User:Megan Hoogenboom/bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Armin Medosch. "Society in Ad-Hoc Mode" (2004)

The article criticizes the way technologies effect society. He wanders if technologies effect society or society effects technologies, because the people develop the new technologies themself. Cornelius Castoriadis idea of self-organisation centre on autonomy as opposed to heterogamy. Democracy must be constantly reborn, due to revolutionary groups, which are now more and more divided in minorities. Technological developments take place in the name of capitalism, not in the name of democracy. But technology can help with the rebirth of the democracy. The internet is very open, the mobile network is very closed. Mobile Telecom providers slow the development down. In al of these projects, the issue is not the realisation of a technical principle or the triumph of pseudo-rational mastery of the world, but the widening of the scope for human action. This form of freedom, and not individualistic whims, is what motivates these efforts.

Cox, Geoff. "Antisocial Applications: Notes in support of antisocial not-working"

Social networking can be named anti-social, the information of it's users can be used by companies, so they can make a profit though online friendships. He sais the network has become a manifestation of ideology in itself. The terms 'social' and 'networking' moving to the antithetical term of 'notworking'. Without politics, our friendships are empty of meaning and our exchanges lead to nothing but the commodification of life itself. Social: it is not a thing but a type of connection, an assemblage, it is a uncertain principle(a moving target of a vast array of entities swarming toward it, it's fluid). Networking: represents a key organisational principle for understanding contemporary politics, society and life in general. Emergent 'organized networks' are horizontal, collaborative and distributed in character of offering a distinct social dynamic. The participatory work ethic of social networking can be interpreted as an expression of new forms of control over subjectivity. Notworking: labour time has become more difficult to measure, much of it now practised as 'nonwork'. Notworking opposed to networking. Work can consist of nonwork. A peer to peer system in this respect might be considered 'post-capitalist' in the production of a social relation based on sharing and the common good. However, social networking demonstrates underlying contradictions: antithetically standing for relations that reflect the dynamics of network architectures and contestational politics. Angela Mitropoulos 'softwar': 'work and nonwork related to social networking software, clearly invoke antagonistic, not friendly relations.' Without the identification of antagonisms that underpin sociality, politics simply cannot be engaged.

Deleuze, Gilles, Foucault, "Every society has its diagram(s)", Introduction

The book is about a diagram (the distributed network), a technology (the digital computer) and a management style (protocol). All three come together to define a new apparatus of control that has achieved importance at the start of the new millennium. How could control excist after decentralization? Deleuze suggests that after the diciplinary societies come the cocieties of control. These societies operate with a third generation of machines, with information technologie and computers. The most extensive "computerized information management" system today is the Internet. At the core of networked computing is the concept of protocol. A computer protocol is a set of rrecommendations and rules that outline specific technical standarts. Computer protocols govern how specific technologies are agreed to, adopted, implemented, and ultimately used by people around the world. Protocol is a technique for archieving voluntary regulation within a contingent environment. Foucalt aargues in the book that protocol is how technological control exists after decentralization. By design, protocols such as the Internet cannot be centralized. To initiate communication, the two nodes have to speak the same language. That is way protocol is important, shared protocols are what defines the landscape of the network - who is conected to whom. A quote from Foucault: 'It's not that protocol is bad but that protocol is dangerous". For all its faults, protocological control is still an imporovement over ither modes of social control. "Periodization is an initial technique tat opens the path and allows us to gain access to history and historical differences." A distributed architecture is prcisely that witch makes protological/imperial control of the network so easy. Protological control mirrors the movements of Empire (Negri & Hardt).
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"Hail the Multitudes", Adbusters The Magazine, Mise en linge le lundi 1er janvier 2007.

Multitude is the name that Michael Hardt and his colleague Antonio Negri gave to an emerging form of social organisation: Itis composed of different people who act in common and collaborate, without denying their differences, freedom or autonomy. It is democratic and can have effectively challenge the present structure of power and pose a real alternative to it. To form a Multitude, the movements must be able to act in common and create a coherent and powerful political project. They say that if you are trained in your work and daily lives to collaborate in horizontal networks, you will be able too in political organisations collaboratively to make decisions, challenge the present forms of power, and propose an alternative society. This sais that new forms of organisation can be effective. Horizontal networks offer flexibility and carry a natural power and legitimacy, because they emerge from a model of production. There is good reason to expect therefore that these horizontal, collaborative networks can emerge, slowly over decades, as the primary and most powerful forms of political organisation.

Lovink, Geert and Rossiter Ned, "Ten thesis on Non-Democratic Electronics: Organized Networks Updated", their comtribution to Networked Politics, Rosa luxemburg Fundation, Berlin, 3-5 June, 2007

1. Welcome to the politics of diversion. there is a growing paradox between existing looseness and desire to organize in familiar structures. Both are problematic. Networks are known for their unreliability and unsustainability. Lovink and Rossiter observe these two models are diverging models, they do not complete or overlap either.
2. Uphold the synthesis. The question becomes how to arrange temporary coalitions, being well aware of the diverting interests and cultures. Instead 'managing' disruptive technologies, it should be also taken into consideration to radically take sides with the new generations and join the disruption. Lovink and Rossiter say: Get rid of moral pedagogies and shape the social change we envision.
3. Applied scalability is the new technics. With the tendency of networks to regress into ghettoes of self-affirmation (the multitudes are all men). we can say that in many ways networks have yet to engage 'the political'.
4. Dream up Indymedia 2.0. No more Wikipedia neutrality. Indymedia has not changed since its inception in late 1999. All too often Indymedia is used as an 'alternative CNN'. There is nothing wrong with that, except that the nature of the corporate news industry itself is changing.
5. The revolution will be participatory or she will not be. As civil society participants scaled the ladder of political/discursive legitimacy, the logic of their networks began to fade away. This is the problematic we speak of between seemingly structureless networks and structural organisations. The obsession with democracy provides another register of this social-technical condition.
6. the borders of networks comprise the "non-democratic" element of democracy. This insight is particularly helpful when thinking 'the political' of networks, since it signals the fact that networks are not by default open, horizontal and global. Important: there is no politics of networks if there are no borders of networks.
7. The borders of networks are the spacings of politics.Borders of networks can be revealed as both limits and possibilities. 8. There are no citizens of the media. What is needed accordingly to Lovink and Rossiter, is total reengineering of user-rights within the logic of networks. Organized networks are equally insistent in maintaining a 'non-democratic' politics. (non-democratic does not mean anti-democratic. Networks are not nations, however thay sometimes act like one.
9. Governance requires protocols of dissensus. They say that the borders of networks highlight their inherent fragility.
10. Design your education. It is though 'edu-networkes' that you can see some of the most inspiring activities of new institutional invention. Lovink and Rossiter claim that is time to reclaim an avant-garde position and not leave the further development of such vital techno-social tools to the neo-liberal corporate sector.