Integral Bibliography of the Evolution of the Physical Organism and its Technological Exteriorizations Part 1

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unedited raw material of a bibliographic project undertaken in 2006

Contents

2. SECOND QUADRANT: THE EVOLUTION OF THE ORGANISM

(the individual organism as an exterior object, i.e. our brain and organism and its exteriorisation in technology and communication)

table of contents part two

2.0 The impact of technology and its criticism

1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILISATION 3

2. THE MYTHOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY 4

3. CRITIQUES OF TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 4

4. TECHNOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY 7


2.1. History of Technology: transforming matter

1. TRIBAL TECHNOLOGIES 9

2. AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES 9

3. INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES 9

4. COGNITIVE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES 10


2.2 History of technology: minds communicating

1. MEDIA IN GENERAL 13

2. ORAL 13

3. WRITING 13

4. PRINTING 14

5. THE MASS MEDIA AGE 15

6. INTERNET, THE WEB and THE NETWORKS 15


- 2.3 Transhuman technologies

1. GENERAL OVERVIEWS 23

2. NOOSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES: AI, Robotics 23

3. BIOSPERE TECHNOLOGIES: Biotech, genetics 24

4. GEOSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES: Nanotech 25


2.4 Topics

ANIMALITY 25

THE BODY 27

THE BRAIN 27

THE COSMOS 27

LANGUAGE/SEMIOTICS 28

NATURE/THE NATURAL WORLD 28

THE OBJECT AS SUCH 28




HOW TO READ ABOUT TECHNOLOGY?

In Ken Wilber AQAL system of classification, i.e. all quadrants/all levels, the aspects of reality are described under four aspects individual-interior, i.e. the interiority of the subject; individual-exterior, ie the behaviour of the ‘object’, and also collective-interior (culture) and collective-exterior (systems). This upper-right quadrant here concerns the ‘exterior’ of the individual, seen as object in time and space. Usually, this is interpreted as the behaviour of the individual, since this is measurable. Individual here should not be seen as only human but as any object under consideration. I have adapted this classification by considering it as the quadrant of technology, for the simple reason that technology is a outward manifestation of the body and the brain of the human.

This chapter thus starts with general considerations about technology, as well as critical works about the interplay of technology and human civilisation and in particular also spiritual consciousness as it is related to technology

After this we examine the evolutionary line of technology, dividing it in three subsections, one dealing with technologies transforming manner, the other on communication technologies, and the third one focusing on the new generation of ‘transhuman technologies’ which are radically redefining the limits of human identity. In the first line we distinguish tribal, agricultural, industrial and cognitive production technologies with a subsection on peer to peer as production paradigm for the near future. In the line on the evolution of communicating minds, we start with the period of orality, followed by the invention of writing, printing, mass media, and the current era dominated by the internet, the web, and various networks. Extra subsections concern books to understand the import of networks. The trio biotech, nanotech, and artificial intelligence, are subsumed under the heading of ‘transhuman technologies’, for their innate capacity of changing our human condition.

After the examination of technology proper, we turn our attention to the other ‘objects’: animals/animality, the body, the brain, the cosmic universe, language, the natural world, seen not as systems but in their physicality as objects. By treating them in the second quadrant, we can devote the next third quadrant exclusively to the human ‘social, economic, and political’ systems and institutions.


The Bibliography

- 2.0 The impact of technology and its criticism

After the general introduction on the effects of technology in general, three lines of technological development are the subject of the following sub-sections. First those that deal with the transformation of matter, and second the communication technologies (transformation of the mind). A third part deals with the transhuman technologies such as biotech (transformation of life), nanotech and AI which threathen human identities as we know it.


1. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON TECHNOLOGY AND CIVILISATION


- André Leroi-Gouran. "Milieu et technique", 1945.

(livre anthropologique sur l'évolution des techniques à travers les temps)


- Lewis Mumford. Technics and Civilisation. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1934.

(a classic foundational work on the subject - “his works on technology and machinism, from the 30s, are still stunning in their actuality and perceptiveness” - rec Soderberg))


- Lewis Mumford. The Myth of the Machine. 2 vols.

(“argues passionately for a restoration of organic human purpose in the larger scheme of things, requiring humans that can rise not only above biological needs; but also above technological pressure and able to draw freely on the compost of many previous cultures”)


- Nolan, Patrick and Gerhard Lenski. 1999. Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology, Eighth Edition . New York: McGraw-Hill. 479 pages.

(“has focused on the relation of techno-economic modes of production, with cultural practices”, i.e. how changes in technology affects society, culture and the self - rec Ken Wilber)


2. THE MYTHOLOGY OF TECHNOLOGY


(the important myths about Man’s possible mastery of the universe through knowledge and technology)


- Dominique Lecourt. Promethee, Faust, Frankenstein: fondements imaginaires the l’ethique. Poche, 1998

(an examination of the great myths which tried to put a limit on human hubris and its technological quest)


- J. Duchemin. Promethee, Epimethee, Pandore. Les Belles Lettres. 2000

(“l’auteur retrace avec erudition les grandes orientations de ces mythes fondateurs, de la Grece antique jusqu’aujourd’hui” - rec Antaios)


3. CRITIQUES OF TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS


General


- Langdon Winner. Autonomous Technology. 1977. (whole earth)


- Lewis Mumford. The Myth of the Machine. 1966. (whole earth)


- Buckminster Fuller. Critical Path. St. Martin's Press. New York. 1981

(“Buckminster Fuller was one of the 20th century's great proponents of humanity's cosmically endowed evolutionary potential. In Critical Path he writes: "Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis-a crisis without precedent." "First, it is a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole." "Second, we are in an unprecedented crisis because cosmic evolution is also irrevocably intent upon making omni-integrated humanity omnisuccessful, able to live sustainingly at an unprecedentedly higher standard of living for all Earthians than has ever been experienced by any; able to live entirely within its cosmic-energy income instead of spending its cosmic energy savings account (i.e., the fossil fuels) or spending its cosmic-capital plant and equipment account (i.e., atomic energy)-the atoms with which our Spaceship Earth and its biosphere are structured and equipped-a spending folly no less illogical than burning your house-and-home to keep the family warm on an unprecedentedly cold midwinter night. "Humanity's cosmic-energy income account consists entirely of our gravity- and star (99 percent Sun)-distributed cosmic dividends of waterpower, tidal power, wavepower, windpower, vegetation-produced alcohols, methane gas, vulcanism, and so on. Humanity's present rate of total energy consumption amounts to only one four-millionth of one percent of the rate of its energy income. "...Ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to 'make it' economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do." )


- Christopher Lasch. Le Seul et Vrai Paradis: une histoire du progres et de ses critiques. Climats, 2002

(a critique of the ideology of ‘technological’ progress’)


Ecological critiques


- Kirkpatrick Sale. Rebels Against the Future - the luddites and their war against the Industrial Revolution. Quartet Books, 1995

(explains why the revolt of the Luddites, the english traditional weavers whole livelyhood was being destroyed by the textile industry, made sense then, and why a ‘neoluddite movement’ is needed today)


- Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

(one of the main critics of industrial society, very popular in the seventies; In French, “La Convivialite”:

- La même année voit paraître La Convivialité,critique plus générale du système technique, dans la foulée d'un Jacques Ellul dont il a découvert l'ouvre en 1965. La Convivialité est un texte qui garde une étonnante jeunesse. Illich y analyse la transformation de l'outil en un appareil asservissant. Il ne critique pas la technologie, mais le monopole qui lui est conféré et qui nuit à la liberté de chacun de répondre à ses propres besoins. Illich décrit la logique qui conduit la société à poursuivre une croissance ininterrompue, acculturant les groupes et les individus, sans répondre à la pauvreté qui, au contraire, s'y développe."L'organisation de l'économie tout entière en vue du mieux-être est l'obstacle majeur au bien-être", résume-t-il.” And see also: “ En 1973, Energie et équité,reprise d'articles donnés au Monde,sape l'analyse courante de la crise de l'énergie - perçue généralement comme un problème de ressources rares - en montrant qu'elle renvoie à la consommation, donc aux usages, par le développement débridé des transports. Il y établit une équivalence originale entre temps gagné - par la rapidité - et temps perdu - à travailler pour acquérir les moyens d'aller vite.”)


Political critiques


- More recommendations from Johan Soderbergh, Swedish author of an essay “Copyleft/copyright” which appeared in First Monday.

(“Its a mighty task that you have undertaken, to write a readers digest of all literature on technology! From a brief glance at the list, it seems that you have gathered some disparate sources on the subject. To me the most important aspect when discussing technology is to identify that technology, far from being neutral, is part of the social power-relations that shapes it. Lessig is in my opinion the one who, addressing an audience that has not confronted this thought before, demonstrates the point most convincing. From then on, I would be inclined to ask, how? David Noble in Digital Diplomacy Mill shows the continuum of skills being transferred from humans to machines/digits. (I have not read the book by him that is in the list). For surveillance, David Lyons The Electronic Eye: The Rise of the Surveillance Society. (London: Polity Press.1994) is the most well-balanced account I have read on the subject. On critically examining the information age, Vincent Mosco is a prominent name (loads of books by him). Currently I'm half-way through Francois Fortiers book 'Virtuality Check'. I cant say anything final about it as yet, it is well written and researched but has not deviated from the others' point of views so far. The difficulty is to find an author that simultaneously pays attention to the strength of counter-hegemonic forces in recapturing (and shaping) technology. There were some references in Cyber-Marxism that I have not access to now but that might be worth pursuing.”)


Philosophical critiques


- HOTTOIS, Gilbert. Simondon et la philosophie de la culture technique, Bruxelles: De Boeck, 1992, diffusion Belin


- Heidegger THE QUESTION CONCERNING TECHNOLOGY

(difficult but enormously influential text in the context of the philosophical reception of our technical civilisation - rec Kenneth Smith)


Spiritual critiques


- Daniel Quinn in _Ishmael

- David Abram's _Spell of the Sensuous

- Derrick Jensen's _A Language Older Than Words

(three books, all of which discuss overthrowing the "mother culture" of the modern scientific / materialistic spirit in various ways.Though, Quinn at times seems to desire "the return of a lost world.")


- Henri David Thoreau. Walden

(“over individu en maatschappij, individu en natuur - technologie - boek is meer dan honderd jaar oud, maar is toch heel herkenbaar wanneer het gaat over rat race, materialisme, de dwaasheid van de wereld die sneller moet gemaakt worden, vB. er komt telegraaf, oké, die communicatie gaat sneller, maar belangrijker is: WAAROVER praten mensen met mekaar? is zeer toepasselijk op gsm, e-mail e.a.” rec Jan Hertoghs)


- Jerry Mander. In the Absence of the Sacred. 1992. (Whole Earth)

(this book was much discussed in the eighties as a critique of industrial society, looking back to the Native Americans for lost wisdom)


4. TECHNOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY


General spiritual interpretations


- The Religion of Technology. David Noble.

(an eye-opener on the religious background and visions of the individuals behind the major innovations in science and technology. It describes a shift in the early medieval monasteries where for the first time, ‘work’ and ‘techne’ were heralded as means to imitate the kingdom of God on Earth, something unprecedented in the other spiritual traditions and civilisations up to that moment)


- Techgnosis. Erik Davis.

(a postmodernish but well readable overview of technology-influenced spiritual worldviews in our time, with discussions of Magick, Scientology, and many other sensibilities)


- CyberGrace. Jennifer Cobb.

(an attempt to synthetise insights from Teilhard de Chardin, Whitehead, and overall inspired by christian theology, to make sense of the new technological developments)


- The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace. Margaret Wertheim.

(a historical overview of the western concepts of space, starting with Dante, via Descartes to the current re-emergence of a new immaterial space, ie cyberspace)


- God and the Chip. Religion and the Culture of Technology. William A. Stahl. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press.

(“interdisciplinary critique of the mysticism associated with technology”)


- Michael Heim. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993

(philosophically informed explanation by an author who is equally at home in philosophy, design, and Taoism)


- L’archeofuturisme. Guillaume Faye. Aencre, 1998.

(this pagan-inspired author, once for a short time part of the new right GRECE movement in France, but also well-versed in Habermas and critical theory, says that the desire of technologies of power, as opposed to the technologies of comfort, is essentially pagan and hence very positive. Following a distinction made by Ernst Junger, between god-like and titan-esque ideologies, he enthousiastically espouses the latter, and calls himself a ‘faustian-promethean’ pagan, opposed to the Christian notion of transgression and hubris; for more postmodern, rather than neoconservative or ‘revolutionnary-conservative’ approaches to paganism, see Mark Pesce, Eric Davis, and Terence McKenna; though there are eerie parallels between the latter’s Archaic Revolution and the concept of Archeofuturism which also calls for a revival of Archaic values; Other title from this ecclectic author: L’Occident comme Declin, ed. Labyrinthe)


Techno-spiritual novels


- La Sphere d’Or. Erle Cox

(recommended by Guillaume Faye, as an ‘impressive account’ of the human quest for technology, interpreted around the Jungerian distinction between god-like and ‘titan-like’ civilisations)


- Neverness (trilogy). David Zindell.

(this science fiction is the only one I know with a double focus both on technological transhumanism, but also on spiritual transhumanism, and there’s a marvelous chapter on a planet Namahn, where ‘machine spirituality and mysticism’ are described in great detail)


- 2.1. History of Technology: transforming matter


1. TRIBAL TECHNOLOGIES


2. AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES


- Lynn White Jr. Medieval Technology and Social Change.

(this book does not cover agricultural technology per se, but its subject matter is the Middle Ages, an age dominated by the feudal system based on the agricultural production of the serfs; this historian was also the originator of the Lynn White controversy, by charging that Christianity's very position to nature was the root cause of the ecological crisis, cfr. also the attempts to create a counter-tradition in the form of Creation Spirituality, by Matthew Fox)


- Jacques Cauvin. Naissance des divinites. Naissance de l’agriculture: la revolution des symboles du neolithiques. CNRS, 1994. (Gaudin)


3. INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES

According to Zack Lynch, since the 1770s there have been five technology waves lasting around fifty years, with each wave starting as a craft industry within the previous wave, and enabling dramatic new efficiencies to bring new areas of complexity under control (wave five and six pertain to the next subsections):

1) the water mechanisation wave, England 1770-1830, replacing handcrafted production with water-powered manu-facture, and supported by the construction of canals

2) the development of steam engines, 1820-1880, made it possible for manufacturing to be located away from water, and powering locomotives with a dramatic reduction of time-to-market

3) electrification enabling steel production, for a revolution in city building and organisation, 1870-1920

4) mass assemblisation and motorisation of industrial production enable the mass market, 1910-1960

5) the informatisation/computisation wave, enabling the sharing of information across the globe at extremely low cost, and hence a total control of delocalised and globalised production process (1960-2020)

6) the neurotechnology wave, 2010-2060, enabling inexpensive and pervasive bioanalysis that will create fundamental breakthroughs in biomedicine, materials processing, etc...


4. COGNITIVE PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES


Computers and networks are both means of information exchange, hence, they are in the other section on ‘transmitting minds’, but also universal machines that aid in every other form of current production, both agricultural, industrial and informational, hence they require a separate subsection here as well. This section should include some books on automation, the re-engineering of production, and the like. Peer to peer is also included as an extra because it functions as a ‘third mode of production’.


General

- Michael Hammer and James Champy. Re-engineering the corporation: a manifesto for business revolution. HarperBusiness, 1984.

(hugely influential book that leds to countless business process re-organisations, as it argued that network technologies could not only be used to make existing processes more efficient, but to reorganise them altogether. The author changed the question from: how can we do things better, to ‘what do we want and need to do at all’, thereby focusing on core processes)


History


- Campbell-Kelly, Martin. Computer: a history of the information machine. Basic Books, 1996. (cited Pekka Himanen)


- Cerruzzi, Paul. A History of Modern Computing. MIT Press, 2000. (cited Pekka Himanen)


- Janet Abbate. Inventing the Internet. MIT Press, 1999.

(how the values of the early hackers influenced the very architecture and functioning of the internet, despite its anchoring in a defense research project)


-  Tim Berners-Lee. Weaving the Web: the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. Harpers-Collins, 1999.

(also focuses on the values and motivations behind its creation)


The present: corporate testimonies and profiles of the networked enterprise


Though a lot of corporate accounts are self-serving, they do give information on how business leaders see themselves, recount their experiences, and explain the management innovations they introduced.


- Jim Clark with Owen Edwards. Netscape Time: the making of a billion-dollar start-up that took on Microsoft. St. Martin’s Press, 199


- Michael Dell. Direct from Dell: strategies that revolutionised the industry. HarperCollins Business, 2000.


- Karen Southwick. High Noon: the inside story of Scott McNealy and the rise of SUN Microsystems. John Wiley and Sons, 1999.


The future: the peer to peer era

The peer to peer era is a hypothesis of the author of this bibliography, described in an essay elsewhere. It surmises that the most general characteristic of a next civilisational phase will be based on autonomous development by a network of equals, an integration of the current atomistic individualism with authentic community. But in a more narrow context, peer to peer can also be considered a third mode of production, neither motivated by profit, nor managed by centralised statist systems (the Soviet model), but through cooperation and exchange.


- Free software, free society. Selected essays of Richard Stallman. GNU Press.

(an explanation of the free software movement and methodology and the General Public Licence)


- Eric Raymond. 1) Homesteading the Noosphere. 2) The Cathedral and the Bazaar

(the basis of the Open Source movement based on the creation of post-scarcity gift economics)


- Pekka Himanen. The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age. Random House, 2001.

(tries to do what Max Weber did for capitalist culture in ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’)


- open sources: voices from the open source revolution. Publisher O’Reilly

(“cool with all high-status personalities in the open source world offering a chapter. There is Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman, Tim O'Reilly, Michael Tiemann, Paul Vixie to name but a few.” - rec George Dafernos who also suggests Rebel Code by Glyn Moody)


- Peter Wayner. Free for All: how linux and the free software movement undercut the high tech titans. HarperBusiness 2000. (Pekka Himanen)


- Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux. Pour la Gratuite.

(“la problematique ouverte par la gratuite permet d’envisager l’action politique comme un moyen non plus de prendre le pouvoir, mais de le rendre progressivement inutile, d’elargir la part autonome de la vie, de la part de la vie libre de pouvoirs”)


- 2.2 History of technology: minds communicating


1. MEDIA IN GENERAL


- McLuhan, M. (1994). Understanding media: the extensions of Man. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

(one of the major maverick analysts on the influence of technology, particulary the print revolution and the mass media age, who also offered a vision of the electronic media to come; see also this biography: - Marchand, Philip, (1946-) Marshall McLuhan : the medium and the messenger : a biography . Vintage Canada, 1998)


2. ORAL

- Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the World, 1982

3. WRITING


-   Shlain, Leonard, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, Viking, 1998

(Argues that the alphabet promoted the left-masculine brain functions and this is then connected to the rise of patriarchy as dominant system. Received both positive and negative reviews demolishing his thesis)


- Jean Bottero.  Mesopotamie: l’ecriture, la raison et les dieux. Gallimard, 1987. (rec Thierry Gaudin)


- Jacques Cauvin. Naissance des divinites. Naissance de l’agriculture: la revolution des symboles du neolithiques. CNRS, 1994. (Gaudin)


- Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.


- Jack Goody, The Power of the Written Tradition, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.


4. PRINTING


- Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the World, 1982


- E.A. Havelock. Origins of Western Literacy, 1976.

(the two books above are about how the print revolution changed the very forms of human consciousness)


- Elizabeth L. Eisenstein The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Volumes I and II

1979

(could be reprint or revision of same work, to verify: Eisenstein, E. L. (1993). The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)


- McLuhan, M. (1962). The Gutenberg galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.


- Chartier, Roger	Les usages de l'imprimé du 15ème au 19ème siècle. Fayard


- The Gutenberg Revolution. John Man Review, 312pp

("without Gutenberg and printing, there would have been no Reformation. A third of all books published in Germany between 1518 and 1525 were by Martin Luther - of the million volumes a year being turned out by German printing presses, more than 300,000 were by Luther. Bestselling author indeed. A contemporary British author would have to sell 300 million copies a year to equal that - a feat way beyond even the Archers and Jackie Collinses. There is a strong case for saying that the Reformation was the first historical result of the invention of printing. Later consequences were nationalism, the industrial revolution, the Newtonian conception of the universe, modern (that is, post-Descartes) philosophy, perspective in art, the notion of causality in the sciences, narrative chronology in literature, individual psychology, and perhaps even modern phenomena as diverse as Henry Ford and the assembly line on the one hand, and Freud and psychoanalysis on the other.")


- Lucien Febvre and Jean Martin. The Coming of the Book. (rec Jacques Barzun)


5. THE MASS MEDIA AGE


- Key author: Marshall McLuhan


- Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media.


6. INTERNET, THE WEB and THE NETWORKS


History of the internet and the web


- Janet Abbate. Inventing the Internet. MIT Press, 1999.

(how the values of the early hackers influenced the very architecture and functioning of the internet, despite its anchoring in a defense research project)


-  Tim Berners-Lee. Weaving the Web: the original design and ultimate destiny of the World Wide Web by its inventor. Harpers-Collins, 1999.

(also focuses on the values and motivations behind its creation)

The emergence of cyberculture


- Pierre Levy. 1) Cyberculture (Odile Jacob 1997) ; 2) Cyberdemocratie (Odile Jacob, 2002) ; 3) L’intelligence Collective (La Decouverte 1995); 4) Qu’est-ce le virtuel

(La Decouverte 1995)

(philosophically very informed, with an utopian bent strongly motivated by a optimism of the will and a recognition of the present form of society as acceptable. Pierre Levy is a strong advocate of collective intelligence, cyberdemocracy, and what it means now and in the future; recommended)


- Danielle Cliche ed., Cultural Ecology: the changing dynamics of communications London, International Institute of Communications, 1997.

(“Perhaps the best book out on communication futures. Essays by Kevin Robbins in which he deconstructs the futuristic claims of Bill Gates and Nicholas Negroponte (the net will end class divisions and reduce if not eliminate distance, physical and social) and by Cees J. Hamelin in which he argues that a global conversations of cultures is needed that goes beyond the hype of the information society. Cultural pluralism is the vision and the challenge of the future, not an information society. Kostas Gouliamos argues that the new technologies continue the hegemony of corporatism, reducing civil and national democracy and Gary Marx investigates if the new information technologies are a threat to privacy. Forget the hundreds of books out on the information society, this is the one to get.” - rec Sohail Inatullah)


- Sherry Turkle. Les enfants de l’ordinateur. Ed. Denoel, 1986.

(pioneering work on the psychological changes induces by computers and video games, in the younger generations and especially children, based on anthropological methodologies)


- Derrick De Kerckhove. Connected Intelligence - The arrival of web society. Kogan Page, 1997 (from the Director of the MacLuhan Institute)

The emergence of cyberpolitics


- Lawrence Lessig. 1) Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.  Basic Books, 1999. 2) The War of Ideas

(on information regulation and the struggles around internet infrastructure)


- The Emergence of Noopolitik. By John Arquila and David Ronfeldt. Rand Corporation.

(the authors are consultants to the military and have interesting things to say about how strategy, political as well as military, should be rethought in a network world. They introduce concepts such as cyberocracy, netwar, and the ‘noopolitik’ of the title, which consists of ‘soft’ techniques based on getting influence in networks; they are broadly informed by a democratic sensibility and open to social change movements such as alterglobalisation)


- Philippe Qeau. La planete des esprits. Pour une politique du cyberespace. Ed. Odile Jacob, 2000.


- Pierre Levy. Cyberdemocratie. Odile Jacob, 2002.


. Extra: Critiques from the left


- Mark Poster: 1)The Mode of Information (1990) ;2) The Second Media Age (1995) ; 3) What's the Matter with the Internet? (2001).

(Arguing that the Internet demands a social and cultural theory appropriate to the specific qualities of cyberspace, Poster reformulates the ideas of thinkers associated with our understanding of postmodern culture and the media (including Foucault, Deleuze, Heidegger, Baudrillard, and Derrida) to account for and illuminate the virtual world, paying particular attention to its political dimensions and the nature of identity. In this innovative analysis, Poster acknowledges that although the colonization of the Internet by corporations and governments does threaten to retard its capacity to bring about genuine change, the new medium is still capable of transforming both contemporary social practices and the way we see the world and ourselves. Recommended Greg Wilpert)


- Francois Fortier.  Virtuality Check.

( "floating somewhere between this virtual heaven and hell, the truth about the infosphere remains hard to pin down...Technologies are neither the naïve product of disinterested science nor the deterministic bearers of social processes. They are shaped by social relations, while in turn they open up opportunities for social change." - rec Soderbergh)


- Traité du tout-monde. By Edouard Glissant. 1997

(“Edouard Glissant, a 'leading postcolonial intellectual' who has written a treatise examining how the internet strengthens or weakens the domination of the First World over the Third World. In other words: how does it function as a tool for power. This is of course relevant as both sides use networked technology as an important tool in their arsenal.” - Mots Pluriel)


- Cyber-Marx, Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism. Nick Dyer-Witheford. Univ of Illinois Pr., 1999

(“comprehensive, well-researched overview on contemporary Marxist responses tot he Information Age” - rec Soderberg)


- Uncanny Networks. Dialogues with the Virtual Intelligentsia. Geert Lovink. MIT Press. (rec Bruce Sterling)


- Paul Virilio. La bombe informatique. Ed. Galilee, 1998

(postmodern critic of technology, who focuses here on the Accident related to the computer, the inevitable catastrophe linked to any new technological promise)


. Armand Mattelart


- Armand Mattelart. Histoire de l’utopie planetaire. De la cite prophetique a la society globale. La Decouverte, 1999

(how communication technologies have always fuelled planetary utopias, but has also always systematically led to deception, so extreme caution is necessary vis a vis the promises of the internet)


- Armand Mattelart. Networking the World.

(“places the contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that networking began much earlier than many assume: in the late eighteenth century.”)


- Armand Mattelart. Histoire de la societe de l’information. La Decouverte, 2001.


The Emergence of Cyber-Economics: understanding ‘cognitive capitalism’


The concept of cognitive capitalism is based on the conviction that we are going through a great transformation that is leading to the emergence of a new form of capitalism, which operates under different rules than its industrial predecessor.


- Burton-Jones, Alan. Knowledge Capitalism.Oxford University Press, 1999.

(cited Pekka Himanen)


- Carnoy, Martin. Sustaining the new economy: work, family, and community in the information age. Harvard University Press, 2000. (cited Pekka Himanen)


- "Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme" de Boltanski et Chiapello. Gallimard, 1999.

(This is a key book, to understand the postfordist model, and particularly its culture, based on the constant transgression of norms, and no longer in any sense conservative, authoritarian, or patriarchal)


 - Tarde, Gabriel. (1962) The Laws of Imitation, translated by E.C. Parsons with introduction by F.Giddings, reprint, Gloucester, MA, Peter Smith. 

(Tarde is credited of having thought through, long before its contemporary emergence, the cooperative logic of information-based exchange; he is a favorite of the school of thought behind Multitudes magazine)


- Maurizio Lazzarato, "Puissance de l’invention. La psychologie economique de Gabriel Tarde contre l’economie politique”. 

(a re-explanation of the importance of the ideas of Tarde)


- La place des chaussettes. Christian Marazzi. L'eclat, 2001.

(Focuses on the idea that capitalism is undergoing/has undergone a ‘linguistic turn’: “Pour Christian Marazzi , le travail est promis à de nouveaux développements. Tous les domaines où l'activité humaine est matière à langage peuvent être réquisitionnés, le travail domestique en particulier. Ainsi, les prophéties millénaristes sur la fin du travail n'ont guère d'autre but que de leurer ceux qui n'ont pas de travail, et l'engagement du langage sur le marché de l'emploi, aux lieux et places de la force ou de la qualification, met l'ensemble de la population en situation de travail, sans pour autant en assurer la rémunération. «Travailler en communiquant», tel est le nouveau mot d'ordre de notre époque OR “emphase sur un capitalisme sémiotique qui met au travail le langage, les formes symboliques de la socialité” reco Multitudes)


- Corsani et alli , "Vers un capitalisme cognitif" l'harmattan 2001)

( accent mis sur un troisième capitalisme, d'abord marchand puis industriel, celui ci, en adéquation avec le développement du general intellect, de l'intellectualité de masse , muterait en capitalisme cognitif - reco Multitudes)


- Henri Laborit, La nouvelle grille: De la biologie à la société de l'information 

(Dimensions biologiques et cognitives de l'individu et de la socialisation: “Ce n'est pas seulement pour tenir compte de la part biologique de la domination que nous devons nous intéresser à Henri Laborit mais surtout pour sa vision, dés 1974, d'une société de l'information permettant de dépasser la hiérarchie dans une société planétaire basée sur l'autonomie, alternative écologique à l'économie thermodynamique qui nous mène à notre perte. C'est un précurseur des analyses de l'économie en terme d'énergie et surtout du passage de la force de travail aux capacités cognitives, analysant la plus-value comme captation d'information. Enfin, l'autonomie et l'autogestion, sous leur forme biologique, révèlent leur dimension d'intégration, d'ouverture et de dépendance. On ne peut ignorer son utopie écologiste d'une autogestion organique même s'il faut y introduire d'autres dimensions et y mettre beaucoup plus de "précaution". - rec etatsgeneraux.org )


- Nick Dyer-Whitheford. Cyber-Marx, cycles and circuits of struggle in High-Technology capitalism. Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1999.

(“well-researched overview on contemporary Marxist responses to the information age” -Soderbergh copyleft essay)


- The Gifts of Athena . Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy by Joel Mokyr Princeton University Press Due/Published December 2002, 336 pages, cloth 

ISBN 0691094837

(“The growth of technological and scientific knowledge in the past two centuries has been the overriding dynamic element in the economic and social history of the world. Its result is now often called the knowledge economy. But what are the historical origins of this revolution and what have been its mechanisms? In The Gifts of Athena, Joel Mokyr constructs an original framework to analyze the concept of "useful" knowledge. He argues that the growth explosion in the modern West in the past two centuries was driven not just by the appearance of new technological ideas but also by the improved access to these ideas in society at large--as made possible by social networks comprising universities, publishers, professional sciences, and kindred institutions. Through a wealth of historical evidence set in clear and lively prose, he shows that changes in the intellectual and social environment and the institutional background in which knowledge was generated and disseminated brought about the Industrial Revolution, followed by sustained economic growth and continuing technological change. Mokyr draws a link between intellectual forces such as the European enlightenment and subsequent economic changes of the nineteenth century, and follows their development into the twentieth century. He further explores some of the key implications of the knowledge revolution. Among these is the rise and fall of the "factory system" as an organizing principle of modern economic organization. He analyzes the impact of this revolution on information technology and communications as well as on the public's state of health and the structure of households. By examining the social and political roots of resistance to new knowledge, Mokyr also links growth in knowledge to political economy and connects the economic history of technology to the New Institutional Economics. The Gifts of Athena provides crucial insights into a matter of fundamental concern to a range of disciplines including economics, economic history, political economy, the history of technology, and the history of science” - frontlist)


- Epingard Patrick (1999), L'Investissement immatériel, coeur d'une économie fondée sur le savoir, CNRS éditions, Paris.  (rec Multitudes)


-  Goldfinger, Charles (1994), L'utile et le futile -l'économie de l'immatériel, Éditions Odile Jacob, Paris  (rec Multitudes)


- Gorz, André, (1997) Misères du présent, richesse du possible, Galilée, Paris (rec Multitudes)


- Sommes-nous sortis du capitalisme industriel? (sous la direction de Carlo Vercellone). Ed. La Dispute

(“Les mutations en cours du capitalisme ont conduit des économistes à poser l'hypothèse d'une nouvelle phase historique du capitalisme, qualifiée de «capitalisme cognitif». Cette transformation trouverait notamment son origine dans la diffusion du savoir et la montée du travail immatériel remettant en cause les formes de la division du travail et du progrès technique du «capitalisme industriel». Cette hypothèse suscite un débat dont les principaux arguments sont développés dans cet ouvrage. Si certains auteurs privilégient la thèse du capitalisme financier comme facteur déterminant de la transformation des rapports sociaux de production, d1autres mettent l'accent sur une multiplicité de tendances dont il est prématuré d'affirmer à quelle configuration achevée elles mènent. D'autres encore insistent sur l'importance des mutations de la division internationale du travail ou sur celle d'une mise en perspective historique pour comprendre le nouveau visage du capitalisme. Les enjeux de ce débat sont loin de n?être que théoriques. L'un d'entre eux, développé dans la troisième partie du livre, est la proposition d'un revenu social garanti comme vecteur d'une reforme radicale des normes de répartition de la richesse. Les auteurs : François Chesnais, Antonella Corsani, Jean-Claude Delaunay, Patrick Dieuaide, Pierre Dockès, Marc Heim, Rémy Herrera, El Mouhoub Mouhoud, Yann Moulier-Boutang, René Passet, Pascal Petit, Geneviève Schméder, Claude Serfati, Luc Soete et Carlo Vercellone; postface par Bernard Paulré.”)


Understanding the emergence of Network Society


- Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Linked: The New Science of Networks.

(“Notre Dame Professor Barabasi digs deep into the world of links on the Web, social networks, cellular connections, and other fields. He returns with a clear picture of how these connections operate and how they’re reshaping our lives.” - rec 21C Magazine.com. “Networks hide wonderful order and are described by rather rigid evolutionary laws”)


- The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. (3 volumes). By Manuel Castells. Blackwell, 1996. (rec Soderbergh). Vol. 1: The Rise of the Network Society; 2) The Power of Identity.

(the classic work on the manyfold changes induced in a network-dominated world; he has updated and focused his research in a subsequent book entitled The Internet Galaxy)


- Castells M. The Internet Galaxy. Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford University Press, 2001


- Network Nation , by Murray Turoff and Roxanne Hiltz (rec George Por)


- Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and  Militancy RAND, 2001

(major theorists of the new network logics as they apply to war and conflict)


Understanding the Emergence of Virtuality


- Some key philosophers on the topic: Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio.


- Guy Debord. The Society of the Spectacle.

(a landmark book whose provocative theses have definitely changed the shape of the debate about modernity, capitalism and everyday life)


- Michael Heim. The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993

(philosophically informed explanation by an author who is equally at home in philosophy, design, and Taoism)

- Philippe Queau. Le Virtuel.


- The Dream Society. Rolf Jensen. McGraw-Hill, 1999.

(‘on the shift from information to imagination’ - Monde des Debats)


- The Experience Economy.

(explains that beyond the selling of commodities, the offering of services, it is now necessary to provide full-fledged experiences to the consumer; contains very useful charts on economic evolution)


Special Sectors: Gaming, art


ART

- Contextes de l’art numerique. Jean-Pierre Balpe. Hermes, 2000.

(“ouvrage remarquable sur les nouvelles conditions de la semiose (?) dans la cyberculture” - Multitudes)


GAMING

Games have overtaken movies as principal entertainment and become the dominant leisure activity of most youth. Because of its interactive and communal character, which is now in the process of being fully networked, we add it as a characteristic feature of the network age.


- Joystick Nation: How Videogames Gobbled our Money, Won our Hearts, and Rewired our Brains.  J.C. Herz.  Abacus, 1997. (cited Pekka Himanen)


- 2.3 Transhuman technologies


How much of the currently made promises will come true and how much is conjecture, will remain to be seen, but that the combination of artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and nanotechnology, (which respectively reduce the world of mind, life, and matter to its informational base), will change our lives and civilisation, and the nature of our humanity, seems already clear.


1. GENERAL OVERVIEWS

- Robert Aunger. The Widening Gyre: How Technology Will Evolve in the Post-Human Era.

(“As our control over the environment increases, truly powerful means of engineering genes, artificial minds and the very constituents of matter itself (at the nano-scale) will arise. It has even been suggested that some of these artifacts are likely to come "alive" (start replicating independently) or "wake up" (develop awareness) in the future. I therefore suggest we urgently need to develop a theoretical framework that can encompass the multifarious ramifications of technology in modern life. The central fact we need to explain is how technology can become increasingly complex -- going from simple tool manufacture to globe-girdling, vertically-integrated corporate empires. Luckily, recent evolutionary theorizing about major transitions leading to increased complexity -- such as the leap from single to multi-cellular organisms -- is perfectly suited to assess the real dangers of new technologies. I therefore use this framework, which I call Meta-Evolution (because it's about the evolution of evolution), to investigate our likely future, based on a reexamination of past trends in technological development. “)


- Michio Kaku, Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century and Beyond. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998. 

(“Parts of it are typical hyper upbeat. But some chapters are stunning. Especially noteworthy is the chapter, "Toward a Planetary Civilization," in particular the distinction between Type 0, 1, 2 and 3 civilizations (based on the type and scale of energy used). Definitely worth reading, bordering on brilliant macrohistory. “ - rec. Sohail Inatullah)


2. NOOSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES: AI, Robotics


ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

- Ray Kurzweil, the age of spiritual machines

(an update to the earlier ‘Age of Intelligent Machines’, many of whose predictions came true, focusing mostly on artificial intelligence that will rather soon surpass human intelligence)

ARTIFICIAL LIFE


- Artificial life Steven Levy

(“Un récit journalistique passionnant sur la vie artificielle . bien au delà de l'anecdotique simple, ce livre constitue la meilleure introduction au sujet” - remi sussan)


ROBOTS


- Robot. Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. Hans Moravec. Oxford University Press, 1998

(the visionary robot scientist from Carnegie-Mellon focuses on the evolution of robots to autonomous conscious beings that will come to dominate the universe)


- Edison’s Eve: a magical quest for mechanical life. Gaby Wood. Knopf.

(brilliant history of the attempts since the Enlightenment to build automata)


- Flesh and Machines: how robots will change us. Rodney A. Brooks. Pantheon.

(by the director of MIT’s AI lab, which is working on humanoid robots)


3. BIOSPERE TECHNOLOGIES: Biotech, genetics

- Francis Fukuyama. The Great Disruption


- Jurgen Habermas. L’avenir de la nature humaine

(“L‚ouvrage interroge les conséquences morales de l‚usage sur l‚homme des manipulations génétiques. “ - Multitudes)


- Peter Sloterdijk, Regels voor het mensenpark: Kroniek van een debat. Uitg. Boom, 176 blz., É29,90. 

(“De twee versies van Regels zullen samen met andere essays over Heidegger rond de zomer verschijnen bij uitgeverij Suhrkamp onder de titel Nicht gerettet: Versuche nach Heidegger. - Groene Amsterdammer /very controversial essay, part of a controversy with Habermas, that discusses eugenism)


- Genescapes: the ecology of genetic engineering. Stephen Nottingham. Zed Books, 2002.

(“a level-headed and systematic examination of the myriad ways in which genetically altered organisms could potentially disrupt natural ecosystems” - rec Resurgence - see also a companion book with 26 essays: ‘Redesigning Life? the worldwide challenge to genetic engineering’)


CRITIQUES


- Cloning the Buddha: the moral impact of biotechnology. Quest Books, 1999.


- L’avenir de la nature humaine. Vers un eugenisme liberal? Jurgen Habermas. Gallimard, 2002.

(foremost philosopher Habermas intervenes in this key debate to see how humanism can survive)


4. GEOSPHERE TECHNOLOGIES: Nanotech


- Eric Drexler, Engines of Change. New York, Anchor Press, 1986.

(“Gives insight into the range of dramatic new nano-technologies that will forever transform economics.” Sohail Inatullah)




- 2.4 Topics

ANIMALITY


- Origins Reconsidered: in search of what makes us human. Richard Leakey and robert Lewin. Doubleday, 1992.
- 1.L'ouvert, De l'homme et de l'animal, Giorgio Agamben, Rivages, 2002
- 2. La part animale de l'homme, Esquisse d'une théorie du mythe et du chamanisme, Michel Boccara, Anthropos, 2002

(Ces deux livres renouvellent la question de nos rapport avec l'animalité. Leurs points de vue me semblent éclairer et compléter ce que j'ai pu avancer sur le rôle du cerveau dans l'ouverture au non-biologique (la distanciation). Nous verrons qu'alors que pour Giorgio Agamben, l'homme est tout entier dans son effort de différenciation de l'animalité (L'homme est un animal qui "se reconnaît ne pas l'être" 46), pour Michel Boccara, et sans contredire à ce processus d'arrachement au monde animal, notre humanité y reste profondément ancrée malgré tout, à travers le mythe ou le chant comme vécus qui nous renvoient au temps jadis où nous étions des animaux comme les autres, avant l'apparition d'un langage humain qui nous a rendu sourd au langage des oiseaux comme à la plupart de nos instincts. Nous verrons qu'il faut y voir le retour dans le langage de notre animalité perdue par le langage. - Jean Zin)


- Dominique Lestel.  Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002

(“Ceci conforte les points de vue de nombreux éthologues et socio-philosophes, notamment en France Frédéric Joulian et Dominique Lestel (dont nous commenterons prochainement dans cette revue le livre passionnant Les origines de la culture. Flammarion 2002) : il n'y a sans doute pas de différences fondamentales entre les sociétés de primates d'aujourd'hui et celles des premiers hominiens. On étend d'ailleurs la réflexion à d'autres sociétés, celles de certains oiseaux et des cétacés par exemple. La question reste par contre entière : pourquoi l'évolution des sociétés d'hominiens a-t-elle divergé de celles des autres espèces animales à cultures voisines ? Deux autres questions secondaires se posent d'ailleurs : qu'étaient les sociétés animales des ancètres des grands singes il y a 3 millions d'années, et en quoi les sociétés aborigènes actuelles ont-elles évolué par rapport à celles des premiers hominiens ? - Automates Intelligents)


- Dominique Lestel. L'animalité. Essai sur le statut de l'humain, Hatier 1996.

(L'imposant livre au que vient de publier Dominique Lestel, qu'il qualifie trop modestement d'essai, sur ce qu'il appelle (toujours trop modestement) "les origines animales de la culture," nous paraît devoir être une base indispensable pour la compréhension du problème majeur de notre époque : la compatibilité entre la survie d'espèces ayant précédé l'homme depuis des dizaines de millénaires, celle des diverses formes de l'humanité actuelle et ce qu'il adviendra de ces dernières lorsque, dans moins d'une cinquantaine d'années peut-être, de nouvelles formes de super-intelligences se seront développées en symbiose entre les machines et les êtres vivants. Il ne s'agit pas, en d'autres termes, d'un livre n'intéressant que les seuls spécialistes de la vie animale, mais tous les lecteurs de notre revue. - Automates Intelligents)


- Man's Place in Nature , by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (rec George Por)


THE BODY


- The  Anatomy of Love: the natural history of monogamy, adultery and divorce. By Helen Fisher. Simon & Schuster, 1992.  (sd bib)


- The Future of the Body: explorations into the further evolution of human nature. By Michael Murphy. Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1992.

(an exhaustive survey of extraordinary human capacities in sports, science, but also amongst mystics, and an examination of how they got there so that this can become a more general cultural trend)


- SIMONDON, Gilbert. 1964. L'individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (l'individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d'information), Paris : PUF, Rééd. J.Millon, coll. Krisis, 1995 

(rec. by Multitudes)


THE BRAIN


- The Triune Brain in Evolution,  Paul MacLean (1990) (‘fundamental’)




THE COSMOS


- The Embers and the Stars: an inquiry in the moral sense of nature. By Erazim Kohaz. Un of Chicago Pr, 1993


- The Dramatic Universe. (4 vols.). By John G. Bennett. Coombe Springs Press, 1977.

(post-Gurdieff synthesis which tries to come to terms with a hyperdimensional universe, while taking into account the tradition of esoteric understanding of the world)


- Theories of Everything: the quest for the ultimate explanation.  By John D. Barrow. Fawcett Columbine, 1991. (sd bib)


LANGUAGE/SEMIOTICS


 - For a critique of the political economy of the sign. Jean Baudrillard. Telos, 1981.

(sd bib)


- A la recherche de la langue parfaite, Umberto Eco Seuil.1994

(“Eco y montre comment on est passé d'une rêverie " hiérogliphique " et polysemique de la " langue adamique " au projet, à l'époque des lumières, de langues artificielles " rationelles " éliminant toute ambiguité du discours. - remi sussan)


NATURE/THE NATURAL WORLD


- Charles Darwin. 1) The Origins of the Species. 2) The Descent of Man.


THE OBJECT AS SUCH


- Revenge of the Crystal - Selected Writings on the Modern Object and its Destiny. Jean Baudrillard. Pluto Press, 1990.


-  SIMONDON, Gilbert. 1989. Du mode d'existence des objets techniques, Paris, Aubier