File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9810, message 158


Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 13:09:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crosby <crosby_m-AT-rocketmail.com>
Subject: Re: Zourabichvili on Myth of Collective Intelligence


Paul wrote: "could you hint at how I get audio and
video plug-ins? I know in principle that they can be
downloaded from the net. And which part of the disk
would i download them to?!!!? I can probably discover
all this at uni but.....it all takes time."

Alas, my job title is 'computer specialist', but I'm
more involved with the abstract or functional
machines that execute upon them (some that gulp data
streams from the world of production and flash back
overcoded indexes of consumption) than with the nuts
and bolts of network connection.

I rely on my employer for access to the Net and have
to huddle behind rules and firewalls. The fellow in
the next cubicle was just this morning trying to
install some software to access radio stations from
the Net but it seems our local network won't allow it
- they don't want all this audio and video streaming
across their gateways, using bandwidth and
distracting people from their work. Hopefully the
universities are more open.

So, I am very much a latecomer to DetG, very much an
amateur at this philosophy 'stuff', not even having
access to an academic library, and greatly appreciate
all these references, excerpts and translations;
thanks, Mark

Oh, if anyone IS interested, Bruno Latour's web site
is loaded with texts available online:
(see http://www.ensmp.fr/~latour/index.html )
"To Modernize or to Ecologize, that is the Question",
"On interobjectivity", "Did Ramses II Die of
Tuberculosis? On the partial existence of existing
and non-existing objects", "How to be Iconophilic in
Art, Science and Religion", "Do you believe in
reality? News from the Science War Front Line"
(préface of Pandora's Hope), "Trains of thoughts,
Formalism and the Fifth Dimension", "Stengers'
Shibboletth"  (préface Isabelle Stengers, Power and
Invention), "A dialog with Richard Powers in Honor of
HAL", "On ne peut rien contre la fatalité des faits",
are just the newer articles available.

Also, enjoyed the references to Pierre Lévy (Ron
Day's comments from last week especially).  Speaking
of flow.. (slapping my forehead) I just realized that
the Levy piece I came across on the Web back in July
(and cited a few lines from to this list) was called
"Collective Intelligence and its Objects:
Many-to-Many Communication in a Meaning World". (It
was also in English, but I didn't bookmark it and now
can't find it again!) And, of course, Lévy's book is
_Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in
Cyberspace_..

Perhaps (part of) the Myth is that these 'objects' of
Lévy's collective intelligence, like the ball in a
soccer game that Lévy mentioned (like the economic
indexes I build as a trade), are too mechanical
rather than machinic (if I'm using the terms
correctly), not really responsive in the sense of
Latour's "non-human actors", which are able to change
'on their own' in response to human and other
interactions?

Oh dear, have I just spent the entire afternoon
rereading all this Whiteheadian stuff I don't yet
understand, and many of these Latour papers that I
do?! 

"Do you believe in reality?" I think that's my
favorite (about transcendental Egos and
brains-in-vats and social filters and Postmodern
versus Non-modern ) and I've got to go now.. bye

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