Back when the sky was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel (Gibson, Neuromancer) and ‘cyberspace’ was the new technicolor, the virtual stood in opposition to the material. The two were different. The former was insubstantial, imperceptible and immaterial. Flexible and playful. The latter was determined and structural, historical and base. This was …
Author Archives: praxis
The protocols of the money markets
While it is not difficult to approach protocol from an object-oriented perspective, following Latour’s Irreductions to understand it as an actant enfolded in alliances and translations, actively doing things in the world, it is perhaps more difficult to imag(in)e it as material. Miller’s discussion of the Internet in his chapter on Media: Immaterial Culture and …
Imag(in)e the stuff on Facebook
There’s a lot of stuff on Facebook. Facebook marketing director Randi Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg’s sister) tweeted that 750 million images/imaginings were uploaded over the New Year’s weekend. This compares with statistics from July 2010 that showed 100 million photos per day. In comparison the 5 billionth Flickr image was uploaded in September 2010. At the …
The stuff of protocol
Daniel Miller is quite clear: “nowhere in this volume [Stuff] will you find any attempt at a definition of that term… Stuff as a term serves just fine” (pp1-2). He explores whether an email or fashion can be seen as ‘stuff’ but is more concerned with tracing how stuff works rather than pinning it down. …
Google and the eccentric’s apartment
Google’s servers are full of rags ‘n refuse. So are Yahoo’s, Twitter’s and Facebook’s. Across the Live Web we leave behind and they hoover up. They stockpile our refuse in their server farms like an eccentric recluse stockpiling New York Times in his apartment. News both mainstream and citizen, snapshots and doodles, post-it notes and …
The felt pen and the protocol
In his contribution to the catalogue for the ‘Making Things Public’ exhibition, Latour talks of “the thin felt pen used by draughtsmen to imagine new landscapes”. Here the draughtsman and his object do more than draw. The object does more than act as the channel for his ‘creativity’ or ‘message’. The pen is an active …