Burnett, R.: How images think (2004)
0.00
7.428156E-4 = product of:
0.0014856312 = sum of:
0.0014856312 = product of:
0.0029712624 = sum of:
0.0029712624 = weight(_text_:e in 3884) [ClassicSimilarity], result of:
0.0029712624 = score(doc=3884,freq=4.0), product of:
0.06614887 = queryWeight, product of:
1.43737 = idf(docFreq=28552, maxDocs=44218)
0.04602077 = queryNorm
0.04491781 = fieldWeight in 3884, product of:
2.0 = tf(freq=4.0), with freq of:
4.0 = termFreq=4.0
1.43737 = idf(docFreq=28552, maxDocs=44218)
0.015625 = fieldNorm(doc=3884)
0.5 = coord(1/2)
0.5 = coord(1/2)
- Footnote
- The sixth chapter looks at this interfacing of humans and machines and begins with a series of questions. The crucial one, to my mind, is this: "Does the distinction between humans and technology contribute to a lack of understanding of the continuous interrelationship and interdependence that exists between humans and all of their creations?" (p. 125) Burnett suggests that to use biological or mechanical views of the computer/mind (the computer as an input/output device) Limits our understanding of the ways in which we interact with machines. He thus points to the role of language, the conversations (including the one we held with machines when we were children) that seem to suggest a wholly different kind of relationship. Peer-to-peer communication (P2P), which is arguably the most widely used exchange mode of images today, is the subject of chapter seven. The issue here is whether P2P affects community building or community destruction. Burnett argues that the trope of community can be used to explore the flow of historical events that make up a continuum-from 17th-century letter writing to e-mail. In the new media-and Burnett uses the example of popular music which can be sampled, and reedited to create new compositions - the interpretive space is more flexible. Private networks can be set up, and the process of information retrieval (about which Burnett has already expended considerable space in the early chapters) involves a lot more of visualization. P2P networks, as Burnett points out, are about information management. They are about the harmony between machines and humans, and constitute a new ecology of communications. Turning to computer games, Burnett looks at the processes of interaction, experience, and reconstruction in simulated artificial life worlds, animations, and video images. For Burnett (like Andrew Darley, 2000 and Richard Doyle, 2003) the interactivity of the new media games suggests a greater degree of engagement with imageworlds. Today many facets of looking, listening, and gazing can be turned into aesthetic forms with the new media. Digital technology literally reanimates the world, as Burnett demonstrates in bis concluding chapter. Burnett concludes that images no longer simply represent the world-they shape our very interaction with it; they become the foundation for our understanding the spaces, places, and historical moments that we inhabit. Burnett concludes his book with the suggestion that intelligence is now a distributed phenomenon (here closely paralleling Katherine Hayles' argument that subjectivity is dispersed through the cybernetic circuit, 1999). There is no one center of information or knowledge. Intersections of human creativity, work, and connectivity "spread" (Burnett's term) "intelligence through the use of mediated devices and images, as well as sounds" (p. 221).
- Language
- e
