An Aggregations of PJ's Blog Posts

The Cyborgology of “Blade Runner”

• May 21st, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

"We're not computers, [...] we're physical," explains the Blade Runner's chief antagonist, a replicant named Roy Batty. In this moment of dialogue, Blade Runner engages a frequent themes of the Cyborgology blog—the implosion of atoms and bits, which we term "augemented reality." In this statement, Roy unpacks the assumption that digitality and physicality are mutually exclusive, while, simultaneously, transcending the boundary between the two. Put simply, Roy is contending that computers cease to be mere computers when they become embodied. In contrast to the familiar theme of cyborganic trans-humanism, Roy is articulating (and embodying) the obverse theory: trans-digitalism.

This Copernican turn—de-centering humans' role in understanding of the universe—is, undoubtedly, one of the great contributions of the cyberpunk genre (and science fiction, more broadly). Quite provocatively, it points to the possibility of a sociology, or even anthropology, where humans are no longer the direct object of inquiry. The question, here, shifts, from how we are shaped by and interact with our tools, to how technology itself becomes an actors (or even agents!) in a particular social milieu.

Increasingly, we find ourselves comfortable discussing what our technology "wants." This de-centering of human agency was, perhaps, most famously captured by Stewart Brand when he said:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

In Brand's framing of this argument, information-sharing technologies influence events in a way that is separate from any expression of human will.

It would be rather shallow, however, to simply conclude that these agents are fully distinct and separable from their human creators. In becoming "physical," the trans-digitalist replicants (or"skinjobs" as they are pejoratively termed) are made subject to many of the same problems which have afflicted human creators from time immemorial (including mortality). Embodied digitality is just as cyborganic as the digitally overcoded body.

Trans-digital cyborgs are always already social—always already co-determining and being co-determined by humanity. Importantly, this means that trans-digital cyborgs are equally embedded in the political structures that define a particular historical moment. These shared political stakes and the inevitability of conflict are what Roy meant to convey when he told one of his designers: "if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes." It is precisely for this reason that the prospect of artificial intelligence is always a bit terrifying: there can be no such thing as an apolitical machine.

This is a re-post. The original can be found here on the Cyborgology Blog.

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Cyborgs and the Augmented Reality they Inhabit

• May 9th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality by Nathan Jurgenson

Virtual, Mediated, and Augmented Reality by PJ Rey

why i don’t like “augmented reality” by Sang-Hyoun Pahk

Defending and Clarifying the Term Augmented Reality by Nathan Jurgenson

I'd like to extend this discussion by clarifying the relationship between augmented reality and the namesake of the Cyborgology blog (i.e, the cyborg). The two concepts are intimately connected.

Augmented reality describes a macro-scale historical phenomenon—a set of techno-social conditions in which (small "m") modern subjects are embedded. Humans have always, in some sense, been augmented by technology. Consider, for example, the technology of language that I am currently employing to enhance our communication; it is much more efficient and effective than gesturing for the purpose at hand. We use the term "augmented reality" most often, however, to describe the consequences of the paradigm shift from physical information storage to digital information storage. Specifically, we use this concept to combat once-popular assumption that the content of communication through digital media was, somehow, completely separate and distinct from what we experience everyday as embodied subjects in the physical world. (We call this assumption "digital dualism.")

Proponents of augmented reality contend that fundamental distinctions of offline/physical space are reproduced in online/digital space and, simultaneously, that what happens on digital media influences, or is even superimposed onto, events in the physical world. While each sphere has separate properties (i.e., distinct forms) their natures' are co-determined (i.e., content is constantly passed back-and-forth between the two).

How does augmented reality relate to cyborgs?

Cyborgs are the indigenous subjects that inhabit augmented reality. They are physical bodies enmeshed in the techno-social formations that characterize a particular historical moment. In conventional sociological terms, cyborgs are the micro/agentic object of inquiry when augmented reality is the macro/structural unit of analysis.

Thus, if "cyborgology" is the study of cyborgs (i.e., humans as they exist under particular techno-social conditions), it is also always the study of augmented reality (i.e., the study of those particular techno-social conditions in which cyborgs operate).

This is a re-post. The original can be found here on the Cyborgology Blog.[ READ MORE ]

Why Journals are the Dinosaurs of Academia

• May 5th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

Answer: They wield enormous (and terrifying) power, yet they are ill-adapted to function in a changing environment.

In most corners of society, it's a become a trope to say that the Internet has changed everything; but online communication is still far from integrated into the norms and practices of the academy, whose pace of change and adaptation is nothing less than glacial. Anyone familiar with academic careers knows that conventional (read print) journal publications are the be-all end-all criterion in evaluating potential hires—the meaning behind the well-worn cliché: "publish or perish."

The practice of using journal articles as the sole criterion in evaluating an academic's productivity is an artifact of an epoch long-passed. I the age of the printing press, journals were, by far, the most efficient and enduring form of communication. They enabled disciplines to have thoughtful conversations spanning decades and continents. They also facilitated the transmission of the knowledge produced through these conversations to younger generations. In fact, it is nearly impossible to imagine the emergence of Modern science without existence of this medium. Thus, in the beginning, journals become symbolically and ritually important because they were functionally necessary. (While journals were medium du jour during Durkheim's productive years, he surely would have recognized the reason behind their status in the cult of the academic.)

Today, academia finds itself in a state of hysteresis (à la Bourdieu); that is say, our habits have become maladapted to the field or environment in which they are performed. Let us consider recent developments in the nature of academic discourse. Fifty years ago, the democratization of commercial flight made face-to-face communication between professionals in various disciplines a reality. Conferences becomes a more rapid and efficient method of communicating ideas—but, this form communication was not durable. Thus, the conference proceeding emerged as a supplementary medium to compensate for the shortcomings of face-to-face communication. In some younger or more progressive disciplines, proceedings have been elevated to a status akin to that journals. These proceedings are printed, circulated, and come to occupy the shelves of offices and libraries across country, if not the world. And, for many decades, this was the only way to transmit and store the content of conferences.

In the proceeding two decades, however, the practical justifications for the production of print journals or conference proceedings has evaporated in light of the Internet's emergence. These vestigial organs of the academy should have slowly withered away, becoming fossilized in archives. Yet, print media remain firmly entrenched, retaining all their symbolic significance, while lacking any of their earlier practical import. Our cult-like worship of print media is far from benign; the privileging of the print over the digital, in fact, has the opposite effect than was originally intended. Instead of facilitating the rapid dissemination of ideas, it hinders it. Print is a solid, heavy medium (as Bauman explains); it travels slowly and is expensive to reproduce. Digital information is liquid and light; it travels instantaneously and is free to reproduce.

It would be superficial, however, to simply criticize print article (and to promote digital articles). The article itself an artifact of print media and native to that form. There ought to be a debate within the academy that seriously considers whether the article optimally utilizes the potential of digital platforms. Are there more effective, indigenously digital mode of communication? Is the article a undead corpse, reanimated to inhabit the digital realm? Of course, this is a loaded question—no doubt exaggerated by the fact that the medium currently in use is an indigenously digital blog, not an article.

De facto, academics in every discipline are utilizing blogs, Twitter, video, and other "new media" to communicate their ideas (and, incidentally, to communicate them to much wider—read interdisciplinary and lay—audiences). De jure, however, we still valorize the article, particularly, the print article. Who/what suffers? Young academics, socially-active academics, the quality of conversation within the academy, and anyone layperson or community who stand benefit from the fruits of academic knowledge. Who benefits? Those entrenched in the old system, whose habits are better suited to yesteryear and who still have sufficient power to resist within the academy to resist any change in the standards of evaluation. What can we do? It's time for the a younger generation and those on the outside to fight our way on to hiring committees. It's time for us to establish a unified agenda that involves developing more expansive and inclusive criteria for evaluation. It's time (as Patricia Hill Collins once said) to leverage our power as "outsiders within"—to learn to function, even thrive, within the system as we systematically work to reform it.

This is a re-post. The original can be found here on the Cyborgology Blog.[ READ MORE ]