Re: <eyebeam><blast> diversity and national net.arts

[zonezero <zonezero@mail.internet.com.mx>]

on 2/13/98 9:17 AM alex.galloway/rhizome wrote:

>however, i don't support pedro's notion of a "real diversity" that
>different coke products for different coke drinkers might represent.
>"localization" is business-speak, it's a way of taking one pattern of
>consumption and producing several.
>
>nor would i conjure up Brian Holmes's vision of a broad diversity drawn
>from the richness of human history and experience:

Dear Alex,
to continue along the line of what is being discussed, let me add some
ideas.

There are two aspects to diversity, one is derived from economics, and
the other from culture. The cultural aspect I would imagine no one is 
hard pressed to accept that the entire population of the world exists
on  the basis of cultural diversity. You name it and there are examples
of  our diversity, along class, gender, religious, professional, age,
etc. etc. lines. It was only that in the past for strictly economic
reasons, the industrial sector of society, in order to reach economies
of scale had to manufacture a "one size -or color- fits all" solution.
It was called mass production. And in parallel to mass production we had
"mass audiences".. so you had idiotic TV to peddle idiotic appliances.
And that formula was the world over (nothing to say of the same sort of
arguments under socialist regimes, but there it was for political
reasons. The dictatorship of the proletariat, you remember? ).  

Today mass production has been replaced by production on demand. So your
computer, or washing machine, or car, or desk can be organised and
produced with your specs in mind, at the same cost as if it were mass
produced. A national magazine can have no advertisements for cigarettes
in my issue, as I don't smoke, but does have information on other items
which are of interest to me. It can have advertisements for stores in my
neighbourhood which are different to yours. So niche marketing, goes way
beyond just clever gimmicks invented as the flavour of the month. They
are increasingly discovering that my families needs are quite different
from that of the family down the hall in the building we live, let alone
from someone across town, or another country, or continent.

It is not rhetoric to discover that we are all different and with
different needs and choices to satisfy. My three year old son, already
expresses his choices when given options. 

you write:
> having tons and tons of different options
>is crucial to our contemporary experience, yet we must also recognise
>that difference is always a *regulated* difference, that specificity is
>always at the same time indeterminate.

you make it sound like if the issue of options is a fickle one. It is
not. Anymore than considering that all the cells of your body  could
function unregulated. Just think that in order for your cells to make up
your ears and not a foot they have to be regulated. But even with this
"regulatory" DNA, we ALL come out looking and being different. So how do
you collate this sort of reality with your analysis? 

We are in a new era, which is just starting, and it has to do with
understanding that we are all quite different, in spite of our
underlying commonness. Yes we are at the same local and world oriented,
at the same we are different and equal. In the past beacuse of the
limitations imposed by technology, we were led to believe otherwise,
that it had to be one or the other. Today we know differently, and
adapting to these new perceptive issues, does not come easy.

Best regards
Pedro Meyer
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