My counter arguent to this is obvious and consists of two main points.
Firstly, there is no method by which we can de-mediate our relations with things. We are mediated through and through. We are our tools and our tools are us. To think otherwise is extremely idealistic; essentialist and fundamentally dualist.
Secondly, the computer is just the latest step in the evolution of human language, and all that is subsequent to that (such as social form, culture, knowledge, etc). If we are to dispense with computers then are we to dispense with language? An interesting proposition - but also ridiculous.
I'm with Heidegger on how we should understand the relationship between humans and things. They are ontologically fluid and of one another. We cannot exist separate to our tools and media and what we do, and why, is an inescapable function of those relations - just as we are ourselves.
best
Simon
On 23 Nov 2012, at 11:19, Martin John Callanan (UCL) wrote:
> All technology must move toward the way things were before humanity
> began changing them: identification with nature in the manner of
> operation, complete mystery.
>
> Art, once so elegant, has been transformed by representation into an
> object, cluttered and confused not only by operating systems and
> applications, its once-accepted inherited discourse, but by the words
> and the theories used to prescribe its very being. These prescriptions
> are themselves shrouded in a language that, disconnected from the
> world as it is, is no longer useful. To recapture that connection, it
> is necessary to find and use a tool that will leave no traces, that,
> in other words, will allow an unmediated relationship with the thing
> in itself.
>
> The problem is more serious: we must dispense with computers
> altogether and get used to working with tools. It can be put this way
> too: find ways of using computers as though they were tools, ie, so
> that they leave no traces. That's precisely what our computers, video
> cameras, amplifiers, web-servers, projectors, cameras, mobile phones,
> etc., and even the internet, are: things to be used which don't
> necessarily determine the nature of what is done.
>
>
> On 23 November 2012 10:55, Simon Biggs <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> There's an interesting and subtle issue here.
>>
>> Martin has distinguished between a programme and the computer it can run on. However, where is the computer in this?
>
>
Simon Biggs
[log in to unmask] http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk
[log in to unmask] Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ http://www.elmcip.net/ http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/
MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices
http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php
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