Control and Freedom

Control and Freedom PDF Author: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533065
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
A work that bridges media archaeology and visual culture studies argues that the Internet has emerged as a mass medium by linking control with freedom and democracy. How has the Internet, a medium that thrives on control, been accepted as a medium of freedom? Why is freedom increasingly indistinguishable from paranoid control? In Control and Freedom, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun explores the current political and technological coupling of freedom with control by tracing the emergence of the Internet as a mass medium. The parallel (and paranoid) myths of the Internet as total freedom/total control, she says, stem from our reduction of political problems into technological ones. Drawing on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and analyzing such phenomena as Webcams and face-recognition technology, Chun argues that the relationship between control and freedom in networked contact is experienced and negotiated through sexuality and race. She traces the desire for cyberspace to cyberpunk fiction and maps the transformation of public/private into open/closed. Analyzing "pornocracy," she contends that it was through cyberporn and the government's attempts to regulate it that the Internet became a marketplace of ideas and commodities. Chun describes the way Internet promoters conflated technological empowerment with racial empowerment and, through close examinations of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, she analyzes the management of interactivity in narratives of cyberspace. The Internet's potential for democracy stems not from illusory promises of individual empowerment, Chun argues, but rather from the ways in which it exposes us to others (and to other machines) in ways we cannot control. Using fiber optic networks—light coursing through glass tubes—as metaphor and reality, Control and Freedom engages the rich philosophical tradition of light as a figure for knowledge, clarification, surveillance, and discipline, in order to argue that fiber-optic networks physically instantiate, and thus shatter, enlightenment.

Control and Freedom

Control and Freedom PDF Author: Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533065
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 365

Get Book Here

Book Description
A work that bridges media archaeology and visual culture studies argues that the Internet has emerged as a mass medium by linking control with freedom and democracy. How has the Internet, a medium that thrives on control, been accepted as a medium of freedom? Why is freedom increasingly indistinguishable from paranoid control? In Control and Freedom, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun explores the current political and technological coupling of freedom with control by tracing the emergence of the Internet as a mass medium. The parallel (and paranoid) myths of the Internet as total freedom/total control, she says, stem from our reduction of political problems into technological ones. Drawing on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and analyzing such phenomena as Webcams and face-recognition technology, Chun argues that the relationship between control and freedom in networked contact is experienced and negotiated through sexuality and race. She traces the desire for cyberspace to cyberpunk fiction and maps the transformation of public/private into open/closed. Analyzing "pornocracy," she contends that it was through cyberporn and the government's attempts to regulate it that the Internet became a marketplace of ideas and commodities. Chun describes the way Internet promoters conflated technological empowerment with racial empowerment and, through close examinations of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, she analyzes the management of interactivity in narratives of cyberspace. The Internet's potential for democracy stems not from illusory promises of individual empowerment, Chun argues, but rather from the ways in which it exposes us to others (and to other machines) in ways we cannot control. Using fiber optic networks—light coursing through glass tubes—as metaphor and reality, Control and Freedom engages the rich philosophical tradition of light as a figure for knowledge, clarification, surveillance, and discipline, in order to argue that fiber-optic networks physically instantiate, and thus shatter, enlightenment.

Avant-garde Videogames

Avant-garde Videogames PDF Author: Brian Schrank
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262027143
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
An exploration of avant-garde games that builds upon the formal and political modes of contemporary and historical art movements. The avant-garde challenges or leads culture; it opens up or redefines art forms and our perception of the way the world works. In this book, Brian Schrank describes the ways that the avant-garde emerges through videogames. Just as impressionism or cubism created alternative ways of making and viewing paintings, Schrank argues, avant-garde videogames create alternate ways of making and playing games. A mainstream game channels players into a tightly closed circuit of play; an avant-garde game opens up that circuit, revealing (and reveling in) its own nature as a game. We can evaluate the avant-garde, Schrank argues, according to how it opens up the experience of games (formal art) or the experience of being in the world (political art). He shows that different artists use different strategies to achieve an avant-garde perspective. Some fixate on form, others on politics; some take radical positions, others more complicit ones. Schrank examines these strategies and the artists who deploy them, looking closely at four varieties of avant-garde games: radical formal, which breaks up the flow of the game so players can engage with its materiality, sensuality, and conventionality; radical political, which plays with art and politics as well as fictions and everyday life; complicit formal, which treats videogames as a resource (like any other art medium) for contemporary art; and complicit political, which uses populist methods to blend life, art, play, and reality—as in alternate reality games, which adapt Situationist strategies for a mass audience.

Rereading America

Rereading America PDF Author: Gary Colombo
Publisher: Bedford Books
ISBN: 9780312447052
Category : College readers
Languages : en
Pages : 861

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Book Description
Intended as a reader for writing and critical thinking courses, this volume presents a collection of writings promoting cultural diversity, encouraging readers to grapple with the real differences in perspectives that arise in our complex society.

Dead Lies Dreaming

Dead Lies Dreaming PDF Author: Charles Stross
Publisher: Tordotcom
ISBN: 1250267013
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
When magic and superpowers emerge in the masses, Wendy Deere is contracted by the government to bag and snag supervillains in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross' Dead Lies Dreaming: A Laundry Files Novel. As Wendy hunts down Imp—the cyberpunk head of a band calling themselves “The Lost Boys”— she is dragged into the schemes of louche billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Rupert has discovered that the sole surviving copy of the long-lost concordance to the one true Necronomicon is up for underground auction in London. He hires Imp’s sister, Eve, to procure it by any means necessary, and in the process, he encounters Wendy Deere. In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Video for Change

Video for Change PDF Author: Sam Gregory
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : House & Home
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Filmmaking-at its best-has the capacity to transform the way people think, and create real social change. This book shows how activists and human rights campaigners can harness the power of images and stories for their own purposes-it's a step-by-step guide to the handicam revolution. Written by leading video activists, and staff of the world-renowned human rights organization WITNESS, this practical handbook will appeal to experienced campaigners as well as aspiring video advocates. This is the only book to cover everything from technical guidance to strategic and ethical issues, making it indispensable for both amateur and professional filmmakers. Book jacket.

The I-search Paper

The I-search Paper PDF Author: Ken Macrorie
Publisher: Boynton/Cook
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
This revised and retitled edition of Searching Writing includes two additional I-Search papers, one by a teacher, and a new chapter entitled "The Larger Context," which shows how the I Search concept can work throughout the whole curriculum in school and college. As with the first edition, The I-Search Paper is more than just a textbook; it's a new form of instructional help -- a context book -- that shows students what authority is in matters of learning and invites them to join the author and teacher in the educational movement called "Writing to Learn." To put this book in the hands of all the students in the course is not only to help them carry out an I-Search but to introduce them in a delightful way to the resources and tools of intellectual inquiry -- but one that never forgets the emotional or physical side of human activity. This is a rare textbook that treats students as partners in learning. It shows what it is to take charge of one's own learning and suggests that this move is one that productive people keep making throughout their lives.

Understanding Sleep and Dreaming

Understanding Sleep and Dreaming PDF Author: William H. Moorcroft
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387286985
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
Designed primarily as a text this volume is an up-to-date and integrated overview of physiological sleep mechanisms, brain function, psychological ramifications of sleep, dimensions of dreaming, and clinical disorders associated with sleep. It is accessibly written with specially boxed material that enhances the text. Authored by a researcher/clinician/professor with more than 25 years of experience in sleep studies, Understanding Sleep and Dreaming provides a solid basis for those who are not expert in this area. It offers a good foundation for those who will continue sleep studies, while at the same time offering enough information for those who will apply this knowledge in other ways such as clinicians in their individual practices or researchers for whom sleep may be part of a specific study. It is an excellent text for courses on sleep at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Viral Spiral

Viral Spiral PDF Author: David Bollier
Publisher: David Bollier
ISBN:
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
From free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses, Wikipedia, remix music video mashups and open science, digital media has spawned a new sharing economy in competition with media giants. Media journalist Bollier provides a comprehensive history of the attempts of this new free culture' community to create a digital republic committed to freedom and innovation. Interweaving disparate and eclectic strands of activity with major technological developments, pivotal legal struggles and case studies, Bollier exposes the magical processes of this era.'

The Hacker's Dictionary

The Hacker's Dictionary PDF Author: Eric S. Raymond
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781548201579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate.

Tuttle Concise Japanese Dictionary

Tuttle Concise Japanese Dictionary PDF Author: Samuel E. Martin
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
ISBN: 1462910416
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 1080

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Book Description
Every serious student of Japanese needs a reliable and user-friendly dictionary in their collection. Tuttle Concise Japanese Dictionary, now with 30% more content, is a completely updated dictionary designed for students and business people who are living in Japan and using the Japanese language on a daily basis. Its greatest advantage is that it contains recent idiomatic expressions which have become popular in the past several years and which are not found in other competing dictionaries. The dictionary has been fully updated with the addition of recent vocabulary relating to computers, mobile phones, social media and the Internet. Other special features that set this dictionary apart include: Over 25,000 words and expressions including idioms and slang. User-friendly layout with main entries in color. Complete Japanese-English and English-Japanese sections. Romanized forms and the Japanese script are given for all Japanese words. A guide to pronunciation helps the user to pronounce Japanese words correctly. Different senses of each word are distinguished by multiple definitions.