An Aggregations of PJ's Blog Posts

Surveillance: From the Cloud(s) to the Fog

• June 20th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

Last winter, Cyborgology contributor David Banks described the Pentagon's Gorgon Stare system—a nine-camera flying drone that can stay airborne for weeks at a time—as a "panopticon in the clouds." Like Jeremy Bentham's infamous prison design (later adopted as a metaphor for all of contemporary society by Michel Foucault), the deployment of surveillance drones serves, in part, to limit the actions of militants by creating a perception that the US government was perpetually watching. Banks argues that, ultimately, these sci-fi-esque surveillance regimes were made possible by recent refinements in automated data management that originally had mundane applications, such as helping spectators follow activity on the sports pitch or producing individualized film recommendations.

There is, thus, a double-sense in which the panopticon has entered the cloud(s). Surveillance devices are not only omnipresent—flying through the air—but these devices are also linked remotely to command and control centers—large, centralized databases that store and process the information produced in surveillance operations. Thus, unlike the historic spy operations conducted by manned U2 spy plans, drones never have to physically return home for data processing; instead, this information is transmitted in real-time.

Recent reports indicate a new development in government surveillance capacities: The Pentagon is working to create swarms of "microdrones," which are expected to be operational, by 2030, at sizes smaller than dragonflies. Government surveillance is dropping out of the clouds and into the fog—the "utility fog" that is. Fans of cyberpunk and other science fiction genres are already likely familiar with this term, which is used to describe the concept of nanobots that function in swarms to accomplish various tasks. Neil Stephenson imagined in The Diamond Age, for example, these bots would eventually inhabit the air we breath, interacting with our bodies and, even, warring for control of them. Importantly, nano-bots or "foglets" are (almost) invisible, so that, unlike the panopticon, we are left clueless as to where the gaze is coming from. We could be under observation anywhere at anytime.

In contrast with the now familiar image of drone “pilots” controlling several operations from a single, centralized command and control center, the volumes information produced by entire swarms of nanodrones will inevitably overwhelm the capacity of the human brain to interpret such data in real-time. It becomes no longer practical to direct the activity of a single surveillance unit. Instead, through ad hoc networking and the utilization of its collective computational power, a swarm will continuously update and redeploy its units to best meet its objectives. Humans are, thus, removed from micro-level operations altogether, relying on machines to best organize themselves during a mission. Human commanders simply transmit objectives to the swarms and wait for an outcome. Thus, nano-fogs are distinct from panoptic drones because their command and control systems are separated, with the control aspect becoming decentralized.
a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/06/19/world/drone-graphic.html?ref=world">
We should expect to see similar changes on civilian terrain as well. Many of us already use smartphones and other mobile devices to access personal documents that we store (via Dropbox, Google Docs, and other such services) on servers that may well be halfway around the world. We also use these device to communicate with one another through centralized servers (via Facebook, Twitter, and other social-networking platforms). These devices, however, seldom communicate directly with one another, but this may soon be changing. The iPhone 5, for example, is expected to integrate near field communication technology that will allow it to securely communicate with nearby devices, even enabling payments to be made by "bumping" one device to another. Each bump creates another connection in a new fog that is beginning to envelop our augmented society (in which the cloud is already old news). And, as this trend progresses, we may find that the old panopticon metaphor—power manifest as control from above—begins to appear somewhat anachronistic.

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

Obama Tweet Authorship Signals Web 2.0 Campaign in 2012

• June 18th, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

On June 17th, an Obama 2012 campaign staffer made a post explaining that Obama's Twitter and Facebook presence would be handled differently going forward. As fellow Cyborgology editor Nathan Jurgenson recently discussed, Obama's posts and updates have, up until now, been ghostwritten—leading Jurgenson to conclude that "Obama-as-president has thus far been a Web 1.0 leader" and, thus, to ask "when will we see a Web 2.0, social media president?" Obama's use of social media has been in sharp contrast to other nationally-recognized politicians, including former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, whose tweets appear to be individually-authored, spontaneous, and personal, making them appear more authentic and more consistent with the norms of other Twitter users (spelling errors and all). The president is now getting into the game by authoring his own tweets.

The campaign update, titled, "A New Approach to Facebook and Twitter," states:

Obama for America staff will now be managing both accounts, posting daily updates from the campaign trail, from Washington, and everywhere in between. You'll be hearing from President Obama regularly, too; on Twitter, tweets from the President will be signed "-BO."

The official @BarackObama Twitter account also posted a tweet that read:

This strategy of using a signature to distinguish the origin of tweets (i.e., those from staffers and those from the president himself) demonstrates a compromise between the need for consistent messaging and the burgeoning need for authenticity in communication. Yesterday's announcement acknowledges that effective use of social media (i.e., user-generated content), unsurprisingly, requires generation of content by the user. That is to say, a significant aspect of social media's appeal (compared to conventional top-down media) is that it offers (at least the perception of) more direct connection to the thoughts and activities of public figures and, even, the potential for some degree of interaction. Social media users delight in the raw tidbits that are generally edited out of more polished news sources. For politicians, social media has the potential to improve a candidate's populist cred by helping to diminish the sense of social distant—the perception that "we, the enlightened leaders, haven't the time for you, the little people."

I believe we are now seeing an answer to Jurgenson's question emerge: We will see a social media president when the current, first-term president is required to occupy the dual roles of president and candidate. It is becoming clear that the president will increasingly come to accept the inconvenience, the possible embarrassment, and the potential de-legitimizing effects of social media with respect to executive authority in order to harness social media as an effective campaign tool. A campaign fought in the silicon trenches will require a transformation (or "augmentation") of the presidency itself.

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

The Social Media Age Gap and the 2012 Elections

• June 3rd, 2011
• Posted in Cyborgology

Already, we are being inundated with stories about the how social media will shape the 2012 campaigns (and how Facebook may, or may not, transform the Presidency itself). Two facts, however, limit the potential role social media will, ultimately, play in the 2012 election:

1.) Young people are heavy users of social media, but are unlikely to vote.

2.) Older folks are likely to vote, but are much less involved in social media.

Thus, the reality is that social media is best at reaching those least likely votes. In its 2008 post-election analysis, Pew found that while 72% of Americans 18-29 year of age were using the Internet for political activities or information gathering (and 49% used social-networking sites for these purposes), only 22% of Americans 65+ years of age engaged in such activities on the Internet (and a mere 2% did so on social media).



At the same time, young adults are roughly 33% less likely to vote than their grandparents. (Note: I had to hunt down a different source of data, so the age groupings vary slightly compared to the previous table.)



While the influence of social media may be somewhat over-hyped, social media should not be ignored. This age-based line of analysis does, in fact, indicate that social media is likely to play a more significant role in 2012 than it did 2008, because, though a majority of Americans 56 years and older are still not on social media, the number of users in age group has tripled in just a few short years.



The inverse proportionate relationship between social media use and voting will likely attenuate the impact of organization and communication through Twitter, Facebook, and other such platforms in the coming election; nevertheless, social media is on course to continue playing a larger role in most aspects of our lives, including electoral politics.

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

UMD Graduate Students Go Beyond the Traditional in a Conference on Theorizing the Web

• June 1st, 2011
• Posted in Footnotes

Co-authored by Nathan Jurgenson. Reposted from Footnotes.
Theorizing the web is not a new project, but critical theories of the web and of new technologies have been too few and under-represented at academic conferences. So we (two sociology graduate students at the University of Maryland) with the assistance of a small committee decided to throw a conference of our own.
The graduate-student-organized "Theorizing the Web 2011" conference took place April 9 on the University of Maryland campus. The program consisted of 14 panels, two workshops, two symposia (one on social media’s role in the Arab revolutions, the other, a conversation with Martin Irvine, Director of the Irvine Contemporary Gallery, on social media and street art), two plenaries (by Saskia Sassen on "Digital Formations of the Powerful and the Powerless" and George Ritzer on "Why the Web Needs Post-Modern Theory"), and a keynote by Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research, on "Privacy, Publicity Intertwined." Presenters travelled from around the world (including Hong Kong and New Zealand). The day-long conference pushed the capacity limits of the venue with more than 200 people in attendance throughout the day. Events ran from registration at 8 am and ended with an after-party that wound down after 11 pm. The program was packed with as many as five concurrent panels.
According to attendees, this conference differed from traditional academic gatherings, which tend to be discipline-specific, promote the presentation of data instead of critical interpretation, and debate over what has already been observed; moreover, they tend to feature panels that are organized around themes that are too loose to foster more than superficial discussion between panelists. In contrast, we put this conference together with the idea that theoretical insights, even at their most difficult and complex, can be made publicly accessible and comprehensible. Moreover, we integrated art and multimedia; registration was pay-what-you-want; we kicked things off at a gallery and concluded with a band. The event was interdisciplinary, and even non-disciplinary given the presence of non-academic attendees interested in the topic. What we built the conference around is the question what should public gatherings to exchange ideas look like? Theorizing the Web was our first attempt as graduate students to shape the academic climate we will be moving into.
In addition to a unique model for an academic conference, what emerged were many interesting new theoretical perspectives on new technologies.
Most important was the discussion of the relationship between the physical and the digital. Internet research in the 20th Century was defined by an assumption of digital dualism—that is, the view that the physical and the digital were separate and distinct spheres of life (think of the movie The Matrix). The physical was something "real" and the digital was "virtual." Developments in the 21st Century, however, have forced us to reconsider this dualism and, instead, look at how the digital is increasingly embodied, located and thus "real," and how the physical world offline is increasingly influenced by the digital. The physical and the digital have imploded, atoms and bits have blurred into an "augmented reality"—what we believe is the new and proper unit of analysis. This concept of augmented reality and the cyborg subjects that inhabit it became a predominant theme of the conference (though, certainly, there continue be significant semantic debates). A relative consensus emerged that future research ought to be informed by the assumption that the online and offline world are connected one another.
Indeed, the conference itself became an example of our augmented reality because of the physical and digital layers of discussion during the day. Roughly 2,000 tweets using the #ttw2011 hashtag augmented the face-to-face meeting. The digital and physical conversations influenced each other, creating an augmented conference experience for attendees.
In the end, we tried to organize a conference that we would want to attend. And all those in attendance that day helped to create an atmosphere of exciting, fun, smart and important theorizing about new social realities. We would like to thank everyone who attended, presented and helped us organize this event (special thanks to our organizing committee, Tyler Crabb, Sarah Wanenchak, William Yagatich, Dave Strohecker, Ned Drummond, and Sean Gray). We look forward to continuing to engage in this ongoing task of innovating how critical theories about society can be disseminated publicly.
An archive of the conference can be found at www.cyborgology.org/theorizingtheweb/
Finally, the conversations about the "enmeshment" of society and technology that started at the conference continue on the Cyborgology blog: thesocietypages.com/cyborgology.
Nathan Jurgenson and PJ Rey are graduate students in sociology working with George Ritzer at the University of Maryland[ READ MORE ]