture, knowledge, geography, social awareness, technology
    and yet there seems to be difficulty in sharing a focus or what
    is actually of greater value, to the larger organism of nettime.
    -- why, with all this potential is the list itself as a mechanism
    not a shared focus by which to transform this situation and
    not be reliant on the default configurations -- or, for instance,
    why is it that the issues of philosophy cannot become a focus
    by which to figure out a way to gain a shared ground by which
    to build up relations between the various systems of thought,
    by more than linking to websites or projects, and instead get
    into these dynamics, on list and in the list as a machinery, in
    which these issues could in/form the shape of nettime itself?
    it would seem it has to do with what is seen as important and
    how it is approached: in terms of ideas, nettime itself is itself
    an idea that seems to be passed over, and is said to limit other
    ideas, yet maybe it is more complex and more simple than this.

    maybe it is that the 'project' has yet to be nettime itself, as a
    larger idea, by which to focus shared action on building up a
    better medium for the things people want to do, via listservs,
    via e-mail (including attaching small graphic/diagrams so as
    to communicate ideas, literally, inaccessible without images,
    which could and would require moderation, image server, etc).

    * maybe what is most troubling is that nettime is standing still,
    and has not evolved as a medium all that much, when there is
    all the potential for taking it on as a shared project, technical,
    cultural, social, etc. and making it into something that has yet
    to exist, and that is DiY from the networks and the ground-up.
    maybe nettime risks not surviving because it does not know
    what it is adapting to, or this is not even a question, and that
    the assumption that its content (discourse) is somehow going
    to save it may be mistaken-- that its content may be part of
    the reason it is dying: the cause of its deterioration, looking
    into the mirror of the vital lack of insight bred in Universities
    today with regard to how things are actually working, even.
    that is, the mental modeling may be insufficient, and yet the
    nettime-model does not necessarily have to rely on failures
    of ideology, for its own development. it could challenge the
    institutionalization of methods and forms of inquiry, linearism,
    all the stuff that is critiqued, and actually experiment and go
    into questioning mode of the assumptions that are propping
    up this wasteland of imagination, and bring it all back down
    to earth, by making the list real, making it relevant, based in
    common sense and peer review and checks and balances of
    ideas, as a public forum, which redefines the very questions
    that all the expertise supposedly existing, fails to account for.
    that is, relevance, realism, idealism, action, shared agendas.
    maybe it is psychological, even, a predisposition, based upon
    academic assumptions, sacred cows, in need of slaughtering.


bc

  architecture, education, electromagnetism
  http://www.mnartists.org/brian_carroll
  http://www.electronetwork.org/bc/





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