| 2004-05-07 |
Jonas : digest |
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The last of our discussions (where I have participated) was concentrating increasingly on something that is called new media, etc. As that is supposed something the group should be re-approaching. I have, in my selection of texts, focused more on whatever is my personal impression of the “present situation”. Partly restricted by keywords and the content of the discussions, I chose the bits of information that seem to fit the schemes and ideas. That is my personal impression, and no wonder if somebody will think that these pages have nothing to do with our discussions, or with VILMA as such. Discussion at the ALF house has started with Birute pointing out her distrust to old stuff, old and outdated machines and mechanisms, for that don’t really function, are not reliable, and so on. So here emerged the temporal dimension of the scheme, etc.
Past to present to future. Past was put on the whiteboard with a not “not reliable”. And Fareed has immediately demonstrate his reason and rationalism by his own surprise at the idea, that past is not reliable. I have chosen the press release from Lietuvos Telekomas, announcing that LT has completely replaced all the old analog switching stations to brand new digital ones. From now on, the telephone network of Siauliai city is completely digitalized, something bad has been pushed out and replaced completely by something new, something more reliable, blah, blah, blah. Progress, technology, triumph. The intention was to find the moment since which LT has completely digitalized entire Lithuanian telephone network, but could not find anything of the kind, and have chosen the substitute which never the less talks about the same, only on a smaller scale. What also has amazed my in the release, that regardless of it being written in 2002 and the content being quite modern, the style and the form in which the event is presented, is absolutely the same propaganda thing you could read in the soviet papers, or hear in the soviet chronicles. The same text from LT could be read with the same pathos: it promises happiness, tomorrow is better than yesterday, beyond any reasonable compare, and we have achieved something more than our biggest competitors - our neighbors, etc. The first text is a whole article from a 1933 newspaper about the plastic surgery, which makes people appear younger, and by making them appear younger, actually makes them younger. Whatever the case, the plasticity of human organism, and crucial dependence of its psychosomatic functions on its social appearance is interesting here. And then the wildly spread phenomena today - gerontophobia and gerascophobia - the fear of getting old, and the fear of old people, or anything that is old. It seems to me that social condition is extremely, but still increasingly, gerontophobic. And I think back about the discontent with the old fashioned magnetic tape recorders. It is not the past that is unreliable, it what is old, and what looks old that is unreliable. From a Marxist point of view it clear, that this implementation naturalization of unnatural and artificial fear and dissatisfaction with anything that is old stimulates and is stimulated by advertising, industry, etc. Whatever. My only idea is that this fear or panic about the old, derives from accumulation of stuff. Long ago there was less knowledge, less things, less people, they lived shorter lives, etc. Today there is much more of everything, but still the same amount of space. And the third text is just a fragment of a speech by German film director Wim Wenders, which expresses my impressions of the mechanism of VILMA, as I have observed it function. |
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