long waves

Four Pathways - first results

The first full seminar of the series "Four Pathways through Chaos" was held in Toronto on May 1-2, under the auspices of the European Graduate School, with about 10 students attending. It was a great success, very interesting! And very directly related to the research into Technopolitics. What I did was to transform the Introduction on methodology and the lectures on Assembly-Line Mass Production into stand-alone PDFs, consisting mainly of quotes from books accompanied by images and transitional comments.

Freeman & Soete, Long Waves of Technological Change

This table is taken from p. 19 of The Economics of Industrial Innovation
by Christopher Freeman and Luc Soete (1997 edition).

Freeman & Soete, Long Waves of Technological Change

On Periodisation: Some thoughts on waves of techno-economic and cultural change

Following on to Brian's listserv post, I would like to add a few more points on periodisation. Although Kondratieff cycles or long waves do play a role here, the intention is not an in-depth discussion of the long wave theory. The intention is rather to create a foundation for a narrative that describes the second half of the 20th century as an interplay of economic, political, technological and cultural forces, seeking out turning points that allow to identify specific characteristics of techno-economic changes as an explanatory framework for specific cultural or artistic phenomena, such as participatory media and / or media art and technology practices.

Periodizing Cinematic Production

[What follows is another look at periodization in the history of media, adapted only very slightly from a post I sent to the iDC list. It follows directly on the long comment I made to Armin's 45 RPM text, concerning the dialectical transformations of the communicational commodity. The idea is to build momentum for shared investigations into the relations between the technological forms, political-economic functions, expressive uses and oppositional appropriations of communications media. Best to all, BH]

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