[Air-L] Question: Likeconomy and the [digital] verbing of nouns

[Guiseppe Getto]

Ravindra,

Coming from the humanities side of things (technical communication/digital
humanities/gaming theory), there's a lot of work right now shaping up
around an area of philosophy called Object Oriented Ontology, which asks
whether like-buttons, algorithms, bots, etc. aren't actually actors within
digital systems in the same way that humans are.

A lot of folks, stemming from the work of Bruno Latour, have started to use
the phrase 'non-human actors' to describe the ways components of digital
systems actually write/communicate for us, or at least enable
writing/communication in digital spaces.

As is typical with the humanities, we are theoretically ahead of where we
are research-wise with this, though: a lot of people in the humanities are
thinking about this phenomena right now, but there are few (if any)
empirical investigations of it that I could send you to...

If you're interested, though: I have lots of sources in this area...

-- 

"We as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must
undergo the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented
society. When machines and computers, profit-motives and property-rights,
are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism,
extreme materialism, and militarism, are incapable of being conquered.
America, the richest, most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the
way to this revolution of values."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking in 1969 at the Riverside Church in
New York City http://bit.ly/jesEVV

Guiseppe Getto

Assistant Professor of New Media, Rhetoric, and Professional Writing

English Department

114C Old Main

SUNY-Cortland

Cortland, NY 13045-0900

607-753-2080 (office)

517-574-8965 (cell)

www.guiseppegetto.com

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Kiva microlending <http://kiva.org/invitedby/guiseppe3344> to merchants in
the developing world
The hunger site <http://www.thehungersite.com/>
Care2's daily donation site <http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/>
My spiritua<http://www.guiseppegetto.com/personal-commitments/spirituality/>l
commitments
My commitment to
wilderness<http://www.guiseppegetto.com/personal-commitments/wilderness/>
 areas
My political <http://www.guiseppegetto.com/personal-commitments/politics/>
 commitments