The What-Would-I-Say App, (#wwis) created by HackPrinceton, has garnered widespread popularity. The app basically amalgamates your Facebook posts, rearranges them, and computes a best guess at what you, the Facebook user, would say. According the app’s creators, here’s how it works:

“what would i say?” automatically generates Facebook posts that sound like you! Technically speaking, it trains a Markov Bot based on mixture model of bigram and unigram probabilities derived from your past post history. Don’t worry, we don’t store any of your personal information anywhere. In fact, we don’t even have a database! All computations are done client side, so only your browser ever sees your post history.

I generally get an iggy feeling from these types of applications, those that summarize you and then share the results with your network. As such, I avoided generating my own random status updates, and instead, giggled guiltily at those that others produced. However, the duties of research called, and to write this post, I gritted my teeth and went to http://what-would-i-say.com/. Now, a solid hour later, I’ve finally pulled myself away and begun to write. Breaking several promises to myself, I even posted one of my randomly generated status updates to Facebook.

So what makes this app so alluring, so addictive, so genuinely pleasurable?

I argue that the popularity of the app, and its pleasure inducing effects, rests in two places. First, the app has a wonderfully narcissism-indulging quality, providing information for ourselves, about ourselves in a fast and holistic—though caricatured[1]—way. Second, the app facilitates self-sharing coupled with a tempered threat to authenticity. The user can talk about hirself, without that “trying-to-hard” connotation.

In a recent post, I reminded readers of the social psychological premise that people come to know themselves by seeing what they do, and how others respond to them. In this way, people prosume identity meanings by producing and consuming *their own* content on social media. The WWIS app makes a caricature of this content—and the related self it signifies—giving the user hirself, back to hirself, in the form of a holistic picture. It gifts us with our tl;dr selves.  Perhaps we appreciate it for the same reason we appreciate (and pay for) actual street-art caricatures of ourselves. Of course we’re complex, and we know this, but it’s neat to get the soundbite, the core or essence.

Importantly, Facebook posts—especially public posts —are already something of a caricature. In my interviews with social media users, participants often describe their profiles as highlight reels or surface level snapshots. That is, users already curate pretty heavily. These curations are further condensed through Timeline, which algorithmically selects out key content to represent different historical moments in users’ lives. WWIS is perhaps the final condensed version of you, and it’s highly satisfying to know what that looks like.  .

Of course, the app does not merely generate information for the user, but affords (and architecturally encourages) sharing. This brings me to the second popularity-facilitating feature of WWIS: it offers and opportunity for explicit performance with a built-in temperance of authenticity threats. It does so, I argue, through feigned randomness and an attached LOL.

Authenticity is the idea of an uncalculated self, one who acts rather than performs. Of course, we are all always performing, but do so in ways that hide the performative nature of action, even from ourselves. In short, nobody likes the dude screaming “Look at me!! Look at me!!” and similarly, nobody wants to be that dude.

The app protects authenticity first by generating random content. That which the user shares is not of hir own doing, not a calculated decision, but a random amalgamation created by an impartial computer with no regard for the user’s performative preferences. This randomness, however, is far from. Although the content of each individual WWIS status resides outside of the user’s control, the user is in full control of what does, and does not, get shared. The affordances of the app are such that statuses do not automatically post, but instead, users have to decide each time if they wish to share or not. The user, then, has lots of curatorial freedom, and so a good deal of performative control. This coupling of seeming randomness with actual performative control allows for explicit self-presentation with a nice protective authenticity-cushion.

Further, the app’s often nonsensical results protect authenticity by attaching the performative act to a proverbial LOL. The generated status updates are usually funny, and so the user who posts them engages in performance while implicitly saying “I don’t take myself, or this performative act, too seriously.” Humor is a fantastic authenticity buffer. It builds in protections against accusations of “trying too hard.” This is the mechanism behind a #humblebrag: I want you to know something about me, but if I just come out and say it, you might think I’m a narcissistic jerk, so I’ll couch it in something humorous or mildly self-deprecating.

In conclusion:

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Over the last couple of weeks, a YouTube video (above) of New York artist Richard Renaldi has continued to populate my Facebook News Feed. Renaldi’s project Touching Strangers is such that he positions strangers together in an intimate poses and photographs them. Despite lack of prior contact, these photographs depict what look to be quite sincere expressions of emotion. Moreover, the subjects interviewed in the video say that they feel some sort of connection towards those with whom they posed. This is certainly moving, admittedly interesting, but as a trained social psychologist, not very surprising. It does, however, offer interesting implications for people’s oft-spouted rants against in-authenticity and identity work on social media.

Let me begin by discussing the sociology of the work. I will them move on the implications for authenticity in light of new technologies.

The punch of the work is particularly punch-y due its location in New York City. NYC is among the most bustling, cement-clad, anonymous places in the world. Sociologist Georg Simmel famously wrote about the city that stimulations here are so great, the only way to sustain sanity is by maintaining utter isolation of the self, even when—perhaps especially when—in tight bodily proximity to innumerable others. In this city of strangers, Renaldi creates friends. They look studiously into each other’s eyes, rest comfortably on one another’s shoulders, embrace, laugh, exchange names.

That these strangers, placed awkwardly into each other’s arms and locked uncomfortably in each other’s gazes, come to lose the awkwardness, and reportedly, find comfort and genuine connection over the course of the photo shoot, is indeed quite moving. Social psychologically, though, it’s quite predictable. One of the key ways in which people come to know themselves is by seeing what they do, by watching their own behaviors. George Herbert Mead calls this “taking the self as an object,” and Charles H. Cooley calls this the “looking glass self.” Psychologists have an entire dissonance theory which essentially says that if you see yourself doing something unexpected, you do some cognitive work so that your surprising action makes sense. In the case of Renaldi’s project, this cognitive labor may come in the form of what Arlie Hochschild calls “emotion work,” or the ways in which people call out desired emotions in themselves, such that they not only seem to feel a particular way, but indeed, do come to feel that way.

In short, what we see here are people engaging in unusual behaviors. They see themselves doing so, and it creates dissonance. They engage in emotion work to bridge the gap, and wind up genuinely feeling attached to their fellow subject(s).

This cool little trick—seeing yourself do something to make yourself become something—has interesting implications for social media. Bernie Hogan points out that our digital profiles act as exhibitions of performative acts. Our pictures, status updates, tags, tweets, blog posts etc. are the interactional crumbs which, collectively, reveal a partial story about who we are. What if we focus instead, on making those crumbs tell the story of who we want to be? Theoretically, we should be able to project future ideal selves and eventually fulfill these projections.

The subjects in Renaldi’s photographs bridged their cognitive dissonance and experienced true connection in a short amount of time. No doubt,  Renaldi’s camera, and the artifacts it created, had something to do with this, as the ephemeral performative act was frozen, captured, and immortalized. Social media affords the recreation of this process—act, capture, reflexively respond—on a continuous and long term basis. As such, social media potentially affords a fruitful path to future-self accomplishment.

Unfortunately, it’s not all quite so easy. In addition to knowing who we are by seeing what we do, we also know who we are by seeing how others respond to us. As such, our ideal selves can only manifest to the extent to which our networks allow it. And our networks, it seems, are kind of sticklers when it comes to authenticity. In many of my interviews with social media users, the theme of authenticity—desiring it for oneself and decrying a lack of it in others—is a central theme. In particular, people are annoyed when others’ identity work is visible, when they “try too hard.” This is such a common theme, in fact, that I wrote an entire article about it.

But what if we shifted our focus? I don’t know how. And to be honest, I also get annoyed when others’ identity work shows. But…what if we did? What if we somehow recognized the potential of allowing identity play? What if we re-imagined the social media platform not as a reflection of who we are, but of who we will be? Authenticity here is not found in the truthfulness or visibility of our deeply flawed characters, but rather, in the integrity of our intentions. The authentic social actor need not be a rugged outdoorsperson to post pictures of an off-trail hike, s/he must simply truly aspire to be the kind of person who completes such a hike.

The mistake of early internet theorists was their assumption that The Web provided an alternate space in which social actors were free to be who they wanted, rather than who they were, without accounting for the socially and structurally embedded nature of digitally mediated interaction. What I’m suggesting, as a Utopian thought experiment, is a shift in structural realities, such that fluidity of self and identity play are not threats to authenticity, but opportunities for growth. A structural reality in which the self is a recognized project over which we tactfully grant each actor the trust of good intentions and the space to develop.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Pics via Renaldi.com

Happy Halloween Week, everyone!! As much as I love free candy from strangers and the widespread creativity of costuming, Halloween inevitably brings with it a darker reality—and I’m not talking about monsters or ghouls. Unfortunately, Halloween becomes a showcase of Americans’ systemic racism, as displayed through ill-conceived racially fraught costume choices.

Below, I’ve compiled some nice resources to share with undergraduate students (or anyone, really) to facilitate discussions about and dissuasion from, the racist choices so many people make this time of year.

Keep in mind, the most effective form of anti-racist conversation is the one that happens *before* someone has a chance to engage in racist behavior. You get to avoid all of the messy defensiveness.

This list is far from exhaustive, but has some really useful material. Additional suggestions welcome in the comments section

1) Unmasking Racism: Halloween Costuming and Engagement of the Racial Other.This paper, published in Qualitative Sociology by Jennifer C. Mueller, Danielle Dirks, and Leslie Houts Picca is a full length formal sociological treatment of the race-Halloween problem. This is a great reading assignment for undergraduates. You can bring some of the other materials into class discussion

2) An Open Letter to the PocaHotties and Indian Warriors This HalloweenThis is a blog post by Adrienne Keene on Racialicious. It’s a relatively short piece, nice to assign to a class, or share on Facebook/Twitter. The post originally appeared on the Native Appropriations blog.

3) Costume #Fails

This is an excellent Youtube video by Franchesca Ramsey (@Chescaleigh). Be sure to check out the links in the “About” tab of this video.

4) The Difference between Blackface and Whiteface In case anyone tries some reverse racism stuff, you can link them to this short synopsis posted on Racismschool Tumblr of why “Whiteface” isn’t really a thing.

5) Trayvon Martin Blackface and TYT These links pair nicely and together,  are great at preemptively countering the two expected dissents in a race-Halloween conversation:  that racism is no longer an issue in post-racial America, and that the incidents of racism are isolated to single cases of ignorant individuals.

The first link is from a recent Gawker piece, and pertains to a quickly spreading image. Two men pose as Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman on Facebook, the latter is shown shooting the former. This has obvious shock value and makes racism hard to deny.

The second link (TYT) opens to a The Young Turks episode, in which two “progressive” and well established media personalities engage in really really racist and sexist analyses of the race-Halloween costume “debate.” Their privilege shines through in a gross but pedagogically very valuable way.

6)  A montage of Blackface Here is a Youtube video showing a montage of Blackface performances featured in Spike Lee’s film Bamboozled.  This is useful to provide a historical context.

7) Is your Costume Racist?Here is a practical checklist so that people can check themselves before heading out for the night. It’s like the Turnitin.com of Halloween.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Last week, Robin James (@doctaj) wondered if “digital dualism” was really “ideal theory” a-la Charles Mills. She argued that what we call digital dualism is really a critique of idealization; that the “ought” of the relationship between humans and technologies reflects the “is” of a privileged group. This is expressed both dualistically but also monolistically.

Within the comments, we discussed the complex designation of “ought” in the relationship between humans and technologies. Without taking on Robin’s ideal theory hypothesis, I want to take about a thousand words here and think about the “ought.” That is, I want to explore what the “good” technosubject does, and how zi relates to technologies within the contemporary era.

The Ought

The context here, is that of mass global connectivity, with uneven distribution of access, use, and skill, each of which concentrates in industrialized nations and among those with relatively high(er) levels of financial and cultural capital.

Within this context, how is the “good” citizen to interact with technology? What does this ideal relationship look like? To investigate this, I begin by teasing out what, as indicated by public discourses, this relationship ought not look like.

The ought not

The ought not is occupied by two extremes: technophilia and technophobia. Or, more simply, people ought not fetishize technologies, or let technologies overtake them, nor should they fear technologies, remain ignorant to their usage, or ignore the ongoings of digital mediation.

In reference to technophilia, or the fetishization of technology, we can turn to the work of psychologist Kenneth Gergen, who argues that the key problem of contemporary society is that of saturation. Technological developments, according to Gergen, facilitate too much connection, too much information, too many voices. Although he concedes that new technologies provide new opportunities, each opportunity couples with an obligation, trapping contemporary social actors in webs of their own desires. The mobile phone, for instance, affords communication while outside the home, and in doing so, obligates the phone owner to avail hirself to incoming calls and reach out to others with pertinent information in a timely manner (e.g. “Honey, why didn’t you call and say you would be late for dinner!?”). The 24/hour news cycle and RSS feeds help keep people informed, while compelling them to stay up-to-date on an increasingly wider and quickly moving set of global and local issues. Similarly, social network sites afford fast and easy communication with vast audiences through both text and image, and in doing so, create expectations of the social actor to document and share hir minutia and to keep up with the minutia of hir friends. Such obligations threaten to overrun the actor, stifling hir agentic movements, overtaking her creative and self-reflective capacities. This is nicely depicted in an image I saw hanging on the walls of my university last week.

The flip side of the technophile—the technophobe—also runs counter to the amorphous ideal. This is the Luddite, the person who, through fear, ignorance, or lack of capital, can’t keep up with recent technological developments. This is perhaps most effectively communicated through humor, in which such groups act as the butt of jokes, the means by which the technologically “advanced” establish their righteousness.  Sites like Buzzfeed and Lamebook offer nice examples, like the one below.

This is funny (and admittedly, I do find it quite funny) because it plays on an implicit value—technological savvy—that certain segments of society fail to grasp. Note, we do not see humorous tropes about kids in developing countries who don’t have email addresses. We don’t want to feel bad about our access to technology, but do want to establish a proper relationship with it.

The ought

The ought rests between the two extremes described above. The ought, I argue, is a carefully curated relationship with technology, one in which the social actor has access, know how, and above all, control. As Laura Portwood-Stacer aptly argues, “opting-out” is a privileged position, and there is a qualitative difference between non-users and “conscientious objectors.”  This is the discursive line that Sherry Turkle straddles so effectively. She loves technology, but fears our pathological relationship with it. Pathology here, of course, is a loss of control, a domination by the technology rather than domination of the technology.

Historically, and continuing into the present, scholars note the use of technologies as a means of dominion over nature. The plow lets us dominate the agricultural fields, the car lets us dominate physical distance, electric heat lets us dominate cold, and ipods let us dominate boredom. This of course reflects the larger Western value of self control as classically theorized by Weber, and dominion over the environment more generally. In an interesting tension, the very technologies that humans use to control the natural world, become the objects of threat in the contemporary era.

The “ought” then, this curatorial dance, is reserved for a select group. It reflects those for whom the failing is of choice, rather than necessity or default. The ought reflects the “is” of the young, white, wealthy digerati with the privilege to unplug and the capacity to reconnect on their own terms.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

A couple of months back, I wrote about an informal meeting of the Cyborgology Crew in which we began to hash out some of the vocabulary issues that currently muddle up theorizing about technology and society. In that post, I interrogated the words “online” and “offline.” This online/offline discussion took up the better part of our day. A second issue also arose, however, and this was one that we never fully resolved. With bellies full of pizza and leg-shaking levels of caffeine, we duked it out over the term “physical co-presence.” Today, I want to put forth our (mostly?) agreed upon critique of the term physical co-presence, and offer an alternative which, on the day of the meeting, I probably articulated poorly. Like the interrogation of online and offline, this is far from a definitive statement. Rather, it is a starting point and a widespread invitation for critique, suggestions, and participation in the construction of a useful theoretical vocabulary.

 A Critique of Physical Co-Presence

Physical co-presence refers to two or more bodies sharing the same physical space at the same time. People typically use this term in juxtaposition to all other  mediated forms of interaction. For example, let’s say two people are collaborating on a project[i]. They may exchange drafts via email, talk through ideas via Skype, link relevant articles to on another via Twitter, and/or get together in a coffee shop to hammer out details. Only the coffee shop qualifies as physical co-presence, whereas Skype, Twitter, and email are otherwise mediated.

To give credit where credit is due, physical co-presence is more accurate than its synonym, Face to Face (FtF), which ignores the capabilities of video chat. Physical co-presence, however, suffers its own muddling effects. The language of “physical” is particularly problematic. It implies that digitally and electronically mediated communication exhibit a relative dearth of physicality as compared to conditions in which interactants’ bodies share the same space at the same time. This is far from the case.

All forms of  mediated interaction—both synchronic and asynchronic— can be intensely physical. Let us go back to the mundane example of project partners. Imagine that they get into a heated argument via telephone about the direction of the project. They may both feel knots in their stomachs, their cheeks may get hot, their shoulders tense, their nails may dig painfully into their palms. I’m certain if you use your imaginations, you creative readers can think of several other kinds of very physical encounters that take place through digital and/or electronic mediation. Juxtaposing physical co-presence to other forms of interaction, then, creates a false distinction centered around physicality.

And yet, there is a reason that the Cyborgology Team made the effort to share physical space as we hashed out these questions of vocabulary. We communicate via email and text message quite regularly, and certainly could have arranged a group video chat which would have been less expensive and more convenient for all involved. We all agreed, however, that it was important, in this case, to share the same physical space. Similarly, people travel to visit loved ones, pay to attend concerts, and wince at the challenge of  “long distance” relationships. Theoretically, this indicates that there *is* something distinct about bodies in the same space, but physical co-presence fails to capture the properties of this distinction with adequate subtlety.

Sensory Co-Presence:

I argue that sensory co-presence more accurately captures the distinct properties of shared physical and temporal space. By sensory co-presence I mean bodies in the same space, at the same time. These bodies breath the same air, feel the same sun, see the same moon, are touched by the same breeze. Sensory co-presence makes no assumptions about the level of physicality. Rather, it, like all platforms of interaction, maintains a particular set of affordances. The distinguishing affordance of sensory co-presences is that all actors involved are subject to the same sensory stimuli. Again, I reiterate, sensory co-present interaction is not the pinnacle of shared physical experience, with other mediated forms—computers, mobile devices, telephones, or tin cans—offering the next best thing. Rather, each medium contains affordances all its own, with varying effects upon physicality under an array of conditions.

Indeed, physicality is always continual and non-linear. All interaction is mediated. The platform of mediation affords different levels, and different kinds, of shared physical and sensory experience. For example, a telephone conversation is more auditory than it is visual, tactical, or olfactory. However, these other senses are not entirely excluded. The look of the phone and visual stimulus of an alert to an incoming call, including a name, phone number, icon, and/or personal image; The smell of one’s own breath against worn plastic; The heat of the phone against a red ear, or weight of the phone in the palm of a tired hand, all contribute to the experience of a telephonically mediated conversation. However, in emphasizing sound, this particular medium minimizes—though again, does not eliminate— sight, smell, and touch. In doing so, sensory sound experiences are sharper, such that shrill noises may elicit pain while rhythmic erotic panting elicits waves of bodily pleasure. Moreover, the absence of sensory co-presence can force interactants to more acutely attune to physical experiences, intensifying their bodily effects. Returning to the project partners, imagine that during an encounter, mediated by, let’s say, Skype, one partner notices a putrid smell wafting through hir office window. Were the interactants sensorily co-present, they would both experience the scent (though perhaps to different degrees depending on their respective nasal-passage biologies), which may become a key nexus of the interaction, or alternatively, fade unnoticed among the infinite array of sensory stimuli in their midst. Because they are engaged via Skype, however, partner B only learns about the smell via the accounts of partner A. If partner A gives a particularly detailed account, the physical response—for both involved—can be quite acute. In short, smelling shit and describing shit in detail can elicit an intense physical response. Sensory co-presence makes no assumptions about which condition will induce a greater or lesser level of physical disgust. Rather, it delineates each as different conditions, with particular affordances, distinct from one another.

From an augmented perspective, technologies both reflect and affect social structures and hierarchical relations. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that theorists of science and technology have long recognized how technologies are gendered. This goes beyond probing technologies of female reproduction, or masculine tools of object manipulation. This pervades even those seemingly gender neutral technological objects, and the ways in which we talk about, use, and make sense of them.

Awhile back, I talked about the gendering of Siri. I argued that the female voice, coupled with her designation as a “personal assistant” created an environment ripe for highly sexist/sexualized personification of the iphone application, and iphones themselves.  Far from Haraway’s utopic de-categorization, this melding of mechanical and organic solidified gendered meanings and strengthened interactional gender inequalities.

With this understanding, I still couldn’t contain my exasperated eye-roll when, after hooking up television in my home for the first time in almost a decade, I saw this (video after the jump):

(click to play)

Windows released this advertisement for the Windows 8 Surface tablet over the summer. It has been successful enough to continue airing regularly for several months. This success speaks volumes. It indicates that the gendered meanings inscribed through the commercial are ones with which viewers are a) comfortable and b) moved by to purchase the product.

So let us take a minute and deconstruct what this comfortable and moving 31- second advertisement does. The narrative trope is simple: two women/girls flaunting their features in hopes of selection within a competitive marketplace. The Windows 8 tablet boasts the following advantages: it is penetrable, easy to display, easy to use, easy to manipulate, and cheap to own. Or, said differently, she is penetrable, easy to display, easy to manipulate, easy to use, and cheap to own.

The closing line, in which the ipad pathetically asks: “Do you still think I’m pretty?” shifts the gendered allusions into a fully anthropomorphized culmination. The ipad, undesirable in her waning capacity to be penetrated, used, manipulated, displayed, and owned, relies on the shallowness of good looks. “Don’t leave me,” she implicitly begs, “you can still use me, too.”

This punch line only works within a culture that simultaneously evaluates women on their appearance, while ridiculing those who rely on attractiveness to obtain desired ends. And the desired ends are, of course, to be desirable.

The meanings imbued in eveyrday technological objects not only reflect existing gender relations, but reinforce the very structures in which these relations make sense. These are the very structures that facilitate “art” projects like the “100+  Boob Grab” that PJ Rey (@PJrey) talked about last week. These are the very structures in which all women Cyborgologists are Othered within a key public intellectual debate, as pointed out by Whitney Erin Boesel (@weboesel). These are the very structures in which “Strong is the New Skinny” passes for feminism.   The logical conclusion of gendering technologies is the construction of technological objects that both reflect and perpetuate existing, problematic, structural and cultural realities. The asexual tablets, through their sexualized and gendered inscriptions, become engines of continued cultural and material power relations.

Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Today, I just want to write a brief post about a cool art project. The Dead Drop project, started by an artist in New York City, embodies much of the theory we talk about here at Cyborgology. And like most forms of art, it accomplishes this theorizing in a far more efficient and interesting way than that which we academics put forth with our many, many words.

The Dead Drop project began in 2010 by a Berlin based artist named Aram Bartholl. During his stay in NYC, he installed 5 Dead Drops in public places. Dead Drops are blank USB ports, cemented into city walls, trees, or other publicly accessible outdoor materials. People can upload and download files onto these ports. Anyone can install a Dead Drop, and Bartholl encourages worldwide participation. Bartholl describes the project as an “anonymous, offline, peer to peer file-sharing network in public space.”  To date, there are 1,231 registered Dead Drops worldwide, comprising about 6,403 GB of storage space.

Here are some theoretical themes that this project touches on:

Digital/Physical Augmentation

Although the bloggers of Cyborgology represent a diverse range of empirical and theoretical backgrounds, our work is tied together by the key assumptions of augmented reality, and the related critique of digital dualism. That is, we recognize the mutually constitutive relationship between digital and physical, and reject their dichotomization. The Dead Drop project is described as offline file sharing. By definition, this troubles separations of physical and digital.  If one tried to categorize this art project, it would be less multi-media—which implies the combination of distinct media components—and more media integrated. The hardware of the USB literally merges with brick and mortar, as the wall now contains and dispenses digital files.

Privacy/Publicity

The affordances of new technologies, the ways in which professionals design them, the ways in which users utilize them, and the ways in which governing bodies access them, blur the lines between privacy and publicity. Never has this been clearer than in the wake of NSA’s entanglements with both large corporations and personal communications. Dead Drop files are expected to be anonymous, and yet, the content of files is, by design, publicly accessible. This begs the question: is anonymity possible once one accesses, shares, or produces digital content? The file sharer’s identity is always embedded within the file content—both symbolically and tangibly. The sharer leaves actual fingerprints on the brick wall and the USB,  s/he leaves identifying code in the file itself, and traces of hir creativity, values, intentions, and identity in the content.

Prosumption

Prosumption refers to the blurring of production and consumption. For the Dead Drop project to work, it must be participatory. The artistic process involves both production and consumption of content. Artistic acts, in this case, consist of installing USBs, sharing files, and retrieving files. The role of Artist, though centralized around Bartholl, is distributed among the masses of consumers. One can produce and consume the art in varying degrees—observing the cemented USB and opting not to share or access files, approaching the USB and downloading or uploading files, or installing a USB oneself. Indeed, one can even prosume the art through vandalism, breaking a USB, for instance, or sharing corrupt files.  Consumption, here, also always requires production, just as production always requires consumption, though these need not play even roles.

Politics of Information

Stewart Brand iconically argued that “Information Wants to Be Free.” Here at Cyborgology, David Banks has written extensively on the constructed scarcity of ideas and information. The Dead Drop project takes a similar political stance on access to information. Artist/participants are instructed to position the Drops in outdoor public places. Symbolically opposing encased ideas, Drops—and their content— are never to be trapped behind locked doors. Similarly, artists are instructed to only include file formats for which downloaders will need no special software or access codes. As the Manifesto states:

A Dead Drop is a naked piece of passively powered Universal Serial Bus technology embedded into the city, the only true public space. In an era of growing clouds and fancy new devices without access to local files we need to rethink the freedom and distribution of data

Of course, one needs both the hardware (e.g. laptop/tablet/mobile device) and the tech skills to access even these openly accessible files. As such, this project, like all work on information freedom, begs the question: free for whom, and under what conditions?

Security:

USBs are subject to physical and digital damage. They are also fully unregulated. Here is what the FAQ section says about security:

I don’t take any actions here! Dead Drops are placed in public space in the city. They are public domain. This is part of the concept and part of the game. (If you ever worked in the field of street art you know what it means to place things outside). In general everybody is responsible for the security of their computers and systems. Is the Internet a safe place?!? Malicious code for USB flash drives is a problem in general. They could (and will) be misused for malicious software.  Be aware of that! Secure your system! Boot a virtual machine! Or ask your friend to go first … (It’s the thrill of the ‘glory hole’ says  boingboing ;-). Also! Dead Drops themselves will be subject to digital and or physical vandalism. Don’t be sad when it happens. Keep growing and install a new drive in maybe slight different location.

In short, it is up to the individual to prevent and/or repair damage. This speaks to the unsecure nature of a free Internet, and the shift to individual stewardship of safety for self and others. More generally, it speaks to a tension between collaborative connection and individual responsibility, two seemingly opposing ethics brought forth in a connected era. This particular tension is one which, to my knowledge, has received little theoretical attention. I would like to see more. In this vein, I would like to know what’s out there that I’ve managed to miss.

*Special Thanks to Dr. Ryan Caldwell for bringing this project to my Attention

Pics via deaddrops.com

Follow Jenny Davis on Twitter: @Jenny_L_Davis

This week, the Bexar County Bibliotech Library opened in Texas. This library is unique in its all-digital format. It is a library without physical books. Instead, patrons have borrowing access to thousands of “e-books” and digital media materials, along with cloud space on which to store them. The library does have a physical building, which houses computers, laptops, kindles, and other hardware that people can borrow, or use on site. Patrons can also attend story time and literacy events at the library.  This is not the first library of its kind, but may be the first one to remain fully digital. In 2002, the Santa Rosa Branch Library in Arizona got rid of bound books. However, in light of consumer complaints, the SRBL—like most libraries— now offers texts through both bound books and digital media.

Perhaps now the timing is better. If so, a library such as this poses a host of questions. How will a digitatized library interact with the digital divide? Will this exclude the less tech-savvy, or act as a means of spreading digital literacy? How will the library continue to support itself without late fees? Why did they choose to eliminate books entirely?

Mostly, though, I want to know what this library will smell like, and how this will shape the intellectual somatic experiences of a new generation.

Waskul and Vannini famously wrote on the sociology of smell [free book intro version], and more generally, somatic work. This refers to the mediation of sensory stimuli by context, social experiences, and social learning. For example, fresh cut grass may remind you of cookouts at home, the excitement before a sporting event, or your first summer job. It can—and likely does—evoke a physiological response. A sense of calm; hair pricked on end; a prideful smile. Alternatively, the smell of saw dust may churn your stomach, signifying forever vomit on the floor in elementary school.

Those nostalgic for books with paper and bindings frequently reference the familiar musty smell of a book, the weight of the text in their hands, the sound of flipping pages. A traditional library, similarly, has a quite distinct sensory profile. Scents of Freshly vacuumed carpets mix with slowly disintegrating paper and the hushed sounds buzzing fluorescent bulbs. The lightly dusted, thickly bound books align row after row, adorned with laminated white stickers with small black letters and numbers, guiding readers to textual treasures organized by genre, topic, author, and title. These sensory stimuli may evoke calm, excitement, comfort, all of these things together. Indeed, being in a library has a feel. To fear the loss of this somatic experience, this “feel” is a legitimate concern. With a new kind of library, and a new medium for text, a particular sensory experience will, in time, be lost forever.

The new space, constituted by a new medium, will not, however, be without a “feel” of its own.  The glowing screen; the smell of plastic mixed with cheap screen cleaners; the sound of softly clacking keys; the visual effect of a slightly warped screen against the faded grey of an old kindle; the anticipation of an hour glass or repeating circle, accompanied by the excitement of a pop-up: “your document has arrived.”

In the course of a couple generations, if digitized libraries become the new norm, new sensory profiles will reshape the somatic nostalgia of an entire population. This historical moment is at once terribly sad and incredibly sociologically interesting. We are at an intersection of somatic transition. Many will experience great and legitimate loss, unable to pass down some of their most meaningful sensory experiences to their children and grandchildren. Perhaps, at some point, losing the sacred spaces in which they get to revisit these sensory experiences themselves.   Meanwhile, the young are in the midst of a great construction, building the sights, sounds, and smells of future whimsy.

Jenny is a weekly contributor to Cyborgology and avid smeller of both books and screens. Follow Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis

Trashbooks Pic (available via CC)

Biblio Pic (available via CC)

In 2006, my final year of undergrad, I participated in a Chinese language and culture scholarship program. We learned to speak and write in Mandarin for two semesters, followed by a month long trip in the summer.  As tends to happen, I’ve forgotten most of the language. The lessons, however, have stuck with me. Along with humbling experiences of climbing the Great Wall, walking through the Forbidden City, and sampling tea in the rural mountains, I remember a few incidents in which Chinese censorship took me by surprise. For instance, on the day after we visited Tiananmen Square, I studiously went to an Internet café to learn more about the events that transpired at the historic site. Besides iconic images of tanks and soldiers, I was admittedly uninformed about most of the details. The tour guide only made one quiet allusion to the Cultural Revolution, and quickly changed the subject. The Internet, I hoped, would help me grasp the cultural and historical magnitude of the space I’d just inhabited.  No such luck. Google was more tight-lipped about Tiananmen Square than our knowledgeable but cautious guide.

China is infamous for its censorship policies and practices.  Amnesty International claims that China imprisons more journalists and ‘cyber-dissidents’ than any other country, and maintains a sizeable “Internet Police” force, up to 50,000 officers strong. But recent studies by Political Scientist Gary King show interesting and surprising patterns in censorship enforcement.  His data show that government censorship of digital activity is less about quieting criticism, and more about squashing physical mobilization.

King and his colleagues posted content on several sites, as well as maintained their own sites in an effort to see 1) what kinds of content were censored, and 2) what they, as site administrators, were asked/required to censor. They found that the tenor of the message mattered little, but the intent mattered a lot. Negative political sentiment was typically left in tact, while both negative and positive efforts to mobilize were quickly removed by regulatory forces. This likely has to do with releasing political pressure valves in a safe way, while gaining access to public opinion in the absence of elections.

Human rights aside, my inclination is to criticize the Chinese government for their dualist assumptions. Criteria for censorship assume that digitally mediated interactions only become real when moved offline. And yet, through their censorship practices, the Chinese government enact a system of communication in which offline political action is more real than digital engagement in both outcomes for the movement and consequences for dissidents. Offline mobilization disrupts the ongoings of government and business, and so results in physical detainment of disruptors. Digitally mediated engagement does not, by itself, disrupt government and business in this way, and dissidents are largely left alone.

That is, this powerful government is *so* powerful that they can—and have—solidified imaginary lines.  The careful distribution of freedom expresses the depth of government control perhaps even more so than a stifling blanket of despotism. These criteria are such that political engagement happens, but only so far as it remains dispersed, mediated, and out of the streets. Through these regulatory criteria, the Chinese government renders digitally mediated political action impotent, and in very tangible ways, less real than boots on the ground.

I have written previously on the ways in which the theoretical digital-physical divide must be understood with regards to empirical variations in the degree of integration between physical and digital.  The regulatory practices in China represent what I call a juxtapositional relationship, one in which the digital and physical are related through opposition. More concretely, digitally mediated political discourse is juxtaposed or defined against the kind of action in which bodies share physical space. What I didn’t talk about in my discussion of materiality, however, was the role of power. This is a huge point to have missed. The degree of integration between physical and digital is not haphazard, but rooted in human action. And, as always, those humans with efficacy to act are those who hold power. In this case, the Chinese government holds relatively greater power than individual citizens. As such, the government structures the degree of integration between physical and digital in a way that—with scalpel-like precision—allows chatter but not action. In theoretical terms, this couples a juxtapositional framework with an explicit judgment and enforcement about what kinds of political acts are, and are not, real.

To be sure, the binary between physical and digital is false. It is a linguistic and discursive fallacy to speak of physical and digital as inherently distinct entities. However, as is the case in China, what we believe to be real is real in its consequences—especially when the purveyors of reality have the resources to enforce the boundaries that they’ve drawn.

Headline Pic: via http://www.theworld.org/2012/05/story-chen-guangcheng/

Follow Jenny on Twitter: @Jenny_L_Davis

On August 21^st, thousands of Syrians suffered the effects of an alleged chemical attack by contested Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad and his regime.  According to U.S. reports, 1,400 people died, and many more were injured. Many of those killed and injured were not part of the Free Syrian Army, but innocent citizens, including children. Investigations indicate that the weapon of choice was Sarin, a liquid-to-vapor nerve agent that can cause an array of symptoms, up to and including death. The Obama administration is now pushing for a U.S. military response. The president will hold a vote today (Tuesday) in an attempt to get congressional backing for targeted missile strikes against the Assad regime.

Importantly, this is an openly symbolic act. Obama and his supporters—along with British PM David Cameron , whose Syria plan was recently voted down—explicitly state that they do not intend to change the tide of the ongoing civil war. Rather, military action against the Assad regime acts as a public punishment for the use of chemical weapons, a violation of the Geneva Protocols of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.  Below are some excerpts from Obama’s remarks a few days ago (here is the full transcript):

This kind of attack is a challenge to the world. We cannot accept a world where women and children and innocent civilians are gassed on a terrible scale. This kind of attack threatens our national security interests by violating well established international norms against the use of chemical weapons… So, I have said before, and I meant what I said that, the world has an obligation to make sure that we maintain the norm against the use of chemical weapons.

In no event are we considering any kind of military action that would involve boots on the ground, that would involve a long-term campaign. But we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act that would help make sure that not only Syria, but others around the world, understand that the international community cares about maintaining this chemical weapons ban and norm.

Kai T. Erikson famously argues that moral lines are drawn at the “public scaffold.” And indeed,  Western military action here is intended not to change the course of this specific war, but to maintain a particular definition of war, one that separates  “war” from other acts of violence with names like “genocide,” “terrorism,” and “murder.”

So why are chemical weapons the uncrossable “red line?”  Why does *this*necessitate military action, while all of the other mass killings in Syria have not? To put this in perspective, the chemical attacks killed an estimated 1,400 people. Since 2011, the Assad regime has used guns and bombs to kill over 100,000 people, including many by-standing citizens.

The key issue with chemical weapons is that, as a technology of violence, they are wildly effective but highly imprecise. That is, they can kill and hurt a lot of people very quickly with little danger to the attacking force. Many of the people hurt and killed, however, will not be the intended targets. A chemical weapon spreads, with little notice for the plans of s/he who releases it. Because of this, innocent people die. People who lived as citizens—not active war participants—become collateral in a war they did not sign up for.

If at this point, you’re thinking that this problem seems quite familiar, then we are on the same page. Right. Drones.

Although the numbers are disputed, some estimate that U.S. drone attacks have killed well over a thousand non-militants in Pakistan, including children, and Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institute believes drone strikes have killed 10 civilians for every one military target.  

The question then becomes, who gets to draw red lines? Who has the power in games of war and language to set and break standards of morality? Who, through treacherous acts of inhumanity and violence against innocents, shifts from being a leader to being a terrorist, despot, or murderer, and who in contrast, sits in relative comfort, giving stern looks and commanding the release of bombs?

Pic via: http://www.thesweetestoccasion.com

Jenny Davis is a weekly contributor for Cyborgology. Follower Jenny on Twitter @Jenny_L_Davis