Well, the time for leisure, travel, reading, and research is over – back to lectures, tutorials, and endless admin. Below are the slides for my first lecture for this session, tracing an outline of the history of communication networks over the last 150 years. A hasty trip from telegraphy to the internet, with an emphasis on the notion of information networks as a nervous system spanning space.
tedmitew.net
My full IAMCR paper is now done, and up on the interwebs.
I will be presenting a paper at the upcoming International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) conference in Istanbul which is under the general theme of Cities, Creativity, Connectivity.
Below is the abstract for my paper titled:
Do objects dream of an internet of things: re-locating the social in ambient socio-digital systems
This paper engages the notion of an internet of things and its implications for conceptualisations of the social, as exemplified by issues such as network identity, privacy, and surveillance. The internet of things can be roughly defined as object networks linking physical and virtual objects into an assemblage with ambient data-capture capabilities. The metamorphosis of the human-centred internet into an internet of things entails the emergence of socio-digital assemblages, with ambient connectivity ‘gelling’ the practices of humans and nonhumans into an augmented, hybrid space. This hybrid space offers two sets of problems – from the perspective of its human users it questions fundamental notions of privacy and identity, while from the perspective of objects it demands for a yet-to-be developed taxonomy of hitherto black-boxed data.
The paper argues that this problematic is fundamentally a function of a social projection ill-equipped to manoeuvre in hybrid space, and suggests an examination of mobile socio-digital assemblages with a conceptual apparatus borrowed from actor-network theory (ANT) and the work of Gabriel Tarde. Key to this reasoning is the specific delineation of the social emerging from these approaches. For ANT, distinctions between entities appear as an effect of the relations between them, while for Tarde the elementary social fact consists of the forms of relations through which difference is produced. The main strength of this conceptual apparatus lies in its capacity to encounter the hybrid complexity of socio-digital assemblages without assigning a priori subject-object relationalities – spatial relations are performed simultaneously with the construction of (hybrid) objects. The paper’s argument is illustrated with case-studies of the internet of things.
The paper suggests that while the internet of things profoundly undermines human-centric projections of network sociality, it also makes the semantics of circulating objects readable for, and visible to, humans. As projects such as talesofthings, itizen, and pachube already demonstrate, making object-semantics explicit and mobile renders their human interlocutors in a hitherto unknown terrain. The enfolding of objects into socio-digital assemblages portends a rearrangement of the rules of occupancy and patterns of mobility within the physical world, because when objects are enrolled as explicit actors their circulations become explicit too.
Examining this research problematic can provide a theoretical understanding of the arguably fundamental shifts in sociality and subjectivity entailed by the proliferation of ambient socio-digital assemblages. Such an understanding is crucial if we are to formulate a stable and coherent approach to the challenges posed by an internet of things.
Reading Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia: complicity with anonymous materials – a singularly unique book way beyond any formulaic description. In the simplest of summations, it is a book about oil (naphta) as a living entity which is the secret daemonic ‘angel’ of the Middle East. Here is a tiny fragment from the section on Paleopetrology [p.17]:
Petroleum’s hadean formation developed a satanic sentience …. (envenomed) by the totalitarian logic of the tetragrammaton, yet chemically and morphologically depraving and traumatizing Divine logic, petroleum’s autonomous line of emergence is twisted beyond recognition.
To think about it, describing this work as a book is to somehow diminish the effect; rather, it is a codex of mythological proportions; a tractatus of speculative theology invoking petroleum science, the archaeology of ancient Persia and Mesopotamia, unnameable inorganic daemons, the ‘secret assassins sect known as Delta Force’, Deleuzean war machines, ancient artifacts, numerological analysis of the ‘Gog-Magog Axis’, and more, mind-bogglingly more.
I am currently re-reading Barry Hughart’s Eight Skilled Gentlemen – a fantasy novel based in Tang Dynasty China – and cannot stop wondering at the imagination and sheer Rabelaisian surrealism of the story. The following passage is a good illustration. Participants: Master Li Kao – a Confucian scholar and detective; Yen Shih – a puppeteer; Number Ten Ox – Master Li’s servant and narrator of the story. Scene: our protagonists are trying to get rid of a corpse belonging to the late servant of their host who is a powerful governor.
A great castle always has a small separate kitchen for the preparation of ceremonial dishes to be offered to ghosts or gods, and it was to be expected that a shaman would wish to offer to the gods who had aided him and invite his esteemed host to share the feast. Master Li had no difficulty commandeering the place, and in a few minutes he and Yen Shih had the corpse stretched out on the kitchen table and were cutting the clothes away. To tell the truth, I still didn’t truly believe this was happening.
‘Ox, would you see if they have any pigs’ feet jelly?’ the puppeteer asked. He turned to Master Li. ‘It seems to me that the thighs might best be marinated in a broth of pigs’ feet mixed with honey and the lees of wine, and then baked inside a crust formed of the marinade thickened with peanut paste.’
‘A connoisseur!’ said Master Li.
‘Gllgghhh’ I said.
‘Ox, while you’re at it, see if they have any pickled jellyfish skins!’ Master Li called after me as I lurched into the larder. ‘I’ve discovered they go marvelously with bear’s paws,’ he continued to Yen Shih. ‘Bears paws taste to me like sixty percent glue, so jellyfish skins might be a good accompaniment to glutinous parts, like the soles of this bastard’s feet, and perhaps the spermatic cords.’
‘Gllgghhh’ I said.
One of the shelves yielded the pigs’ feet, and in a cabinet I found a jar of jellyfish skins. When I started back towards the table Master Li was preparing to remove the top of the corpse’s head with a saw, and Yen Shih was measuring fibula and tibia for ax strokes.
‘Yen Shih, shall we do the brains in a traditional turnip sauce, or would you prefer oyster broth?’ Master Li shouted over the puppeteer’s ax.
‘You know, I rather favor poaching brains in coconut milk, if Ox can find any,’ Yen Shih said thoughtfully.
‘Brilliant!’ Master Li said admiringly. ‘Ox, see if they have any coconuts, and do you know why our erudite friend made the suggestion? Once upon a time, so the story goes, the great king of Nam Viet was stabbed by assassins, and he realised he was dying, so he pulled off his head and stuck it on a tree as his final gift to the people. The head turned into the coconut, and because the king was drunk at the time the fluid inside it is the most easily fermentable stuff on earth.’
‘I shall again seek your invaluable advice before possible ruining something,’ said Master Li. ‘Shall we keep the tongue whole, possibly baked inside a crust of walnut paste, or should we slice and saute it with butter and garlic?’
‘I am a butter-and-garlic man’ the puppeteer said. ‘Why don’t we save the walnut paste for broiling the bastard’s balls?’
‘Splendid,’ said Master Li.
‘How about a casserole of toes and ears?’
”Maybe with breast meat added,’ Master Li said. ‘Stewed slowly with bean curd, fagara, red peppers, and a lot of mushrooms added at the end.’
‘Sounds marvelous,’ said Yen Shih. ‘We have time to make a few sausages, don’t we?’
‘Oh, certainly. Here, let’s see what his intestines look like.’
‘Ox, look for some of that mustard from the south that goes so well with sausages!’ Yen Shih called out. ‘I once knew a fellow named Meng Kuan who claimed he bought mustard of Tan and took it home and forgot about it,’ he said to Master Li. ‘The stuff began to grow, and it sprouted a torso, a head, a tail, and four legs, and Meng Kuan swears it bit him and galloped out the door and he never saw it again.’
‘What was he drinking?’
‘Paint remover, I assume. Speaking of which, is there some way we can disguise the features, yet leave it intact, and serve the grand warden crisp fried face of boyfriend?’
‘Gllgghhh’ I said.
‘Will you look at this fellow’s kidneys and pancreas!’
‘Gorgeous! And the liver!’
‘Eggplant! Ox, we must have eggplant, tomatoes, onions, green peppers, and at least two kinds of squash!’
…..
Not a trace of the creature remained, except for the succession of splendid dishes that were carried to the grand warden’s table the following evening at the banquet. I lacked the social status to receive an invitation, of course, and so did Yen Shih, but Master Li was a guest of honor. Master Li could eat anything, including “Twelve-Treasure Five-Taste Herb-Honeyed Unicorn,” which was served to the grand warden as the dish of distinction. (Yen Shih and Master Li had boiled the corpse’s buttocks in an infusion of hibiscus petals, and I had to admit it gave them a lovely shade of bluish pink.) As I said, I didn’t attend, but I did hear satisfied comments from departing guests, including the assessment of two very exalted prelates.
‘A bit rich for my taste, but quite well done,’ said the High Priest of Yen-men, and his Confucian counterpart put the seal on it.
‘Singularly succulent comestibles.’
‘Gllgghhh’ I said.
Prezi from a guest lecture I did on culture jamming – discusses the origins of the practice in the Frankfurt School, examples of jamming techniques, main lines of critique, and examples of co-option of the techniques by corporate branding.
A prezi from yet another lecture on copyright – this one aiming for an overview of the state of play.
Prezi from a mini-lecture I gave on the cultural context of the gaming industry:
Prezi from my lecture on copyright enforcement in gaming, using EULA’s and the confusion surrounding user generated content as an example.