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Monday, December 6, 2010

Ctheory.net

I came across the above site, edited by Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, which explores the way digital technologies have affected, infected, formed, taken over, mixed with and so on contemporary experience. The essay that has meant the most to me so far is entitled "Code Drift." The thesis seems to be that human evolution is now tied up with the drift of code as it is absorbed, remixed, and rearranged. Creativity stems from random combinations and recombinations of code, not from individual genius. While it is true that individual human beings do the recombining, it is the code itself, both local and global, that is the source of this recombining, the individual is merely the occasion.

Here are some quotations from the beginning of "Code Drift." 

We want to argue that data has come alive in the form of our extended network of technological organs, that the growth of information culture is the real world of evolutionary development literally, not metaphorically.

digital cosmology has its own laws of motion -- code drift; its politics are based on the deeply paradoxical situation of our being tethered to mobility

the beginning of something fundamentally new is now upon ... this new onrushing event of code drift, tethered mobility, enhanced data flesh, and digital trauma.

1 comment:

  1. This is pretty good stuff!

    I'm working on a somewhat experimental fiction blog, that I thought you might be interested in.

    It's a series of loosely related stories, that integrates images and video into the narrative. It's a bit rough, as I only work on it in my spare time and I have very little.

    http://ecclusiastics.blogspot.com/

    Hope you enjoy!

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