Jussi Parikka - What is Media Archaeology? (Polity Press, Uk, May 2012)

From the Parikka's blog Machinology:

It’s out, and gradually in book stores — What is Media Archaeology? (Polity),
my new book about media archaeology (what a surprise)!

It picks up where the edited volume Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications (Huhtamo and Parikka) left off; this means the implications bit, and how media archaeology relates to other recent discussions in art, cultural and media theory: software studies, new materialism, archives, and more. In other words, it complements the earlier collection.

So in short,

1) What IS media archaeology?

- depends who you ask. If you ask Erkki Huhtamo or Siegfried Zielinski, you might get a different answer than from asking me. For Huhtamo, it is the recurring topoi/topics of media culture; for Zielinski, a poetic exploration of deep times and variantology; and so forth. For me, it is an exciting theoretical opening to think about material media cultures in a historical perspective. However, it expands into an experimental set of questioning about time, obsolescence, and alternative histories as well. In one way, it is about analyzing the conditions of existence of media cultural objects, processes and phenomena. It picks up on some strands of “German media theory”, but connects that to other debates in cultural theory too.I like what Bernhard Siegert has said about the early ethos of media archaeology being that of Nietzschean gay science — experimental, exploratory, radical. Perhaps in this vein, media archaeology is one answer to the need to think transdiscplinary questions of art, science, philosophy and technology.

2) Isn’t it just media history that tries to rebrand itself?

- No, not really. A lot of the media archaeological work expands to strong theoretical arguments as well as quite different sorts of historical inquiry than one recognizes in media historical work. Having said that, perhaps this is where the interesting connections are emerging; how media archaeology can contribute to media historical inquiry as well as to thinking about archives and cultural memory. There is one chapter on archives in this new book. A lot of media archaeology owes to earlier new cultural histories and new historicism, so the link is there.

3) Isn’t media archaeology only a footnote to Kittler’s work?

- That would be unfair towards a bunch of other theorists, German and non-German. Kittler himself denied being a media archaeologist, even if a lot of the stuff has taken much inspiration from him and the idea of looking at “conditions of existence” of cultural formations through (technical) media. Even Germany is filled with media archaeological work, since 1980s, and a lot of that expands to such new directions as Cultural Techniques (Siegert, Krajewski, Vissman, and others) as well as other media archaeologists — not least Wolfgang Ernst. In addition, the book offers an insight to other media archaeological theories, such as Huhtamo’s, Zielinski’s, new film history (Elsaesser et al) as well as the links to emerging media studies fields such as digital humanities (eg Kirschenbaum’s work).

4) Sounds like the book is all theory, huh?

There is more than just media theory — although I admit, that because of the nature of the book, was not able to work too much of new empirical material there. However, one key thing that pops up in the book is the use of media archaeology as an artistic method. There is a whole chapter dedicated to that. I think one of the most exciting directions is to see how these methodologies can be used in design, arts and other fields of creative practice that anyway are interested in themes of obsolescence, media and technological affordance, the environment and ecology, remix and for instance hardware (even analogue!).

5) What next?

- No more media archaeology for me. Well, I have jokingly promised that I won’t use the term anymore, even if I am interested in seeing where this term might take us. I will come up with a disguise, a theoretical disguise.

6) your chance to ask me a question!

- and I will answer, if I can.

Meanwhile, here is the info about the book:

(From the Publisher’s catalogue and website):

This cutting-edge text offers an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyses the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past.

Written with a steampunk attitude, What is Media Archaeology? examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities.

What is Media Archaeology? advances an innovative theoretical position while also presenting an engaging and accessible overview for students of media, film and cultural studies. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the interdisciplinary ties between art, technology and media.

And the blurbs:

‘Jussi Parikka offers a lucid, concise, and highly readable account of a new and exciting field – media archaeology. He demonstrates that contemporary media forms are rooted to the past by multiple threads – untangling them helps us understand the media frenzy that currently surrounds us.’
Erkki Huhtamo, University of California Los Angeles

‘A fabulous map of media archaeology that, as its subject compels, produces its territory anew.’
Matthew Fuller, Goldsmiths

‘The most comprehensive coverage to date of this fascinating area of study. Parikka’s book offers an excellent overview of connections between the material and social aspects of media technology. He provides a thorough review of the diverse and sometimes contrasting theoretical foundations and provides a host of concrete examples of media-archaeological practice that serve to bridge the gap between heady theoretical trajectories and the concerns of practicing artists, users and other readers who take their technology seriously.’
Paul DeMarinis, Stanford University


Read more on Parikka's blog

Ontologies of the Present: Dialectics and Genealogy from Hegel to Agamben - directed by Bram Ieven and Geertjan de Vugt @ Utrecht University (March/May 2012)

Ontologies of the Present: Dialectics and Genealogy from Hegel to Agamben
OSL Seminar directed by Bram Ieven en Geertjan de Vugt 

When Foucault famously declared Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reasonthe last book of the 19^th century the bell for the burial of Hegelian historicism was tolled. Foucault’s turn to Nietzsche and his revitalization of genealogy as critique can only be understood in opposition to the Hegelian dialectic. While the dialectic provides a method in which the singularity of thought is recuperated and placed within a larger ‘whole’ (Hegel) or process of unification (Sartre), genealogy shows us how the origin of certain modes of thinking and discourses are not recuperable within a bigger whole (Foucault) and are in fact shot through by a multiplicity that does not let itself become part of any straightforward process of unification (Deleuze).
            However, both dialectics and genealogy are ways of coming to terms with the double bind one finds oneself inevitably confronted with when dealing with the idea that concepts, ideas and critical notions relate to the historical, political and social circumstances in which they are developed. On the one hand it implies that thinking is coached in its own, singular historical conditions, affected by them and shaped through them. On the other hand it implies that thinking itself also directly reflects on history and its own historicity. The idea that thinking should reflect on its own position, the idea that his is what thinking is about, is what the modern concept of critique is all about. The dialectic and genealogy, then, are two ways in which critique can be defined.          
            This seminar is based on three pillars. Firstly participants will familiarize themselves with the dialectic (Hegel, Kojève, Sartre), it’s criticism (Nietzsche, Deleuze, Bataille), and its persistence (Jameson, Malabou). Secondly we will study genealogy as a critical method by focusing on the work of Foucault and his interpretation of Nietzsche. The development of genealogy as a (alternative) form of critique, it turns out, was conceived of as a direct criticism of Hegel and the dialectical method. Finally we will go into one of todays most prevelant reinterpretations of Foucault, namely that of Agamben’s analysis of paradigms.
            By the end of the seminar participants have a thorough understanding of the concepts vital for an understanding of (French) post-structuralist thought: dialectics and its relevance today, the stakes of a philosophy of difference, genealogical analysis and the archaeology of paradigms.

Each seminar session takes place on Friday from 2 to 5PM. For each session a special guest speaker will be invited who will be giving a one hour introduction to the theme after which we will do a close reading of the texts under scrutiny. Reading materials will be distributed in advance. Please register by sending an e-mail to: osl-fgw@uva.nl

Program:

1. Historicity and Dialectics

Friday March 16 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: t.b.a.

G.W.F. Hegel, ‘Preface: On Scientific Cognition’ in: Phenomenology of Spirit, Oxford University Press: Oxford, pp. 2-46.

Alexandre Kojève, ‘In place of an Introduction’ and ‘A Note on Eternity, Time, and the Concept’ [Selections] in: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit, New York, Basic Books, 1969, pp. 3-29, pp.

Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Critique of Critical Investigation’ in: Critique of Dialectical Reason, London: Verso, 1991, online:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/critic/praxis.htm

2. The Eternal Recurrence and the Critique of Dialectics

Friday March 30 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: Rudi Visker

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 1-68. 

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, London, Continuum, 1986, pp. 87-88, 156-164, 194-198. 

Michel Foucault, 'Nietzsche, genealogy, history', in: Language, Counter-Memory, Presence, Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 1977, pp. 139-165.
Michel Foucault, 'The Discourse on Language’, in: The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York,

Pantheon Books, 1972, pp. 215-239.

3. The Return of the Dialectic?

Friday 13 April 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: Marc de Kesel

Fredric Jameson, ‘Hegel’s contemporary critics’, in: Valences of the Dialectic, London, Verso, pp. 103- 122.

Catharine Malabou, ‘Whose afraid of Hegelian wolves?’ in: Deleuze: A Critical Reader, P. Patton ed., 114-138.

Judith Butler, ‘Foucault: dialectics unmoored’ in: Subjects of Desire: Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth Century France, New York, Columbia University Press, 1999,

Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, ‘Nietzschean critique and the Hegelian commodity, or the French have landed’, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 26, nr. 6, pp. 70-84.

4. Genealogy from Nietzsche to Foucault

Friday April 27 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: Sjoerd van Tuinen

Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life’ in: Untimely Meditations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 57-87, 100-107.

Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘341. The Heaviest Weight’ in: The Gay Science, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 164-165.

Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘The Convalescent’ in: Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 173-181.

George Bataille, ‘Mr. Nietzsche’ and ‘Nothingness, Transcendence, Immanence’, in On Nietzsche, London, Continuum, pp. 1-12, 177-178.

Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, London, Continuum, 1986, pp. 25-31, 47-49, 68-72. 

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994, pp. 53-58.

Pierre Klossowski, ‘The Experience of the Eternal Return’ in: Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle, London, Continuum, 2005, pp. 43-57.

5. From Foucault to Agamben
Friday 11 May 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: t.b.a.
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York, Pantheon Books, 1972, pp. 135- 199.
Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, New York, Zone Books, 1999, pp. 138-146.
Giorgio Agamben, ‘Philosophical Archaeology’, in: The Signature of All Things, New York, Zone Books,
2009, pp. 81-113.
Giorgio Agamben, ‘What is the Contemporary?’, in: Nudities, Stanford, Stanford University Press,
2011, pp. 10-20.
Giorgio Agamben, The Sacrament of Language, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2011, pp. 8-11.

6. Agamben’s Genealogy of the Present: Homo Sacer
Friday 25 May 2012, 14:00-17:00, PC Hoofthuis 6.25 (Spuistraat 134) CHAIR: Sonja Lavaert

Giorgio Agamben, ‘What is an Apparatus?’ in: What is an Apparatus?, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 1-24.
Giorgio Agamben, ‘What is a Paradigm?’ in: The Signature of All Things, New York, Zone Books, 2009, pp. 1-24
Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998, p.1-15, 119-189 

 Read more on OSL website

Michael Sheringham: "Archival Memory: Foucault and After" @ Alma Mater Studiorum-Università di Bologna, 24 maggio 2012

La memoria nelle Scienze Umane - Michael Sheringham discute di 

"Archival Memory: Foucault and After"

24 maggio 2012Luogo: Sala Rossa - Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici
Via Marsala, 26
Bologna 

Dalle 16 alle 19 presso la Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici dell'Università di Bologna (via Marsala, 26), Michael Sheringham (All Souls College-University of Oxford) terrà un seminario intitolato "Archival Memory: Foucault and After"

Read more on Alma Mater website

Mile Gu et alii - How quantum physics could make 'The Matrix' more efficient @ Nature + Communications - Published 27 March 2012

Quantum simulations need to store less information to predict the future than do classical simulations. The finding applies to phenomena described by stochastic processes. Credit: Mile Gu / Center for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore


Researchers have discovered a new way in which computers based on quantum physics could beat the performance of classical computers. The work, by researchers based in Singapore and the UK, implies that a Matrix-like simulation of reality would require less memory on a quantum computer than on a classical computer. It also hints at a way to investigate whether a deeper theory lies beneath quantum theory. The finding is published 27 March in Nature Communications.

The finding emerges from fundamental consideration of how much information is needed to predict the future. Mile Gu, Elisabeth Rieper and Vlatko Vedral at the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National Univesity of Singapore, with Karoline Wiesner from the University of Bristol, UK, considered the simulation of "stochastic" processes, where there are several possible outcomes to a given procedure, each occurring with a calculable probability. Many phenomena, from stock market movements to the diffusion of gases, can be modelled as stochastic processes.

The details of how to simulate such processes have long occupied researchers. The minimum amount of information required to simulate a given stochastic process is a significant topic of study in the field of complexity theory, where it is known in scientific literature as statistical complexity.

Researchers know how to calculate the amount of information transferred inherently in any stochastic process. Theoretically, this sets the lowest amount of information needed to simulate the process. In reality, however, classical simulations of stochastic processes require more storage than this.

Gu, Wiesner, Rieper and Vedral, who is also affiliated with the University of Oxford, UK, showed that quantum simulators need to store less information than the optimal classical simulators. That is because quantum simulations can encode information about the probabilities in a "superposition", where onequantum bit of information can represent more than one classical bit.

What surprised the researchers is that the quantum simulations are still not as efficient as they could be: they still have to store more information than the process would seem to need.

That suggests quantum theory might not yet be optimized. "What's fascinating to us is that there is still a gap. It makes you think, maybe here's a way of thinking about a theory beyond quantum physics," says Vedral.

More information: For further details, see "Quantum mechanics can reduce the complexity of classical models" Nature Communications, 3, 762 (2012).http://www.nature. … mms1761.html

"Mathematical models are an essential component of quantitative science. They generate predictions about the future, based on information available in the present. In the spirit of simpler is better; should two models make identical predictions, the one that requires less input is preferred. Yet, for almost all stochastic processes, even the provably optimal classical models waste information. The amount of input information they demand exceeds the amount of predictive information they output. Here we show how to systematically construct quantum models that break this classical bound, and that the system of minimal entropy that simulates such processes must necessarily feature quantum dynamics. This indicates that many observed phenomena could be significantly simpler than classically possible should quantum effects be involved. (...)"

Media Archaeology Approaches, Applications, and Implications - Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka (editors) - California University Press, Usa, 2011

This book introduces an archaeological approach to the study of media - one that sifts through the evidence to learn how media were written about, used, designed, preserved, and sometimes discarded. Edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, with contributions from internationally prominent scholars from Europe, North America, and Japan, the essays help us understand how the media that predate today’s interactive, digital forms were in their time contested, adopted and embedded in the everyday. Providing a broad overview of the many historical and theoretical facets of Media Archaeology as an emerging field, the book encourages discussion by presenting a full range of different voices. By revisiting ‘old’ or even ‘dead’ media, it provides a richer horizon for understanding ‘new’ media in their complex and often contradictory roles in contemporary society and culture.


1. Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology
Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka

Part I: Engines of/in the Imaginary
2. Dismantling the Fairy Engine: Media Archaeology as Topos Study
Erkki Huhtamo

3. On the Archaeology of Imaginary Media
Eric Kluitenberg

4. On the Origins of the Origins of the Influencing Machine
Jeffrey Sconce

5. Freud and the Technical Media: The Enduring Magic of the Wunderblock
Thomas Elsaesser

Part II: (Inter)facing Media
6. The “Baby Talkie,” Domestic Media, and the Japanese Modern
Machiko Kusahara

7. The Observer’s Dilemma: To Touch or Not to Touch
Wanda Strauven

8. The Game Player’s Duty: The User as the Gestalt of the Ports
Claus Pias

9. The Enduring Ephemeral, or The Future Is a Memory
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Part III: Between Analogue and Digital
10. Erased Dots and Rotten Dashes, or How to Wire Your Head for a Preservation
Paul DeMarinis

11. Media Archaeography: Method and Machine versus History and Narrative of Media
Wolfgang Ernst

12. Mapping Noise: Techniques and Tactics of Irregularities, Interception, and Disturbance
Jussi Parikka

13. Objects of Our Affection: How Object Orientation Made Computers a Medium
Casey Alt

14. Digital Media Archaeology: Interpreting Computational Processes
Noah Wardrip-Fruin

15. Afterword: Media Archaeology and Re-presencing the Past
Vivian Sobchack


Erkki Huhtamo is Professor of Design | Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles. Jussi Parikka is Reader at Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton, UK) and the author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses and Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology.


Read more on CUP website

Reviews:
“Huhtamo and Parikka, from the first and second generations of media archaeology, have brought together the best writings from almost all of the best authors in the field. Whether we speak of cultural materialism, media art history, new historicism or software studies, the essays compiled here provide not only an anthology of innovative historical case studies, but also a methodology for the future of media studies as material and historical analysis. Media Archaeology is destined to be a key handbook for a new generation of media scholars.”
—Sean Cubitt, author of The Cinema Effect


"Taken together, this excellent collection of essays by a wide range of scholars and practitioners demonstrates how the emerging field of media archaeology not only excavates the ways in which newer media work to remediate earlier forms and practices but also sketches out how older media help to premediate new ones."
—Richard Grusin, author of Premediation: Affect and Mediality after 9/11 


“In Media Archaeology, a constellation of interdisciplinary writers explore society’s relationship with the technological imaginary through history, with fascinating essays on influencing machines, Freud as media theorist, interactive games from the 19th century to the present day, just to name a few. As an artist, my mind is set on fire by discussions of the marvelous inventions that never made it to the mainstream, such as optophonic poetry, Christopher Strachey’s 1952 ‘Love letter generator’ for the Manchester Mark II computer, and the ‘Baby talkie.’”
—Zoe Beloff, artist and editor of The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and Its Circle


"A long-awaited synthesis addressing media archaeology in all of its epistemological complexity. With wide-ranging intellectual breath and creative insight, Huhtamo and Parikka bring together an eminent array of international scholars in film and media studies, literary criticism, and history of science in the spirit of making the discourse of the humanities legible to artist-intellectuals. This foundational volume enables a sophisticated understanding of reproducible audiovisual media culture as apparatus, historical form, and avant-garde space of play." 
—Peter J. Bloom, author of French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism


"An essential read for everyone interested in the histories of media and art."
—Oliver Grau, author of MediaArtHistories


"Media archaeology is a wonderful new shadow field. If you are willing to step outside the glow of new media, this book's approaches can shift how you experience the objects and experiences that fill the new everyday of contemporary life. No one captures the beauty of studying new media in the shadow of older media implements and practices better than Erkki Huhtamo, the Finnish writer, curator, and scholar of media technology and design famous for his creative work as a preservationist and an interpreter of pre-cinematic technologies of visual display. He has teamed up here with Jussi Parikka, the Finnish scholar who has brought us an insect theory of media, to give us this long-awaited collection of essays in media archaeology. The surprise of the book is that the essays collectively bring forward a range of approaches to considering archaeological practice, giving us new ways to think about our embodied and subjective orientations to technologies and objects through the lens of the material remnants of practice, rather than offering a narrow definition of the field. The collection moves between computational machines and influencing machines, preservation and imagination, offering a range of ways to live the new everyday of media experience through the imaginary of archaeology."
—Lisa Cartwright, co-author of Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture


“Where McLuhan’s Understanding Media ends, Media Archaeology actually begins. Refusing the often futile search for the eternal laws of media, Media Archaeology does something more difficult and rare. It literally brings the history of media alive by drawing into presence the enigmatic, heterogeneous, unruly past of the media—its artifacts, machines, imaginaries, tactics, and games. What results is a fabulous cabinet of (media) memories: the imaginary moving with kinetic frenzy, histories of what happens when media collide in the electronic space of the virtual, and stories about those strange interstitial spaces between analogue and digital.” 
—Arthur Kroker, author of The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism


“Rupturing the continuities and established values of traditional media history, this exciting and thought-provoking collection makes a significant contribution to our understanding of media culture, and demonstrates that the presence of the past in present-day media is central to the recognition and re-cognition that media archaeology promotes.”
—John Fullerton, editor of Screen Culture: History and Textuality


“Here, at last, is a collection of essays that are a critical step to comprehending the history of our impulse to see ourselves in the machines we have made. This could be the beginning of 'Archaeology of Intention.'"
—Bernie Lubell, artist


“Huhtamo and Parikka’s expertly curated collection is a kaleidoscopic tour of media archaeology, giving us forceful evidence of that unruly domain’s vitality while preserving its wonderful unpredictability. With this essential volume, countless new paths have been opened up for media and cultural historians."
—Charles R. Acland, author of Screen Traffic


“This brilliant collection of essays provides much needed material and historical grounding for our understanding of new media. At the same time, it animates that ground by recognizing the integral roles that imagination, embodiment, and even productive disturbance play in media historiography. Yet these essays constitute more than a collection of historical case studies; together, they transform the book’s subject into its overall method. Media Archaeology performs media archaeology. Huhtamo and Parikka excavate the intellectual traditions and map the epistemological terrain of media archaeology itself, demonstrating that the field is ripe with possibilities not only for further historical examination, but also for imagining exciting new scholarly and creative futures.” 
—Shannon Mattern, The New School

Molti numeri, grande scienza - Gabriele Beccaria @ La Stampa 14 marzo 2012

Nascono giganteschi depositi di informazioni gestiti dai supercomputer: "là nasce un nuovo modo di fare ricerca".

L'era del "Big data" cambia tutti i saperi, dalla fisica al giornalismo.

Intrufolatosi dal camino, il lupo è stato bollito vivo, ma dalle indagini emerge che i tre porcellini non siano i bravi ragazzi che qualcuno si ostina a difendere. Un video rivela che il lupo soffrisse d’asma e c’è chi pensa che i tre abbiano inscenato una rapina inesistente. Il processo cercherà di fare luce e gli interrogativi sui social networks dilagano come un incendio: dove finisce il diritto di difendere con armi abbiette la propria casa, già virtualmente assediata da mutui insostenibili? Mentre i porcellini, ammanettati, sono trascinati in aula, scoppiano i disordini di strada. La rabbia contro le banche degenera in violenza e gli articoli su carta e su iPad si susseguono, costruendo una storia dal finale aperto.

Su Youtube questo spot pubblicitario è un evento: lo slogan con cui si chiude è «The whole picture» - la realtà intera - ed è così che il quotidiano inglese «The Guardian» si autopromuove, divertendosi a riraccontare la celebre fiaba. Immersa nel XXI secolo, eccola finire sotto i riflettori stravolta dalla molteplicità delle fonti e dalla varietà delle interpretazioni. Una sequenza cangiante - ma lo spot non lo dice - eccitata da un fenomeno noto come «Big Data» e che si può riassumere come la «neo-scienza di grandi numeri».

Sebbene non abbia ancora colonizzato l’immaginazione collettiva, questa scienza emergente è così aggressiva da cambiare tutto e, infatti, lo tusnami sommerge perfino una roccaforte degli allergici ai numeri come il giornalismo. Proprio «The Guardian» è uno dei primi media a buttarsi nel labirinto del «data journalism»: un gruppo di reporters è stato incaricato di confezionare scoops esplorando la mole inarrestabile di dati elaborata da centri studi, corporations, governi, organismi finanziari ed entità internettinane, a cominciare dai social networks. Che si tratti di Wikileaks e la guerra segreta in Afghanistan o degli scenari sulla povertà in Occidente queste valanghe di saperi richiedono una mente versatile: stile da inviati, ragionamento da analisti. Altrimenti non c’è modo di maneggiare i codici con cui decifrare un universo di informazioni compresse in formule e schemi, fino a far sbocciare scoperte che, contaminandosi, generano ulteriori possibilità.

Lo sanno bene gli scienziati: se le esigenze retoriche possono riposare in stand-by, la sfida intellettuale si concentra sui dati, un caos da manipolare senza sosta, seguendo singole ipotesi e progetti grandiosi. «Viviamo una rivoluzione - ha sentenziato Gary King, direttore dell’Institute for quantitative social science di Harvard -. Si comincia adesso, ma la marcia della quantificazione si diffonderà attraverso l’accademia, il business e i governi. Non c’è area che non sarà toccata». Tra gli esempi, si citano la «Global biodiversity information facility», un deposito grezzo di info sulla vita terrestre, dai batteri a interi habitat, la «ProteomeCommons», che custodisce 13 milioni di files sulle proteine, lo «Sloan Digital Sky Survey» con oltre 230 milioni di oggetti stellari e galattici e l’«International nucleotide sequence database collaboration», esteso su 250 miliardi di dati genetici. Senza dimenticare l’esperimento più ambizioso mai tentato, quello al Cern di Ginevra sull’origine dell’Universo, che si prepara a macinare 15 petabytes di conoscenza ogni 12 mesi (una gestione da 150 milioni di euro).

«Big data» attinge a miniere che fino a poco tempo fa non esistevano e si organizza con il marchio di «scienza della complessità»: schizza oltre le singole parti (atomi, geni, individui, stelle) e, sfruttando i poteri dei supercomputers, si inerpica nel continente inesplorato delle proprietà emergenti, vale a dire i fenomeni che si generano dalle interazioni degli elementi-base, ma che allo stesso tempo li trascendono, con risultati non prevedibili. E’ come dire che da un Dna quasi identico si ottengono sia Obama sia Romney, ma anche un banchiere di Manhattan e un militante di «Occupy Wall Street». Oppure, a voler essere più sofisticati, significa che l’obiettivo della scienza esplode e muta di status. Ai tempi di Darwin era costruire teorie, spiegate dai fatti. Oggi, nell’epoca dei gruppi multidisciplinari, si accumulano database e si macinano simulazioni per osservare ciò che si materializza. Ma non è detto che l’epifania si manifesti e si approdi al momento della sintesi. Ciò che si intravede può essere solo una strada accanto a molte altre e quindi la rincorsa riparte subito. E’ la complessità, appunto. Così multiforme da non entrare in nessuno dei cassetti delle classificazioni tradizionali.

Da oggetto solido la conoscenza, di metamorfosi in metamorfosi, è ora una dimensione liquida, in cui spostarsi lungo rotte multiple e immergersi a varie profondità. «Il problema è che questa informazione è inutile, se non si hanno i mezzi per navigarla», spiega il fisico Ciro Cattuto, vicedirettore scientifico dell’Isi Foundation di Torino, uno dei centri che hanno fatto della complessità la propria bussola. E così ha sperimentato un metodo per tuffarsi in Twitter e strappargli segreti altrimenti inespugnabili: servirà anche per i reporters di oggi e gli storici di domani.

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Jussi Parikka - Insect Media An Archaeology of Animals and Technology - University of Minnesota Press, Usa, 2010

Since the early nineteenth century, when entomologists first popularized the unique biological and behavioral characteristics of insects, technological innovators and theorists have proposed insects as templates for a wide range of technologies. In Insect Media, Jussi Parikka analyzes how insect forms of social organization—swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence—have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society, providing a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology.

Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, including Jakob von Uexküll and Karl von Frisch, posthumanist philosophers,media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Parikka develops aninsect theory of media, one that conceptualizes modern media as more than the products of individual human actors, social interests, or technological determinants. They are, rather, profoundly nonhuman phenomena that both draw on and mimic the alien lifeworlds of insects.

Deftly moving from the life sciences to digital technology, from popular culture to avant-garde art and architecture, and from philosophy to cybernetics and game theory, Parikka provides innovative conceptual tools for exploring the phenomena of network society and culture. Challenging anthropocentric approaches to contemporary science and culture, Insect Media reveals the possibilities that insects and other nonhuman animals offer for rethinking media, the conflation of biology and technology, and our understanding of, and interaction with, contemporary digital culture.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Insects in the Age of Technology
1. Nineteenth-Century Insect Technics: The Uncanny Affects of Insects
2. Genesis of Form: Insect Architecture and Swarms
3. Technics of Nature and Temporality: Von Uexküll’s Ethology
4. Metamorphosis, Intensity, and Devouring Space: Elements for an InsectGame Theory

Intermezzo

5. Animal Ensembles, Robotic Affects: Bees, Milieus, and Individuation
6. Biomorphs and Boids: Swarming Algorithms
7. Sexual Selection in the BioDigital: Teknolust and the Weird Life of SRAs
Epilogue: Insect Media as an Art of Transmutation

Uncovering the insect logic that informs contemporary mediatechnologies and the network society

Insect Media analyzes how insect forms of social organization—swarms, hives, webs, and distributed intelligence—have been used to structure modern media technologies and the network society. Through close engagement with the pioneering work of insect ethologists, posthumanist philosophers, media theorists, and contemporary filmmakers and artists, Jussi Parikka provides a radical new perspective on the interconnection of biology and technology.

With Insect Media, Jussi Parikka offers a theory of media that challenges our traditional views of the natural and the artificial.Parikka not only understands insects through the lens of media and mediation, he also unearths an insect logic at the heart of our contemporary fascination with networks, swarming, and intelligent agents. Such a project requires the ability to interweave cultural theory with a deep understanding of the sciences—something for whichParikka is well-suited. Most importantly, Insect Media reminds us of the non-human aspect of media, communication, intelligence. Insect Media is a book that is sure to create a buzz.

—

Eugene Thacker, author of After Life


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