Newmedia on Wed, 15 Aug 2007 23:03:18 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> The banality of blogging |
Folks: Okay -- Felix finally brought it up. He's a early nettimer (as am I) and it's often not clear what some of the newer posters have heard of and/or not. Formal causality is the topic at hand as Felix correctly noted. Formal cause is one of the four Aristotelean causes -- along with Efficient, Material and Final. My guess is that most people on nettime have never heard of this fundamental underpinning of Western Culture. I'm not trying to insult anyone and I hope I'm wrong. McLuhan was a student of the classics. His PhD thesis has finally been published, which broadly illustrates his training. "The Medium is the Message" is simply an advertising sloganeered version of Formal Causality. McLuhan wasn't interested in "arguing" with anyone about these things (nor am I) but there are probably a few thousand people throughout history who were. I doubt that any of them are on nettime. <g> Best, Mark Stahlman New York City # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@kein.org and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org