W11: W10 Unsymposium

Some key take away ideas from this week’s lecture:

Jasmine said that her takeaway idea from the Galloway reading was that more powerful hubs can disintegrate and others proliferate – I agree this was one of the key ideas in the reading. Elliot stated that it was important to determine the limitations of a network as well as the opportunities for growth.

There was a lot of talk about technological determinism – Adrian said that you need to understand that the thing you think you’re in charge of has agency, before arguing that technology develops technique. He stated that technique is a response to technology, and a technical apparatus defines what we do.

I think this  is a fair call, however I think it is more cyclical than that.

I was watching a documentary a while back on Pixar and animation (which one it was I can’t quite remember, but I’ll try to recall it later) and one of the animators explained that “Art inspires technology, and technology challenges the art”. I think this is a truer statement of how we engage with technology and use it creatively – afterall why would we develop technology if we hadn’t been trying to get it to do something it wasn’t able to do?