Aram Sinnreich

R.I.P. Steve Jobs [Video]

A few weeks ago, Reuters TV called me up to record a segment for their Steve Jobs obituary. It's the first time I've ever been asked to eulogize someone who was still living, and I found that task, plus the necessity of boiling down a modern titan's life into a quotable snippet, somewhat unnerving. Nonetheless, i was proud to contribute my little bit to what would undoubtedly be a global outpouring of grief and hagiography, and I tried hard to say something that would both resonate and do some small bit of justice to the man.

I'm not an Apple fanboy -- for instance, I've long been a critic of their music retail strategy, which has served them well and everyone else rather poorly. But I do use a Macbook Pro, iPhone, iPad and several other Apple-produced pieces of hardware and software, and I consider each of them a marvel of engineering and design. This is fortunate, because I probably spend the majority of my waking hours holding, watching, listening to, and communicating via one of these devices.

But to simply point to all the pretty boxes and say "Mr. Jobs made some nice machines" is not enough. It would be difficult to overstate the impact that Jobs had on business and culture at large, especially over the past 15 years since his storied return to the company he cofounded. Socially, he demystified -- and therefore democratized -- computer use, dragging the silicon chip from the desks of dedicated geeks to the pockets of the people.

He did this by meeting his customers halfway -- obliterating the command line prompt and impersonal packaging for the intuitive interface and the sleek, chic curves of haute design. I say "halfway" because he also forced us, coders and users alike, to conform to his vision. We had to adjust our hands and minds to the folder and the swipe, and we had to shun the freer pastures of the GPL and Linux for a walled garden full of proprietary delectables.

Steve Jobs built an empire -- one of America's largest -- on this "halfway" principle, and on the proposition that computers -- the cold, calculating (literally), impersonal tools of eggheads and hackers -- could be reimagined as warm, fuzzy, and even sexy. I'm currently teaching a masters-level course called "Critiquing Marketing Communications," and a few weeks ago I had to institute a ban on using Apple as a brand example, because my students would barely talk about anything else.

Whether we're headed for singularity, cyborgism, fragmentation or obliteration, there's no question that the future of humanity and the future of the digital computer are firmly and irrevocably intertwined. It's impossible to imagine a tomorrow without ubiquitous processing, and yet impossible to fathom the degree to which our fates and those of the machines will continue to blur. If we're able to contemplate this astounding proposition without despair and abject terror, we have Steve Jobs to thank for it. 

Cloud Hardware?

Yesterday, I had a very interesting getting-to-know you chat with my new colleague Chirag Shah. He's a computer and information science guy, and  I'm a media and culture guy, but even casually, we were able to find a lot of common ground. Mostly, we talked about the evolution of wireless technology and strategy, and the coming Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft battles over the mobile OS.

As an aside during our conversation, I mentioned that "of course, eventually the handset disappears altogether, and becomes virtualized through pico or retinal projection, and all that's left is maybe a little bluetooth or RFID fob, and maybe a pair of earphones." This has been an assumption in the back of my mind for the past decade or so, but I'd never really stopped to think about whether it was actually true, and what these developments mean in terms of culture and technology. To put it another way, Apple especially has spent the last decade investing the mobile media/communications device with almost talismanic qualities, and would it really want to destabilize its market power by dematerializing the very object that defines its strategy? Judging by the prevalence of "concept videos" that feature transparent, AMOLED screens and other barely noticeable interfaces, I'd say the answer is yes.

OK, so people want see-through phones and laptops. So what? Is that any different than Crystal Pepsi, and other aesthetic stabs at dematerialization in the marketing annals? 

Maybe. In the past 2 years, "cloud computing" has reached mainstream awareness, as a greater and greater number of applications are departing end users' local spheres and entering the ether, accessible (to anointed users) via any and every informatic orifice. This isn't necessarily a good thing, as Cory Doctorow and others have pointed out. Yet, for a variety of technological, economic and social reasons, it's almost certainly the next thing.

What if the aesthetic of dematerialization is a nod toward this trend, and even an intimation that hardware will soon follow in software's footsteps? The immediate version of this would be the virtualization of the device itself, as I described above: visual, auditory, haptic and network interfaces decoupled from one another, comfortably nestling in easy reach of the organs they're supposed to serve. But the next phase would be the disappearances of the interfaces themselves, and a shift of the burden of recording and transmitting information to the already-pervasive, already-redundant network of communication devices in our urban environment. 

We're already being captured on dozens or hundreds of cameras as we go about our appointed rounds; why don't we just tap into that network for video communications a la Skype or FaceTime? There are already screens pervading nearly every inch of public space, from elevators to subways. Why not use the closest one to check your email, or catch up on the latest episode of the Daily Show? With audio spotlight technology, we could theoretically walk down the street having a conversation out loud via VoIP, protected by an ensconcing cone of silence. And so forth.

I'm hardly suggesting that these possibilities are a reality given our current technological and social infrastructures. Nor am I suggesting that this is a desirable next phase for communication. But I do wonder whether this vision of the hardware cloud plays into the current trend of dematerialization, and to what degree it's been discussed explicitly within the HCI and design communities. Anyone?

New draft syllabus for "Visions & Revisions of Cyberspace"

I taught this course as a Masters-level class at NYU a year ago, and the syllabus worked very nicely. Now, my challenge has been to improve, update and upgrade it for my Ph.D. students at Rutgers. I think it's pretty good, but please weigh in and let me know how I can make it better (especially you, former students of mine!) (UPDATED 8/29)

9/1: Introduction

 

9/8: No Class Today

 

9/15: The Memex and the Mushroom Cloud

 

• Bush, V. (1945). As we may think. The Atlantic.
• 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)

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Leiner, et al (2000). A Brief History of the Internet.

 

9/22: The Metaverse

 

• Nelson, T. (1974). Computer lib/dream machines. [excerpt]
• Baudrillard, J. (1988). Simulacra and Simulations [excerpt]
• Chesher, C. (1994). Colonizing Virtual Reality.
• 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)

 

9/29: Rules and Regulation

 

• Internet Society, DNS Root Name Servers Explained for Non-Experts
• Mueller, M. (2002). Dancing the Quango: ICANN as International Regulatory Regime.
• Wu, Tim (2006). Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, and Nondiscriminatory Access
• Sinnreich & Zager (2008). E-Speech: The (Uncertain) Future of Free Expression
• Hinze, G. (2010). Preliminary Analysis of the Officially Released ACTA Text

 

OR

 

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

 

10/6: Free Love, Free Speech, Free Software

 

• Stallman, R. (1985). GNU manifesto
• Barlow, J. P. (1996). A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
• Markoff, J. (1995). A Most Wanted Cyberthief is caught in his own web.
• Turner, F. (2005). Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy.
• Christopher Kelty (2005). Geeks, Social Imaginaries, and Recursive Publics

 

OR

 

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

OPTIONAL

 

• 2600, Interview with Kevin Mitnick (video)

 

10/13: dot-com Fantasies

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Dyson, E. (1995). Intellectual value. Wired.
• Meeker, M. (1995). The Internet Report. Morgan Stanley. [Read part 1. The rest is skimmable].
• Sinnreich, A. (2001). Remixing the Distribution Chain for Digital Music. Jupiter Research.
• 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)

 

10/20: Our Second Selves: Video Games and Identity

GUEST: Joost van Dreunen

 

FOUR OF THE FOLLOWING:

 

• Bogost, I. (2006). Playing politics: Videogames for Politics, Activism and Advocacy. First Monday. Special Issue number 7. (10 pages)
• 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)
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture. (Chapter 3)
• Costikyan, G. (2007) Super Columbine Massacre: Artwork or Menace?

 

OR

 

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

 

 

10/27: Configurable Culture

 

·      Sinnreich, A. Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture (U. Mass Press, 2010)

 

11/3: 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

 

11/10: 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.
• Bossewitch & Sinnreich (2009). Beyond the Panopticon: Strategic Agency in an Age of Limitless Information
• EFF, Surveillance Self-Defense Project

 

11/17: Adventures in MeatSpace

GUEST: Laura Forlano

 

·      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)

 

11/22 (Monday of Thanksgiving Week): Field Trip

 

·      Readings and destination TBD

·      Exact date/time TBD

 

12/1: Singularity and Fracture

 

• Vinge, V. (1993). What is the Singularity?
• Kurzweil, R. (2010). Q&A on The Singularity (pdf)
• Lanier, J. (2010). You Are Not A Gadget. [Chapters 2-3]
• Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age [Conclusion: “The Myth of Cyberspace”]

 

OPTIONAL:

 

• Vance, A. (2010). Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

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.

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!

Reconfiguring the sonic landscape

In an ocularcentric culture like ours, it's no surprise that privacy advocates and security advocates alike are caught up in the battle over visual information -- who can record it, who can store it, and who can share it with whom. Foucault helped us make sense of this back before configurability even kicked in, with his critique of panopticism (a metaphor borrowed from Bentham).

But, aside from the soundtracks to video footage and commercial music, not many people have been concerned with our sonic landscape, with what I (and some others) would call the "panaudicon" (actually, the last Batman movie is a notable exception). For years now, I've been kicking around this idea of aggregating diverse audio streams from net-connected devices, public microphones, and the airwaves, and filtering them into a public space (virtual or actual), where they can be cataloged, remixed, redirected, etc. I proposed versions of this project to both the Lear Center and the Annenberg Center (R.I.P.) when I was in LA, but they never had any interest in backing it, and I guess I just didn't have the time or the interest to pursue it on my own.

Thankfully, someone has now done it, in a very cool site called SoundSweep.org (or is it "sounds weep"? ah ha!). I think this is a Sci-Arc based project. Anyway, here's the site's self-description:

Sound Sweep is a gray radio broadcast that records and reprograms sonic space in Los Angeles. Its intention is to generate new spaces, perforate established spaces and amplify forgotten spaces.

Definitely worth checking out, although there's not much audio there yet.

(Thanks for the link, Marissa!)

Thought-control interface for gaming

People who know me know that I love stuff like this: creepy sci-fi technologies seeping almost without comment into our quotidian world. A company called Emotiv has just announced it will be shipping thought-control (and emotion-reading) interfaces, mass marketed to video gamers, later this year. Of course, this stuff has been around for a while -- mostly, DARPA-funded projects whose ostensible purpose is to help paraplegics move a mouse cursor, but of course the real agenda is more like Firefox (not the browser -- the Clint Eastwood movie) -- thought-controlled weaponry to nudge our soldiers ever closer to maximal killing efficiency and an Ender's Game-like remove from the visceral experience of taking life. But, to my knowledge, this is the first time such technology will be available at BestBuy.

Of course, as I've been arguing for years, this tech is half of the necessary infrastructure for networked telepathy (the other half has also been built -- someone just has to put the two pieces together), or, if you want to get really sinister about it, networked thought control.

To put on my analyst's hat for a second: imagine the data mining possibilities this thing will have! McDonald's will actually be able to target action-oriented marketing (buy a Big Mac right now, for 99 cents!!!) based on the real time emotional state of media consumers. Whoa. I've got to bake that into my SEMPO projections.

Now, to put on my video game professor's hat: imagine the feedback effect the adoption of technologies like this would have on game design. Once designers can count on collecting and delivering data through such an interface, it could significantly change gameplay; levels could become faster or harder depending on the level of stress the user exhibits (certain biofeedback games already do this, in a way), or enterprising designers could use the device to break the 4th wall. Imagine Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid taunting you -- not with "his" psychic knowledge of the games you've got stored on your memory card, but based on "his" real-time assessment of your emotional state. [Shudder].

(Thanks, Masha!)

UPDATE: Dave [surname redacted] sez:

hmmm....i'll believe it when/if it works...
at this point, it is all very functional and doesn't work very well, at least what i've seen.  it is all based on mapping electrical signals AFAIK.  neuroscience/brain imaging scares the shit out of me b/c so many people want to believe its possible (and have a vested interest in making it appear possible) that the technology is being sold as being able to do more than it can.  you've seen the stories CNN has done where they're using fMRIs on people to show their "real" voting preferences?  it's batshit crazy to say that one is true (the scan) over the other (the person's articulated preference).  at best you can say that they're in conflict.  but once CNN (or Wired or anyone who can make money off overblowing claims) gets a hold of it, they start making fMRIs say more than they do.

i've been thinking a lot about Eugene Thacker's biomedia argument- what you get is not someone's thoughts, but a machinic interpretation of them, mediated by a computer program that is designed to interpret signals in a particular way.  it is IMO not any different from what was going on in the 19th C when they were measuring fatigue and inferring neurasthenia based on slow reaction time, declining tactual acuity, etc.