Relational Ecology and the Digital Pharmakon by Benard Stiegler

Film: Sleep Dealer Alex Rivera

• Attention comes from the Latin word attendre.

• Paying Attention is a synonym for taking care.

• Therefore a philosophy of care can assume a philosophy of attention.

• According to Stiegler an “attention economy” has control over people who use analogue and digital technologies.

• An attention economy treats human attention as a source commodity.

• According to Simondon’s thesis there are two different dimensions of individuation. A psychic individual and social individuation.

• According to Simondon the psychic is a phase which does not stop transforming

• This individuation is achieved through social individuation.

• The two dimensions of indivduation is formed by attention forms.

• According to Steigler, “The acquisition of these forms begin with the first moments of life.”

• What we first learn in life and continue to learn is what forms our attention.

• Education plays a huge part in how our attention forms.

• Education has a part in the way our memories form.

• Education has resulted in a “collective memory that constituted in by the attentional forms of knowledge.

• Knowhow

• Life skills

• Cognitive knowledge

• Theoretical knowledge

• According to Steigler only an educated person can take part in these forms of attention.

• Non educated people cant do anything.

• “The Memory of the human entity is essentially exteriorised, materialized and spatialised. It is spatially, materially and technically projected into what us constituted as a common space and time, projected if not out of time then at least beyond its own original temporality and in a certain way put into reserve in space, enabling it to become at once the memory of the individual and of the group.”

• In the movie Sleep Dealer the memory is a commodity through the system TruNod.

• luz sells her memories, she sells her memories of others and events in her life. She is a blogger of sorts.

• There are people who today on the internet whether it be through a blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube who share each and every moment of their lives.

• Culture is invented through individual experience.

• We transitioned from prehistory to protohistory with the invention of recording techniques.

• One form of a literal attentional form is geometry.

• The literal attentional forms “comprise an ensemble of mental disciplines that each constitute an attentional form furnished with its own particular rules.

• Pharmakon: A sorcerer in ancient Greece.

• “Obviously, this affirmation of the poisonous character of writing as remedy that is, as pharmakon of which the side effect here appear to be much worse than the ill that is finitude of memory, does not mean that Plato condemns outright the practice of writing or of reading...”

• In Sleep Dreamer the main character Memo goes to Tijuana (the city of the future) where he finds work as a Node.

• Node is the ultimate form of outsourcing. Men and women withe nodes inmplanted in their body are connected to machines which contol robots.

• There is no need for jobs any more other then the Nodes.

• The job of the Node is not a safe job, these men and women have electricity running through their body. In fact in the movie a man is carried away unconscious.

• Just because it is dangerous does not mean they will stop.

• Digital rational technologies are capturing attention in a destructive fashion.

• Digital rational technologies led to new attentional forms.

• In Dream Dealer the attention of technology proves to be detrimental.

• Memo who is from a small town dreams of getting out. He hacks phone lines as an escape.

• He is mistaken for a terrorist and his home is blown up and his father is killed.

• Here the technology and Memo’s attention to it caused distraction.

• The Process of Identification starts with the parents and then it is formed by objects and desires and through many other things.

• Our core beliefs begin with our parents. But it is the objects of society such as movies and smartphones that shape who we are.

• Identification and Idealism project a psychic individuation

• “Language is the primary attentional form...”

• It never functions alone.

• Metalanguage: “all metalanguages are critical languages. It is form the transformation of the conditions of individuation grammatisation...”

• According to Plato: A deformation is a short circuiting of memory.

• Each of us has a singular experience.

• The memory of each person creates their experience in a different way.

• The goal of the social web is to control the “fruits of the collaborative production of metadata.”

• Technologies of attention are both cultural and cognitive.

• New forms of research are possible because of digital technologies.

• Sleep Dealer takes place in an industrial society, even in his small town the machine holds precedent over everything.

• Not only was Memo obssesed with technology so was his brother. His brother loved American T.V

• Memo’s goal is to one day contribute to the global economy. When he becomes a Node he says “Finally I could connect to the other system the global economy.”

• “The Concept of a world connected by technology, but divided by boarders is the central concept of Sleep Dealer. This ironic reality pushed me to imagine a future in which boarders are sealed, and imagrents no longer come to America. Instead, in the wold of Sleep Dreamer, immagrents stay in their home countries, connect their bodies to ‘the net’ and send their pure labor to robots in America. This is what used to be called the ‘American dream’, five minute into the future.”