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FCJ-005 The Erasure of Technology in Cultural Critique

By ⋅ November 6, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Belinda Barnet University of New South Wales Isaac Asimov once suggested that it would make far more difference in our everyday lives if the automobile had not been invented than if Einstein had failed to formulate the theory of relativity (Hansen, 2003: 1). Theory and technology are very different things. Likewise, language and technology are very different things. According to US critic Mark Hansen, technology should be assessed according to its concrete experiential effects, not just its symbolic or cultural significance; it is more than just an effect of language. This is a tall order, because we have little to draw upon in taking such an approach: contemporary critical theory treats technology as a trope or representation rather than a physical reality in the world. The “machine” is not just a metaphor for a particular technology, but for technology itself. And at a deeper level, this metaphor enframes technology within…

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FCJ-004 The Military-Entertainment Complex: A New Facet of Information Warfare

By ⋅ November 5, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Stephen Stockwell and Adam Muir Griffith University All by itself, a Go piece can destroy an entire constellation synchronically; a chess piece cannot…Chess is indeed a war but an institutionalized, regulated, coded war… Go is war without battle lines, with neither confrontation nor retreat, without battles even: pure strategy, whereas Chess is a semiology. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1989: 353) A revolution in military affairs (RMA) has taken place in the US since the first Gulf War as the data-processing power of the computer has been applied not only to the strategic complexities that had prompted the development of the computer in the first place but, now, to the systematic operations of small units and individuals. The ability to micro-manage the organisation of logistics has raised the possibility of micro-managing the organization of information to target particular audiences among both the enemy and one’s own populations to produce close control of…

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FCJ-003 Internet Politics in an Information economy

By ⋅ November 4, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Jon Marshall University of Technology, Sydney Introduction The Internet, and information technology generally, is not separate from the social world in which it is embedded, neither does it fully determine that world. It may, however, allow modifications, intensifications or even subversions to occur. This paper will discuss some of the problems and paradoxes of the “Information economy” and its regimes of property; issues around the so-called hacker ethic and open source software; and some of the expectations which have been held for the Internet’s role in fostering democratic politics. It is possible the idea of the “information economy” itself has a negative effect by suggesting a whole new range of property to be appropriated and kept from common use. The term “information” is not a concept which links things together because they are similar in the same way. It is an open and magical term, which may hide as much…

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FCJ-002 Perfect Match: Biometrics and Body Patterning in a Networked World

By ⋅ November 3, 2003 ⋅ One comment

Gillian Fuller School of Media and Communications, UNSW Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness. (Benjamin, 1992: 217) When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation. (Massumi, 2002: 4) Life is increasingly concerned with traffic management. Home-work-play *.* life fractures in multiple directions and dimensions as we simultaneously move or wait in various queues in different modalities. Through this constant movement, this endless folding and unfolding into and out of various assemblages, movement happens at innumerable speeds and lives as many lives. These lives of constant transit invoke different infrastructures for their own distinct functionalities. More highways, more airports, more servers, more nodes on the global network of flows, we always need more, and it needs to be faster. As writers like Paul…

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FCJ-001 Report: Creative Labour and the Role of Intellectual Property

By ⋅ November 2, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

Ned Rossiter Communications and Media Studies, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University This report is based on the survey I conducted for the fibrepower panel initiated by Kate Crawford and Esther Milne – ‘Intellectual Property-Intellectual Possibilities’ (Brisbane, July 2003). I wanted to explore in some empirical fashion the relationship between intellectual property and creative labour. Why? Largely because such a relationship is the basis for defining what is meant by creative industries, according to the seminal and much cited mapping document produced by Blair’s Creative Industries Task Force (CITF). Despite the role IP plays in defining and providing a financial and regulatory architecture for the creative and other informational or knowledge industries, there is remarkably little attention given by researchers and commentators to the implications of IP in further elaborating conceptual, political and economic models for the creative industries. There is even greater indifference towards addressing the impact…

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Issue 01 – The Politics of Networks

By ⋅ November 1, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

There are many who say that publishing today – especially the publishing of new ideas – is in trouble. In many ways, this is hard to argue with, especially as regards commercial academic publishing. At the same time it is, in fact, a very exciting time for publishing. Just as a revolution in music publishing and online distribution has changed the nature of music, new technologies have meant new modes of delivery and new forms of distribution are currently changing the way we engage with ideas. Perhaps most exciting is that it is suddenly much easier for new voices to find publication outside of the established academic presses, and to find new communities that are prepared to give these voices a context. The Fibreculture Journal, the journal of the Fibreculture network of critical Internet research and culture in Australasia, embraces these changes. We are celebrating the launch of the Fibreculture…

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