How persuasive do you find Mosco's argument regarding myth? What mythical "tales" or sources might he have overlooked? While he notes there are positive aspects to maintaining myths, he clearly focuses on the negatives. What positives should be emphasized? As always, feel free to comment on any other aspect of the book that you find provocative. ************************ discussion vincent mosco >> sociologist, political economist. The political economist of communication >>> first book. examines the processes of commodification (williams, marx), structuration (anthony giddens), accumulation of capital :: how does it matters for culture, politics, case of miami >>> as cultural center of production for LA >>> World Bank offices. Headquarters for many banks from southamerica. growing presence of cultural studies in communication :: importance of content blind spots in political economy >> dont ask the question, so what do we do from here? >>> sometimes does not give us a blueprint. function of myths in society >>> "provide a path" myth as a story, grand narrative >> what are those myths. myths and technological determinisms? >>> tech determinism is an argument of causality levi-straus >>> how we think, how we mobilize our anthoropological framework to understand society bricoleur >> mythmaker >>> take pieces of the world and build something, create something >> with some vision >>> do that with concepts >>> deductive >>> how we make sense of the evidence we have in front of us >> the bricoleur is adaptive, creative, able to put things together. >> generative persons in terms of myth. >> breaking the relationship between the actual and the possible. paths to trascendance >> lift people out of the banality what kind of banal space is he talking about? the sublime >> transcendence :: the trickster : embody the resistance, emotionality, subversive, creative >>> embodies contradictions >> imagination :: aspirational >> maybe something new can grow >> trickster as the monkey wrench cyberspace myth >> power for all end of history in fukijama's book : prophets :: the vision : social cohesion, perfectly function democracy, freedom, equality, education, peace, myth trascends history >>> no history space >> globalized >> end of nation state >>> notions of citizenship and identity >>>> reagan figure :: deregulation, fukujama's sense of end of history, ahistorical, linked arms with Tatcher >> creating an environment for business and capital. >> very politicized indeed >> sort of american victory in history, the end. "freedom" >> as an important world in the cyberspace myth. eschepticism >> being able to read towards myths ****************** I agree with Carrie in the refreshing aspect of the Digital Sublime and I think the questions she is asking here are provocative. Since it is true that nowadays more people is participating in the creation of content from the bottom, a question about the mythic qualities of those productions becomes pertinent. In my opinion, what ends happening with the bottom-up creation of narratives is that usually they end growing up from a grass that is already located in a bigger "mythic space." Hence, those creations end strengthening the power of the myth, the grand narrative, the hyperbole. Think for instance in the myth of "the Nation" back in the 19th century and how poets or painters coming from the bottom, lets say from "the masses," contributed to strengthen the myth. This fact, highlights the positive aspect of the mythical thought, it helps us to build something, for instance, communities, societies, cities, neighborhoods. The myth provides us with the energy, symbols, and metaphors, to build projects together and help each other. Mosco's argument about the cyberspace as a mythic space makes sense to me. I buy it. Actually, it answers some of the questions that I have been asking myself during the course of this class. The theme of the myth tights together very well technology and culture, and brings to the discussion religion, an area that sometimes seems to be ignored in media studies (but that given the name of this field should not be overlooked). As Mosco reveals in his book, the historical religious is essential to our adoption of technologies. And with the cyberspace, religion is closer to gnosticism, a field that I found fascinating and that somehow resonates very well with the rhetoric of the knowledge and information society. While reading Mosco's description of the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardlin, and his connection with Macluhan's thought, I couldnt stop thinking in the importance of these mystics for providing the playful metaphors, the ambiguous symbols, the imagination that will energize the creation of a mythic space. I also thought of Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinean writer, poet, blind-man, and definitely a researcher of gnosticism, who wrote several short-stories that later on, in the Age of Computers and the cyberspace, were re-readed and re-discovered by many cyber-artists/writers/theorists. Texts such as The Garden of the Forking Paths (1941), and The Aleph (1949), have been associated several times with the internet, the knowledge network, and, of course, the "universe as a computer." http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/borges-garden.html http://www.phinnweb.org/links/literature/borges/aleph.html I think the method of critiquing mythology is appropriate for the study of technology and culture. It resonates with the sort of critique of modern thought developed by Latour. Like the idea of doing a critique of grand narratives Myth provides paths to trascendance. Trascend Mythmakers : the Digerati Ciberspace as a mythic space