Computers were emerging as popular artifacts for the masses and becoming more powerful each year. Information technologies (IT), in general, were going through dramatic changes and needed new languages and modes of understanding. This post discusses how the cyberpunk genre began contributing new forms of understanding to the “codes” that had linguistically determined what was called “IT.” In particular, the term “cyberspace” began circulating as a collector and conveyor of new meanings increasingly associated with the new data networks.

Concurrently, telecommunications went through a conceptual transformation. Long the linguistic domain of electrical engineers and Washington DC lawyers, the dramatic technical advances required new language and forms of understanding. Terms like telematics and informatics emerged. Both words recognized that digital technologies were changing the electronic environment, but telecommunications people preferred the former while computer people used the latter.

Artificial intelligence (AI) was also beginning to be popularized through movies like Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984). AI became a policy issue with the revelation that the Japanese were investing heavily in the “Fifth Generation” AI project. Also, it was recognized that advanced AI technologies would be needed for “Star Wars,” President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to defend the US against nuclear attack. The US response was the NSFNET, a 56K backbone network connecting supercomputers around the country. Also, it was recognized that advanced AI technologies would be needed for “Star Wars,” President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to defend the US against nuclear attack. Initially, an obscure research network called the ARPANET, with increased investment through the National Science Foundation and the concurrent mandate to use TCP/IP protocols, the connecting fibers would become the Internet.

By the decade’s later years, the notion of “cyberspace” began circulating. Its meaning varied, but the continuing developments and adoption of digital network technologies and the megacomputing abilities of the new microprocessors spurred its cultural motion.

Cyberspace was mostly connected with the “virtual reality” technologies that combined high-resolution goggles with various gloves, pressure suits, and other physical equipment to simulate the visual world and the haptic experiences associated with interacting with it. While some dial-up networking existed, it was still a few years before hypertext protocols enabled the World Wide Web, and people were unsure how interactions would occur in this new electronic environment. Cyberspace suggested at least a disruption of the traditional telecommunications environment – voice calls, emails, and television.

These simulated environments gained subcultural attention, mainly through the works of one author. William Gibson coined cyberspace to describe the electronic “consensual hallucination” that the characters in his award-winning novel Neuromancer (1984) used to participate in the networked “matrix,” another term he pioneered in his fictional narrative that posited a near-future scenario in which the new electronic spaces become dominant. He continued the exploration in two subsequent books, Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988).

In the trilogy, “console cowboys” connect to the network by “jacking in.” Velcro-held “trodes” attached to their heads link their minds to the electronic telecommunications matrix. Somewhat like a flight simulator, the cowboy experiences a vast simulated space scattered with geometric shapes representing institutional databanks such as the “green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America.”[2] Their objective is primarily to participate in the “biz,” the combination of cyberspace and street economies of Gibson’s dystopic future scenarios.

The novels captured the spirit of the times and imagination of many of the technology-minded. Their popularity rocketed the author to special cult status, as evidenced in a cameo performance in the televised Oliver Stone mini-series Wild Palms (1993), a story roughly about the near-future use of virtual reality in the broadcast industry for political purposes. The actual William Gibson was introduced by Sex in the City‘s Kim Cattrall as the man who coined the term cyberspace. To which he replied, “And they won’t let me forget it.”[3] The scene is shown below.

As Gibson alluded in one of his short stories published in Cyberspace. First Steps by Michael (Ed). Benedikt (1993):

Assembled the word cyberspace from small and readily available components of language. Neologic spasm: the primal act of pop poetics. Preceding any concept whatever. Slick and hollow–awaiting received meaning. All I did: folded words as taught. Now other words accrete in the interstices.[4]

In retrospect, Gibson’s articulation of electronic networks’ cultural and political dimensions seemed to have entered a discursive void where engineers, lawyers, and technocrats had dominated the only language able to talk about computers and telecommunications. Cyberspace, as a term, became a new way of conceiving the telecommunications network, one with artistic, cultural, and political dimensions. It soon rocketed to the status of a social currency.

Cyberspace, as a term, was elevated to a unique socio-economic position. As the commercial, entertainment, financial, and productive realms of diverse countries and regions began being woven together through the world’s new telecommunications grid, the term circulated as a new “symbolic third,” a type of money that found its way into discussions about IT and telecommunications. In doing so, it shined a new light on the problems and possibilities of IT. No longer just the domain of gigantic computer centers run by lab-coated technocrats, cyberspace suggested the possibilities of a new economy, a new democracy, and new ways for people to connect and maintain relationships.

Although its value deflated significantly after the Internet and its World Wide Web became popular, cyberspace terminology helped change the perception of a technological infrastructure that had been the domain of staid telecommunications (AT&T and the RBOCs) companies and Washington lawyers.

Soon, the Internet presented a new domain for cyberspace – global e-commerce. Business discourse and particularly the “dot.com” phenomenon that emerged with the WWW dominated the narrative. Cyberspace went further into the crevices of academic talk, arts, and political discourse. But it also migrated to the military where it found a new home. Cyberspace became a domain of international security.

Citation APA (7th Edition)

Pennings, A.J. (2010, Dec 27). Neuromancing the Code: When IT Changed. apennings.com https://apennings.com/dystopian-economies/neuromancing-the-code-when-it-changed/

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Notes

[1] Quote from Cyberscribe. (1991) Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Production. By Producer/Director Frances-Mary Morrison, Editor Jacques Milette.
[2] Part of a quote from William Gibson’s (1984) Neuromancer. (New York: Ace Books) p. 52. “Inner eye opening to the stepped scarlet pyramid of the Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority burning beyond the green cubes of Mitsubishi Bank of America, and high and very far away he saw the spiral arms of military systems, forever beyond his reach.”
[3] Wild Palms was a Capital Cities/ABC, Inc. production which was aired in the US as a 6 hour mini-series the week of May 16-22, 1993. It was adapted from a long-running adult comic strip in the magazine Details.
[4] As part of William Gibson’s short story “Academy Leader,” in Benedikt, M. (1991) Cyberspace: First Steps. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) pp. 27-29.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital economics, information systems management, and comparative political economy.

A Digital Story about Economics and Health

Posted on | December 23, 2010 | No Comments

Busy with grading today but I liked the combination of story-telling and data visualization in this video. Hans Rosling is a doctor from Sweden who has done a lot of work on paralytic diseases in developing countries.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.

Susan Crawford on US Broadband Policy, Net Neutrality and the Comcast-NBCU merger

Posted on | December 21, 2010 | No Comments

Here is the video of Susan Crawford’s talk at New York University on November 29, 2010. Professor Crawford was recently the Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy.

Notes from Alex Goldman

Some relevant articles to today’s FCC decision.

MSNBC
‘Open’ Internet just a pipe dream

Paid Content

FCC Pushes Through Net Neutrality—And Draws Fire From Right And Left

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.

Best IT/Media Policy Books

Posted on | December 11, 2010 | No Comments

Do we really know the impact technology is having in our lives? Sometimes I wonder if social media, as important as it is, is shielding us from the other important influences IT is having in our lives from the financial crisis we are recovering from, the way we conduct war and espionage, and the structural problems inherent in our economy. I would say our educational systems, and the news media, and certainly our cultural institutions are still behind in understanding and conceptualizing ways to deal with the problems associated with our new information and communication technologies. Luckily we do have some good thinkers who are writing and making contributions to this area.

So I wanted to reproduce this list by Adam Thierer on The 10 Most Important Info-Tech Policy Books of 2010. Have a quick look at the list below and then link to the post at the Technology Liberation Front for a good description and links to buy.

1. Tim Wu – The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
2. Kevin Kelly – What Technology Wants
3. Jaron Lanier – You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto
4. Nicholas Carr – The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
5. Clay Shirky – Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age
6. Barbara van Schewick – Internet Architecture and Innovation
7. Milton Mueller — Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance
8. Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain (eds.) – Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace
9. Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake – Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It
10. Adrian Johns – Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates

Honorable Mentions:

Rob Frieden – Winning the Silicon Sweepstakes: Can the United States Compete in Global Telecommunications?

Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma (eds.) – Open Government: Collaboration, Transparency, and Participation in Practice

William Powers – Hamlet’s BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age

Robert W. McChesney & John Nichols – The Death and Life of American Journalism

Nick Bilton – I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works.

You might want to also take a look at their list of the best books of the 2000s.

Category: characteristics of digital media, digital destruction, how IT came to rule the world, telecom policy and net neutrality
Tags: Barbara van Schewick > Clay Shirky > Jaron Lanier > John Nichols > Jonathan Zittrain > Milton Mueller > Nick Bilton > Richard A. Clarke > Rob Frieden > Robert W. McChesney > Tim Wu

Informating the Subject: Reflecting on Zuboff’s Future of Power and Work

Posted on | December 10, 2010 | No Comments

Shoshana Zuboff’s In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) was one of the more interesting inquiries into the processes of computerization and electronic communications to emerge out of the 1980s. While suffering from a number of deficiencies that will be discussed later, it nonetheless represented a serious and significant contribution to the organizational and sociological discussion of the new information technologies. One of her contributions, the verb “informating,” provided important insights into the key practice of the new technologies and the construction of modern identities in a cybernetic age.

Applied in pre-Internet computerized environments, informating is the process of registering a wide range of information related to computer tasks. She both connected and compared informating to the processes of automating. Computers are often involved in the processes of automating – the process of replacing human activities and work with machinery. Zuboff distinguished informating from automating because “it produces a voice that symbolically renders events, objects, and processes so that they become visible, knowable, and shareable in a new way.”[1] Consequently, informating is an effective concept for approaching that vast writing project which characterizes the politics of electronic modernity and whose activities determine and aggregate the facts of social existence.

Informating can be a vehicle to understand and politicize the constitution of the self and identity in the modern information society. Like other textual practices, computerized informating is implicated in the ways individuals both know themselves as well as the way they are situated in modernity’s broad range of institutional structures and their disciplines and eligibilities. The data collection processes involved in computerization are significant in that they lead to an accumulation of information that is intimately related to the individual and yet are essential, in aggregate and other forms of “scrubbing,” for the continuance of modern bureaucracy. As they monitor the various activities of everyday life, they also keep a record that can be accessed or fed into larger databases across the Internet. For example, in a supermarket, your grocery’s barcodes are read and fed into a computer. Not only does it tabulate the price but enters the information into other files, database lists for inventory, finance, and marketing. Informating stores data about activities, placing it in files which can later be analysed, examined, and graded.

Her concern with the codification of the work environment into machine-compatible texts opened up a range of inquiry that is applicable to other facets of modern life. Drawing on what she terms the dual capacity of information technology: its ability to both automate and informate productive activities; she was able to analyze how technology changes the practices of work, managerial authority, and the supervision of employees. Although her main concern was how industrial intelligence has been removed from the site of the body and relocated within the electronic space of cybernetic control and communication, her suppositions have applicability elsewhere.

Identities are rooted the institutional and textual structures of society. They are mediated and produced through the predominant modes of signification and understanding and informating provides important data sets which can be referred to again for the examination and further training of the subjectivity of individuals. She drew on Foucault, who focused in part on the procedures of examination that were a crucial strategy for the exercise of modern power. The examination works to hold their subjects of attention “in a mechanism of objectification.”[2] Examination turns the economies of surveillance and visibility into an operation of control. It proceeds by the textualization, the writing of visibility according to a set of prescribed protocols and knowledges. Under this official gaze, the subject becomes a slate to be evaluated, classified, and registered in the official system of files considered by what Max Weber considered to be so important for the organization of bureaucracy.” The examination that places individuals in a field of surveillance also situates them in a network of writing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them.”[3] The file is a prescripted event in the sense that it has an agenda and not just a loose collection of random documents.

These cybernetic identities are characteristic of the information age. The proliferation of multimediated information is changing the way people operate in the arenas of their lives. Furthermore, since information technology is largely developed out of institutional requirements, it is inherently political. Cybernetic identities are connected to the great bureaucratic spaces of credit, education, and production. They are the result of types of observation, classification, and registration. They result from a penetrating gaze which codes, disciplines, and files under the appropriate heading. Actions lose their actuality, and bodies lose their corporeality.

Mark Poster used Foucault to think about the consequences of computer databases on subjectivity and its multiplication of selves to feed an extensive array of organizational files. He was less concerned with databases as “an invasion of privacy, as a threat to a centered individual, but as the multiplication of the individual, the constitution of an additional self, one that may be acted upon to the detriment of the ‘real’ self without that ‘real’ self ever being aware of what is happening.” The texture of postmodern subjectivity is dispersed among multiple sources of information production and storage. In The Mode of Information, he warned of the “destabilization of the subject,” a fixed self no more but rather one “multiplied by databases, dispersed by computer messaging and conferencing, decontextualized and reidentified by TV ads, dissolved and materialized continuously in the electronic transmission of symbols.”[4] In an age when Google wants to “organize the world’s information,” we are still trying to determine the implications of that multiplication of identity within the networks of institutional power.

Taking it to the world of the web and social media in this talk by Rachel Botsman, she makes the case for “collaborative consumption,” This is the sharing or exchanging of various goods and services, such as DVDs, power tools, etc. with absolute strangers because the informating capabilities of social media are able to track a person’s “reputation,” We saw this with eBay of course, and she expects it to be a major economic force as more and more people develop their reputation as a type of social currency. Which of course, it always has been.

Notes

[1] Zuboff, Shoshana. In the Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power. New York: Basic, 1988. Print., p. 9.
[2] Rabinow, Paul, comp. The Foucault Reader. London: Penguin, 1991. Print., p. 200-201.
[3] Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990. Print.. p. 98
[4] Poster, Mark. The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1990. Print.. p. 15.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a professor of global media at Hannam University in South Korea. Previously, he taught at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was on the faculty of New York University from 2002-2012. He taught at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand and was a Fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii.

Category: books and films, characteristics of digital media, digital media management, enterprise systems, technologies of meaning
Tags: In the Age of the Smart Machine > Informating > Mark Poster > Shosana Zuboff

Advertising, E-Commerce and the Power of Search

Posted on | December 10, 2010 | No Comments

At the core of global e-commerce’s extraordinary potential is the power of search engines and the new advertising strategies they enable. Search engine based advertising has continued to increase rapidly and drive e-commerce with it. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. totalled nearly $6.5 billion during the third quarter of 2010, a 17% increase over the same period a year earlier.

Source: IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report/PwC (www.iab.net)

Advertisers have steadily moved to online marketing and advertising instead of traditional media outlets. Especially smaller businesses, often requiring stricter quantitative accountability for their expenditures in terms of how many people are viewing their ads, actual site visits and even directly quantifying sales in relation to their expenditure have combined advertising strategies with search capabilities, providing a powerful tool for small and large businesses as well as other organizations that need to reach out to customers and/or other targeted audiences.

Gateway sites that use specialized search engines and software-based “spiders” search the global infosphere cataloging information and responding nearly instantly to investigating queries with extraordinarily fast results. Google has climbed to the top of the search business and has capitalized on this success to become a major force in the web advertising business with over $20 billion in 2009 revenues, far outpacing the other advertising behemoths such as Omnicon and WPP.

What made Google so successful? Primarily it was an innovative method of ranking websites based on searching for links to that site. Google “crawls” the Internet using robotic “spiders” and uses PageRank, which assigns a numeric value how how significant a page is based on the links found to that site. It analyzes inbound and outbound links and uses a mathematical equation to determine the pages rank. This is something that a webmaster cannot tamper with to increase the website’s rank.

In fact, Google added a new twist this Fall. They changed their search algorithm when a online vendor claimed to the New York Times that the large number of complaints they were getting actually increased their page rank and consequently increased their profits.

Notes

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD has been on the NYU faculty since 2001 teaching digital media, information systems management, and global communications.

Category: global e-commerce, media strategies
Tags: Google > PageRank > search engines > spiders

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