skandalon

And a separate problem is that when “reblogging”, the original source on Tumblr is hard to track down. I try to be scrupulous about linking to the original writer/creator of things, but Tumblr sites sometimes make that hard to do, or make it hard to even notice that what you’re reading/looking at originated on someone else’s Tumblr site.

✖ Via Daring Fireball: “Khoi Vinh on Tumblr and Identity”, August 5th, 2010

Reblogging is fast and effortless. If the author of a Tumblr blog (or any other blog for that matter) doesn’t take the time to track down the original source of the quote or picture he’s interested in, it will get lost in the reblogging process (for example, try to find the original artist of a picture published on ffffound!). There’s a reason why Skandalon release only two posts a day : providing adequate references can be a time consuming process. But without them, this archive won’t be a proper archive. And I’m not saying that everyone should do this. It’s a personal choice. But then again, for it to be a choice, one would have to take the time to think about it : do I want to know who’s behind this nice illustration? Do I want to spend time to look into it? Do I need the reference? What could I gain from it? And so on.

• Aug 06, 2010 link notes tagged: Skandalon Tumblr archive artist author creator ethic reference source technology adequate references

Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is nevertheless the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - that engenders the territory, and if one must return to the fable, today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the extent of the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges persist here and there in the deserts that are no longer those of the Empire, but ours. The desert of the real itself.

✖ Via Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, tr. Sheila Faria Glaser, University of Michigan Press, [1981]1995, p. 1 [full pdf]

Baudrillard is quoting a very (very) short story by Jorge Luis Borges “On Exactitude in Science” or “On Rigor in Science”. Learn more about it on Wikipedia and read one of its English translation.

• Mar 10, 2010 link notes tagged: reality realism hyperrealism philosophy reference map author fiction desert representation science