Readings
More on the workings of OLPC…
Hey guys, here is a link to a video I found about how OLPC works - everything about the technology of the little green laptop! Enjoy…
Summary for the Final Week…
New Media Architecture: Summary of Readings
On the readings
“Strategies for Tactical Media” by McKenzie Wark
Telesthesia is the movement of information faster than people by the means of phones, television, radio, internet, etc. Because it can move faster it can also organize the “movement of people and things.” Telesthesia is “perception at a distance”
Tactical Media is very similar. It combines the use of all different media. It is used as a term to define media that crosses several genres and is considered a moblizing force that not only questions every aspect of our media life but life in general. Tactical media supposedly reaches out to people who would otherwise be isolated and gives them a voice. It could link social movements to groups it could never reach before.
Wark believes that tactical media should be about challenging not only what the different mediums can be but can change how we think about the issues the new media presents. Wark does not hold out hope that this movement will last forever but instead looks forward to the next change.
“The Practice of Everyday Life” by Michel de Certeau
Michel believes that consumers are no longer interpreting media like they used to. Instead of simply absorbing the content they are reflecting and wanting to react. Michel is taking a look at the groups that media is intended for, how they consume it and why they interpret it like they do. He says that the common people consume culture that is “disseminated and imposed by the elites” but I believe he is trying to debunk that idea as the media is changing or at least explain how even the marginal or minority groups now have “elites” in whatever culture due to the enormous amount of information out there and the next to zero wait time to consume that media.
The Yes Men video:
Thank goodness I tried to watch the whole movie this morning because I didn’t understand the youtube video and didn’t understand why we were watching it. The guest seemed a bit off and said things that made the company sound terrible when it was supposed to sound good.
This is what I caught from the video: Dow accepting full responsibility of the Bhopal disastor. “Union Carbide plant leaked deadly gas.” They are giving $500 to the Indian victims which will cover 1 year of medical care but this is 20 years later. The site also has toxic waste and has not been cleaned up. It is used as a playground by children and they drink water from it. “It’s better late than never.” They will release the studies on the chemicals.
It is interesting considering the damage that was done to Dow by having a person fake represent them. What is worse is that the BBC legitimized him by letting him on air.
“The Practice of Everyday Life”, or “Now Nick Feels Like an Idiot”
Hey folks. This is my attempt to summarize this massive block of near-unreadable text. I’ll do my best to keep the editorial comments to a minimum, but if you read the text, I’m sure you’ll be able to understand my frustration. Click the jump for what’s probably a completely useless jumble of ideas.
Tired of Trees: Questioning Internet Protocol
Galloway and Thackers intro of The Exploit conducts a political philosophy within the nature of networks. There has been a developing relationship with the technological advances and the sovereignty that is said to control them. This would oppose the belief held by Geert Lovink who proclaimed that internet protocols are not ruling the world, but simply the government is. Upon examining this proclaim, Galloway and Thackets would argue that political formulas could not elucidate networks because it fails to analyze from a articulate level–taking into account the existence of their intricate qualities and extent. Instead this section introduces an idea about the nature of networks from an anti-code of thought which considers the relationships between biology and technology.
Their approach begins by debating whether or not America is a sovereign power or a network power. After a small collection of complicated questions such as “Does the policy of American unilateralism provide a significant counterexample to the claim that power today is network-based,” they suggest that the juncture between sovereignty and networks is the place where the apparent contradictions can best be understood. Such a contradiction that they come to find is how the American unilateralism counters the notion that we live in a global network society–”How could there be a global system of distributed control if there also exists a single superpower?”
Galloway and Thacker hint for a new method of control that is instead entirely innate to networks. They form a question that comes from the assumption that the present day American regime is in the political vanguard that aims to establish sovereignty in a new political structure that is antithetical to traditional modes of control. They ask the nature of the current geopolitical struggle and believe it is necessary to reach beyond a theory of power law distributions to a theory of political action rooted in networks.
Their argument has three steps, which are:
1. The modern period is characterized by both symmetrical political conflicts waged by centralized power blocs, and also asymmetrical political conflicts in which netwroekd actors struggle against centralized powers.
2. The present day is symmetrical again, but this time in the symmetrical form of networks fighting networks.
3. In order to be effective, political movements must discover a new exploit.
Examples of asymmetric conflict that exist today that shows a historical response to the centralization of power include the suicide bomber vs the police, peer-to-peer protocols vs music conglomerates, guerillas vs the army, netwar vs cyberwar, and subcultues vs the family.
The new exploit which is suggested would have to be a form of “anti web,” as they coin, which would be as asymmetrical in relationship to networks as the network was in relationship to power centers. It would have to consider the intricate unhuman elements of all networks and would later be called an exceptional topology. This exploit hasn’t been invented, as they conclude, and probably will fail to begin and the sovereigns will again breed their own demise.
Alex Galloway: Networks and Sovereignty
Galloway’s work is concerned with the power relationship between sovereignty and networks. The network has become the core organizational structure for postmodern politics/life and has replaced the hierarchical systems of the modern era. They challenge the assumption that networks are democratic and provide a new model for thinking about networks and power structures that are not associated with trees or rhizomes.
In the opening of Prolegomenon: “We’re tired of Trees,” Galloway and Thacker grapple with a claim made by Geert Lovink, that the American president, not global networks rule the world, and go on to pose two main questions:
1.What is the profile of the current geopolitical struggle? Is it a question of sovereign states fighting non-state actors? Is it a question of centralized armies fighting decentralized guerrillas? Hierarchies fighting networks? Or is a new global dynamic on the horizon?
2. Networks are important. But does the policy of American unilateralism provide a significant counter example to the claim that power today is network-based? Has a singular sovereignty won out in global affairs?
Galloway and Thacker suggest that the juncture between sovereignty and networks is the place where the apparent contradictions in which we live can best be understood. They hope to be able to present a topological or “diagramatical” argument about global political conflict, an approach that compares the abstract spaces of different structural systems.
Galloway and Thacker situate the power relationship of networks in a larger historical context of political conflict. They define a politics of symmetry, where the conflict exists between two equivalent powers (like the American Soviet conflict), an asymmetrical conflict (grass-roots/guerrilla networks against entrenched power centers) and a new increasingly more prominent symmetry of network forces against network forces. Today connectivity is a threat and the network is a weapons system. Centralized and decentralized power blocks that were successful for so long during the modern period are failing and we must learn to succeed with a distributed architecture. However, networks are unequal and inconsistent (unlike the old power block symmetry). Networks are neither centralized nor distributive but both. The network creates a new form of sovereignty.  Networks are the medium through which America derives its sovereignty. Ultimately, Galloway and Thacker argue that we must conceive of a new topology, one that is asymmetrical in relationship to networks, as the network was asymmetrical in relation to power centers. “Resistance is asymmetry.”
Discussing Interfaces
If I understood Mushon’s article correctly, the over-arching theme throughout Interface as a Conflict of Ideologies is the idea that while it generally goes unnoticed, the Internet is an undoubtedly biased interface. As mentioned in the ShiftSpace.org introduction video, Internet users commonly mistake the Internet as distributed and open, due in large part because:
The web is celebrated for dramatically lowering the threshold for the authorship of media and communication interfaces. The relatively low prices of hosting, the simplicity and flexibility of HTML and the interconnectivity model of the hyperlink have made the web a revolutionary tool for gaining ownership of media (Mushon 7).
But the truth of the matter is that the Internet is not unlike other interfaces - it contains inherent biases that favor one independent system over the other. Mushon defines interface as ” a point of interconnection between two independent systems” (2), and in the case of the Internet, although the cycle of communication between sender and receiver varies within different website models, the site owner is always favored over the audience member. This fact is more obvious in sites such as the online version of the New York Times, which functions “in a classic one-to-many broadcast format without offering interfaces for users input” (Mushon 8). However, as Mushon goes on to note:
…control over the interface is always kept in the hand of the site owner. Even the highest level of interactive content does not allow authorship of the interface - and so while content can be authored by the owner of the site or its audience the rules of engagement are always defined by one member of the communication cycle.
Even in the instance of Wikipedia where there is no single identified author identity, (which is cited as an example of Commons-Based Peer Production), the many contributors, editors and mere readers that visit the site must work within the confines of the wiki interface. This means adhering to the general layout and code predefined by the owners of the site, which whether noticed or not, restricts the level of interaction possible between the two independent systems. One such Wikipedia-related example is demonstrated in the fact that many contributors are largely influenced to conform to this interface’s disinterest in acting as a place to generate discussions surrounding entries made and edited on Wikipedia - (which is an option that, as Mushon points out, goes largely unnoticed by the vast majority of Wikipedia users due to the link’s deemphasized placement on the site.)
Consequently, because the users or consumers of websites are constantly subjected to the ideologies that are deeply encoded within that given interface, and because such influences often go unnoticed on the Internet, such forces succeed in removing the agency that one has in their interactions. There is no public space on the web, and the web has never had any public space; it is “…a social space completely controlled and privately owned” (Mushon 17). But in Interface as a Conflict of Ideologies, Mushon advocates that we work to gain this agency that, in terms of user-interface online, we never had.
As clearly demonstrated in the ShiftSpace.org video, there certainly exists ways in which people can begin to challenge interfaces despite the restrictions imposed by site owners. For example, Mushon mentions the potential shown by a field of research known as Metaweb, which “stands for web applications and platforms that attempt to expand the interactive features offered by webpages” (21). But in more general terms, he names two strategies we can begin and continue to explore to retrieve user agency in the interface.
The first is known as tactical media (i.e. hacking), which embraces a “hit-and run” use of media where one seeks “not to refrain from engagement with systems, but rather the opposite - extend it” (Mushon 23). And the second is strategic media, which practices a “hit-and-stay” method that unlike tactical media, requires one to take responsibility for his or her actions and demonstrate patience and leadership within that culture. And it is with the use of tactical and strategic media that Mushon sees the possibility “to oppose the logistic media of global power” and attempt to subvert the inherent conflict in interface (Mushon 30).
interface conflicts
In “interface conflicts” Mushon explain the importance of interface in an individual’s path to understanding mediated information.  He argues that User Interface in one form or another, has always existed as layer of mediation in communication, and with the advent of graphical computer software, (and primarily web based tools) has become a vital layer in facilitating how a user (or consumer) constructs his/her understanding of the respective space.
Through looking at Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding Model,”  Mushon explains how the interfaces on websites and web tools directly effect a user’s conception of identity, and ownership online.  In many ways, interface can be also seen as similar to context.  One example he gives is when the Los Angeles Times tried to add a wiki-style editorial to its website, a la wikipedia.  However, with in a few days of starting the rampant amount of vandalism on the proprietary site forced the times to end the experiment.  Contrasted to wikipedia,  which is actively monitored by thousands of users  for the “good of the commons.”  Without this context of shared ownership (as the Times would have retained all rights to any created content) the wiki platform was unable to keep itself bound together.With this idea in mind, the question remains as to how we as users of the internet will see a positive change in progressing user interface in order to create context outside of conglomerated control in order to benefit individuals. In attempting “to find more open models on the web” Mushon sees three primary ways to “intervene” on the web.
There are two primary methods he sees:
I: Tactical Media
II: Strategic Media
Tactical Media includes “hit and run” types of power subversion, such as Google Bombing, Hacking (both as a technological and non-technological act of repurposing) and singular events that subvert control through interface.
Strategic Media focuses on “hit and stay” modes of intervention, such as Greasemonkey, a feature (For Firefox, Safari, and Opera web browsers (under different names)) which allows a user to change the html of a webpage to make it more usable and more powerful. These scripts are based on javascript, a basic and unversal code for the web which are in tern easily customizable, which means that there are tons of hacks one can try for their favorite websites check: www.userscripts.org
Both of these processes for intervention give users power to take interface control back and place the power in the hands of the web viewers, rather than web servers.
Ultimately, Mushon concludes his paper, saying,
“I see the web our main interface to globalization….new ideas are developing from global interconnectivity, from the free culture and the open source movements and from hacker culture. These new ideologies are developed from the bottom up - from communities sharing mutual goals rather than those in powers defining an arbitrary abstract public. This new action demands a renewed social dependency, openness, creativity, leadership and trust.  The power balance of interface can be reconsidered. It is time for us to sit down and rewrite our rules of engagement.
Also, in an aesthetic mode of interface, Mushon included no tabs in his document 
Clay Shirky Sheds Light on a WikiWorld
Shirky in his article writes
human life always exists in tension between our individual and group identities, inseparable and incommensurable. For ten years now, it’s been apparent that the rise of the digital was providing enormous new powers for the individual
This doctrine can be adapted to my third travelogue, the Agarwalla brothers who invented scrabulous were garnered individual power based on digital means; they then created a community based on that freedom of individuality to create such a program. I feel as if Wikipedia offers the same rewards and freedoms. Here individuals are able to share information that is then distributed to a larger community. However, here the problem lies with accredited information and research. Rushkoff’s points out that we are not overthrowing the elite but replacing it. It is a celebrated form of individualism that should be focused not solely on context but content as well. Meaning try and understand where the information is coming from and how it is being brought to you the active participant. Most importantly I believe we all need to take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. Most professors disapprove the works of Wikipedia as research, however, in my experience it has served as satisfying starting point on any subject one can think of. My friend and I always joke about the future of Wikipedia, we believe one day there will be a wikipedia page about every person on the world. who know….
