[...] ontology: how we understand what constitutes life and objecthood

==Campbell==> help consumer research:
1. expand the range of temporal reference (look into the future of how consumption will look like)
**assumption of the future: the future will be a post-consumption existence**
2. expand the range of physical reference (extraplanetary consumption: what the ***consumption of place*** means; embryonic consumption sites: store your child's cord blood stem cells)
3. interrogation of the roots of humanism (social sciences)


today:
robotic revolution
biotechnology revolution


*posthuman: ideological account of the future of the human species in annexation with info-bio-technologies =/= *posthumanism: (speculative philosophy + material reality) critique of the discourse and epistemologies of *humanism:
•belief in progress
•technological mastery over nature,
•separation of human and animal kingdom
•therapeutic approach to human behavior
•secular approach to scientific inquiry
*humanism = epistemology: a way of investigating the world that is consonant with our human intuition--understand--> life as comprising essentially animate or inanimate, self or other, human or nonhuman** [=/= set of diverse beliefs]

horror of surgically implanted biomedical enhancement --> (persistence of the) inviolability of the body as the seat of identity <-- a classic humanist assumption

posthumanism
•speculative philosophy + material reality
•abstract philosophy + empirical science
•ancient + futuristic
•exotic + specialized (telesurgery, amorphous computing) + banal + ubiquitous (automobility, eyeglasses)
•
--> apocalyptic era (intelligent machine takeover)
--> ecological ethics (human not the most important form of life on earth)

***attempt to overcome humanness is an age-old human tendency***

what constitutes life
•women --> Schiebinger
•slaves --> Douzinas
•computer viruses --> Parikka
•cellular automata --> Delanda
•bacteria --> Haraway
•swarms -->Thacker
•


*brand = living system* (--> distinguish themselves from environment, exclude from it what is not, feedback communication with environment, self replicate, evolve, ) =/= cultural product
@Femke


(Campbell arguing that) the human and the posthuman are (ways to describe the forces that are) already present in the human condition:

1.
computation of life
mid 19th century weaving technologies ==> logic of computation ==ontology==> “universe = giant computer” : attempting to uncover what life itself is through a better understanding and appreciation of the power and seeming omnipresence of computational logic
•a discourse [~ a way of talking about the world] (and not only a claim that people make)
--> an example of how dominant technologies are not just instruments but models (through which the world is understood)
‘clockwork universe’ was the model for the last four millennia: clockwork-like essence of cosmos + state + body (=/= romanticism, galvanism, mesmerism, quantum mechanics)
}==>
•consumer as computer/computational (consumer as information processor, consumer as automatic subject =/= psychological agent) <== science of cybernetics, automaticity, feedback
•information (a new powerful substance in mid 20th century), “raw data ==> decisions, models, theories”, a specialized value-free term (=/= fact, learning, wisdom, understanding, enlightenment) --> second half of 20th century: information began to assume a deep and proved privileges place (in politics, cultural imaginary), to informationalize consumer objects:
◦jeans as “intelligent denim” --> “vector graphics and pixelation as there expression of your individuality” (Jack & Jones)
◦cream as “pro-retinal A nanosomes and Par-Elasty” (L'Oreal)
•

2.
laborization of life
growing sophistication of the previously simple and straightforward categories of aliveness and deadness (<== technologies since the 1970s: stem cell engineering, in vitro fertilization, genomics, virtual surgery, biomaterial engineering)
}==>
•make the range of what constitutes ‘alive’ larger and more complex
•stage the interpenetration of the machinic and the organic
(in the future it will be the) marketers as the most influential groups in re-drawing categories of existence and deciding what is animate or inanimate, natural or technical (not scientists or philosophers)
[***classical marketing strategies: positioning, communication]
==> paradoxes in consumption (for example stem cell engineered meat appears as both identical and radically different from its predecessors) --> postethical consumption models (categorized as vegetarian? how marketing re-enchant food without appeal to a myth of pastoral origin?)
--> commentary consumption acts: organic food market, natural healthcare market

3.
miniaturization of life
“fast, cheap, and out of control”
autonomous (=/= central, god-like)
}==>
•technology is no more locatable within a machine (a consciousness that envelopes the world) --> dispersed: (a logic of) technology as environment [diffused] =/= tool [discrete]
internet of things : digitally enabled objects share and respond to information
1980s --> processing (of information, microprocessor)
1990s --> networking (world wide web)
2000s --> sensing and controlling
“my consumption patterns worth so much that they underwrite my acts of consumption” -Hayles
•*cognition = a product* that emerges between the self and its environment (and does not take place exclusively on the brain) --stages--> cognition as a process

4.
complexification of life
complex (feedback loops, emergence, bifurcation) =/= complicated: accurately analysable system having a large number of component and perform sophisticated tasks
•most of the most valuable products today have virtual components (software, money, etc.) that would be unrecognizable 25 years ago

5.
automation of life
(fundamental legal principle of) ius gentium: all humans are the same in so far as they are rational human beings in possession of free will =/= 21st century neuroscientific research
}--Libet--> “free won't” : the mind exists in a climate which says yes, but it can say no
agency is outsourced to systems that increasingly invisiblize from everyday life (software deciding mortgage, Facebook suggest friend, turning car into a moving computer)

dystopian imaginary of Black Mirror TV series --> these developments are a tyrannical force that undermine an a priori and fundamental humanness

--Campbell--> consumer researcher's results will be powerful counter-balances to the often too blindly utopian and dystopian accounts of the future

...................................

[*]advertising: (ubiquitous and contentious) symptom of organization[= corporate entity and/or common practice]
aesthetic ambassador of the organization
--(a way through which)--> **anyone outside the organization mythologizes an imaginary inside**

(its) media:
•***indirect messages of public relations that are embedded deep in the heart of non-advertising genres***
•bombastic and direct appeal of made-for-cinema advertisement and corporate communication
•

how advertising used to be scorned as a practice and profession --> gained responsibility in American culture:
-1 advertising became instrumental in enlisting soldiers during world war I ==> lending it a moral force which served more noble purposes besides commerce
-2 it was elevated through its incorporation into education (first in Harvard University 1924)
-3 it becames adept at referencing styles and commissioning work from the realm of high culture
}--now--> advertising does not just produce culture, but ***culture produces advertising***

(one of the central questions of advertising in contemporary times has been the extent to which) *advertising enframes everything within its discourse and logic*
--Campbell--> ****if advertising is everything, what is it not?**** [@apass] <-- this is a crucial question about advertising and it is part of a larger global crucial devate about the commodification of life and previously inalienable aspects thereof

scientific advertising ---> go to Haraway

advertising:
1. fas[...]