Spatial Machinations
Stuart Elden points to Ian Hacking’s CdF course on his website:
This was news to me – Ian Hacking’s Collège de France courses, where he held the Chaire de philosophie et histoire des concepts scientifiques between 2001-2006, are online at his website.
(Well… DNS and territories)
Two things I’ve read recently converged in my mind and reminded me of work in geography undertaken a while ago about the ways apparently abstract or immaterial aspects of the internet are intimately tied up with traditional geo-political borders and territories.
First, as James Bridle finishes his essays about geographic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) for the Citizen-Ex project – its really interesting to reflect on the often fraught and muddy geo-politics of the domain name system (DNS), which Bridle expresses beautifully. The stories about the Libyan (.ly), Syrian (.sy) and British Indian Ocean Territory (.io) domains are especially arresting.
Second, over on Culture Digitally, Adam Fish wrote a post about the growth in interest in the high seas, the upper reaches of the atmosphere and space for creating extra-legal territories for ‘unencumbered’ innovation and for the delivery of services without the need for territorial wrangling:
Technical approaches towards national internet sovereigntyincluding IP address blocking, domain names, key words, and packet filtering. Non-technical forms of censorship include laws, regulations, threats, bribes, and arrests of publishers, ISPs, and authors. Reporters without Borders identifies 19 countries – including the US and the UK – along with Cuba, China, Iran, and North Korea, all of which use one or several of these tactics to create a distinct national internet.
Certainly, what governments want for their people and what the people want for themselves frequently diverge. But while we may agree that internet censorship by authoritarian dictatorships is an affront to free communication, can we really put our faith in Facebook’s drones? It is possible to overthrow a government and depose a dictator but it is nearly impossible to revolt against corporate drones and extraterritorial CEOs.
Both of these reminded me of a few things in geography: of work in by Mark Wilson about 15 years ago and (of course) by Matthew Zook (also about 15 years ago [e.g.]) concerning the economic geographies of the infrastructures of the internet(s). It also strongly reminded me of Alexander Murphy‘s paper in the Annals of AAG a couple of years ago about ‘Territory’s continuing allure‘. It is interesting, amongst the hyperbole of immateriality and of ‘off-shore’ data centres through which our exhaust data are analysed and sold on, that (the idea of) territory maintains certain kinds of political-economic importance in particular circumstances.
As Murphy contends (in a different context but I suggest the argument holds in relation to the examples above):
if Agnew (1999, 504) is right that the spatialities of power will change “as material conditions and associated modes of understanding of them change” (italics added), then the continu- ing hold of modernist conceptions of territory on the political–geographic imagination (see Gregory 1994) must be seen as fundamental to any effort to understand the character and prospects of the current system (p. 1214)
…
Novel spatialities of power call out for a reinvention of the linguistic terms and conceptual frameworks we use to make sense of the world (see, e.g., Allen’s [2011] call for a consideration of what he terms topologies of power). At the same time, if we are to make sense of the circumstances and struggles shaping the political future, we must not underplay territory’s continuing ideological hold and practical significance … We also need to factor in the enduring significance of territorially based worldviews that continue to shape the perspective and ideas of billions of people–and by extension the institutions and regimes that circumscribe their lives.(p. 1224)
In a post on TechCrunch Jon Evans runs through the various ways we might have to rethink ownership in a tightly vertically integrated economy of an ‘internet of things’. The article resonates with the talk “Dancing with Data” by Chris Speed that I posted a few weeks ago, about markets, value and how we can understand our everyday uses of digital technologies.
As Chris argues, you/we are already enrolled into markets through the ‘data exhausts‘ of our stuff and as Jon Evans argues in the article, even as the ‘owner’ of the physical device you have no real control over whether or where that data exhaust goes. As Evans goes on to say, there is increasingly a variety of forms of ownership of any given device: there’s physical possession, legal ownership and the ultimate power to command it (what you might call “root” access). Likewise, in an article in The Atlantic (to which Evans links) Madrigal and Meyer point out the peculiarities of interoperation that an Internet of Things requires:
Most “smart-home” devices right now aren’t talking to each other directly over a local wifi network. Instead, they’re talking to enormous and centralized data centers, which are then talking to each other, which are then (finally) sending instructions back to different devices in your home.
Evans goes on to argue that we could think about ownership another way:
the possibility of a decentralized Internet of Things; smart things which don’t communicate with any central server, but rather with a peer-to-peer, perhaps blockchain-based network. Consider the way FireChat is being used in Hong Kong, so that protestors can communicate despite the authorities’ control of the mobile networks. You don’t always actually need a central server, especially if you have a distributed-consensus system – like a blockchain – for longer-term data storage and algorithmic coordination.
It’s an interesting, relatively short, article with plenty of links to follow up – worth a read!
The Internet Of Things is coming. Rejoice! “¦Mostly. It will open our collective eyes to petabytes of real-time data, which we will turn into new insights and efficiencies. It will doubtless save lives. Oh, yes: and it will subtly redefine ownership as we know it. You will no longer own many of the most expensive and sophisticated items you possess. You may think you own them. But you’ll be wrong.
They say “possession is nine-tenths of the law,” but even if you physically and legally own a Smart Thing, you won’t actually control it. Ownership will become a three-legged stool: who physically owns a thing; who legally owns it; “¦and who has the ultimate power to command it. Who, in short, has root.
Read the rest of the article.
Ofcom, the quango that regulates communications activities in the UK (i.e. broadcasting, mobile phones and internet service provision), has released a report that suggests that the UK population (according to their survey) generally prefers to use their ‘smartphones’ as the principle means of accessing the internet.
They include a few other interesting findings:
During 2014, 4G subscriptions leapt from 2.7 million to 23.6 million.
…
Smartphone users with 4G are shopping online more than those without 4G (55% of 4G users do this compared with 35% of non-4G users); banking more online (55% versus 33%); watching more TV and video clips online (57% versus 40%); making more face-to-face and voice calls over the internet (28% versus 20%); using services such as Snapchat to send more photos and videos (49% versus 36%); and instant messaging more with services such as WhatsApp (63% versus 50%).
…
One in three adults (34%) turn over and check their phones within five minutes of waking up. For young people, checking social media messages before breakfast is even more crucial – around half (49%) of young people aged 18-24 check their phones within five minutes of waking up.
…
Most 16-24 year olds are watching on-demand and catch up programmes on computers and smartphones rather than on a TV connected to a set-top box.
I’ve been idly thinking about the automation of everyday life and the kinds of vision of a future that have been represented (repeatedly) by technology makers, not least in terms of ‘ubiquitous computing‘, and been thinking about the rich history of this from Worlds Fairs:
And the forms of spatial imagination that were inherent within these visions of the future were leapt upon in popular culture, especially in cartoons. What I mean is: the ways in which the relationships between people, buildings, locations, things and the sorts of ways of living that thereby emerge form a kind of vernacular for understanding possible futures, which are grounded in (broadly) speculative extrapolations of the experience of space and place.
From the obvious ‘space age’ Jetsons, to the less obvious reinterpretations of technologies of convenience (using Dinosaurs and stone tools) in the Flintstones, there was a lot of co-opting of the futures being sold by the likes of General Motors in their “Futurama” exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair and Disney’s “Epcot“.
And so we get a Tom and Jerry cartoon that resonates with contemporary stories of the loss of jobs to automata – with ‘Thomas’ replaced by a robotic cat:
Another famous GM depiction of an automated home that draws on the forms of spatial imaginary of futurama and its ilk is the film “Design for Dreaming”, in which Thelma Tadlock guides us through the kitsch depictions of a cars and the kitchen of the future.
It is interesting (and heartening) that at the same time you get a satirised version of this with Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd in the Looney Tunes cartoon “Design for Leaving”, in which (of course) everything goes wrong [and in this vision there’s no Robert DeNiro plumber to fix it]:
Elmer Fudd – Design for Leaving by DwightFrye
These cartoons are somewhat emblematic of a satirising of visions of the future, almost contemporaneously, which is probably rather healthy. We (academics, anyway) have a tendency to take these future visions rather seriously and in many cases it is justified – ways of relating a future have politics and they do particular kinds of political work. Nevertheless, it seems like I (and possibly others) have missed a trick in not paying a little more attention to how popular culture addresses these lofty visions of an automated future everyday life.
I wonder if we might count the recent darkly humorous ‘speculative fictions’ Black Mirror, by Charlie Brooker in this tradition. For example, if we have the vision of a day with “Glass” by Google:
Then we have the accompanying tale of obsessive and creepy behaviour such forms of life-logging and AR might produce with “The Entire History of You”, the third episode of Black Mirror:
These of course stray from the topic of automation but they serve to illustrate the power of satire in relation to visions of the future. It would be great to see more cartoons that comically critique and reimagine the kinds of stories we are being currently told about a future of automated everyday life.
Incidentally, I’ll be touching on some of this in a ‘paper’ (talk) I am giving at the RGS-IBG annual conference this year (in Exeter!), as part of the ‘Algorithmic Practices‘ sessions.
TOWN from Orla Murphy on Vimeo.
Over on Ireland after NAMA, Gavin Daly points to this lovely short film by Orla Murphy and Orla McHardy about the ways in which the development of Irish rural towns has shifted what constitutes everyday life, how this relates to ‘town planning’ (or lack thereof) and what might form alternatives.
I think this would make a lovely resource for teaching too, a sort of partner and update to the (rather old, but interesting) UK Central Office for Information animated film “Charley in New Town” (1948).
Hello to anyone that actually reads this blog! I’ve been on a ‘stay-cation’ en famille and I’m now back ‘at’ work… for the various values of location that implies for an academic that commutes and makes an office wherever is practical.
So, ‘nose [back] to the grindstone’…
… I’m on holiday. Normal service resumes in August.
Marvellous:
By Alan Warburton
Psychometrics from Alan Warburton on Vimeo.
Late capitalist networked culture is obsessed with improving performance. TED speakers are cult idols, sharing their commandments for success and productivity. On social networks our friends become brands, and brands become our friends. Self-help books are interchangeable with business philosophies. In the conference room – and the weekend supplements – we learn how to shape ourselves, how to be consistent, how to operate. Reduce entropy. Maximise consistency. Become an industry of one.
You are an engine. One day you’ll fly away.
Created by Alan Warburton.
Music by Alan Warburton and Tom Hatfield.
Via @timoarnall
Keith Harris has offered a draft translation of an interesting essay that forms part of a broader, very interesting, paper colloquium that included Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault. The paper is “La Ville-Ordinateur” (The Computer-City), very much worth reading and following-up Keith’s links. This is a great resource!
As I mentioned last week, this is the essay that kicked off Recherches 13 (1973) and is the context for the two conversations involving Deleuze, Guattari, Foucualt, and Fourquet that are published as texts 129 and 130 in Foucault’s Dits et Écrits (tome 2) and translated into English in Foucault Live (1996) under the title “Equipments of Power.”
This is a draft but I think it comes across fairly clearly. I would like to gather it along with a few of the other key contributions to this issue and putting it our for publication, perhaps along with portions of issue 14 (Stuart Elden provides some insight into issues 13 and 14 here and here). Any advice on how to undertake that or journals you believe might be interested in such an endeavor would be greatly appreciated, as would any comments on the translation itself (or if you know of any postdocs where one could concentrate on this kind of work, I would be interested in that too!).