[Air-l] capitalism always lies?

[Danny Butt]

Art, welcome to AOIR :7. I get the feeling you're not going to get much joy
from the list, for much the same reasons as we discussed last year with the
war (http://www.aoir.org/pipermail/air-l/2003-March/003443.html). Although
you put the case a little more bluntly, and with good reason from my POV.

I enjoy these little episodes where lists are confronted with the political
tensions and exclusions underlying their supposedly autopoeitic functioning.
There's something about the way Internet Studies (and AOIR's promo material)
emphasises its "independence from traditional disciplines" that exemplifies
the limitations of late 90s techno-fetishism: the "digital divide", the
"information economy", "internet studies"... all pretty much confuse the
technological object of study with epistemology. From my perspective, the
rather poor ability of the list to discuss politics, critique, or to
position research practices reflexively can be traced to that move to be
"new" and "independent". While lists like nettime have their own
well-documented problems (which you know too well Art!) - at least over
there I don't feel like I'm in a science fiction film where someone's burnt
all the records from 150 years of social theory, leaving only hazy memories
("Hey, now this reminds me of grandma talking about, um,  Cultural
Studies..."). Still, I enjoy reading AOIR as fieldwork :)

Regards,

Danny

-- 
http://www.dannybutt.net

Art McGee wrote on 1/2/04 8:32 AM:

> And this clown is a professor? That's the most idiotic and
> duplicitous branching of logic I've ever seen from someone
> supposedly past undergrad. Now I understand why the field
> of CyberSociolology is so damn elitist and off-track, if
> people like this are considered respected members.
> 
> As others have already pointed out, in the context of the
> United States of America, which is what we were talking
> about, Capitalism, the all-consuming imperative for profit,
> perverts, distorts, and basically undermines at every point
> the attempt to have a truly democratic media system. This
> is simply a fact. It doesn't mean that in other contexts
> there aren't other reasons for media lies and distortions,
> but here, Capitalism (and for that matter Patriarchy and
> White Supremacy) is the primary barrier.
> 
> 
> Art
> 
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