User:Birgit bachler/readings

SOCIETY IN AD-HOC MODE. DECENTRALISED, SELF-ORGANISING, MOBILE

Armin Medosch, 2006

The text delivers an interesting perspective on the future of society from a bottom-up view. The text works with examples that mainly deal with the anti-globalization movement and the idea of open source networks. The idea of every user serving as a node simultaneously, so that commercial providers of networks are not necessary anymore, is an interesting attempt to describe an open society. Whether democracy does not work together with an ad-hoc society is a point that made me think a lot. Fascinating is the fact that the text has been written before most of the mentioned mobile technologies, such as 3G hat their impact in Europe. The ideal of technological development for the benefits of humanity and society instead of capitalistic aims is a romantic idea.

ANTISOCIAL APPLICATIONS: NOTES IN SUPPORT OF ANTISOCIAL NOTWORKING

Geoff Cox, 2008

The notes of Geoff Cox rather seem to be an accumulation of portentous terms, and the text is therefore really hard to read. He tries to describe the fact, how social networks affect society, capitalism, consumerism, work and politics. Websites like facebook are based on connections between users, which therefore create a new immaterial product called 'subjectivity'. That leads to the fact that the consumer is finally being sold to a product, based on their network connections. He uses the term 'antagonistic' very often and in a for me not comprehensible way. Why does he have to mention that social relations are produced as friendly rather than antagonistic? Calling a computer network a social factory is an interesting approach, but in my opinion not pointed out well enough. Also the 'Notworking' is not discussed very well. Why has in his opinion labour time become more difficult to measure? How has the observation being made that work and action have become indistinct? He also focuses on Peer-to-Peer relations being the more advanced way of social networking, compared to Server-Client relations. He sees that as a chance to rethink politics from within network cultures. His final conclusion/suggestion left me alone rather helpless, that is why I put it here, because I will never read this paper ever again. The suggestion of this notes - in support of antisocial notworking - is that without the identification of antagonisms that underpin sociality, politics simply cannot be engaged.

PROTOCOL: HOW CONTROL EXISTS AFTER DECENTRALIZATION

Alexander Galloway, 2006

The book starts describing a new apparatus of control that consists out of a distributed network, that uses the technology of computers and communicates via protocols. It also mentions the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze who predicts a shift from disciplinary societies to societies of control. Galloway argues, that the existence of a protocol stands for a mean of control after decentralization. He sees the DNS database as a controlling hierarchic system over the Internet, the most extensive "computerized information system" today. By quoting Marshall McLuhan's the content of every new protocol is always another protocol he describes the Internet through the nested protocols it depends on. Without a shared protocol, there is no network. Galloway also uses Michel Foucault's theory on biopolitics and calls the protocol a democratic panopticon of the control societies. He writes that distributed architectures make protocological/imperial control of a network easy, a centralized protocol is doomed to fail. He sums up Periodization from Centalization to Decentrentralization to Distribution. In his notes Galloway makes us of a lot of well-known philosophers whos quotes he uses to undermine his theories on forms of control within societly and technology, and the relation between nodes in networks.

HAIL THE MULTITUDES

Michael Hardt, 2005

Michael Hardt describes the name Multitude" as a form of social and political organization, that represents a movement in horizontal, decentralized structures and might constitute an upcoming form of power that refuses central leadership and unified programs. The central point of his text is the following hypothesis: In each era the most powerful form of political organization corresponds to the dominant organizational model of economic production. Since the structures nowadays are not as hierarchical and centralized as they were in the past centuries, he sees a future in decentralized, collaborative, horizontal organizations taking over political power.

TEN THESES ON NON-DEMOCRATIC ELECTRONICS: ORGANIZED NETWORKS UPDATED

Geert Lovink & Rossiter, 2007

1. Politics of diversion: Both organized and loosed structures are problematic. The power of unstructured networks to be able to do bottom-up changes opposites their unreliability, unsustainability and their high fluctuation. People need some structure in their life. Both models neither compete nor overlap each other.

2. Think Global, Act Local. Growing gaps, ruptures and tensions make place for changes, temporary coalitions, radically take sides with the new digital generations and go for change.

3. Networks are ready to interact on political level. Tensions lead to actions.

4. Platforms such as Indymedia and Wikipedia are not an alternative to CNN anymore. They grew into the shifting landscape of media, while there is no more space for activism anymore.

5. A participatory revolution? YouTube and MySpace are considered the apogee of participatory media, but lacking media activism.

6. There is no politics of networks, if there are no borders of networks.

7. What remains of a former pulsating, energetic network are the ruins of its borders. How to engage the border as the condition of transformation and renewal?

8. There is a difference between citizen's rights and user's rights. It's important to loose the ties between 'democracy' and 'the media'. What can be translated from offline networks to online networks? The rules do change.

9. How can the fragility of the borders of a network turned into a strength of the future of networks?

10. How can we use the potential of new media in an educative sense? Can these energies be directed into a creative collaboration of minds?

THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET - AND HOW TO STOP IT

Jonathan L. Zittran, 2008

Tethered Appliances, Software as Service and Perfect Enforcement

Zittran summarizes appliances that are controlled remotely from the producer/vendor etc. rather than from the end-user in this chapter. He concludes that the generative aspect of the PC led to is big success but also to its biggest failure: bad code. Since most glitches in performance can not be fixed by the consumer easily, people move away toward more centrally controlled devices such as mobile phones, video game consoles, iPods, TiVos, iPhones, Blackberries... The ongoing communication between device and their vendors assures functionality, no one but the vendor should change them to ensure functionality.

He names the term Web 2.0 a buzz word that describes the migration of traditional PC functionalities onto the internet, and the therefor user-generated content just being a side effect to this.

With the example of TiVo against EchoStar he mentions an incident in already in 1998, where infringement of intellectual property rights caused the deletion of user recordings on a DVR including the whole DVR-functionality.

Describing the borders of law in those cases very flexible he states that those in control of the tethered appliance can control the behavior undertaken with the device in a number of ways: preemption, specific injunction, and surveillance - described in detail.

He also deals with the topic of "the perfect law enforcement" and evaluates the term, naming actual examples, he also includes the term "tolerated uses" in copyright infringement. He sees the end of generativity, generative PCs not only in the upcome of more stable working, tethered appliances but also in the shift from classical software to web 2.0, where the user has the feeling not to be surfing the internet but using online software as they were working locally on their PCs. These makes tethered appliances worrisome, since the loss of their generative character also raises the possibilities of (remote) regulation.

These possibilities arose through the continuously available high-speed internet access and the text was written in a state where ebook-readers have not hit the market as much as now, so it seems a pretty informative basis and perspective on the development of tethered appliances from a critical point of view. The text uses a lot of interesting historical events that help envisioning how the future could look like, and also questions the aspect of centralized control on content generated or owned by a user digitally.

CYBERTEXT - PERSPECTIVES ON ERGODIC LITERATURE

Espen J Aarseth, The John Hopkins University Press, 1997

(Introduction) Aarseth brings an interesting perspective on the relation of narrative text on its own to the reader but also to the medium it is connected to. He describes as well the parallels as the differences he sees between conventional text and hypertext, also referring to literary critics and theorists who do not see his point (1997) and do not acknowledge his essentially new perspectives on "ergodic literature". He tries to picture the impact of interactivity through new technology from a time, where terms as web 2.0 where not present yet and "cybertext" as present and common today could not have been imagined yet. This gives an interesting insight on the hypertext culture and its hopes and views.

In the introduction to his book Aarseth tries to define his approach to the notion of cybertext. He explains the term "ergodic literature" as text where nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text and counts cybertext/hypertext to this definition. Cybertextuality is nonlinear and produces verbal structure for the aesthetic effect. Literary theorists, however, claim also forkable text/hypertext being a linear sequence during reading. Aarseth argues that when reading hypertext one is constantly reminded of inaccessible strategies, paths that are not taken, voices which are not heard. The reader misses the exact result of his choices. A reader that is strongly engaged in the unfolding of narratives is powerless, similar to the spectator of a soccer game is not a player himself and does not experience the pleasure of influence but the pleasure of being a voyeur - safe, but impotent.

Aarseth sees narrative text as a labyrinth, a game, an imaginary world where the reader is able to explore at will, get lost, discover secret paths, follow rules... According to Penelope Reed Doob one must distinct between unicursal and multicursal mazes: "If on a winter's night a traveler"(1993) by Samuel Beckett/Italo Calvina can be seen as a unicursal maze. "Rayuela"(1966) by Julio Cortazar is a multicursal maze, "Pale Fire"(1962) by Vladimir Nabokov is both unicursal and multicursal. A footnote in a text can also be seen as both, it offers the reader a choice of expansion.

Aarseth also describes the term "book" as printed, bound and sold in the most traditional fashion, the "codex format" is one of the most flexible and powerful information tools yet invented and its capacity can probably never be exhausted. Writing always has been a spatial activity, referring to 2-3-dimensionally layouted wall inscriptions on temples in ancient Egypt. "I Ching" receives special attention through its hexadecimal system where 64 symbols result in 4096 possible texts, used as a oracle, being one of the oldest Chinese texts, also inspired Leibniz and the binary system used for computer technology. Through digital computing Aarseth sees the concepts such as "the text itself" being broken down into two independent technological levels: the interface and the storage medium.

Talking about poetics in writing computer programs he sees a constant evolution, mentioning Eliza (1963), Adventure and Tale-Spin. He summarizes cybertext being not a new form but only a perspective on all forms of textuality. He mentions the conventional split between text and reading, the second reading of the text always changes the experience, the relation between signifiant and signifié. Text never exists without a context, convention, contamination. Describing text as a machine as a mechanical device for production and consumption of verbal signs, this machine is not complete without a human operator.The textual machine connects the operator, the verbal sign and the medium. Each text can be positioned in this multidimensional field according to its functional capabilities (see chapter 3).

MARSHALL MCLUHAN - GUTENBERG GALAXY

The Gutenberg Galaxy deals with the great changes from the handwritten to the print. He mentions philosophical and social aspects of that change, mainly pointing out the print representing uniformity and certitude in language and changing the relevance of semantics in the written medium. He puts the reader of print in a different position than the reader of a manuscript, calling print a frame-by-frame version of thoughts and stressing the point-of-view, the importance of the perspective of the reader. He also mentions the printed book as a mass medium in a relation to trends and markets, pointing out its importance on the cult of individualism through being portable and breaking the library monopoly. McLuhan describes the change of an era that seems unseizable for a person born in the 20th century, reigned by mass production, making a world without mass-produced goods unimaginable. This record of an era keeps in mind the pro's and con's of a mass-produced society by serving with a broad set of facts and examples from past centuries. McLuhan's book itself being print serves as an example as well as a paradox of its own content.

"Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic" (74f)

McLuhan points out the important difference between scribal and typographical books in the history of the book in the Western world and that only one-third of the book's history is typographic. He cites G.S. Brett's "Psychology Ancient and Modern": The idea that essentially book learning describes knowledge is a modern view, whereas the original idea is that of "cunning" or the possession of wits. He specifies a dichotomy that the book brings into any society and mentions the work of James Joyce in this regard. With Finnegans Wake he describes the "emergence of the caveman or sacral man from the audile world of simultaneous resonance into the profane world of daylight". He sees the Wake as Joyce's Altamira drawings of the entire history of the human mind. All basic gestures and postures during all phases of human culture and technology resemble a wake that can disappear again. He makes connections with the terms wake, awake, light and darkness and refers to self-awareness as a quality of humans to be able to live simultaneously in all modes of culture while staying conscious, awake in a cultural clash between the oral and visual, the savage and civilized, the sacral and profane. "The invention of typography confirmed and extended the new visual stress of applied knowledge, providing the first uniformly repeatable commodity, the first assembly line, and the first mass-production." (124-126)

In this chapter McLuhan declares typography an instrument of uniformity. He quotes Abbott Payson Usher stating "The invention of printing marks the line of division between medieval and modern technology". McLuhan calls it the first reduction of a handicraft term to mechanical terms, translating a movement into a series of static shots or frames. This reminds me of the translation from analog to digital signal-transformation, the most popular equivalent of that idea in the late 20th century. He calls print the first mass-production and also points out the change of relation to the writer the reader has when not reading a manuscript but print. Print culture can be seen as a visual homogenization, reducing an experience to the visual only while relegating the auditive and sensual. The "point of view" habit of a fixed position gave popular extension to the avant-garde perspectivism of the 15th century, which puts a focus on the relativity of knowledge, which revolutionized descriptive sciences, mathematics and modern technology.

"A fixed point of view becomes possible with print and ends the image as a plastic organism"

The fixed point of view is described with the explicit visual linking of components in a composition, the purification of the classical image and the isolation of the visual factor in experience. McLuhan compares the dynamics of the two-dimensional with Kepes' description of medieval painters who repeated the main figure many times in the same picture to represent all possible relationships that affected him. The paradox of the Gutenberg era is its strictness in being a series of static shots, that result in the homogenization of men an materials.

"With Gutenberg Europe enters the technological phase of progress, when change itself becomes the archetypal norm of social life" In his "Defence of Poetry" Sir Philip Sydney declares the poet to be the only one who applies matter to the erection of the human spirit while the philosopher only teaches and the historian only gives examples. Descartes recognizes that print changes philosophy by rendering the probing and checking of every term unnecessary. Print discourages verbal play through its strong demand for uniformity of spelling and meaning, resulting in certitude that puts the reader into the center. He compares the contrast of "To be or not to be" with the conflict between "conscience" and "resolution". The printed word is an arrested moment of mental movement, the reader is dealing with a "still shot". The alphabet in print serves as the highest intensity of definition, print is the technology of individualism.

"The portability of the book, like that of the easel-painting, added much to the new cult of individualism" Printing broke the library monopoly by making the book an individual object through its portability and increased reading speeds because of uniform and repeatable type. McLuhan describes the book also in its character of being a product that is regulated by a market. An author needs capital for printing and publishing, runs the risk of commercial failure, is dependent on the drive of sales and markets. A new kind of consumer world arises, Latin books are losing ground around 1530, the reading public changes, includes women and middle class people. We can only imagine the medieval book trade through its parallel with today's art market, where great paintings are mostly traded second-hand.