User:Pleun/rwrs/Essay II

Essay #II

Topics:

[Steve: choose one of these topics. You have 4 essays here, each builds on the other:

Technologies of Self
The Self in the age of Digital Exhibitionism
The anthropomorphic web: How can the web be seen as a (metaphysical) entity
Internet Switching Policies: Two minutes of Jon Postel

Reading List:

[Steve: You need some Foucault here if you are going to tackle technologies of self- try means of correct training]

Databases
Hoer van de Duivel
Postscript on societies on control
The rise of the network society
A declaration of independence of cyberspace
Black transparency

[Steve's feedback and suggestions:

Key points: control societies are governed by pattern and code, and regulated by images and algorithms. This is opposed to disciplinary societies, which are governed by meaning and sense and regulated by precepts (see A. Galloway’s ‘protocol’ and G. Deleuze’s ‘postscript on the societies of control’)

Recognition of these systems (control and discipline) allows us to understand contemporary media as a mode of (self) governance and opens up a number of avenues of enquiry. I will mention four here:

1) Databases and protocols as control mechanisms

2) Digital labor (immaterial labour)

3) Digital mediation providing new ‘technologies of self’

4) Participatory surveillance

Over the next few weeks we will study a series of texts that explore these avenues

Sample texts):

Tiziana Terranova: ‘free labor’ (from ‘digital labor, the internet as playground and factory’, ed Trebor Scholz, 2013)

Ayhan Aytes: ‘return of the crowds, mechanical Turk & neoliberal states of exception’ (from ‘digital labor, the internet as playground and factory’, ed. Trebor Scholz, 2013)

Geert Lovink: ‘Facebook, anonymity and the crisis of the multiple self’ and ‘ society of the query: googlization of our lives’ (from ‘networks without a cause’, 2011)

A. Galloway: Protocol, Introduction (2004)

A. Galloway: The Interface Effect, one chapter from the book (2012)

Douglas Rushkoff: Programme or be Programmed (2012)]