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Digital songs: Aspects of contemporary work and life

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Abstract

Despite apparent differences, industrial and digital worlds rely, it is claimed, on the same epistemological foundation epitomized by the deductive-analytical and projective character of representation. A comparison of the very mode by means of which language and cognition have been re-represented in software with the logic that underlies the motion patterns of the industrial machine helps to lay open the hidden epistemological affinities of these otherwise different instrumental devices. Within this overall framework an attempt is made to reconfigure the novelty of the digital machine and to assess some consequences of the ongoing electronic textualization of contemporary contexts of work.

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The apprehension of pure relations as such is a supreme way, but at the same time the emptiest way of objectifying entities.

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Kallinikos, J. Digital songs: Aspects of contemporary work and life. Systems Practice 5, 457–472 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01059835

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