Aram Sinnreich

MediaCon Panel with Trevor Pinch & DJ Spooky (audio)

This weekend, I was fortunate to host a keynote discussion between media theorist (and Moog afficionado) Trevor Pinch and DJ/author Paul D. Miller, a/k/a DJ Spooky. It was part of an excellent conference called "Extending Play" organized by the doctoral students at Rutgers SC&I. 

Our panel was a lot of fun -- a freewheeling discussion that ranged from music and tech geekery to broad social theory. You can listen to the audio transcript here:

ExtendingPlay_Keynote_Sinnreich_Pinch_Miller

 

 

My new book project: PiracyCrusade.com

My new book project, loosely based on my LimeWire expert testimony, is called "The Piracy Crusade." Although it will be published as a paper book next year by University of Massachusetts Press, I'm also publishing draft chapters as I write them on an open, Creative Commons-licensed, comments-enabled platform hosted by the MediaCommons project.

This kind of prepublication is increasingly being used as "peer-to-peer review," a crowdsourced alternative to the traditional academic "peer review" process, in which 2-3 anonymous readers with unclear motives and levels of interest weigh in on your work after 6-12 months of waiting. Obviously, when you're covering something fast-moving like law, technology, culture, or all three, that kind of a waiting process can be deadly.

If you have any interest, experience, or opinions regarding music, intellectual property law, new technologies, or the digital media industry, I encourage you to take a look, and leave a comment. All constructive commenters will get a shout-out in the final version of the book's Acknowledgments section.

The first two chapters are already up, and Chapter 3 is in process. Check it out on PiracyCrusade.com!

p.s. I'm also looking for some cover art -- if you're interested in creating something (I can't pay you, but I'll give you a credit on the cover), let me know.

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.

Video of "Beyond the Internet" panel

Last night, I was was fortunate to host an excellent panel on Internet freedom, cyberliberties, mesh networking, and next-gen networks at Rutgers University, with Laura DeNardis, Jonathan Baldwin, Michael Potter, Josh King, and my colleague, Aaron Trammell. ISOC-NY generously offered to livestream the event, which is now archived on their site.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

internetsocietychapters on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Happy American Censorship Day

Today, in honor of American Censorship Day, I've replaced my standard banner with a cheerful black bar.

I do this as a form of protest against the spirit of censorship pervading the regulation of the Internet and other communications platforms -- specifically, the pending legislation known as ProtectIP and SOPA being discussed in a Congressional hearing today. This legislation would criminalize huge swaths of the Internet as we know it today, and put a politically unacceptable degree of censorship power in the hands of government and large corporations. I stand with organizations like Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, as well as publishers like TechDirt and BoingBoing, in opposition to these measures, and I hope you will as well.

To find out more, and to take action, please visit AmericanCensorship.org.

 

"Beyond the Internet" event at Rutgers tomorrow

Tomorrow, I'll be hosting an event at Rutgers called "Beyond the Internet." It continues the themes I've been working on with the MondoNet project, surrounding the potential of new and emerging platforms (e.g. ad hoc, wireless mesh networks) to provide a more robust platform for free speech and the exercise of cyberliberties.

The cornerstone of the event will be a panel featuring some of the technologists and thinkers at the forefront of these issues, including:

• Laura E. DeNardis, American University / Yale Information Society Project
• Michael Potter, Geeks Without Frontiers
• Jonathan Baldwin, Parsons
• Josh King, New America Foundation/OTI
• Isaac Wilder, founder, Free Network Foundation

The event is free and open to the public, hope you can make it!

Time and location:
Wed, November 16
7:00pm – 9:00pm
Rutgers University, College Ave Campus
Alexander Library
4th Floor Lecture Hall
Map: http://bit.ly/t5fDnq 
Event website: technologies.rutgers.edu

[Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (NYU Video)

Recently, I gave my "Music in the Network Age" talk for Evan Korth's "Computers and Society" class at NYU's Comp Sci department. I was honored to be one of Evan's speakers -- his list is deep and impressive.

Below is the video, courtesy of Joly MacFie:

Previously: [Lecture] Today is Opposite Day: Music in the Network Age (audio + slides)

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

Whither Facebook? Whither Society?

I spent a very interesting 45 minutes on the radio today with MPR Midmorning host Kerri Miller and Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray, talking about Facebook, privacy, society, and our changing ethics and expectations about what it means to "participate" in an always-on culture. I love being on Kerri's show, because she gives her guests lots of opportunities to ramble, argue, and otherwise break away from the standard talking points.

Here's an archived stream:

So long, Photoshop. You'll be remembered quaintly.

This is so staggeringly simple and such a deft piece of complex engineering, I am blown away. A new program called PhotoSketch turns simple line drawings into photocollages using image search, mapping, cutting, pasting and blending algorithms. In other words, you draw a doodle, and the program turns it into a photorealistic image.

I can easily imagine the day when this functionality is available for audio and video. Without advanced technical expertise, people will be able to create their own films, games, and songs simply by sketching their favorite actors, locales and musicians into the frame. Of course, the Andrew Keens of the world will decry it as yet another victory for mediocrity over greatness. I prefer to think of it as yet another victory for free expression over cultural exclusivity.

Can't wait to play with it.

PhotoSketch: Internet Image Montage from tao chen on Vimeo.