Dave Young - Collected Annotations

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Below is a collection of my annotations and descriptions from last year's Reading/Writing/Research Methodologies seminars. Reviewing them as a collection, the foundation of my current theoretical interests is very clear: namely how systems mediate the “mechanics” of society, with respect to a historical analysis of computer technologies during the Cold War.

Cyburbia

My first annotation from last year was of two chapters (The Network Effect and Peer Pressure) from James Harkin's book Cyburbia: In The Network Effect, Harkin provides a contextual analysis of network theory, introducing the concept with a reference to Pierre Bayard's book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read: “More important than mere books [...] were the teeming associations that tied those books together in the literary system.” (Harkin: 72) This idea of the study of the relationships between objects is central to network theory, and ultimately, as Harkin argues, to the way we live in the 21st century. Further elaborated on through the discussion of various mid 20th century social experiments (from Milgram's Small World Theory to the 70s Deadhead's dreams of a global consciousness with computer networks) and later the assimilation of network theory into economics and business models, the link with Norbert Wiener's theories of cybernetics becomes apparent. The concept of viewing the human body as a control and communication system, as Weiner proposed in his book Cybernetics (1937), had been “refined and extended into the network metaphor” (Harkin, 83) by the 1990s. Harkin describes how the network effect (ie - how the number of connections in a network rises exponentially to the number of nodes within the network) can be understood as a real-world social phenomenon, influencing how people look for jobs or organise protests. The chapter comes to an end with Harkin citing many critics of network theory, including a failed re-attempt of Milgram's Small World theory which, upon further investigation, resulted in the discovery of the cover-up of the original experiment's failure. On a final note, he suggests that network-theory becomes more directly relevant to society with the rise in popularity of the internet and Web 2.0.

In Peer Pressure Harkin's historical overview in the previous chapter naturally leads to how network theory has affected current trends in cyberculture. According to Harkin, Facebook is a perfect example of the network-effect: it becomes much more valuable as it's population increases and it reaches a critical mass. Along the way, it changes how we socialise -and how we talk about socialising - through the introduction of new words and phrases derived from Facebook itself. Harkin partially attributes the success of social networks and other web 2.0 concepts to technological advancements in internet speeds, without which the late-90s worries of a “monumental” cyber traffic-jam might not have been unfounded. Fed by a the public appetite for voyeurism, amateur pornography, diy reality tv websites, and fictional v-loggers proliferated online. The result, argues Harkin, is a labyrinthine mass of content that turns surfers into a state of cyburban daydreamers, clicking their way aimlessly around the internet.

While connecting people through a network of tags and google's page-rankings, the ability to communicate with people of similar opinions and worldviews as yourself is more instant than ever before. Harkin discusses the internet presence of the perpetrators of school shootings and the existence of pro-ana (anorexia) websites, providing a view on the darker results of social networks. Harkin finishes by linking the myriad of content previously discussed with cybernetics, and how feedback systems and other ideas central to network theory describe the very basis of how we communicate online.

Control and Freedom

In the introduction to her book Control and Freedom: Paranoia and Control in the Age of Fiber-Optics (2005), W.H.K Chun states that “power now operates through the coupling of control and freedom”. (p1) This idea is explored throughout the rest of the introduction, establishing a firm basis for a more detailed investigation in the following chapters.

Through the analysis of the cultural shift from disciplinary systems to control systems in the internet age, Chun discusses the effects of this on our social, political, and economic use of technology. She begins by briefly addressing the issue of privacy and the reproducibility of online content, and how our internet activity can be monitored using data-sniffing technologies. These acts of eavesdropping and cyber-espionage are contrasted with respect to Foucault's idea of disciplinary society and Deleuze's control society: in the former, power should be always visible but unverifiable, whereas in the latter the illusion is that the subject is provided with greater liberties while alternative, more subtle forms of enslavement are utilised. From an economic perspective, Chun draws a parallel between George Bush's statements on capitalist freedom (ie, the freedom to “make a living”) and Marx's “condemnation of [the] bourgeois freedom” that leaves the living person with a subordinated relationship to capital. (p11)

Chun argues that the online relationship between control and freedom can be experienced as sexuality, or sexual paranoia. Referencing the terminology of hardware components such as plugs and sockets, Chun describes how online networks are dominated by sexualised metaphors and concepts. She describes technology as being a trojan horse for pornography – putting forth the idea that the ubiquity of sexualised content and interactions online essentially render technology as being a “carrier” for pornography. Following on from this, she describes how the protection of minors from online sexualised content were the dominant reasons for internet censorship pre 9/11.

With relation to ideology, Chun describes how computers simulate ideology by acting as a “false interpretive apparatus.” (p19) Software, she argues, provides us with a representational relationship with our hardware, symbolising the real-world concepts of recycling bins, folders and files. Furthermore, the way in which the computer addresses the user directly highlights the notion of the “personal computer”, or the users assumed power over the machine. The implications of this can be seen in the acknowledgement of the prescience of cultural theorists such as Barthes, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari by studies and analyses conducted by various new media researchers. For example, studies into usage of online chat rooms and multi-user domains in the late 1990s suggested that Foucault's notions that sexuality is becoming increasingly discursive and that gender is performed seemed to be proven.

Finally, Chun argues that while technology has been seen as an antidote to political problems, in effect using it in this way “generalises paranoia.” (p25) She states that “to claim users are an effect of software is not to claim that users, through their actions, have no effect.” (p30) Arguing that we must be made aware of our vulnerability online, Chun argues that we “must seize a freedom that always moves beyond our control.” (p30)

Digital Recombination

Jos de Mul's text The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination outlines an adaptation of Benjamin's theories of mechanical reproduction, in relation to 21st century information culture. De Mul's central argument is that another paradigm-shift in how we experience media has occurred: the increasing mutability of information as a result of the digital interface. The text begins by providing an overview of the themes in Benjamin's original essay, specifically the auratic element of an artwork – it's singularity, its physical occupancy of one space in time. Describing the possibilities presented by Middle Ages' printing techniques and the eventual emergence of photography and film as “the dominant cultural interface” (p96), the author retraces Benjamin's thesis that the cult status of an object diminishes (with the aura) through reproduction. While Benjamin argues that this phenomenon had the potential to mobilise a revolution, De Mul, with the benefit of hindsight, suggests that the 'mechanical media' instead mobilised consumerist desires.

While De Mul recognises the contemporary relevance of Benjamin's arguments in The Work of Art, he makes a clear distinction between mechanical and digital reproducibility – the distinguishing factors being the ability to “Add, Browse, Change, and Destroy.” (p99-100) These features amount to a new level of informational mutability, and according to De Mul, are utilised within database structures as part of computer software and networked applications. Quoting Manovich: “databases have become the dominant form of the computer age.” (p101) In the information age, “everything – nature and culture alike – becomes an object for recombination and manipulation.” (p101)

The “manipulation value” is an important facet of database aesthetics, and further blurs the divisions between what Benjamin described as the aestheticisation of politics and the politicisation of art. By giving the example of the installation W4 by Dutch artist Geert Mul consisting of a publicly-curatable database of 80,000 images via a human-computer interface, the author argues that the database itself can become an autonomous work of art. The user's ability to query this database and form “recombinations” of images illustrates the mutability – or the “manipulation value” - of the database structure.

The manipulability of the database is an increasingly political act, as it involves the moderating of information, states De Mul. He references the political campaigns of George Bush and Geert Wilders as examples of digital recombinations and mediated displays of information. I think this point is perhaps even more visible in the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama, where the political battleground shifted further towards the feedback systems of web 2.0, and his cultivated image of ultra-hip liberal hero personality was only fractured by his admission that he owned Microsoft's dismal media player, the Zune. (source: http://gizmodo.com/5101522/barack-obama-uses-a-zune)

De Mul concludes on a tentative note, warning that Benjamin's anxious imaginings of an alienated society caused by mechanical reproduction can be transposed to contemporary information culture. What is potentially at stake, according to the author, is not only the alienation of society as Benjamin feared, but also an evolutionary threat to the human race itself: “Gradually, we become aware of the inapproachability of the workings of a technology that we have invented. And we might even start to reflect on the non-human and maybe even inhuman character of the new medium.” (p104)

Imaginary Futures

In Richard Barbrook's book Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village (2007), he provides an interesting argument for the Cold War as a battle over the future of Capitalism and Communism. He argues that technology was one way the Americans tried to convince the world that Capitalism could provide a better way of life, one that seemed to promise an end to unskilled labour and an increase in leisure time as the computers take over. I annotated two chapters, titled The Human Machine, and Cold War Computing.

In The Human Machine, Richard Barbrook describes the importance of military funding to the initial development of computer technologies. During the World War II, Alan Turing and his team at Bletchely Park developed Colossus: a computer built specifically to decode encrypted messages transmitted through German military networks. Going back further, Babbage's Difference Engine was funded by the English government as it “promised to produce more accurate navigation tables” for the British Navy. (p41)

Barbrook describes how, in the United States, the military became the dominant patrons of IBM during the Cold War: "When the survival of the nation was at stake, technological excellence wasn't constrained by financial limitations." (p40) The rapid developments in computer technologies were applied as a mass-control interface, enabling the US military to “plan the destruction of Russian cities, organise the invasion of 'unfriendly' countries, […] and pay the wages of its troops and manage its supply chain.” (p41) In the U.S, the computer was also seen as an important political tool to analyse the rapidly increasing quantities of data from sources such as the U.S census. With the use of computers, the statistics could be processed much quicker, and be presented in a more comprehensible manner to the policy-makers. Barbook's central argument in this chapter is that the computer was initially developed as a governmental tool to control a political agenda. The computers of the 1950s did not have a domestic function – they were sinister objects capable of plotting missile trajectories and simulating crisis situations. To relate this to our current seminar series on interfaces: The computer could be understood as being a tool to manage 'political conditions' – it was the interface between the military and nuclear warfare, or between the politicians and managing the economy.

Like the innovations in computer technology discussed in the previous chapter, Norbert Wiener's development of cybernetics was also driven by military purposes. Barbook describes how Wiener invented an anti-aircraft gun mechanism that could correct the aim of its operator through a system of feedback, by understanding the operator as a mechanical extension of the gun itself. Wiener was one of many scientists working on military projects – to quote Barbook: “In the early 1940s, almost every American scientist had believed that developing weapons to defeat Nazi Germany benefited humanity.” (p48) While cybernetics was quickly adopted as an important tool in a broad array of scientific disciplines after the Macy Conferences in 1946, Barbrook describes how Wiener became increasingly vocal in his opposition to the Cold War.

While Wiener adopted a socialist understanding of cybernetics, the mathematician John von Neumann developed a right-wing alternative. Barbrook writes about how Turing's theories of artificial intelligence greatly influenced von Neumann: “Just like Turing, this prophet also believed that continual improvements in hardware must eventually culminate in the emergence of artificial intelligence.” (p51) Barbook is heavily critical of the involvement of scientists such as von Neumann in the development of military technologies, writing that “scientific curiosity had led them into complicity with high-tech barbarism.” (p52) He continues: “Technological fetishism had absolved computer scientists of any responsibility for the consequences of their own actions.” (p53)

The sinister and dangerous implications of the computer were not overtly visible to the American public during the Cold War, hidden under the guise of artificial intelligence research, cybernetic theory development, or pure technological novelty. To cite Barbook's example of IBM's pavillion at the 1964 World Fair in New York: “The only hint of the corporation's massive involvement in fighting the Cold War was the presence of the computer which could translate Russian into English.” (p53) Barbook argues that the paranoid drive of technological innovation was masked by a science-fiction illusion – an 'imaginary future' that would put astronauts on the moon and create flying automobiles.

Referenced Material (In Order of Citation)

Harkin, James: Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That's Changing How We Live and Who We Are (2009) Chun, Wendy: Control and Freedom: Paranoia and Control in the Age of Fiber-Optics (2005) de Mul, Jos: The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination taken from Digital Material (2009) Barbrook, Richard: Imaginary Futures (2007)