Tomas’ favorites
Networked Crisis & The Reality Jockey
Project: Polytopia
Project: Polytopia
by Leon Tan and Tomas Skovgaard
Mixed Reality Publics
Networked publics are mixed reality assemblages, open social wholes hacked
together from Internetworked virtual spaces and actual locales. Mixed reality is a
companion concept to that of the networked publics, and for our purposes, refers to the
re/mixing of virtual and actual lifeworlds resulting from the embedding of Internet and
mobile technologies and networks into the fabric of actual territories and their ritual
social activities. As a concept, mixed reality was coined by Paul Milgram and Fumio
Kishino (1994), who proposed a ‘virtuality continuum’ defined by ‘real’ environments on
one end and ‘virtual’ environments on the other. Their virtuality continuum, displayed in
the first diagram, has become quite influential in theorizing virtual experiences, with
over 800 citations to date. The opposition that they make between virtual and real is
however, incorrect. Instead, as the philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1988) argues, the virtual
is not opposed to the real, but to the actual. The second diagram replaces Milgram &
Kishino’s ontologically naive proposal with a mixed reality continuum in which reality
spans both virtuals and actuals. A minor correction to be sure, but one which allows us
to escape the strange position of misunderstanding virtuality as deprived of/lacking
reality in some way.
Virtual Communication Topologies
Communications topologies are key virtual components of the networked publics.
A communications topology consists of “structures of links and nodes - rather than
locations” (Adams, 2009: 69). It is a dynamic virtual space that connects human and
inorganic machines through communication, regardless of geophysical location. We can
think of such topologies as ‘informational milieus’ as Terranova (2004) proposes,
immaterial neighborhoods composed by the circulation of linguistic and non-linguistic
ideas. Linguistic ideas take the form of propositions as well as propositional attitudes,
namely beliefs and desires. Non-linguistic ideas may be visual or aural, an idea of a face
and an idea of its voice for example. Both kinds of ideas may be considered ‘currencies’
in the informational milieus composed by Internetworking. They extend into “systems
of action intended to change the world” (Gell, 1998: 6) largely by stimulating the
production of what the philosopher David Hume (1977) called ‘impressions,’ secondary
passions including pleasures and pains as well as "love and hatred, grief and joy, pride
and humility" (Vol. II, p. 4). Passions are the variables that most influence the pursuit of
desired ends, and are for this reason, the moving force behind social processes. The
online circulation of ideas enables individuals to form affective links not only with each
other but also with local spaces, architectures, events and circumstances. For our
purposes, “topological spaces are lived spaces, that is, they are built and maintained,
liked or disliked, invested with desire, fear, or other emotions, and they form contexts
for the formation of subjectivity and social interaction.” (Adams, 2009: 70)
Networked Crisis: Globalizing Political-Economic Contention
According to the economic historian Fernand Braudel (1977), capitalist
organizations and a roll call of hegemonic nations ‘globalized’ themselves at an early age,
their command over long distance trade and capital enabling such institutions to deal
with the problem of resource dependencies through elimination and vertical integration,
and to gain an upper hand in claims-making in relation to small-scale and relatively
powerless economic actors. As Braudel writes:
Internetworked communications topologies of the last decade however, bring with
them significant changes in the capacity of small-scale actors to express claims, giving
rise to globalized waves of political-economic contention. Consider for instance, the
recent eruption of claims-making in the form of The Pirate Bay (TPB) and so-called
‘media piracy,’ disrupting/eroding the prevailing claims (distribution models and revenue
streams) of media oligopolies, and stimulating transformations in world markets. Despite
the ruling of the Swedish courts against TPB organizers in 2009, TPB is still operating
thanks to the global distribution of its component servers and users.
Internetworked topologies also make possible the ad hoc formation of
transnational political constituencies, enabling intensifications of claims-making anywhere
in the online world economy. TPB related claims making for example, increased
dramatically in the hours following the court ruling against TPB, leading to a surge in
numbers for a loosely related Piratpartiet (Pirate Party), just in time to gain the fledgling
party a seat in the European Parliament in 2009. The political success of Piratpartiet has
since inspired a global pirate movement with official parties registered in states as
diverse as Australia, Canada, Argentina, UK, France, Spain, Austria, Finland, Denmark
and Belgium. As another example, the 2008 Beijing Olympics provided the perfect
opportunity for pro-Tibetan activists to mobilize groups in different locations into a
coordinated global wave of political claims-making demanding changes in Sino-Tibetan
relations. Finally, terrorist organizations demonstrate how loosely knit collectives may
rapidly reconstitute themselves as ‘terror cells’ in any city in the world with little or no
forewarning and catastrophic consequences. Transnational assemblages such as these
are endemic to the networked city. They may be considered ‘autonomous zones’ (Bey,
1985) or ‘strategic sovereigns’ (Andersson, 2009), whose claims expressed online and
offline have become exceedingly difficult to anticipate, control and censor. The
networked publics are for this reason characterized by major institutions are in perpetual crisis, as
claims-making and contention exceed and short circuit geopolitically bound legislative
frameworks and established lines and arrangements of power.
At the same time, the existence of power nodes or hubs in virtual topologies
must not be neglected. Such nodes are immediately visible in network visualizations –
they are the ones with an enormous number of connections. Search engines such as
Google and major news websites such as The New York Times or the BBC are good
examples of power nodes. By virtue of their centrality in many networks, such nodes
may often function as opinion homogenizing machines. As DeLanda (2005) explains:
“The overall effect of mass newspapers and news agencies was homogenizing.
Newspapers aimed their presentation to the lowest common denominator, while news
agencies attempted to create a product that would be acceptable to all their
subscribers…” (p. 244). Combined with the global reach of the Internet, such
homogenizing machines may exert formidable subjectivating pressures on vulnerable
individuals. Nevertheless, the affordances of Internetworked topologies appear
considerably greater for collectives of small-scale actors than for institutions on the side
of prevailing power. According to Peter Evans’ (2008) analysis, such collectives may
contribute to a kind of ‘counter-hegemonic globalization’ that redresses problems of
‘neo-liberal globalization,’ in particular, “failures to deliver social protection and collective
goods” (p. 277).
The networked publics are no utopia. It is an intensification of real
informational/communicational flows traversing the online world economy, inspiring a
turbulent remixing of virtual topologies with actual sites and circumstances. To survive
the perpetual crises and cycles of contention in the networked city, one becomes a
reality jockey (RJ). Learning from DJs and VJs, the RJ remixes virtuals and actuals in a
pragmatic mode concerned only with whether or not things ‘work.’ Like DJs and VJs,
the RJ is sensitive to its audiences or ‘publics’ and understands the importance of visual
and aural ideas in affecting individual experiences and social interactions. The RJ is also
acutely aware of the linguistic ideas over/coding the territories s/he belongs to,
especially those ideas given by prevailing legislative frameworks, and attuned to
opportunities for evasion and strategic manipulation. Immersed in globalized flows, the
RJ has highly developed filters, and is able to rapidly sift through marketing and
ideological ‘noise’ to yield information of relevance to the circumstances. Likely
belonging to multiple transnational communities, the RJ is not attached to local
nationalisms but instead has multiple neighborhoods to hand wherever ‘home’ happens
to be. It is not as though actual places diminish in importance however, but rather that
communications topologies gain a measure of autonomy from geopolitical moorings.
The resulting upheaval is the RJ’s native milieu and hunting ground; networked crisis is a maelstorm of worlds and pepole to come.
Authors
Leon Tan (PhD, Auckland) is an independent art and media historian based in Sweden.
His research focuses on Internet media, mixed/augmented reality and cultural studies.
Tomas Skovgaard (arch.maa, Copenhagen) is an independent architect interested in
digitalisation, communication and Internet media, theory vs practice.
References
Andersson, J. (2009). For the good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a strategic sovereign.
Culture Machine, 10.
Bey, H. (1985). T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic
Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.
Braudel, F. (1977). Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
DeLanda, M. (2005). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G. (1988). Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books.
Evans, P. (2008). Is an alternative globalization possible? Politics and Society, 36(2), 271-
305.
Gell, A. (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hume, D. (1977). A Treatise of Human Nature. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Milgram, P., & Kishino, A. F. (1994). Taxonomy of mixed-reality visual displays. IEICE
Transactions on Information and Systems, E77-D(12), 1321-1329.
Terranova, T. (2004). Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto
Press.
Mixed Reality Publics
Networked publics are mixed reality assemblages, open social wholes hacked
together from Internetworked virtual spaces and actual locales. Mixed reality is a
companion concept to that of the networked publics, and for our purposes, refers to the
re/mixing of virtual and actual lifeworlds resulting from the embedding of Internet and
mobile technologies and networks into the fabric of actual territories and their ritual
social activities. As a concept, mixed reality was coined by Paul Milgram and Fumio
Kishino (1994), who proposed a ‘virtuality continuum’ defined by ‘real’ environments on
one end and ‘virtual’ environments on the other. Their virtuality continuum, displayed in
the first diagram, has become quite influential in theorizing virtual experiences, with
over 800 citations to date. The opposition that they make between virtual and real is
however, incorrect. Instead, as the philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1988) argues, the virtual
is not opposed to the real, but to the actual. The second diagram replaces Milgram &
Kishino’s ontologically naive proposal with a mixed reality continuum in which reality
spans both virtuals and actuals. A minor correction to be sure, but one which allows us
to escape the strange position of misunderstanding virtuality as deprived of/lacking
reality in some way.
Virtual Communication Topologies
Communications topologies are key virtual components of the networked publics.
A communications topology consists of “structures of links and nodes - rather than
locations” (Adams, 2009: 69). It is a dynamic virtual space that connects human and
inorganic machines through communication, regardless of geophysical location. We can
think of such topologies as ‘informational milieus’ as Terranova (2004) proposes,
immaterial neighborhoods composed by the circulation of linguistic and non-linguistic
ideas. Linguistic ideas take the form of propositions as well as propositional attitudes,
namely beliefs and desires. Non-linguistic ideas may be visual or aural, an idea of a face
and an idea of its voice for example. Both kinds of ideas may be considered ‘currencies’
in the informational milieus composed by Internetworking. They extend into “systems
of action intended to change the world” (Gell, 1998: 6) largely by stimulating the
production of what the philosopher David Hume (1977) called ‘impressions,’ secondary
passions including pleasures and pains as well as "love and hatred, grief and joy, pride
and humility" (Vol. II, p. 4). Passions are the variables that most influence the pursuit of
desired ends, and are for this reason, the moving force behind social processes. The
online circulation of ideas enables individuals to form affective links not only with each
other but also with local spaces, architectures, events and circumstances. For our
purposes, “topological spaces are lived spaces, that is, they are built and maintained,
liked or disliked, invested with desire, fear, or other emotions, and they form contexts
for the formation of subjectivity and social interaction.” (Adams, 2009: 70)
Networked Crisis: Globalizing Political-Economic Contention
According to the economic historian Fernand Braudel (1977), capitalist
organizations and a roll call of hegemonic nations ‘globalized’ themselves at an early age,
their command over long distance trade and capital enabling such institutions to deal
with the problem of resource dependencies through elimination and vertical integration,
and to gain an upper hand in claims-making in relation to small-scale and relatively
powerless economic actors. As Braudel writes:
At an early date, from the very beginning, they went beyond ‘national’ boundaries and were in touch with merchants in foreign commercial centers. These men knew a thousand ways of rigging the odds in their favor: the manipulation of credit and the profitable game of good money for bad... Who could doubt that these capitalists had monopolies at their disposal or that they simply had the power needed to eliminate competition nine times out of ten? (p. 57).
Internetworked communications topologies of the last decade however, bring with
them significant changes in the capacity of small-scale actors to express claims, giving
rise to globalized waves of political-economic contention. Consider for instance, the
recent eruption of claims-making in the form of The Pirate Bay (TPB) and so-called
‘media piracy,’ disrupting/eroding the prevailing claims (distribution models and revenue
streams) of media oligopolies, and stimulating transformations in world markets. Despite
the ruling of the Swedish courts against TPB organizers in 2009, TPB is still operating
thanks to the global distribution of its component servers and users.
Internetworked topologies also make possible the ad hoc formation of
transnational political constituencies, enabling intensifications of claims-making anywhere
in the online world economy. TPB related claims making for example, increased
dramatically in the hours following the court ruling against TPB, leading to a surge in
numbers for a loosely related Piratpartiet (Pirate Party), just in time to gain the fledgling
party a seat in the European Parliament in 2009. The political success of Piratpartiet has
since inspired a global pirate movement with official parties registered in states as
diverse as Australia, Canada, Argentina, UK, France, Spain, Austria, Finland, Denmark
and Belgium. As another example, the 2008 Beijing Olympics provided the perfect
opportunity for pro-Tibetan activists to mobilize groups in different locations into a
coordinated global wave of political claims-making demanding changes in Sino-Tibetan
relations. Finally, terrorist organizations demonstrate how loosely knit collectives may
rapidly reconstitute themselves as ‘terror cells’ in any city in the world with little or no
forewarning and catastrophic consequences. Transnational assemblages such as these
are endemic to the networked city. They may be considered ‘autonomous zones’ (Bey,
1985) or ‘strategic sovereigns’ (Andersson, 2009), whose claims expressed online and
offline have become exceedingly difficult to anticipate, control and censor. The
networked publics are for this reason characterized by major institutions are in perpetual crisis, as
claims-making and contention exceed and short circuit geopolitically bound legislative
frameworks and established lines and arrangements of power.
At the same time, the existence of power nodes or hubs in virtual topologies
must not be neglected. Such nodes are immediately visible in network visualizations –
they are the ones with an enormous number of connections. Search engines such as
Google and major news websites such as The New York Times or the BBC are good
examples of power nodes. By virtue of their centrality in many networks, such nodes
may often function as opinion homogenizing machines. As DeLanda (2005) explains:
“The overall effect of mass newspapers and news agencies was homogenizing.
Newspapers aimed their presentation to the lowest common denominator, while news
agencies attempted to create a product that would be acceptable to all their
subscribers…” (p. 244). Combined with the global reach of the Internet, such
homogenizing machines may exert formidable subjectivating pressures on vulnerable
individuals. Nevertheless, the affordances of Internetworked topologies appear
considerably greater for collectives of small-scale actors than for institutions on the side
of prevailing power. According to Peter Evans’ (2008) analysis, such collectives may
contribute to a kind of ‘counter-hegemonic globalization’ that redresses problems of
‘neo-liberal globalization,’ in particular, “failures to deliver social protection and collective
goods” (p. 277).
The networked publics are no utopia. It is an intensification of real
informational/communicational flows traversing the online world economy, inspiring a
turbulent remixing of virtual topologies with actual sites and circumstances. To survive
the perpetual crises and cycles of contention in the networked city, one becomes a
reality jockey (RJ). Learning from DJs and VJs, the RJ remixes virtuals and actuals in a
pragmatic mode concerned only with whether or not things ‘work.’ Like DJs and VJs,
the RJ is sensitive to its audiences or ‘publics’ and understands the importance of visual
and aural ideas in affecting individual experiences and social interactions. The RJ is also
acutely aware of the linguistic ideas over/coding the territories s/he belongs to,
especially those ideas given by prevailing legislative frameworks, and attuned to
opportunities for evasion and strategic manipulation. Immersed in globalized flows, the
RJ has highly developed filters, and is able to rapidly sift through marketing and
ideological ‘noise’ to yield information of relevance to the circumstances. Likely
belonging to multiple transnational communities, the RJ is not attached to local
nationalisms but instead has multiple neighborhoods to hand wherever ‘home’ happens
to be. It is not as though actual places diminish in importance however, but rather that
communications topologies gain a measure of autonomy from geopolitical moorings.
The resulting upheaval is the RJ’s native milieu and hunting ground; networked crisis is a maelstorm of worlds and pepole to come.
Authors
Leon Tan (PhD, Auckland) is an independent art and media historian based in Sweden.
His research focuses on Internet media, mixed/augmented reality and cultural studies.
Tomas Skovgaard (arch.maa, Copenhagen) is an independent architect interested in
digitalisation, communication and Internet media, theory vs practice.
References
Andersson, J. (2009). For the good of the Net: The Pirate Bay as a strategic sovereign.
Culture Machine, 10.
Bey, H. (1985). T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic
Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia.
Braudel, F. (1977). Afterthoughts on Material Civilization and Capitalism. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
DeLanda, M. (2005). A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History. New York: Zone Books.
Deleuze, G. (1988). Bergsonism. New York: Zone Books.
Evans, P. (2008). Is an alternative globalization possible? Politics and Society, 36(2), 271-
305.
Gell, A. (1998). Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hume, D. (1977). A Treatise of Human Nature. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
Milgram, P., & Kishino, A. F. (1994). Taxonomy of mixed-reality visual displays. IEICE
Transactions on Information and Systems, E77-D(12), 1321-1329.
Terranova, T. (2004). Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto
Press.
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