Brian &al:
> Try the vision thing. Nobody has it, everybody needs it, it's the rarest
thing
> on earth. I don't think that the post-2008 crisis will ever be resolved
> until some socio-political agency comes up with a vision of the future
> that is inspiring, workable and translatable into
mathematical-statistical
> terms. And what if we never get one?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king -- Erasmus (from the
Latin *_in regione caecorum rex est luscus_
(https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=in_regione_caecorum_rex_est_luscus&action=edit&redlink=1)
*)
In 1946, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell), still a stanch Socialist, wrote
an essay called "Second Thoughts on James Burnham," published in the journal
Polemic (and reprinted in the "Orwell Reader" &c). Then he sat down and
wrote "Nineteen Eighty-Four," which few have recognized as his continued
polemic against the now evident *end* of "class warfare" (much as Aldous
Huxley had written "A Brave New World" against H.G. Wells' "The Open
Conspiracy"). Orwell refused to understand what had already happened.
Burnham, in turn, like many other Socialists (but certainly not all) of
those times -- including Daniel "Post-Industrial" Bell &c -- recognized that
MASS MEDIA had ended the usefulness of "class" analysis, since the
population had shifted under *radio* conditions (as understood by Marx &al)
away
from that sort of consciousness. "Mass" had replaced "class" in how people
thought. As a result -- which Blair/Orwell fiercely resisted -- a
completely *new* sort of "capitalism" had developed and, therefore, a *new*
sort of
opposition was required.
This recognition (which some then-and-now refused to recognize) was a
result of the Rockefeller Foundation's 1935-1940 "Radio Research Project"
(RRP)
-- which was the first time that anyone had organized a sweeping effort to
try to understand the *effects* of new technology on the population.
Without that understanding, "vision" is simply not possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Research_Project
For those who are paying attention, T. Adorno was hired by the RRP to
explain the effects of music in a radio environment. He never completed that
assignment and his "exit memo" to Paul Lazarsfeld has never been published.
The only public copy resides on microfilm at Columbia University Rare
Books and I have a PDF of the photos I took off the reader, if anyone is
interested.
In 1953, the Ford Foundation (where its Program Area Five: Individual
Behavior and Human Relations had replaced the earlier Rockefeller funding)
granted $43,500 to Marshall McLuhan (an English professor) and Edmund "Ted"
Carpenter (an anthropologist, likely working with the CIA in "Area Studies")
for a project titled "Changing Patterns of Behavior and Language in the New
Media of Communications." This grant (roughly $500.000 in today's money)
produced a seminar and a journal. That journal, EXPLORATIONS: Studies in
Culture and Communications, has recently been republished and is *required*
reading for anyone today who is looking for "vision."
http://wipfandstock.com/explorations-1-8.html
McLuhan attempted to get the Ford Foundation, as well as Robert Hutchins
(first at Univ of Chicago and later at his Ford-backed Center for the Study
of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara), to fund his organizing of a
research center to address these issues. When they declined, he eventually
got the Univ of Toronto, IBM and others to back his Centre for Culture and
Technology -- which, alas, never produced any useful research, since
McLuhan largely abandoned the effort after clashing with psychologists about
his
"sensory balance" tests and, instead, opted to become a "media guru."
Along the way, McLuhan and Bell were invited to the 1969 Bilderberg
Conference, to explain May '68 in Paris. Apparently neither of them
understood
that a new "technology" was involved -- LSD. Later, Marshall became the
"Patron Saint" of WIRED magazine -- which, in turn, was founded by Stewart
Brand, the "patron saint" of LSD. Yes, Thomas Wolfe, who "discovered" McLuhan
(ending his career as a researcher), was also responsible for documenting
the *drug-based* origins of the "Californian Ideology."
https://www.amazon.com/Electric-Kool-Aid-Acid-Test/dp/031242759X
While the original Rockefeller project studied *radio*, McLuhan devoted his
life to studying the *effects* of TELEVISION -- thus "changing patterns of
behavior and language" in the *new* media of communications in the 1950s.
But that is no longer the world in which we live. We are now DIGITAL.
This means we don't *perceive* the world in same way anymore.
As a result, the earlier details no longer matter -- at the same time that
the "method" involved is more valuable than ever. The "steering function"
collapse that you describe is simply the result of what happens when one
techno-psychological environment collapses and is replaced by another one.
Indeed, as some have recognized -- while others refuse to grasp the
principles involved, clinging to their tattered "social constructionism" --
society isn't "steered" by this-or-that company or bureaucracy or institution
or
"class" but rather by the technologies we habitually use to communicate
with each other.
We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us -- John Culkin (introducing
Marshall to Fordham in an article titled "A Schoolman's Guide to McLuhan,"
1967)
In 2015, some of us established the Center for the Study of Digital Life
(CSDL), since the previous "steering functions" generated by *radio* and
*television* no longer function and the *new* one has to be understood. This
new strategic research group now has 20+ Fellows and early-stage projects
underway in Beijing, Moscow, Rome, Silicon Valley and Washington, DC.
_www.digitallife.center_ (http://www.digitallife.center/)
The initial program for the CSDL was laid out at MetaForum III in Budapest
in 1996 -- twenty years before the Center -- for the benefit of nettime,
in my keynote speech "Who Are We: What Are We Becoming?" Were some of you
were there at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts?
http://www.thing.desk.nl/meta4um3/index.html
Perhaps "vision" *is* the rarest thing on earth. Maybe that's because
some have been blinded and, as a result, it's so hard for them to see . . .
<g>
Mark Stahlman
Jersey City Heights
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