43 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2015
    1. the “came out”

      Hmm. Interesting to borrow this phrase, usually associated with LGBT and queer identities, in the context of a presence/absence, real/pseudonymous. etc.

    2. less hospitable, and thus less ethical

      How does this relate to democracy? Is there a utopian vision underlying this ethos? #naivereader

    3. Hayles presents a convincing argument in response to Manovich that neither database nor narrative will “win” but that they are “natural symbionts.”

      Yes! Yes! The Great and Powerful Hayles!

      The Great and Powerful Oz!

    4. The question becomes the following: How do we navigate the increasingly complex relationship between database and narrative as the amount of data increases?

      Love this question--one of ongoing and increasing importance. Also, how tenable is this divide? Is it binary?

    5. In a March 7, 2007, blog post, Andrew Keen compared Wikipedia’s dealings with Essjay to the Czechoslovakian Communist Party’s ability to make people vanish: “The communists, of course, were particularly adept at forgetting.”

      This passage shows the ease of conflating "anonymity" with an absence of presence; what is interesting here, though, is how the lapse in anonymity (the becoming present of the ostensibly absent subject) is met (or is characterized as having been met) by the desire to make the subject absent again, in this case, by "disappearing" him.

    6. Further, as with most websites, Wikipedia is continually archived by the Internet Archive, a site that should remind us how difficult it is to “disappear” online.

      The connection between anonymity and the archive is interesting—what is the place of anonymity in the archives? Can an absent subject be archived? Is this business of the archive to make present?

    7. I describe this as “writing back” not in order to describe the volunteers as freely acting agents—we will see that this is far from the truth

      like Foucault's idea that power structures predetermine forms of resistance, thus being absorbed back into the power structure?

    8. Essjay

      Like many, I'm struck here by the usage of usernames in the creation of an ethos. I think it's important; but I also think it's worth noting that there is a generational divide at work here. Many people still use usernames to create a digital self; but we should remember that quite often today people log into other sites via FaceBook, Twitter, etc. Many people use their actual names for these sites, and thus for their usernames. This sort of ethos creates a sense of continuity, or 'branding' if you will, that is more prevalent in the newer generation of Internet users who grew up with social media as a given... https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576

    9. I use scare quotes because Jordan was not really anonymous. Rather, he created another identity that would help him navigate Wikipedia. Thus, these edits were not written anonymously—they were written by Essjay. Further, even those Wikipedians who do not register for a username can still be traced to an IP address (an IP address is included next to each edit on Wikipedia).

      Very smart move to deconstruct the concept of "anonymity" as a lack or absence of identity. I'm reminded of some of Derrida's thinking about the essential presence of subjectivity; in Spurs, he writes:

      "...there is, after all, no thinking of an historical subject that does not necessarily refer to “the concept of substance—and thus of presence—our of which it is born” (Derrida, Spurs 229).

    10. Competition was still part of this system, but it shifted. Rather than attempting to compete for point totals, volunteers were now encouraged to keep their activity index high.

      The game then becomes the habituation of labour.

    11. Annettee Vee’s detailed rhetorical analysis of how computer code has been defined at various times as text, speech, and machine is evidence that rhetoricians are no longer neglecting the realm of computation

      I'm just dropping this off as a bookmark so I can link to this section for someone else.

    12. Yes, I make decisions about who or what might enter my home

      Thinking about the home here, and Ronell's telephone above I'm reminded of Derrida's Of Hospitality where while tracing the frontier between public and private (and what we might consider on and offline), he shows that the recent “accelerated deployment of particular technologies” reveal what has always been the case (57): that “in order to constitute the space of a habitable house and a home… you have to give up a passage to the outside world” (61).

      Home isn't where the heart is, but where your phone is. In the face of an ever-present exposedness how do we delineate the home? Are we also always at home because of deliberate, continual exposure (smartphones, but also digital personas on social media)?The home-front is expanding.

    13. These blurry lines seemed slightly less blurry in the tone-dial-screech-crackle-connect scenario, but even the bad old days of dial-up Internet access put forth the fiction that there was an offline and an online, a moment when others were arriving and a moment when we were alone.

      I can't help but think of Al Swearengen from HBO's Deadwood grappling with the introduction of telegraph poles and the blurring of this fiction.

      "Al: Invisible messages from invisible sources, or what some people think of as progress.

      Dan: Ain’t the heathens used smoke signals all through recorded history?

      Al: How’s that a fucking recommendation?

      Dan: Well, it seems to me like, you know, letters posted one person to another is just a slower version of the same idea.

      Al: When’s the last time you got a fucking letter from a stranger?

      Dan: Bad news about Pa.

      Al: Bad news! Or tries against our interests is our sole communications from strangers, so by all means, let’s plant poles all across the country, festoon the cocksucker with wires to hurry the sorry word and blinker our judgments of motive, huh?

      Dan: You’ve given it more thought than me.

      Al: Ain’t the state of things cloudy enough? Don’t we face enough fucking imponderables?

      Dan: Well, by God, you give the word, Al, and them poles will be kindling."

    14. Ethical programs are enacted constantly, by both humans and computational machines, and software studies presents a set of terms and concepts for making sense of those programs.

      I'll be interested in tracking how this ongoing-ness of constantly enacted ethical programs figure into "decisions.'

  2. Sep 2015
    1. http://eliterature.org/pad/afb.html>.
    2. hile I agree wholeheartedly with Matt, the current system of peer review is part of what's broken, part of what's made a vibrant mode of scholarly communication undead

      Is peer review really broken?

    3. pambots are attracted like vermin to the apparently abandoned structure.

      Vivid visual simile of spambots as cockroaches.

    4. olars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org

      annotating on local PDF

    5. bsolescence

      Magic!

    6. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive.

      I actually feel like this sentence could be about hyopthes.is!

    7. Anxiety of Obsolescence:

      Just realized @kfitz is likely referencing Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence (1973) here.

      Image Description

    1. re only 5.8% of retail sales total in the US. Nuts that online retail has bumped up to 33% in 2 years. I wonder where this number's from. Well, I suppose that a first stop doesn't necessarily mean they bought something there, though.

      meta annotation of an annotation annotated on hypothesis

    1. The University of Texas

      Here's the "State of the University Address" given by Gregory Fenves at his inauguration as the new UT President. In this first section he thanks all of the stakeholders and establishes good will.

    1. Meanwhile, Amazon is now the first stop for almost a third of all American consumers seeking to buy anything. Talk about power.

      This article from 2013 states that online sales were only 5.8% of retail sales total in the US.

      Nuts that online retail has bumped up to 33% in 2 years. I wonder where this number's from. Well, I suppose that a first stop doesn't necessarily mean they bought something there, though.

    2. intellectual

      "Intellectual"

      Image Description

    3. CONSERVATIVES and liberals

      Image Description

    4. In 2012, the staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition submitted to the commissioners a 160-page analysis of Google’s dominance in the search and related advertising markets

      This seems to be the report they are talking about.

    5. Berkeley, Calif.

      Reich teaches at Berkeley.

      Image Description

    1. I'm really interested in the intersections of food delivery and rhetorical delivery. There are networks formed for food delivery that end up having significant rhetorical implications.

    1. Some balloons bore long paper banners with intricate designs ranging from abstract patterns to the likeness of musicians and celebrities, someone’s girlfriend or mother, or, on many occasions, Jesus Christ.

      BALOOOOOONS!!!!

    1. On an inauspicious Wednesday in 1660, Samuel Pepys left his lobsters in the back of a London taxi. According to his diary, he often purchased lobsters from fish markets in the city and brought them home for dinner. He also ate lobster at the homes of friends, served them at an elaborate dinn

      @dwrl @DWRL

    1. We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

      is that true though? Isn't access to cyberspace mediated through access to other resources?

    2. Governments of the Industrial World,

      Strange to read this post-Prism program. But I wonder--even after the overreach of NSA surveillance--if it's not the Corporate Giants of the Post-Industrial World that we should be most wary/weary of.

    3. 1996

      Those were the days.

    4. You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants

      I wonder if this is where the term "digital natives" comes from.

    5. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions

      This is really interesting. The idea of cyberspace as part of a natural ecology is something the kind of breaks down the nature/culture RL/virtual binaries at the very same time that he's making a distinction between the construction of physical spaces and cyberspace. Cyberspace, here, is part of nature but manmade construction projects are not.

    6. by John Perry Barlow

      Pretty legendary figure in American 20th/21st century culture, really: a cattle rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist, and cyber rights activist. This is my favorite line from his Wikipedia page:

      In the meantime, Barlow was still able to play an active role in the Grateful Dead, and also recruit many unconventional part-time ranch hands from the mainstream as well as counterculture.

      This is his cat:

      Image Description

    1. John Perry Barlow

      Pretty legendary figure in American 20th/21st century culture, really: a cattle rancher, Grateful Dead lyricist, and cyber rights activist. This is my favorite line from his Wikipedia page:

      In the meantime, Barlow was still able to play an active role in the Grateful Dead, and also recruit many unconventional part-time ranch hands from the mainstream as well as counterculture.

      This is his cat:

      Image Description