Poetics of the Technium
Podcast:
In Kevin Kelly’s subchapter on “Freedom” (307-11), it’s a bit hard to keep track of just who or what in the technium is responsible for making choices, making mistakes, and innovating. Drawing on Brooke’s discussion of White’s kaironomia in Lingua Fracta, my first podcast explores the potential of the “unconscious free will” of technology (specifically new media tech) to accomplish rhetorical invention on its own—that is to say, without the intervention of human agency. I suggest that “glitches,” when manifested visually or audibly, might be interpreted as an emergent form of ‘poetic’ expression. Hope you enjoy!
-j.
The track is "Plan R (Oh I Was Just Remixing)" by DoKashiteru. Creative Commons license.
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Comments
Google Voice Poetry
James,
Great job! Just one quick note on form: could you speak up a little? When you sat back from the mic it became a little difficult to hear at moments.
Your podcast got me thinking in new ways about creativity in the same way that Kelly's reading got me thinking in new ways about technology and invention. Conceiving of technological error as a mode in which the technium has its own invention [or even creation?] is in itself an innovative thought. It's perhaps the first step toward understanding a way in which the technium may become further, and more directly, self-sustaining. Though I think "mistakes as invention" is still a few steps away from invention in the way it is conceived of in the rhetorical canons, it's interesting to entertain this idea as heading in that direction.
Your comments on the poetics of error reminded me of this tongue-in-cheek article from 3quarksdaily: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/02/love-begins-a-picture-an-anthology-of-google-voice-transcriptions-formatted-and-annotated-as-poetry.html
In it, the author takes mistaken speech-to-text voicemail messages and formats them as if the Google Voice technology had written poetry of its own. He then provides analysis of the poetry as if it was written by a human mind. The result is intentionally funny, but in order to make the joke work the author had to make a similar rhetorical move that you did. He had to position himself toward technology in such a way that allowed him to think of the technology as something that could think, act, and create on its own.
In the article, we as readers are expected to find this idea a little funny. But as you point out, this way of thinking about technological mistakes is not very far from the truth.
Again, really interesting podcast!
- John