This Is for Fighting, This Is for Fun: Camerawork and Gunplay in Reality-Based Crime Shows Fred T... more This Is for Fighting, This Is for Fun: Camerawork and Gunplay in Reality-Based Crime Shows Fred Turner Several years ago, I interviewed a Vietnam veteran named Brian Winhover. He had survived three tours of combat duty, but when he tried to tell me how he felt when he was ...
Two leading scholars of internet history, Charlton McIlwain and Fred Turner, delve into the stori... more Two leading scholars of internet history, Charlton McIlwain and Fred Turner, delve into the stories you might not have heard about where the technology came from. Yes, DARPA and IBM played formative roles, but what about back-to-the-land hippies in the 1960s, or a sprawling network of African American engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts who helped develop and popularize the web? McIlwain and Turner explain how major decisions about the early internet's design and usage lead to some of its problems today.
Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge w... more Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge workers have trekked out into a barren stretch of alkali desert and built a temporary city devoted to art, technology and communal living: Burning Man. Drawing on extensive archival research, participant observation and interviews, this article explores the ways in which Burning Man's bohemian ethos supports new forms of production emerging in Silicon Valley and especially at Google. It shows how elements of the Burning Man world-including the building of a sociotechnical commons, participation in project-based artistic labor and the fusion of social and professional interaction-help to shape and legitimate the collaborative manufacturing processes driving the growth of Google and other firms.The article develops the notion that Burning Man serves as a key cultural infrastructure for the Bay Area's new media industries.
... Taking creative hints from the likes of Thomas Pynchon and Ralph Ellison, Kevorkian showcases... more ... Taking creative hints from the likes of Thomas Pynchon and Ralph Ellison, Kevorkian showcases a small sam-pling of creators who ... In this deceptively brief and exceptionally timely book, law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu put the lie to that consensus. ... FRED TURNER ...
To date, journalists and most of those who study them remain wedded to a deeply modern understand... more To date, journalists and most of those who study them remain wedded to a deeply modern understanding of the profession, one in which firm analytical borders separate news and newsmakers, reporters and audience, press and politics. New media technologies have begun to corrode these boundaries in practice, however. With its emphasis on sociotechnical hybrids, actor-network theory offers a powerful tool for analyzing shifts in the practice of journalism under new technological conditions.
In the early spring of 1955, more than a quarter million people streamed through the doors of the... more In the early spring of 1955, more than a quarter million people streamed through the doors of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They came to immerse themselves in The Family of Man. An exhibition of 503 photographs of men, women, and children, made by 273 photographers from around the world and selected by photographer Edward Steichen and his assistant, Wayne Miller, The Family of Man filled the entire second floor of the museum. A series of temporary walls designed by architect Paul Rudolph channeled visitors through the images, allowing them to move at their own pace, to pause where they liked, and to pool at pictures of particular interest. Visitors gazed at photographs of children dancing, families gathering, and men and women of myriad nations working, walking, marrying, fighting. Some pictures dangled from wires overhead, some hung from poles, and at least one faced downward from the ceiling. Some filled entire walls, while others were as small as a handbill. Together, the installation and the images left few places where visitors could turn and not encounter a picture of another person doing something they were likely to recognize. The Family of Man quickly became one of the most popular exhibitions in
This article recalls the New Games Tournament of 1966 and with it, two ways to imagine play in th... more This article recalls the New Games Tournament of 1966 and with it, two ways to imagine play in the period: one, military war gaming and the other, the protest-oriented play of the counterculture. It then analyzes the legacy of these cultural styles for contemporary forms of gaming.
In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer ... more In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer production. In this view, digital technologies and social production processes are driving a dramatic democratization of culture and society. Moreover, leading scholars now suggest that these new, hyper-mediated modes of living and working are specifically challenging the hierarchical structures and concentrated power of bureaucracies. This paper first maps the assumptions underlying the new consensus on peer production so as to reveal the sources of its coherence. It then revisits Max Weber’s account of bureaucracy. With Weber in mind, the paper aims to expose analytical weaknesses in the consensus view and offer a new perspective from which to study contemporary digital media.
Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge w... more Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge workers have trekked out into a barren stretch of alkali desert and built a temporary city devoted to art, technology and communal living: Burning Man. Drawing on extensive archival research, participant observation and interviews, this article explores the ways in which Burning Man's bohemian ethos supports new forms of production emerging in Silicon Valley and especially at Google. It shows how elements of the Burning Man world — including the building of a sociotechnical commons, participation in project-based artistic labor and the fusion of social and professional interaction — help to shape and legitimate the collaborative manufacturing processes driving the growth of Google and other firms. The article develops the notion that Burning Man serves as a key cultural infrastructure for the Bay Area's new media industries.
In the wake of the Second World War, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and other members of the New ... more In the wake of the Second World War, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and other members of the New York art world helped transform popular understandings of what it might mean for human beings to work alongside information machines. This article shows how. Drawing on archival research, interviews and a survey of secondary sources, it follows Cage and Rauschenberg from Black Mountain College into their 1960s collaboration with engineers from Bell Laboratories in an organization called Experiments in Art and Technology (or E.A.T.). It then shows how, in 1970, at a Manhattan mansion packed with electronic media and christened 'Automation House', E.A.T. modeled a fusion of artistic collaboration and automated labor for the captains of American industry. In the process, the article concludes, E.A.T. helped set the stage for a re-imagining of computing in the workplace as a bohemian practice and of computers as tools for creative, peer-to-peer collaboration. 1952 was a watershed y...
For almost a decade, Facebook has maintained two internal organizations to commission and create ... more For almost a decade, Facebook has maintained two internal organizations to commission and create artworks for Facebook offices around the globe. This paper maps those enterprises, their organizational practices, and the aesthetics they promote. It then builds on recent work in the critical sociology of capitalism to make two cases: one, that the ways Facebook works with the arts marks a radical departure from traditional, industrial-era corporate collecting practices; and two, that Facebook's arts initiatives mirror and help legitimate profit-seeking techniques particular to social media. Together, it concludes, these features give us a glimpse of the ways that surveillance-based for-profit media such as Facebook are creating new relationships between the arts, the corporation, and their respective publics.
L’ideologie de la Silicon Valley trouve ses origines dans la contre-culture americaine des annees... more L’ideologie de la Silicon Valley trouve ses origines dans la contre-culture americaine des annees 1960, voire le puritanisme : il s’agit toujours de repousser les frontieres et de construire des communautes egalitaires, mais en remplacant le Lsd et la Bible par des systemes informatiques.
This Is for Fighting, This Is for Fun: Camerawork and Gunplay in Reality-Based Crime Shows Fred T... more This Is for Fighting, This Is for Fun: Camerawork and Gunplay in Reality-Based Crime Shows Fred Turner Several years ago, I interviewed a Vietnam veteran named Brian Winhover. He had survived three tours of combat duty, but when he tried to tell me how he felt when he was ...
Two leading scholars of internet history, Charlton McIlwain and Fred Turner, delve into the stori... more Two leading scholars of internet history, Charlton McIlwain and Fred Turner, delve into the stories you might not have heard about where the technology came from. Yes, DARPA and IBM played formative roles, but what about back-to-the-land hippies in the 1960s, or a sprawling network of African American engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts who helped develop and popularize the web? McIlwain and Turner explain how major decisions about the early internet's design and usage lead to some of its problems today.
Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge w... more Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge workers have trekked out into a barren stretch of alkali desert and built a temporary city devoted to art, technology and communal living: Burning Man. Drawing on extensive archival research, participant observation and interviews, this article explores the ways in which Burning Man's bohemian ethos supports new forms of production emerging in Silicon Valley and especially at Google. It shows how elements of the Burning Man world-including the building of a sociotechnical commons, participation in project-based artistic labor and the fusion of social and professional interaction-help to shape and legitimate the collaborative manufacturing processes driving the growth of Google and other firms.The article develops the notion that Burning Man serves as a key cultural infrastructure for the Bay Area's new media industries.
... Taking creative hints from the likes of Thomas Pynchon and Ralph Ellison, Kevorkian showcases... more ... Taking creative hints from the likes of Thomas Pynchon and Ralph Ellison, Kevorkian showcases a small sam-pling of creators who ... In this deceptively brief and exceptionally timely book, law professors Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu put the lie to that consensus. ... FRED TURNER ...
To date, journalists and most of those who study them remain wedded to a deeply modern understand... more To date, journalists and most of those who study them remain wedded to a deeply modern understanding of the profession, one in which firm analytical borders separate news and newsmakers, reporters and audience, press and politics. New media technologies have begun to corrode these boundaries in practice, however. With its emphasis on sociotechnical hybrids, actor-network theory offers a powerful tool for analyzing shifts in the practice of journalism under new technological conditions.
In the early spring of 1955, more than a quarter million people streamed through the doors of the... more In the early spring of 1955, more than a quarter million people streamed through the doors of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They came to immerse themselves in The Family of Man. An exhibition of 503 photographs of men, women, and children, made by 273 photographers from around the world and selected by photographer Edward Steichen and his assistant, Wayne Miller, The Family of Man filled the entire second floor of the museum. A series of temporary walls designed by architect Paul Rudolph channeled visitors through the images, allowing them to move at their own pace, to pause where they liked, and to pool at pictures of particular interest. Visitors gazed at photographs of children dancing, families gathering, and men and women of myriad nations working, walking, marrying, fighting. Some pictures dangled from wires overhead, some hung from poles, and at least one faced downward from the ceiling. Some filled entire walls, while others were as small as a handbill. Together, the installation and the images left few places where visitors could turn and not encounter a picture of another person doing something they were likely to recognize. The Family of Man quickly became one of the most popular exhibitions in
This article recalls the New Games Tournament of 1966 and with it, two ways to imagine play in th... more This article recalls the New Games Tournament of 1966 and with it, two ways to imagine play in the period: one, military war gaming and the other, the protest-oriented play of the counterculture. It then analyzes the legacy of these cultural styles for contemporary forms of gaming.
In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer ... more In the last few years, a powerful consensus has emerged among scholars of digitally enabled peer production. In this view, digital technologies and social production processes are driving a dramatic democratization of culture and society. Moreover, leading scholars now suggest that these new, hyper-mediated modes of living and working are specifically challenging the hierarchical structures and concentrated power of bureaucracies. This paper first maps the assumptions underlying the new consensus on peer production so as to reveal the sources of its coherence. It then revisits Max Weber’s account of bureaucracy. With Weber in mind, the paper aims to expose analytical weaknesses in the consensus view and offer a new perspective from which to study contemporary digital media.
Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge w... more Every August for more than a decade, thousands of information technologists and other knowledge workers have trekked out into a barren stretch of alkali desert and built a temporary city devoted to art, technology and communal living: Burning Man. Drawing on extensive archival research, participant observation and interviews, this article explores the ways in which Burning Man's bohemian ethos supports new forms of production emerging in Silicon Valley and especially at Google. It shows how elements of the Burning Man world — including the building of a sociotechnical commons, participation in project-based artistic labor and the fusion of social and professional interaction — help to shape and legitimate the collaborative manufacturing processes driving the growth of Google and other firms. The article develops the notion that Burning Man serves as a key cultural infrastructure for the Bay Area's new media industries.
In the wake of the Second World War, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and other members of the New ... more In the wake of the Second World War, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg and other members of the New York art world helped transform popular understandings of what it might mean for human beings to work alongside information machines. This article shows how. Drawing on archival research, interviews and a survey of secondary sources, it follows Cage and Rauschenberg from Black Mountain College into their 1960s collaboration with engineers from Bell Laboratories in an organization called Experiments in Art and Technology (or E.A.T.). It then shows how, in 1970, at a Manhattan mansion packed with electronic media and christened 'Automation House', E.A.T. modeled a fusion of artistic collaboration and automated labor for the captains of American industry. In the process, the article concludes, E.A.T. helped set the stage for a re-imagining of computing in the workplace as a bohemian practice and of computers as tools for creative, peer-to-peer collaboration. 1952 was a watershed y...
For almost a decade, Facebook has maintained two internal organizations to commission and create ... more For almost a decade, Facebook has maintained two internal organizations to commission and create artworks for Facebook offices around the globe. This paper maps those enterprises, their organizational practices, and the aesthetics they promote. It then builds on recent work in the critical sociology of capitalism to make two cases: one, that the ways Facebook works with the arts marks a radical departure from traditional, industrial-era corporate collecting practices; and two, that Facebook's arts initiatives mirror and help legitimate profit-seeking techniques particular to social media. Together, it concludes, these features give us a glimpse of the ways that surveillance-based for-profit media such as Facebook are creating new relationships between the arts, the corporation, and their respective publics.
L’ideologie de la Silicon Valley trouve ses origines dans la contre-culture americaine des annees... more L’ideologie de la Silicon Valley trouve ses origines dans la contre-culture americaine des annees 1960, voire le puritanisme : il s’agit toujours de repousser les frontieres et de construire des communautes egalitaires, mais en remplacant le Lsd et la Bible par des systemes informatiques.
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