Hyperreality or cyberspace - real social media experts (philosophers) (essay from @andragy)

via scribd.com

"Baudrillard's hyperreality is not a map at all, but a participative process that may shape us, or may allow us to shape our surroundings. There is no other controller. Governance is our own hands but is set to mass agendas. The cybernetic loop has closed on postcapitalist society and cyberspace."

This is dense, but well worth the read. This is also fascinating material to consider in greater depth. It provides a perspective well beyond the technological utopian view that pervades so very much of our industry.

(I also love the perspective of our society as a cybernetic loop -- it fits very well with the dynamics of the IT industry, and provides an interesting counter-perspective on notions of 'the singularity', suggesting that many elements of 'merging with the machine' are already at hand.)

Posted via web from _technoist_

William Gibson on the future

Q U O T E D

"The trouble is there are enough crazy factors and wild cards on the table now that I can't convince myself of where a future might be in 10 to 15 years. ... We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that -- we have no idea at all now where we are going.

Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too."

-- Science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the word "cyberspace," explains why he's taken to writing about the past
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From http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/08/quoted-606.html
Originally from: http://www.silicon.com/silicon/networks/webwatch/0,39024667,39168006-1,00.htm