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Today I want to offer a quick provocation that might make for interesting conversations (read: arguments) with family and friends this holiday season. Statistically speaking, you are probably on the road right now. Maybe you are just sitting down at your favorite reststop Sbarro (The Official Food of You Don’t Have Another Choice™) and, after checking in on Foursquare, you start reading some of your favorite blogs (that’s us). Then, maybe its your nosey uncle, or your 10-year-old sister, or your husband leans over and tells you to, “get off the Interent and interact with the real world.” Its a slightly rude thing to say, but you put your phone down and engage with those in bodily co-presence. What is it about the Internet that invites strong criticism from such a wide range of people?  It is often said that 1) the Internet encourages anti-social behavior; 2) that it makes us lazy and contributes to increasing waistlines and decreasing attention spans and; 3) our increasing reliance on Internet services means we are widening the “Digital Divide” and cutting out the poor, the elderly, and the differently abled. Statements like these are too numerous to cite with links. Its the kind of socia commentary and pop psychology that has graced the pages of most news magazines. Could we take these arguments and apply them to other large sociotechnical systems? Since we all have transportation on our minds, let’s levy these criticisms against the highway and see where it takes us: more...

Photo of the week

This week at Cyborgology…

Dave Strohecker is back at theorizing hipsters and authenticity, this time comparing them to “indie”

Editors Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey live-tweeted and archived the Twitter stream of the recent flash-conference on Occupy, the Tea Party and networked democracy

Jenny Davis writes on “responsible Googling,” or how teachers should best use the Web in the classroom

Nathan Jurgenson asks if Occupy can survive a winter without tents, arguing that most analyses of the movement has looked too much at space and not enough at time

David Banks writes his second post on Actor Network Theory, compares it to “augmented reality”  and again comes down hard on Latour and his disciples. The post continues to spark a terrific discussion in the comments

Sarah Wanenchak responds to Nathan’s previous post arguing that, yes, Occupy can withstand a winter without tents. Memories are strong, and people will not forget about what made the movement powerful. 

Two weeks ago, I wrote a Brief Summary of Actor Network Theory. I ended it by saying,

My next post will focus on ANT and AR’s different historical accounts of Western society’s relationship to technology. While Latour claims “We Have Never Been Modern” we at Cyborgology claim “we have always been augmented.” I will summarize both of these arguments to the best of my ability and make the case for AR over ANT.

The historical underpinnings of ANT are cataloged in Laotur’s We Have Never Been Modern and are codified in Reassembling the Social. I will be quoting gratuitously from both.

In We Have Never Been Modern, Latour comments on a debate between the political philosopher Thomas Hobbes and natural philosopher Robert Boyle. Latour describes the debate this way: more...

Picture of the week is of Victorian audio surveillance. Note the listening device taking on the form of an ear. Augmented reality predates electronics and has come to take on creative forms.

This week at Cyborgology…

Sara Wanenchak discusses the symbolic power of the tent for the Occupy movement

Jenny Davis draws on Barthes to describe how memes are the mythology of our augmented society

Guest author Doug Hill discusses the relationship between Ellul’s concept of technique and the Occupy movement

Dave Strohecker continues his series of posts on hipsters and technology calling them a “folk devil”, a group we can project our insecurities upon

Guest author Gene Morrow highlights a video-talk that describes the increased blurring of the physical and technological

David Banks describes “the beast of Kandahar” and its role in augmented warfare

Last, listen to Cyborgology Editors Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey talk on the radio about technology and the Occupy movement

Iran claims to have captured one of the CIA’s stealth drones which, they say, intruded on their airspace. Usually, I would talk about nations’ continuing development of their capacity for “augmented warfare” and maybe throw in some commentary on how this relates to theories on surveillance and the state. But, to be totally honest, I am incapable of doing that right now. Not because I have deadlines for papers coming up, or because I actually promised that my next post was going to be about Actor Network Theory. Its because… Well…

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Bloggers here at Cyborgology have explored the internet meme in interesting ways. Most notably, David Banks analyzed the performative meme, arguing for its function in cultural cohesion, and P J Rey delineated the political and strategic role of internet memes in the #OWS movement. Here, I wish to take a step back, and deconstruct the very structure of the internet meme, exploring what the internet meme is and what it does. Specifically, I argue that the internet meme is the predominant (and logical) form of myth in an augmented society, and that it both reflects and shapes cultural realities.

To make this argument, I must first put forth definitions of both myth and meme. more...

Picture of the week comes from David Banks. FourSquare and Occupy at that critical intersection of the digital and physical.

This week at Cyborgology…

Nathan Jurgenson’s photo-theory essay on the new Lytro so-called “living picture” technology and what it means for potentially more interactive social media objects

Guest author Gene Morrow disagrees with PJ Rey a bit and argues that Occupy cannot hibernate indoors this winter but instead needs a home in physical space

Sarah Wanenchak is welcomed on board as the newest member of the Cyborgology blog and writes a short essay linking the Occupy movement to the 1848 revolutions in Europe

Jenny Davis looks at social ties and Facebook, from the weak to close connections, from the global to the local

PJ Rey provides an essay on Cyberpunk with a critical eye towards the role of the Ayn Randian rugged individualism but embracing the Cyberpunk ethos of being at once deeply interested in as well as highly critical of technology and society

David Banks begins his project of applying “augmented reality” theory to other theories of technology by writing about and critiquing Actor Network Theory

David Strohecker round the week out with a look at Britain’s “safe text street” as it deals with our increasingly augmented reality

On this blog we talk a lot about “augmented reality,” or how the digital and the material are increasingly mutually constitutive. As an example of this concept, I bring you the following development: Britain’s ‘Safe Text’ Street.

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