guest author

What do I Like When I “Like” on Facebook?

L. M. Sacasas on February 26, 2012

This post originally appeared on The Frailest Thing and is replicated here with permission.

By one of those odd twists of associative memory, John Caputo’s little book, On Religion, recently came to mind. Caputo, a well regarded interpreter of Jacques Derrida and a philosopher in the continental tradition, opened with a question culled from the work of Augustine of Hippo. Splicing two lines from Augustine’s Confessions, Caputo framed his study by asking, “What do I love when I love my God?”

I appreciate this formulation because it forces a certain self-critical introspection. It refuses the comforts of thoughtlessness. Precisely where some might be most inclined to rely on taken-for-granted assumptions and unquestioned constructs, Caputo’s Augustinian query interjects a searching critique. And it is the structure of the question that I want to borrow to consider one dimension what we are doing when we use social media.

But first, a little more from Caputo who takes the liberty of elaborating on the spirit of Augustine’s quest. Channeling the African saint, Caputo writes, “… I am after something, driven to and fro by my restless search for something, by a deep desire, indeed by a desire beyond desire, beyond particular desires for particular things, by a desire for I-know-not-what, for something impossible. Still, even if we are lifted on the wings of such a love, the question remains, what do I love, what am I seeking?”

Then Caputo makes an important observation. “When Augustine talks like this,” he cautions, “we ought not to think of him as stricken by a great hole or lack or emptiness which he is seeking to fill up, but as someone overflowing with love who is seeking to know where to direct his love.”

Not too long ago I posted some thoughts on what I took to be the Augustinian notes sounded in Matt Honan’s account of his time at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and Kevin Kelly’s subsequent reflections on Honan’s experience. In that post, I employed the very language Caputo cautioned against — in part because Honan’s rhetoric invited it. But now I’m chastened; I’m inclined to think that Caputo is on to something. His distinction is not merely academic and I’ll return to it a little further on.

more...

RIP Roger Boisjoly: Lessons of the Challenger Disaster

Doug Hill on February 17, 2012

Roger Boisjoly has died.

The name may not ring a bell, but Boisjoly’s place in history certainly will: He was the engineer who tried in vain to persuade NASA that it was unsafe to launch the space shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986.

The Challenger explosion remains today one of our most evocative images of technology gone wrong. This is due in part to the personal nature of the tragedy – the schoolteacher onboard, the family members watching – and in part to the subsequent revelations that NASA proceeded with the launch despite Boisjoly’s warnings.

My intention here is not to rehash the chain of events that led to the Challenger’s demise, but to show how some of those events demonstrate patterns of error that are commonplace – indeed, almost inevitable – in the operation of complex technological systems. more...

Between Reality & Cyberspace

jeremyantley on February 8, 2012

Reposted from Peasant Muse.

Photo by aagius

What does the term ‘cyberspace’ mean?  Does this Gibsonian construct adequately fulfill the task, currently asked of it by many, of defining the digital/physical realm interaction in terms of its scope and function?

Attempts to frame new social interactions spurred by digital innovations in communication, documentation and self-actualization (just to name a few) generally encounter problems of word choice when describing the effects these advancements bring to our growing conceptions of reality.  Literary terminology, often built upon antiquated notions reconfigured to suggest a potential or future state of being, sometimes suits the purpose of analogy when looking at these phenomena.  Yet there always comes a time when our understanding of an event or construction of reality demands that we re-evaluate our word choice, lest our future analytical efforts be hindered by its, perhaps, outmoded or misleading operation.  PJ Rey and the internet persona known as Mr. Teacup produced just this sort of re-evalutation of the term mentioned above, cyberspace, through two excellent pieces titled ‘There is no Cyberspace‘ and ‘There is Only Cyberspace’, respectively written.

PJ Rey argued that the term cyberspace, first coined by William Gibson in the short story ‘Burning Chrome’ and defined as a ‘consensual hallucination’, is deeply problematic in describing our contemporary social web because the web is neither consensual nor a hallucination.  Thanks to the ubiquity of smart phones, pervasive documentary practices (something Nathan Jurgenson calls the ‘Facebook Eye‘) mean that even if someone does not participate in the social web their actions are nonetheless captured by it to some degree, thus shaping our actions on the individual and societal level.  Many of us cannot control the degree to which this ‘Facebook Eye’ documents our actions (Could you stop every friend from making comments or posting pictures of your embarrassing moment from last week’s party?  What about last year’s party?) making the web far from a consensual space.  In many ways, because the web is not consensual it is also not a fantastical or a hallucinatory space either.  It is a part of reality- the web is as real as reality itself.  Actions taken offline impact online relations and vice-versa, allowing Rey to state that, “causality is bi-directional.  We are all part of the same human-computer system.” more...

Google and the Production of Curiosity

Rob Horning on February 4, 2012
The Google Matrix

Originally posted on PopMatters.

On Twitter, PJ Rey resurrected this August 2010 op-ed by William Gibson that has new currency given the hullaballoo about Google’s privacy-policy changes. Gibson argues that Google is an unanticipated form of artificial intelligence, “a sort of coral reef of human minds and their products.” But this description sounds less like artificial intelligence and more like Marx’s notion of the general intellect. Anticipating the intensification of technology, Marx claimed that machines would eventually subsume “the process of social life” and integrate it as a form of productivity.

The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

This is pretty obscure even by Marx’s standards, but autonomist Marxists (Negri, Lazzaurato, Virno) have extrapolated from this a definition of general intellect that embraces, as Virno puts it, “formal and informal knowledge, imagination, ethical tendencies, mentalities and ‘language games’.” Because of the membranous nature of the general intellect, when harnessed and integrated with capital, it can recuperate all social behavior as “immaterial” production — enriching the valence of signs, producing affects, etc. — it means that “even the greater ‘power to enjoy’ is always on the verge of being turned into labouring task.” That is, our consumption, especially of information, is a mode of production. The general intellect is the sum of all that information circulation. more...

Why successful black guy is successful

Samuel Tettner on January 29, 2012
Successful Black Guy
Successful Black Guy

Why successful black guy is successful: The socio-cognitive side of humor

Having read Jenny Davis, David Banks and PJ Rey on internet memes, I felt compelled to share my creative grain of sand on this peculiar ‘web-based’ construct. I often wonder why memes are funny. The simplicity of memes is deceiving: e.g., a Spartan image, often featuring only the face or upper body of a person or animal, and a kitsch colored background that would make Warhol think you’re on acid. Add two rows of parallel text above and below and presto! –  You have created funny. Is it really that easy? I would generally think (and hope) that humor is a complex phenomenon, that answering  “why is this picture of a cat funny to me?” requires invoking some esoteric philosophical or psychological terminology. I decided to do some research.

One of my favorite memes of all times is “successful black guy”. This is successful black guy explained by know your meme: “an image macro series featuring a Black man dressed in business attire and a witty one-liner satirizing the stereotype of young African American male as street hustlers or gangsters who only care about cars, money and ho’s. The humor is mostly derived from the intentional line break in mid-sentence, with the top line impersonating a black male stereotype (EX: I Got the Best Ho’s) and the bottom line suddenly falling flat in character (EX: Out in My Tool Shed). more...

The Popularization of Dubstep: FULL ESSAY (Parts 1 and 2)

David Paul Strohecker and Ibalu Dwan on January 21, 2012

You may not be a fan of the wub-wub-wubbing musical genre known as dubstep, but it is increasingly taking center stage in American popular culture. For example, a recent NorthFace advertisement uses it while a snowboarder glides down a snowy mountainscape, Britney Spears  and Rihanna have both incorporated some dubstep into their recent work, teen heartthrob Justin Bieber is rumored to be working on his own dubstep album, and the teaser trailer for the new Mission Impossible film features a distinct wub-wubbing in the background. So what is dubstep anyway? And where did it come from?

Dubstep Goes to College
Dubstep was conceived in the London dance music scene in the late 90s and early 00s. It takes mainly from drum and bass and grime genres, but is influenced by many different styles of music, including dancehall and hip-hop. The heavy influence of grime, the dark elements of drum and bass and the guttural bass lines give it an almost dirty sound. This along with the layer of synthesizers are what people in the scene refer to when they describe the music (or party) as “grimey.”

Dubstep entered the mainstream club scene in 2006 in great part with the release of producer Oliver Jones’ (aka Skream) debut album “Skream,” which took club culture by storm in Europe (Woolliams 2008). The album also became widely popular in the United States EDM (electronic dance music) scene.

Internet memes like this serve to articulate anxiety about perceived subcultural changes.

more...

The Popularization of Dubstep-Part 2: The Need for Distinction

Dave Paul Strohecker and Ibalu Dwan on January 6, 2012

Part 2
From Screamo to Brostep: The Case of Skrillex

The popularization of dubstep is further epitomized in the wildly popular, albeit polarizing example of Sonny Moore, former lead singer/frontman of the 2000s screamo band From First to Last. He left the band in 2004 to pursue his solo career only to return in 2008 as the dubstep DJ Skrillex, when dubstep was beginning to “blow up” in American popular music.  He quickly became an internet phenomena, an early harbinger of the recent “brostep” wave of popularization which would later be bolstered by user-generated dubstep videos using footage from the Transformers movies. And at the 2011 MTV Music Awards, he walked away with the award for Best New EDM Artist as a result of his popularity under the stage name Skrillex.

Upon hearing of this award, many in the EDM community were outraged. Why? Because many members of this subculture viewed him as an outsider who solidified dubstep as pop music played on radio and television stations, making the subculture open and accessible to most everyone. Most in the EDM community have never seen him as an organic member of the underground dubstep or EDM subculture. Skrillex is simply the product of mainstream capitalism taking notice of dubstep as a viable market commodity. His popularity and success coincides directly with the most recent wave of popularization occurring in the late 2000s, his five recent Grammy nominations notwithstanding. more...

The Popularization of Dubstep-Part 1: Dubstep Goes to College

David Paul Strohecker and Ibalu Dwan on December 29, 2011
Popular dubstep DJ Skrillex performing live.

Below is the first of a two-part essay exploring the popularity of dubstep, a musical genre formerly associated with the underground EDM (electronic dance music) scene.

Part 1

You may not be a fan of the wub-wub-wubbing musical genre known as dubstep, but it is increasingly taking center stage in American popular culture. For example, a recent NorthFace advertisement uses it while a snowboarder glides down a snowy mountainscape, Britney Spears  and Rihanna have both incorporated some dubstep into their recent work, teen heartthrob Justin Bieber is rumored to be working on his own dubstep album, and the teaser trailer for the new Mission Impossible film features a distinct wub-wubbing in the background. So what is dubstep anyway? And where did it come from?

Dubstep Goes to College
Dubstep was conceived in the London dance music scene in the late 90s and early 00s. It takes mainly from drum and bass and grime genres, but is influenced by many different styles of music, including dancehall and hip-hop. The heavy influence of grime, the dark elements of drum and bass and the guttural bass lines give it an almost dirty sound. This along with the layer of synthesizers are what people in the scene refer to when they describe the music (or party) as “grimey.” more...

Digital Native: Twin Manifestations or Co-Located Hybrids

Samuel Tettner on December 19, 2011

Review of ‘Digital Natives and the Return of the Local Cause’ by Anat Ben-David. Essay from the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? book collective, published by Centre for Internet and Society, India and HIVOS, The Netherlands

Ben-David’s piece is an informed attempt to resolve the conceptual fuzziness of the term “Digital Native.” She attempts this in a philosophical manner: trying to move away from the ontological “who are Digital Natives?” to an epistemological “when and where are Digital Natives?” Her reasoning is that this change in perspective will allow us to unpack the hybrid term and thus  determine if it refers to a unique phenomenon worth exploring.

To answer the when and the where, Ben-David situates the term into its constituencies: digital and native, contextualizing the words using two approaches; historiographical (when) for the digital and geopolitical (where) for the native.

“Digital” is situated, semantically, in the broader framework of technology-mediated social activism. The author applies the concept placing two events side-by-side: First, the 1999 manifestations against World-trade Organization protests in Seattle and then the 2011 Tahir Square protests in Egypt. Are these two phenomena different in nature? Is Tahir Square a more technologically advanced version of Seattle? Are the basic mechanisms the same, albeit with new faces and shinier phones? more...

Waving at the Machines

genemorrow on December 9, 2011

This is a video from a talk given by James Bridle, one of the main forces behind the New Aesthetic Blog, about the ways in which he is seeing the collision between machine and human happen, and the transformations which are being brought to by it society.

I have to say that it is pretty phenomenal, and touches on some of the aspects already talked about on this blog. For example Bridle touches briefly on the phenomena of documentary vision, which has been discussed extensively on this site, just after the 30 minute mark of the talk.

While some aspect of a digital dualism is still present in the language of the talk, the references to real as dichotomous with digital (which may be inevitable in trying to talk about these things), I still think that Bridle covers an amazing breadth of ways in which the digital and physical are bleeding into each other and collapsing any reasonable difference between the two. He really highlights, and shows, how humans are developing ways of seeing which are dependent on our technology, on the ways which are machines see. As well as how the machines are developing ways of seeing which are dependent on our own naturalized concepts of vision and perception, they are learning to see like us.

I think this is an important aspect of the entire cyborgology exercise. That we are developing characteristics which are influenced by our machines and technology (and that we always have), and that our technology also develops characteristics which are like us. I think it further breaks down the divide between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, and shows how person and machine merge into a social space made up of equal parts of both.

All in all it is a really excellent talk, and well worth watching. I felt as though it absolutely needed  to be shared here.