Re: <nettime> Friedrich Kittler

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

hi Florian,

On Sat, 29 Oct 2011, Florian Cramer wrote:

> In the humanities, the intellectual provocation of new technology -
> and techno-determinism - has worn off. At least in an environment
> like Nettime, I do not see many people left who would seriously
> dispute the social/political/economical/cultural constructedness of,
> and agency in, media and technology. This is why I think that,
> pragmatically, his greatest legacy and impact on media studies and
> media criticism will be the hacker legacy: his insistence that one
> needs to have technical understanding of the systems one analyzes
> and criticizes. In a world where scholars identify with terms like
> "digital humanities", apparently without knowing more than the
> colloquial meaning of 'digital', this remains a painfully important
> message.

painful, well said.

You gave yourself an answer then, why people here prefers to remember
him just for the "personality and intellectual style"? so they can
keep on sanctifying their position in the "digital humanities" as
illiterates who sat in the intellectual salon. <g>

I had nothing to do personally with Kittler, but knowing the
enthusiasm of some of his students I guess he must have been an
inspiring teacher. One time at transmediale I've had the honor of
disagreeing with him, or better with a panel he was in, about the
interpretation they gave of free and open source software.
I kind of recall I was sitting just besides you.

Nevertheless I guess he should be placed "up there" for a genealogy of
media studies (genealogy in Foucaultian terms, that is for us a less
superficial alternative to the Manovich encyclopedia) together with
Flusser and ... Foucault, indeed.

ciao

-- 
jaromil,  dyne.org developer,  http://jaromil.dyne.org
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