Alphabetic texts do not convey the bodily gestures of human speech: the hesitations, silences, and changes of pitch that infuse spoken language with affect. Rotman suggests that by removing the body from communication, alphabetic texts enable belief in singular, disembodied, authoritative forms of being such as God and the psyche. He argues that while disembodied agencies are credible and real to "lettered selves," they are increasingly incompatible with selves and subjectivities formed in relation to new virtual technologies and networked media. Digital motion-capture technologies are restoring gesture and even touch to a prominent role in communication. Parallel computing is challenging the linear thought patterns and ideas of singularity facilitated by alphabetic language. Barriers between self and other are breaking down as the networked self is traversed by other selves to become multiple and distributed, formed through many actions and perceptions at once. The digital self is going plural, becoming beside itself.
- 217 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
Becoming Beside Ourselves continues the investigation that the renowned cultural theorist and mathematician Brian Rotman began in his previous books Signifying Nothing and Ad Infinitum...The Ghost in Turing's Machine: exploring certain signs and the conceptual innovations and subjectivities that they facilitate or foreclose. In Becoming Beside Ourselves, Rotman turns his attention to alphabetic writing or the inscription of spoken language. Contending that all media configure what they mediate, he maintains that alphabetic writing has long served as the West's dominant cognitive technology. Its logic and limitations have shaped thought and affect from its inception until the present. Now its grip on Western consciousness is giving way to virtual technologies and networked media, which are reconfiguring human subjectivity just as alphabetic texts have done for millennia.
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Information
Publisher
Duke University Press BooksYear
2008Print ISBN
9780822342007
9780822341833
eBook ISBN
9780822389118
Topic
InformaticaSubtopic
Interazione tra uomo e computerTable of contents
- Contents
- Foreword Machinic Bodies, Ghosts,and Para-Selves: Confronting the Singularity with Brian Rotman Timothy Lenoir
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Aura
- Introduction: Lettered Selves and Beyond
- Part I
- Part II
- Notes
- References
- Index
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Yes, you can access Becoming Beside Ourselves by Brian Rotman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Informatica & Interazione tra uomo e computer. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.