Rheingolds observation of how mobile technology maps and creates social networks for adolescents seems particularly potent. He observes that young people often use the technology to maintain relationships that parents might not approve of. Here, ubiquitous electronic communications might combine with young peoples’ easier adoption of both technology and rebellion. Resistance to adult authority could mesh with resistance to much more: “Afghans in Pakistan were horrified by the ease which young Moslem boys and girls, who would never have been allowed to be alone together, can now participate in virtual social relationships via mobile phones” (21). Perhaps Rheingold’s networks have the potential to rap around particular mechanisms of patriarchy.

I am looking for more than an analysis of mobile tactics in the Philippine “People Power II” revolt (though Rheingolds discursive use of strategy and not tactics might provide a productive analytical entry point into his text, for example what role do tactics play in game theory and possibilities for cooperation [page 45]. Josh, I believe prediction would play a crucial role in the analysis).

Instead I wish to explore how mobile tech creates communities and ideologies. Perhaps this will lead us to a theory of mobiley resistant ideologies. According to Rheingold, an SMS has an expressive element and so can confirms a relationship. “The sender and receiver share a common, though asynchronous experience….The content is not that important. The message has a meaning in itself; it is a way of showing the recipient you’re thinking of him (or her).” (25-6). Such an expression claims membership in a social network. Social networks can translate into communities. The message is more important than content. The sender and receiver rise in importance. Targeting rises in importance. But of coarse anything targeted can miss its mark. A texter might make a typo or choose the wrong contact to send to. Someone else might have barrowed the phone. Texting might then fit into Deinst’s paradigm of ideology. I fit into a discursive group because the content I generate could be passed through and to anyone in a network. The content I receive might come from anyone. I am enmeshed in a discursive circuit that I do not control. Of coarse, SMS communication would not constitute Ideology in itself but it provides a model of “micro-ideology.” Such a small-scale discursive community would be flexible both in content and membership. It would be adaptable to diverse situations providing adaptable fields of knowledge and questioning.

Such micro-ideology would not necessarily be resistant but it does demonstrate the possibility for new social/subject arrangements in an era of pervasive, locally oriented computing. As always, militants will need to apply themselves to micro-ideologies to make them useful for radical collective action.

To close, 3 cheers to the Nepalese opposition who achieved victory even when the mobile networks of Kathmandu were shut down.
posted by chr15 at 3:35 AM

One of the more interesting aspects that seemed to emerge from the reading for this/last week is that of prediction. While Smart Mobs consistently deals with attempts to predict social reception/use of new technologies, commercial factors, and technological evolution from a design/development standpoint, as well as posing inquiries into how the changing state of mobile communications will alter human interaction and established methods of observation/control, I’m thinking more, here, about technologies that enact/suggest a sort of prediction, or foresight, themselves.

One example is Rheingold’s discussion of Sentient Things, and particularly the attention he pays to “augmented reality.” Rheingold mentions “research into ‘attentive billboards’ – display screens that use optical recognition techniques to learn where people are looking and to detect characteristics of the people who look at the billboard” (94). This sort of advertising campaign posits a billboard that “looks back at [people] as they gaze… extracts information about their sex, age, and race, and adjusts the display accordingly.” With this info, the billboard can show a knitting advertisement “When grandma walks up,” or a motorcycle when someone approaches wearing “leather gear” – it can even “extract your facial expression to guess whether you are happy or sad.” While this may be an exciting concept, its foundation in an ability to determine a person’s race, gender, age and interest on a purely visual basis is absurd – not to mention extremely problematic. Why not just call them “Stereotyping billboards”?

In a similar moment, Gray’s discussion of the “new frontier” of facial recognition technology, wherein computerized apparatuses are used to interpret “involuntary facial ‘microexpressions’ that reveal emotional states,” demonstrates what Gray calls a blurring of “the boundary between biometrics and mind reading” (Urban Surveillance, 324). While Grey is correct in pointing to questions this research raises regarding the distinction between clues and evidence (325), thought and speech (327), the usefulness of this sort of technology seems rather questionable when one considers regional/cultural variations that emerge in analyzing facial expressions. While attentive billboards, it seems from Rheingold’s description, presume an immediately perceivable difference between various categories of people, this sort of facial recognition procedure would seem to operate in regards to a sort of uniform, or universal face. Both techniques are equally dangerous.

This concept of facial interpretation seems aligned with McCahill’s explanation of risk management, and the transition “from reactive social control… to proactive strategies seeking to minimize opportunities for crime or terrorist behaviour in the future through the prediction of sources of insecurity” (ibid, 319). Then there’s the discussion, in the introduction of Agre’s article on “capture,” of the Echelon system’s monitoring of seemingly private communications not only to analyze the “flows…keywords…[and] patterns” of “targets chosen in advance” – i.e., suspected terrorists – but also to “identify new suspects” (Surveillance and Capture, 739). While a solution offered in this introduction involves the standardization of cryptography, how does one encrypt one’s face/race/age? Fake mustaches are, of course, always a solution, but why should we have to go to such efforts to evade?

On a (somewhat) different note:

Agre’s discussion of information as assumed to be true, transparent, and tied to a philosophical theory of “correspondence” (745), resonates with Gray’s notion of the “categorizing phenetic fix” – the idea that, with visual/informational proof (such as surveillance footage of Madelyne Toogood beating her child in a parking lot), there is a tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of a single action. But, in regards to Deleuze, does this demonstrate a sort of “mold” as opposed to “modulation”? In this sort of permanence of identity, the loss of the possibility for “redemption” as Gray puts it, is a different sort of enclosure created? Or is this characterization an example of a free-floating method of control, one that travels with us, or somesuch? I guess what I’m wondering is how Deleuze conceives of identity under the control society – aside from his transition from individual to dividual. Perhaps characterization is just a method of perpetual separation?

Regarding space/behavior:

I thought Agre's emphasis on the restructuring of activity under the capture method was interesting to consider alongside Rheingold's discussion of the progressive mediation of our actions, interactions, and experience with the world around us. Particularly, the concept of Worldboard (91-3) and other sorts of augmented reality experiments that, while attempting to simplify our navigation of the world and better our understanding of our surroundings (translating posters written in Chinese, identifying plants, directing us to flight terminals), make us dependent on a portable device (like all those "people on the streets of Tokyo staring at their mobile phones instead of talking to them" (xi)) with capacities for communication/processing. Aside from having to move between designated beacons/nodes for technology like Worldboard to work, the concept of a device that translates/interprets/simplifies our navigation through semi-foreign areas brings up more touchy questions about uniformity.
posted by josh_g at 9:46 PM

an interesting article on pervasive computing, -c

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, link

Sousveillance (IPA: /su??ve?l?ns/) refers both to inverse surveillance, as well as to the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity (i.e. personal experience capture).


posted by chr15 at 2:26 PM