whatknows :: do you?

August 26, 2008

Eulogizing Theory

Filed under: Academic — Jed @ 1:12 pm

How does one produce “truth”?

Today gnovis ran an article of mine considering this very question. It all started when I stumbled across an issue of Wired with a headline proclaiming “The End of Theory”. Evocative titles always seem to get me to buy magazines, but this one seemed to have some personal relevance and worth the $4.95. I suppose the gnovis article was inevitable. Here is a taste:

As we rush to reconstruct our physical lives in online spaces, digital worlds like Facebook and Second Life have largely forgone the potential freedoms of digital environments. When Anderson asserts that we should focus on what people are doing, he forgets Althusser’s Marxist response that “ideology is material” and as such, never offers a problem that is outside of material’s ability to respond. No wonder all of this data analysis is working. We are just measuring predefined user behavior in a digital world, a world we insisted on digitizing.

It is a fun piece, so I hope you will check it out.


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