Missed Posts –

Philip Agre and Mark Poster

The capture-model of surveillance outlined by Philip Agre was one of the most useful and interesting articles we have read this semester. Representing a dramatic shift in the way that surveillance functions, turning increasingly to what one might call dataveillance, capture shows the way that social control is no longer a purely top-down and external system which is imposed directly upon the individual subject as was a more classically surveillant model such as that put forward in the description of the panopticon. Capture plays upon the individual’s desires and operates through rhetorics of convenience, service and security which only indirectly doubles as a system of social control. This kind of system is, of course, aligned with the conception of the “control society” put forward by Deleuze in his postscript since the capture-based system allows for a far more mobile and dynamic system of control. However, what is interesting about these connections between capture (Agre) and control (Deleuze) is the way that both simulate a highly dynamic system that would seem to be directly opposed to the older disciplinary model put forward by Foucault, yet systems of capture and control necessarily utilize a stable, embedded infrastructure in order to function. Cell phone records and GPS coordinates, PIN numbers and credit card histories, commercial websites and biometric data banks must be located in particular places that record the more mobile subject, thus reversing the subjective immobility of the previous disciplinary era. Yet these new systems create a double for the subject that remains contained and preserved in some important way within some archival structure. In this way it would seem that the structure of power relations has shifted in important ways, but some of the fundamental elements of disciplinary control remain operative within new systems of control and capture.

Complimenting this conception is Mark Poster’s understanding of databases as a form of discourse a la Foucault. This was also a really interesting point and I would be really interested in following up more on this idea. How as discourse changed and, along with what I have suggested – following Agre, Deleuze and others – as an increasingly archival mode of control, how has writing, inscription and other increasingly Symbolic orders come to play a larger part in our lives. Recently, I have been reading several short essays by Baudrillard and he speaks of the shifting conditions of the virtual and the Real and it seems that it is along these lines that a better undertstanding can be gleaned. Although, perhaps, not to quite the extreme extent as Baudrillard might frame the question… The connection between Poster and Baudrillard is not so surprising since Poster translated several of Baurdillard’s works, but has he written more on these
posted by David at 4:05 PM

Missed Posts –

Coco Fusco

Sitting in the back of Coco Fusco’s talk with Julie, I was very much struck by the very issues that Julie raised in her own blog post about this event. The films itself was really fascinating because of the way that it highlighted certain aspects of interrogation and torture as well as the performativity of these things. This was perhaps what I found most striking and interesting about both the talk and the film was watching the way that the interrogators of Team Delta both acted out various interrogation techniques and their discussions about what they were doing – and the way that most of their discussions really emphasized the importance of performing certain roles of power. Because this aspect of the film seemed to clearly illustrated I was surprised when, in the Q&A afterwards, Coco seemed so defensive about the way in which these performances of power might be related to other practices such as BDSM.

On the one hand, I can see why she, being a filmmaker and academic, might not want to equate the ordeal of interrogation or torture (an impossible distinction, or at the very least a matter of degree) with the consensual scenarios of bondage play for political reasons, but Coco’s reaction to Julie’s question about the similarities between the two seemed more defensive than necessary. What it seemed like Coco was revealing was a surprising commitment to some authenticity of the film and she seemed unwilling to enter into a discussion of the play of signification that was taking place in regards the films and the events represented therein. An example of this was her vociferous reiteraton of the fact that this was like a class and not like a bondage scenario. Again, from a political standpoint I can see how she would want to align the film with something more socially legitimate than BDSM, but it seemed that she was foreclosing the possibility for discussion as to the actual similarities in this regard (such as the fact that she paid $7,000, or that it was, in some very important way, consensual since she and the women she experienced this with all knew that they were going in for interogaton, etc.). This is not to take away from the political implications of her work, merely to suggest that a more open minded perspective would create an opening for further insights into the production and performance of power as it runs throughout myriad aspects of our lives.

I was also really interested that Coco had brought one of the members of Team Delta with her and I was really interested to hear his perspective on what we had watched in the Q&A afterwards as well as his position on the current administration’s policies on torture/interrogation.
posted by David at 11:01 AM

Missed Posts –

Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold

Rheingold’s account of emerging trends and technologies of mobile, wireless telecommunications was interesting for the way that it surveyed recent movements (pun intended) across a diverse range of fields, linking together cell phones and text messaging with the developing field of ubiquitous computing. While much of Rheingold’s book was an interesting forecast of future issues involved in telecommunications, it still seemed as though the text was in danger of falling into some mode of techno-prophecy that has become increasingly common. Written largely in a first-person perspective, Rheingold traces his own travels from one hot spot of technical development to another while annotating this emerging map of key figures and mavericks in the various fields and spaces in which he moved. While surely this was meant to appeal to a broader audience in terms of the distribution of his book, it is nonetheless striking that many of his adventures seem tinged with an almost futurist delight in the shifts taking place in techno-culture. The problem with this sort of perspective is that the accounts of the technologies and the phenomenon begin to seem skewed in the direction of the highly visible center of gravity represented in the text by Rheingold himself – his own perspective overtakes the analyses that come up in the book in surprisingly uncritical ways which emerge in his discussions of Japanese youth culture in which the importance of texting and of the otherness of those individuals he observes seem of equal value. Aside from the positive (and, at times, uncritical) stance taken by Rheingold in the text, I was struck by several notions that emerged from reading his accounts of the transformations of social structures into aleatory social networks – a virtual mode of telecommunication based in the transmission of texts – the subtle shifts in the notion of intelligence that began to take shape in the book, and the orientation towards the future tending in a decidedly utopian direction.

His discussion of the new social formations that are rising up out of mobile internet technology was quite interesting and this was one of many aspects of the book that I found quite valuable. Of particular interest in this regard was his analysis of the infrastructure that needed to be in place in order to fully implement these techniques of social formations. This gave way to his discussion of ubiquitous computing and the possible future of a world in which the actual spatial locations of reality were themselves annotated through technologies such as WorldBoard that are in development by IBM.

The notion of intelligence that Rheingold begins to get at is something that I would need to think more about and I would have liked to follow up on this notion more in the final discussions in the class. Clearly, through the notion of smart mobs in general and the chapters on reputation and collectives and aleatory social formations, some notion of collective or group intelligence is coming into play, but I am not quite sure how it functions, although this might have something to do with the fact that Rheingold himself cannot say for sure the forms that these things will take in the future…
posted by David at 2:09 AM

The company has explained why its anti-spam effort is ending

A series of web attacks by spammers have forced a security firm to end an initiative to curb junk mail.
from bbc

Israeli start-up Blue Security used a variety of tactics to make spammers clean up the lists of addresses to which they sent junk mail.

The firm also automatically filled in forms on spammers' websites to get names taken off the mailing lists.

But escalating attacks from spammers annoyed by the initiative's success has led to its closure.

Widespread attack

Blue Security set up the Blue Frog anti-spam scheme in July 2005 and since then has signed up more than 500,000 members.

The scheme involved users reporting to Blue Security every spam message they received. The security firm would then contact the spammers who sent the mail and ask them to remove the name of that user from their mailing list.

We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations Blue Security

If this method of stopping spam failed, Blue Security would then visit the spammer's websites advertising the products seen in junk mail and fill in any forms asking for users' names be removed from the list.

This could mean that some spammers' websites were getting thousands of requests for mailing lists to be cleaned up every day.

Blue Security claimed that the scheme reduced spam for many of those that signed up.

The tactic of bombarding spammers' websites was controversial among many anti-spam workers.

Sense of responsibility

The first indication that some junk mailers had taken exception to the anti-spam efforts came in early May when Blue Security was hit by a large so-called Distributed Denial of Service attack.

In such attacks websites get bombarded with huge amounts of data that their servers cannot handle.

At the same time some of those that had signed up for Blue Security's anti-spam system started getting threatening messages.

Blue Security realised that if it re-started its anti-spam campaign the attacks would get worse as the spammers seemed to have a huge network of remotely-controlled computers under their control.

"We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations," said a statement on Blue Security's website.

As a result the company has decided to discontinue its anti-spam efforts.

"We believe this is the responsible thing to do," said the statement.

The company said it would now explore other ways to use its technology although for non-spam uses.
posted by chr15 at 1:15 PM