History

It's sometimes hard to describe my interests in a concise way, (though I have tried listing them in the past.) To put it plainly, I'm interested in the many ways that people relate to technology, both as individuals and within social structures, and the ways that they have done so in the past-- then, we might have an insight in to how we might in the future. 

It's easy to say that technology drives social change, but it's a much more interrelated, dynamic process. Things start to get really interesting when you're looking at the macro-structures behind inventions and their conditions of possibility, because you start to examine all of the non-material aspects behind technology. Sometimes all the materials are there to make something, but there's no economic means of support for research and development, or it's not conceivable given the mindset of the time.  I'm personally fascinated by the mental universes of people in the 1600s who were doing pioneering science, but in crazily magical ways (like Helmont or Newton, who did private alchemy experiments and believed that God that went bowling with comets.) In a more modern vein, Eleanor Saitta has a call for papers up that asks what ideas of the last few decades will be incomprehensible to future generations--an interesting question.


Or, you have situations like a war where both sides have pretty similar tech and forces, but one side completely wipes the floor with the other (my favorite examples are the 1940 Fall of France, or the 1895 Sino-Japanese War). Surprising results like that are really useful, because they show you things you otherwise wouldn't know. In both those cases, the (superior) ideas of the winning side were embodied in effective organizations, and that won wars. (In the science-fictional realm, Arthur C. Clarke's short story "Superiority" is a fantastic example of a materially superior force hamstrung by a dysfunctional organization and priorities.)

 I think that it's worth it to examine nearly-forgotten artifacts of past media and technology because they give us a ton more examples and case studies of socio-technological relations and forms of interaction than we'd have if we only paid attention to what exists today. Given the accelerating rate of technological change over the past 100 years, It's a dangerous trap to assume that anything about our era is 'normal' for the range of human existence or to project our own patterns too far into the future. That's where history comes in. By paying attention to weird strange things in our past, we're better protected against weird, catastrophic things in the future.


For more information:
Athanasius Kircher
Edward Tenner
Dead Media Archive

Dispatch from Alsace

Greetings from Europe. I've been seeing a ton of World War II battlegrounds and fortifications, and reading a lot about the fall of France in 1940. I will be putting up observations, piece by piece, but for now I'll leave you with a quick thought:

If you want to know where Paul Virilio is coming from with all his talk about speed and warfare, read Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat. Bloch was an influential historian, one of the guys who developed the Annales style of long-duration social history. (His most famous work investigated the folk belief that the touch of the French King could cure scrofula--basically the first historical anthropology.) He was also a reservist mobilized into staff work during the second World War. He witnessed firsthand the failure of the French general staff to grasp the increased speed of land warfare, but more importantly the increased tempo of operations that came with radio. Every time they tried to fall back and establish a defensive line, the germans had raced beyond it. They were able to identify opportunities and support breakthroughs far faster than any of the pre-war planning had anticipated. The defeat was strange, surprising, and demoralizing, especially since germany had no real advantage in men or material.

Defeats like those are surprising, and as Claude Shannon would have you know, surprises are always informative.

 Strange Defeat was composed after Bloch was demobilized, while he was working with the resistance. Sadly, he didn't live to see its publication--the Nazis shot him a few weeks after D-Day. It's a short, interesting book, and well worth the read.

Seen in Cambodia, part 1

I'm currently off in seclusion in Kampot, grading papers and wrapping up my affairs in lovely Cambodia, but I thought I'd share this when I had a spare second. I noticed this chair when I went to the tailor for fitting (affordable tailored clothing is but one of the many wonderful things about this country). 

Check it out. What do you notice, besides that great dark wood that typifies Khmer furniture?

Yep--instead of the standard wicker or straw, this chair's seating is made out of old tennis racket strings. Totally cool and surprisingly comfortable.

 

"No Impact Man" as seen from Cambodia

For the observant, browsing through the bootleg DVD shops here can be quite rewarding. Firstly, the covers were definitely designed by non-native speakers of English, because their hype quotes on the front of the box are sometimes ambivalent or downright negative about the film. My favorite was for "Step Up 2: The Streets," which proudly displayed the faint praise, "It's no Stomp the Yard, but it's alright!"

There are also curiosities of selection. While you're guaranteed to have the current blockbusters and popular tv show box sets, there are always certain unusual offerings, like 8-in-1 selections of Oscar winners from the 20s and 30s or 9/11 conspiracy documentaries. But more to the point, there are a ton of quality documentaries available, I reckon as the joint result of backpacker/NGO-worker demand and ease of supply (I'm guessing the maker of a movie about philosophers talking is maybe not as zealous about copyright infringement as the big studios. After all, for small players in the creative arts, obscurity is a far greater threat than piracy.) As a result of this, I got to watch the wonderfully entertaining documentary, No Impact Man.

I really liked it, and it spurred a couple of thoughts: