Edited by Ludger Hovestadt and Vera Buhlmann Applied Virtuality is
a book series which is edited by Ludger Hovestadt, ITA Institute of
Technology in Architecture, ETH Zurich, Switzerland and Vera
Buhlmann, Technical University Vienna, Institute for Architectural
Theory. Based on the thesis that technology changes character over
time, the series aims and scopes are to reflect that change by
describing and analyzing the most recent explorations and
innovations in technology, as well as their implications for a more
philosophically comprehensive understanding of technics in our
contemporary symbolical, information saturated, climatic
environments. The overall interest thereby is to (1) affirm the
mightiness of the generic without embracing homogeneity as a
necessary consequence, (2) to affirm calculation, computation and
automatization without embracing the reduction of human intellect
to mechanisation without arcane esprit, and (3) to oppose in
principle the contemporary attitude that tends towards a certain
"intellectual chicness" that seems to rather narcissistically
celebrate itself in a strangely detached competition for "critical
divination" of soon-to-be-expected cultural doom and decay. With
the birth of abstract/symbolic/universal algebra in the late 19th
century, many scholars associate a fundamental crisis that affects
human culture at large. We owe all of our contemporary electric and
information-based infrastructures for living to these developments
in mathematics, and it is no coincidence that we tend to find the
symptoms that point to the manifestation of this crisis in the
changes this new form of technics imposes on the people who begin
to rely on it. This crisis is classically conceived as a crisis of
intuition (Hans Hahn, Edmund Husserl et cetera). But from a more
appreciative stance towards the sheer unlikeliness and fantastic
power of intellection which is at work everywhere in the reality of
such media-ized living environments, we might just as well see in
this characterization an anxious (even if all-too understandable)
misconception of the critical developments we are experiencing.
From this stance, the sheer prominence of this misconception today
indicates what appears like a certain fatigue of thinking, perhaps
an exhaustion-through-overwhelming of our collective power to
imagine. We mean no offence by saying this. Let us illustrate more
concretely: John Orton maintains in his book Semiconductors and the
Information Revolution: Magic Crystals That Made IT Happen, that
"as a human achievement," semiconductors ought to "rank alongside
the Beethoven Symphonies, Concord, Impressionism, medieval
cathedrals and Burgundy wines and we should be equally proud of it"
(2009, p. 2). Why is it, indeed, that this demand feels odd? Of
course this lack of appreciating our current form of technics is
owed partially to its abstractness and the degree of expertise it
seems to demand from us. But has this not been the case for any of
the abovementioned artifacts we all meanwhile hold as precious and
dear? We hope to find the right dosage of irony and humor that
seems so necessary for theorizing technics, arts, intellection in a
manner that seeks to escape (1) the servile irresponsibility that
attaches to programs of mechanization, as well as (2) the
narrow-mindedness and missionary commitment that attaches to
ideological doctrine and programmatic. By celebrating moments of
intellectual quickness, with our interest in theory and
abstraction, we pursue a genuinely comparatistic approach. We
regard artifacts as theoretical objects, constituted by the
intelligible codes and symbolic grammaticality that give them
consistency. But we don't see the reality of artifacts in the white
spectrum of these codes and symbols; rather, we see their reality
in that which is enciphered thereby. The ambitions of a
comparatistic approach to theory strive towards an alphabetization
and literacy of these codes.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
