Engineering Culture

Social change does not simply result from resistance to the existing set of conditions but from adapting and transforming the technical apparatus itself. Walter Benjamin in his essay "The Author as Producer" (written in 1934) recommends that the `cultural producer' intervene in the production process, in order to transform the apparatus in the manner of an engineer.This collection of essays and examples of contemporary cultural practices (the second in the DATA browser series) asks if this general line of thinking retains relevance for cultural production at this point in time - when activities of production, consumption and circulation operate through complex global networks served by information technologies. In the 1930s, under particular conditions and against the backdrop of fascism, a certain political optimism made social change seem more possible. Can this optimism be maintained when technology operates in the service of capital in ever more insidious ways?