Aram Sinnreich

New article: "Welcome to Alphaville, Avoid the Ghetto"

Truthdig.com just published my new article, "Welcome to Alphaville, Avoid the Ghetto." It's about what happens when smartphones turn our entire life into a giant search engine, and then selectively hide the results without telling us.

...The world we see through our smartphones is a curated world, and its horizons are constricting, rather than expanding. Though they’re often billed as modern-day Diogenes’ lamps, outshining the light of day with the light of truth (or “augmenting reality,” in contemporary geekspeek), they would be better understood as corporate-sponsored guidebooks to our own lives, keeping us on the prescribed path and off the road less traveled....

For more, read the article on Truthdig.

The metaverse inches closer to reality with Google's "liquid galaxy"

Google's new project, "liquid galaxy," is kind of like The Veldt. Once large-scale, flexible AMOLEDs become affordable, this can be more or less seamless.

All the world's a board game, and all the men and women merely tin shoes...

Well, it's finally happened. Hasbro and Google have teamed up to launch Monopoly City Streets, an online riff on the capitalist world's favorite board game, using Google Maps as the platform.

Although I think this is a great mash-up, I'm a little disappointed because, from the little the blog and site reveal (official launch is tomorrow), this appears to be more like an MMO, and less like a big game. In other words, it seems to be using computers to bring the real world into the confines of the screen, rather than bringing the datasphere out into the world we inhabit physically.

One of the spiels I find myself giving often of late is about how the moment of the metaverse has passed, and the adventures in meatspace are just beginning. With mobile smartphones, connected cameras, and emerging solutions like MIT's 6th Sense, there's no reason a game like this should be confined by the keyboard and monitor; we should be able to "buy" streets and buildings, and to pay and collect rent, by traversing actual cities as well as virtual ones.

Of course, there very well may come a day when processing becomes so ubiquitous and latency-free that there's no perceptible difference between bringing physical experience into the computer and bringing data into the physical world. But until then, I'd like to be out and about, footloose and fancy free, rather than chained to a glowing square and a brick of keys.

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace, revised

I'm almost done with the syllabus I blogged a few weeks back. But I still need some help from all you smart folks out there. Please take a look, and let me know what I'm missing. Feel free to borrow, as well. Remember, this is for Masters students in Media, Culture and Communication.

UPDATE: Here's the final version:

Topics in Digital Media:

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace

 

Dr. Aram Sinnreich

Description

 

Today, for the first time in history, computer-mediated culture has become mainstream for a majority of individuals in technologically developed societies. From email to texting, from online gaming to online banking, from YouTube to Hulu, from DoS attacks to Second Life sit-ins, nearly every traditional aspect of our lives has found a new expression in its digital proxy.

 

In order to understand the cultural, social, political and economic consequences of this development, we must look to the origins of today’s cyberculture, in the futuristic visions (both dystopian and utopian) that shaped the development of today’s networked technologies. We will trace the genealogy of these visions, as they developed in tandem with the growing digital communications infrastructure over the past three quarters of a century, and evolved into new forms that even the most forward-thinking of visionaries could not have predicted. Ultimately, one can argue that the Internet has both exceeded and fallen short of the hype that surrounded its birth and development, and, by comparing the myth to the reality, we may better understand what aspects of the human condition are likely to persist regardless of technological development.

 

Class will be conducted as a seminar. Students will be responsible for leading discussions on the readings, and are encouraged to critically engage the readings and class conversations.

Schedule

9/9: Introduction

 

9/16: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
  
  AND 2 OF THE FOLLOWING:
  
  
• Borges, J. L. (1941). The library of Babel.
• Rifkin, J. (1995). A view of the future. Utne Reader.
• Slouka, M. (1996). Reality is death. (from War of the Worlds)
• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/23: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Dibbell, J. (2008). Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World
• Pendragon, H. (2008) Griefers: Why Dibbell’s Wired Article Was 1-Sided.

 

OR

 

• Neil Stephenson, Snow Crash (Bantam, 1992)

 

9/30: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Wu, T. (2005). Network neutrality, broadband discrimination.

 

OR

 

• Lawrence Lessig, Code v2 (Basic Books, 2006)

 

10/7: Freedom to Hack

GUEST: Karl Fogel, founder, questioncopyright.org

 

• Christopher Kelty (2005), Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics
• NY Times (1995), A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)
• Stallman, R. GNU manifesto

 

OR

 

·      Doug Thomas, Hacker Culture (U. Minn Press, 2002)

10/14: dot-com Fantasies

GUEST: Gene DeRose, CEO, HouseParty, former CEO, Jupiter Research

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• CNET, Top 10 dot-com flops
• Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired.
• O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0?
• Schiff, S. (2006). Know it all. The New Yorker.
• boyd, d. (2007). Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.

 

OR

 

• Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (Vintage Books, 1996)

 

10/21: Our Second Selves: Video Games and Identity

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. Palmgrave Macmillan. Introduction, Conclusion and Appendix (20 pages)
• Smuts, A. (2005, November 2). Are video games art? Contemporary Aesthetics. (11 pages)
• Seabrook, J. (2006). Game master. The New Yorker, November 6, 2006 (14 pages)
• Bogost, I. (2006). Playing politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism and Advocacy. First Monday. Special Issue number 7. (10 pages)
• Jones, Saving Worlds with Videogame Activism. [unpublished paper]
• Ito, et al (2008). Living and Learning with New Media (pp. 18-39)
• Brathwaite, B. (2007). Sex in video games. Charles River Media. Chapter 4, pp. 89-122.
• Parisi, D. (2007). Playing the Interface: Video Games as Bodily Techniques [Unpublished paper]. (19 pages)

 

OR

 

• Dibbell, J. Play Money. (Basic Books, 2006)

 

 

10/28: Remix/Configurable Culture

·      Aram Sinnreich, Mashed Up (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

OR

 

·      Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture (NYU Press, 2006)

 

OR

 

·      Lawrence Lessig, Remix (Penguin, 2008)

 

11/4: The Cloud

 

·      Downes, S. The Cloud and Collaboration

·      Zittrain, J. Lost in the Cloud

·      Golden, B. Clueless on the Charles: How Zittrain’s Cloud Missive Got it Wrong

·      Doctorow, C. Not Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

OPTIONAL:

 

·      Google Blog, Introducing the Chrome OS

·      Chappell, Windows Azure Whitepaper

 

11/11: Surveillance, Sensors and Semantics

 

• Brin, D. (1998). The transparent society.
• Berners-Lee, et al. (2001). The Semantic Web.
• Dodson, S. (2008). The Net Shapes Up to Get Physical.
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/18: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Dennis Crowley, founder, Dodgeball.com

 

·      Doctorow, C. (2004) Anda’s Game

·      NY Times (2004). Quick, After Him, Pacman Went Thataway

·      Laura Forlano (2010). WiFi Geographies: When Code Meets Place

·      Area/Code, Big Games Manifesto (1 page)

·      Patti Maes, The Sixth Sense (Video)

 

 

11/25: MOVIE/FIELD TRIP

 

12/2: Presentations

 

12/9: Presentations

 

FINAL PAPER DUE: 12/16

My radio interview on Beatles Rock Band

Today I spent an hour on MPR's "Midmorning" (along with Daniel Radosh and Jason Della Rocca) discussing the soon-to-launch Beatles Rock Band, and some of its bigger-picture implications for the media industry and society at large. We also responded to a lot of listener questions. Altogether, it was a nice, freewheeling conversation, aided by host Kerri Miller's terrific moderation.

Here's the stream of the show:

Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace

I'm currently putting together the syllabus for my NYU Masters course this Fall, entitled "Topics in Digital Media: Visions and Revisions of Cyberspace." Usually when I teach a class like this, I tell a story on a timeline, painting cyberculture as an evolving entity. This time, however, I'm thinking about it in terms of subject areas, in which each week traces the past, present and future of a given meme or concept. My tentative list of 10 concepts/subject areas is as follows:

1: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud
2: The Metaverse
3: Hackers and Gamers
4: OSS/FS/CC
5: dot-com Fantasies
6: Web 2.0
7: Remix/Configurable Culture
8: The Cloud
9: Surveillance, Sensors and Robots
10: Adventures in MeatSpace

I'd love any and all informed feedback on either (a) subjects I need to add, delete or merge, and (b) vital readings/viewings/playings for a given subject. Email or blog comments will do. Thanks!

Who says government monopolies can't innovate? USPS puts AR to good use

I love, love, love this augmented reality application by the US Postal Service, for its combination of high-tech geekiness and good, old-fashioned functionality. Want to know which package size is appropriate for the item you're shipping? Hold it up to your webcam, and see how virtual boxes fit around it.

 

(Seen on Adverblog)