/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15391464]

What are some books/essays that explore how changes in communications technology over the past 20 years have changed our culture, politics, or just society in general? Looking for something like David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram" but for the internet age.

[Anonymous No.15391469]

>>15391464
In 2028 the girl will be naked

[Anonymous No.15391473]

>>15391469
no in 2028 she'll be in a hijab

[Anonymous No.15391480]

[Anonymous No.15391488]

>>15391464
Unironically look into Marshall Mcluhan. Picrelated is a great start.

[Anonymous No.15391505]

>>15391464
mcluhan discusses the way in which medium of communication affect society in his books

[Anonymous No.15391516]

>>15391469
>>15391473
In 2028 she will be four hundred pounds

[Anonymous No.15391523]

>>15391516
Excellent.

[Anonymous No.15391554]

>those sandals
>1980

[Anonymous No.15391555]

>>15391523
>he works with a charity called “Feed”
>“a world without whales, it’s too terrible to imagine“

[Anonymous No.15391565]

>>15391464
If its the same person then their 2018 garb is not a good look

[Anonymous No.15391578]

>>15391464
>>15391488
>>15391505
This is now a McLuhan thread it if wasn't already by default of the topic. Now just how does the Web change our sense ratios? Is 4chan a visual or audile/tactile medium? Does it tend toward a manuscript, shared, folk or perhaps monastic culture or is it more scholarly, sequential/causal focused?

I wager that 4chan in general will have to be looked at as tending toward the mythical in some aspects, with its seemingly spontaneous and unplanned discovery of meme "magic," which is to say a sort of undisclosed architectonic, operating above the sphere of understanding of the average individual who nonetheless participates in the function, in the manner of the deities of the Iliad, no doubt.

[Anonymous No.15391598]

>>15391516
and still won't fuck you

[Anonymous No.15391626]

>>15391523
my nigga, prob gave her free reign to consoooooom so that he can coooooooooom

[Anonymous No.15391633]

>>15391464
Read Ellul

[Anonymous No.15391636]

OMG that bitch on the left is so hot

[Anonymous No.15391859]

>>15391464
I've read a few academic papers, mostly on innovation, communications and strategic communications. Sorry I don't have citations on hand, but if you have access to a university online library its not hard to find.

For the most part the current literature is roughly invested in how we consume information from digital sources (psychology and media coms are in this space, very interesting, the human mind has been self conditioned to ignore ads), how to communicate through a medium which has unprecedented noise and cannot broadcast in the traditional sense as well as attempting to predict where communications will lead. Unfortunately you won't find DFW's prose in any of this.

[Anonymous No.15392097]

right is normal weight for armerilards?

[Anonymous No.15392123]

>>15391469
>>15391473
>>15391516
you're all correct

[Anonymous No.15392137]

>>15391464

[Anonymous No.15392139]

>>15391523
Peaked at 165 pounds

[Anonymous No.15392145]

>>15391578
4chan is an egregore. This means we influence many facets of reality from the safety of an anonymous image board. We effect culture. Look at how far Pepe spread since 2015. Idiots are still spamming Pepe emotes on Twitch.

4chan is a visual communication medium. Pictures and text are enough to sway the day to day.

[Anonymous No.15392317]

>>15391488
this.

[Anonymous No.15392337]

>>15392145
Yes, you are right about the first part. However, I disagree that 4chan is largely visual. The average anon makes his judgments, not based upon the letter but upon the gesture or the "sound" of a given post. The means of involvement is audile/tactile; moreover, the meme is, though presented visually, not interpreted "visually," either aesthetically or objectively; rather, the meme is searched out by the viewer for cultural, symbolic, that is to say, "felt" value or significance. The meme is a social phenomenon--the individual, that is, the autonomous individual has nothing to do with the meme; he cannot even interpret it except insofar as he is part of a folk, an egregore, as you say. The meaning of the content on 4chan is not sought on a personal, private level, in the manner of liberal society, which, though the term 'liberal' is woefully abused in various ways, really consists of private individuals, in the full sense, and the public only exists in a limited way, in service of that privacy which is the real end of such a society. 4chan has no public significance, and therefore has no private significance either. Rather, it exists as a collective subterfuge, hence anonymity is an essential mark. Privacy is, in a sense, violated by its very existence, for it desires to know every secret, by any means; the hope is for scandal, for the essence of the 'Anon' is an inwardly agitated, perpetually traumatized being, like the savage of the wilderness, which therefore seeks its relief in the escape of pressure in an outward, yet concentrated way--therefore its activity is nothing but the Hunt, and its victims become a part of its mythology. 4chan remembers nothing of mundane individuals (as a legal or moral entity), it has no conception of the "neighbor"--rather it knows only scandals, defamations, conquests, trophies, and so on. Gestures are all symbolic for it; gestures, memes, actions are all interpreted according to an evolving myth. Every occurrence is a sign, a conspiracy, teeming with magical potency, that is to say, with a certain 'magical' use value--for every event must be interpreted according to the working conspiracy. The phenomenon as a whole possess a movement, an immanent, impending involvement--the whole community is necessarily involved in everything--and individuals can only get in the way, can only disrupt, or, if they are able to 'infect' the popular mentality, they may effect some change; yet it is better if the sources be untraceable, it is better if the masterminds, if there be any, be never more than members of the crowd.

[Anonymous No.15393111]

>>15391578
In English, doc

[Anonymous No.15393157]

>>15392337
>The phenomenon as a whole possess a movement, an immanent, impending involvement--the whole community is necessarily involved in everything--and individuals can only get in the way, can only disrupt, or, if they are able to 'infect' the popular mentality, they may effect some change; yet it is better if the sources be untraceable, it is better if the masterminds, if there be any, be never more than members of the crowd.
Is this why there is a hate for namefags, or why use of 4chan memes on other media are "cringe"? For example, i see people on tiktok who just NEED to tell everyone else that wojak was "ours" first. The individual, named account claming corporate memebership in the culture and possession of its objects is almost the definition of cringe.
And yet also, it seems that the other media are absorbed into the egregore's sphere of influence, like a politican domain that resembles the The Thing from John Carpenter's movie. The peripherary of the egregore where blending individuality with the raw memetic group mind is where the phenomenon gets most interesting.

[Anonymous No.15393200]

>>15393157
everythign on 4ch is cringe if cringe bothers you you have to leave

[Anonymous No.15393221]

>>15393200

[Anonymous No.15393246]

>>15393221
you have to share the site with the absolute dregs of humanity, the biggest losers there are, and not only is there no way for you to avoid them, you can't even always tell who they are from a given post. The chinless fellow in your picture haunts your posts, rubbing off on you the more time you spend here

[Anonymous No.15393269]

>>15393246

[Anonymous No.15393293]

>>15393157
Naturally, 4chan has its own understanding of 'authenticity,' which is never attached to individuals but only to the 'tradition,' which is the reserve of all that is to be deemed legitimate, sacred. If a potent meme arises, it has first of all, the appearance of arising out of the vortex, and second, if the actual anon or original post be found, the poster will inevitably be regarded as having been possessed (by a living god); for, this is the only appropriate way to account for what is 'magical,' viz., that it has come down to us 'from above,' or from the underworld, from the void, wherever. Thus, if 4chan is regarded as the abysmal wellspring of original memes, this is only because 4chan is regarded as being in position of a certain 'tradition' which goes back 'to the beginning.' Everyone of course will have noticed that 4chan has, since its golden age, 'fallen,' having been slowly diluted by the mundane, by the all too human. Any new content will have sprung from deep within the board, seemingly out of nowhere, the mysteriousness of its roots being its essential qualification as new lore. The need to distinguish between true and false lore is a most serious matter. Yet inevitably it will be that which cannot be explained by other means.

[Anonymous No.15393320]

>>15391464
She looks like a dump truck on right

[Anonymous No.15393329]

those chairs look uncomfortable

[Anonymous No.15393401]

>>15391464
This is an interesting subject to me. The invention of the telegraph was really a huge thing, maybe even bigger than landing on the moon. The first transatlantic telegraph cable was like the biggest happening of the time, thousands of people gathered, royals present etc. Sending a message from London to New York now took a few seconds or something where it used to take weeks. Before the telegraph most information traveled at the same speed as humans, the pony express being an example. Although I think there were communication lines on land made up of a series of semaphores and blinking lights and similar stuff, based on the same principle as the smoke signals of the Indians. I'm guessing each station in the series of such stations of semaphores, lights or such was susceptible to corruption as they were operated by people. This is of course true of any kind of communication. Letters can be opened with steam and resealed as Stasi in East Germany did. I love this scene in the movie For A Few Dollars More where Clint Eastwood's character hijacks the local telegraph, it really illustrates an interesting concept.
https://youtu.be/cIqLodn26CI?t=4240

[Anonymous No.15393424]

>>15392097
I'm American and I find the girl on the right to be fat and gross. That said, yeah, she's about average here. Her style is that of a middle schooler's too, which makes it even more embarrassing. She basically looks like a fat child from behind.

[Anonymous No.15393436]

>>15393401
In case the link doesn't work
@1:10:40
https://youtu.be/cIqLodn26CI

[Anonymous No.15393460]

>>15393401
Ever read McLuhan, or Walter Ong? Or Harold Innis, McLuhan's mentor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Innis#Communications_theories

I also really liked Baudrillard's short essay on the difference between information and meaning:
https://monoskop.org/images/c/c4/Baudrillard_Jean_In_the_Shadow_of_the_Silent_Majorities_or_The_End_of_the_Social_and_Other_Essays.pdf

[Anonymous No.15393605]

>>15393460
No I have not, I haven't read that much in my life to be honest. But thanks for the tip. I saw a discussion on another forum a long time ago about the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, was something about language and communication I think, was interesting.

[Anonymous No.15394935]

>>15391464
This is not a recent book, but Future Shock by Alvin Toffler (1970) is still very applicable to society today