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Everybody knows the story: Computers—which, a half century ago, were expensive, room-hogging behemoths—have developed into a broad range of portable devices that we now rely on constantly throughout the day.  Futurist Ray Kurzweil famously observed:

progress in information technology is exponential, not linear. My cell phone is a billion times more powerful per dollar than the computer we all shared when I was an undergrad at MIT. And we will do it again in 25 years. What used to take up a building now fits in my pocket, and what now fits in my pocket will fit inside a blood cell in 25 years.

Beyond advances in miniaturization and processing, computers have become more versatile and, most importantly, more accessible – you can easily sell your computer processor, there’ll be plenty of those interested, everybody needs it nowadays.  In the early days of computing, mainframes were owned and controlled by various public and private institutions (e.g., the US Census Bureau drove the development of punch card readers from the 1890s onward). When universities began to develop and house mainframes, users had to submit proposals to justify their access to the machine. They were given a short period in which to complete their task, then the machine was turned over to the next person. In short, computers were scarce, so access was limited. more...

The role of new, social media in the Occupy protests near Wall Street, around the country and even around the globe is something I’ve written about before. I spent some time at Occupy Wall Street last week and talked to many folks there about technology. The story that emerged is much more complicated than expected. OWS has a more complicated, perhaps even “ironic” relationship with technology than I previous thought and that is often portrayed in the news and in everyday discussions.

It is easy to think of the Occupy protests as a bunch of young people who all blindly utilize Facebook, Twitter, SMS, digital photography and so on. And this is partially true. However, (1) not everyone at Occupy Wall Street is young; and (2), the role of technology is certainly not centered on the new, the high-tech or social media. At OWS, there is a focus on retro and analogue technologies; moving past a cultural fixation on the high-tech, OWS has opened a space for the low-tech.

What I want to think about there is the general Occupy Wall Street culture that has mixed-feelings about new technologies, even electricity itself. I will give examples of the embracing of retro-technology at OWS and consider three overlapping explanations for why this might be the case. I will also make use of some photographs I took while there. more...

(Or: How we’ve come to be micro-celebrities online)

Facebook’s recent introduction of “frictionless sharing” is the newest development in a growing trend: data is being increasingly produced passively as individuals conduct their day-to-day activities. This is a trend that has grown both on and offline. We will focus on the former here; especially “frictionless” sharing that involves syncing Facebook with other sites or apps. Once synced, much of what a user listens to, reads or otherwise accesses are automatically and immediately published on Facebook without any further action or approval.  Users may not even need to “opt into” frictionless sharing because many services are changing their default setting to automatically push content to Facebook. In short, we can say that users play a passive role in this process.

Contrast this to more active sharing: when we “like” or “+1” something (by clicking the eponymous buttons that have spread throughout the Web) it requires the user to make a conscious and affirmative action to share something with others in their network. Nathan Jurgenson (one of this post’s co-authors) previously described these two models as types of “documentary vision:” We actively document ourselves and our world around us as if we have a camera in our hand (“liking”, status updates, photos, etc.), or we can passively allow ourselves to be documented, curating our behaviors along the way (e.g., reading a magazine article so that you can present yourself as the type of person who “likes” that sort of magazine) much like a celebrity facing a crowd of paparazzi photographers.

Let’s make another layer of complexity to this documentary model more...

One of the things I find most striking about discussion around technology’s “place” in schools is that adults treat technology as if it is a hot-potato bomb tossed around among young people.  In some senses, I think it is a bit of a ticking bomb: when used in schools, new technologies show that society’s norms about their “appropriate” use are still being formalized. Moreover, when new technologies are used in the classroom, they reveal how both teacher authority and the construction of childhood are themselves unstable – schools are charged not only with the role of enforcing appropriate use of technologies, but they must also maintain that they offer an ideal learning environment for children. In classical sociologist Max Weber’s terms, schools’ current use of technology reveal cracks in teacher legitimacy, fueling a panic whereby parents and teachers suggest these technologically-infused settings are contrary to the needs of young people.

In a recent series of op-eds in the New York Times, Greg Simon argues that a Silicon Valley Waldorf School, one of a number of esteemed and very expensive K-12 schools here in the U.S., is a model for education because it privileges creativity and imagination over the infusion of technology in classroom instruction.  For Simon, technology and childhood are dichotomous entities: technology serves only to debase kids’ need for free-spirited play. Moreover, because computer images, games, and ubiquitous technology dominate in the adult world, they serve as distractions to children and cannot “fit” in schools. more...

I should really post a review of this coffee shop. Maybe on Yelp. I could snap a photo of the cool little setup I have going here or tweet about the funny laptop rules at this place. Or I can get meta and type a Facebook update about how I am currently blogging about all of these possibilities to document my experience. While contemplating all of this, Spotify, a music-listening service, published the song I just listened to on Facebook.

Let’s reflect briefly on how we document experience. The first examples I just gave might be called “active sharing” whereas that last example, the Spotify one, highlights how self-documentation is also increasingly passive. And I think this furthers what I call “documentary vision”: the habit of experiencing more and more of life with the awareness of its document-potential.

Much has been made of so-called “frictionless sharing,” the new Facebook feature that automatically publishes updates from partnered sites and services. Sync Facebook with Spotify or the Wall Street Journal and what you listen to or read will be passively published on the new Facebook live-ticker.

This more passive sharing furthers an already established trend: we are increasingly living life under the logic of the Facebook mechanism. more...

The Cyborgology blog turns one today! [our first post]

We are thrilled with the blog’s success and the community that has grown around it. It has been exciting to see the increase in page views, high quality comments, and discussions on sites like Twitter and Facebook. The Faux-Vintage photo essay took on a life of its own and a recent post on Chomsky was rewritten for Salon.com (here). The blog has advanced a theoretical position we call “augmented reality,” positioned art as theoretically significant, focused on social justice issues and has played host to much audio and video from a range of events. The highlight was watching this community come to life at the Theorizing the Web conference that grew out of the blog.

We began Cyborgology to fill a void we observed in popular and academic discourse: conversations about technology often lacked theory, and theoretical debate often neglects technology.

Since we created the blog 365 days ago, more...

Cyborgology editor Nathan Jurgenson will be in Zuccotti park Saturday, and contributing author David Banks will be participating in a new occupation in Albany, NY. Nathan will be providing his insights on social media and the OWS movement. David will be watching closely and commenting on the birth of a local occupation.

more...

Last week, Nathan Jurgenson linked to an interview with Noam Chomsky, where Chomsky argued that social media is superficial:

Jeff Jetton: Do you think people are becoming more comfortable communicating through a device rather than face to face or verbally?

Noam Chomsky: My grandchildren, that’s all they do. I mean, of course they talk to people, but an awful lot of their communication is extremely rapid, very shallow communication. Text messaging, Twitter, that sort of thing.

Jeff Jetton: What do you think are the implication for human behavior?

Noam Chomsky: It think it erodes normal human relations. It makes them more superficial, shallow, evanescent. One other effect is there’s much less reading. I can see it even with my students, but also with my children and grandchildren, they just don’t read much.

Jeff Jetton: Because there’re so many distractions, or…?

Noam Chomsky: Well you know it’s tempting…there’s a kind of stimulus hunger that’s cultivated by the rapidity and the graphic character and, for the boys at least, the violence, of this imaginary universe they’re involved in. Video games for example. I have a daughter who lives near here. She comes over Sunday evening often for dinner. She brings her son, a high school student. And of course he hasn’t done any homework all weekend, naturally, so he has to do all his homework Sunday night. What he calls doing homework is going into the living room while we’re eating, sitting with his computer and with his headphones blaring something, talking to about ten friends on whatever you do it on on your computer, and occasionally doing some homework.

Jeff Jetton: How do you know what he’s doing?

Noam Chomsky: I watch him.

Jurgenson offered an epistemological critique of Chomsky, arguing that Chomsky’s dismissal of social media as superficial fits a long-standing pattern of affluent white academics maintaining their privileged position in society by rejecting media that is accessible to non-experts.  Jurgenson pointedly asks “who benefits when what you call “normal” human relationships get to be considered more “deep” and meaningful?”  Chomsky is seemingly ignorant to the use of Twitter and other networks in shaping the Arab Spring and the #Occupy movement; or the fact that young people are voraciously sharing and consuming important news stories through these same networks; or that Blacks and Hispanics were early adopters of smartphones; or that gay men have been pioneers in geo-locative communication. In many cases, historically-disadvantaged groups have used social media technology to find opportunities previously foreclosed to them.  For these folks, social media is hardly trivial. more...