... "Now it seems that the project of science is not primarily to represent the natural world with language but to reconfigure the natural world as language, so that it can be composed, transformed, and manipulated in the ways our minds are equipped to operate upon knowledge itself.

Increasingly, an idea in one's head will map directly to a product on-screen. Just as our sexual perversions have been reduced to shorthand notations such as "shemale posers," "older spreads," and "a peeing blonde," which lead to immediate gratification, so will our other desires be expressible in tiny coded epithets, icons, and services." (Sheldon Pacotti, in SALON 2003 #)

... according to Luhmann, blogs are about the ordering of chaos through the reduction of complexity. This reduction of complexity is effectuated through communication. Some possibilities are realized, others are excluded, and, thanks to communication, the world becomes relatively predictable.

Communications produce communications, and when those can be linked to each other and structured in a relatively predictable way, societies emerge. Or persons. Or Blogs.

Society is made up of communications and nothing but communications. What is not a communication does not belong to society but to its environment. Elephants, fish and chips or cars do not belong to society.

Nor do people, that is: insofar "people" refers to more than just agents of communication. "Real People" belong to the environment. And insofar they belong to the environment, they do not communicate. Only communications communicate.

The system can only communicate about the environment within itself. It cannot communicate with the environment. If systems communicate with each other, a greater system is introduced and emerging.

(material adapted from radical philosophy)

... "in 1982 IRA GLASS, the future creator and host of the public radio program "This American Life," graduated from Brown University with a degree in semiotics. In response, his parents took out a classified ad in their local newspaper: "Corporate office seeks semiotics grad for high paying position." Glass was not discouraged. "My religion was semiotics," he recalled in a recent interview. "Before semiotics I was, like, a middle-class kid who didn't know what he believed. . .. Semiotics, basically, was exactly the way I defined myself." Hätte ich selbst sein können.

... it just smells funny -jazz". Hier 1-10 von ungefähr 1440. danke dort.

featuring: email CP/M naturopathy (> veganism) radio democracy apartheid COBOL peace film art theatre spam fishing conservatism ...

Q: How many Frank Zappa's does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None, the light bulb is not dead, it just smells funny.

(see this and other lightbulb jokes)

... entsteht ein neutraler Raum, in dem uns das Subjektive entgleitet. Ein Gegen-Raum, in dem alle Identität verloren geht, beginnend mit der Identität des Körpers, der den Schreibprozess in Gang setzt.

Es gibt im Text keine Person außerhalb des Geschriebenen. Der Autor ist allein die Instanz, die durch den Akt des Schreibens erzeugt wird, so wie ICH nichts anderes ist, als die Instanz, die durch das ICH-Sagen/Schreiben erzeugt wird.

Die Sprache kennt keine Person, nur ein linguistisches Subjekt. Dieses Subjekt ist leer bis auf den einen Sprechakt, der es überhaupt erst beschwört, aber es ist erforderlich, um der Sprache Zusammenhalt zu geben.

... sagt Barthes, so ungefähr jedenfalls. Das Ganze in normale Blog-Sprache übersetzen.

... Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs (vol. 3):
1. Underwear. 2. It's a Crime. 3. Busby Berkeley Dreams. 4. I'm Sorry I Love You. 5. Acoustic Guitar. 6. The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure ...

(from billy's blog, with linguistic links)