Source: Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture
Quotes
→ employees are ‘empowered’ to do work, not have a job
a shift in the basis of employment from long-term positions to shorter-term projects, by the leveling of corporate hierarchies, and by the integration of activities across multiple industries
<> Work Pray Code?
e.g.: Fairchild Semiconductor
Noyce’s anti-hierarchical social style: dress codes w/o suits and ties, engineers can speak their minds to superiors
Thanks largely to the absence of such distinctions, social and professional networks extended across local institutions, industries and corporations
But: Arrogance in an interconnected system
Quotes
The center of change must be the individual, acting with other likeminded individuals. This emphasis on local action echoes the notion of the individual’s role in maintaining universal systems Brand’s response offers a glimpse of the political consequences of this point of view… No group should count on help from any other. Everyone is on his own
isn’t the assumption that the individual action and choice can effect change a privileged one? a life spent knowing that what you did matters minority groups don’t have that luxury. they must do things en masse, at scale
- belief: we are all part of a system, but the self matters
- ⇒ it’s a collapsing of distinctions, an “integration”, “collaboration”, “networking”
- but in a way that emphasises the individual node: connecting the nodes, yes, but that visual assumes that the nodes are mutually exclusive, statically bounded objects, clearly delineated (MECE)
- ⇒ no nuance. the boundaries of the self can’t be that clear?
- Bateson said that the self cannot be separated from the local environment, but that was taken to mean that they had to be connected — alternative reading: there is no point to the separation
For Barlow as for Bateson, “mind was a space” — that is, mind and material world were both systems constituted and maintained by the circulation of energy and thus were mirrors of each other
Related Ideas
At another level, though, the link between digital technology and hallucinogens reflected a shared dream of disembodiment
Counterculture: desire for shared consciousness, mysticism, LSD <> bay area hippie movement
Lenticular logic (McPherson, “US Operating Systems at Mid-Century”)
Related: Sorting things out (Bowker)