Hmm, Cloud Computing

Cloud computing suggests that the nature of personal computers will change due to remote storage of data. Individual pcs wont actually have much storage capacity - well they could but why would you need to? Since all of your stuff: work, music, movies, photos, software, grocery lists, etc., will be stored in a beautiful virtual cloud of data known to many as 'the internet'. My life is kind of like that already. I dont actually keep much on my own computer, only stuff that I want to keep out of the public (rick astley mp3's) its just easier to keep stuff in some mysterious location and google apps are way too convenient. So then a pc would lose a large part of its program or content, and is more like this, conceptually speaking -

















just an access point or window into a larger thing. Does that make it more like furniture or something? And then what happens when you do THIS???!!!
well, let's not go there. Its just kind of interesting to think about what your computer would look like if it were designed specifically with cloud computing in mind. I would like to know what Steigler would think about cloud computing as an infinitely abstracted model of the 'note to self'. It reminds me of one of my favorite Wittgenstein thoughts from Philosophical Investigations that talks about an obtuse triangle. (I dont have the book with me so I dont have the exact quote right now, but I'll try my best to sound like a mediocre German translation...) 'If you take a drawing of an obtuse triangle and cut it out of the paper, pick it up, turn it over in your hand, and put it back down again, you end up with the mirror image yes? In the same way, if you take a glove for the right hand, brought it into the 4th dimension and replaced it back into the 3rd dimension, the glove would then fit on the LEFT HAND...
As you could imagine, this totally blew my mind when I was 15, lying on my bedroom floor listening to Pink Floyd, high, pondering the strange little gloves that floated around in the air peeling the posters off the walls before they melted... Ah Nostalgie!

I guess I'd better start wrapping this thing up soon. But, the more I read on this topic, the more sources I find and it keeps getting more interesting. For instance, I have a whole new reading list for the next week ( like, as if thats going to happen during finals, pffff) that includes the likes of Mcluhan, Felix Ravaisson, Manuel Delanda , Boudoin and of course more Adorno, amongst others. I've opened up a whole can of philosophers. But i think that I have found enough to support the original proposal, or at least to start talking about the subject without sounding like a complete moron. If I remember correctly, the original proposal was to investigate if there is a larger social and cultural signifigance to the aesthetics and design of commonplace technological devices like laptops, wherein we can find the opportunity to quantify an individuals' agency with technological devices as defined by Steigler and exemplified by activities like the Maker's Faire. The significance being, the degree of user-consciousness, situated in the current condition that is massive industrial externalisation of memory/ collective knowledge. Ehchem. The proliferation of this ( hold on I'm going to make a new word here) hypermnemotechnology ( aaahahahaha) means it is essential to analyze how the physical interface affects agency, how the marketing strategy slash social/cultural associations affect agency and the relationship between those two things. More...

Would your conversations be different if this was your phone?

( referring to the last post...) I like this idea for a couple of reasons. This is like a model of the transition from an industrial to knowledge based economy. Essentially, photography was a major step towards the commodification of images; the contemporary manifestation of this is the commodification of intelligence. Elizabeth's observation is consistent with Steigler's discussion of the industrial externalization of memory for this reason. It could be said that Apple computers jumped the gun in the aestheticization of the externalized memory/ knowledge, and in fact has instigated the process of commodification* of the mnemotechnical device. ( I have yet to make a Bourdieu post about aesthetics and social class, but it's coming don't worry) And again, to draw a comparison to the other laptop option, the generic pc. The nature of its assembly as a product is in most cases so fractured and rhizomatic that it is resists comprehensive commodification as a product. Steigler insists that it is our duty to become increasingly assertive agents of our own humanity (whoa) in dealing with the industrial externalisation of memory. This is because of the level of complexity and sheer capacity of commonplace technology, where we now witness this externalization at a totally crazy huge scale. So the question I would like to propose is: what effect does the commodification of this technology have on our ability to remain concious agents, as desired by Steigler, when the aim of the culture industry is usurp our agency?

*commodification as situated in Adorno and Horkheimers ideas outlined in 'The Culture Industry'