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

Date: Saturday, December 11, 1999, 11:17:55 AM

Subject: Winners and Losers..

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In the constructive desire to halt any animosity that I may have created

with Damien by my rather pedestrian concerns that technology

can only be understood within broader social, historical and political

structures, I have decided to log-off and find a less conflicted soap-box.

Sorry if I have offended anyone, just a grumpy young historian in a dying

discipline flogging out-moded ideas in increasingly constricted spaces.

milkbar boy…

Date: Thursday, November 25, 1999, 9:09:57 AM

Subject: : Re: [mediacircus] The 20th Century

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>

>

>But if microsoft hadn’t grown like this, then we would be without

>microsoft-monopoly <http://www.ms-monopoly.com>

>

>> At the end of the Twentieth Century there are a few stark realities.

>> Australia’s Gross Domestic Product, that is every thing that

>> the entire 20 million of us produce and have taken over two hundred years

>> to reach, is worth obout 300 billion. Our government

>> controlls about a quarter of this sum. Universities in Australia cost maybe

>> 2 billion.

>>

>> Investors have placed more than 640 billion dollars into MicroSoft, almost

>> twice Australia’s annual GDP. MicroSoft was founded

>> in 1982. (General Electric is worth 290 billion, IBM, 150 billion, Exxon

>> 110 billion, Wal-Mart 100 billion.) 50 of the world’s largest economies are

>> now corporations.

>>

>> more to come…

Date: Friday, October 22, 1999, 1:11:55 PM

Subject: Labor and multimedia

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Looks like there isn’t goin to be a special portfolio named “Minister for

Multimedia”. But this probably isn’t a bad thing as Stockdale

was a bit of a token relic anyway. Multimedia will be part of John Brumby’s

industry portfolio. Getting rid of this “Minister for Multimedia” name will

probably give the ‘industry’ a little more respect in the broader community

anyway as it will appear to be less ‘Jeffed”.

Part of the political analysis on why Jeff lost concentrated on his web

site. Perhaps people are beginning to become weary of those who use the

old-fashioned Twentieth Century modernist rhetoric of techno-agency to flog

their ideas. ie. Jeff was a political conservative,

an ideology that has traditionally been concerned with preserving the

status quo. (Place conservative ideas on the Internet and all of a sudden

they become contextualised in the modernist rhetoric as “technology as

progress”).

Jeff’s defeat proved that there is no inevitable agency or

techno-determinism inherent the Internet or any other technology. The net

is imbedded within the social and political context in which we all live.

Jeff’s defeat is proof of this.

Jeff’s defeat proved that there is no inevitable agency or

techno-determinism inherent the Internet or any other technology. The net

is imbedded within the social and political context in which we all live.

Jeff’s defeat is proof of this.