Search results for banks

There are many theories that seek to clarify the relationship between our offline existence and whatever it is we are doing online. I say “whatever” not to be flippant, but because there is a great deal of debate about the ontological, conceptual,and hermeneutic ramifications of online activity. How much of ourselves is represented in our Skyrim characters? Is retweeting an #ows rally location a political act? How is access to the Internet related to free speech? These are questions that some of the greatest minds of our day are contemplating. I know some equally smart people that would throw up their hands in frustration at even considering these topics as worthy of research and critical analysis. Regardless of whether or not you think it is worth pondering these questions, people all over the world are engaging in something when they post a Facebook status or check in to a coffee shop on Foursquare. In his Defending and Clarifying the Term Augmented Reality, Nathan described how our relationship to these sorts of digital Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) fits in with our historial relationship to technology: “technology has always augmented reality, be it in pre-electronic times (e.g., architecture or language as technologies) or how those offline are still impacted by the online (e.g., third-world victims of our e-waste or the fact that your Facebook presence influences your behavior even when logged off).” I have argued elsewhere that, even if ICTs mark a fundamental shift in our relationship to technology, it is only another wave in a constantly evolving relationship to our own understanding of technological progress. I am going through this (hyperlinked) summary of many of this blog’s larger arguments because 1) we have been growing in readership, and 2) we are embarking on a new, ongoing, project to situate Augmented Reality (AR) amongst other theories of society’s relationship to technology. Today I want to introduce Actor Network Theory (ANT). more...

Photo of the week comes from the current protests in Egypt. The picture captures the flow of imagery across mediums, especially in times of protest. Al Jazeera ran the photo of a police officer who reportedly is shooting protesters in the eye. Infuriated, Egyptians stenciled his image on walls. The graffiti was then photographed and disseminated on social media, where Zeynep Tufekci saw the image and sent it to us. The image of the police officer flows from cameras to TV broadcast to paint on walls back into photo-form into social media and onto this blog where you see it now. Reality is augmented.

Meanwhile, this week on Cyborgology…

Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey co-author an essay about how today we breath in an atmosphere increasingly able to capture what we do as a social media document

Jenny Davis writes about the mileage Facebook critics get out of misusing the word “friend”

We repost a comment Distinguished University of Maryland professor and past President of the American Sociological Association Patricia Hill-Collins made about PJ Rey’s post on journals being the “dinosaurs” of academia

PJ writes about the trust we place in modern technologies to become and enjoy the cyborgs we have become today

PJ also thinks about what is in store for the #occupy movement as winter bears down and concludes it is partially in memes

David Banks gets into the Thanksgiving spirit and discusses sexism and Internet food videos

Dave Strohecker looks into why Hipsters are into vintage and retro technology, circling around the ideas of authenticity and nostalgia

Next is a guest post from Jeremy Antley on the analogue roots of digital dualism, looking at a similar process of “textual dualism”

And we round up this week with the second part of Dan Greene’s “augmented syllabus” project

Since you are probably going to spend today arguing about Occupy Wall Street with your conservative family members and helping your parents with computer questions we figured you would appreciate some slightly ligher fare: internet cooking shows. But because we are social scientists, we can’t be satisfied with uncritical review. Therefore, I want to discuss how these cooking shows interact with, perform, reify, and probelmitize constructions of gender and nationality. The three shows I want to cover (I’m gonna have to pass on this and this. There’s a great article at dailydot.com that lists most internet cooking shows.) are Epic Meal Time, Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time, and My Drunk Kitchen. Full disclosure: I have a profound weakness for all of these shows, with increasing affinity in the order I just presented them. In case you’re unfamiliar with these shows, I’ll briefly introduce them and then get into the theory. [Images after the break might be considered NSFW.] more...

Image of the week. augmented reality: the online infiltrates how we perceive the offline, made literal here.

Meanwhile, it was busy this week on Cyborgology…

PJ Rey writes about Klout and how it infiltrates our mind’s eye

Dave Strohecker and Jenny Davis team to write about the gender-switching ‘Jailbreak the Patriarchy!’ browser hack

Nathan Jurgenson provides some initial reflections on the OWS Raid at Zuccotti park

PJ Rey gets Marxian and discusses value, productivity, labor and the web

and Mike Bulajewski responds

Sarah Wanenchak reflects on the evolution of the ‘human microphone’ as Karl Rove gets mic-checked

David Banks tells the important story digitality and materiality with the example of getting Wi-Fi running at an Occupy park

And, finally, a guest-post by Doug Hill discusses the continuing issues of automation, jobs and how society should respond

Commentary about the Internet and the various communication services it provides, regularly fall into utopian or distopian visions of radically new worlds. The utopias tell of a future in which we are all continually connected in a seamless egalitarian web of techno-democracy. The distopian warnings describe overstimulated zombies shuffling from computer screen to smartphone, hermetically sealed in the echo chamber of their choosing. These predictions are equally unlikely to occur any time in the near future, and for one simple reason- Its really hard (and expensive) to get a stable internet connection in a park. more...

Image of the week is a photo Cyborgology editor Nathan Jurgenson took yesterday while visiting Marshall McLuhan’s Coach House at the University of Toronto. A former horse stable, this was the home of McLuhan’s research center and where he held his famous weekly seminars that attracted celebrities like John Lennon and Woody Allen. Many described the atmosphere as similar to Andy Warhol’s Factory.

This past week on Cyborgology…

Dave Strohecker critiqued Tom Morello’s new song as another example of the ‘manic pixie dream girl’ trope

David Banks reflected on the recent Society for the Social Studies of Science meetings in Cleveland

PJ writes a rich essay on Julian Assange’s politics and importantly distinguishes cyber-libertarianism from cyber-anarchism

David Banks is at it again, this time writing about panoptic surveillance at Occupy Wall Street as a panopitcon in the clouds and the crowds

Jenny Davis offers a theoretical review of the new film In Time, and inspires discussion in the comments

And Dave Strohecker wraps up the week with his take on the technology of social-movement tattooing as a new form of slacktivism

The first post I wrote for Cyborgology concluded that many of the dominant socio-technical systems in our world look and behave in a similar fashion. The entertainment industry, advanced military surveillance, search algorithms, and academic reference tools are swapping hardware and best practice in such a way that the carrying out of a military invasion, or the Super Bowl begins to look disturbingly similar. Around the time that I wrote that post, USAToday ran a disturbingly cheerful story about police departments’ desire to acquire similar technology. Miami’s police department acquired the  Honeywell’s T-Hawk Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) a few moths later. The only regulations that prevented the MPD (or any police force) from acquiring such technology were FAA regulations about where and how it could be flown. Such acquisitions have gone largely unquestioned by the media as well. In fact, local coverage of the purchase was supportive. A local CBS affiliate led with the headline, “Dade Cops Waiting To Get Crime Fighting Drone Airborne.” This all seems very bleak, but just as powerful actors have increased their abilities to engage in surveillance, the individual has more tools than ever to watch the watchers. more...

Unlike my fellow Cyborgologists, who are based in sociology departments, I am working towards a Ph.D in an interdisciplinary field called Science and Technology Studies (STS). The field emerged in the late 60s amongst (and directly influenced by) the environmental movement, the anti-nuke movement, and second wave feminism. Today STS is an established field with departments all around the world. The interdisciplinary nature of the field makes it difficult to have one single umbrella conference, but the closest we get is the annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, or simply “4S.” The conference has panels on a wide variety of topics including, “(Re)Inventing the Internet: New Forms of Agency“, “Evidence on Trial: Experts, Judges and Public Reason“, and “Reproductive and Contraceptive Technologies: Shifting Subjectivities and Contemporary Lives“. There are also two sister conferences that happen simultaneously at nearby hotels: The Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) and the History of Science Society (HSS). While the conference was enjoyable, and the talks were fascinating, I was left wondering if STS is up to the task of changing how we talk about technology, science, and innovation. 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...