“Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner” (May, 1992). Evaluate this statement with reference to specific contemporary examples.
stef1994feb
W2notes6.pptxNew Media and Government
We the Pixel
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Hobbes vs. Locke
For by Art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth … which is but an artificial man … and in which the Sovereignty is an artificial soul…
Hobbes T.
Leviathan 1651
Whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People…
Locke, J.
Two Treatises on Government 1689
This illustrates an early development of social contact theory.
Thomas Hobbes (Royalist)
For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH, or STATE, (in latine CIVITAS) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; and in which, the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and motion to the whole body.
Believed that mankind’s “state of nature” was to be at war with one another.
Without leadership life is “nasty, brutish and short”
John Locke (Sort-of Republican)
Whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence.
Believed that we are indeed in a social contract with the state, but that this is one we enter into voluntarily
If the state mistreats us or curtails our rights, then we must challenge and overthrow that state.
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Knowledge is Power
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Madison, J. 1822
Writings 9:103
It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory.
Lyotard 1999, 163
If we are going to be engaged citizens we require access to information
Without knowledge we cannot judge our leaders
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[New Media is] fluid, individualized connectivity, a medium to distribute and control freedom.
Chun 2006:1
Paul Otlet
Vannevar Bush
Stewart Brand
Douglas Engelbart
Ted Nelson
Tim Berners-Lee
New Media (which we can here take to mean the internet) allows us to devise our own connections with one another.
It is in this way (among others) that it distributes freedom; if knowledge is power (and power liberates us) then the internet distributes the power previously held from us.
These people each (in different ways) discussed the way in which information might be made more democratic, and therefore available to all.
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Paul Otlet (1868-1944)
… it is necessary that all of these individual works be registered and classified, so that anyone can retrieve them immediately in order to use them and to push ahead, to know at every moment what has been done and what remains to be done.
Otlet, P. 1990:13
1892: Wrote “Something about Bibliography”
Books are arbitrarily designed by an author, rather than being chunked into information.
Social Sciences are too discursive, unlike natural science
No adequate system for organising knowledge for retrieval.
Sought to standardise research into simple index cards
An internationalist, who dreamed of a single language which would connect all people across cultures.
Created the Universal Decimalisation System for categorizing all knowledge.
1895: Universal Bibliographic Repository, where you could write in a query and receive up to fifty index cards of references in response.
Spent war seeking peace, and hoped to set up a set of global human rights.
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Vannevar Bush (1890-1974)
The memex: “a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.”
Bush 1945
1938: National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) chair
Chair, National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), and later director of OSRD
Co-ordinated 6000 scientists in research pertaining to war.
Initiated the Manhattan project
Feared that the scale of information would lead to information overload.
Otlet is focussed on the academic community, as is Bush.
Connectivity is a privilege of the few.
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Stewart Brand (1938-)
We are as gods and might as well get good at it.
So far, remotely done power and glory—as via government, big business, formal education, church—has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains.
In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing—power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by the WHOLE EARTH CATALOG.
Preface, Whole Earth Catalogue, 1966
1950s: repression, a return to the norm, a generation after war
1960s (late) : rejection of the status quo, a feeling of seismic change.
Stewart Brand: counterculture figure of 1960s.
Joined author Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters upon graduation, where he experimented with psychoactives and lived the commune lifestyle.
Saw a picture of earth from space and was inspired to devise whole earth catalogue (google before google – Jobs)
Above quote refers to the whole earth catalog’s capacity to unite communities.
Also assisted Douglas Engelbart’s mother of all tech demos
Demonstrated mouse, keyboard, graphics – the modern computer
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Practitioners
Douglas Engelbart
We are developing means to augment the human intellect…
[With networked computers] no-one can dominate the show
Engelbart, D. 1962
Ted Nelson
Computers are versatile gizmos which may be turned to any purpose, in any style.
Nelson, T. 2003:304
Engelbart
1962: Authored a report to the Air Force suggesting that we might use computers to devise a different kind of office.
Sought to harness collective intelligence
1968: Mother of all Tech Demos
Nelson
1965: presented "Complex Information Processing: A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" at the National Conference, in which he coined the term "hypertext”
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Computer Lib / Dream Machines
I have an axe to grind: I want to see computers useful to individuals, and the sooner the better, without necessary [sic] complication or human servility being required. Anyone who agrees with these principles is on my side, and anyone who does not, is not.
THIS BOOK IS FOR PERSONAL FREEDOM, AND AGAINST RESTRICTION AND COERCION.
That’s really all it’s about. Many people, for reasons of their own, enjoy and believe in restricting and coercing people: the reader may decide whether he is for or against this principle.
Nelson, 1974
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Communication (definition) : common; creating a sense of shared identity, sharing information
The internet and the web are different things
The internet is the International Network of computers; the web is the content/software that runs on it
Funding for the internet came from government.
The initial idea was to centralise all communication between academic and government institutions to one place, where details would be logged.
Initially ARPA developed decentralisation; having server ‘nodes’ which routed traffic
Finally, distributed computing, whereby information is routed in various directions
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Tim Berners-Lee
The Web should somehow optimally serve humanity. That the Web should service humanity. That we should study the Web, develop it, and check that it is serving humanity.
Berners-Lee, T. 2008
Worked as a contractor at CERN where he proposed a system for sharing research he called ENQURE
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Old Media: one to many
New Media: many to many
Levy 1998: 140-41
Monopolies of information work like this: F controls the media, so they control what C is likely to hear.
McLuhan: Hot media: sequential, authoritarian
Cool media: non-sequential, end of authority
The Internet (Physical infrastruture) vs the web (software)
Postal service vs individual letters.
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Community Optimists
People in virtual communities do just about everything people do in real life, but we leave our bodies behind
Rheingold 1993
[We are] nomadic gatherers of knowledge … with electricity we extend our central [nervous] system globally, instantly interrelating every human experience.
McLuhan 1964:358
Community Optimists
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Read
Barlowe
Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace
Read
The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto
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[New Media is] fluid, individualized connectivity, a medium to distribute and control freedom.
Chun 2006:1
Reading
Further reading
Castells, M.
Mobile Communication & Society
Networks of Outrage and Hope
Shirky, C.
Here Comes Everyone
Barbrook, R. et al
The Californian Ideology
For next week
Zimmerman, E. Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games: Four naughty concepts in need of discipline
http://www.ericzimmerman.com/texts/Four_Concepts.html
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