Some stuff about me: I am obsessed with all things new and techy-like. I spend equal time getting bruised up on my bike and prancing around in pink and sequins. I dislike spit on the sidewalk, mayonnaise and the seams on the toes of socks. I enjoy french bulldogs, cupcakes, post-modern philosophy and fat snowflakes that fly back up. I have a tendency to social theorize everything, but I also have an appreciation for the just plain absurd.
The skin of the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute. It is the most naked, though with a decent nudity. It is the most destitute also: there is an essential poverty in the face; the proof of this is that one tries to mask this poverty by putting on poses, by taking on a countenance. The face is exposed, menaced, as if inviting us to an act of violence. At the same time, the face is what forbids us to kill.
Ethics and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas (via gloriousdefeat)
Corporate Rule of Cyberspace, by Slavoj Žižek
To put it simply, Steve Jobs is no better than Bill Gates: whether it be Apple or Microsoft, global access is increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access. The more an individual user is given access to universal public space, the more that space is privatized.
Cause, hey, why not? Philosophy deserves to be more beautiful yet.
(Source: sunset7)
This video was made for the Guggenheim / YouTube Play Contest. It is intended to be displayed in exhibit, preferably in a gallery projected on a large white wall. It was intended to be exactly 10 minutes: the limit of time allowed. In addition to what it means to you and as such, it is meant to express a point of view about language, experience, art, specifically video performance art, the philosophy of performance and ethics - the face to face
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life’s nothingness.
André Maurois (via fuckyeahsolitude)
Early Bird Special: The Cameraman — Chris Ware illustrates Jeff Potter’s cautionary tale about “how being behind the camera can rob you of your humanity even if the camera’s not real.”
As told to Ira Glass. Animation: John Kuramoto.
[hitrecordjoe / ratsoff.]
This story is chilling. It will be part of my techno-ethics 101 course someday. :)
(Source: jaredgeller)
Old Spice Guy + FEMINIST HULK + Judith Butler
Old Spice Guy: "Hello, FEMINIST HULK. I observe that you are using lady-scented body wash."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK FIND LAVENDER FRAGRANCE RELAXING AFTER DAY OF SMASH."
Old Spice Guy: "Wouldn't you like to smell like me?"
Feminist Hulk: "HULK WOULD RATHER SMASH GENDER BINARY OF PERFORMATIVE SHOWERING."
Old Spice Guy: "Your tiny purple shorts hanging on the towel rack now hold tickets to the Sleater-Kinney reunion concert. And diamonds."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK ENJOY CORIN TUCKER'S REJECTION OF TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES AND CONSUMERISM. BUT DIAMONDS MAKE HULK WANT TO SMASH HEGEMONY OF POST-COLONIAL OPPRESSION. ALSO, STILL PREFER TO SMELL LIKE FIELD OF FLOWERS."
Old Spice Guy: "You puzzle me, Feminist Hulk. Your wish to use lady-scented body wash, even whilst smelling the intoxicating scent of my Old Spice, is unparalleled in my experience. "
Judith Butler: "Feminist Hulk makes a good critique, Old Spice Man. Your discourse is being circumscribed by a learned sex/gender distinction. Please pass me the loofah."
Old Spice Guy: "Hello, Judith Butler. Allow me to scrub your back. So you and Feminist Hulk are saying that my devotion to Old Spice body wash might be part of a larger regulative discourse to maintain an essential ontological gender?"
Judith Butler: "That's correct, Old Spice Man."
Feminist Hulk: "HULK SMASH EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMEWORKS, WHILE SMELLING LIKE SPRING GARDEN."
Old Spice Guy: "I understand. Allow me to bake you a cake, Feminist Hulk and Judith Butler, while we discuss intersectionality and the beauty of giant green muscles."
Judith Butler: "Congratulations on making a break with compulsory heterosexuality, Old Spice Man."
Femist Hulk: "HULK IS VERY HAPPY TO SHARE TEARS OF JOY AND ORGANIC WHOLE WHEAT PASTRY FLOUR WITH OLD SPICE MAN AND JUDITH BUTLER."
Old Spice Guy: "I'm on a unicorn."
From femonster.tumblr.com
Current reading: Susan Orbach, Bodies.
Commercial pressures delivered today by celebrity culture, branding and industries which make their profits by destabilizing the late modern body have eradicated most of our prior feeling towards and understanding of the body … Our bodies are and have become a form of work. The body is turning from being the means of production to the production itself.
The Problem with Time
The concept of time is a favorite philosophical problem. For some, time is merely the measure of movement (think of the second hand on a clock). Others get more creative; Bergson rethinks time and consciousness for the concept of “duration,” a concept that I’ve been struggling to sort out since I first encountered it years ago (a simple version: time is both a series of discrete moments and is also the collection of those. It’s also neither of those things. In some ways, he’s concerned with how time feels). Levinas’ version of time involves a tragic awareness and repetition of “now moments” that can only be alleviated by the face of the other.
Why on earth am I rambling on about philosophy and time, you might ask.
I spend a lot of time thinking about time. I wonder how our experience of time will change as we develop technology to answer our demand for instant gratification. It’s both a phenomenological question (a la Bergson)—how will the passing of time feel to our bodies?—and an ethical one (a la Levinas)—in a world of technological mediation, where do we experience the face of the other that allows us to break from our own tragic sense of self?
Advancing technology will affect our human experience on every conceivable level (and even in ways we can’t yet conceive). Isn’t it time we consider the consequences?
Really Wikipedia?
Really? This is all we can collectively come up with for literary examples of Existential Crisis?:
Prince Hamlet experiences an existential crisis as a result of the death of his father. This is shown especially by Shakespeare in the famous soliloquy which starts, “To be, or not to be, that is the question…”.
The X-Men cycle of stories, which tell of alienated mutants who regularly engage with issues of life and death, is an example of existential crisis in a fictional setting.
In South Park, the character Kenny is routinely killed and so often has an especially acute awareness of his mortality.
