Cyborgology

Lev Manovich on “The Poetics of Augmented Space”

PJ Patella-Rey on September 20, 2012

I’ve recently been auditing a course with Jason Farman on “Space, Place, and Identity in the Digital Age” and he assigned a piece that was so profoundly relevant to this blog that I had to post about it immediately.

Lev Manovich’s 2006 article “The poetics of augmented space” published in Visual Communication (which he had apparently been working on since 2002 [edit: the article was actually first published in 2002]) is the earliest that I am aware of anyone using the term “augmented reality” in the broader sociological context of social interaction that flows between digital and physical (as opposed to the more limited computer science definition that describes it as merely the overlaying of digital information on the physical environment). more...

The New 99: Context Collapse and Culture in Motion

jennydavis on September 19, 2012

On the anniversary of the Occupy movement, an anonymous saboteur released a secret video from a private Mitt Romney Fundraiser back in May, potentially replacing “99%” with “47%” as the new progressive rallying cry.

I know I ended my post last week with a promise for continuation, but that will have to wait (next week, I promise). Today, I want to talk about privacy, sousveillance, but mostly, context collapse in light of Monday’s events.

In case anyone missed it, here is what happened: An attendant at a small, private, high-dollar Mitt Romney fundraiser secretly taped Romney’s speech and released the tape to the mainstream media. On this tape, Romney makes several politically damning statements, most notably, referring to 47% of American citizens as “victims” who will always depend on the government and about whom it is not his job to worry. Here is a quick snippet of the transcript (see full video below): more...

Newsweek Isn’t A “Troll” (Even If It’s Acting Like One)

nathanjurgenson on September 17, 2012

In light of the recent Newsweek magazine cover scandal, let’s think for a moment on what a “troll” is and when we should or should not call someone or something a troll. My first reaction to the Islamaphobic cover was “trolling. ignore.” That was the exact wrong reaction.

Trolls, of course, are those who deliberately post inflammatory material in order to disrupt or derail discourse. Declaring something or someone a “troll” is a way of saying that they just want attention. Trolls attempt to disrupt productive communication in an attempt to get noticed. The one thing you need to know to do when this happens: don’t feed the trolls. Don’t. Feed. The. Trolls. It’s good advice. However, because of its mainstream position, I do not think Newsweek is a “troll,” even if it sure as hell is acting like one. more...

In Their Words

nathanjurgenson on September 16, 2012

“Number Of Users Who Actually Enjoy Facebook Down To 4”

“In order to be profitable, it is highly likely that Twitter can only get more annoying, Pandora can only get more interrupt-y, Tumblr can only get more cluttered, Facebook can only get more devious”

“Grindr officially announces its plan to mobilize gay men as a political bloc in the 2012 elections”

“I can’t put Twitter or the little blue bird in jail, so the only way to punish is monetarily”

“About four grams of DNA theoretically could store the digital data humankind creates in one year”

“Google Glass is changing the implicit social contract with everyone in his or her field of view”

“Having opened up a chasm between the informational and material, we’re rapidly trying to close it”

“Imagine being excited to see what the Internet looks and feels like in a new town”

“remote sensing and screen culture might displace today’s commonplace demand for airbuses”

“[Academics] quickly devolve into a game of Who’s The Best Luddite. And it is most definitely about hierarchy & power”

“The site, just a few weeks old and still in beta, consists entirely of videos uploaded by real people having what might be called nonperformance-like sex”

“human beings have not always tried to make sense of emotions through numbers”

“the hate-mongers who made this video and those who use the provocation as a pretext to kill are in a symbiotic, mutually reinforcing relationship”

“it appears that identity-based search results could be nothing more than old bigotry packaged in new media” [pdf]

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson more...

How To Kill Digital Dualism Without Erasing Differences

Giorgio Fontana on September 16, 2012

Giorgio Fontana (1981) is an Italian writer, freelance contributor and editor of Web Target (http://www.web-target.com/en/). His personal website is www.giorgiofontana.com. On Twitter: https://twitter.com/giorgiofontana.

In some very stimulating articles – mainly this one – Nathan Jurgenson has convincingly argued against what he calls digital dualism: that is, to think that “the digital world is virtual and the physical world real”:

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Meaning-Making Through Numbers: Emotional Self-Quantification

whitneyerinboesel on September 13, 2012

Can we create quantitative data that will help us make sense of our emotions?

In preparation for the 2012 Quantified Self Conference on 15 and 16 September (#QS2012), I’m spending a couple weeks writing about the “self knowledge through numbers” group Quantified Self. Last week, I focused on self-quantification in relation to my masters work on what I’ve termed biomedicalization 2.0; this week, I focus on my upcoming dissertation project, which will look specifically at emotional self-quantification (or “mood tracking”).

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Empowerment without Independence

jennydavis on September 11, 2012

Last week Sarah Wanenchak (@dynamicsymmetry) and Whitney Erin Boesel (@phenatypical) separately broached the tensions between technologies, bodies, ownership, and power. Here, I want to articulate this tension more explicitly, and argue that at a broad level, this is a tension between empowerment and dependence. Empowerment—as producers become consumers, reducing institutional authority over identity meanings and cultural representations; dependence— as these identity and cultural prosumers necessarily rely upon increasingly complex technical systems of implementation. more...

In Their Words

nathanjurgenson on September 9, 2012

“we are probably the last generation to experience a clear difference between offline and online”

“technologically-mediated storytelling is every bit as world-destroying as it is world-creating”

“75 percent of all [Wikipedia] articles score below the desired [Flesch] readability score”

“We all participate in this strange authorship of the now”

“Anonymous is reminding you that their fight will soon be your fight, if governments & corporations get their way”

“the answer doesn’t lie in getting paid to blog, but in relearning how to circulate our food and water as freely as our .gifs”

“to really understand “the Internet” we need to forget it as a unified “it” altogether”

“The porn industry is on the same trajectory as all media: content itself no longer holds value”

“Furby actually makes you want to hurt it somehow—if only it had feelings—so that you can punish it for existing”

“the internet hive mind might begin producing a new kind of anti-gonzo journalism”

“personal relationships seem to be the blurry edge of a quantified field of vision”

“All physical spaces already are also informational spaces”

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @nathanjurgenson

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Empowerment Through Numbers? Biomedicalization 2.0 and the Quantified Self

whitneyerinboesel on September 6, 2012

In preparation for the 2012 Quantified Self Conference on 15 and 16 September (#QS2012), I’ll be spending the next two weeks writing about the “self knowledge through numbers” group Quantified Self (@QuantifiedSelf). This week, I focus on self-quantification in relation to my masters work on what I’ve termed biomedicalization 2.0; next week I’ll focus on my upcoming dissertation project, which will look specifically at emotional self-quantification (or “mood tracking”).

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The Cyborg Diet

jennydavis on September 5, 2012

We all know the trope: In The Future—near or distant—food will come in the form of a pill. The pill will offer optimal proportions of all necessary nutrients. It will be calorically dense, vitamin infused, moderately fatted, protein filled, fiber enhanced, time released, and highly precise. The consumer will be satiated. The body will be healthy. This is a pill of perfect consumptive efficiency. This is the predicted diet of the cyborg.

Indeed, as cyborgs, our practices of (literal) consumption are characterized by scientific engineering. Our food and food practices are more a product of laboratory and factory work than the sweat of tilling farmers. And yet, we have not come up with a successful food-replacement pill. Instead, we’ve generally (though not ubiquitously) developed a market and a mindset that moves away from efficiency, developing and utilizing technological advancements to maximally consume with minimal caloric absorption. I offer here a few examples: more...