Saturday, 15 April 2006
on LiveJournal and "technology"
Two quick links of interest:
First, a request for help with a research study about LiveJournal (one blogging network).
Also, a really, really amusing Strong Bad e-mail about "technology."
Friday, 14 October 2005
Two new digital technologies
According to news sources (here and here), a company has developed a kettle which one can turn on by text message. I'm amazed by the foray into connecting communications technology and not-particularly-high-tech kitchen tools.
I also think this political site is interesting. It bills itself as an "online march" to change politicians' priorities. The really interesting part, however, is that after you enter your contact info and choose your own protest sign, you are transported to a Google Maps page visually illustrating how many people in your area have done the same thing and where they are.
They seem to have limited the scope of the tool, as I couldn't find anyone outside my own state (or even a broad region of my state); perhaps this is their response to very valid privacy arguments that could be made. I found the tool fascinating for exploring where others in my area were located but intimidating when I explored the referral link and found that others could also see my location.
Saturday, 24 September 2005
babies living in a digital world
A friend posted a link to this baby announcement site, a technological sight in itself, but also notable for causing me to check out ipodyourbaby. I wonder what it might mean for learning for babies to learn these ipod symbols before learning their ABCs.
Monday, 19 September 2005
and now, some props to non-digital technology
I lifted this from a friend's blog. I love how it presents non-digital technology in technological sales language.
New Product Announcement
Announcing the new Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device, otherwise known as the BOOK.
It's a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just lift its cover. Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere -- even sitting in an armchair by the fire -- yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disk.
Here's how it works: each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. By using both sides of each sheet, manufacturers are able to cut costs in half.
Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The "Browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Most come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session -- even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers.
Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is the entertainment wave of the future, and many new titles are expected soon, due to the surge in popularity of its programming tool, the Portable Erasable-Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language stylus [PENCIL].
Tuesday, 07 December 2004
a LiveJournal group on CMC
I'm mostly just posting this to archive others' discussions of CMC and class:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/virtucomm/32877.html
It's highly amusing for me to see others discussing people I've read in class in much the same ways as we have.
Tuesday, 30 November 2004
what is identity?
Playing with a new webtoy (very useful for finding combinations of colors), I got this result:
identity is love | |||||
brought to you by the isLove Generator | |||||
This is by no means scholarly, but it got me thinking more about what identity is/might be, and also how the simplest, most random-seeming digital works (such as a web form that generates colors and a pithy slogan based on one's answers and posted online journal interests) can create profound meaning based on context. Well, maybe not profound, in this case, but my context of having thought and written about what identity is/means, especially in digital contexts, imbued this little bit of code with special meaning that others likely wouldn't see.
Monday, 29 November 2004
Cumulative (sort-of) piece, 22 November 2004
"Come up with a list of three solid, descriptive, anchored suggestions for teachers teaching digital rhetoric or for students learning digital rhetoric."
I think it's important for digital rhetoric teachers to encourage students to look beyond the text presented by a given digital work (either alphabetically or orally or even visually) to the method and details of presentation as a location of argumentation, both as they analyze works and as they construct them. Transitions, appeals to a particular genre, and things like that students may know to consider rhetorically when working with traditional (i.e., "solely" alphabetic text) works, but can be more slippery when it comes to transitions within video, appeals to a particular web genre, use of color and font, etc. (Color and font, of course, can be part of "traditional" works, but they're more slippery, too.)
I also find it important for students to engage in discussion/thought about how identities (and constructions of identities) change in digital spaces, since identity affects the construction of authorial authority and is both a cause and effect of the particular construction of an author's digital work.
I also want to add to the example you provided. You suggested that digital rhetoric teachers "encourage students to explore different computer and communication technologies so that they may choose the best technology to facilitate their writing and the rhetorical situation to which they are responding." This, to me, makes loads of sense. I would only add that it seems to be important to allow/encourage students to bring their differing experiences and competencies to the course and share them. I think especially of the construction of this course, how we have been encouraged and required to bring in different pieces of the digital world that we have experienced for the review/reflection of the whole class. Since no one person can master or even map the whole of the digital world, it seems important for other instructors to do as you have done -- to allow students some level of direction of course activities and discussions, so that each participant in the course can be enriched by each other participant's experiences. Assuredly, they overlap and diverge in interesting ways, allowing windows into diverse digital communities and diverse interpretations of digital spaces.
Saturday, 27 November 2004
Dibbell and the power of (digital) words, 8 November 2004
I especially appreciated this passage from Dibbell's article:
"After all, anyone the least bit familiar with the workings of the new era's definitive technology, the computer, knows that it operates on a principle impracticably difficult to distinguish from the pre-Enlightenment principle of the magic word: the commands you type into a computer are a kind of speech that doesn't so much communicate as make things happen, directly and ineluctably, the same way pulling a trigger does. They are incantations, in other words, and anyone at all attuned to the technosocial megatrends of the moment -- from the growing dependence of economies on the global flow of intensely fetishized words and numbers to the burgeoning ability of bioengineers to speak the spells written in the four-letter text of DNA -- knows that the logic of the incantation is rapidly permeating the fabric of our lives."
I had not previously considered the power attributed to special words, code (a signifier of the hidden, the secret, the powerful), in the discourse of the digital. It is true: people see technology, and especially computers, as having minds of their own -- and often as being crotchety and uncooperative, awaiting that new secret password that they've made up before they will hand over what we desire, which is being held just out of our grasp above our heads. And in this discourse, computers are objects of coder magic, computers are bullies, computers are manipulative children looking to see how much they can make us do for that small object they are holding back from us.
I feel like there is something important wrapped up in this idea, though I'm not yet able to unpack it fully.
[Link to "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell]
Questions from class, 3 November 2004
"How are bodies represented through technology? Within digital space?"
I think of Sullivan's experience with the Long Hair Site, and I remember that bodies are presented in photographic images, as wholes (often in conjunction with other bodies) or in parts (such as the face), often retouched or translated into new surroundings (i.e., cut out and pasted against a different backdrop). They are also presented in artistic renderings (digitized paintings, computer-constructed anime fan art, etc.) -- and, depending on how Freudian one's beliefs are, abstract images and features of design. (Suddenly, I've developed a new interpretation of the traditional inverted L web page design -- a representation either of two penises or of a wide-open womb.)
But bodies are also represented through the allowances made for them by technology -- through the ways they are expected to interact with technology.
"How does your sense of self change shape in different spaces? E.g., in your physical office or workspace? In your home? While instant messaging? Within your web site?"
I find that I have different textual selves in different situations, with a certain "academic writing" voice, a certain "professional" voice for work-related correspondence, a certain personal blog voice, etc. But the edges between these are blurred; for example, this is an academic blog, incorporating many personal flourishes. When corresponding with people for my job with whom I have a less formal relationship or who address me in keeping with a less formal relationship, I use more informal language and don't bother typing out my full signature.
But I am mostly a social chameleon; my response to people, my self positioning (and, perhaps, my sense of self), shifts based on how they respond to me. I don't generally see physical spaces as being able to change my sense of self -- bring out different elements, perhaps, or indicate that certain behaviors are appropriate and others are not, but not so much to change how I see myself. Digital spaces, however, as different communication media, do change how I express myself, which does construct my sense of my textual (or, I suppose, multimedia) self.
I don't know if that addresses the questions or not.
Desser on chat room pseudonym gender - 3 November 2004
Desser's study of the gendering of online pseudonyms in her graduate class was interesting to me at least partially because it was the first scholarly reading in this course (as far as I remember) that I have actively disagreed with in some way.
She suggests that "electronic media, such as MUDs and MOOs, do offer students a bewildering array of temporary identity constructions through the use of pseudonyms, which allow students to shift identities in class, race, gender, age, and nationality, to take on living or historical or fictional identities, or to even borrow the identity of other students or the teacher. [...] From a literary-studies perspective, morphing can allow students to take on the identities of fictitious characters or of authors, thereby coming to a deeper understanding of assigned texts. Indeed, there are many possibilities for writing teachers to effectively link student 'morphing' to a variety of curricular goals in English studies."
However, I am highly skeptical about this. Pretending to be someone doesn't necessarily give one any more information about that person or his/her situation -- unless the pretending situation is set up to approximate the situation of the person one is pretending to be, or something of that nature. I think of the concept of identity tourism, and Nakamura's idea that the ability to change roles doesn't change what the stereotypes are -- or give a "morphing" individual any more information about what it is like really to be a member of another demographic group. As an undergraduate, I had a professor in a senior-level honors class who liked to play a game in which students were forced to respond as though we were a character in one of the plays we were studying, though the questions he asked generally had no referent or point of departure in the printed scripts. I hated that game because I knew that I didn't know how the characters thought. How could I? I certainly hadn't experienced the world from their perspective. I don't see how Desser's suggested morphing play has any more ability to teach about what it's like to be someone else.
On the other hand, Desser's presentation of the "sexualizing" of a female-presenting male might be an example of how chat room morphing play could teach a little about what it is like to be others -- if one is treated as the member of a different demographic one presents oneself as, for example. However, the instance Desser presents seems fairly weak in terms of severity, and I wonder if the male student noticed the sexualization or thought differently about it because "he" was the object of it. Desser notes that, in this online conversation, this student "perform[ed] the traditional role of a woman in off-line conversation: he greets the group, welcomes newcomers, and acknowledges contributions. In short his responses work to include and to create connections, thus performing the social role typically perceived as women's work in conversation." Perhaps this means that he is simply behaving as a good identity tourist and acting out the role prescribed for him (her). We can't know, based on the information that Desser presents. I wish that she had presented an account of the experience from the male student's point of view (à la Takayoshi's suggestions).
I also was annoyed by Desser's views regarding female language use designed to build community. She states that "sociolinguists Foss and Cameron are two among many feminist scholars who have done extensive research showing that in off-line conversations women, because of their diminished access to power in a patriarchal society, are more likely to attempt to make social connections through language, using physical gestures such as nodding and smiling, and linguistics tags, which serve to show agreement and foster community. If the argument of information-age rhetoricians that pseudonymity provides female students with egalitarian spaces for conversation is correct, then one would expect such tags, both linguistic and physical, to be less frequent or to disappear altogether in virtual chat environments. [... However,] from this chat session, which included numerous exchanges similar to the one above, I recognize that taking on gender-neutral or male pseudonyms in virtual chatrooms does not necessarily mean that women will use language differently than they do when their female identities are not hidden. However, the fact that the female participants in this chat session did not substantively change their speech patterns from what is typical of women's off-line discourse does not mean that virtual spaces are oppressive to women or that there is no potential for such spaces to become the egalitarian fora that scholars like Hawisher and Selfe (1993) have hoped for. That these women spoke on line very similarly to the way women often interact off-line can be seen as a testament to how powerful off-line expectations of conformity to gendered roles are. In other words, on-line women may not look like women but nevertheless act like women. It may take many more years of experimentation with on-line pseudonymous conversation for female participants to substantively alter the way they use language. Or it may be that the sexism that exists off-line will always be able to invade cyberspace, despite women's attempts to mask or morph their gendered identities. As we continue to critically examine our new 'morphing' subjectivities on line for their potential for both women's empowerment and disempowerment, we will learn just how complex a goal it is for feminists to make virtual space a safe space for women."
Why is a position of concern for community necessarily oppressive? Granted, I am a woman, so perhaps my opinion is necessarily slanted, but I don't see how concern for community, on anyone's part, is such a bad thing. I agree that women should not be forced to build community just to be heard, but I believe that community building, relationship building, is a generally positive thing.
I do, however, find it intriguing that in Desser's class, "all participants, regardless of gender, showed a preference for gender-neutral or male pseudonyms in an academic on-line setting." When I think back to my own IRC experiences, her findings are borne out there, as well. My handle was asdfjkl, admittedly neuter, but those who knew me knew my gender, and a few referred to me in jest as "keybroad." I do wonder why so few take on female pseudonyms in comparison with those who take on male ones, although I understand the appeal of a generic handle.
[Link to "Gender Morphing in Cyberspace" by Daphne Desser]
Arnold & Miller on gendered web pages - 3 November 2004
I was intrigued by Arnold and Miller's early (i.e., 1998) study of gendering on "official" personal home pages (i.e., those of "people in institutional or commercial settings"). They state that they "concentrated mainly on the textual content of the pages, and found that men's pages were shorter, that there was more variety in length and self-reference in women's pages, and that women made more reference to the reader and seemed to be showing more awareness of those who would be viewing their pages than men did. All of these seem to show more concentration on individualised communication with others in women's pages, compared with more standardised self-presentation in men's pages. By 1998 the form of most pages was still very paper-text-like, with little sign that a new format for presenting the self was providing the opportunity for new conceptualisations of the self [...]."
Yet they also point out that "women seemingly do not have the freedom to ignore conventions or to fail to ensure they are taken seriously (Tannen 1993). So for the women found via the home page 'front door' they present as open 'friendly' and smiling (with a suitable picture), but also include a full cv or list of honours, degrees, titles or membership of esteemed professional bodies", whereas the men will also mention these but this is not the most important 'presenting' feature of their page. For men - what they do is who they are." This last point intrigues me -- it is, after all, an standard statement about American males that they judge themselves mostly/solely based on their work, whereas American women are seen as more likely to judge themselves based on the quality of their relationships. So while Arnold and Miller suggest that "women are still attempting to present an identity which offsets some of the disadvantages of real-life gendered spheres of operation (while men rely on the advantages)," I wonder if the differences they see in web representations of identity might also be arising somewhat from gender-based differences in values (i.e., those honors, degrees, and titles mark the women as members of specific groups, specific communities, and indicate something about their relationships with others).
[Link to "Gender and Web Home Pages" by Jill Arnold & Hugh Miller]
Takayoshi, women, and technology - 3 November 2004
Takayoshi's rich look at the variety of issues involved in women's relationships with technology was really useful to me. I appreciated her introduction to traditional narratives of gender as she notes that "Kantrowitz's (1994) article encapsulates several essentializing cultural narratives about gender and technology—including narratives of women as caring, nurturing beings interested in love, animals, and interpersonal relationships; of men as aggressive, macho conquerors of the universe; and of computer culture as imbued with masculine values of sterility, logic, and impersonality. In this way, the article serves as a good example of the way traditional definitions of male and female, masculine and feminine are imbricated in popular narratives of computers. Although Kantrowitz's article serves as a good example of the gendering of computers in our cultural consciousness, it does little to disrupt these gendered constructions. Kantrowitz constructed computers and traditional gender roles as fixed and stable" (124 / 2 in PDF). I hadn't previously heard about the women/animals link, although the way women are elided with the "natural," it does make sense.
She goes on to explain that "recent scholarship is firmly grounded in an awareness that technologies are always ideological, that technologies can be used to both oppressive and empowering ends, and that disempowered groups are more likely to be oppressed than empowered by technologies. When considered together, however, the narratives we've told about women and technology tend to create coherent, although competing, visions of technology as either good or bad" (125 / 3).
Takayoshi attempts to debunk these by suggesting that researchers not "rely too heavily on narrative as a methodological stance. Teacher-told, person-based narratives assume several interpretive stances: that the teacher has an accurate picture of what happens in the classroom, that there is one interpretation that makes more sense than other possible interpretations, that students represent themselves to teachers honestly and unselfconsciously (without constructing 'student' personae), and that teachers' subject positions (that might vary significantly from students' race, class, gender, generational, sexual orientation, and body image positions) do not complicate interpretation. [...] Ultimately, these questions of interpretation are questions of power" (128 / 6). She goes on to explain that, "although we expect empirical researchers to rest their claims on actual data they've collected systematically, we are less likely to hold narrative claims to similar standards. Why was the narrative chosen out of all the possible narratives? Was it representative of many students' experiences, or was it such a strikingly discordant feature of the classroom life that it stood out? Answers to these questions suggest how differently we might interpret stories of classroom moments. We might understand and give weight to representative stories in very different ways than we do strikingly discordant ones. Without a recognition of where the story fits within the context of the classroom life (or the Listserv activity, or the professional discourse), the risk is that the unusual or uncommon experience becomes representative of the everyday. This meaning-making dynamic is particularly important to think about with regards to stories we've told about women and technology" (129 / 7).
Takayoshi also considers where narratives of women having bad experiences with technology might fit in that matrix of questions -- are they standard, out of the ordinary, viewed from an authority figure's standpoint, viewed from the point of view of the woman herself? She points out that "stories that imply women will be harassed if they enter the 'masculinist' world of technology, where they do not rightfully have a place, function to keep women from entering those spaces at all. The potential for this blurred relationship, then, is mediated by stories that continue to inscribe women as either empowered or oppressed by technologies.
In the same way that violence against women curtails female activity and the threat of violence forces women to police themselves, stories of women and children harassed online can function hegemonically to keep women and children from getting involved with technology in the first place--which continues to ensure that online sites are predominantly male. At the heart of this struggle is resistance to the role binaries will play in our conceptions of computer technologies and the limits of those binaries. Feminist critiques of technology offer one pathway out of this either/or by offering a theoretical vision of technology use and design as ambiguous. A conception of technology as ambiguous moves beyond a vision of technology as merely non-neutral and articulates the ways technologies have always been positive and oppressive, oftentimes both at the same time" (133 / 11). As she puts it, "the nature of technology, as it is experienced by many users, lies somewhere in the conjunction between the good aspects and the bad tendencies" (136 / 14).
She then asks the interesting question, "how do women users enact agency in using technologies that are constructed as and have been oppressive to women users?" (136 / 14). She adds to this the suggestion that "answers to some questions might best be answered through more systematic studies [rather than narrative alone]: For example, how and why do women become agents of change? How can my actions and theories as a teacher using computer-mediated communications, as a theorist of electronic spaces, support this moment? These questions--central to a feminist theory and practice--are central also to our involving women in these arenas" (137 / 15). I do not (yet) know how to answer these questions, but I agree with Takayoshi that they are crucial to improving the relationship between women and technology, both in fact and in societal construction.
[Reference: Pamela Takayoshi, "Complicated Women: Examining Methodologies for Understanding the Uses of Technology"]
Blair & Takayoshi on women & technology, 3 November 2004
I appreciated Blair and Takayoshi's look at how technological spaces affect gender differences and women in particular, especially in view of the "excitement [that arose] within the field of composition studies at the changes technology seemed poised to make--changes in definitions of text, writer, and reader, changes in the nature of classroom practice, and changes in the shape of writing professionals' lives" (2 / 2 in PDF).
Despite this optimism, they point out that "Takayoshi (1994) supports Romano's conclusions in her assertion that with no intervention in traditional power structures, discourse in a new, potentially more empowering forum will no necessarily be any more empowering than those traditional forums" (3 / 2), and "a brief exploration of the landscape of the Web reveals that it is again another technology of conflicted meaning for women--women on the Web exist as both objects to be consumed and as agents of production" (5 / 3).
Blair describes a class she taught in which most men had moderate to strong technology knowledge, while the women had less knowledge, "often le[ading] to a redistribution of power and authority to many male students in the class, who served as the primary knowledge source for both men and women" (9 / 5) and even Blair herself, creating a less-than-empowering environment, at least partly because the men in the class were not necessarily skilled at teaching technological skills collaboratively -- they did not necessarily have any education in teaching whatsoever, after all.
This development leads Blair and Takayoshi to suggest that "as students and teachers establish new narratives of negotiation in a quest for virtual voices and virtual control over their own image in electronic writing, this conception of technological literacy demands a more collaborative relationship between teachers and students and between the students themselves. Through such efforts, the social change called for by Balsamo (1995) can occur. By creating discursive electronic spaces that better account for the material experiences and diverse voices of women representing themselves online, other women in the classroom and the community can gain technological access" (10 / 6). I appreciate this suggestion, and the idea that women reading women online and women teaching women technological skills can bring change; I do, however, find myself wondering what these "feminist cyberscapes" might look like and if I might have seen any in my wanderings on the web.
[Reference: Kristine Blair & Pamela Takayoshi, "Introduction: Mapping the Terrain of Feminist Cyberscapes"]
Sullivan on the male gaze, 3 November 2004
I was intrigued by Sullivan's experiences with her web narrative - especially as a long haired woman somewhat embarrassed by the possibility of being fetishized by the male gaze and catalogued on someone's website for consumption by many. I understand websites listing interesting writings, interesting videos, interesting things on the web to be consumed, but I don't understand (or appreciate) the consumption of human images. The idea of image (i.e., identity) as an object still somewhat puzzles me and arouses distaste within me. Perhaps this is why I was intrigued by this quote from Sullivan:
"I favor a more historicized model of psychological processes in my work on the discourse and culture of beauty, because I have come to believe that the objectification of women's faces and bodies pervasive in mainstream mass media forms one of the cornerstones of women's oppression" (192 / 4 in PDF).
I am inclined to agree, even when women offer themselves up for consumption; I believe one can willingly allow oneself to be oppressed. I am curious, though, about the possibilities for presenting female identity and images of females (and femaleness) on the Internet without furthering oppression. If I post pictures of myself to my blog, do I further oppression of myself and other women, since others may judge me based on my appearance, lust after me, etc.? Is a photo of my boyfriend and me different from a photo of me alone? How can I, as a woman and as a creator of Internet material, counter oppression (of women and other non-dominant groups)?
[Reference: Laura L. Sullivan, "Cyberbabes: (Self-) Representation of Women and the Virtual Male Gaze"]
ju90 on cyborg identity, bodies, and "the Other" - 1 November 2004
Having read little about cyborg identity and almost nothing about identity and people with disabilities, I found Ju Gosling/ju90's web narrative truly illuminating.
This passage, in particular, helped me to understand the emphasis on bodies in theoretical writings, especially those addressing the idea of the Other:
"The reason which straight, white, non-disabled men give when defining members of every other group - the 'Other' - as inferior is physical difference, with this difference being regarded as either reflecting or dictating inferiority in other areas: for example in intelligence, morality or character. Physical qualities - the mark of the Other - are therefore regarded as the Other's most important characteristics, whether or not they exist in reality.
In contrast, straight, white, non-disabled men do not define themselves in relation to their bodies. Instead, repression of anything which transcends the boundaries of gender, sexuality, race and disability is characteristic of them. Marriage and fatherhood are then used to stress their heterosexuality, gender and virility (disabled people commonly being regarded as asexual or as lacking the right to breed).
Belonging to a group seems to be more important to straight, white, non-disabled men than to those whom they define as members of other groups. This is shown in their love of uniformity - most obviously illustrated in their clothing choices. However, members of other groups are commonly perceived as having a greater concern with group identity, since it is only by uniting that they can fight their oppression" (link).
ju90 then goes on to describe how "pride in being the Other problematises and destabilises the constructs of power created by straight, white, non-disabled men, for what then explains the Other's inferior treatment and position in society but unfounded prejudice and oppression? The process of developing pride therefore is not merely one of personal reaffirmation, but of political revolution." She mentions a Disability Pride Week organized "after the social services department adopted the social model of disability - where people with impairments are perceived as being disabled by society rather than by the impairment itself - as a means of analysing and directing their work" (link) -- whereas the traditional/dominant ideology would have no room for such a thing, nor would it even be able to make sense of its existence. I can imagine adherents of this ideology saying, "Why not have a D Student Pride Week, then, or Homeless Pride Week, or Underemployed Pride Week?" I foresee this because I don't think they would be able to believe that being disabled is more being differently abled. As with using different communication media, some mental pathways/pathways of action are closed off, certainly, but others are opened, perhaps in ways that are not possible for the "traditionally abled."
It is because of this traditional/dominant ideology and its manifestations against all segments of the Other -- and because of the "fragmented and weakened" opposition to oppression resulting from the "polarisation of groups around identity" -- that ju90 suggests "a coalition based on 'affinity, not identity'. Unlike pluralism, where groups coalesce despite their differences to unite around a common aim, affinity would mean that groups coalesced because they recognised both their commonalities and each Other's sources of and manifestations of oppression.
As the huge majority of the Other, we have far more in common than the physical differences which divide us. When we only recognise our own identities, we fail to recognise the identities of those Others whom we subsequently oppress. And no one is that straight, that white, that non-disabled and that male - at least not all of the time. Perhaps we need to discover our pride in our identities only to rediscover our pride in our humanity, and to realise that our bodies are just that" (link).
ju90 also discusses the effect disability aids have on bodies and on identity, stating that "one reason why [they] are commonly perceived as having negative connotations is the depersonalising, identity-stripping effect of their stifling uniformity and medicalised appearance - our aids reduce us to and categorise us by our impairments in a reflection of the way in which the medical profession treats us. I had already discovered the difference which a personalised aid makes with public reactions to my much-admired stick, which was carved by Rick Leech out of one piece of hazel, with the handle in the form of a seal with buffalo horn eyes. My stick signifies something very different to the standard metal, medical aid - its unique appearance restores its associations with gender-bending, clowning and discipline, as well as, in this case, having connotations of paganism and shamanism - but it performs exactly the same task. [...]
Unfortunately, most disability aids are still produced or prescribed by the National Health Service, and in many cases ownership still rests with the state rather than with the disabled person who uses them. Private purchases are very expensive and beyond the means of most disabled people, who have the lowest average incomes in the country - myths of generous state benefit systems and insurance policies notwithstanding. So most disabled people are unable to 'own' their aids in any sense, with the result that their aids are the first thing which is noticed about them, and they are immediately classified as disabled by the spectator. Yet when an aid is personalised, the person using the aid is revealed beneath the social identity" (link).
She then describes the personalization of her own brace, complimenting the redesigner's work by mentioning that "a stallholder at Kensington Market is one of several people who have since viewed the brace simply as clubwear - even when told differently - and who have openly desired it, thus completely reversing its stigma," though "our [ju90 and the redesigner] over-riding aim was to make the brace more comfortable to wear, in every sense. I had no wish to deny my impairment, to disavow my deviance. Making impairment visible illuminates a fundamental truth: the perfect body does not exist, and its illusion can only be maintained while the disabled body is hidden from sight. At the same time, I did not want to be medicalised by the appearance of the brace. Medical images are those of surveillance and social regulation, used to classify, discipline and manage the body. Meanwhile media images of disabled people distort us as objects of pity, as a burden to others, or as super-crips who have overcome what is seen as the tragedy of our lives, and these images are played up by charities which are run by and largely employ non-disabled people in order to get donations. I therefore wanted to control my own image, to mark my body in a way which was meaningful to me, and to reject my body's classification by its impairment" (link). This control of her body's marking through control of the look and feel of her brace I found fascinating, perhaps because I don't often think about the ways in which I control how my body is marked through its/my physical presentation.
I was also struck by ju90's statement that "when disabled people's sexuality is recognised, it is regarded as being deviant, and as objects of desire we are exoticised and fetishised. So in a very real sense, all disabled sexuality is queer" -- much like the sexuality of cyborgs, who "are seen on the one hand as being asexual, genderless, and on the other hand as being extremely sexual." ju90 links these two identities, since "cyborgs, too, are visualised as being less than human within popular culture, and therefore as not being deserving of human rights. Indeed, cyborgs are often seen as being a threat to humans, and therefore require containing. Disabled people, meanwhile, lack human and civil rights throughout the world. We are also seen as dangerous - in popular culture, physical impairment is used as a metaphor for evil, while IRL, women with mental health needs are stigmatised as potential killers and are forcibly drugged, restrained and imprisoned" (link).
ju90 questions how "disabled people's use of aids such as sticks, braces and wheelchairs is regarded as being fundamentally different in nature to the other ways in which we rely on technology to live our daily lives in the West. The use of cars, bicycles, phones, computers, domestic technology such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines - all these, in contrast, are seen as being entirely natural. Equally, the use of chemicals such as contraceptives to alter the body is seen as being entirely different to the use of insulin or anti-depressants." At the same time, she rejects technophile utopian ideas -- "for example, the idea that, in the new millennium, we will all be augmented and upgraded by technology would be undermined by the realisation that scientists can't produce an artificial hip joint which will reliably last longer than ten years, and indeed, that the body is so resistant to being 'upgraded' that people who have had transplants need to take drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection. Likewise, the idea that we will all be able to take so-called 'smart drugs' to enhance our abilities would be problematised by including the experiences of disabled people, given our awareness of the side-effects of drugs, and our knowledge that the drugs we rely on may also shorten our lives or even kill us" (link). As a woman who has experienced this side of bioscience intimately, ju90 is especially well equipped to critique utopian visions of the intersection of bodies and technology.
[Link to "My Not-so-secret Life as a Cyborg" by Ju Gosling]
Barrios and writing into action, 1 November 2004
I appreciated Barrios's discussion of queer writing classrooms and especially his emphasis on "action horizons." He describes this as an idea "from the work of Richard E. Miller and Kurt Spellmeyer (2002), who used it to describe students’ 'capacity to act upon the world in ways that do justice to its real complexity' (p. 5). Because it 'imagines ordinary citizens like our students as the shapers of policy rather than as mere critics, passive observers, or discerning consumers' (Miller & Spellmeyer, 2002, p. 5), a pedagogy based on the action horizon invites students to apply class readings and discussions to the world outside the classroom. […] The action horizon can provide a new direction for LGBT pedagogy because, in a classroom organized along these lines, identity is not the primary focus. And so it doesn’t matter who’s queer or straight because queer issues aren’t for queers alone—they’re problems facing every citizen in the classroom" (342 / 2 in the PDF).
He goes on to assert that "a queer classroom, then, is not just for queers; it enables all students to see their sexuality and to see as well the ways in which that sexuality is created by and through cultural discourses, a realization that serves as a precondition for change in the larger political context" (345 / 5). I love Barrios's assertion that, "if education cannot help us and our students deal with the events of lived experience, if it cannot be 'concretely valuable,' then what good is it? As current events continually remind us, the world is a briar patch" (343 / 3), and students need expanded tools with which to deal with the world (as everyone does).
The discussion and writing topics he used in his classes, then, focused not on queer identities but "the ways these identities operated in the real world through the concept of pride" (352 / 12), specifically addressed through pride flags, or on "political actions (the civil function of marriage, compacts between states)" (357 / 17). In this way, he worked to move his students toward greater understanding -- for example, of "the linkages between these [pride] flags and concepts of nation, community, and identity" and "the problems of gay and straight pride" (352 / 12) -- and encouraged them to articulate these expanded understandings, which made issues more complex, since "it’s easy, after all, for someone to say that LGBT couples shouldn’t be able to marry; it’s far more complex to argue that one state shouldn’t recognize what another state does" (357 / 17).
All of this seems like a very, very smart way of encouraging students to expand their viewpoints and understandings. Instead of blasting away at those students who might hold viewpoints he would find homophobic/bigoted/what have you (or just at their viewpoints, which would feel like the same thing) in the name of bringing about change -- and thereby causing these students to stop listening/thinking/interacting truthfully and bunker down -- he encourages all of his students to consider the ramifications of queer issues in other areas (pride, political ramifications, the construction of sexuality, etc.) and thereby encourages them to continue to think about the issues and to do so from a variety of angles. All of this I consider to be a good thing, causing more thought about issues too often decided through emotions and name-calling.
[Reference: Barclay Barrios, "Of Flags: Online Queer Identities, Writing Classrooms, and Action Horizons"]
Longo et al. and what it is to be human/machine - 1 November 2004
I greatly appreciated Longo et al.'s background into the term "robot": "Karel Capek (1961) coined robot to refer to an engineered being more mechanically perfect than a human, with an enormously developed intelligence and no soul (p. 9). He used this term in his play R.U.R., which was first performed in the United States in April 1923, at the St. Martin's Theater in New York. In authoring this work, Capek responded to a post-World War I context of Central European mistrust of industrial society. In Czech, robot means compulsory servitude or slavery. Capek's play, which introduced the term into the English lexicon, asked questions about dehumanizing effects of working within a capitalist industrial society. Thus, even at its inception, the term 'robot' interrogated the boundaries between humans and machines" (99-100 / 3-4 in PDF).
Longo et al. describe a course based on three questions: "What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be a machine? And what can machines tell us about being human?" (99 / 3). They posit that "closely examining our relationships with machines ultimately brings us back to [examining our] relationships with our fellow human beings" (100 / 4), which makes sense, since "human" and "machine" are ideas that are positioned as polar opposites, even if one cannot see a continuum between the two (as Longo et al.'s students eventually did).
Longo et al. present as evidence the fact that "Norbert Wiener (1990) also found that human relations with machines revealed human relations with other humans. In examining motivations for 'gadget worship,' Wiener argued that this excessive admiration of machines revealed a 'desire to avoid the personal responsibility for a dangerous or disastrous decision by placing the responsibility elsewhere,'" going on to make the argument that "what we desire from our machines can speak volumes about human motivations. Thus, as students in this course came to understand, the machines we make reflect our humanity. By studying these machines, we study ourselves. Langdon Winner (1992) reminded us that our machines and technologies were made with human hands" (101 / 5).
Thus, machines can show us what we ourselves have made (the machines themselves); they can illuminate issues of human desire by way of the designated use of the machines; they illustrate something about what it is to be human, about human ideology, by way of the difference between humans and machines in the way they are treated, how their needs are met or not met, etc. I think specifically of the least privileged humans and the most "privileged" machines, and shudder at which gets needs met more consistently and is treated more humanely. I suppose that desires for salvation through technology, machines, indicates a human desire for something outside oneself to "fix" one's situation -- indicates a desire to be saved from someone/thing by someone/thing.
But I still don't know how to distinguish humans from machines, at least not without turning to my personal spiritual beliefs; I don't know how to make distinctions between the two without referencing spiritual/supernatural concepts. Outside of that kind of argument, with animals (well, most animals), plants, fungi, protists, and monerans, one can reference humans' higher mental capacity as what distinguishes them, beyond other biological differences, from other life forms. But machines can have that "higher mental capacity" and exceed it, in terms of processing power and information stored. I then think of humans as biological life forms, created/constructed/birthed through innate, biological processes -- although bioengineering and artificial insemination make this murky, too -- instead of being constructed thoughtfully by humans (as machines are) -- although automated factories make this a bit murky as well. In short, it is difficult to define what makes life life, and I think I would have made a lousy philosophy major.
[Reference: Berndadette Longo, Donna Reiss, Cynthia L. Selfe, & Art Young, "The Poetics of Computers: Composing Relationships with Technology"]
Nakamura on typing and identity, 1 November 2004
The first chapter of Nakamura's book presents some really interesting ideas. She introduces how "Manovich identifies two 'layers' to new media: the cultural layer, which is roughly analogous to 'content,' and the computer layer, or infrastructure, interface, or other machine-based forms that structure the computer environment. His argument that the computer layer can be expected to have a 'significant influence on the cultural logic of media' (63) is in some sense not original; the notion that form influences content (and vice versa) has been around since the early days of literary criticism. It has been conceded for some time now that certain forms allow or disallow the articulation of certain ideas. However, what is original about this argument is its claim that our culture is becoming 'computerized' in a wholesale and presumably irrevocable fashion. This is a distinctly different proposition from asserting the importance of, say, electronic literacy, a paradigm that is still anchored by its terminology in the world of a very old medium: writing. […] If we follow this proposition, we can see that our culture is in the process of being 'transcoded' by the computer's 'ontology, epistemology, pragmatics.'" (2-3 / 2 in PDF)
Then she explains her transition from the word "stereotype" -- "itself an example of machine language, albeit a precomputer machine language; the first stereotype was a mechanical device that could reproduce images relatively cheaply, quickly, and in mass quantities" (4 / 3) -- to her word "cybertype," which she developed "in an attempt to transcode the language of race and racialism that [she] observed online, [...] to describe the distinctive ways that the Internet propagates, disseminates, and commodifies images of race and racism. The study of racial cybertypes brings together the cultural layer and the computer layer; that is to say, cybertyping is the process by which computer/human interfaces, the dynamics and economics of access, and the means by which users are able to express themselves online interacts with the 'cultural layer' or ideologies regarding race that they bring with them into cyberspace. Manovich is correct in asserting that we must take into account the ways that the computer determines how ideological constructs such as race get articulated in this new medium" (3 / 2).
She describes how "cybertypes are more than just racial stereotypes 'ported' to a new medium. Because the Internet is interactive and collectively authored, cybertypes are created in a peculiarly collaborative way; they reflect the ways that machine-enabled interactivity gives rise to images of race that both stem from a common cultural logic and seek to redress anxieties about the ways that computer-enabled communication can challenge these old logics. They perform a crucial role in the signifying practice of cyberspace; they stabilize a sense of a white self and identity that is threatened by the radical fluidity and disconnect between mind and body that is celebrated in so much cyberpunk fiction. Bodies get tricky in cyberspace; that sense of disembodiment that is both freeing and disorienting creates a profound malaise in the user that stable images of race work to fix in place." (5-6 / 3-4) In this sense, "machines that offer identity prostheses to redress the burdens of physical 'handicaps' such as age, gender, and race produce cybertypes that look remarkably like racial and gender stereotypes." (5 / 3) I have to agree with her that "supposedly 'fluid' selves are no less subject to cultural hegemonies, rules of conduct, and regulating cultural norms than are 'solid'" (4 / 3) -- in other words, one can act out a different role, but that doesn't change what role is prescribed for whom.
Meanwhile, she points out the fatal flaw of technosalvation narratives: "Rhetorics that claim to remedy and erase gender and racial injustices and imbalances through expensive and difficult-to-learn technologies such as the Internet entirely gloss over this question of access, which seems to me the important question. And it seems unlikely that this glossing over is entirely innocent. Cybertyping and other epiphenomena of high technologies in the age of the Internet are partly the result of people of color's restricted access to the means of production--in this case, the means of production of the 'fluid identities' celebrated by so much theory and commerce today." (9 / 5)
She then addresses those who oppose the Internet and other media expanding to reach the entire world; for example, one anti-media-expansion advertisement "claim[ed] that global media, including (especially) the Internet, produce a kind of 'mental retraining; the cloning of all cultures to be alike'" (15 / 8). This is also referred to as "monoculture." Nakamura asserts that "cybertyping's purpose is to representatively bracket off racial difference, to assuage fears that the Internet is indeed producing a monoculture. The greater fear, however, which cybertyping actively works to conceal, is the West's reluctance to acknowledge its colonization of global media, and ongoing racist practices within its own borders" (19-20 / 10-11). She explains that "just as the gold rush depended upon the exploited labor of Chinese immigrants, black slaves, and Mexican workers and consequently created racial stereotypes to justify and explain their exploitation as 'Western expansion,' so too does our current digital gold rush create mythologies of race that are nostalgic. That is, they hark back to earlier narratives of race and racialism which were always-already 'virtual' in the sense that they too were constructed narratives, the product of representational labor and work" (26 / 14). So we (that is, our culture) can justify the digital divide between "developed" countries and "developing" countries by referencing the nostalgic images of these people as close to the land, "natural," wanting to continue in traditional ways, without mentioning the poverty in which they generally live, the hardships and the low levels of services that they generally endure, their relatively low life expectancies. We can justify exploiting Indian IT workers by means of cybertypes of them as hard-working, a mass rather than individuals, etc.
Nakamura likens identity as a construct to an afterimage, a remaining mental image after having seen an image (perhaps a stereotype or cybertype) and moved on to other things; the afterimage remains and is the identity we attribute to the object of the image (perhaps a person or group of people).
All of this (mostly) makes sense. However, there are a few things that Nakamura mentions about which I was curious. For one, "postbody" ideology -- what is this, and how can it exist? I have the same difficulty with "posthuman" ideology; how can embodied humans understand what these ideas might be, and how could they possibly have come up with such ideas, not having the ability to leave their embodied humanness behind save through supernatural experiences which are beyond quantification? Also, is it really true that "it has been well documented that telecommunications technologies encourage paranoia" (8 / 5)? I want to see those studies, if only so I can reference them to paranoid folks I encounter on the Internet.
[Reference: "Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction" by Lisa Nakamura]
Stone and Nakamura on socialization, 1 November 2004
Stone makes a number of interesting observations in her introduction piece, but the one I was most intrigued by was this:
"Within a short time, the number of hours that a broad segment of children will spend playing computer-based games will exceed the number of hours that they spend watching television. It is entirely possible that computer-based games will turn out to be the major unacknowledged source of socialization and education in industrialized societies before the 1990s have run their course" (27 / 14 in PDF).
This thought makes me want to read the rest of James Paul Gee's book, or to find other researchers who might have considered this socializing influence. I imagine that video games would have some of the qualities the Internet is purported to have, although I question if video games have the same likelihood to assume a raceless (i.e., monoculturally white) identity, for example. The explosion of popularity for anime, manga, and other artworks (and video games!) that assume an Asian identity might challenge this -- or might end up being another form of "identity tourism," as Nakamura describes it.
Nakamura describes "chat-space participants who take on identities as samurai and geisha," stating that they "constitute the darker side of postmodern identity, since the 'fluid selves' they create (and often so lauded by postmodern theorists) are done so in the most regressive and stereotyped of ways. These kinds of racial identity plays stand as a critique of the notion of the digital citizen as an ideal cogito whose subjectivity is liberated by cyberspace" (xv / 3 in PDF) -- in other words, the ability to construct one's own identity in cyberspace (including the race and sex one will assume) does not mean that one will be freed from the stereotypical representations of the past. Nakamura describes the creation of "cybertypes, or "images of racial identity engendered by this new medium [cyberspace]" (xii / 2), stating that an understanding of these images is necessary in order to be able "to assess the Net's potential for 'social transformation'", since "the Internet is above all a discursive and rhetorical space, a place where 'race' is created as an effect of the net's distinctive uses of language" (xii / 2).
Nakamura notes that "currently, 'popular attitudes toward the Internet tend to be maddeningly bipolar--either the Net changes everything or the Net changes nothing' (Heilemann 138). Of course, the truth lies between these two poles: the Net changes some things" (xii / 2). The way identities are represented online is, of course, different from the way they are represented in person, over the telephone, etc. But the mental constructs Internet users bring with them do not necessarily change much.
Meanwhile, Nakamura states that "while on the one hand people of color have always been postmodern (and by extension 'virtual'), if postmodernism is defined as that way of seeing subjectivity as decentered, fragmented, and marginalized, on the other hand their lack of access to technology and popular figuration as the 'primitive' both on- and offline (those virtual samurai and geisha are certainly not to be found in 'modern,' let alone postmodern, Japan) positions them simultaneously in the nostalgic world of the premodern" (xv-xvi / 3-4). So some representations of people of color on the Internet (and probably in at least some video games as well) lock them into a position as "primitive," "pre-modern," historical object rather than recognizing the complex postmodern identities they experience. I would really, really love to read more research and theory about this.
[References: "Introduction: Sex, Death and Machinery, or How I Fell in Love with My Prosthesis" by Allucquère Roseanne Stone; "Introduction to Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet" by Lisa Nakamura]
Windley's "Business Driven Identity Management," 1 November 2004
Windley's is the first business-related digital identity article I have read, and I find his definition of "digital identity strategy" fascinating -- "a long-term plan that models how identity information will be used by your business, taking into account the key stakeholders in identity: your partners, customers, and employees" -- which has the benefits of "a consistent and systematic approach to customers, improved security for corporate applications and information, lower user administration costs and better compliance with internal and external policies."
The steps he presents --
--are a bit business-y for me to understand clearly, yet make it clear that planning (infra)structure and use policies for the information that will be posted to the Inter/intranet are of primary importance. Moreover, the need to have that infrastructure and those use policies reflect the needs of the organization's context are highlighted in a way that reminds me of admonitions to consider rhetorical situations.
[Link to "Business Driven Identity Management" by Phillip J. Windley]
Powell on digital identity - 1 November 2004
Powell mentions something in passing, as he goes about describing Harvard's online learning experiences, that seemed to me to be important. "Even with all the ease of communication and access to information that the digital age gives, however, Ogletree said something appears to be missing, and figuring out what and why is one of the conference's missions. People today, he said, 'spend more, but have less,' 'buy more but enjoy it less' and have 'added years to life, but not life to years.'"
I think about this quite a bit in thinking about cyborg theory and digital identity issues. Digital technology creates many, many opportunities that would not otherwise exist (such as for interactive online learning experiences), yet there is a trade-off; something of simplicity, of ability to live without technological devices, is lost. People seek salvation through technological advancement (or through accumulation of technological commodities), but don't find it. This is not to say that, pre-digital technology, life was simple and grand and perfect; rather, I just find myself contemplating our (post)modern dependence on technology, and the vulnerabilities that are wrapped up in that dependence. What happens if there is a power outage, or something more severe? What happens if, for some reason, I am deprived of computer or Internet access for an extended period of time? How do I access information, communicate, accomplish my necessary daily tasks? Much of my coursework and employment-related work involves the Internet, and almost all of it involves computers.
[Link to "Internet Conference Examines Harvard's Digital Identity" by Alvin Powell]
Hunter on online politicking and privacy - 27 October 2004
My online political activities made me very interested in Hunter's discussion of how such activities threaten privacy (and, perhaps, the integrity of the electoral system).
He introduces the idea of political privacy, which some people would consider an oxymoron, and states that "in the associational privacy and anonymous political speech cases cited above, the Court has come to recognize the incredible importance of political privacy. Far from distorting public debate, a protected space of privacy for people to develop their identities and political views free from the influences of governmental or social pressure, actually helps constitute a vibrant public sphere of interaction and debate. Simply put, without the private there would be no public." This kind of discussion of the private/public split made so much sense to me.
His description of the huge databases of information developed by "Internet advertising networks like DoubleClick, Engage, the Flycast network, and MatchLogic" through their use of cookie technology, tracking users through innumerous online exchanges, I found troubling, especially when he described how these companies are attempting to link their databases with those of off-line companies "which [know] individuals credit card numbers, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and house hold income." And then, to realize that "the privacy invasive techniques just described, are now being rapidly adopted by political campaign professionals seeking to identify and target likely contributors and supporters," caused me to be thoroughly troubled.
He states that "no company is more famous (or infamous for that matter) for bringing target marketing techniques to the political campaign world than Aristotle International, a political consulting firm founded in 1983. Over the years Aristotle has digitized the publicly available voter registration lists in every state in the country, and combined them into a vast database containing the names of more than 150 million Americans registered to vote. The database has been combined with information from other sources to create profiles which include voters names, addresses, telephone numbers, party affiliations, frequency of voting, ethnicity, incomes, employers, what cars they drive, and up to 25 other factors (Wayne, 2000). Aristotle sells access to its database through VoterListsOnline.com which advertises that 'you may search as many times as you wish until you have narrowed the list to just the type of voters you want at a price you can live with (cited in Knight, 2000).' One of Aristotle's most popular products is its 'Fat Cat' list of wealthy contributors, which promises to turn 'your personal computer into a proven fund-raising machine (cited in Wayne, 2000).'
Aristotle's impressive voter list offerings have made it wildly popular among candidates. According to Aristotle's IPO prospectus, 50 U.S. Senators, over 200 House members, 46 Democratic and Republican state parties, and numerous national advocacy organizations are clients. During the 2000 campaign season, Aristotle estimated that some 72 percent of Senate candidates, and 66 percent of House candidates used the company's services (Aristotle, 2000: 3). Several 2000 Presidential candidates including George W. Bush, John McCain, Elizabeth Dole, and Steve Forbes, also used voter information provided by Aristotle (Wayne, 2000).
In addition to its traditional voter list offerings, Aristotle has sought to expand 'to become a leading provider of targeted internet marketing solutions (2000: 3).' To facilitate its move into online marketing, Aristotle has teamed with network advertiser MatchLogic, to serve targeted banner advertisements to web surfing voters. This partnership allowed Aristotle to cross reference Virginia voter registration rolls with Internet users likely to support John McCain, and then serve McCain banner ads encouraging people to help collect signatures to get his name on the Virginia primary ballot (Lessnor, 2000)."
Other profiling companies "are now eagerly packaging their information for political campaigns", one example of which, "called Map Applications offers software which can link as many as 5,000 categories of information (including age, ethnicity, marital status, salary, and gun ownership) to individual voters (Stepanek, 2000)." Meanwhile, "Juno.com, a free Internet Service Provider (ISP) which requires users to fill out detailed demographic profiles in order to use the service, has sold thousands of member email addresses to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Republican National Committee (Mintz, 2000)." Hunter also describes a free ISP developed by the Democrats that collected much personal information at registration and seemed geared to collecting
He goes on to discuss how most political campaigns list no privacy policy, and how 45% of candidates process donations through third-party websites (only 28% of which have privacy policies, and which do not have to follow any candidate policy that may exist). Hunter mentions that "among candidates using a third party processor, 90 turned to Campaigncontribution.com, a service with no privacy policy, offered by the good people of Aristotle International" (mentioned above). If politicians and those websites with which they contract e-donation help don't disavow this kind of scary information-sharing behavior, it is bound to flourish. Hunter suggests that "if voters become aware of the practices described above they may well simply disengage from political activity," or from seeking political information online, for fear that this information may become a (potentially unsavory) profile for sale. He cites a columnist who suggests that such profiling may lead to "receiving from a candidate personalized messages that are designed for your demographic group and political affiliation. You'd never hear an opposing view. You'd be pampered with predigested politics, a Muzak soundtrack to the movie of your own choosing," which would hamper those Internet users who wish to seek information on many sides of political debates, who wish to have their beliefs challenged and to engage in across-the-divide political conversation.
Hunter discusses how the FEC (Federal Election Commission) database of political donors giving more than $200 has been posted to the web (on the FEC's page and independent pages such as opensecrets.org and PoliticalMoneyLine), allowing anyone with Internet access to search this (arguably) personal information. The implication is dark: "Searches based on employer are possible, and thus a pro-life boss could find out with a single click all employees who support pro-choice candidates, or vice versa. A non-union employer could determine who among its workers had given even relatively modestly to pro-labor candidates or political action committees." Again, knowing that assumably private behavior such as donating money to political candidates or groups will be visible to anyone in the world who cares to look, people may simply choose not to give.
I imagine that the groups whose demographics are most likely to care about privacy would be most damaged -- those who see themselves as countering a corrupt and often scarily monolithic establishment. I first think of anti-war activists, rural militia-types, and independent media supporters, though concern for privacy is not an issue that can be easily plotted by demographic group -- it seems to me to be to be more generalizable to the American public as a whole. We may post signs on our front lawns or put bumper stickers on our vehicles, but do we really want to be visible, profilable, for our political beliefs to anyone with web access? I tend to think not. Hunter seems to agree, discussing how FEC rules (including a requirement that any candidate-based political website "include the full name of the site's creator and indicate whether it was authorized by the candidate being advocated for") "when applied to the Internet, may actually force citizens to disengage from politics for fear of loosing [sic] their personal political privacy, a situation which ironically runs directly counter to the FEC's goal of helping to equalize citizens [sic] political influence in the electoral process."
Hunter finally turns to electronic voting, its vulnerability to tampering, and its challenge to voter privacy: "Suppose a voting system manufacturer offered to impartially run an entire election and bear all the expenses in return for being granted access privileges to market to voters. Should a governmental body even consider such a proposal? Should the voter be able to, or required to, opt in or out before any of this use is made? Is it a far stretch to have outsourced elections, such as 'County-wide Elections for Prince William County, brought to you by AOL Time-Warner'?" His projected outcome of this challenge to political privacy matches his others: "The very real security and privacy concerns surrounding electronic voting threaten to destroy the bedrock election principle of a right to a secret ballot. If people believe their votes may be monitored by an employer, party operative, or commercial marketer, they will likely stop voting all together. Far from 'fixing' our nation's voting system, online voting, if not looked at and implemented carefully, could actually make things worse. As Mercuri (1993) sagely notes, 'Technology alone does not eliminate the possibility of corruption and incompetence in elections; it merely changes the platform on which they may occur.'"
I appreciated greatly his suggested remedies to these problems: removing FEC labeling requirements on candidate-based websites, moving the FEC disclosure limit up to $1000 or "allowing small time ($200 - $900) contributors to only have to disclose their names and zip codes rather than their full home address and place of employment," all campaign websites posting privacy policies and checking those of websites contracted to process donations, and (my favorite) "with regards to voter profiling in both the offline and online worlds, states and the FEC should be far more diligent in enforcing existing regulations prohibiting the commercial use of voter registration records. Some 25 states already have such laws on the books, but they are rarely if ever enforced (Pressman, 2000). Trevor Potter, a former FEC commissioner similarly notes that 'Federal election data cannot be used for commercial purposes, but no one has ever challenged it (cited in Wayne, 2000).' It is rather hard to imagine a more commercial use of election related information than Aristotle sharing its voter profiles with an Internet advertising network like MatchLogic. Enforcement actions brought against these types of profiling techniques could greatly curtail the privacy abuses associated with the use of publicly available voter registration and campaign contribution information." These last two suggestions seem to me to be no-brainers. I would love to see some congresspeople take up the voter privacy effort (if only for publicity's sake), though I suspect that this is unlikely in today's political climate and potentially dangerous, depending on what might be inserted into legislation when no one is looking.
[Link to "Political Privacy and Online Politics: How E-Campaigning Threatens Voter Privacy" by Christopher Hunter]
Wednesday, 24 November 2004
Wolf on the Dean campaign and the future of politics online - 27 October 2004
Wolf's description of how the Internet was intensely important to Howard Dean's presidential campaign intrigued me, as I too was involved in online political actions surrounding the 2004 election, though mostly not until Dean's campaign had been shot down. I could relate to the person he interviewed who said that "a lot of the people on the Net have given up on traditional politics precisely because it was about television and the ballot box, and they had no way to shout back. […] What we've given people is a way to shout back, and we listen - they don't even have to shout anymore." Another man made the interesting observation that "In the old telephone company, central planning was needed before the network could grow. [...] If you are willing to let things happen from the bottom up, you can scale without doing all that planning."
He describes how this changes things:
"In the past, early enthusiasm in western states was meaningless to a primary candidate except as a source of donations. The first contests were on the other side of the country, where face-to-face politics and idiosyncratic issues (such as the value of ethanol as a gasoline additive) played an absurdly outsize role. […] But because the entire Dean system is densely linked, the distant work of all the local groups feeds back into the campaign. Local letters to the editor are copied and sent around by email, graphics and videos are shared among groups, and technical assistance is distributed. A local and national volunteer infrastructure arises with almost no help or supervision. […] For months, local meetups […] have been composing handwritten letters to Iowa Democrats, asking them to support Dean."
The possibility of the roles of campaign supporters changing, broadening, seems to me to be an interesting and good thing -- greater public involvement in the political process is generally a Good Thing.
Meanwhile, Dean's role as a candidate changes somewhat in this new environment: "What does it take to lead a smart mob? Ito emails back an odd metaphor: 'You're not a leader, you're a place. You're like a park or a garden. If it's comfortable and cool, people are attracted. Deanspace is not really about Dean. It's about us.'"
Wolf takes a parting shot at analyzing the Web popularity of varying campaigns, stating that "popularity breeds more popularity; links are made most quickly to Web sites that have the most links. One of the major factors determining who will win in a race for links, therefore, is time. The first sites gain an early lead, and the lead tends to grow. But, of course, late arrivals sometimes take command. This is because time is not the only factor. The other factor is what Barabási calls 'fitness.' [...] The most important thing to notice about Barabási's model is that the advantage of arriving early and offering adequate or superior fitness increases exponentially over time. This means we would not expect to find lots of competing sites clustering closely around the leader. Instead, the graph has a steep curve. This is exactly what we see when we look at the relative size of the online campaigns, whether measured by links, traffic, or Meetup numbers."
However, Dean was not, ultimately, the Democratic contender, and I wonder what these individuals and researchers might have to say about that. That the Internet certainly has a broad effect on the electoral process but is not (yet) the main catalyst? That those early primary races, the ones that won Kerry the nomination, are still the main event in terms of the party nomination? Something else?
I also wonder, because I have been involved with MoveOn.org, a large Internet group which supported Kerry's ultimately unsuccessful campaign for the presidency, if what happened to Dean might be mirrored there. Kerry had a large group of Internet supporters (in MoveOn and elsewhere), yet failed.
[Link to "How the Internet Invented Howard Dean" by Gary Wolf]
metac0m on hacktivism, 25 October 2004
Having never heard of hacktivism before this class, I very much appreciated metac0m's definitions of hacktivism ("a policy of hacking, phreaking or creating technology to achieve a political or social goal"), hacker ("a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities [...] who is capable of 'creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations'"), electronic civil disobedience ("non-violent, direct action utilized in order to bring pressure on institutions engaged in unethical or criminal actions [... aiming] to disrupt the operation of information and capital flows of carefully selected target sites without causing serious damage"), and so on.
I was intrigued by the mention of an electronic civil disobedience (ECD) action arranged at the same time as street protests in Seattle against the WTO in 1999; it reminded me of an online protest march set up in spring 2004 to which I came across a link. However, my link is merely virtual imagery, avatars created by real people to march in protest. The ECD metac0m describes "has been an attempt to blockade electronic targets through mass participation," "provid[ing] a mechanism for ordinary people, who cannot get to Seattle, to register a protest that may have the impact equivalent to actually being there in person" (25) by slowing or blocking access to the WTO's servers," thereby "placing information back in the service of people rather than using it to benefit institutions" -- which, he argues, is what the government does: "Without public pressure cyberspace will have no moral or normative controls to control the excesses of politicians, groups or corporations who would seek to dominate that public space."
This kind of distributed denial of service (DDoS) actions -- actions that seek to slow or stop Internet traffic hoping to reach the WTO's servers -- metac0m describes as being different from traditional DDoS attacks because traditional attacks involve hacked computers automatically sending requests over and over again, whereas the "virtual sit-in" involves real people sitting at computers, clicking "refresh" over and over again (or some similar action). He notes that some hackers and hacktivists see no difference between the two, quoting one as saying that "the only difference [...] is the difference between blowing something up and being pecked to death by a duck." From these hackers' point of view, "creation is good; destruction is bad. Hackers should promote the free flow of information, and causing anything to disrupt, prevent, or retard that flow is improper. For instance, cDc does not consider Web defacements or Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to be legitimate hacktivist actions. The former is nothing more than hi-tech vandalism, and the latter, an assault on free speech."
Another hacker calls hacktivism "using technology to advance human rights through electronic media" -- and in this community, censorship is considered a human rights violation. In this way, these hackers are attempting to redirect efforts to solving problems of censorship rather than disrupting the online operations of "evil" entities, and "code itself is the primary location of struggle." This last statement fascinates me -- rather than online skirmishes with authorities, these hacktivists struggle against themselves, against the limitations of the technology itself, to construct a solution to the problem of censorware.
metac0m explains that "increasingly, activists and hacktivists are being criminalized and labeled as terrorists. Users, activists, and hackers alike face censorship and surveillance on the Internet. Thus hacktivists have begun to develop technologies aimed at empowering Internet users and activists with security and privacy enhancing tools. There are numerous ongoing hacktivist projects to develop technologies that would enable activists, citizens and civil society networks to secure themselves against, or work around, Internet censorship and surveillance. The scope of these technologies ranges from small, simple scripts and programs to highly developed peer-to-peer network protocols, and stegonography [sic] tools. The new collaborative hacktivist community Hackforge.net aims to bring together hackers and activists in an open source collaborative software development environment in order to facilitate the continued development of hacktivist technologies.
Oscillating between creation and confrontation hacktivism is returning to its hacker roots. True to the hacker definition of 'circumventing limitations' hacktivists have always focused on technology development, with a particular focus on ensuring freedom of speech on the Internet, although this aspect has often been ignored by the media and academics. Hacktivism is not simple pranksterism, nor is it malicious or destructive. It is not synonymous with defacements and DoS attacks. Hacktivism is a form of electronic direct action in which creative and critical thinking is fused with programming skill and code creating a new mechanism to achieve social and political change. Hacktivists are committed to securing the Internet as a platform of free speech and expression. This ensures that the Internet remains a medium for activism and an environment that facilitates the free flow of information."
This kind of activism - both against corrupt use of authority and current technological limitations - I find incredibly intriguing.
[Link to "What is Hacktivism? 2.0" by metac0m]
Tuesday, 23 November 2004
Vegh on "cyberterrorism" - 25 October 2004
I was intrigued by Vegh's discussion of how computer attacks and blowing up buildings are conflated in the discussion of "cyberterrorism."
He notes that "in light of these serious threats from cyberspace [physical terrorists using the Internet for "formulating plans, raising funds, spreading propaganda, and communicating securely"], it is worth noting that the national discourse on cyberterrorism is about something that - fortunately - has not yet happened. It is, therefore, desirable for the government to show credibly that cyberterrorism does, indeed, exist, or is at least highly probable to occur in the future, in order to keep up the seriousness of the threat under the disguise of which restrictive legislation can be easily passed that increases the power of the government."
Vegh's opinion of the expanded powers of the government is obvious. As a part of his argument, I appreciated his mention of how changes the U.S. has supported (such as the downfall of communist regimes) have been aided by such technology, how "the use of encrypted messaging on the Internet can empower oppressed people in authoritative regimes to evade their government's censorship and surveillance, just like it can assist al-Qaeda members to communicate in confidence. What must be realized is that the Internet is just like any other tool; it can be used for good as well as bad, just like the proverbial hammer. But it also has to be realized that it is in the interest of certain powers to present it in a light that best supports their current agendas. It is no surprise that the biggest government ally in this struggle is probably the mainstream mass media. [...]
Especially put into the context of other types of terrorist alerts (e.g., against bridges, water supply facilities, nuclear reactors, airports, or embassies abroad), one is left wondering whether these alerts [about cyberterrorist threats] are strategically distributed according to a planned agenda, with the additional benefits of indirectly putting blame on countries or technologies that stand in the way of U.S. global political, economic, and cultural hegemony, by carefully injecting them into the text of these warnings.
Perhaps there is no government agenda. Yet, the majority of these articles are from wire service reports prompted by government-issued alerts and press briefings. Perhaps there is intelligence that specifically points to plans against U.S. cyberspace. Yet, the language and sources are extremely vague, making it look like an attempt to issue warnings about all imaginable scenarios; just in case any of them happens, the government can always say they did warn the public. Perhaps consequent legislation was only meant to serve the protection of the American people. Yet, it also protects the government from any other political dissent, or at least gives them the power to monitor their citizens, as well as it protects businesses from loss revenue from 'copyleft,' 'peer-to-peer,' and 'open source' initiatives. Perhaps it is only sensationalist reporting by newspapers to sell more copies. Yet, it influences public opinion, creates a negative image of hacking, online political activism, free software and other counter-corporate-cultural movements, blurs the boundaries of cyberactivism and cyberterrorism, and consequently prompts unwarranted restrictive legislation, induces misguided policy-making, and causes the curtailment of civil liberties."
Vegh picks out weaknesses in the government terrorist rhetoric that I find valid (must threats be so vague, if they do exist? is it coincidental that the rhetoric protects corporate interests that are threatened by computer developments outside the world of commerce? could there be some other governmental interest at work in these assertions about "hackers"?), and uses them to support the existence of hacktivism.
[Link to "Hacktivists or Cyberterrorists? The Changing Media Discourse on Hacking" by Sandor Vegh]
Negativland's take on fair use and intellectual property - 25 October 2004
Negativland, as artists devoted to using collage and other borrowing/referencing techniques to make (what they would argue is) new musical work, present an interesting persuasive statement about fair use and intellectual property, much like the RIAA positional statement I've already discussed. Much like the RIAA, they use strong language and statements to make their point (although Negativland seems to me to be less melodramatic and more forceful).
For example, they assert that "the world wide corporate assumption of private cultural ownership is now fencing off such timely artistic directions by using copyright law to assert that virtually any form of reuse without payment or permission is theft. From their economic point of view, cultural owners now use copyright law as a convenient shield from 'direct reference' criticism, and a legal justification for total spin control and informational monopolization in the marketplace.
However, from an artistic point of view, it is ponderously delusional to try to paint all these new forms of fragmentary sampling as economically motivated 'theft', 'piracy', or 'bootlegging'. We reserve these terms for the unauthorized taking of whole works and reselling them for one's own profit. Artists who routinely appropriate, on the other hand, are not attempting to profit from the marketability of their subjects at all. They are using elements, fragments, or pieces of someone else's created artifact in the creation of a new one for artistic reasons. These elements may remain identifiable, or they may be transformed to varying degrees as they are incorporated into the new creation, where there may be many other fragments all in a new context, forming a new 'whole'. This becomes a new 'original', neither reminiscent of nor competitive with any of the many 'originals' it may draw from."
Though Negativland's statements about corporate ownership of cultural property is undoubtedly a slam on the RIAA and/or member companies, the RIAA's anti-piracy statement does not contradict Negativland's fair use argument. This seems like an important point to mention.
Negativland describes its use of collage as deriving from "collage techniques which have developed throughout this century, and which are universally celebrated as artistically valid, socially aware, and conceptually stimulating to all, it seems, except perhaps those who are 'borrowed' from." They argue that art and commerce are both important societal forces, which should have equivalent legal primacy and authority, at least, since "one feeds the mouth, but the other feeds the spirit, and either one without the other can only be seen as a form of societal decline."
One piece of the argument that I found especially compelling:
"Unlike the basic thrust of all the rest of U.S. law, copyright law actually assumes that all unauthorized uses are illegal until proven innocent, and any contested 'fair use' always requires a legal defense, which remains beyond the financial grasp of most accused 'infringers'. This financial intimidation results in the vast majority of art appropriators caving in and settling out of court, their work being consigned to oblivion, and the 'owners' having it all their way, including their expenses paid under the guise of 'damages'."
They suggest, instead, that "a revision of the Fair Use statutes should throw the benefit of the doubt to artistic reuse and place the burden of proof on the owner/litigator. When a copyright owner wished to contend an unauthor