Fragments - changing skins

Although I don’t agree with the drastic measures to punish those who infringe on intellectual property like the ones advocated by Jeter (and Shaviro to a certain degree), I found the discussion useful. As an artist, I want to share my work but I also don’t want my work to be stolen, or taken without my permission. Of course, I don’t want to go to the extremes of cruel punishment as those expressed by Jeter. But I’m in agreement that certain control over intellectual property should take place.

Shaviro also writes about poetry and compares a poet to a radio that receives messages (18) and writes that a “poet’s task is to channel otherness.”

Then quoting Ken MacLeod he writes that, “Every square yard was occupied by a stall or shop or kiosk, each of which had its own fluorescent rectangle above it advertising flights or drugs or socks or cosmetics or lingerie or insurance or back-ups or cabs or hotels” (22), which made me think of Second Life with all the building that takes place in there, and where even the emptiest of spaces is used to make a statement, advertise something, sell something. In the same vein in Transmetropolitan Warren Ellis writes about a world where people change their genetic makeup at the slightest whim, “get yourself some reptile skin for three weeks, spend a month in feathers” (22), which also reminded me of Second Life.

But the most salient thing about Shaviro’s writing is something that has already been pointed out in class, his way of writing in fragments, disjointed, discontinuous, etc…like life.