26 October 2007
The call for relevance is gaining momentum. In multiple sectors and countries, individuals are acting upon this call:
1) Through cloud computing, Google and IBM are pushing towards technological relevance in the academic and the government sectors (Steve Lohr, "Google and IBM Join in 'Cloud Computing' Research," The New York Times, 8 October 2007). Indeed, Randal E. Bryant, Carnegie Mellon University's Dean of Computer Science, lauded this initiative, stating:
"We in academia and the government labs have not kept up with the times. [...] Universities really need to get on board."
Along with Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Maryland, and the University of Washington will be involved in this project. The innovation in cloud computing, as explained by Edward Lazowska, one of University of Washington's Computer Science Professors, is that it "allows for a type of education and research that we can't do today".
Relevance mediated through advanced electronic technology and fostered by corporate collaboration.
2) Through Unesco's World Digital Library Project, the Library of Congress' American Memory Project, the European Digital Library Project, and the French Digital Library's Europeana Project, nations are acting upon the call for "intercultural understanding" (Doreen Carvajal, "Library of Congress Advances 2 Digital Projects Abroad," The New York Times, 18 October 2007). By remediating cultural artifacts and texts into a virtuality of vivified digitization, they are cementing a greater relevance between culture and technology.
Relevance mediated through the process of remediation, initiated by national collaboration for the advancement of a digitized cultural education.
3) Furthering the relevance of aesthetic culture and education in a technological reality, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Uris Center for Education underwent a $75 million, 25,000 square foot reconstruction (Edward Rothstein, "Old Masters, New Teaching Hardware," The New York Times, 23 October 2007). According to Rothstein, "art education...makes...traditions as crucial as innovation". As he explains the renovated Center, art is being approached in a "more systematic way" where parents are able to see art through their child's eyes - the benefit being that "much less could be taken for granted" through that perspective.
Most striking is Rothstein's claim that the Center taught him a different way of seeing because this new (refreshing) vision is what our reality requires.
The past in conversation with the present-future for a cultural relevance of educating perspectives.
4) The Post Office takes the Uris Center one further in re-evaluating and re-defining its public image, to declare rather boldly its technological relevance today (Stuart Elliott, "Post Office Aims to Leave Yesterday's Image Behind," The New York Times, 23 October 2007). It has been remediated for quite some time now, with minor notice and acknowledgment. Its Executives are calling for the Office's re-conceptualization and re-definition to account accurately for its current state and relevance for its customers.
With the Post Office, a sector occupying the-all-too-real qua reality, there is a contemporization recquiring acknowledgment and an even greater demand for exhibited presence in virtuality. Indeed, as individuals increasingly inhabit multiple spheres of virtuality, this very real institution is forcing a break from its "imagery of the past" - a break akin to that of the myth of myth.
Relevance declared through re-definition and separation from the myth of imagery.
5) Even in advertising, there is a push towards relevance, though more for value in profit (Brian Stelter, "In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences," The New York Times, 24 October 2007). As explained by Michael Steib, Google's Director of Television Ads:
"We see a future in which, when you sit down in front of your television set, you will see ads that are more relevant for you [...] When we make advertisements more relevant to viewers, inventory becomes more valuable and the return on investment is much higher for advertisers."
Attempting to capture the elusive by answering Madison Avenue's plaguing question of audience accountability, Google in tandem with the Nielsen Company and EchoStar are making significant strides...
...and so the greed behind ad relevance begs us the question of a broadened relevance for cultural aggrandizement unabated by material consumerism.
Relevance forged by profit value, begging a questionnable direction of technology, modernization, and our current reality.
Perhaps a critical mass of progress towards regression as a possible state of an ersatz relevance...
6) Mark Pagel, Quentin D. Atkinson, and Andrew Meade have been studying why the more a word is used, the less it evolves, and came up with the answer that words rarely used are less apt to be corrected when misused, allowing for an individual "to develop a stronger linkage to the mutant form" (Henry Fountain, "Two, Deux, Dos: Heavily Used Words Evolve More Slowly," The New York Times, 16 October 2007). This is in contradistinction to a widely used word, that when misused will be more apt for correction and thus, less evolution. Of course, this applies mainly to the English, Spanish, Russian, and Greek languages because those are the ones Pagel, Atkinson, and Meade tested in their studies. The Eastern languages are quite a different matter...
Word evolution as an indication of relevance in usage and import and as a cultural aside capturing a snapshot of the doxa creating that history.
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There is an improved dialogue between culture and technology enhanced by the dream of shared progress (in education). No longer is there a center and a periphery in clear demarcation. Instead, there are multiple interlapping spheres of virtuality inhabited seamlessly and replacing that dyad.
More importantly, rather than individuality qua individual, there is now an evolution to inviduality qua collaborative individuation. From an ever newer technology, digitization, image remediation, and word evolution to consumer accountability, the true measure encroaches progress accountability in culturization.
The question will be the pace at which the universal doxa acts towards the presumed relevance or if it steers forward in an unceasing direction towards its own relevance. There is a critical need for a language to account accurately for the present. Although other sectors are acting upon this need in dynamic progress, we have yet to see our doxa following suit...
Hyphenation, please.
