Reading Path
imperativeTechnology and Scenic Design
Technics, media, data, and the design of post-ritual scenes.
Introduction
Attend to the scene. Not to the content that circulates through it, not to the message it transmits, but to the scene itself — the structured space of shared attention that makes any content possible. This path develops Center Study's analysis of technology as fundamentally a matter of scenic design: the construction and maintenance of scenes adequate to their deferral function. Read it with your attention on the actual scenes you inhabit.
The Sequence — 3 texts
The imperative as the origin of technology — the argument that all technological organization is organized around command structures that originate in the ritual scene. Having established the originary account of technology, we can ask: what happens to that account in conditions of post-ritual modernity?
The scaling problem: how do originary concepts apply to large institutional structures? Scenic design and the construction of scenes adequate to the deferral demands of complex societies. The auto-immunological pathology: institutions attacking the forms of centrality that their own function requires.
Where This Path Arrives
Technology is not neutral. It is the medium of the scene, and the scene is the medium of deferral. The question this path leaves you with: what scenes are your practices constructing, and are those scenes adequate to the deferral they are meant to accomplish?