Manifesto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhUP7EHyeL0

Re-Digitizing the Digital

Contention: Is it possible that the digital revolution only apparently empowers the individual by providing access to a networked world?

As information/knowledge is centralized we are trading many languages (each possessing a unique vocabulary + semantic structure) for a lingua franca. Each language offers the potential for a special take on “reality.” Six thousand languages were spoken at the beginning of the 20^th century, one hundred years later less than half remain. As suggested in 1984, “Newspeak” is the official government controlled language that eliminates synonyms in an effort to streamline communication. The ethos of economy favors compaction, and while efficient, the ability to express nuanced difference diminishes with each elimination. As the condensation continues, humans become less expressive, less able to name, to describe, and thus to know.

Digitization depends on quantifiable data. This is a primary tool that makes a corollary possible, globalization. Globalization requires homogeneity, threatening character and individuality. The poetics of life cannot be explored through binary code. The human hand must reassert itself as a new emphasis is placed on qualitative value. The idiosyncratic expression captured in a hand wrought gesture suggests a singular interpretation. To account for the evanescent moments in life, we must maintain diversity, promote the foreign and relish the incompatible fragments of translation. Binary language amounts to white and black, 1 and 0, victory and defeat, positive and negative, friend and foe. The modern world, centralized and interchangeable, must revert to gain value. Grey is a value between absolutes. Quantifiably inaccessible, the space between seeks to re-digitize the digital.