Check it out!

In its colloquial use this phrase is quite typically associated with new things. It indicates something that is supposed to be unknown or was not (yet) perceived. There is also a social imperative behind this phrase, involving at least one person that has already “checked out” something and another who hasn‘t. Knowledge is handed down, spread and expanded. Yet there is another use which makes this common phrase all the more interesting. In the case of “checking a book out from a library”, for example, the initial recommendation is transformed into a proposition to act and to get hold of something.

“To check” is a Cybernetic metaphor

The placing of the word check here is indicative of an intrusion of cybernetic jargon into common speech. “Checking” is closely associated with surveillance and control, of safeguarding the proper functioning of a machine, a routine or an algorithm. The seemingly trivial remark adopts a whole new dimension pointing toward a cultural condition where the number of choices surpasses what the mind can reasonably and productively process. In the field of cultural production each enunciation exist first and foremost to be communicated at a given point in time. Because production is asynchronous (works on particular subjects) and simultaneous (different actors produce at the same time), continued attention to a multitude of subjects is difficult.

Dissonance and Consonance

Assuming that a given individual can only follow the development of a limited number of elements, “check it out” points to a hitherto unnoticed element and seeks to integrate it into the wider perceptive and interpretative framework. Elements that are excluded from a structure are reviewed and amended to establish consonance or can be rejected to uphold dissonance on firmer grounds. “Check it out“ remains an imperative and a cybernetic metaphor of cultural production. Any selection of elements remains to be expanded by further “checks” on available alternatives and variants. Identity thus established is a temporal marker.

Den Alltag dialektisch verstehen

Eine Frage der Ähre

Man stelle sich einen Hamster mit mittlerer Reife auf der Durchreise von Amsterdam nach Berlin vor, der an der Raststätte Garbsen vor Hannover einen Zwischenstopp einlegt. In froher Erwartung einiger frischer Getreidekörner betritt der Hamster in Begleitung seines Frauchens die Raststätte und muss feststellen: Es gibt nur Wasser! Und das ist bei aller Kundenorientierung der Mitarbeiter auch nur auf Nachfrage zu erhalten. Da er in Damenbegleitung ist, muss er sich der Nahrungsbeschaffung alleine widmen – nur Herrchen dürfen hier ihren Schutzbefohlenen zu Seite stehen.

Auch der etwas betagte Dalmatiner W., der gegen 9.30 Uhr in Begleitung der Familie M. aus G. in Garbsen ankommt, ist erschüttert. Hatte ihm die Grundschule und das Gymnasium bereits 12 Menschenjahre seines ohnehin kurzen Lebens geraubt, muss er jetzt zur Kenntnis nehmen, dass die freundlich-höfliche Anrede seiner Person nur darüber hinweg täuschen soll, dass auch für ihn hier an Wasser und Breckies nur „gedacht“ worden war, Taten sollten in unbestimmter Zeit folgen.

Stellen wir uns abschliessend also jene Person vor, an die sich dieses Schild eigentlich richtet – das Herrchen bzw. den Kunden in seiner Funktion als konsumierender Weltreisender, der zu jeder Zeit an jedem Ort der Autobahn eben jenen Komfort erwarten darf, den er in seiner unmittelbaren Lebensumgebung auch vorfindet. Schließlich ist er es, der, trotz aller Bemühungen demokratischer Bildungspolitik, von allen Mehrbeinern immer noch der einzige ist, der durch die Lektüre abstrakter Buchstaben (in den meisten Fällen) jene zu sinnvollen Worten zusammenfügen und (im besten Fall) auch verstehen kann.

Verstehen wir diese absurde Krönung von Kundenorientierung hier also richtig, müsste sich aus dem Geschriebenen eine Handlungsanweisung ergeben. Bleibt nur die Frage, wer hier handeln soll. Das „Herrchen“, das in absentia implizierte „Frauchen“ oder doch das Team aus Zwei- und Vierbeiner? Wir stellen uns also abschließend den mit Waffenschein ausgestatteten Rottweiler des ledigen Markus P. aus D. vor, der nach der Lektüre dieser Zeilen mit einem kühnen Sprung hinter die Theke des Raststätten-Shops – zu deutsch: Convenience Area – einen prekär beschäftigten Mitarbeiter in eine noch prekärere Lage bringt, indem er ihn durch eindeutiges Augenrollen und lautes Bellen AN DAS AUFFÜLLEN DER WASSERSCHÜSSEL ERINNERT.

PS: Beschwerden bitte an: Autobahn Tank & Rast GmbH,  Andreas-Hermes-Str. 7-9, 53175 Bonn. Telefon 0228/922-0, Email: kundenkontakt@serways.de

Printed periodicals in decline in Japan

The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association (NSK) reports a slow decline of printed periodicals in Japan for 2008. See this quote for the most recent figures.

clipped from www.pressnet.or.jp By type of publication, sales of books fell 2.7 percent to \458.1 billion and sales of magazines dropped 5.2 percent to \530.5 billion. Among magazines, sales of monthly publications fell 4.6 percent to \410.5 billion, while sales of weekly magazines dropped 7.1 percent to \120.1 billion. The rate of return of unsold copies was up 0.9 of a percentage point to 39.0 percent for books and up 0.3 of a percentage point to 36.9 percent for magazines.

Against Simulation: The Early Works of Jean Baudrillard

Becoming an author is a really hard job. Publishing a book is even harder. Even today. Not until you can become ignorant of your own text and read it over and over again, the true character of the text will emerge. My thesis on Baudrillard’s early works is now available (in German) featuring in-depth explorations of the Marxist and Semiotic treatises, McLuhans heritage, and Baudrillard in the context of Durkheim’s distinction of profane and sacred practices and Weber’s disenchantment of the modern world.

Chapters feature:

• Baudrillard in Media and Cultural Criticism: Against Simulation
• From Symbolic to Semiotic Cultures: Collective Representations – Rationality of Literacy and Individualization
• Alienation and Symbolic Exchange: Barthes’ Modern Myths – The Objects and Consumer Society – Need for Difference – Symbolic Exchange
• The Test of the Mass Media and Telematic Subjects: Parole sans réponse and Implosion – The Screen and Telematic Subjects
• Symbolic Exchange in (online) social networks

Graphic concept and typo composition by Katharina Berndt (gluecklichebilder.de). Editor: Jakob F. Dittmar. Available from University Press of Technical University Berlin, Kiepert, or Amazon.de or as a free download of the complete pdf from the publisher.

Theory – 学説 – Theory

The cover image was taken on the streets of Ginza, Tokyo. I wish it was a montage but actually it was all there. “Longchamp” of “Paris” next to a Barbra Streisand-looking girl featuring fashion by “Theory”. What struck me most is the combination of such disparate elements as pure signs. Maybe it takes a long way to Japan to discover this self-referentiality of the sign and the image. The cultural difference aside, it teaches a lesson in Baudrillardian thinking. And maybe theory is not so far away from fashion anyway.

Born to be Dialed

The World at your fingertips

Reviewing the strange trends that have accompanied media revolutions, it occured to me that Marshal McLuhan’s thesis of new media overtaking functions of older one’s was worth pondering in relation to the Internet. Especially digital network media seem to be endowed with a revolutionary force no other medium has ever possessed. In their alleged annihilation of physical space, of lived experience, of social relations, in their drastic rewriting of the rules of business, and the vast opportunities of self-reflection and creation, the digital (network) media find their way into every conceivable act of interaction.

Yet, a quite opposite thesis would hold that these new media merely facilitate and improve what was already there. Now, everyone can make nice and professional looking pictures with a plethora of easy-to-use digital cameras and imaging software. While the developers are working on the next big hit in interaction design, it’s the bulky Yellow Pages disappearing from the hall. Search engine availability optimizes the use of one of the oldest modern media… the telephone. It has become so common to call someone in case of a knowledge gap or where actions need to be coordinated instead of finding an individual solution to a problem. Formulaic language is introduced, similar to a code pattern, that is exchanged vocally instead of a nuanced written text. The easy availability of contact data forces some to artificially close the channel, block off communication to be able to perform their assigned professional functions. On the back of ready access comes a new culture of exclusivity.

“I pick up my telephone receiver and it’s all there; the whole marginal network catches and harasses me with the insupportable good faith of everything that wants and claims to communicate.”

(Baudrillard: “The Ecstasy of Communication“)