were benjamin and macluhan right in the end?

[sirb...@hotmail.com]

peer to peer established a new era and a new viewing experience.
everyone just downloaded entire seasons in 2 hours. everyone just
downloaded, like painters in the modern city, like baudelaire. so
technological determinism was where it was at all the time?

[neo-anchorite]

[neo-anchorite]

Interesting, but say more. What did Baudelaire download?

Of course, McLuhan was right that people become appendages of
machines, but how does Limewire mark something very different from
that already marked TVs constitution of consciousness as flotsam?

http://tornhalves.wordpress.com

[sirb...@hotmail.com]

the comparison with baudelaire was excessive.

mcluhan was excessive when he thought difficulty would be needed in
works of art, equating with the avant garde. however, there's the
technological platform to be taken into account from a kantian
misprision that's never been inclined to being in love with mass art.

benjamin was wrong for being dialectical materialist and thinking it
was our perceptions that changed BUT there's the technological
platform thingie to be taken into account and after all the
perceptions were already there only juust awakened, it's kind of a
quibble to have a go at him for that. he was also wrong for the aura
and the new age thing or was he? after all we are determined by the
technique and sciences and the symbolic landscape or supermarket that
we're lucky to bathe in (rorty) that surrounds that so often is a
result of it. so the laws of copyright, defeated, awaken perceptions
and allow our symbols to become technique.

[neo-anchorite]

Slow down.

First make the issue clear. Right about what? In relation to which
prior argument? And why does this matter?

Sobriety, although not much fun, does aid communication.