Class: October 25, 2011
After attempting to decipher a Stanford webpage on Hegel's phenomenology of the spirit last night, we all walked into class this morning completely confused. At least the majority. So, to clear up all the confusion and answer all our questions, we are then asked to google dozens of words/phrases that are being rapidly added to the list on the white board, creating a different tab for each and clicking on one of the resulting links without any explanation of why we are doing so. You can imagine: an entire class frantically searching obscure philosophical words for roughly half an hour. Knowing that we would be graded on our results (but not understanding how we could possibly be graded on this assignment), we blindly followed the rules until ten minutes before the bell rang. Turns out that all the tabs we were creating and countless webpages being clicked on for each one were actually representing the phenomenology of the spirit. As one article by Matthew Grant (posted below) beautifully articulated, the World Wide Web that we use daily is actually (and quite remarkably) the manifestation of Hegel's theory. Every human has a self consciousness that presents itself on the web, whether it be through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, store memberships or soundcloud.com. We all have in some way been placed on the Internet, sharing our everyday thoughts and ideas. You can type almost anything into the Google search box and get a result. Someone has written about it, talked about it, debated it, tweeted it, identified it, related to it. You get the idea. Google and the web contain our history...not just mine or yours, but of everyone (in some way or another). It saves every search and entry, so even my seemingly small, meaningless entries this morning contributed to the "Database of Intention" (as called by Matthew Grant). My confusing night and confusing class turned out to be very helpful. I'm not sure I understand everything, but I get the idea that we have, in essence, lived out the phenomenology of spirit thought up by Hegel. And that's a very interesting thought indeed.
http://www.matthewtgrant.com/tag/search/
thanks -j
After attempting to decipher a Stanford webpage on Hegel's phenomenology of the spirit last night, we all walked into class this morning completely confused. At least the majority. So, to clear up all the confusion and answer all our questions, we are then asked to google dozens of words/phrases that are being rapidly added to the list on the white board, creating a different tab for each and clicking on one of the resulting links without any explanation of why we are doing so. You can imagine: an entire class frantically searching obscure philosophical words for roughly half an hour. Knowing that we would be graded on our results (but not understanding how we could possibly be graded on this assignment), we blindly followed the rules until ten minutes before the bell rang. Turns out that all the tabs we were creating and countless webpages being clicked on for each one were actually representing the phenomenology of the spirit. As one article by Matthew Grant (posted below) beautifully articulated, the World Wide Web that we use daily is actually (and quite remarkably) the manifestation of Hegel's theory. Every human has a self consciousness that presents itself on the web, whether it be through Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, store memberships or soundcloud.com. We all have in some way been placed on the Internet, sharing our everyday thoughts and ideas. You can type almost anything into the Google search box and get a result. Someone has written about it, talked about it, debated it, tweeted it, identified it, related to it. You get the idea. Google and the web contain our history...not just mine or yours, but of everyone (in some way or another). It saves every search and entry, so even my seemingly small, meaningless entries this morning contributed to the "Database of Intention" (as called by Matthew Grant). My confusing night and confusing class turned out to be very helpful. I'm not sure I understand everything, but I get the idea that we have, in essence, lived out the phenomenology of spirit thought up by Hegel. And that's a very interesting thought indeed.
http://www.matthewtgrant.com/tag/search/
thanks -j
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