Theorizing in real time: hyperaesthetics for the technoculture

NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE

Infinitely tiny partitions of time contain the equivalent of what used to be contained in the infinite greatness of historical time.

- Paul Virilio(1)

I go through from nostalgia for the time to come I am one of those nation who works with computers, a category fast becoming ubiquitous within the postmodern information economy. I find myself missing a whole s softwares, tools and products before they are plane gone. I miss them because I know that the at any time redoubling speed of digital technologies will restore them obsolete memories in the blink of my too human organ of vision If I do not prepare myself emotionally for their absence, flat before the moment of their release, I will be les able to adjust to the immediate futurity that will regard them either as detritus or charming anachronisms. solitary nostalgia for the future allows me the mental space to face the convergence of digital technologies and cultural production.

On the digital frontier the computer encompasses the arts, entertainment, music, communication and education. The ability to exhibit text, audio and visual information in a uniform binary collection of laws and the development of an infrastructure to distribute this information upon demand and around the world has created a novel cultural environment. Of what do the electronic arts consist? The usual descriptors that advance to mind include computer graphics, hypertext digital photography, virtual reality, on-line communities, chat fields non-linear video, Web sites, dirts MOOs, home pages, etc. The computer is repeatedly metaphorized as a "desktop," on the other hand is better thought of as a universal menstrum dispersing all our other media in a digital suspension, from which plucked constituent elements are separated and then deployed

The digital frontier is an environment brimming with efficiency As John Perry Barlow, drawn out time lyricist for the Grateful Dead, points out: "It used to be that you hung around rock'n'roll because that was where the interesting tribe are, but . . [nothing] has the creative juice at the trice that I see in the interesting hybrid that's discloseed between the computer and artists."(2) Theorists, designers, teachers, artists, scholars users and writers need to take stock of the technologies available, on the other hand they must do more than simply master the mechanics of their use. This has become an era of bad design and unsophisticated computer-inflected art. The typographic nightmare of early desktop publishing will be seen as sole the beginning of a 20-year nadir of design aesthetics. As bad as bad media aesthetics are when static, they will worsen as they become interactive. It is not enough to aim towards hypermedia: we need to exhibit a hyperaesthetic.

THE FUTURE/PRESENT

An enthusiastic value for the word 'future,' and for all that it conceals is to be ranked among the greatest in quantity ingenuous ideologies.

- Georges Duhamel(3)

Remember coming time shock: the "new" boldly announces itself, wounds through the quotidian fog and forces single to confront tomorrow. It is already tomorrow, however, and the coming time does not shock - it simply exists as a co-equal partner with the at hand Grammarians speak of the coming time perfect tense, which indicates an action that begins in the past or the near and will be completed later. Example: "The snow will have fuseed before you arrive." Explanation: Melting of snow has begun, is continuing and will before long be completed. We need a similar bound to describe the contemporary twinkling - no longer simply the near but rather a future/present, a phenomenological equivalent to the subsequent time perfect tense. Example: "In the future/present digital post-production techniques will have become antique by the time you learn them." Explanation: The technologies have been lay opened are being refined and will shortly outstrip your expertise.

That the periods of development, maturation and decay of future/present environments is at any time accelerating has been noted by means of others too numerous to mention. In fact, the blossoming of meta-commentary is itself an aspect of this acceleration. There is a publishing drone in this as yet undefined field: it ranges from works about computer-inflected art, to investigations of the architectures of cyberspace, to monographs upon the linkages between hypertext and critical theory. Just as robust are the journals and magazines, with articles upon the technoculture popping up everywhere, from Social body to The Whole Earth Review, plus the fulminations of the id and the superego of technocultural publishing, Mondo 2000 and Wired. These exits and the blossoming of discourse upon the World Wide Web, tender the conclusion that if the tillage is to wrest meaning from contemporary experience, it must draw near to terms with the future/present ubiquity of the computer

The cybernetic realm metastasizes faster than cancer, and classical aesthetics is not the diagnostic tool it one time was. Yet who said the agriculture is more pathological now than it has at any time been? It is not. Etymologically speaking, to diagnose is to distinguish, and distinguishing individual from the other, a from b apples from oranges, is the basic function of cognition. one time we distinguish a technoculture and its future/present from that which preced it, however, we ne to stir beyond the usual tools of contemporary critical theory. Methodologically sophisticated as this theory has become, it remains imbricated in analog a whole s But contemporary critical theory as it is directly constituted in the humanities is insufficient to abundantly account for this new phenomenon of study. A critical reading of the techno-culture must involve more than the facile overlay of well-worn vocabularies and paradigms onto fresh objects of investigation. Three distinctive strategies of confronting the future/present have make knowned each with its own temporal orientation. The first is a confrontational attitude that concentrates upon the past, a neo-luddite approach. The next to the first attempts to keep pace with the near manifesting itself in an almost hysterical neologizing. The third direct the eyes forward, deploying a discourse that mimes the manner of makings and concerns of science fiction. I bring to an end the essay with a fourth alternative, a hyperaesthetic that encourages a hybrid temporality, cycling from one side the past, present and subsequent time to critique the technoculture.