Blog Art! The Death of Email (or Death by Email)

Date: Monday, December 6, 1999, 4:19:48 PM

Subject: Macromedia and the 20th Century…

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Punters,

As fascinating and innovating as Macromedia’s web technology is, I always

find it quite frightening the language that is used to describe

technological innovation. How can a web site ‘evolve’ like biological

systems? Either this means that the author has little or no understanding

of how Darwinian thought has been abused this century (ie. by a certain

mid-century, mid-European man with a little moustache), has never met a

biologist, or that Macromedia has fascistic tenancies. No sure, but

perhaps if I was as ‘intelligent’ as a web site then I could use reductive

empirical observations and essentialise these to vast bodies of

intellectual enquiry in which I have little understanding and even less

respect.

Perhaps there is little or no room for humanism in understanding

technological innovation, but biology, give me a break. This 2001 Space

Odyssey Hal taking over the world narrative is over 20 years old now. The

Web is wonderful, but the multi-media god in g-strings hanging out with a

mobile phone, surfing the web for stocks, drinking beer in the London at

Beaconfield cove with early 90’s Manchester haircuts. The future looks bright!

(I hear that Macromedia’s new green web site is called photosynthesis).

Date: Tuesday, December 21, 1999, 11:29:18 AM

Subject: suggestions for next aim hard/software upgrade

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>Hi, just a few thoughts on what we might ask santa for in the new year…

Making industry pay each student 50K per year for the uncritical

embrace of their products and degrading the public nature of university

education

the understanding of the political nature of products bought with public

money in a public institution. The understanding that both the Internet and

Computers were invented by universities and it is only recently that the

‘brand name’ and product based companies have

entered universities.

the understanding of the difference between education and training.

the understanding of where a public institution positions itself beside

private enterprise.

the understanding of the difference between a university and a training

institute.

the understanding that technology is political not ‘rational’.

the understanding that the best universities in the world have a healthy

critical distance and a healthy understanding of the other knowledge

centres in the community ie. industry, marketing, sales etc. and are

critical and can contextualise and evaluate the products and propaganda

that industry produce.

Subject: Labor and Multimedia.

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As Victoria has now changed hands from a Liberal to a Labor government, it will be interesting to see what is in store for the multimedia
“industry” in this state. Kennett’s government often abused the modernist mantra of ‘technology as progress’ or the idea that imbedded in technology is its own agency…as opposed to the more socially progressive direction of Labor ie. you have to be able to afford a computer in the first place.

Does this mean no more “minister for multimedia” or does it mean “e-merge” will finally arrive? Does this mean that there is a possibility
now that those of us who are interested in “thinking” about interactive media can distance ourselves from “industry battler” types who are more interested in revenue generation?

Is Victoria finally on the move and can we now think about technology a little more sophisticatedly that the often simplistic logic that just because a new model Falcon comes out every two years, that we are rocketing ahead? How will the funding bodies change?

something to be aware of I ’spose.