that’s what i was wondering

mark fisher on accelerating technology in a time of decelerating culture [paste]

Those of us who grew up in the decades between the 1960s and the 1990s became accustomed to rapid changes in popular culture. Theorists of future shock such as Alvin Toffler and Marshall McLuhan plausibly claimed that our nervous systems were themselves sped up by these developments, which were driven by the development and proliferation of technologies. Popular artefacts were marked with a technological signature that dated them quite precisely: new technology was clearly audible and visible, so that it would be practically impossible, say, to confuse a film or a record from the early 1960s with one from even half a decade later.

The current decade, however, has been characterised by an abrupt sense of deceleration. A thought experiment makes the point. Imagine going back 15 years in time to play records from the latest dance genres – dubstep, or funky, for example – to a fan of jungle. One can only conclude that they would have been stunned – not by how much things had changed, but by how little things have moved on. Something like jungle was scarcely imaginable in 1989, but dubstep or funky, while by no means pastiches, sound like extrapolations from the matrix of sounds established a decade and a half ago.

Needless to say, it is not that technology has ceased developing. What has happened, however, is that technology has been decalibrated from cultural form. The present moment might in fact be best haracterised by a discrepancy between the onward march of technology and the stalling, stagnation and retardation of culture. We can’t hear technology any more. There has been a gradual disappearance of the sound of technological rupture – such as the irruption of Brian Eno’s analogue synth in the middle of Roxy Music’s “Virginia Plain”, or the cut-and-paste angular alienness of early rave – that pop music once taught us to expect. We still see technology, perhaps, in cinema CGI, but CGI’s role is somewhat paradoxical: its aim is precisely to make itself invisible, and it has been used to finesse an already established model of reality. High-definition television is another example of the same syndrome: we see the same old things, but brighter and glossier.

lately

been distracted lately by personal transformation issues, particularly finding out susan has (most likely treatable) endometrial cancer

she’s doing ok, but since there are only 2 gynecological oncologists in az, and she’s on the state health support plan, we still haven’t even got her into the office to see the specialist. it’s been 3 weeks since the diagnosis.

any prayers/good thoughts are appreciated.

eric hobsbawm in 2004

“Frankly, I can’t make sense of what has happened in the United States since 9/11 that enabled a group of political crazies to realize long-held plans for an unaccompanied solo performance of world supremacy. I believe it indicates a growing crisis within American society, which finds expression in the most profound political and cultural division within that country since the Civil War, and a sharp geographical division between the globalized economy of the two seaboards, and the vast resentful hinterland, the culturally open big cities and the rest of the country. Today a radical right-wing regime seeks to mobilize “true Americans” against some evil outside force and against a world that does not recognize the uniqueness, the superiority, the manifest destiny of America. What we must realize is that America global policy is aimed inward, not outward, however great and ruinous its impact on the rest of the world. It is not designed to produce either empire or effective hegemony. Nor was the Donald Rumsfeld doctrine — quick wars against weak pushovers followed by quick withdrawals — designed for effective global conquest. Not that this makes it less dangerous. On the contrary. As is now evident, it spells instability, unpredictability, aggression, and unintended, almost certainly disastrous, [i]n consequences. [Jonathan Rosenbaum.com]

and things have changed far less than many expected, haven’t they?

meanwhile, several states harbor mutinous intentions which might seem trivial now, but may not in years to come.

bankgangsters continue to swallow the american economy

the money’s gone and some of it into politician’s pockets

The intention of Congress when it passed the bailout bill could not have been more clear. The purpose was to buy up defective mortgage-backed securities and other “toxic assets” through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as tarp. But the bill was in fact broad enough to give the Treasury secretary the authority to do whatever he deemed necessary to deal with the financial crisis. If tarp had been a credit card, it would have been called Carte Blanche. That authority was all Paulson needed to switch gears, within a matter of days, and change the entire thrust of the program from buying bad assets to buying stock in banks. [from link 1]

Despite the financial crisis that nearly sank us a year ago, the front page of the Sept. 12 New York Times reports that, “Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs.”

If nothing is changed, MIT’s Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, told the Times, the banks “will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check.” [from link 2]

fucking finally

a bill which would begin the gutting of the PATRIOT Act

ghosts of economic bubbles past

container ship limbo off singapore [undernews]

2 important posts from boing boing

have to cite these: what sounds an essential new book by a Congressional counsel on copyright, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, & without state legislative action, the Philadelphia Free Library System is going to shut down at the end of this month

from the comments on the library post, it seems likely political brinksmanship is at work. but that it gets to this point at all is sickening.

r.i.p. jim carroll

i liked the basketball diaries film, unlike a lot of people. never got into his work but still sad to see him go [boing boing]

Times obit

don’t usually plug commercial sites, but

last exit to nowhere does the movie t-shirt thing right [boing boing]

at the other end of the spectrum

from iceland is dubai, where you can go to jail for bouncing a check