Transcoding: The Mirroring of the Database Form and Postmodern Culture

• In Event: ICA Plenary Interactive Paper/Poster Session and Reception
  In Interactive Paper Session: Philosophy, Theory and Critique Interactive Poster Session

Abstract

This essay explores the rise of database logic that pervades our current culture, specifically how media forms are recontextulaized through the database and human communication is shifting to fit database logic. Building on Lyotard’s narrative disintegration, this account explains altered definitions of truth, creativity, individuality, experience, and art. Drawing broadly, this paper incorporates McLuhan’s insights on electric media, new media theorist Lev Manovich’s metarealism, and technologist Kevin Kelly’s thoughts on the future of the web. These themes are recapitulated by tracing the extension of these cultural logics from older media to cybernetic systems, through Enzensberger, Benjamin and Nichols’ discussions of art, technology, and human subjectivity. Aside from this synthesis, the notion of credibility is contributed to describe fully-functioning database elements.

Author

• Benjamin A. Lyons, Southern Illinois U - Carbondale