Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Vito Acconci reading

paragraph 13

"the electronic age obliterates space and overlaps places"
this paragraph stood out to me as being especially pertinent to modern digital media and online interactions. "the electronic age establishes the primacy of time," says acconci, and the truth of this statement has grown exaggeratedly: now we demand immediacy in every part of our lives, in finding out information and answering questions we don't know, in talking to people, in seeing images. time has gone from a concept to a physical object (clock) to a number, and similarly everything in our lives is codified, packaged and sold and readily available. people are numbers -- the number of pageviews on a site, the number of friends you have on facebook, the number of comments you get on a blog post or piece of art, the number of upvotes or likes your written opinions earn. the physical world is indeed "a slowing-down process", one which can serve as a welcome change of pace, although even public spaces are now infiltrated by the technology on our smartphones and laptops. despite his eccentricity i like this reading.

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