Technology – Society = Information + Society?

1. Technology – Society = Information + Society? COMN 2312

2. Langdon Winner • Inheriting the classical critiques of technology: Ellul, Illich, Benjamin, Heidegger basically translating some of the critical theorists of continental Europe to North American terrain • Translating them to the “age” we find ourselves in • “High Technology”

3. Langdon Winner unlike other forms of human creativity, technology has never been considered a subject worthy of philosophical inquiry. This is reflected in our general approach to technology which is more concerned with "how things work" and "making things work" than with the moral and political significance of technical systems in themselves. If we are to awaken from what he calls our "technological somnambulism," a condition in which progress is driven by technology itself rather than by the vision and innovation of society at large, then we need a new approach — "a philosophy of technology" — that examines the consequences and wider implications of technology in our lives. Scott London

4. Langdon Winner • “High Technology” recasting the idea of “caste” or class in view of technology Winner contends that technologies are not merely aids to human activity but also powerful forces that give meaning and direction to our lives. Conditions of power, authority, freedom, and social justice are often deeply embedded in technical devices. Scott London

5. Langdon Winner • “High Technology” recasting the idea of “caste” or class in view of technology The physical arrangements of industrial production, warfare, communications, etc., have not only transformed the exercise of power and the experience of citizenship but they have also introduced "inherently political technologies” Scott London

6. Langdon Winner • “High Technology” recasting the idea of “caste” or class in view of technology Winner illustrates the dangers of our society's unquestioning faith in technology by examining the concept of "risk" and the practice of "risk assessment" — one of the ways commonly used for choosing between competing technologies. Examining technologies solely on the basis of risk and benefit ignores the larger moral and political dimensions, he argues. Moreover, by substituting "risk" for the more straightforward concept of "danger" current debates about issues such as environmental policy shift the burden of proof to those who resist technological innovation Scott London

7. Langdon Winner • “High Technology” recasting the idea of “caste” or class in view of technology In a beautifully crafted essay called "Mythinformation," he deconstructs many of the silly arguments put forth by Internet enthusiasts about the so-called digital revolution. He describes the pervasive "computer romanticism" of our times as rooted in a "woefully distorted picture of the role of electronic systems in social life." He devotes special attention to the political hopes and expectations of computer enthusiasts which he says are based on an unrealistic faith in the value of information, rather than public knowledge and wisdom. Scott London (Reviewing the Whale and the Reactor)

8. Langdon Winner • “High Technology” recasting the idea of “caste” or class in view of technology He also looks at the "optimistic technophilia" that characterizes much of the current interest in electronic democracy. The notion that new technologies will produce increased democratization, participation, and social equality does not stand up to scrutiny, he insists. Not only have empirical studies shown that powerful groups tend to use new technologies to retain political control, but the whole idea is grounded in a faulty understanding of democracy. Proponents of electronic democracy subscribe to the belief that democracy is first and foremost a matter of distributing information. They maintain that more people need more information because information is knowledge, knowledge is power, and therefore methods to increase access to power automatically enhance democracy and equalize social power. This is a myth, according to Winner. Genuine democracy involves the pursuit of common ends through discussion, deliberation, and collective decision, not "logging onto one's computer, receiving the latest information, and sending back an instantaneous digitized response." Scott London

9. Cyborg: The monstrous possible • Frankenstein • Orson and H.G. Wells The alternative narrative: • Lost in Space • Dr. Spock • Data And yet • The Borg

10. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other) Pop images • The Attack of the 50ft Woman • Iila • The Queen Borg • The witch

11. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: Amongst a generation of brilliant female scientists who are still in many ways treated as this “feared” other (visible at the time: Ada Lovelace, Rachel Carson, Maria Mayer, Evelyn Fox Keller, Barbara McClintock, Sulamith Goldhaber, Rosalind Franklin…) Other as key to how we will live with technology

12. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: The “other” as diffraction

13. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: The “other” as diffraction (the ease of locating patterns is an illusion – the actual cause of pattern is more complicated

14. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: Amongst a generation of brilliant female scientists who are still in many ways treated as this “feared” other- influential at this time Archeology (Marija Gimbutas): Researches domestic technologies of ancient cultures, discovers and extensive goddess image belt across Europe/Asia and Africa (posits a matriarchal culture); and a goddess imagery

15. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: Amongst a generation of brilliant female scientists who are still in many ways treated as this “feared” other- influential at this time Archeology (Marija Gimbutas): The research on women reveals very complicated relationships with technology– this in contra to another popular image – woman as needing an “easy relationship with technology” as technologically decorative or passive

16. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: Amongst a generation of brilliant female scientists who are still in many ways treated as this “feared” other- influential at this time Archeology and Mythology(Marija Gimbutas and Joseph Campbell): The power of women, woman in their theological, mythological and technological heritage: Medea (a combination of human and goddess, transcultural myth, the fluid use of forms for creating cultural vitality) – Woman as the first cyborg: the model of the possible – technology as for human community Versus the current (1980’s) popular model of a patriarchal/corporate technology which is only appropriated for progress of technology itself/for profit/for power – not for human “being” (in this model it is human “being” which is also “othered” along with woman)

17. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: We can not go backwards, Us + technology has been in place for a very long time. Ancient What we can do is find our empowerment – the image of woman + technology is juxtaposed against other images that we have accepted – yet which do (often) unacknowledged damage

18. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: The monstrous possible (the cultural fear of woman as technological other): Haraway writing in the 1980s onward Haraway: We can not go backwards: What if we think of the cyborg as the other that is also us/embrace this “other” that is us Find the us + technology that embraces and empowers human being- this image has always been there in the woman + technology image, its is there in the image of Medea: the fluidity of form change (transform – the crossing or migrations of forms – the flow of forms)

19. Cyborg/Feminism/Other: Deleuze also is thinking about fluidity, multiplicity, the idea of the trans/form – crossing of forms- the pollinations of forms Influences Lev Manovich: the flow of forms in New Media. New Media as the result of grammars – a mix of data, programming, spatial-visual metaphors that while they have rules are also extremely malleable: We have watched the eruption of this new “language” like we have now the capacity to watch the eruption of a volcano: Razorfish (cyborg imagery?)

20. Influences Lev Manovich: the flow of forms in New Media. New Media as the result of grammars – a mix of data, programming, spatial-visual metaphors that while they have rules are also extremely malleable: We have watched the eruption of this new “language” like we have now the capacity to watch the eruption of a volcano:Razorfish (cyborg imagery?)

21. Transform: Manovich Crossing back and forth of forms • “If with GUI the physical environment migrated into the computer screen, now the conventions of GUI are migrating back into our physical reality. The same trajectory can be traced in relation to other conventions, or forms, of computer media.” • From the Language of New Media: Forms

22. Data + Space (architecture?): (the permeability of forms) • A collection of documents and a navigable space, already traditional methods of organizing both data and human experience of the world itself, be- came two of the forms that today can be found in most areas of new media. The first form is a database, used to store any kind of data—from financial records to digital movie clips; the second form is a virtual interactive 3-D space, employed in computer games, motion rides, VR, computer animation, and human-computer interfaces. In migrating to a computer environment, the collection and the navigable space were not left unchanged; on the contrary, they came to incorporate a computer’s particular techniques for structuring and accessing data, such as modularity, as well as its fundamental logic—that of computer programming. So, for instance, a computer database is quite different from a traditional collection of documents: It allows one to quickly access, sort, and reorganize millions of records; it can contain different media types, and it assumes multiple indexing of data, since each record besides the data itself contains a number of fields with user-defined values. • From the Language of New Media: Forms

23. Data + Space (architecture?) • the collection and the navigable space were not left unchanged; on the contrary, they came to incorporate a computer’s particular techniques for structuring and accessing data, such as modularity, as well as its fundamental logic—that of computer programming. So, for instance, a computer database is quite different from a traditional collection of documents: It allows one to quickly access, sort, and reorganize millions of records; it can contain different media types, and it assumes multiple indexing of data, since each record besides the data itself contains a number of fields with user-defined values. a continuum describing the degree to which a system’s components may be separated and recombined

24. Transcoding • “the transcoding principle, these two computer- based forms migrate back into culture at large, both literally and conceptually. A library, a museum—in fact, any large collection of cultural data—is replaced by a computer database. At the same time, a computer database becomes a new metaphor that we use to conceptualize individual and collective cultural memory, a collection of documents or objects, and other phenomena and experiences” • From the Language of New Media: Forms

25. Computer as “privileging” • In short, the computer database and the 3-D computer-based virtual space have become true cultural forms—general ways used by the culture to represent human experience, the world, and human existence in this world. Why does computer culture privilege these forms over other possibilities?

26. Leaky forms: they spring leaks/they cause leaks • “We may associate the first genre with work (the postindustrial labor of information processing) and the second with leisure and fun (computer games), yet this very distinction is no longer valid in computer culture. As I noted in the introduction to the “Interface” chapter, increasingly the same metaphors and interfaces are used at work and at home, for business and for entertainment. For instance, the user navigates through a virtual space both to work and to play, whether analyzing scientific data or killing enemies in Quake.” • From the Language of New Media: Forms

27. The relationship between New Media & Design • “New media design. From one perspective, all new media design can be reduced to these two approaches; that is, creating works in new media can be understood as either constructing the right interface to a multi- media database or as defining navigation methods through spatialized representations.” • From the Language of New Media: Forms

28. Interface • “Inter” = “between” • Functions as the betweening “space” • The face between “faces” • Brings (bridges) together at least two dimensions: informational/physiological-psychological “Often, the two goals of information access and psychological engagement compete within the same new media object. Along with surface versus depth, the opposition between information and “immersion” can be thought of as a particular expression of the more general opposition characteristic of new media—between action and representation.”

29. Narrative: story + linear (time) form • Narratology, the branch of modern literary theory devoted to the theoryof narrative, distinguishes between narration and description. Narration is those parts of the narrative that move the plot forward; description is those parts that do not • Cinema is narrative form + image flow: this makes its impact powerful (like volcanic form) • Cinema as a form influencing and melting in the digital world (animation as part of this)

30. Info-aesthetics • we need something that • can be called “info-aesthetics”—a theoretical analysis of the aesthetics of information • access as well as the creation of new media objects that “aestheticize” information processing.

31. database is defined as a structured collection of data. • Different types of databases—hierarchical, network, relational, and object-oriented—use different models to organize data. For instance, the records in hierarchical • databases are organized in a treelike structure. Object-oriented databases • store complex data structures, called “objects,” which are organized into hierarchical • classes that may inherit properties from classes higher in the chain.

32. Database is defined by structures that have aesthetic and narrative impacts in their collection of data. • For example: In the game Tetris • An algorithm is the key to the game experience in a different sense as • well. As the player proceeds through the game, she gradually discovers the • rules that operate in the universe constructed by this game. She learns its • hidden logic—in short, its algorithm.