…ment 01: Welfare State (2011)
Filed under magazine | Tags: · art, contemporary art, politics, welfare state
…ment is a journal for contemporary culture, art and politics. …ment acts as a field for enquiry, dialogue and experimentation and is committed to emerging forms and ideas. Inviting upcoming and established artists, thinkers and cultural workers, the publication addresses social and political issues in order to generate a dynamic discourse.
Editor-in-chief: Federica Bueti
Associate Editors: Benoit Loiseau, Clara Meister
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Zizi Papacharissi (ed.): A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · community, facebook, identity, internet, mass media, myspace, networks, virtual communities, web 2.0, youtube
A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new work on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. The focus of the volume rests on the construction of the self, and what happens to self-identity when it is presented through networks of social connections in new media environments. The volume is structured around the core themes of identity, community, and culture – the central themes of social network sites. Contributors address theory, research, and practical implications of many aspects of online social networks including self-presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/gender/race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement and political impact.
Publisher Routledge, 2010
ISBN 0415801818, 9780415801812
328 pages
Eli Pariser: The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, facebook, google, internet, surveillance, technology, web, web 2.0
An eye-opening account of how the hidden rise of personalization on the Internet is controlling-and limiting-the information we consume.
In December 2009, Google began customizing its search results for each user. Instead of giving you the most broadly popular result, Google now tries to predict what you are most likely to click on. According to MoveOn.org board president Eli Pariser, Google’s change in policy is symptomatic of the most significant shift to take place on the Web in recent years-the rise of personalization. In this groundbreaking investigation of the new hidden Web, Pariser uncovers how this growing trend threatens to control how we consume and share information as a society-and reveals what we can do about it.
Though the phenomenon has gone largely undetected until now, personalized filters are sweeping the Web, creating individual universes of information for each of us. Facebook-the primary news source for an increasing number of Americans-prioritizes the links it believes will appeal to you so that if you are a liberal, you can expect to see only progressive links. Even an old-media bastion like The Washington Post devotes the top of its home page to a news feed with the links your Facebook friends are sharing. Behind the scenes a burgeoning industry of data companies is tracking your personal information to sell to advertisers, from your political leanings to the color you painted your living room to the hiking boots you just browsed on Zappos.
In a personalized world, we will increasingly be typed and fed only news that is pleasant, familiar, and confirms our beliefs-and because these filters are invisible, we won’t know what is being hidden from us. Our past interests will determine what we are exposed to in the future, leaving less room for the unexpected encounters that spark creativity, innovation, and the democratic exchange of ideas.
While we all worry that the Internet is eroding privacy or shrinking our attention spans, Pariser uncovers a more pernicious and far-reaching trend on the Internet and shows how we can- and must-change course. With vivid detail and remarkable scope, The Filter Bubble reveals how personalization undermines the Internet’s original purpose as an open platform for the spread of ideas and could leave us all in an isolated, echoing world.
Publisher Penguin Group USA, 2011
ISBN 1594203008, 9781594203008
304 pages
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Comment (0)Tim Wu: The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, industry, internet, media history, politics, technology
In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial consolidation? Could the Internet—the entire flow of American information—come to be ruled by one corporate leviathan in possession of “the master switch”? That is the big question of Tim Wu’s pathbreaking book.
As Wu’s sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century—radio, telephone, television, and film—was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive prerogative of a kingdom called Hollywood . . . NBC’s founder, David Sarnoff, who, to save his broadcast empire from disruptive visionaries, bullied one inventor (of electronic television) into alcoholic despair and another (this one of FM radio, and his boyhood friend) into suicide . . . And foremost, Theodore Vail, founder of the Bell System, the greatest information empire of all time, and a capitalist whose faith in Soviet-style central planning set the course of every information industry thereafter.
Explaining how invention begets industry and industry begets empire—a progress often blessed by government, typically with stifling consequences for free expression and technical innovation alike—Wu identifies a time-honored pattern in the maneuvers of today’s great information powers: Apple, Google, and an eerily resurgent AT&T. A battle royal looms for the Internet’s future, and with almost every aspect of our lives now dependent on that network, this is one war we dare not tune out.
Part industrial exposé, part meditation on what freedom requires in the information age, The Master Switch is a stirring illumination of a drama that has played out over decades in the shadows of our national life and now culminates with terrifying implications for our future.
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf, 2010
Borzoi Books
ISBN 0307269930, 9780307269935
366 pages
review (Peter Decherney, Nathan Ensmenger, Christopher S. Yoo)
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Comment (0)Siva Vaidhyanathan: The Googlization of Everything: And Why We Should Worry (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, china, facebook, google, internet, search, surveillance, technology, youtube
In the beginning, the World Wide Web was exciting and open to the point of anarchy, a vast and intimidating repository of unindexed confusion. Into this creative chaos came Google with its dazzling mission—“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible”—and its much-quoted motto, “Don’t be Evil.” In this provocative book, Siva Vaidhyanathan examines the ways we have used and embraced Google—and the growing resistance to its expansion across the globe. He exposes the dark side of our Google fantasies, raising red flags about issues of intellectual property and the much-touted Google Book Search. He assesses Google’s global impact, particularly in China, and explains the insidious effect of Googlization on the way we think. Finally, Vaidhyanathan proposes the construction of an Internet ecosystem designed to benefit the whole world and keep one brilliant and powerful company from falling into the “evil” it pledged to avoid.
Publisher University of California Press, 2011
ISBN 0520258827, 9780520258822
265 pages
review (Evgeny Morozov, The New Republic)
review (Adam Thierer, The Technology Liberation Front)
review (Jack Shafer, San Francisco Chronicle)
Steven Levy: In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, code, facebook, google, internet, microsoft, search, software, youtube
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works.
While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google’s IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company’s ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.
The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.
But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China—Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy—and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?
Publisher Simon and Schuster, 2011
ISBN 1416596585, 9781416596585
352 pages
video (NPR interview with Laura Sydell)
review (Evgeny Morozov, The New Republic)
review (Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post)
review (Paul Boutin, The Wall Street Journal)
review (Jack Shafer, San Francisco Chronicle)
PAGE magazine, No. 1-67 (1969-1985, 2004-2011)
Filed under magazine | Tags: · art history, computer art, computing, early media art, history of computing, history of technology, media art, media history, united kingdom
PAGE is the bulletin of the Computer Arts Society.
The Computer Arts Society was one of the most influential British computer art groups. It was founded in 1968, followed by an inaugural exhibition, Event One, in March 1969 at the RCA. George Mallen, Alan Sutcliffe and Lansdown set up CAS as an offshoot of the British Computer Society, to further the use of computers by artists. CAS flourished through the 1970s and early 80s.
PAGE was initially published from April 1969 until 1985 and was named after the concept of paging (the use of disk memory as a virtual store which had been introduced on the Ferranti Atlas Computer). It featured major British and international computer artists and hosted some fundamental discussions as to the aims and nature of computer art. Its first editor was Gustav Metzger, thereby establishing from the beginning an association with the avant-garde. Metzger was “excited” to discover CAS and “people coming together” as he had “felt quite isolated.” As early as 1961, Metzger had stated that “…the artist may collaborate with scientists, engineers.” As many members were outside of London or overseas, PAGE was an important disseminator of information.
Publisher: The Computer Arts Society, London
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