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…

35 days to go…

“There are those who predict that (internationalisation) in its present form will go on and on base their belief in the power of technology, whether in aviation, the computer, the satellite, or a host of other fields. But the biggest single influence on the rapid shrinking of the world is not new technology, vital as it is. More influential is the present relative peace in the world.

This is a period of relative international peace—the Balkans not withstanding–between the big nations. But if international relations become tense and nationalism becomes more aggressive, as will probably happen at lease once in the next 50 years, the latest technology will cease to be so effective in bridging gaps. In times of tension, new technology erects rather than erases barriers. Indeed, much of our new communication technology arose—or was improved—during World War II and the Cold War. It was designed initially to divide: it can do so again”

Geoffrey Blainey July 1999

..or as that intellectual gymnast Marshall McLuhan said thirty years ago about television creating a ‘global village’, it is popular today to see the Internet as permanently making a global community. (This was before 2003 when China re-claimed Taiwan from the pre-1949 Chinese Nationalists and the US bombed Shanghai and Australia sent in all our 16 000 troops and our Medicare levy went up 5000% therefore no one could afford to log onto their ISP anymore).

…more to come…

35 days to go…

“There are those who predict that (internationalisation) in its present form will go on and on base their belief in the power of technology, whether in aviation, the computer, the satellite, or a host of other fields. But the biggest single influence on the rapid shrinking of the world is not new technology, vital as it is. More influential is the present relative peace in the world.

This is a period of relative international peace—the Balkans not withstanding–between the big nations. But if international relations become tense and nationalism becomes more aggressive, as will probably happen at lease once in the next 50 years, the latest technology will cease to be so effective in bridging gaps. In times of tension, new technology erects rather than erases barriers. Indeed, much of our new communication technology arose—or was improved—during World War II and the Cold War. It was designed initially to divide: it can do so again”

Geoffrey Blainey July 1999

..or as that intellectual gymnast Marshall McLuhan said thirty years ago about television creating a ‘global village’, it is popular today to see the Internet as permanently making a global community. (This was before 2003 when China re-claimed Taiwan from the pre-1949 Chinese Nationalists and the US bombed Shanghai and Australia sent in all our 16 000 troops and our Medicare levy went up 5000% therefore no one could afford to log onto their ISP anymore).

…more to come…

In 1930 it cost $244.65 for a three minute phone call from London to New York. Today it costs less than $4.00

In 1980 IBM predicted that the world market for personal computers over the next 10 years would be 275 000 By 1990, there were more than 60 million PC users.

(39 days until the end of the ‘popular elected century’ as opposed to the end of the real 20th century that doesn’t really end until 31 December 2000).

In Freud’s opinion, it is true that women gains nothing by studying, and that on the whole woman’s lot will not improve thereby. Moreover, women cannot equal man’s achievement in the sublimation of sexuality.

Minutes of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, 1907.

Date: Thursday, November 18, 1999, 11:42:46 AM

Subject: The 20th Century

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With only 43 days left until the end of the 20th Century it is possibly

important for us, as members of a public institution that is perhaps

reflective of and dogged by late 20th Century nihilism, apathy and

expediency, to think about the road maps that got us here. Most of us

probably wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the golden age at the end of the

Second World War (1947-1973) that ended in university education being made

free. This Century started with Western Europe controlling over 80% of the

world’s land mass (that included Australia) and ended in Australians being

tricked into voting for the English establishment by the ‘battler elite’

who called for a popular elected president in a country that doesn’t even

have a popularly elected Prime Minister! Technology fed into the politics

of Nationalism, Fascism, Communism and Colonialism and resulted in two

world wars in which one of the most civilised and advanced Western

societies, Germany, committed on of the most barbaric acts of human

history, the holocaust. In 1949 Von Neuman invented the architecture for

what is today’s most common computer (and arguably not much has happened

since except smaller and faster machines). America was the first and last

county to use Nuclear weapons in aggression and destroyed two Japanese

cities killing hundreds of thousands of people. Twice this century Western

civilisation has thought that this is it, its all over. The first time was

during WWI when most of the world’s countries were at war with each other.

The second was during the cold war and the Bay of Pigs. Communism took over

two thirds of the World’s population, then went away. The Avant Garde dies

as does the industrial working class

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…

I liked you paper and I wish that I had have heard you presenting it. I especially like the idea of embedding your arguments of masculinity and patriarchy within the culture in which we live. All too often the Gibsonesque drones look for an escape in that barren soul-less place called ‘cyberspace’. I saw one of those awful bubble cars the other day–you know, the sort that Bikers used to piss on at the Broadford rallys–and it had the word”Cyber” blazoned along it’s side. Now there is Cyberspace. Surely there is more room in a HR Manaro?

I’m not sure if I’m a big fan of Fukuyama either. There is a great book by an Australian named Keith Windshuttle The Killing of History: How a Discipline is being Murdered by Literary Theory and Cultural Critics. The past and history are two different things. The past is just there, but history is something that allot of dedicated people spend years scraping through dusty archives to support an argument or empower some group, be they conservative, liberals, or lefties. The thing that makes History different than all other disciplines is that it requires the weight of evidence to support the seeking of truths. The history department at Melb Uni is ironically called “The Department of History and Women’s Studies”. History is the solution, not the problem. It is the lack of History that is the problem. A lack of History means that all these young boof-head Kennett clones get around thinking they are hip when really they look like Duran Duran or Culture Club or some other 80s relic. Now this is tragic. No one owns the past as no one owns history. History is political and this is why Henry Reynolds helped win the Mabo case. It is the lack if History that makes us patriarchal or capitalist or whatever. Now I remember a country where rabid right-wing red-necks had to read a few books before they took public positions….such a long time ago.

His-story

Date: Tuesday, December 7, 1999, 10:23:43 AM

Subject: Macromedia and the 20th Century…

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>An event which was to greatly affect Turing throughout his life took place

>in 1928. He formed a close friendship with Christopher Morcom, a pupil in

>the year above him at school, and the two worked together on scientific

>ideas. Perhaps for the first time Turing was able to find someone with whom

>he could share his thoughts and ideas.

That’s not all they shared…

(38 Days to go until the end of the people’s century)

The past is necessarily inferiour to the future. That is how we wish it to be. How could we acknowledge any merit in our most dangerous enemy? This is how we deny the past and how we cooperate with the victorious who hold the world firm in its web of speed.

FT. Marinetti, the futurist, 1913.

The term “Asian” only came into currency after the Second World War, for reasons that are obscure.
Eric Hobsbawn 1994

What, indeed, were international powers, old or new, at the end of the millennium? The only state left that would have been recognised as a great power, in the sense in which the word had been used in 1914, was the USA. What this meant in practice was quite obscure. Russia had been reduced to the size it had been in the mid-seventeenth century.

Eric Hobsbawn, 1994

When I was at battler school, in North West Tasmania…a state that this century has reaped extinction on not only the Tasmanian Tiger but also an entire race of people (Trugennini was the last Tasmanian Aboriginal and Terrance was the last Tasmanian Tiger) I learnt that you need a complete unit before you can call it one. Very simple really, half a unit is 0.5 and three quarters is 0.75. A unit is not one unit until it is complete ie. the end of January is only one twelfth of the year and a child is not one year old until she has been on the earth for twelve months. So, what I don’t understand is why when nine units have passed, that we now call it ten? How come at the end of 1999 years that we now count 2000 or when only 99 years of a century has passed that we say 100? I suppose that this is indicative of the truth versus popular opinion, or if you get enough people to believe something, that it becomes the truth…(like that there could be such a thing as a popular elected president under the Westminster system or that technology is the only agent of change, like many of the Internet-preachers tell us). I am still waiting for that computer-led leisure society so depicted in the 1970’s. The only people who share in this dream now are the unemployed.

I only have 19 dollars to spend on booze tonight, perhaps I can convince the barman that I really have twenty.

more to come….

Date: Thursday, December 2, 1999, 10:00:23 AM

Subject: The 20th Century

It is ironic that the WTO conference is being held in Seattle WA, a city

that spored Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon books and Nivarna.

If globalisation is inevitable (or this particular brand that is being

interpreted by the West Coast Techno-Right) then how come there is one of

the largest protests happening since Vietnam occuring in Seattle at this

moment? What agency does technology such as the internet have when tens of

thousands of people take to the streets and let down the tyres of Boeing’s

aircraft or weld up the gates on

the Microsoft campus? This is more proof that Marshall McLuhan and his late

90’s revisionist cronies are wrong. The medium is enculturated because this

is where the people live.