NOISE

OK, so i'm really interested in the concept of noise - noise in lots of contexts. McLuhan writes that "Ours is a brand-new world of allatonceness. 'Time' has ceased, 'space' has vanished. We now live in a global village...a simultaneous happening. We are back in acoustic space." Noise is a central environmental feature for the modern cyborg, and learning to navigate and cope with noise is part of life within a cyborg culture. Not only is our return to "acoustic space" a product of the literal sonic environment, but it is also a descriptor of the digital environment described by Paul Virilio as "the twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity". Noise comes at us all at once (immediately and instantly), rather than in the manageable, read-at-your-own-pace form of writing. Written language, in the Western alphabetic form, is a map that represents acoustic space. The ear is filtered through the eye. Today, through modern media technologies, the ear can hear for itself the information previously translated through the eye. As Virilio notes, "Nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else. ... If we are not aware of this loss, and do not account for it, our gain will be of no value." I believe that the increase in noise (both in a sonic sense and a communication theory sense) apparent in modern mediated culture offers both gains and losses, and i hope to develop a more complete understanding of this phenomenon.