Communication Matters

Chapter 10

Attention and assemblage in the clickable world

J. Macgregor Wise

 

We are enamored of our devices. Occasionally, we become afraid of them, in seemingly brief irrational moments of panic (sometimes justified, and sometimes not). And, from time to time, we become concerned with their impact on our lives, livelihoods, environment. In praise or blame, we single out particular devices: the iPod, the nuclear power plant, the spinning Jenny. But as the late philosopher Gilles Deleuze put it in one of his last interviews, the machines themselves tell us nothing (1995: 175). We have to realize that the machines are part of assemblages – multiple and diverse collections of objects, practices, and desires functioning across a broad landscape ...