Machinic

Form versus Context 

This weeks readings, I find, delve into the deepest of questions. Who came first, the chicken or the egg? What do we owe to technology for our advances and what does technology owe to us? At this point, I don't know. However, I did find much of the readings and clips quite interesting and do have a few things to say on the subject of the interplay between technology, culture, society, change and events. 

I feel this interplay can be seen in the growth and popularity of the technological powerhouse, Apple. They have placed themselves perfectly at the centre of the perpetual state of interplay between these factors. They develop new and appealing products and shift the very culture of the society which surrounds them. Each release of a new product becomes a significant technological and social event. But, the question that springs to mind is the nature of Apple's success. Did they change the market to meet their ideologies, or, did a string of events lead to the unstoppable rise of a culturally significant technological giant? 

I tend to side with Marshall McLuhan in the belief in technological determinism, being that, 'Technology is the agent of social change'. This is seen with Apple and the 'necessity' they have created in owning their products. I feel this can also relate to Jean Baudrillard when he discuses the idea of technologically produced 'simulacra', signs which are copies of other signs. He further discusses the medium, which in this blogs case is Apple, as being the model for a number of things including ones sense of self and even the perception of reality itself. 

We have a society that is perceived through, and controlled by, the medium. Bringing to mind the idea of form versus context, as discussed in the reading Theoretical Frameworks in the context of flows and ‘machinic’ though. The technological, aesthetic medium brings about its own context, what was once simply a tool, the computer, has become a socially and culturally relevant accessory. The iSociety has formed.