Re: <nettime> Ippolita Collective: In the Facebook Aquarium (part One, #2.2)

[Florian Cramer <flrncrmr@gmail.com>]

> 'Mediatic euphoria' is never a good thing, because it is based on the
> implicit idea of technological determinism, a belief that is itself
> solidly grounded in the Enlightenment tradition.


I dare to disagree. Technological determinism, as far as represented in
late 20th century media theory and media philosophy, has been clearly
grounded in anti-enlightenment and anti-humanist traditions of thinking. In
the prominent case of Friedrich Kittler (drawing on Heidegger, whose
philosophy of technology drew on C.F. J?nger), it even could be argued that
his strand of media theory and technological determinism was first of all a
polemical construct created to voice radical opposition against
enlightenment schools of thought, Frankfurt School critical theory (whose
dialectics of enlightenment at least recognized one positive 50% in
enlightenment philosophy) and post-marxist cultural studies.

What is really at the core of the issue: whether technology is a cultural
construct for which there can be political intervention (a view that would
unite enlightenment thinkers and even those critical cultural studies
people who see the enlightenment tradition as a tool of capitalist and
Western hegemony), or whether technology is an a priori, with culture and
politics as its products, and intervention as a hopeless form of naive
humanism.

Florian


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