So I guess this was about how technology being introduced into society affected it? I find that to be a bit presumptuous; to draw conclusions on what everyone was thinking when so-and-so happened, but lets dive in.
A particular passage took my interest as I found it to be a bit obvious, which was jarring considering the piece I was reading. When referring to the affects of new video technology on society, Rosler says, "Commentators on both left and right looked on the centrality of the machine as meaning the decline of cultural values in the West." I think a lot people's first instinct when something new comes out is to exploit it. It didn't take publicly accessible TV channels long to start producing smut for the masses. I could site examples all day.
I also enjoyed Rosler's conclusion about Jane Livingston's except. Livingston basically says artist style is non-existent in video art, which of course is bogus. I suppose in 1974 no one could have guessed what forms video would take on in the near future.
Overall, the reading was a bit flowery in the wording, and Rosler's sentences sometimes drag on for six lines, but it wasn't bad. I just hope I can think about this critically at 8am tomorrow... See you then!
Haha.
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ReplyDeleteInteresting take on this, Brad. I find some of this text to be a little impenetrable also, but there are many valuable moments that get a bit clearer with each reading. While I think your observation that almost any new technology is taken advantage of for certain kinds of profit that might be undesirable is certainly true in many situations (though I think the Right is probably more upset about the smut than the Left), I think what she's referring to specifically is the "machine" of the industrial revolution and how society was changed by new modes of production (think Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin). Neither end of the political spectrum was initially very excited about how rural, agrarian values were being traded in for sooty factories and cities bulging with unskilled workers, barely eking out an existence. It's a difficult essay because she covers so much ground, about 150 years in 20 pages, but it's important to understand current technology in the context of this long history.
ReplyDeleteSee you tomorrow.