Culture

Letter In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub

Came across this letter online and wanted to save it here for future reference.

In solidarity with Library Genesis and Sci-Hub

In Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s tale the Little Prince meets a businessman who accumulates stars with the sole purpose of being able to buy more stars. The Little Prince is perplexed. He owns only a flower, which he waters every day. Three volcanoes, which he cleans every week. “It is of some use to my volcanoes, and it is of some use to my flower, that I own them,” he says, “but you are of no use to the stars that you own”.

There are many businessmen who own knowledge today. Consider Elsevier, the largest scholarly publisher, whose 37% profit margin1 stands in sharp contrast to the rising fees, expanding student loan debt and poverty-level wages for adjunct faculty. Elsevier owns some of the largest databases of academic material, which are licensed at prices so scandalously high that even Harvard, the richest university of the global north, has complained that it cannot afford them any longer. Robert Darnton, the past director of Harvard Library, says “We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free … and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.”2 For all the work supported by public money benefiting scholarly publishers, particularly the peer review that grounds their legitimacy, journal articles are priced such that they prohibit access to science to many academics – and all non-academics – across the world, and render it a token of privilege.3

Elsevier has recently filed a copyright infringement suit in New York against Science Hub and Library Genesis claiming millions of dollars in damages.4 This has come as a big blow, not just to the administrators of the websites but also to thousands of researchers around the world for whom these sites are the only viable source of academic materials. The social media, mailing lists and IRC channels have been filled with their distress messages, desperately seeking articles and publications.

Even as the New York District Court was delivering its injunction, news came of the entire editorial board of highly-esteemed journal Lingua handing in their collective resignation, citing as their reason the refusal by Elsevier to go open access and give up on the high fees it charges to authors and their academic institutions. As we write these lines, a petition is doing the rounds demanding that Taylor & Francis doesn’t shut down Ashgate5, a formerly independent humanities publisher that it acquired earlier in 2015. It is threatened to go the way of other small publishers that are being rolled over by the growing monopoly and concentration in the publishing market. These are just some of the signs that the system is broken. It devalues us, authors, editors and readers alike. It parasites on our labor, it thwarts our service to the public, it denies us access6.

We have the means and methods to make knowledge accessible to everyone, with no economic barrier to access and at a much lower cost to society. But closed access’s monopoly over academic publishing, its spectacular profits and its central role in the allocation of academic prestige trump the public interest. Commercial publishers effectively impede open access, criminalize us, prosecute our heroes and heroines, and destroy our libraries, again and again. Before Science Hub and Library Genesis there was Library.nu or Gigapedia; before Gigapedia there was textz.com; before textz.com there was little; and before there was little there was nothing. That’s what they want: to reduce most of us back to nothing. And they have the full support of the courts and law to do exactly that.7

In Elsevier’s case against Sci-Hub and Library Genesis, the judge said: “simply making copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website, disserves the public interest”8. Alexandra Elbakyan’s original plea put the stakes much higher: “If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge.”

We demonstrate daily, and on a massive scale, that the system is broken. We share our writing secretly behind the backs of our publishers, circumvent paywalls to access articles and publications, digitize and upload books to libraries. This is the other side of 37% profit margins: our knowledge commons grows in the fault lines of a broken system. We are all custodians of knowledge, custodians of the same infrastructures that we depend on for producing knowledge, custodians of our fertile but fragile commons. To be a custodian is, de facto, to download, to share, to read, to write, to review, to edit, to digitize, to archive, to maintain libraries, to make them accessible. It is to be of use to, not to make property of, our knowledge commons.

More than seven years ago Aaron Swartz, who spared no risk in standing up for what we here urge you to stand up for too, wrote: “We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?”9

We find ourselves at a decisive moment. This is the time to recognize that the very existence of our massive knowledge commons is an act of collective civil disobedience. It is the time to emerge from hiding and put our names behind this act of resistance. You may feel isolated, but there are many of us. The anger, desperation and fear of losing our library infrastructures, voiced across the internet, tell us that. This is the time for us custodians, being dogs, humans or cyborgs, with our names, nicknames and pseudonyms, to raise our voices.

30 November 2015

Dušan Barok, Josephine Berry, Bodó Balázs, Sean Dockray, Kenneth Goldsmith, Anthony Iles, Lawrence Liang, Sebastian Lütgert, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, Marcell Mars, spideralex, Tomislav Medak, Dubravka Sekulić, Femke Snelting…

  1. Larivière, Vincent, Stefanie Haustein, and Philippe Mongeon. “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 6 (June 10, 2015): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502.,
    “The Obscene Profits of Commercial Scholarly Publishers.” svpow.com. Accessed November 30, 2015.  ↩
  2. Sample, Ian. “Harvard University Says It Can’t Afford Journal Publishers’ Prices.” The Guardian, April 24, 2012, sec. Science. theguardian.com.  ↩
  3. “Academic Paywalls Mean Publish and Perish – Al Jazeera English.” Accessed November 30, 2015. aljazeera.com.  ↩
  4. “Sci-Hub Tears Down Academia’s ‘Illegal’ Copyright Paywalls.” TorrentFreak. Accessed November 30, 2015. torrentfreak.com.  ↩
  5. “Save Ashgate Publishing.” Change.org. Accessed November 30, 2015. change.org.  ↩
  6. “The Cost of Knowledge.” Accessed November 30, 2015. thecostofknowledge.com.  ↩
  7. In fact, with the TPP and TTIP being rushed through the legislative process, no domain registrar, ISP provider, host or human rights organization will be able to prevent copyright industries and courts from criminalizing and shutting down websites “expeditiously”.  ↩
  8. “Court Orders Shutdown of Libgen, Bookfi and Sci-Hub.” TorrentFreak. Accessed November 30, 2015. torrentfreak.com.  ↩
  9. “Guerilla Open Access Manifesto.” Internet Archive. Accessed November 30, 2015. archive.org.  ↩
Posted on by Mathias Klang

What LGBTQ Students Want Their Professors to Know

Teaching starts tomorrow. This is a timely reminder to ask the class participants how they identify instead of making assumption based on class rosters.
‘Ask Me’: What LGBTQ Students Want Their Professors to Know

Simple beginning for identity identification. Ask preferred name, preferred pronoun.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Jaywalking – who owns the city?

This thoughtful quote comes from the thoughtful essay The End of Walking by Antonia Malchik

Making jaywalking illegal gave the supremacy of mobility to those sitting behind combustion engines. Once upon a time, the public roads belonged to everyone. But since the ingenious invention of jaywalking we’ve battered pedestrianism in one of those silent culture wars where the only losers are ourselves.

After reading this you may enjoy reading The forgotten history of how automakers invented the crime of “jaywalking” by . And the great podcast 99% Invisible’s has an episode on jaywalking.

In the end it’s about what our public space is for. Who has the right of way. Of course we need to prevent people from getting killed but how much space should the road take from us?

Posted on by Mathias Klang

What’s the deal with hilarious reviews?

Most reviews are mildly helpful. The problem is that if something is reviewed and it has less than 3/5 it’s interpreted as being bad. Like not even worthy of attention. And as we all know reviewers are biased. Or incompetent. Or they just look at stuff that isn’t important. I don’t mean individual reviewers. I am a reviewer on some sites. I mean as a collective. A… Wait! what is the collective noun for reviewer?? probably something boring… Anyway an embarrassment of reviewers are usually generally bad. Taken together we all hate different aspects of the same thing, making it less helpful for the reader to decide what it all means.

But there is one type of review that is fantastic and that is the snarky, hilarious review. Take for example this review for Veet for Men Hair Removal Gel Creme by A. Chappell:

Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen. I didn’t have long to wait. At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head.

And the review just gets funnier and funnier.

Or what about this review for Haribo Gummi Candy Gold-Bears, 5-Pound Bag by Douglas Pope:

The animal noises broadcasting from my pelvis were an ominous warning of the violent acts that were to follow. I shouldered my way into the bathroom, clawing at my belt, moaning with pain. The smell came first. It started sweet, almost tangy. That was quickly overpowered by a cloying chemical perfume.

 And its not only on Amazon that people are creative. Tripadvisor has over 250 reviews for The Grand Budapest Hotel in The Republic of Zubrowka. Naturally neither the hotel, nor the republic exist as they are both fictional creations from a recent Wes Anderson movie called The Grand Budapest Hotel.
One of the reviews “Singularly Charming!” by Wendy J from North Carolina
Much of my enjoyment was due to the kind attention of M. Gustave, the heavily perfumed concierge. I was amazed that he seemed to be there ALL THE TIME, always ready and delighted to help me! Case in point: On the plane ride over from the States I somehow lost my front row isle seat to the opera ‘Toscana’. When I mentioned this to M. Gustave, he told me that he’d be able to get me another ticket with just one day’s notice. And he did. Incredible. That in and of itself was worth a million klubecks to me.
Coming across reviews like these makes me happy. But I also wonder – what kind of literature this is? Should this be seen as a type of fan fiction? Maybe this works for the hotel but for the gummi bears? So is it just humor writing? Journalism? It is definately creative writing! The what is it that drives people to spend time and energy writing wholly or partly fictional reviews? Or even reviews for things that do not exist?
Maybe this should be the basis of a small research project? Or maybe I should just enjoy reading what people write and not worry too much about the rationale.
Posted on by Mathias Klang

Court supports Salaita; will organizations apologize?

Professor Steven Salaita was due to begin working at the University of Illinois. Days before he was scheduled to teach, he had quit his old job and put his house on the market. All in good faith that he had a job. He was fired for ‘Uncivil’ Tweets. The university argued that his position was still conditional on final approval and therefore he wasn’t actually fired – he was just never hired.

This created a lot of discussion. Individuals came down on both sides. In support of the university people argued that the tweets were just unacceptable and that the university was formally right. On the side of the professor was academic freedom, free speech, and that the university knew that he had relied upon their promises when he packed up and moved across the country.

Now a federal court has found in favor of Salaita and has allowed his lawsuit against the University of Illinois to proceed, and the chancellor who rescinded his appointment last year has resigned amid an ethics investigation.

This is good news. I make my position clear and I am happy that academic freedom and free speech are being valued highly.

My argument is not against those individuals who would disagree with me. I don’t mind or care that we are in disagreement. That is the whole point of free speech after all.

But I have a problem with the organizations. Academic groups who spoke out in favor of the University of Illinois. Many of their members were in agreement with them but many of their members were very angry with their organizations supporting the university over the individual academic freedom.

Now that the federal court has found support for Salaita and the concept of academic freedom and the need to protect speech – what are these organizations going to do? Isn’t it time that they apologized? No, they don’t need to apologize to Salaita (even though I think that would be a generous move that demonstrates growth) but I do feel that they should apologize to their members.

Take for example the letter from the American Sociological Association

We write as elected leaders of the American Sociological Association to express our support for your decision not to hire Dr. Steven G. Salaita as a faculty member at the University of Illinois. Although some sociologists disagree with your decision, as a previous letter indicated, we wanted you to know that some sociologists, including leaders of the American Sociological Association, support your decision. We personally feel if a job candidate openly disparages an entire minority group it is a good reason not to hire him or her as a new faculty member. Dr. Salaita’s public expressions of hatred and his public endorsement of violence have no place in the University of Illinois.

The problem is that the university HAD hired him. They were dismissing him. The rhetorical and legal loophole is fake. Most hires are subject to approval and if we were to wait for such approval then the hiring system would grind to a halt. The “elected leaders of the American Sociological Association” spoke for their organization and their members. Now the court has shown them the error of their ways: will they now finally apologizing to their members?

Academic organizations are there to raise awareness about the subject they represent and also to ensure that the academics who make up their organization can carry out their research and teaching without being harassed. They failed. They came down on the side of censorship and they should, at the very least, apologize to the people they claim to represent.

 

 

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Privacy and Surveillance in the Movies

In preparation for my course on privacy I asked the hive mind (mainly Twitter & Facebook) for recommendations of films that deal with privacy. I mostly wanted fictional stuff but most of the documentaries are too good not to include (even though I am sure I have missed a lot of documentaries).

The list is by no means complete so please add or send me anything I missed.

You only live once (Lang 1937) Joan Graham (Sylvia Sidney) works as the secretary to the public defender. Unfortunately, she’s fallen madly in love with a criminal by the name of Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda). Convinced that Eddie is a good man with bad luck, she pulls some strings and gets Eddie released from prison early. The two get married, but while Eddie tries to fly right, he soon discovers he can’t change his nature. His past comes knocking at their door, and the couple is forced to go into hiding.

The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940) This classic romantic comedy focuses on Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn), a Philadelphia socialite who has split from her husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), due both to his drinking and to her overly demanding nature. As Tracy prepares to wed the wealthy George Kittredge (John Howard), she crosses paths with both Dexter and prying reporter Macaulay Connor (James Stewart). Unclear about her feelings for all three men, Tracy must decide whom she truly loves.

Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954) Sitting in a wheelchair, his leg in a cast, a photographer (James Stewart) spies on courtyard neighbors and sees a murder.

The Conversation (Coppola, 1974) Surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is hired by a mysterious client’s brusque aide (Harrison Ford) to tail a young couple, Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy Williams). Tracking the pair through San Francisco’s Union Square, Caul and his associate Stan (John Cazale) manage to record a cryptic conversation between them. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger.

All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976) Two green reporters and rivals working for the Washington Post, Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), research the botched 1972 burglary of the Democratic Party Headquarters at the Watergate apartment complex. With the help of a mysterious source, code-named Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook), the two reporters make a connection between the burglars and a White House staffer. Despite dire warnings about their safety, the duo follows the money all the way to the top.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (Radford, 1984) A man loses his identity while living under a repressive regime. In a story based on George Orwell’s classic novel, Winston Smith (John Hurt) is a government employee whose job involves the rewriting of history in a manner that casts his fictional country’s leaders in a charitable light. His trysts with Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) provide his only measure of enjoyment, but lawmakers frown on the relationship — and in this closely monitored society, there is no escape from Big Brother.

Brazil (Gilliam, 1985) Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle (Robert De Niro), he meets the woman from his daydream (Kim Greist), and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.

The Net (Winkler, 1995) Computer programmer Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) starts a new freelance gig and, strangely, all her colleagues start dying. Does it have something to do with the mysterious disc she was given? Her suspicions are raised when, during a trip to Mexico, she’s seduced by a handsome stranger (Jeremy Northam) intent on locating the same disc. Soon Angela is tangled up in a far-reaching conspiracy that leads to her identity being erased. Can she stop the same thing from happening to her life?

Gattaca (Niccol, 1997) Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke) has always fantasized about traveling into outer space, but is grounded by his status as a genetically inferior “in-valid.” He decides to fight his fate by purchasing the genes of Jerome Morrow (Jude Law), a laboratory-engineered “valid.” He assumes Jerome’s DNA identity and joins the Gattaca space program, where he falls in love with Irene (Uma Thurman). An investigation into the death of a Gattaca officer (Gore Vidal) complicates Vincent’s plans.

The End of Violence (Wenders, 1997) Producer Mike Max (Bill Pullman) has made a fortune through his gory action flicks, but his own capture at the hands of some thugs causes him to reexamine his role in violent productions. After escaping the crooks, he hides out with a group of gardeners, and eventually decides to drop out of Hollywood and stay with his new protectors. Meanwhile, government surveillance man Ray (Gabriel Byrne) uses a complex network of cameras to spy on Los Angeles, but he is disturbed by his superiors.

The Truman Show (Weir, 1998) He doesn’t know it, but everything in Truman Burbank’s (Jim Carrey) life is part of a massive TV set. Executive producer Christof (Ed Harris) orchestrates “The Truman Show,” a live broadcast of Truman’s every move captured by hidden cameras. Cristof tries to control Truman’s mind, even removing his true love, Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), from the show and replacing her with Meryl (Laura Linney). As Truman gradually discovers the truth, however, he must decide whether to act on it.

Enemy of the State (Scott, 1998) Corrupt National Security Agency official Thomas Reynolds (Jon Voight) has a congressman assassinated to assure the passage of expansive new surveillance legislation. When a videotape of the murder ends up in the hands of Robert Clayton Dean (Will Smith), a labor lawyer and dedicated family man, he is framed for murder. With the help of ex-intelligence agent Edward “Brill” Lyle (Gene Hackman), Dean attempts to throw Reynolds off his trail and prove his innocence.

Minority Report (Spielberg, 2002) Based on a story by famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, “Minority Report” is an action-detective thriller set in Washington D.C. in 2054, where police utilize a psychic technology to arrest and convict murderers before they commit their crime. Tom Cruise plays the head of this Precrime unit and is himself accused of the future murder of a man he hasn’t even met.

Dogville (von Trier, 2004) A barren soundstage is stylishly utilized to create a minimalist small-town setting in which a mysterious woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) hides from the criminals who pursue her. The town is two-faced and offers to harbor Grace as long as she can make it worth their effort, so Grace works hard under the employ of various townspeople to win their favor. Tensions flare, however, and Grace’s status as a helpless outsider provokes vicious contempt and abuse from the citizens of Dogville.

Code 46 (Winterbottom, 2004) In a dystopian future, insurance fraud investigator William Gold (Tim Robbins) arrives in Shanghai to investigate a forgery ring for “papelles,” futuristic passports that record people’s identities and genetics. Gold falls for Maria Gonzalez (Samantha Morton), the woman in charge of the forgeries. After a passionate affair, Gold returns home, having named a coworker as the culprit. But when one of Gonzalez’s customers is found dead, Gold is sent back to Shanghai to complete the investigation.

Caché (Hidden) (Haneke, 2005) A Parisian couple terrorised by anonymous videos which hint at a long-kept secret.

The Lives of Others (Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006) In 1983 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), doubting that a famous playwright (Sebastian Koch) is loyal to the Communist Party, receives approval to spy on the man and his actress-lover Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck). Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, then faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria and orders Wiesler to get the playwright out of the way.

Disturbia (Caruso, 2007) Ever since his father died, young Kale (Shia LaBeouf) has become increasingly sullen and withdrawn, until he finds himself under house arrest. With cabin fever setting in, he turns his attention to spying on his neighbors, becoming increasingly suspicious that one of them is a serial killer. However, he wonders if he is right, or if his overactive imagination is getting the better of him.

Look (Rifkin, 2007) Interconnected stories are told entirely through images captured on security cameras in storage rooms, police cars, parking lots, shopping malls and other locations. Store manager Tony (Hayes MacArthur) has affairs with the women who work under him, high schooler Sherri (Spencer Redford) schemes to seduce teacher Berry (Jamie McShane), a pedophile stalks his next victim at a mall food court and two thieves go on a killing spree that links to other tales witnessed by the unseen electronic eyes.

We Live in Public (Timoner, 2009) In 1999, Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris recruits dozens of young men and women who agree to live in underground apartments for weeks at a time while their every movement is broadcast online. Soon, Harris and his girlfriend embark on their own subterranean adventure, with cameras streaming live footage of their meals, arguments, bedroom activities and bathroom habits. This documentary explores the role of technology in our lives, as it charts the fragile nature of dot-com economy.

The Social Network (Fincher, 2010) In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer genius Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, he is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but Zuckerberg finds that his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend (Andrew Garfield).

Erasing David (Bond & McDougall, 2010) Dramatized documentary (docufiction) film from the United Kingdom. Stating that as of today the UK is “one of the three most intrusive surveillance states in the world, after China and Russia”, director and performer David Bond tries to put the system to the test. After anonymously setting up private investigators Cerberus Investigations Limited to trace him, he tries to disappear.

Terms and Conditions May Apply (Hoback, 2013) Filmmaker Cullen Hoback exposes the erosion of online privacy and what information governments and corporations are legally taking from citizens each day.

Citizenfour (Poitras, 2014) After Laura Poitras received encrypted emails from someone with information on the government’s massive covert-surveillance programs, she and reporter Glenn Greenwald flew to Hong Kong to meet the sender, who turned out to be Edward Snowden.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Being Passive Aggressive on Facebook

How do you know when you’ve made a faux pas on a social network? If you let slip a politically incorrect comment in real life you should be able to tell that you have crossed a line by the pained expressions and the nervous squirms – but how do people squirm on social media?

This social squirming is important. It is a way in which we are schooled and taught the social boundaries of our world. Naturally some overly boorish person may actually say “we don’t accept that behavior here” but this is really unnecessary. We are usually good at picking up cues, the squirms are enough.

So how do people squirm on Facebook? Well they do so in the most passive aggressive way. Rarely do you find the boorish reproachful comment. Most often what we are met with is silence. Sure, offscreen it silence is a passive aggressive strategy but online it is the most commonly used.

Try it! Say something incorrect on FB and you will be frozen out of the social circle. Keep it up and people may begin to block you. Of course this means that the time nobody liked your post… it could have been that you crossed a social line.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Sharing, oversharing and selfies: Notes from a lecture

What are we doing online? How did we become the sharing group that we are today? And what are the implications of this change? These were the questions that we addressed today in class.

Social Media Timline 2014To begin with we began the discussion of what online safety looked like in the early 2000. The basic idea was that you should never put your real name, address, image, age or gender online. Bad things happened if you shared this openly online and the media joyously reported on the horrors of online life.

By the time Facebook came along everything changed. Real names and huge amounts of real information became the norm. Then we got cameras on phones (not an inevitable progression) so when we added smartphones to the mix, sharing exploded.

Sherry Turkle was one of the most prominent researchers involved in the early days of Internet life. In 1995 her book Life on the Screen was optimistic about the potential impact of technology and the way we could live our lives online. Following the development of social media, Turkle published a less positive perspective on technology in 2011 called “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other”. In this work she is more concerned about the negative impact of internet connected mobile digital devices on our lives.

In a discussion of her work I took some key quotes from her Ted Talk on her Alone Together book.

The illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship…

Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved…

I share therefore I am… Before it was; I have a feeling, I want to make a call. Now it’s; I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text…

If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely

The discussions in class around these quotes were ambivalent. Yes, there was a level of recognition in the ways in which technology was being portrayed but there was also a skepticism about the very negative image of technology.

Then there was the fact, that she mentions in her talk, that she was no longer just a young researcher, she was now the mother of teenagers. She looked at their use of technology and despaired. What did this mean? Was there a growing technophobia coming with age? Was her fear and generalization a nostalgic memory of the past that never was?

The Douglas Adams quote from Salmon of Doubt felt appropriate:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

So is that what’s happening here? Is it just that technology has moved and to a point where the researcher feels they are “against the natural order of things”? A fruitful discussion was had.

From this point we moved the discussion over to the process of sharing. The ways in which – no matter what you think – technology has changed our behavior. One example of this is the way in which we feel the need to document things that happen around us on a level which we were unable to do before.

The key question is whether we are changing, and if so, whether technology is driving this change. Of course all our behavior is not a direct result of our technology. For example the claims that we are stuck in our devices and anti-social can be countered with images such as these

kubrick-subway-newspapersCommuters on trains were rarely sociable and talkative with each other and therefore they needed a distraction. Newspapers were a practical medium at the time and now they are being replaced by other mediums.

However, the key feature about social media may not be what we consume but it’s the fact that we are participating and creating the content (hence the term User generated content).

What we share and how we share has become a huge area of study and parody. The video below is a great example of this. Part of what is interesting is the fact that most who watch it feel a sting of recognition. We are all guilty of sharing in this way.

This sharing has raised concerns about our new lifestyles and where we are headed. One example of this techno-concern (or techno-pessimism) can be seen in the spoken poem Look Up by Gary Turk

Of course this is one point of view and it wouldn’t be social media if this wasn’t met up with another point of view. There are several responses to Look Up, my favorite is “Look Down (Look Up Parody)” by JianHao Tan.

From this point I moved to a discussion on a more specific form of sharing: The Selfie. The first thing to remember is that the selfie is not a new phenomenon. We have been creating selfies since we first learned to paint. Check out the awesome self portrait by Gustave Courbet.

Gustave_Courbet_-_Le_DésespéréBut of course, without our camera phones we would not be able to follow the impulse to photograph ourselves. Without our internet connections we would not have the ability to impulsively share. These things are aided by technology.

The Telegraph has an excellent short video introduction to the selfie and includes some of the most famous/infamous examples

In preparation of this class I had asked the students to email me a selfie (this was voluntary) and at this stage I showed them their own pictures (and my own selfie of course). The purpose of this was to situate the discussion of the selfie in their own images and not in an abstract ideology.

We discussed the idea of a selfie aesthetic the way in which the way in which we take pictures is learned and then we learn what is and is not acceptable to share. All this is a process of socialization into the communication of selfies.

Questions we discussed were:
– Why did you take that image?
– Why did you take it that way?
– Why did you share it?
– What was being communicated?

Then we moved to the limits of selfie sharing. What was permissible and not permissible. Naturally, this is all created and controlled in different social circles. We discussed the belfie as one possible outer limit for permissable communication.

But the belfie could be seen as tame compared to the funeral selfie a subgenre which has its own tumblr.

However, the selfie that sparked the most discussion was the Auschwitz Selfie which created a twitter storm when it was fist posted and continues to raise questions of what can and should be communicated and the manner in which it should be communicated.

The whole “selfie as communication” creates new ways of communication and innovation. One such example is the picture of a group of Brazilian politicians purported to be creating a selfie. brazilian politicians selfieThis is cool because the politicians want to be current and modern and therefore try to do what everyone is doing. They are following the selfie aesthetic which in itself has become a form of accepted communication online.

Here are the slides I used (I have taken out the student selfies)

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Humor as Disobedience

The class today was on the use of humor in political protest. Last week we discussed the fundamentals of civil disobedience and this week the students presented different examples of the uses of humor.

So the basics of disobedience are usually described as having different components to differentiate them from “just” lawlessness. For example H. A. Bedau argued in Civil Disobedience in Focus that in order for disobedience to be legitimate it should be

“committed openly…non-violently…and conscientiously…within the framework of the rule of law…with the intention of frustrating or protesting some law, policy or decision…of the government.”

As the examples of humor show, they fail many of these components and do not pass as civil disobedience. In most cases they are either not breaking any rule, regulation, policy, or social norm and in other cases they are not protesting the ruling authority or government.

However, the examples demonstrate the complexity of society by realizing that it is not only the government that regulates and that disobedience need not only be the breaking of rules.

The presentations today included The Pink Chaddi Campaign where Indian women sent pink underwear to the leader of an orthodox Hindu group to protest it’s misogynistic worldview. The De Grote Donor Show ashocking critique of popular culture intended to raise awareness about organ donation. The John Howard Ladies Auxiliary Club, a group of performance actors who adopted characters parodying 1950s Australian housewives and claimed to be the Prime Minister’s fan club. They would use his own conservatism against him in their parodies.

In The Snatchel Project the goal is: “Let’s make a uterus or VJJ* for each male rep in congress! If they have their own, they can leave ours alone!”. Participants knit or crochet female reproductive organs and send them to legislators. The Barbie Liberation Organization hacked talking Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and switched their recorded messages. This would make Barbie say “vengeance is mine” while G.I. Joe would exclaim that “The beach is the place for summer.” The goal was to show that gender stereotypes are just that – stereotypes.

The sheer variation of these activist campaigns ensured that we had interesting and lively discussions ranging from fears connected with organ donation to misogyny in Australia. A lively class indeed.

An interesting aspect of looking at these studies was to refer them back to the theories. Where they political actions since they were aimed at non-political players? Where they disobedience when they were not breaking any rules? What we could see was that the activists (even if they may not all have defined themselves as such) set about non-conforming to social norms and protesting the message of a dominant player.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Disobedience Technology: Notes on a lecture

This lecture had the goal of introducing theories and methodologies behind civil disobedience in order to give the class the tools to identify legitimate acts of civil disobedience compared to lawlessness.

We began with the example of Socrates whose principled stand was that the law must be obeyed. In Plato’s text Crito we find Socrates in jail awaiting execution. His friends argue that he should escape.

But Socrates argues that the Laws exist as one entity, to break one would be to break them all. He cannot chose to obey the rules that suit him and disregard those which he doesn’t approve of.

The citizen is bound to the Laws like a child is bound to a parent, and so to go against the Laws would be like striking a parent. Rather than simply break the Laws and escape, Socrates should try to persuade the Laws to let him go. These Laws present the citizen’s duty to them in the form of a kind of social contract. By choosing to live in Athens, a citizen is implicitly endorsing the Laws, and is willing to abide by them. (Wikipedia)

This principled stand cost Socrates his life. However, most proponents of civil disobedience argue that there must be a way of following some rules while disobeying others. This disobedience must find legitimacy in other sources.

Greek mythology dealt with this issue in the story of Antigone where at one stage after a battle King Creon decreed that the dead were not to be buried. Antigone defied the law and buried her brother. She knew of the law and defied it knowingly arguing that she was bound by a superior divine law.

Continuing on this theme we looked at some of the classics of disobedience. Thoreau’s arguments that we are sometimes obliged to defy the government, Gandhi’s belief that we have a duty to disobey the unjust leader (and the example of the salt march), and Martin Luther King’s words that an unjust law is against God’s law.

“For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’…We must come to see…that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’…One may well ask, ‘How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?’ The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust…One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” (King Letter from Birmingham Jail)

These positions all argue that there is a higher moral authority that would make it legitimate to disobey rules. Indeed, King underscores that disobedience in such cases is a moral responsibility.

The argument against disobedience remains in the area of the social contract and the question about who could legitimately argue for the rules to be held or broken? In his Theory of Justice, John Rawles agreed that that there are situations where laws should not be followed and attempts to prevent “simple” lawlessness by stressing that disobedience is:

…a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to the law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government.

H. A. Bedau argued in Civil Disobedience in Focus that in order for disobedience to be legitimate it should be

“committed openly…non-violently…and conscientiously…within the framework of the rule of law…with the intention of frustrating or protesting some law, policy or decision…of the government.”

While Peter Singer stressed

…if the aim of disobedience is to present a case to the public, then only such disobedience as is necessary to present this case is justified…if disobedience for publicity purposes is to be compatible with fair compromise, it must be non-violent.

These positions can be summed up with the idea that certain acts of disobedience are necessary in order to bring a minority position to the attention of the majority. However, in order to maintain its legitimacy, acts of disobedience must be carried out openly, non-violently, purposely, aimed at a specific rule or policy, by people prepared to accept the consequences.

Despite this, there are still critiques aimed at groups that attempt to disrupt via acts of civil disobedience. Often the arguments against disobedience are:

  • CD is not defensible in a democracy as the social contract is established and maintained by the people for the people.
  • CD is illegitimate as it subverts the equality embedded in the democratic process itself.
  • CD can only be acceptable if ALL other (democratic) methods have been exhausted

These critiques are easily enough met if we look at the American civil rights movement. The activists chose not to entrust the democratic process since the process is an endless one and does not necessarily promote change, but can be used to re-enforce established ideas. As King writes: ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ The outlook for social change, brought about from within the system was bleak. By challenging the rules it became more and more clear to the majority that the rules were harmful and needed to be changed.

We then spoke of moving disobedience online. Discussing the ways in which technology can be used to support activism. At the same time our technology use has also created a system in which our activism has been trivialised and subverted. Social media is efficiently used to promote and spread information about injustice. However, social media is also used to trivialize political acts. We click on LIKE icons, re-Tweet links, and share videos but what does it all mean?

Is this Postman‘s dystopia (Amusing ourselves to Death) in action?

The slides

Posted on by Mathias Klang