ICTlogy

Keynote Speech: Scott Lash
New Media and Knowledge Ontologies

We should think of a broader scope of Web 2.0 beyond just media but into knowledge. Globalization is quite a complex thing, being web 2.0 both a consequence and a cause.

Ontologically being digital. What is the new media ontology?

Heidegger, revisiting Aristotle, talks about the cost of technology: formal cost, material, efficient cost, final cost. So, how should we handle new digital media (e.g. Facebook)?

Technology for Heidegger: an instrument, for selfish uses; but also technique can open objects, and people, reveal new layers of meaning.

Kittler: wants to empty out the object, empty out the form.

Lots of new media objects can be explained through the Gestalt paradigm, as open, productive objects.

Francisco Varela: closed networks. You’ve got your network in your pocket, i.e. in your mobile phone, your digital agenda, etc.

Web 2.0: decreases production, increases representation

Epistemology: you cannot know the things by themselves, but through their categories, their qualities; those categories are somehow subjective, inside the observer. Phenomenology, on the contrary, is about knowing the thing by itself, presuming a general, external, objective categorization.

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