Re: striation and Gibsonian cyberspace

>
> The following bit of fluff started floating around my head when I read
> _MP_ over Christmas break. (Sidebar: I spent Christmas with my
> parents. I spent a lot of time reading _MP_, and my parents would
> often see me with my nose in it. But what can one say to one's
> parents, who, I say with great kindness, don't know much about
> "philosophy", when they ask, "What's the book you're reading about,
> Erich?" "Lots of stuff", was the only answer I could give.) I post it
> prompted by Erik Davis' comments about a recent Cyberconf.
>
> D/G contrast two "modes" of "structuring" "space" (see, I'm a real
> poststructuralist now, because I put quotes around the most ordinary
> of words), the "striated" and the "smooth". In the former type a "grid
> of measurement" exists; in the latter, the watchword is "we can get
> anywhere from anywhere, and don't need your grid".
>
> It struck me that the Internet, as one interacts with it today, has
> many of the characteristics of a "smooth" space; all routes through
> IP-space to a given destination look more-or-less the same, and one
> doesn't care about them - one can get anywhere from anywhere (with
> exceptions, as always). I was struck by this when contrasting the net
> as it is today with the Gibsonian view of cyberspace as means of
> interacting with the net - all glowing grids and polygons, requiring
> perceived "movement" to get to one's destination. This seemed to me to
> be an act of gridding par excellence. (Look, I can use French words
> too.)
>
> Many people who enter rapture when talking about this kind of
> cyberspace justify it with "oh, but it will be so _easy_ to use, so
> _visual_, so _intuitive_". Perhaps yet another case of a code on the
> micro-level reproducing itself on the macro-level? (Just now I think
> of the seed-crystal example in "One of many regimes of signs")
>
> I don't know exactly what this has to do with anything. And please
> tell me if I'm one of the poseurs Miguel de Landa talks about in a
> recent issue of _Mondo 2000_, those D/G fans who run around saying
> "binary machines" and "modes of deterritorialization" but have no idea
> what they're saying.
>
> Erich Schneider erich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> "The Hierophant is Disguised and Confused."
>
As to whether or not you are a poseur I can offer no opinion because I
think you have an interesting point, which might only mean that I too am
nothing but a poseur.

I would agree that in comparison to Gibsonian cyberspace the "real" thing is
smooth. However, if we take D&G's example of felting and weaving as the
smooth and the striated then it seems like the Internetworks on both levels
simultaniously. Any path is a good as any other to move from where you are
to where you're going, but as you go you draw a line, you pull a thread that
cuts through the full, null space of felt by weaving a certain set of sites
together according to the destination of the address directing your post.
The Internet is only absolutly smooth if it remains un-used, but if it remains
un-used then the Internet isn't. So I guess the question, or maybe its the
answer, would be does striation necessarily territorialize? Does a space
that does not exist except as it is being striated/territorialized not
necessitate it own deterritorialization?

Flannon


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