- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Literature and Creative Destruction
-
PART I The New Enlightenment - Preface “Unnice Work” Knowledge Work and the Academy
-
Chapter 1 The Idea of Knowledge Work -
Part II Ice Ages - Preface “We Work Here, but We're Cool”
-
Chapter 2 Automating -
Chapter 3 Informating -
Chapter 4 Networking -
PART III The Laws of Cool - Preface “What's Cool?”
-
Chapter 5 The Ethos of Information -
Chapter 6 Information Is Style -
Chapter 7 The Feeling of Information -
Chapter 8 Cyber-Politics and Bad Attitude -
Part IV Humanities and Arts in the Age of Knowledge Work - Preface “More”
-
Chapter 9 The Tribe of Cool -
Chapter 10 Historicizing Cool -
Chapter 11 Destructive Creativity -
Chapter 12 Speaking of History - Epilogue
-
Appendix A Taxonomy of Knowledge Work -
Appendix B Chronology of Downsizing (Throught the 1990s) -
Appendix C “Ethical Hacking” and Art - Works Cited
- Index
Destructive Creativity
Destructive Creativity
The Arts in the Information Age
- Chapter:
- (p.317) Chapter 11 Destructive Creativity
- Source:
- The Laws of Cool
- Author(s):
Alan Liu
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
The rationale of contemporary knowledge work is “creative destruction,” with the emphasis on “creative” and almost no serious reflection on “destruction.” The question of a future aesthetics is the question of the general legitimation of art in such an age of creative destruction. What is the function of the creative arts in a world of perpetually “innovative” information and knowledge work? The special potential of the arts in the age of knowledge work may well be to complement the humanities lesson that “cool has a history” with the crucial inverse of that lesson: history can be cool. Cool à la mode—the cool of the instantaneous present—can no longer be the exclusive obsession of knowledge workers. In the age of “creative destruction,” the sense of history will also need to be cool. This chapter looks at viral aesthetics and the potential of the new aesthetics of “destructive creativity” in the information age.
Keywords: knowledge work, information age, cool, creative destruction, creative arts, viral aesthetics, history
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Literature and Creative Destruction
-
PART I The New Enlightenment - Preface “Unnice Work” Knowledge Work and the Academy
-
Chapter 1 The Idea of Knowledge Work -
Part II Ice Ages - Preface “We Work Here, but We're Cool”
-
Chapter 2 Automating -
Chapter 3 Informating -
Chapter 4 Networking -
PART III The Laws of Cool - Preface “What's Cool?”
-
Chapter 5 The Ethos of Information -
Chapter 6 Information Is Style -
Chapter 7 The Feeling of Information -
Chapter 8 Cyber-Politics and Bad Attitude -
Part IV Humanities and Arts in the Age of Knowledge Work - Preface “More”
-
Chapter 9 The Tribe of Cool -
Chapter 10 Historicizing Cool -
Chapter 11 Destructive Creativity -
Chapter 12 Speaking of History - Epilogue
-
Appendix A Taxonomy of Knowledge Work -
Appendix B Chronology of Downsizing (Throught the 1990s) -
Appendix C “Ethical Hacking” and Art - Works Cited
- Index
