general points of interest

Last class in the go-around about Wiener's text, I said that I was interested in boundaries and in the structures within which Wiener and Weaver were working. Wiener dealt largely with historical and theoretical boundaries, so it was interesting to see Hayles concerned with boundaries of material things, even if that sometimes necessarily meant looking at it from a theoretical standpoint. I was particularly struck in the way Hayles in several places juxtaposes bodies and capitalism (3, 42, 169 are a few places), looking both at the historical trajectory of both as well as via the question of objects and value.

I was also happy to reach page 135, in which were treated my anxieties over the seemingly glaring questions of pre-assumption and definitions within the work of the thinkers whom Hayles discusses. The significance of the observer and the question of the level to which the world is at all objective (and thereby, the level to which disciplines or fields of study create their seeming objectivity) is an important one, and questions about it have arisen for me very quickly in each of the readings for this week, and in last class's as well. I don't have anything particularly profound to offer other than the hope that we discuss in class the actual assumptions and problematics that are structuring the ideas discussed.