Christian, Fabulous!  I had not read this work but will most certainly do so now.  It seems to capture the essence of a recent (mess of a) video I put together to try and articulate this 'phenomenon.' ... I think...then again, I might have it all wrong.  Everyone on this list seems so much more brilliant than I - if you have comments of any nature, please share. Robert --- On Sat, 7/7/12, Cristian Berrio Zapata <cristian.berrio@gmail.com> wrote: From: Cristian Berrio Zapata <cristian.berrio@gmail.com> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Technology as ideologically neutral? To: "jeremy hunsinger" <jhuns@vt.edu> Cc: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Received: Saturday, July 7, 2012, 7:48 AM Pls do not let McLuhan out of the scope... in McLuhan, M. (1995). The Playboy Interview. Essential McLuhan, 233-269. “*In the past, the effects of media were experienced more gradually, allowing the individual and society to absorb and cushion their impact to some degree. Today, in the electronic age of instantaneous communication, I believe that our survival, and at the very least our comfort and happiness, is predicated on understanding the nature of our new environment, because unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitute a total and near-instantaneous transformation of culture, values and attitudes. This upheaval generates great pain and identity loss, which can be ameliorated only through a conscious awareness of its dynamics. If we understand the revolutionary transformations caused by new media, we can anticipate and control them; but if we continue in our self-induced subliminal trance, we will be their slaves*.” (McLuhan, 1995) On the other hand, I am a fan of applying the "complexity" view to all ICT views. Therefore it would be quite difficult to sepparate politics, from ideology, from economics, from culture, all of them part of the Internet-Web pack. It  comes to be very visible when looking at digital divide programes applied to indigenous communities. Regarding the "amputation" problem also raised by McLuhan, ICT tools let "self perception" out of the scope. Self perception (proprioception and tactile perception) is the base of affective bound, "love". Then, what are we depriving new generations of? 2012/7/7 jeremy hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu>

I find this to be an interesting debate, though mostly the question is where the ideology actually exists.    Does it exist in the object itself?   relations to the object from other objects?  relations to the object to semiotic systems around it?  relations to socius or culture?  or in the systems alone, cultures alone, socius, alone, etc.

basically there is a matrix here of ideologies, contexts, objects and their axiologies operating both ontologically ala mereological constructions  and epistemologies.   With many blurry middle grounds.

I hold that artifacts have politics in themselves, but i'm not sure that all artefacts have ideologies in themselves.  The question i tend to raise and ask people to write about is... what is the politics of the toaster, because the toaster has a whole political economics and a politics, but does it have an implied ideology.  Now the design of a toaster can certainly have ideological components, but the idea of a toaster may perhaps not, though granted whether the idea exists outside of the set of objects is another debate for the Platonists to take up.

however... I wonder about the neutrality of the internet because as I've argued here before, that while there is no real internet beyond reference to a conceptual idea that encompasses many technologies and systems that lack what i'd all think of as a unity beyond the concept.  So does it as a whole have a neutrality or an ideology?  there is a certain technocratic rationality to it, and that rationality certainly has a traditionally critiqued ideology, but is that in it, or in the design of it, or in the relations of it within historic contexts?  and isn't neutrality and the claim to it, an ideological claim?  I've always tended to argue that the claim toward neutrality and objectivity is almost always ideological.

one of my favorite authors on this technology as ideology is Paul Virilio and my second favorite is Walter Benjamin in Arcades Project.

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-- *Cristian Berrío Zapata* _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/