Review of Carr and Dean from LBO

Left Business Observer
Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to our
Brains , W.W. Norton, 276 pp. $26.95.
Jodi Dean, Blog Theory: Feedback and Culture in the Age of the
Drive, Polity Press, 140 pp., $19.95.


Hearts fluttered over the contribution of Facebook and Twitter to the Middle Eastern uprisings. No doubt they contributed, but so did things like pre-existing union agitation in Egypt. And it wouldn’t have happened had people not gotten out of their pajamas and into the streets. But, over the longer term, what is our
wired world doing to our minds and cultures?

These two books come at the same problem from different directions. Jodi Dean’s is explicitly from the left and rather theoretical, and Nicholas Carr’s isn’t explicitly political and is mostly empirical. But they both make you worry about the Internet’s effect on us. Neither author is a Luddite, and both blog. And they’re aware of the oddness of writing a book about the topic. The new media world is fast, faster even than TV, which rewards “fast thinkers,” as Pierre Bourdieu put it (see LBO #83). The speed of TV is driven by advertisers, who fear that anything seriously disruptive, like pausing to think, might interfere with sales effort. Though those preferences have become embedded in the assumptions of producers—they love bombast, phony conflict, quick cuts—one could still imagine serious conversation on TV, or disruptive art—in fact, we’ve all seen that now and then.

Instructions for self-assessment--due May 9

Your self-assessment is due at 4:30 on Monday, May 9, in my office.

It needs to have a cover page, be typed, double-spaced, with page numbers, and a staple in the upper left hand corner.

The paper should be 12-15 pages long.

Illustrations, graphs, graphics, images, charts, and comics are permitted. Take risks. 

The best papers will engage specific readings. 

You should assess your performance in the class. Here are the sorts of questions you might consider:

What did you put into the class? How did you contribute to others' learning and experience? In what ways did you take responsibility for your own learning? 

What did you get out of the course? Is there a difference between what you thought at the beginning of the term and what you think now?  Is there anything you would do differently?

With all these questions, be as specific as possible. You might choose to construct your answer in terms of the readings. You might choose to construct your answer in terms of themes. You might choose to construct your answer in terms of the areas of assessment (projects, participation, blogs, exams, papers). You might choose to construct your answer in terms of the types of activities engaged in (books, online readings, Facebook, blogs, lectures, debates, presentations, discussions, collaborative exams).      

Final Exam--due May 7 at 4:30

Deadline:  Saturday, May 7, at 4:30. Exams must be handed in to my office by 4:30 on May 7. Exams must be typed, double-spaced, with citations and page numbers; they must be stapled in the top left corner. I will not accept late exams.

You may use your books and consult with others in the class. As a preface or introduction to your exam, explain how you went about answering the questions. Did you work with others? With whom did you work? How did you organize yourselves? What was the process? Be as specific as possible. Failure to provide this account will result in a ten point penalty (that is, ten points deducted from your total exam points).

Note: Your self-assessment will be due on Monday, May 9, at 5:00 in my office. I will accept early papers. I will not accept late papers.

There are 10 ten point questions and 1 twenty point question.

Ten point questions. Be sure to cite and engage the readings that inform your answer.

1.  Eric Raymond contrasts the cathedral and the bazaar. What point is he trying to make with this contrast? Is his argument consistent with his title? Why or why not? 

2.  Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that Google has capitalized on public failure. What does he mean when says this? How is this argument connected to the question of regulation?

3.  What drives social media? The best answers will think in terms of both the users and the features of social media. They will also refer to the "The Viral Me."

4.  In what ways does an eighties "hacker culture" shape Wikileaks? How does this differentiate Wikileaks from more traditional journalism? What are the benefits of these differences? What are the drawbacks?

5.  What does Mark Andrejevic mean by "digital enclosure"?

6.  Does interactivity entail democratization? Use Mark Andrejevic to answer this question. What are the repercussions of your answer for analyzing movements.org?

7.  What is the connection between technology and refusal of work according to Franco Berardi?

8.  According to Franco Berardi, why do problems like panic disorder, ADHD, and depression increase under semio-capitalism?

9.  According to Nicholas Carr, what does the internet do to our brains? How does he use the idea of brain plasticity in his argument? Is it persuasive? Why or why not?

10.  Why is it in Google's interest to get us to click on more and more links? What are the repercussions of this for Google? What are the repercussions for people? Does it make sense to use the notion of efficiency to think about thinking? Why or why not?

Twenty point question. Be sure to engage and cite material from the course in your answer. You may use texts assigned during the first half of the course (chapter two of Terranova may be important here).

Students had the option of changing the way their work in the course would be assessed. You could change the requirements as well as the way these requirements would be weighted. Why didn't you do this? In answering the question, consider what you personally did or did not do as well as what your fellow students did or did not do (I'm asking you here whether you think your own reasons/motivations were the same or different from those that you attribute to others). The best answers will thematize the effect of the media terrain. For example, digital networks are supposed to facilitate communication; they are supposed to enable people to connect with one another easily; is this the same as enabling/inciting people to come together to evaluate problems, formulate options, and make decisions? Might the same technologies that reduce friction also displace action?

End of term

Since there hasn't been a consensus (much less a full debate) on the course requirements, the one's I introduced at the beginning of the term will stand.

The format for the final exam will be the same as it was for the mid-term. It will be due on May 7 at 5:00. I will post the questions this Friday.

The self assessment paper (15 pages) will be due on May 9 at 5:00. I will post guidelines for the paper by Friday.

Write or Die by Dr Wicked � About

Write or Die by Dr Wicked � About:

"Write or Die is a web application that encourages writing by punishing the tendency to avoid writing. Start typing in the box. As long as you keep typing, you’re fine, but once you stop typing, you have a grace period of a certain number of seconds and then there are consequences."

The Terminators: drone strikes prompt MoD to ponder ethics of killer robots | World news | The Guardian

The Terminators: drone strikes prompt MoD to ponder ethics of killer robots | World news | The Guardian:

"The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence.

The report warns of the dangers of an 'incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality', referring to James Cameron's 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute 'acceptable machine behaviour'."

Google against extremism (AYM related)

Remember AYM (Movements.org) and one of its founders, Jared Cohen? He has a new project, fighting violence extremism. That is, Google, a corporation, is participating in a political struggle against what it (or the US State Department) considers violent extremism:

Neo-Nazi groups and al Qaeda might not seem to have much in common, but they do in one key respect: their recruits tend to be very young. The head of Google’s new think tank, Jared Cohen, believes there might be some common reasons why young people are drawn to violent extremist groups, no matter their ideological or philosophical bent. So this summer, Cohen is spearheading a conference, in Dublin, Ireland, to explore what it is that draws young people to these groups and what can be done to redirect them.

Technology, of course, is playing a role both in recruiting members to extremist groups, as well as fueling pro-democracy and other movements--and that’s where Google’s interest lies. "Technology is a part of every challenge in the world, and a part of every solution,” Cohen tells Fast Company. "To the extent that we can bring that technology expertise, and mesh it with the Council on Foreign Relations’ academic expertise--and mesh all of that with the expertise of those who have had these experiences--that's a valuable network to explore these questions."

Cohen is the former State Department staffer who is best known for his efforts to bring technology into the country’s diplomatic efforts. But he was originally hired by Condaleezza Rice back in 2006 for a different--though related--purpose: to help Foggy Bottom better understand Middle Eastern youths (many of whom were big technology adopters) and how they could best "deradicalized." Last fall, Cohen joined Google as head of its nascent Google Ideas, which the company is labeling a "think/do tank."

This summer’s conference, "Summit Against Violent Extremism," takes place June 26-29 and will bring together about 50 former members of extremist groups--including former neo-Nazis, Muslim fundamentalists, and U.S. gang members--along with another 200 representatives from civil society organizations, academia, private corporations, and victims groups. The hope is to identify some common factors that cause young people to join violent organizations, and to form a network of people working on the issue who can collaborate going forward.

"With more than 50% of the world’s population under the age of thirty and the vast majority of those characterized as 'at risk,' socially, economically, or both, an oversupply exists of young people susceptible to recruitment by the extremist religious or ideological group closest to them in identity or proximity," Cohen wrote on the blog of the Council on Foreign Relations, the event’s co-host.

One of the technologies where extremism is playing out these days is in Google’s own backyard. While citizen empowerment movements have made use of YouTube to broadcast their messages, so have Terrorist and other groups. Just this week, anti-Hamas extremists kidnapped an Italian peace activist and posted their hostage video to YouTube first before eventually murdering him. YouTube has been criticized in the past for not removing violent videos quick enough. But Cohen says the conference is looking at the root causes that prompt a young person to join one of the groups in the first place. "There are a lot of different dimensions to this challenge," he says. "It’s important not to conflate everything."

Web Creator Tim Berners-Lee: Internet Access Is A Human Right

Web Creator Tim Berners-Lee: Internet Access Is A Human Right: "We're living in a world where Internet access should be as readily available as water, according to the man who helped create the web, Tim Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee, who made his comments at an MIT symposium on 'Computation and the Transformation of Practically Everything,' noted that people have become so reliant on the web that it should be a right to have access to it, as reported by Network World.

'Access to the Web is now a human right,' he said. 'It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.'"

Second paper topics. Papers due on April 22.

Be sure to read the instructions carefully.

Deadline: Papers are due on April 22 at 5:00. I do not accept late papers--no exceptions. You must submit a paper and electronic version. Paper versions are due in my office at 5:00 on April 22. Electronic versions must be sent to my email address: jdean@hws.edu. Again, you must submit both versions (submitting just one does not count and you will get a "0").

Format: Papers must be typed, double-spaced, with a title page, citations (recognized academic form), and page numbers. The paper version must be stapled in the upper left corner. Papers should be 6-8 pages long (5 is too short; 9 is too long).

Style: Papers must have a thesis, that is, a primary claim for which you argue on the basis of your reading of the texts assigned for the class. The thesis must appear in your first paragraph. The assignment is to write an essay on one of the topics listed below. The essay should answer the question the topic poses. In answering the question, the essay should draw from (and cite) the relevant course materials (as well as materials from your presentation if you choose that question). You are welcome to email me your thesis in advance to make sure you are on the right track. I can only answer queries made before noon on April 20.

Assessment: The criteria for assessment (not in rank order) are 1) the format requirements; 2) the cogency of the thesis; 3) the quality of the argument; 4) the quality of the writing; 5) the depth of engagement with the course readings; 6) the understanding of the readings demonstrated in the paper. I am looking for papers that take a position and present strong, well-supported arguments for it. I am also looking for papers that show improvement and development since the beginning of the course.

Questions (choose 1):

1. Terminator 2 depicts a future of sentient machines. Mark Andrejevic envisions a present wherein interactivity disempowers citizens politically while at the same time telling them that they are active and involved. Given the empirical examples we've discussed in class (Movements.org, open source software/development, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia), which vision seems most likely? Are the ways of dealing with (preventing? overcoming?) these two futures the same? Why or why not?

2. Franco Berardi argues that in semio-capitalism, "human minds and flesh are integrated with digital circuits thanks to interfaces of acceleration and simplification. . . " Explain Berardi's thesis. How is it like or not like a vision of Terminators? How is it like or not like the vision of hive mind or singularity Lanier criticizes? Is Berardi right? Why or why not?

3. Franco Berardi contrasts connection with conjunction. Explain these two concepts. What do they entail for the connective generation? Use these concepts to analyze Facebook and/or Twitter.

4. Write an essay in which you compare and contrast Dean and Berardi. Be sure to consider whatever being and the connective generation as well as their discussions of the change in the symbolic/decline of symbolic efficiency.

5. Write an essay that uses one of the theoretical pieces we've read this term (Terranova, Dean, Andrejevic, Berardi) to explore more analytically the empirical material you covered in your class presentation. (These papers will be graded in terms of the depth/detail of your analysis).

6. Franco Berardi describes our world of digital networks in terms of a series of psychopathologies. Yet he also suggests that information technologies are liberating. Which side of his story is more convincing? Why? Are both sides present in our contemporary setting? How or in what sense?

7. Franco Berardi suggests that the connective generation (the generation that learned more words from machines than from their mothers) lacks empathy and desire. He even suggests that art and poetry are captured in semio-capitalism, unable to oppose semio-capitalism. Why does he think this? What are the implications of this claim? Is he right?

Celebrity and the refusal of work (I prefer to sleep)

I've been thinking about Ryan's remarks on celebrity [check out Ryan's clarification of his point]. Elements of celebrity that are appealing include money, doing what one wants, and, "being almost like a kid again" (I think that is pretty close to a direct quote). In a way, then, the desire for celebrity is a desire for freedom (autonomy). It is also a desire for recognition (to be known to others).

Is it possible that the desire for recognition ends up trumping the desire for freedom? Or that the desire for recognition functions in such a way that it can be manipulated and so substitute for or displace the desire for freedom (we might think here about the entrepreneurs quoted in the Friedman article; as they explain, successful social media uses people's desire for affirmation, people's need to prove they exist).

What if we focus on the desire for freedom? Bifo describes the desire for freedom as a refusal for work: "I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep."

Might then the celebrity form be a form of our alienation, our unfreedom? If we were free to sleep when we wanted, free not to work, would we be likely to fantasize about the freedom of a select few?

HACKING MONOPOLISM TRILOGY - Face to Facebook

HACKING MONOPOLISM TRILOGY - Face to Facebook:
"There are other common themes in the projects. In all of them we stole data that is very sensitive for the respective corporations. With Google it was the 'clicks' on their AdSense Program; with Amazon we started to steal the content of entire books, and with Facebook we stole a huge amount of public data profiles. In all the three projects, the theft is not used to generate money at all, or for personal economic advantage, but only to twist the stolen data or knowledge against the respective corporations. In GWEI it was the shares obtained through the money created by the Adsense program; in Amazon Noir it was the pdf books distributed for free; and in Face To Facebook it is the collection of profiles moved with no prior notice to a dating website.

All the projects, indeed, independently claim that some of the corporation’s 'crown jewels', including their brand image and marketing approaches, can be hacked, focusing only on their established strategies and thinking in a 'what if?' fashion"

Radical Philosophy - Commentaries - March/April 2011

Excerpt from an interesting discussion of Wikileaks. I encourage you to read the whole piece, available at the link:

Radical Philosophy - Commentaries - March/April 2011

"Years ago, Julian Assange considered solutions for an unusual problem, the kind of thing cryptographers discuss: how can you make sure a message only becomes readable at a certain time, not before, such that no human frailty or mechanical error interferes with the schedule? He came up with three answers, which display his knack for odd lateral thinking, an unremarked gift that turns up throughout his work. One solution: encrypt the message, and then broadcast the key to the code out into space, to ‘distant astral bodies’, as he puts it, and wait for it to be bounced back. You can publicize the body, the distance, the coordinates; the satellite dishes of Earth will be oriented at that hour of that day to pick up the bounce and your message will be read. Another solution is quite baroque, with space probes passing a key stream between them, ‘using space as the storage medium’, before sending decrypts back to Earth. The last is by far the most elegant solution, the most difficult to realize, and in some ways the cruellest."

Telestreet: The Italian Media Jacking Movement

For Thursday: Precarious Rhapsody 1-3

Teaching Insurrection - Franco Berardi Bifo | Through Europe from Through Europe on Vimeo.

Eurozine - The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives - Geert Lovink A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum

Eurozine - The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives - Geert Lovink A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum:

"Google suffers from data obesity and is indifferent to calls for careful preservation. It would be naive to demand cultural awareness. The prime objective of this cynical enterprise is to monitor user behaviour in order to sell traffic data and profiles to interested third parties. Google is not after the ownership of Emile Zola; its intention is to lure the Proust lover away from the archive. Whereas for the French, Balzac's collected works are the epiphany of French language and culture, for Google they are abstract data junk, a raw resource whose sole purpose it is to make profit. It remains an open question"

Harsh reality behind Apple scandal | China Watch

Harsh reality behind Apple scandal | China Watch:

"Employees of United Win Technology suffered muscular atrophy and damage to their nervous system after using a chemical, n-hexane, to clean touch panels from August 2008 to July 2009. The company is owned by Taiwan-based Wintek Corp, which produces iPhone components for Apple.

Apple Inc acknowledged the scandal for the first time on Feb 15, in its Apple Supplier Responsibility 2011 Progress Report. The company said 137 workers at the Suzhou facility had suffered adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane. The factory has 16,000 employees.

As of Monday, 100 of the 137 had left the factory with compensation of 80,000 to 140,000 yuan ($12,166 to $21,291), according to Liu Jie, press officer for the industrial park where the plant is situated. All signed agreements with United Win Technology that exempt it from responsibility if their health worsens, Liu said."

Excerpt from "The Packet Gang" by Jamie King

A segment from a critique of the extension of the open source model of development to other areas, particularly political organizing and Indy Media:

Here, the idea of openness presents itself as absolutely inimical to the ‘dominant multinational global news system’, where ‘news is not free, news is not open’. With open publishing

the process of creating news is transparent to the readers. They can contribute a story and see it instantly appear in the pool of stories publicly available. Those stories are filtered as little as possible to help the readers find the stories they want. Readers can see editorial decisions being made by others. They can see how to get involved and help make editorial decisions. If they can think of a better way for the software to help shape editorial decisions, they can copy the software because it is free and change it and start their own site. If they want to redistribute the news, they can, preferably on an open publishing site. 

The working parts of journalism are exposed. Open publishing assumes the reader is smart and creative and might want to be a writer and an editor and a distributor and even a software programmer [...] Open publishing is free software. It’s freedom of information, freedom for creativity.[16]

Accounts such as this and De Angelis’ bear out my argument that an extreme amount of expectation is being focused on openness as an agent for change. Not only is openness central to the organisation of the social movement, but in many cases it is taken as read that the organisational quality of openness is inherently radical and will be productive of positive change in whichever part of the social-political field it is deployed.

Stallman: "Why Open Source Misses the Point of Free Software"

Excerpted from the Stallman: 

In 1998, a part of the free software community splintered off and began campaigning in the name of “open source.” The term was originally proposed to avoid a possible misunderstanding of the term “free software,” but it soon became associated with philosophical views quite different from those of the free software movement.

Some of the supporters of open source considered the term a “marketing campaign for free software,” which would appeal to business executives by highlighting the software's practical benefits, while not raising issues of right and wrong that they might not like to hear. Other supporters flatly rejected the free software movement's ethical and social values. Whichever their views, when campaigning for open source, they neither cited nor advocated those values. The term “open source” quickly became associated with ideas and arguments based only on practical values, such as making or having powerful, reliable software. Most of the supporters of open source have come to it since then, and they make the same association.

Nearly all open source software is free software. The two terms describe almost the same category of software, but they stand for views based on fundamentally different values. Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the free software movement, free software is an ethical imperative, because only free software respects the users' freedom. By contrast, the philosophy of open source considers issues in terms of how to make software “better”—in a practical sense only. It says that nonfree software is an inferior solution to the practical problem at hand. For the free software movement, however, nonfree software is a social problem, and the solution is to stop using it and move to free software.

The GNU Manifesto - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

The GNU Manifesto - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF): Richard Stallman

 "Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way. I cannot in good conscience sign a nondisclosure agreement or a software license agreement. For years I worked within the Artificial Intelligence Lab to resist such tendencies and other inhospitalities, but eventually they had gone too far: I could not remain in an institution where such things are done for me against my will.

So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free. I have resigned from the AI Lab to deny MIT any legal excuse to prevent me from giving GNU away.(2)"

From each according to ability = a really good system

From an interview with Linus Torvalds (chief architect for Linux operating system). The interviewer has asked him about the motivation: what was his motivation for doing all the work for free? why did he open up the project to other developers rather than view it as his own property?

LT: Well, I've put in a lot of work, and that's really what the thing has been all about: everybody puts in effort into making Linux better, and everybody gets everybody elses effort back. And that's what makes Linux so good: you put in something, and that effort multiplies. Essentially, in game theory terms it's not a "zero-sum game" at all: it's a positive feedback cycle.

Imagine ten people putting in 1 hour each every day on the project. They put in one hour of work, but because they share the end results they get nine hours of "other peoples work" for free. It sounds unfair: get nine hours of work for doing one hour. But it obviously is not.

Note that this isn't true of just the Linux developers who write the kernel code, it's also true of the actual users. Especially in the early days of Linux the users were also acting as guinea-pigs for new features and so on, and they (sometimes unwittingly) put in a lot of effort in determining whether something worked or whether it really should have worked another way. And for that work they put in they got the reward of seeing better and better systems.

What I'm really saying that there is no need for anybody to even try to put back as much as you get from the Linux project - because it doesn't really make sense. The whole project is built on the idea that everybody puts back whatever they can - and that the sum of a lot of small effort is a really good system..