Hi Naomi,
> I am leading a seminar class on mobile wireless media, and yesterday we
> read interview with Hakim Bey on the liberating/repressive aspects of
> successive mass medias.
Cool, can you send the link... dealing with Hakim Bey's always a bit
sketchy 'cause of some of the "extreme relativity of his morality" lets
say, but I still really like his poetics.
> Mobile platform seems to embody these two poles in
> a significant way. Inexpensive, pervasive, undetectable. It has been
> interesting to compare development of mobile in asian countries and its
> development in the west, or to compare between any locations where
> this is
> going on. Technical, political, social, cultural issues all differ, and
> great inventiveness in providing the infrastructure as well as in its
> application.
Right, I suppose there's probably quite a but written on this by now,
from a cultural perspective?
There are loads of conference on it like the Wireless Wolds one, I
think ti was called, down Surrey (which when I went to it 3 years ago
was like 50% Scandinavians presenting!?)
But I remember back then, there was only really the Sadie Plant thing
for Nokia that i was aware of that really did a rigorous cross cultural
ethnographic study of use patterns --I guess there was also that cool
little Mobile Cultures booklet edited by Geert Lovink too.
> It seem that many of the ideas that were being used on limited scale
> very
> recently– for example experiments in location sensing and proximity,
> social networks by artists or research groups – are being built and
> promoted on a larger scale as commercial applications.
Ah yes, the good old "capitalist axiomatic" as Deleuze liked to call
it...
> In asia with
> governmental/corp support on a mass level, versus experimental often
> limited scale in the west.
But my question for you, & for the list, would be... can we envision
the design for a system that can not, or will not be recuperated (by
large companies and goverments), 'cause, for example, it's just too
hard to control?
> Many of my students come from asian countries,
> and I hope to gain some insight into development in asian countries
> from
> their news sources.
Well, it sounds like they're getting equipped with valuable critical,
conceptual skills.
M.
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