Title: ms3305
1ms3305
2Aims of the lecture
- To engage with Foucault's concept of
- Knowledge/Power
- And apply it to the information society debate
3Knowledgecertainty gtgtgtgtgtgtgtgtInformationuncertaint
y
- We live in a world where there is more and more
information, and less and less meaning. Jean
Baudrillard, 1981 p. 79
4From Warren Weavers Introduction toClaude
Shannons The Mathematical Theory of
Communication1949
- The concept of information at first seems
disappointing and bizarre--disappointing because
it has nothing to do with meaning, and bizarre...
Because the two words information and
uncertainty find themselves to be partners
5A shift
- Lecture 1
- From knowledge certainty
- a visual culture defined by language
- lecture 2
- To information- uncertainty
- an information culture defined by
events
6From the Nobility of Sight to the Inverted Eye of
the Panopticon
7Perceiving the World
- We could say that our knowledge of the world is
determined by our senses
- Sight
- Hearing
- Touch
- Smell
- Taste
8A worldly perceptual process
- starts with unprocessed information chaotic
environmental stimuli - enters the perceptive field - low-level sensory
organs of the body - then organized into high-level mental
representations at the cognitive level (see
Chalmers et al, 1992)
9Bass Cleff language
Bass frequencies
Sensory organ
10central nervous system
11Idealism versus Empiricism
- Idealism
- internal perception comes before sense data
- form comes before information
- Idea of bass precedes bass frequencies
12Idealism versus Empiricism
- Empiricism
- sense perception is the sole source of human
knowledge - We are informed about the world
- bass frequencies lead to the concept of bass
13Forms or Informs?
- How sensory data becomes a shared language is
something of a black box - Robots cant do it yet!
- Low frequency Bass
- Bass fish
14Despite the debate - Western philosophy has
broadly agreed that there is a hierarchy of
the senses
15hierarchy of the senses
- Touch
- Smell
- Taste
- Hearing
- Too close to the objects we observe
- Top of the hierarchy
- The distancing function of sight
16Ocularcentricism
- Understanding of the objective world by the
all seeing eye
17Ocular permeation of language
The mirroring of perception and language
18Ocular permeation of language
- The ability to visualise something internally is
closely linked with the ability to describe it
verbally. Verbal and written descriptions create
highly visual memory, and specific mental
images. The link between vision, visual memory,
and verbalisation can be quite startling
(Riven and Gravelle in Jay, 1994 p. 8)
19- Read the next slide and tell me how it relates to
the link between vision, visual memory, and
verbalisation
20- If we focus our attention on the object in front
of us, we can keep an eye out for any useful
insights that may enlighten our worldview. At the
same point in time, we might develop an outlook
that is blinded to the truth of the matter.
Nevertheless, as we further inspect the world
around us we might at least be able to set a few
foreseeable goals. There is scope for added
scrutiny of the facts, despite the slight dimming
of our senses.
21Around 15 visual metaphors
22The Nobility of Sight
- All the management of our lives depends on the
senses, and since that of sight is the most
comprehensive and the noblest of these, there is
no doubt that the inventions which serve to
augment its power are the most useful that there
can be (Descartes,
Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry and
Meteorology in Jay, 1994 p. 71)
23The Nobility of Sight
- The eye of a philosopher on the diverse actions
and enterprises of all mankind
(Descartes 1637)
24Language, the senses and the intellect
- Rene Descartes (1596-1650) maintained that false
perceptual judgments are ultimately the result of
confused ideas (Descartes in Jay, 1994 p. 73)
25Ocularcentric Discourse
- Renaissance 1400-1600s
- Perspectivalism
- the rationalisation of sight
- The visual rendered to a set of coordinates
- Enlightenment Rationalism 1650s-1790s
- (Jay, 1994)
- elevated the Ocularcentric notion of reason to a
universal truth
26(No Transcript)
27The Enlightenment
- What is an idea? It is an image that paints
itself in my brain Ive ideas only because I
have images in my head - (From Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary in Jay,
1994 p. 83)
Author and Philosopher 1694 - 1778
28(No Transcript)
29Ocular technologiesTechnical enhancement of the
eye (Jay, 1994)
- Extension of the the range and power of our
ocular apparatus - Camera obscura
- Microscope
- Telescope
- A trip to Titan
- The improvement of our ability to disseminate the
results - Printing press
- Visual media technologies
- The Web
30Recap
- Ongoing debate about perception
- Senses, ideas and images are linked mirrored in
language - Development of ideas linked to the dominant sense
of sight
- Representations are images of the mind that
underpin our understanding of the world
31A challenge to the Ocularcentric Discourse
32Michel Foucaults Ocular discourse
- Discourses are practices - Not just
conversations, linguistic systems or texts - They situate the speaker and the listener
- They can constrain action control truth
- Psychiatric discourse
- Makes link between criminal and pathological
behaviour - Classifying criminal behaviour as madness
33Michel Foucault
- With Foucault the Nobility of Sight not so much
rejected as inverted
- The visual as a means of domination
- The hegemony of the eye
34Empire of the Gazeapparent in the growth of
ocular technologies
- The dominant discourse of observation
- Prisons
- Schools
- Clinics
- Factories
- Evident in
- Open plan office space
- Learning spaces
- CCTV
- Road cameras
35The Birth of the Clinic An Archaeology of
Medical Perception
Power relations function in the construction of
images painting, photography etc - images work
within specific institutional practices .
36Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison
- Panopticon
- an ocular technology of power
- A prison designed with a central observation
tower - The prisoners visible at all times
37The Panopticon
- The permanent visibility that assures the
automatic functioning of power (Foucault, 1979
p. 201)
- The inmate of a prison internalises the
mechanism of surveillance which the building
establishes (Foucault, 1977)
38Panopticon Surveillancein the Information
Society
- Applied to the network society by Robins and
Webster (1999) - Dystopian approach counters McLuhans global
village utopia - Managed networks
- Surveillance technologies
- Transactional surveillance
- Cybernetic control
39The dark side of information revolution (Robins
Webster, 1999 p. 92)
- Two interrelated parts of the information
revolution - mechanism for social management, planning and
administration - surveillance and control
- knowledge/information and power are always
interrelated - The Ambiguous Panopticon Foucault and the Codes
of Cyberspace by Mark Winokur - http//www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick371
40Another challenge to the Ocularcentric Discourse
41The problem with representation
- Objects and the environment
- We return to the problem of environment
- A worldless or worldly sense of it all
-
42Self-referential
43(No Transcript)
44(No Transcript)
45"The fascination here is that the drawings are
interpreted as representing objects, but the
objects represented could not be constructed
because the spatial constraints of the
environment have been contravened.
Wade, 1980 Visual Allusions Pictures of
Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum
46http//www.lipsons.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/escher/asc
ending.html