The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Wednesday December 8th, 2021
Before the ‘Age of #Metaverse’: Fantasy, Rhetoric, and
Reality of #Malaysia’s “Cyber-SMART Schools” of the 1990s by Dr. Azly
Rahman
When discussed within the context of aesthetics of technology
and when brought deeper into the analysis of superstructural
(ideological) underpinnings of transnational, pan-, and virtual
capitalism, Malaysia’s grand design to ‘cybernate’ society and to wire
up all of its 10,000 secondary schools situated within its even grander
design of The Multimedia Super Corridor, represents an interesting case
study and a text to be analyzed via the paradigm of Critical Theory
through the means of discourse analysis on “development”.
In this brief analysis of the transfer of discourse on technological
change and the heteroglossia surrounding it (see Bakhtin, 1984), I will
first present a scenario of change – of how agents of technological
change played their role in a world of fantasy reminiscent of Arthur C.
Clarke’s statement that “… the future is a different world, they do
things differently there…”, and proceed with a brief discourse analysis
drawing from ideas proposed by media analysts such as Broughton (1984),
Marcuse (1941), and Terkel (1997 ).
Continue reading HERE!
Gypsy Face #poem & #painting by Nikos Laios
“Your face melts
With the sunrise
And your green eyes
Drip over the pine trees,
Red lips soft like wax.”
Continue reading HERE!
Where there are Tailings, No Grass Grows: Serbians Protest against Rio Tinto by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Another fault line has opened in the mining wars. In Serbia,
resistance is gathering steam against various deals made between
Belgrade and companies that risk environmental degradation and lingering
spoliation.
In this regard, the globe’s second largest metals and mining
corporation, features prominently. Rio Tinto, bruised in reputation but
determined in business, finds itself in a hunting mood in the Balkans,
hoping to establish a lithium mine and processing plant in the valley of
Jadar.
As the infamous destroyer of the Juukan Gorge Caves outlines in a statement,
the Jadar site is intended to “produce battery-grade lithium carbonate,
a critical mineral used in large scale batteries for electric vehicles
and storing renewable energy”. This greening shift – because all canny
mining entities are doing it – promises to “position Rio Tinto as the
largest source of lithium supply in Europe for at least the next 15
years.” In an effort to make matters sound even more impressive, Jadar
will also “produce borates, which are used in solar panels and wind
turbines.”
ntinue reading HERE!
Screws & Chips 21#19 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
For more Screws & Chips, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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