Franz Kafka's weblog (1910 - 1923) is now in progress. It is available in English or German. The site 'aims to supplement that work by providing a public-domain translation in English and a space for discussion'. Nice idea!

The Transliteracies group conducts research in the technological, social, and cultural practices of online reading. The investigation into new digital practices involves individual, organisational literacy and semi-"literate" machines.

"The idea is to exploit cross-disciplinary expertise to approach online reading from multiple angles simultaneously, rather than just as an engineering problem, just as a hermeneutical problem, or just as a social problem. "

" Networked, digital environments also make more important the social, collective experience of reading (as instanced by Web blogs or the Google search-engine technology that filters hits according to popularity or relevance in a community of referring Web pages, each of which is in effect a "reading" of the referred page). Finally, the new online reading complements the emerging technologies that increasingly allow computers to read/write autonomously to each other across platforms and applications-as in the XML-based technologies that underlie the new online text archives, "Web services," and RSS newsreaders."

A (free) conference will take place in June. Seed-questions are being spread to discuss issues at the virtual round-table before the conference. 

Hartmut Dietz präsentiert den 'Neuen Physiologus'. In dieser labyrintischen 'Verknüpfung der Wissenschaften' schafft er seine alphabetische und logische Ordnung in die Welt. 'Die Enzyklopädie der Erfahrungen' erklärt 'die Menschen und die Welt in seinen Beziehungen'. Über Menschen, Tiere und Sensationen gibt es literarische Auszüge vom Höhlenweib bis Minotaurus.

Untauglich für 'fast-food'-scans der blogger Welt. Zeit machen und geniessen.

The aquired, non-genetic storage of necessary cultural information : Paideia has to take place from one generation to the other. Viewed not from its content, but its structure, the syntax  enables an imperative, indicative etc. Hence a surface covered in code (a picture)  for example of an enthusiastic, dynamic smoker is an indicative.

In early education one learns mainly these imperatives from group-members or instructors. These 'behavioural programmes' set values and ethics for life.

In school the communication of operatives provides an 'experiential programme'.

Tertiary and lifelong education operate on indicatives, or 'knowledge’ (Erkenntnis)

All three levels are of course never distinct in reality. To not 'pick your nose' can remain a life-long value, but school or tertiary information can be obsolete within a very short time.

Paideia or the messages, that programme us are now being usurped by a single sender, the mass media . It transmits the imperative of the system itself, which are mainly models for behaviours of consumption. The outcome is a value-free behaviour, that allows the interests of the senders to appear as one with the interests of the receivers.

A programming elite with the help of science & technology beam their discursive indicatives form the centre of a one-way amphitheatre. The codes of mass-culture tend to become universal on the 'techno-imaginative surfaces' (TV, magazines, billboards etc.) which are absorbed by the receivers.

The division of sender vs. receiver culture works to the advantage of the ‘elite’, which aims to consume to the max, and has other than that little vision of the direction of the entire programme, in fact they are outright incapable of assembling any other programme.

Interactive, dialogic networks are the answer to a mono-logical discourse.

Inspired by:
Vilém Flusser, Kommunikologie, Fischer 1998, pp 309-329