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FCJ-186 Hack for good: Speculative labour, app development and the burden of austerity
Melissa Gregg Intel Corporation, USA [Abstract] In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. (Reagan, 1981) At a time when the technology sector offers hope for a revitalised economy, particularly in the United States, the working conditions typical in this highly prized industry take on special significance. This paper analyses the rise of ‘hackathons’ – code- and data-sharing events that inspire participants to accomplish specific challenges in a condensed time frame – to understand their role in the ecosystem for app development and the qualities of work they promote. Hackathons are emblematic of broader trends in high-tech labour in that they reflect the difficulties, opportunities and compromises young workers face in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. They are a symptom of a broader transformation affecting career preparation and training as stable paths for recruitment give way to the velocity of…
FCJ-185 An Algorithmic Agartha: Post-App Approaches to Synarchic Regulation
Dan Mellamphy and Nandita Biswas Mellamphy Western University, Canada [Abstract] Let us begin with indefinition (the indefinite): specifically the question of information —proceeding from there to the myriad methods and mechanisms used to capture and control (or ‘net’) it. There is no single, unified mechanism governing the definition and distribution of information today, and this may account for some of the major tensions and tendencies in the so-called ‘information era’. The concept of ‘information’ itself has no single, unified definition, even though there are various theories that have been put forward to conceptualise it — as some ‘thing’ akin to a commodity-cum-object that can be possessed (indeed purchased), traded and legislated, or alternatively (for example) as a ‘process’ akin to signal-transmission, feedback- and/or stimulus-response circuits (‘information transfer’ and ‘information flow’). Hence, although information may be a useful and much-used idea, there is as yet no agreement on its basic definition…
FCJ-184 Interpassive User: Complicity and the Returns of Cybernetics
Svitlana Matviyenko University of Western Ontario [Abstract] …cybernetics gets more and more complicated, makes a chain, then a network. Yet it is founded on the theft of information, quite a simple thing. Michel Serres, The Parasite (2007: 37). No boundaries This essay explores the properties of mobile apps – and ‘smart’ technologies in general – that return us to the allegedly ‘old’ questions of governance and control raised by cybernetic theory. I argue that mobile apps are different from other software due to the role they play in transforming the configuration of actors in the human-machine assemblage. The significance of such radical reconfiguration is veiled by the discourses of ‘innovation,’ ‘creativity,’ ‘sustainability,’ ‘productivity,’ and ‘transparency’, which advocate the extensive use of cloud based technology for the sake of generating more data. This results in an environment where ‘the body-across-platforms as the body with the data’ becomes ‘the body as the…
FCJ-183 iHootenanny: A Folk Archeology of Social Media
Henry Adam SvecMillsaps College [Abstract] Introduction It has been tempting, for fans of folk music, to celebrate the creative possibilities afforded by Web 2.0 as a sign of the resurgence of something like a folk revival. [1] David Dunaway (2010), for instance, has divided the history of folk revivalism in the United States into three periods. His first wave lumps together a wide range of collectors, researchers, and activists, from ethnographers to the more overtly political and propagandising efforts of Alan Lomax and others in the thirties and forties. Next is the ‘folk boom’, which featured the mass-commercial success in the fifties of the Weavers and then the Kingston Trio (Dunaway, 2010). Happily, the folk revival has returned again, according to Dunaway, beginning in the late eighties and early nineties, and the World Wide Web has been a key source of the new varieties of folk expression recently on offer:…
FCJ-182 Middlebroware
Frédérik Lesage Simon Fraser University [Abstract] Introduction In the introductory chapter to Software Takes Command, Lev Manovich (2012: 31) justifies his decision to focus his study on software applications instead of ‘the activity of programming’ by arguing that the former – for the most part commercial application software like Photoshop, AfterEffects, and Final Cut Pro – represent the tools of ‘mainstream cultural practices’ of digital media production while the latter represents an exceptional practice. Manovich’s self-justification serves as a useful starting point for this paper because it draws attention to two sets of interrelated questions regarding contemporary digitally mediated cultural production. The first set of questions stems from Manovich’s acknowledgement that digital media producers, including people who program, represent a significant group of cultural producers (Dovey and Kennedy, 2007; Mackenzie, 2006: 32—33). But recognising programmers as cultural producers raises a classificatory challenge: is the practice of programming necessarily a distinct…
FCJ-181 There’s a History for That: Apps and Mundane Software as Commodity
Jeremy Wade Morris and Evan Elkins University of Wisconsin-Madison [Abstract] Introduction I Am Rich was first released in August 2008 in Apple’s iOS App store for $999 (Milian, 2008). The program’s only function, other than displaying an image of a jewel, was a self-congratulatory message that read ‘I am rich, I deserv it, I am good, healthy & successful [sic].’ It was reportedly purchased 8 times before Apple removed it from the store. I Am Rich could be read as clever commentary on conspicuous consumption (Veblen, 1965) in an era of digital and ephemeral goods or dismissed as a trivial piece of software – a novelty joke like an electric shock pen or a whoopee cushion (both of which, incidentally, you can also find as apps). However, these readings of the app’s limited functionality and ostentatious pricing miss a much larger story about the way apps have radically reconfigured the…
FCJ-180 ‘Spotify Has Added an Event to Your Past’: (Re)writing the Self through Facebook’s Autoposting Apps
Tanya Kant University of Sussex, Brighton, UK [Abstract] ‘The film you quote. The songs you have on repeat. The activities you love. Now there’s a new class of social apps that let you express who you are through all the things you do’ (Facebook, 2014). Introduction: Performing the Self in the ‘Like’ Economy Facebook’s apps network – an ‘ecosystem’ designed to ‘deeply integrate’ (Zuckerberg, 2011) commercial lifestyle, gaming, entertainment and shopping applications into Facebook – is a key component of Facebook Inc.’s current operational and economic infrastructure. As Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly emphasised during the 2014 F8 conference keynote, Facebook apps play an essential role in Facebook Inc.’s newest expansion strategy – that is, to become a ‘cross-platform platform’ (Zuckerberg et al., 2014) that connects not just friends, family and acquaintances but the millions of platforms, websites, ‘stacks’ and services that currently constitute the web. To date, the external products and…
FCJ-179 On Governance, Blackboxing, Measure, Body, Affect and Apps: A conversation with Patricia Ticineto Clough and Alexander R. Galloway
Svitlana Matviyenko University of Western Ontario Patricia Ticineto Clough Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY Alexander R. Galloway New York University [Abstract] Introduction The work of these two authors is well known to anyone whose research concerns matters of affect and biopolitics, software, networks and gaming, interface culture and communication, political economy of media and information, the systems of measure and control addressed in the contexts of French theory, feminist and speculative thought, Marxism or psychoanalysis. We were lucky to have them among the keynotes for our Apps and Affect conference, where their talks sparked an interesting exchange that impacted a number of the conference conversations. Afterwards, I suggested to Patricia and Alex that they elaborate on aspects of their discussion; this invitation resulted in the following conversation, which took place via email between April and December 2014. Patricia Ticineto Clough is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Queens College and…
FCJ-178 Network Affordances: The unpredictable parameters of a Hong Kong SPEED SHOW
Audrey Samson City University of Hong Kong Winnie Soon Aarhus University [Abstract] Introduction Internet-based activities like social communications, money transactions, education, and entertainment are increasingly inseparable from everyday life. Artists work with and within this banal network and explore its affordances to address network technologies, politics, aesthetics, and culture. This paper examines the notion of network affordance, a term used in the field of Human Computer Interaction and Software Studies, within the context of network art. Building on James Gibson’s theory of affordance in the context of psychology, we understand affordance as the directly perceived parameters and properties of things in an environment (Gibson, 1977: 127). The study of parameters and properties is useful in comprehending the affordances of network technologies. In the context of design, William Gaver discusses the interactivity between things and users with what he calls the affordance of predictability (Gaver, 1996). Both Gibson and Gaver call…
FCJ-177 Television Assemblages
Teresa Rizzo University of Sydney [Abstract] Introduction It is an understatement to say that television and television culture have undergone a dramatic transformation over the last decade. As little as ten years ago typical Australian viewers would sit in front of the television set at a particular time to watch their favourite show. If they wanted to record a programme they would have to go through an elaborate process which included: searching the scheduled programme time and then entering the start and end dates and times on a video recorder; rummaging for a free tape and making sure the video recorder was left on. Today, by contrast, viewers can access their favourite shows in a number of different ways, on a variety of platforms and devices, at a time of their choosing. New forms of digital television have emerged, including Internet television and IPTV, that offer new ways of accessing…
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