Lecture: Andrew L. Russell, The Open Internet: An Exploration in Network Archaeology

January 29, 2015
3:00 PM
Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library

The DCMI speaker series in Critical Media and Digital Studies features speakers invited to visit Penn State. Its goal is to present critical, rather than merely celebratory perspectives on the study of digital culture and media; to explore emerging perspectives on the politics of the technology industry, software engineering ethics, and the legislative regulation of data collection and analysis; and to integrate with the study of digital culture and media the study of social class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, and postcoloniality, as well as non-Western cultural perspectives.

On January 29, 2015, Andrew L. Russell joined us to deliver a lecture titled “The Open Internet: An Exploration in Network Archaeology.”

Event flyer

Follow-up interview (February–March 2015)

Description of presentation

Popular histories of the Internet feature a linear and teleological approach to their subject, one that marginalizes or ignores developments that do not fit neatly into a narrative of the Internet’s success. Historians of technology know better than to accept such tidy narratives, but so far they have failed to convince scholars, policymakers, and the public to see nuance and contingency (rather than the bold march of progress) in the Internet’s history. In this lecture I pursue an alternative strategy, adopting concepts from “media archaeology” and “network archaeology” to highlight two anecdotes in networking history — Bancroft Gherardi’s “engineering of the present” in the American Bell Telephone System in the 1920s, and Louis Pouzin’s “heterogenius computer network” in France in the 1970s. I argue that while Gherardi and Pouzin do not fit easily into heroic tales of how we got to now, their stories have more to offer those who have noticed some uncomfortable contradictions in 21st century discourses of innovation, network neutrality, and the Open Internet.

Speaker bio

Andrew L. Russell is an Associate Professor in History and Director of the Program in Science & Technology Studies in the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He is the author of Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and he has published over a dozen articles and book chapters on standardization in the Bell System, the history of modular systems, Internet history, and digital cellular networks in the United States and Europe. His teaching includes courses on American history, the history of science and technology, the history of business and innovation, and social aspects of information and communication technologies. He is a graduate of Vassar College (B.A. History, 1996), the University of Colorado at Boulder (M.A. History, 2003), and the Johns Hopkins University (Ph.D. History of Science and Technology, 2007), and worked in the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project in Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1997 to 1999. He is the Reviews Editor for IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, a member of the IEEE Computer Society History Committee, and Chair of SIGCIS, an international collective of historians of computing and information technologies.

Description, from publisher’s Web site

How did openness become a foundational value for the networks of the twenty-first century? Open Standards and the Digital Age answers this question through an interdisciplinary history of information networks that pays close attention to the politics of standardization. For much of the twentieth century, information networks such as the monopoly Bell System and the American military’s Arpanet were closed systems subject to centralized control. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, engineers in the United States and Europe experimented with design strategies to create new digital networks. In the process, they embraced discourses of “openness” to describe their ideological commitments to entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and participatory democracy. The rhetoric of openness has flourished – for example, in movements for open government, open source software, and open access publishing – but such rhetoric also obscures the ways the Internet and other “open” systems still depend heavily on hierarchical forms of control.

Other resources

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Web site for Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks

Author’s resource page for Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (includes reviews, events, and press/interviews)

Andrew Russell Web site

Andrew Russell on Twitter

Lecture: Brian Hochman, The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media: A Brief History, in Color

December 9, 2014
3:00 PM
Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library

The DCMI speaker series in Critical Media and Digital Studies features speakers invited to visit Penn State. Its goal is to present critical, rather than merely celebratory perspectives on the study of digital culture and media; to explore emerging perspectives on the politics of the technology industry, software engineering ethics, and the legislative regulation of data collection and analysis; and to integrate with the study of digital culture and media the study of social class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, and postcoloniality, as well as non-Western cultural perspectives.

On December 9, 2014, Brian Hochman joined us to deliver a lecture entitled “The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media: A Brief History, in Color.”

Event flyer

Follow-up interview (December 2014–January 2015)

Description of presentation

“The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media: A Brief History, in Color” examines the history of color photography and early color media, which emerged in the early twentieth century out of the effort to preserve the world’s disappearing cultures. It’s a talk that looks, more generally, at how new media become “new.”

Speaker bio

Brian Hochman is Assistant Professor of English at Georgetown University, where he also serves on the faculties of American Studies and Film and Media Studies. He is the author of Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), and he is currently working on a new book on the history of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping in the United States titled The Wiretapped Nation: An American History Overheard.

Description, from publisher’s Web site

How ethnographic encounters shaped audiovisual media in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America

Brian Hochman shows how widespread interest in recording vanishing races and disappearing cultures influenced audiovisual innovation, experimentation, and use in the U.S. Drawing extensively on seldom-seen archival sources, Savage Preservation offers a new model for thinking about race and media in the American context — and a fresh take on a period of accelerated technological change that closely resembles our own.

Savage Preservation is an eye-opening account of the mutually entangled origins of ethnography and the meanings of modern media: recorded sound, color photography, documentary film. Not only does Brian Hochman enrich his readers’ sense of culture as a concept available to historical change, he demonstrates convincingly that North American media studies remains haunted at its core by the racial ‘science’ of earlier generations.” —Lisa Gitelman

Other resources

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Web site for Savage Preservation: The Ethnographic Origins of Modern Media Technology

Brian Hochman, “Hearing Lost, Hearing Found: George Washington Cable and the Phono-Ethnographic Ear,” American Literature 82.3 (September 2010): 519–551

Brian Hochman, “Ellison’s Hemingways,” African-American Review 42.3–4 (Fall/Winter 2008): 513–532

Brian Hochman Web site

Brian Hochman on Twitter

Lecture: Astra Taylor, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age

December 2, 2014
3:00 PM
Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library

The DCMI speaker series in Critical Media and Digital Studies features speakers invited to visit Penn State. Its goal is to present critical, rather than merely celebratory perspectives on the study of digital culture and media; to explore emerging perspectives on the politics of the technology industry, software engineering ethics, and the legislative regulation of data collection and analysis; and to integrate with the study of digital culture and media the study of social class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, and postcoloniality, as well as non-Western cultural perspectives.

On December 2, 2014, Astra Taylor joined us to speak about her book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Metropolitan Books, 2014; Picador, 2015).

Event flyer

From the Preface of The People’s Platform:

I am not trying to deny the transformative nature of the Internet, but rather to recognize that we’ve lived with it long enough to ask tough questions. Thankfully, this is already beginning to happen. Over the course of writing this book, the public conversation about the Internet and the technology industry has shifted significantly. There have been revelations about the existence of a sprawling international surveillance infrastructure, uncompetitive business and exploitative labor practices, and shady political lobbying initiatives, all of which have made major technology firms the subjects of increasing scrutiny from academics, commentators, activists, and even government officials in the United States and abroad.

People are beginning to recognize that Silicon Valley platitudes about “changing the world” and maxims like “don’t be evil” are not enough to ensure that some of the biggest corporations on Earth will behave well.

Description, from publisher’s Web site

From a cutting-edge cultural commentator, a bold and brilliant challenge to cherished notions of the Internet as the great leveler of our age

The Internet has been hailed as an unprecedented democratizing force, a place where everyone can be heard and all can participate equally. But how true is this claim? In a seminal dismantling of techno-utopian visions, The People’s Platform argues that for all that we “tweet” and “like” and “share,” the Internet in fact reflects and amplifies real-world inequities at least as much as it ameliorates them. Online, just as off-line, attention and influence largely accrue to those who already have plenty of both.

What we have seen so far, Astra Taylor says, has been not a revolution but a rearrangement. Although Silicon Valley tycoons have eclipsed Hollywood moguls, a handful of giants like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook remain the gatekeepers. And the worst habits of the old media model—the pressure to seek easy celebrity, to be quick and sensational above all—have proliferated on the web, where “aggregating” the work of others is the surest way to attract eyeballs and ad revenue. When culture is “free,” creative work has diminishing value and advertising fuels the system. The new order looks suspiciously like the old one.

We can do better, Taylor insists. The online world does offer a unique opportunity, but a democratic culture that supports diverse voices and work of lasting value will not spring up from technology alone. If we want the Internet to truly be a people’s platform, we will have to make it so.

Author bio, from publisher’s Web site

Astra Taylor is a writer and documentary filmmaker. Her films include Zizek!, a feature documentary about the world’s most outrageous philosopher, which was broadcast on the Sundance Channel, and Examined Life, a series of excursions with contemporary thinkers. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Salon, Monthly Review, The Baffler, and other publications. She lives in New York City.

Other resources

Amazon.com

Publisher’s Web site for The People’s Platform

Read the Preface online

Geert Lovink and Astra Taylor, “Beyond digital discontent: A conversation with Astra Taylor,” Eurozine, May 30, 2014

Sarah Leonard, “Can the Internet Be a ‘People’s Platform’? A Q&A With Astra Taylor,” The Nation, June 4, 2014

Rose Dwyer, “Six Questions: Astra Taylor discusses the potential and peril of the Internet as a tool for cultural democracy,” Harper’s, August 7, 2014

Astra Taylor, “Hope and Ka-ching: Workers of the world, apply here,” The Baffler 25, 2014

Review by Evgeny Morozov, Bookforum, April/May 2014

Review by Zachary Loeb, boundary 2: The b2 review, May 27, 2014

Astra Taylor Web site

Astra Taylor on Twitter