Does anyone else out there feel that Bogard's attempts to connect simulation and surveillance seem more than a bit forced? Were it not for his admission early on that he started out trying to write a history of surveillance, I would have trouble making sense of this at all. I, for one, feel that this connection is a pity, because the whole idea of new media as simulation is rich enough on its own to sustain many thoughtful discussions--and I am working on surveillance as my final project for this class.
And while I am enacting the role of class grump, I will also say that reading Bogard and Baudrillard together made me long for straightforward writing. I know that Baudrillard especially is supposed to be "provocative," but I still feel that many of his provocations conceal mistakes of observation or reasoning rather than revealing creative insights. His whole discussion in "Precession" of how "medicine loses its meaning" when confronted by an individual's ability to simulate symptoms just seems wrong. He seems to equate here "sumulatable" and "simulated" (i.e., "every illness may be considered as simulatable and simulated")--I assume I am missing some subtle point of argument here, but I cannot figure out just what.
I also am unsure that grumpy reflections really add much to the general intellect, but that is what you get when you make posting mandatory. Then, if you do not make posting mandatory, many people fail to post. I do not see a good resolution to this dilemma. Perhaps postings that the writer does not recommend for reading could be done in a funny color. That would be cheerful.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I am much agreement with your statement. You are braver than I. I simply avoided posting my true feelings about Baud. because I really couldn't wrap my head around a good, productive argument about his work. Simply writing, "This $#*& me off!" without really contributing a good counter-argument didn't seem useful for the class. It seems as if Andy Vlad put some notes in his powerpoint that are somewhat useful to a productive grumpy conversation. All I have left for now is that you are not grumpy alone! That's my two cents.
Grump is good!
that said, i do wish we'd had more time to take up some of the objections -- and for some more discussion.
Since I spend a fair amount of time working on the role surveillance plays in both marketing and security, the surveillance/simulation connection takes on a certain resonance for me . In security circles simulation/deterrence is perhaps THE central theme of surveillance. Think "Information Awareness Office" "Transportation Security Administration" or "Minority Report." Much of the goal of algorithmic monitoring is to gather information that allows for the prevention of particular possible futures (with the interesting result that, as Dean notes, the only sign that it works is that something doesn't happen). In marketing circles algorithmic customization isn't so much about deterrence (except perhaps of activities such as "not consuming") as it is about inciting consumption . Still, there is an element, I think of Baudrillard's conception of deterrence in Bill Gates's visio n of a frictionless future: one in which the refrigerator orders the milk for you -- human action is itself rendered dispensable in this cycle. Baud calls this the "automatic writing of the world" in the other essay we read for last week. Again, this is perhaps more a question of tendencies revealed in absurd extremes, but there is perhaps something productive about considering the tendency: imagine the hyper-informated society envisioned by marketers: one in which every act of consumption, interaction, etc. generates a cascade of information that interacts with other information to yield complex decisions (who has access to what goods and services, who gets pulled aside and searched, etc) all taking place automatically. There is a kind of deterrence of conscious activity or control here. Perhaps.
Post a Comment