Pear Tree in a Walled Garden by Samuel Palmer, c. 1829

 

While our collective imagination has been gripped with the images of downtrodden folks in other parts of the world uprising in seemingly spontaneous acts of defiance, here at home, we late industrial consumers continue doing what we do best: passively and uncritically absorbing whatever is in front of us.  In our zeal to dive into the next hot thing that the market offers us, we seldom have occasion to question what is absent—what is quietly being denied us—and what social costs are obscured by the price tag of a commodity.

Apple is an interesting contradiction in consumer society because, on the hand, it seems endlessly capable of producing new devices that we never knew we needed; yet, when we pick them up, they seem almost magical, enabling us to do things we hardly imagined—or, rather, to consume things in ways we never imagined.  In light of its continual innovation and its capacity to generate “cool,” Apple is often seen as progressive organization.  On the other hand, Apple is notorious for placing authoritarian controls on its products.  As the old quip goes: “Linux is great at letting you do what you want to do (if you are willing to stare for hours at line code), Apple is great at letting you do what they want you do, and Windows is great at crashing.”  Of even greater concern, Apple remorselessly outsources it labor to China’s most offensive factories, some of which recently received attention because they had to install nets around the buildings to end a spate of highly-public suicides.

Two recent artworks highlight the underside of Apple’s pristine white carapace.

Phone Story

On September 13th, 2011, Phone Story, an app that is part-game, part social commentary piece produced by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Paolo Pedercini, received international attention when is was banned from Apple’s App Store after a few short hours in circulation. The app’s website explains that:

Phone Story is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe. Phone Story represents this process with four educational games that make the player symbolically complicit in coltan extraction in Congo, outsourced labor in China, e-waste in Pakistan and gadget consumerism in the West.

Perdercini posted the ban notification that he received from Apple which explained that, according to its guidelines, apps cannot:

  • depict violence or abuse of children
  • present excessively objectionable or crude content

The censorship of the app is objectionable not only for the blatant power play that Apple made in silencing its critics; there is also a twisted sort of irony in its statement to Perdercini: In declaring the content of the app to be “excessively objectionable or crude,” Apple has, implicitly, endorsed this statement as a description of its own behavior because, of course, the app was about Apple’s business practices.  This act of censorship also raises grave concerns over whether markets can be trusted to ensure the free flow of politically important information in a democratic society.  The problem with Apple’s “walled garden” approach to the Web is that the walls appear to keep voices of dissent or even self-reflexivity away from the garden.

 

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Another work, by monologist Mike Daisey, relives Daisey’s journey to China to observe the conditions in which Apple products are made.  Though it might appear, at first glance, to be a polemic against Apple; The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs is, in fact, a tale of Daisey’s personal conflict between his love, as a consumer, for Apple devices, and his disgust, as a human being, for Apple’s labor practices.

Daisey’s monologue is not only significant as a work of art, but also a piece of investigative journalism.  Daisey traveled to a factory complex—or, perhaps, more accurately, a small industrial city—in Shenzhen, China that employs almost one million people and was able to see firsthand the conditions of workers in Apple’s factories by adopting the guise of an American businessman and investor.  Daisey also located and spoke with Chinese labor activists militating against the working conditions in local factories.  These organizers faced certain death if caught by the authorities.

Daisy discusses the monologue in a Tech Crunch interview with Andrew Keen titled “Exposed: Apple’s Terrible Sin in China.”

YouTube Preview Image

On September 18th, 2011, Barry Wellman, the early and rather prescient scholar of the Internet, posed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek question to the Communication and Information Technology Section of the American Sociology Association (CITASA): “‘Critical’ – aren’t we all?”  This post was precipitated by a call for papers for special issue of tripleC entitled Marx is Back: The Importance of Marxist Theory and Research for Critical Communication Studies Today (no affiliation with the author).  Specifically, the call invited papers that address (my emphasis):

what it means to ask Marx’s questions in 21st century informational capitalism, how Marxian theory can be used for critically analyzing and transforming media and communication today, and what the implications of the revival of the interest in Marx are for the field of Media and Communication Studies.

Shortly after it was sent, Wellman responded to the call, saying:

Not meant personally, but the use of the word “critical” by a subset of scholars always bothers me as leading to unconscious smugness? If I’m “critical”, your lot isn’t? Who, except flacks and twerps, isn’t critical? Can we criticize the criticalists?

This sparked a debate over the utility and appropriateness of the phrase “critical theory.”  Critics of the phrase raise the following objections:

  1. The phrase “Critical Theory” has been appropriated by one, heavily Marxist-inspired, tradition (though, it should be noted that the Frankfurt School also draws liberally from Weber, Freud, and others), which guards against its use by other theoretical perspectives.
  2. The use of the adjective “critical” implies an evaluation of work outside of this tradition as non-critical by comparison.
  3. By making such implicit evaluations, self-identified critical theorists consciously or unconsciously being smug with respect to their colleagues.

In this essay, I will argue that, despite these objections, the phrase “Critical Theory” makes a useful distinction and that the stakes in this debate are more than merely semantic.

 

I. Definition & Background

First, it is important to differentiate critical theory, critical sociology, and critical thinking. Critical Theory (with capital “C” & “T”) . In common parlance, a critical theory is simply one that seeks to disprove or discredit an extant theory.  According to this definition, most professors are likely to engage in critical theorizing in their career.  It is simply one mode of academic discourse.  Sometimes, critical theory is called “negative theory” because it negates existing explanations of various phenomena, as opposed to positive theory whose purpose is new explanations.

Following this interpretation of critical theory, Michael Burawoy argued, in his 2004 presidential address to the American Sociological Association, that critical sociology is a distinct subset of sociology that challenges dominant paradigms within the discipline of sociology, saying “It is the role of critical sociology […] to examine the foundations—both the explicit and the implicit, both normative and descriptive—of the research programs of professional sociology.”

In contrast to the specificity of critical theory, “critical thinking” is a relatively vague term that generally implies thoroughness and rigor in making logical connections.  While critical theorizing generally occurs in professional academic discourse, critical thinking is widely valorized across various social strata.  Everybody is supposed to aspire to be a critical thinker.

“Critical Theory” (capital “C” & “T”) is distinct from the common noun phrase “critical theory.”  Critical Theory generally refers to a specific intellectual movement associated with the Frankfurt school, a few loosely associated figures, and their successors.  Critical Theory is not defined merely by rigor or thoughtfulness; therefore, the claim that something is not Critical Theory does not amount to a claim that something is not thoughtful or rigorous. Rather, “Critical Theory” is the name given to a distinct theoretical approach developed in reaction to a historically specific set of conditions.  The agenda of this theoretical program is laid out in Theodor Horkheimer’s (1937) seminal essay “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in which he explains:

The traditional idea of theory is based on scientific activity as carried on within the division of labor at a particular stage in the latter’s development. It corresponds to the activity of the scholar which takes place alongside all the other activities of a society but in no immediately clear connection with them. In this view of theory, therefore, the real social function of science is not made manifest

Critical Theory, on the other hand,

Although it itself emerges from the social structure, its purpose is not, either in its conscious intention or in its objective significance, the better functioning of any ele­ment in the structure. On the contrary, it is suspicious of the very categories of better, useful, appropriate, productive, and valuable, as these are understood in the present order, and re­fuses to take them as nonscientific presuppositions about which one can do nothing. […] such thinkers interpret the economic categories of work, value, and produc­tivity exactly as they are interpreted in the existing order, and they regard any other interpretation as pure idealism. But at the same time they consider it rank dishonesty simply to accept the interpretation; the critical acceptance of the categories which rule social life contains simultaneously their condemnation.

So, while traditional theorists attempt to refine and develop extant systems with respect to newly acquired data, Critical Theorists question the social implications of the very assumptions on which those systems are based.  They can do so only by first engaging in the history of sociology—that is, by making the shift from data to theory itself as the object of inquiry.  Then, secondarily, they must subject that theory to political inquiry, particularly questioning its position with respect to dominant ideologies.  Critical theorists ask: “Who benefits by starting from these assumptions?”  The Frankfurt School often suggested that people ignore explanations equally as plausible as their own assumptions due to mass manipulation, repression, or false consciousness.  The most important difference between traditional theory and Critical Theory is that the former aims to refine and reform a system, while the latter seeks a revolutionary disposition of that system. Traditional theory is about taking the set of tools you are given and trying to make them work better, While Critical Theory greets those same tools with suspicion and asks: Who benefits from these tools, can we use different tools, or can we put them to use in different ways?

Two points:

1.) Note that Horkheimer himself does not use “critical theory” as a proper noun phrase.  He was, in fact, trying to delineate two co-dependent tasks of scientific (i.e., rigorous and systematic)  inquiry, while alluding to the “critical philosophy” of an important predecessor, Immanuel Kant .  No doubt, the emphasis of his essay rests on critical theory which he believed was systematically inhibited by what Herbert Marcuse would latter call a “one-dimensional society” (i.e., a society where a single hegemonic ideology is so dominant that others become unthinkable or in-articulate-able).  Nevertheless, it is only in retrospect, historical scholars of social theory adopt the proper noun “Critical Theory” as a short-hand for the work of Horkheimer and his cadre of academics.

2.) A wide range of other terms d’art are equally evaluative: e.g., “Modern” implies passé, Feminist implies sexist, queer implies hetero-normative, etc.  It is simply a matter of accuracy to acknowledge that the tradition of Critical Theory defines itself in opposition economistic rationality, essentialism, structural functionalism, etc.  However, to degrade the well-founded and rigorously-defended antagonism captured in the phrase “Critical Theory” as a mere manifestation of “smugness”—especially, given that this revolutionary sentiment was expressed contra the burgeoning fascist state in Germany—is tantamount to dismissing feminism as women just being “uppity.”


II. The Politics of Preserving a Term

Let’s face it, the leaders of the Frankfurt school weren’t necessarily the most congenial folks.  Adorno was a particularly bitter curmudgeon, who was aggressive toward colleagues and dismissive toward students.  Parts of Horkheimer and Adorno’s famous essay on the culture industry is aloof, culturally insensitive, and smug at many points; nevertheless, it delivered a much needed dose of reality.  It’s hard to appreciate a pessimist; yet, sometimes we really need someone angry and disillusioned to point out everything we have swept under the rug.  I want to argue that the academy could use a few more curmudgeons.

While Barry Wellman and others insist that our positions in academia (or, at least, in sociology) require us all to be critical, I find there is reason to believe that the opposite is the case—that, in fact, structural conditions within the present-day academy inhibits a new generation of scholars from engaging in the kind of critical work done by the Frankfurt school and political allies such as C.W. Mills or Angela Davis.  Critical Theory’s goal of undermining present, unjust social relations (most notably capitalism) and the totalizing ideologies that sustain them is probably structurally incompatible with our discipline’s norms of evaluation, which elevate government grants above all else.

I’m a lowly grad student and have not yet been invited behind the velvet curtain of hiring committee meetings.  However, in preparing for my own job application process, I’ve been told again and again that committees (at major research institutions) are most interested in those candidates who have secured their own NSF/NIH funding.  To the extent that these anecdotes are representative of trends throughout the discipline of sociology, and academia more broadly, the incentive structure we have built implicitly favors projects that support goals intrinsic to our prevailing political and economic system (and thus making them likely to receive government funding), as opposed to those projects that serve to undermine the present social order and promote alternatives.

And, though certain established academics may find it relatively easy to obtain grants, criticizing capitalism and other structures of domination have not been particularly high on the government’s priority list lately.  In fact, academics championing the issues of the marginalized and trivialized are facing increasing political scrutiny from conservative movements (e.g., the recent Coburn report, which targeted dozens of specific researchers and prescribed the wholesale elimination of social science funding).

If we all were truly critical in the historical tradition of Critical Theory, then there would be far more discussion of the structural conditions of academia and which ideologies they promote. For the Critical Theorist, it is not sufficient to be thorough in one’s investigations, one must also choose one’s work on the basis of its political potential, which is always both facilitated and constrained by the structures in which we are embedded.  As it stands, I find little acknowledgement that disciplinary mechanisms of funding, evaluation, incentivization, etc. are, in fact, intrinsically political.  And, to the degree that we recognize our own complicity in these structures, such concerns are generally trumped by careerism.  When is the last time faculty have marched to draw attention to the precarious nature of life in the growing adjunct labor force or in solidarity with graduate students who the state fails to even recognize as workers (and, thus, as having the right to unionize)?  As the operating logic of universities comes to increasingly resemble that of a business, we should find it unsurprising that departments’ decision-making processes are increasingly rationalized.  Every time the (formally rational) question “How much money can this person bring to the department?” is asked, (substantively rational) questions regarding the social and political significance of an applicant’s work are supplanted.

Returning, now, to the initial question: perhaps Wellman is well-founded in observing a degree of unconscious smugness in the use of the term “critical,” but if this smugness exists, it is a sublimated manifestation of the profound frustration and disappointment many of us feel with respect to a discipline that is so rife with conflicts of interest and so embedded in the very structures of power and domination (which, ironically, we were once central in highlighting), that we have lost our collective capacity for self-reflexivity.  Dialectics are at a standstill.  We have been subsumed by the very structures we are supposed to be criticizing.  The role of Critical Theory is to seek conditions in which revolutionary ideas will again be possible.  It is not a popular message because it challenges the stakes we have claimed to prestige and other resources; but it is, nonetheless, important to those of us who believe in higher ideals of social justice.

In short, Critical Theory asks sociologists to bite the hand that feeds them.  Few oblige.

I am attempting to organize a session on online play, gaming & leisure at the Eastern Sociological Society Meetings, February 23-26, 2012 in New York City.

If you’re working on a relevant project, submit a title and a 200-250 word abstract (anything over 250 words will not be accepted) here. I’ll review the submissions on October 1st and see if we have enough to make a proposal.  Feel free to submit you papers through the ESS general submissions process as well if you plan to attend regardless of whether we are able to get a panel into the program.

Also, if you’re interested in the topic, you can join the sociology of play and game listserv:

Send an email to: listserv@listserv.umd.edu

Subject: subscribe soc-of-play-and-games

Body: subscribe soc-of-play-and-games [first name] [last name]

I shot this video at the University of Maryland’s 2011 Summer Social Webshop and am posting it here with Ezster’s permission.  This presentation is particularly interesting because she describes the arc of her research throughout her career thus far, noting specific topical and methodological shifts.

I have archived trials and tribulations surrounding WiFi access at the 2011 American Sociological Association with the hope it might encourage ASA to give higher priority to this issue at future events:

#ASA2011 folks: RT if you’d be willing to pay higher registration fees to have wifi @ #ASA2012
pjrey
August 15, 2011

wifi is 15$ extra for whole conf RT @pjrey #ASA2011 folks: RT if you’d be willing to pay higher registration fees to have wifi @ #ASA2012
nathanjurgenson
August 15, 2011
RT @JessieNYC: Also, re: #ASA2011 + future meeting planning it would be great to have someone actually *test* the wifi in the hotel before booking.
cabell
August 16, 2011
RT @JessieNYC: The deal is this: wifi in ALL meeting rooms + throughout @CaesarsPalace . #ASA2011
cabell
August 16, 2011
Heading to vegas tomorrow. any word on the wifi situation?#asa2011
Jup83
August 19, 2011
@Jup83 wifi is 15$ extra for whole conference @ Caesar’s. RT @pjrey #ASA2011
danrmorrison
August 19, 2011
Also, WiFi update: We were told at check-in that there is free WiFi in the registration room but not in any of the meeting rooms 🙁 #ASA2011
pjrey
August 19, 2011
Wifi password: Sociology. But no option to enter password to by-pass credit card page. #epicfail #asa2011 fortunately, 3G seems to work.
JessieNYC
August 20, 2011
#ASA2011 WiFi – SSID: ASA2011, Password: Sociology
pjrey
August 20, 2011
@alexhanna We have wifi access for whole conf for $15. In past, no access in conf rooms or high cost. #ASA2011
Shelia_Cotten
August 20, 2011
My dl speed for #ASA2011 WiFi clocked at .42 mb/s. Glad to have it, but still not super-great.
pjrey
August 21, 2011
hey ASA, give us good wifi, the content we produce adds value to your association RT @pjrey: Upload speed for #ASA2011 = 0.05mb/s
nathanjurgenson
August 21, 2011
What has happened to #asa2011 wifi? That famous one with Sociology password!!! Can’t find it anymore 🙁
MMiiina
August 21, 2011
@jadarc I tried to make some #ASA2011 #Storify posts, but the site was really acting up for me (and #WiFi here is painfully slow).
pjrey
August 21, 2011
@mrafalow find it (#asa2011 wifi) on Octavius Ballroom 🙂 thanks
MMiiina
August 21, 2011
#ASA2011 #WiFi connection speed this morning: DL = .39mb/s, UL = .39mb/s.
pjrey
August 21, 2011
Cosmopolitan has free and open #WiFi – DL = 4.25 mb/s, UL = 5.28 mb/s #ASA2011
pjrey
August 21, 2011
Things I care about in a conference: presentations, people, coffee & WiFi. Things I don’t care about: everything else. #ASA2011
pjrey
August 21, 2011
#ASA2011 connect speed now a paltry .26 mb/s dl, .13 mb/s ul (that is roughly 1/17th of the speed of the free WiFi at the Cosmopolitan) 🙁
pjrey
August 21, 2011
Motel 6 has decent WiFi and free coffee. #ASA2011 do you?
pjrey
August 21, 2011
#90dollarregistration MT @pjrey: #ASA2011 connect speed now paltry .26 mb/s dl, .13 mb/s ul (1/17th the speed of the free WiFi at Cosmo)
nathanjurgenson
August 21, 2011
watching Al Jazeera live about Libya at #asa2011–good wifi connection
bradleysmith
August 21, 2011
good connection? I think you have all our bandwidth RT @bradleysmith: watching Al Jazeera live about Libya at #asa2011–good wifi connection
nathanjurgenson
August 21, 2011
The $15 wifi at Caesars applies to one device. We had a bill of $119 for internet charges when we checked out. They fixed it. #asa2011
learnsociology
August 22, 2011
@learnsociology #asa2011 one device wifi scam. Not surprising. The transaction cost of dispute makes it a great business plan.
djjr
August 22, 2011
wifi gone? can anyone share the password for the hotel wifi? #ASA2011
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
No WiFi in #CITASA roundtable 🙁 #asa2011
pjrey
August 22, 2011
coffee+wifi=essential RT @pjrey: No WiFi in #CITASA roundtable 🙁 #asa2011 #fail
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
RT @learnsociology: The $15 wifi at Caesars applies to one device. We had a bill of $119 for internet charges when we checked out. They fixed it. #asa2011
ASAStudentForum
August 22, 2011
@redlog @pjrey agreed, but 3G connection spotty here, and 3G laptops/tablets rare. #ASA2011 reg$=wifi, plz
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
Sorry for blasting you #asa2011 tweeps. Lack of WiFi & cell coverage means I have to draft tweets in session and wall to window to send.
pjrey
August 22, 2011
New Fail: coffee+wifi=essential RT @pjrey: No WiFi in #CITASA roundtable 🙁 #asa2011 #fail http://t.co/NmwodPr
WiFiFAIL
August 22, 2011
Agreed. RT @nathanjurgenson coffee+wifi=essential RT @pjrey: No WiFi in #CITASA roundtable 🙁 #asa2011 #fail
firuzehsv
August 22, 2011
had to skip #CITASA session for 1 that hs 3G &/or wifi. need to actively prosume conference, not passively consume. fix this, ASA #ASA2011
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
#ASA2011 sections: Pay for WiFi in your sessions if ASA won’t. I’m looking at you #CITASA #SKAT
pjrey
August 22, 2011
Wanted to attend 10:30 #ASA2011 #CITASA but not 3G or WiFi 🙁
pjrey
August 22, 2011
had to skip #CITASA session for 1 that hs 3G &/or wifi. need to actively prosume conference, not passively consume. fix this, ASA #ASA2011
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
#ASA2011 sections: Pay for WiFi in your sessions if ASA won’t. I’m looking at you #CITASA #SKAT
pjrey
August 22, 2011
RT @pjrey: #ASA2011 sections: Pay for WiFi in your sessions if ASA won’t. I’m looking at you #CITASA #SKAT
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
Wanted to attend 10:30 #ASA2011 #CITASA but not 3G or WiFi 🙁
pjrey
August 22, 2011
watching @pjrey create a Storify on the #ASA2011 wifi #fail
nathanjurgenson
August 22, 2011
@nathanjurgenson #asa2011 “need” to prosume/WIFI: personal or a theory of better conference “experience”? What does it produce for whom?
djjr
August 22, 2011
@djjr @nathanjurgenson I wasn’t able 2 get to #ASA2011 this year, so wifi and twitter use produces a “virtual” conference experience for me!
laurenn_EV
August 22, 2011
Twitter & blogs broaden discourse; create room for more voices in conference; serve as archive @djjr @nathanjurgenson #ASA2011 #WiFi
pjrey
August 22, 2011
RT @PJRey #ASA2011 sections: Pay for WiFi in your sessions if ASA won’t. I’m looking at you #CITASA #SKAT ME We were told free WiFi e’where
barrywellman
August 22, 2011
At a session on social media in teaching (Octavious 19, Promenade level)–we’ll see if the wifi holds out. #teaching #ASA2011
cabell
August 22, 2011
Communication via WiFi enables audience and those unable to attend to participate in the discourse. @djjr @nathanjurgenson #ASA2011
pjrey
August 22, 2011
@barrywellman @pjrey Part of the issue is that #asa2011 staff don’t check wifi in early visits to hotel sites.
JessieNYC
August 22, 2011
#ASA2011 sorry #citasa . I turned the wifi too strong… Sucked power faster then compter could charge
scgeer
August 22, 2011
@JessieNYC: @barrywellman @nathanjurgenson Let’s hope @ASANews recognizes the value of social media publicity in 2012 #ASA2011
pjrey
August 22, 2011

Robert Manning
George Ritzer


The Consumer Studies Research Network held a pre-conference to ASA 2011 at the University of Las Vegas.  The following is an archive of audio, video, and images from the concluding spotlight panel featuring:

Moderator:

Joel Stillerman, Grand Valley State University

Panelists:

Robert Manning, Responsible Debt Relief Institute

George Ritzer, University of Maryland

Robert Manning
Q&A Session

Tweet archive for ASA 2011

TwapperKeeper archive URL: <http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ASA2011>

Total tweets: 1349
Total twitterers: 317
Total hashtags tweeted: 157
Total URLs tweeted: 143

Top 10 tweeted hashtags

asa2011 (1337)

skat (52)

vegas (32)

sociology (28)

cyborgology (23)

123 (18)

lasvegas (16)

secondlife (14)

facebook (11)

ff (8)

Tweet archive for ASA 2011

TwapperKeeper archive URL: http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/ASA2011

Total tweets: 596
Total twitterers: 211
Total hashtags tweeted: 86
Total URLs tweeted: 90

The Anonymous Twitter Feed Announcing the NATO Breach

 

On July 21st, 2011, Anonymous—the 4chan-associated hacker collective with a cyber-libertarian bent—announced that they had breached NATO’s secure database and retrieved roughly a gigabyte of restricted data.  To verify their claim, Anonymous posted a “NATO restricted” document to Twitter.  Interestingly, Anonymous has been very cautious in leaking the documents it has obtained, publicly declaring that it would be “irresponsible” to publish most of it.  Much of what has be published is “Redacted, for sanity.”

Letter from Anonymous

Anonymous was recently in the news for shutting down several payment processing websites like Visa and Mastercard after these companies decided to stop processing donations to it’s ideological ally, Wikileaks.  The interesting thing here, however, is not the similarities between Anonymous’ NATO breach and the culture of Wikileaks but what makes them distinct: Wikileaks is a largely passive organization that reviews and posts whatever leaks are submitted, while Anonymous is actively breaching organizations, seizing their data, and, ostensibly, disseminating it for the public good.  Because of its socially conscious nature, this latter behavior has been labeled “hacktivism.”  Anonymous displayed the ideological motivation behind their activities in a recent letter responding to the coverage of the NATO incident.  The letter expressed a range of conventional libertarian concerns: for example, “[g]overnments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.”

Historically, leaks are the product of activism within an institution (e.g., Daniel Ellsberg‘s famous leak of the Pentagon Papers).  Anonymous is demonstrating, however, that in the highly liquid world of digital information, leaks no longer need to be pushed from within, but can be pulled from without.  That is to say, institutional outsiders can target the secret documents of an organization and reveal them to the public.  We might aptly describe this as a form of sousveillance (i.e., surveillance from below).

The question raised by Anonymous’ activities is whether—in light of the knowledge that it is more difficult than ever to control the flows of information—institutions will be compelled to change/reform their behavior.  Is enforced transparency an effective remedy to the ills created by institutionally-consolidated power structures?

Nope.  It’s not a reference to some long-forgotten 80s movie.  On June 23, 2009, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates signed a memorandum creating US Cyber Command, a separate sub-command unit of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) headed by a four-star general, (currently, Gen. Keith B. Alexander). And, despite all its digital dualist rhetoric (exemplified by the rampant use of terms like “cyberspace” and “cyber-attackers”), Cyber Command should viewed as a major step toward the augmentation of warfare.  With the launch of Cyber Command, the US has quietly moved toward developing new first strike capacities that may, ultimately, prove more strategically important than even the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

While most media coverage has tended to focus on Cyber Command’s defensive postures (e.g., protecting classified data, securing the power grid, etc.), Cyber Command is also developing offensive capabilities to target and cripple other nations’ communication, transportation, and utility grids.  This demonstrates that, in the augmented warfare of the future, an effective assault on atoms will also require a simultaneous assault on bits.

Cyber Command’s capacities, however, are far from fully developed.  A recent report by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the Cyber Command “has not fully defined long-term mission requirements and desired capabilities to guide the services’ efforts to recruit, train and provide forces with appropriate skill sets.”

Watch CBS sensationalize cyber-warfare and make the digital dualist fallacy of comparing cyberspace to land and sea.