1. Relational Ecology and the Digital
Pharmakon by Benard Stiegler
Film: Sleep Dealer
Alex Rivera
2. • Attention comes from the Latin word
attendre.
• Paying Attention is a synonym for taking
care.
• Therefore a philosophy of care can assume
a philosophy of attention.
• According to Stiegler an “attention
economy” has control over people who
use analogue and digital technologies.
• An attention economy treats human
attention as a source commodity.
3. • According to Simondon’s thesis there are
two different dimensions of individuation. A
psychic individual and social individuation.
• According to Simondon the psychic is a
phase which does not stop transforming
• This individuation is achieved through social
individuation.
4. • The two dimensions of indivduation is
formed by attention forms.
• According to Steigler, “The acquisition of
these forms begin with the first moments
of life.”
• What we first learn in life and continue to
learn is what forms our attention.
5. • Education plays a huge part in how our
attention forms.
• Education has a part in the way our
memories form.
• Education has resulted in a “collective
memory that constituted in by the
attentional forms of knowledge.
7. • According to Steigler only an educated
person can take part in these forms of
attention.
• Non educated people cant do anything.
8. • “The Memory of the human entity is
essentially exteriorised, materialized and
spatialised. It is spatially, materially and
technically projected into what us
constituted as a common space and time,
projected if not out of time then at least
beyond its own original temporality and in
a certain way put into reserve in space,
enabling it to become at once the memory
of the individual and of the group.”
9. • In the movie Sleep Dealer the memory is a
commodity through the system TruNod.
• luz sells her memories, she sells her
memories of others and events in her life.
She is a blogger of sorts.
• There are people who today on the
internet whether it be through a blog,
Facebook, Twitter, or Youtube who share
each and every moment of their lives.
10. • Culture is invented through individual
experience.
11. • We transitioned from prehistory to
protohistory with the invention of
recording techniques.
12. • One form of a literal attentional form is
geometry.
• The literal attentional forms “comprise an
ensemble of mental disciplines that each
constitute an attentional form furnished
with its own particular rules.
14. • “Obviously, this affirmation of the
poisonous character of writing as remedy
that is, as pharmakon of which the side
effect here appear to be much worse than
the ill that is finitude of memory, does not
mean that Plato condemns outright the
practice of writing or of reading...”
15. • In Sleep Dreamer the main character Memo
goes to Tijuana (the city of the future)
where he finds work as a Node.
• Node is the ultimate form of outsourcing.
Men and women withe nodes inmplanted in
their body are connected to machines
which contol robots.
• There is no need for jobs any more other
then the Nodes.
16. • The job of the Node is not a safe job, these
men and women have electricity running
through their body. In fact in the movie a
man is carried away unconscious.
• Just because it is dangerous does not mean
they will stop.
17. • Digital rational technologies are capturing
attention in a destructive fashion.
• Digital rational technologies led to new
attentional forms.
18. • In Dream Dealer the attention of
technology proves to be detrimental.
• Memo who is from a small town dreams of
getting out. He hacks phone lines as an
escape.
• He is mistaken for a terrorist and his home
is blown up and his father is killed.
• Here the technology and Memo’s attention
to it caused distraction.
19. • The Process of Identification starts with
the parents and then it is formed by objects
and desires and through many other things.
• Our core beliefs begin with our parents.
But it is the objects of society such as
movies and smartphones that shape who
we are.
• Identification and Idealism project a psychic
individuation
20. • “Language is the primary attentional
form...”
• It never functions alone.
• Metalanguage: “all metalanguages are
critical languages. It is form the
transformation of the conditions of
individuation grammatisation...”
21. • According to Plato: A deformation is a
short circuiting of memory.
• Each of us has a singular experience.
• The memory of each person creates their
experience in a different way.
22. • The goal of the social web is to control the
“fruits of the collaborative production of
metadata.”
23. • Technologies of attention are both cultural
and cognitive.
• New forms of research are possible
because of digital technologies.
24. • Sleep Dealer takes place in an industrial
society, even in his small town the machine
holds precedent over everything.
• Not only was Memo obssesed with
technology so was his brother. His brother
loved American T.V
• Memo’s goal is to one day contribute to the
global economy. When he becomes a Node
he says “Finally I could connect to the
other system the global economy.”
25. • “The Concept of a world connected by
technology, but divided by boarders is the
central concept of Sleep Dealer. This ironic
reality pushed me to imagine a future in
which boarders are sealed, and imagrents
no longer come to America. Instead, in the
wold of Sleep Dreamer, immagrents stay in
their home countries, connect their bodies
to ‘the net’ and send their pure labor to
robots in America. This is what used to be
called the ‘American dream’, five minute
into the future.”
