Jack Trembath TechGnosis Intro and Michael Wesch

The introduction of TechGnosis by Erik Davis and the various productions of Michael Wesch direct their attention towards the ever changing world of technology, the new terrain that technology creates, and how us as humans interact and navigate these new worlds.  Davis writes about the intersection and the world surrounding the mystical and the technological, two occurrences that appear to be otherwise contradictory and inverted of each other.  He argues that these two worlds and ways of being, the mystical being the human desire for meaning and the unknown and technology, the creation of tools, information, and many other adaptations, do not answer one or the other but work together and build off each other.

Michael Wesch’s video The Machine is Us/ing Us points out that the web 2.0 is developing in a manner that is creating completely new environments and ways of thinking and connecting.  Form and content became separate on the web with the switch from the HTML coding format to XML.  Now that these two are separate, almost anyone has the freedom to upload and thus create the content of the web.  Furthermore, with the internet being the result of the masses, it is not only us, but it also develops in way that is beyond us.  We define the Web and the Web defines us.  Wesch’s second video talks about the medium of YouTube, it’s interaction with the rest of the internet, and how it is shaping completely new communities as well as bringing to life new and unknown conflicts and solutions. On one hand, YouTube creates this free space of humanity without anxiety that allows for empowerment giving people a presence and a voice in which anyone and no one could hear.  On the other hand, it is also a space in which hatred becomes a performance, authenticity becomes unknown, and a media of participatory satire is born.  YouTube itself becomes a self-reflexive tool in the face of an anonymous audience without the social pressures and constraints that come with community connection.  In the third video, From Knowledgeable to Knowledgeable, Wesch talks about re-thinking the classroom structure as well as re-defining education.  He talks about how a world of information and technology is at the students’ hands and education should aim to teach them how to acess and furthermore utilize it in a collaborative way.  The classroom shouldn’t be one professor standing in front of the class talking at students but rather talking with them and working together to answer questions that no one knows.  In this same line of thought, he writes how meaning is not only sought but also created.

One line that stood out to me that I believe captures the connection between all of these pieces is, “For all of the technologies, it is the technologies of information and communication that most mold and shape the source of all mystical glimmerings: the human self,” in Davis’ TechGnosis.  Wesch touches on the subject as well when he states that media mediates human relations and if media changes so does human relations.  We created the internet, and we mold it by defining the content. On the other hand, the internet is shaping and reshaping our world, how we communicate, and how we view ourselves.  Wesch’s YouTube talk is exemplary of this phenomenon.  YouTube technically exists only as the platform and the videos we upload to it.  You would think that we are in power of what it is or isn’t but out of this platform has arose communities, collaboration, and culture that re-contextualizes the original content.  No longer is it necessarily us, but it is using us.


Concepts and Texts that come to mind/may be of relevance later (hyperlinks?):
Form vs. Content- Formalism
Pale Fire- Vladmir Nabokov
Signified and Signifier -Saussure
Existence precedes essence
Existentialism
Ishmael-Daniel Quinn
Death of the Author-Roland Barthes

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