evening redness

Here is my (late as it were) proposal for the upcoming Dark Side of the Digital Conference. (edit: I’m calling this my page of writing for the day, even if it’ snot quite a page.)

“There is no dark side of the digital really”

Benjamin J Robertson

In a recent blog post, Jussi Parrika suggests that we should read the “dark” in “dark side of the digital” in terms of “the dark side of the moon” rather than “dark side of the force.” Instead of the evil or malevolent “side” of digitality we should, with Pink Floyd, address the fact that “There is no dark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact it’s all dark.”

These two approaches to this conference theme are not at all at odds with one another. This paper argues that among the darkest (as in the force) aspects of the digital is its darkness (as in the moon) by design if not by nature. That is, the digital is closed to us, an inhuman space much in the manner that Galloway and Thacker suggest that networks stand opposed to humanity. Drawing from Galloway and Thacker—as well as upon Stiegler’s notions of default, disbelief, and discredit—this paper describes the dark side of the digital through nine short discussions:

• Speak to Me: when we communicate through digital tools, what else do we communicate with?
• Breathe: the digital gives us so much room, but none in which to pause.
• On the Run: as in “on the digital”: the pharmacology of speed.
• Time: history and futurity in the age of hypersynchronization.
• The Great Gig in the Sky: where is the cloud?
• Money: not too much credit but too much discredit—no investment where no belief.
• Us and Them: there is no us and no them—the digital has neither “side” nor “sides”.
• Any Colour You Like: the perils of choice; hyper-demography—all content directed to the individual.
• Brain Damage: how damaged? is the digital now the default?
• Eclipse: the end of the Enlightenment, even the parts we “like”, such as privacy.

This entry was posted on 6 January 2013 at 18:12 and is filed under Page a Day, Uncategorized with tags A Page A day, bernard stiegler, conferences, digital humanities, Media Studies, Stiegler, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.