E. Gabriella Coleman’s new book Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (2012, Princeton University Press) is an ethnography of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) hackers working on the Debian Linux Operating System. It is a thorough and accessible text, suitable for someone unfamiliar with open source software or coding. It would make an excellent addition to an IT and Society 101 course syllabus, or a reading group on alternative work organization. Coleman’s greatest achievement in this text, however, is not the accuracy of her depiction, but the way in which she dissects the political and economic successes of the open source community. By claiming absolute political neutrality, but organizing work in radical ways, contributors to F/OSS “sit simultaneously at the center and margins of the liberal tradition.” (p. 3) Coleman argues that while F/OSS, “is foremost a technical movement based on the principles of free speech, its historical role in transforming other arenas of life is not primarily rooted in the power of language or the discursieve articulation of a broad political vision. Instead, it effectively works as a politics of critique by providing a living conterexample…” (p. 185) more...
Archive: Dec 2012
“I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D printable 33rpm records”
“IBM predicts that computers will soon have a sense of smell”
“Yes, Randi Zuckerberg, speak to us about human decency”
“the needed reforms, executives at Apple and Foxconn hope and believe, are falling into place”
When something that is not originally digital is converted to digital form, that thing has been “digitized”—but what do you call it when something that is digital is converted to analogue or material form? There was a discussion to this effect in my Twitter feed a few months ago, but I don’t recall that we ever came to consensus about a) whether there is a term for this, and if not, b) what that term should be.
Whatever that term is or may be, it’s a term that I keep needing, so I’m hoping to identify it by reopening the discussion here. Without further ado, here are some of the recent digital/analogue crossovers that have inspired my question:
“Behaving as if our digital data is fleeting can cause serious trouble”
“Social Media” didn’t get anything wrong or right. Reporters got things wrong”
“I’m tired of contributing to the commodification of my own existence”
“There was no correlation between how much money users paid and how well they were treated”
“No, technology is not “rewiring” young people’s brains”
“Holiday cards were mostly maudlin crap as if that could make any real difference for stopping wars”
(This is the full version of a two-part essay that I posted in October of this year. Here are links to Part I and Part II)
“Well, you saw what I posted on Facebook, right?”
I don’t know about you, but when I get this question from a friend, my answer is usually “no.” No, I don’t see everything my friends post on Facebook—not even the 25 or so people I make a regular effort to keep up with on Facebook, and not even the subset of friends I count as family. I don’t see everything most of my friends tweet, either; in fact, “update Twitter lists” has been hovering in the middle of my to-do list for the better part of a year. And even after I update those lists, I probably still won’t be able to keep up with everything every friend says on Twitter, either.
I feel guilty when I get the “You saw what I posted, right?” question. I feel like a bad friend, like I’m slacking off in my care work, like I’m failing to value my important human relationships. Danah boyd (@zephoria) was talking about something similar in October of this year at “Boom and Bust“—about how social networking sites create pressure to put time and effort into tending weak ties, and how it can be impossible to keep up with them all. Personally, I also find it difficult to keep up with my strong ties. I’m a great “pick up where we left off” friend, as are most of the people closest to me (makes sense, right?). I’m decidedly sub-awesome, however, at being in constant contact with more than a few people at a time. more...
In light of the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the debate over access to firearms has again been thrust to the fore of our national consciousness. With the resurgence of this debate, the classic “guns don’t kill people” line of argument will inevitably feature prominently in radio conversations, TV interviews, Facebook posts, and tweets. The “guns don’t kill people” trope is part of a larger pattern in how our society frames the relationship between technology and (lack of) collective responsibility.
“Guns don’t kill people” is a spin on the broader “technology is neutral” trope–still widely-embraced by Silicon Valley–whose function is to absolve the creators of technology from any responsibility for the consequences of what they have designed. The “technology is neutral” trope has long be subject to criticism. From Frankenstein’s monster turning on its creator to Robert Oppenheimer’s own reflections on creating the bomb, Western civilization has wrestled with the question of where responsibility resides in atrocities facilitated by technology, and we, on occasion, are reminded that the choice of what to research and create (or to not research and not create) is an expression of both individual and cultural values. As the great sociologist Max Weber once said, only through “naive self-deception” does a technician ignore “the evaluative ideas with which he unconsciously approaches his subject matter… that he has selected from an absolute infinity a tiny portion with the study of which he concerns himself.” Technology is never neutral because its birth–its very existence–is the product of both political forces and values-oriented decision making.
“To the photographer, this was simply a beating, not this particular man suffering”
“This glitch is a correction to the “machine”, and, in turn, a positive departure”
“Inbox Zero is a coping mechanism for the anxiety created by a constant flux of e-mail”
“the cybertheorists, however, are a peculiarly corporatist species of the Leninist class”
“I’m tired, technoutopianism. I’m tired of your sexy, shiny surface and your utter lack of substance”
The following post was originally a seminar “reading response” paper that I had a little too much fun with. Reproduced here for your (possible) amusement:
Oh, technoutopianism. I came of age steeped in you; I was the fish, and you were the water that surrounded me and kept me wet. We were once such intimate familiars—and yet, you still managed to smack me right upside the head when I moved to the Bay Area.
It’s not that we weren’t great together, for a time. more...
Bloomberg News reported earlier this weekthat Google used creative accounting to avoid paying something like $2 billion in corporate income taxes this year.
Much of that savings was realized by funneling nearly $10 billion in profits to shell companies in Bermuda, which has no corporate income tax. Like other multinationals, Google uses maneuvers such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” to get its revenues safely out of the countries in which they’re made, relatively untouched. By doing so, Bloomberg says, the company was able to cut its overall tax rate nearly in half. more...
The concept of the Uncanny Valley is pretty well known by now – the idea, popularized by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, that as non-human objects approach a human likeness they start, for lack of a better phrase, to really creep us the hell out. It’s a fairly simple idea, and one that usually seems reasonable to us on both a visceral and an intellectual level, at least partly because it’s something that most of us have experienced aspects of at one time or another. But there are parts of this concept that often go unexplored, which is what I want to deal with here.
“I’ve created a technique for converting digital audio files into 3D printable 33rpm records”
“IBM predicts that computers will soon have a sense of smell”
“Yes, Randi Zuckerberg, speak to us about human decency”
“the needed reforms, executives at Apple and Foxconn hope and believe, are falling into place”
When something that is not originally digital is converted to digital form, that thing has been “digitized”—but what do you call it when something that is digital is converted to analogue or material form? There was a discussion to this effect in my Twitter feed a few months ago, but I don’t recall that we ever came to consensus about a) whether there is a term for this, and if not, b) what that term should be.
Whatever that term is or may be, it’s a term that I keep needing, so I’m hoping to identify it by reopening the discussion here. Without further ado, here are some of the recent digital/analogue crossovers that have inspired my question:
“Behaving as if our digital data is fleeting can cause serious trouble”
“Social Media” didn’t get anything wrong or right. Reporters got things wrong”
“I’m tired of contributing to the commodification of my own existence”
“There was no correlation between how much money users paid and how well they were treated”
“No, technology is not “rewiring” young people’s brains”
“Holiday cards were mostly maudlin crap as if that could make any real difference for stopping wars”
(This is the full version of a two-part essay that I posted in October of this year. Here are links to Part I and Part II)
“Well, you saw what I posted on Facebook, right?”
I don’t know about you, but when I get this question from a friend, my answer is usually “no.” No, I don’t see everything my friends post on Facebook—not even the 25 or so people I make a regular effort to keep up with on Facebook, and not even the subset of friends I count as family. I don’t see everything most of my friends tweet, either; in fact, “update Twitter lists” has been hovering in the middle of my to-do list for the better part of a year. And even after I update those lists, I probably still won’t be able to keep up with everything every friend says on Twitter, either.
I feel guilty when I get the “You saw what I posted, right?” question. I feel like a bad friend, like I’m slacking off in my care work, like I’m failing to value my important human relationships. Danah boyd (@zephoria) was talking about something similar in October of this year at “Boom and Bust“—about how social networking sites create pressure to put time and effort into tending weak ties, and how it can be impossible to keep up with them all. Personally, I also find it difficult to keep up with my strong ties. I’m a great “pick up where we left off” friend, as are most of the people closest to me (makes sense, right?). I’m decidedly sub-awesome, however, at being in constant contact with more than a few people at a time. more...
In light of the recent tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, the debate over access to firearms has again been thrust to the fore of our national consciousness. With the resurgence of this debate, the classic “guns don’t kill people” line of argument will inevitably feature prominently in radio conversations, TV interviews, Facebook posts, and tweets. The “guns don’t kill people” trope is part of a larger pattern in how our society frames the relationship between technology and (lack of) collective responsibility.
“Guns don’t kill people” is a spin on the broader “technology is neutral” trope–still widely-embraced by Silicon Valley–whose function is to absolve the creators of technology from any responsibility for the consequences of what they have designed. The “technology is neutral” trope has long be subject to criticism. From Frankenstein’s monster turning on its creator to Robert Oppenheimer’s own reflections on creating the bomb, Western civilization has wrestled with the question of where responsibility resides in atrocities facilitated by technology, and we, on occasion, are reminded that the choice of what to research and create (or to not research and not create) is an expression of both individual and cultural values. As the great sociologist Max Weber once said, only through “naive self-deception” does a technician ignore “the evaluative ideas with which he unconsciously approaches his subject matter… that he has selected from an absolute infinity a tiny portion with the study of which he concerns himself.” Technology is never neutral because its birth–its very existence–is the product of both political forces and values-oriented decision making.
“To the photographer, this was simply a beating, not this particular man suffering”
“This glitch is a correction to the “machine”, and, in turn, a positive departure”
“Inbox Zero is a coping mechanism for the anxiety created by a constant flux of e-mail”
“the cybertheorists, however, are a peculiarly corporatist species of the Leninist class”
“I’m tired, technoutopianism. I’m tired of your sexy, shiny surface and your utter lack of substance”
The following post was originally a seminar “reading response” paper that I had a little too much fun with. Reproduced here for your (possible) amusement:
Oh, technoutopianism. I came of age steeped in you; I was the fish, and you were the water that surrounded me and kept me wet. We were once such intimate familiars—and yet, you still managed to smack me right upside the head when I moved to the Bay Area.
It’s not that we weren’t great together, for a time. more...
Bloomberg News reported earlier this weekthat Google used creative accounting to avoid paying something like $2 billion in corporate income taxes this year.
Much of that savings was realized by funneling nearly $10 billion in profits to shell companies in Bermuda, which has no corporate income tax. Like other multinationals, Google uses maneuvers such as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” to get its revenues safely out of the countries in which they’re made, relatively untouched. By doing so, Bloomberg says, the company was able to cut its overall tax rate nearly in half. more...
The concept of the Uncanny Valley is pretty well known by now – the idea, popularized by robotics professor Masahiro Mori, that as non-human objects approach a human likeness they start, for lack of a better phrase, to really creep us the hell out. It’s a fairly simple idea, and one that usually seems reasonable to us on both a visceral and an intellectual level, at least partly because it’s something that most of us have experienced aspects of at one time or another. But there are parts of this concept that often go unexplored, which is what I want to deal with here.