Currently reading

In a nod to N+1’s excellent semi-regular N1BReading series, I’m going to attempt to detail quick, light, summaries and connections for my current readings. Leibniz’s Monadology

I am re-reading Andrew Feenberg’s excellent Questioning Technology. Going through this book for a second time has caused me to upgrade my opinion of it from masterful to nearly-or-quite-possibly desert island material. Feenberg’s approach—empirically dependent historical and philosophical analyses of technology—doesn’t have the kind of gravitas that I would normally accord to a desert island book, and it is far too light-hearted and readable to be so “serious”, but it did cause me to rethink my political heuristics. Since a re-reading necessitates greater depth and engagement, I’ve decided to read it alongside his Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity (Inside Technology), a collection of essays from the last decade or so. Likewise, Feenberg engages quite regularly with Heidegger, a figure that I’ve been circling around for years now, and never taking straight on, so I’ve finally started seriously reading through Heiddegger’s oeuvre (Basic Writings).

For a soon-to-start reading group we are going through Jean-Luc Nancy’s The Birth to Presence, a collection of Nancy’s essays. Bewildering in rhetorical style (in the somewhat cloying style of Deleuze, Serres, and so on), Nancy tackles metaphysics straight away, and positions himself as a staunch anti-representationalist. Running through his work for a first time evokes many connections and themes, but no solid conclusions. Although he does not mention it, his metaphysics appear to require engagement with Parmenides’ Fragments (especially VII onwards). Annoyingly, Nancy forces the reader in to the depths of not-being, and through sleep and non-consciousness (with evident knowledge on the matter, despite the obvious impossibility of making these claims). Then, Nancy exhumes Descartes’ substance dualism with respect to sleep and dreaming, but never mentions Foucault and Derrida’s spirited debate (History of Madness) on this portion of the Meditations. I’m not confident on my interpretation, however, so I can’t tell if Nancy thinks madness is on the soul or the body. Perhaps it’s neither, given what seems to be a serious rationalist streak in the book, at times echoing Leibniz’s Monadology so loudly that I’ve decided to re-read it as a point of comparison.

Finally, I’ve just completed Siegfried Zielinski’s Deep Time of the Media, a kind of Kittler-esque exploration of media history. The book excels at being obscure, with foray’s into weird and wild Modern, Renaissance, and Medieval examples of seeing and hearing apparatuses. The scope and breadth of the content makes for a fun but somewhat unforgettable read.

My Open Questions for the Occupy Toronto movement

1. Recognizing that “revolution is in the air,” but that Canadians have not suffered nearly as deeply or rapidly as Americans since the 2008 economic and mortgage meltdown, is the Occupy Toronto movement a show of solidarity? Opportunistic? Long overdue? (It’s no lapse of judgement to recognize that Canada does still have a semi-functional welfare state, yet that doesn’t mean many aren’t still suffering terribly.)
2. Parks and permanent structures have a long history of being integral to free speech (as Judge Brown remarked), but now that eviction has been served (and will surely commence) is “occupation” essential to the movement? How can the momentum continue without occupation?
3. What kinds of micropolitics are available to concerned individuals? Are they as effective?
4. Is it Marxist revolution, or radical democracy? Does it matter, and can it be both?

My worry is that since the 1999 Seattle WTO protests mass, non-violent protests are met with increasingly military oppression. Certainly the optics can be bad (viz. G20 or UC Davis more recently), but the effect rarely rattles the cage of democracy. At this point, are the protestors and the police merely acting out a high-stakes game? A kind of dance?(And in a cruel twist of irony, vindicating increased spending on militarized police weapons.)

The Occupy movement, with its creative appropriation of space, has made unprecedented traction as many (including those that are not young) have joined. The movement is now being met with (predictably) militarized force. What resistance is next? Have we been hemmed in?

Quick review of Dropbox (with promo code)

I’ve been using Dropbox for almost two years now, and despite persistent difficulties and worries with security and privacy, it’s been a rock-solid product that it absolutely necessary to my personal workflow. In addition to providing set-it-and-forget-it backup (useful for all sorts of things), it syncs instantly and even offers basic web access to your files. I had tried SecretSync, an application with considerable promise, but found that despite offering much enhanced security to your Dropbox store, it is still far too flaky to use for critical data.

Earlier today I moved everything out of my SecretSync store into Dropbox, taking that leap (eyes closed!) into the world of personal and sensitive data in the cloud.

If you want to sign up with my promo code I get free space (maybe you do too?). At the very least, use my code.

Review of The Rational Factory

Biggs, L. (1996). The Rational Factory: architecture, technology, and work in America’s age of mass production. Studies in Industry and Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Reviewed September 8, 2011.

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Review of Management, Labour Process and Software Development

Barrett, R. (Ed.). (2004). Management, Labour Process and Software Development: Reality bites. London: Routledge. Reviewed September 4, 2011.

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