Sidenotes, some research into technological development. My audio paper will consist of documenting outdoor navigation practices and listenting in the city, without mobile phones. It contains a critique of dominant technology; specifially GPS and services like Google Maps. I want to do some research into digital behaviours to try give structure to my mixed feelings around our devices. Notes on “The Digital Condition” by Felix Stalder.
Stalder begines the book with a fascinating analysis of cultural growth. His beginning points are that technological development is not made of leaps, but is a fluid stream of ideas, cultural shifts, social movements, tensions and demands that make the popularisation of a new technology possible. This makes me question my negative view of certain technologies, when they cannot be isolated by wider changes in culture. Crises that promt questions and ideas will stimulate the research and development of new technologies. It seems that this process is indefinite. The shortening of resources on our planet affects the ability for this kind of development, but rather than stopping or slowing down certain developments, resource scarcity can increase violence and tensions between global powers. How can my practices and lifestyle be in contradiction to mass movement, a river? Perhaps we are not in contradiction when we have new ideas, we are together in new ideas. Rather than my scripts for urban wandering being a “rejection” or a “return” to a past, they could be felt as a different approach to the new unfolding realities/technologies. Different perspectives.