Today I have watched a couple of talks by Benjamin Bratton about the stack and how it is creating a new form of geopolitics. I as I understand it the stack is the interlinked networks, organic and inorganic, that we are all part of. I would guess that we are the end user, connected via layers to global computer networks. This is not to say that the stack has a linear flow, all parts are interconnected and resources flow to and fro as required. The implications of this are that current global geopolitical border are becoming obsolete. Bratten suggests, I think, that we need to alive to what replaces them, as the technologies of the stack can be used for good or ill. When asked about the ethical dimension of the stack he suggests he is unable to predict what the consequences are, only that there will be some. He draws a parallel to current map divisions that have brought genocide and death on an industrial scale, but also useful concepts such as citizenship and equal rights.
The first talk I watched was his criticism of the TED talks. He likened them to religious infomercials, giving people a moment of spiritual uplift relating to how clever we are and how we, somehow, through talking about our problems, have the ability to solve them. Bratten suggests that we are only tickling the surface of what is required to actually begin to improve our situation. Firstly, as I understand it, we must recognise how the framework in which we operate is evolving due to technology. Once we understand that we no longer operate within our traditional borders we can go about re-imagining a more equitable map. While we continue to validate out-dated conceptions of how our lives are actually structured, vested interests are redrawing this map for us. Secondly, there needs to be an actual re-orientation of expertise to problem solving, rather than discussion. I guess perhaps the second follows from the first.
It is a great open-ended discussion that I have only touched the surface of today. It appeals to me as it appears to highlight the relations between objects, the activities between nodes, as primary. Perhaps individual subjectivity ‘keys’ into this network, the memories and provoked responses to any given situation are as much a part of this network as data flowing around the cloud? It could be that the stack provides a mirror to Bergson’s cone diagram…
Co-incidentally I watched the great deep-topography documentary ‘The London Perambulator’ this week too, about Nick Papadimitriou, whose subjective experience seems keenly tied to the apparent and hidden networks around London – roads, paths, sewers etc. He seems to embody how the cone might link to the stack.
Making work I am increasingly aware of the making of a sculptural object in the studio as a momentary confluence of material, action and memory, within a set of given systems (neurological, the art world, supply chains etc). Next to the magnitude of this confluence any ‘meaning’ embedded in the work seems pretty paltry…