A co-authored article with Harry Halpin (W3C) is now available in UnLikeUs Reader – Social Network Monopolies and Their Alternatives, edited by Geert Lovink and Miriam Rasche. You can download our chapter here: Collective Individuation: The Future of The Social Web. This chapter comes out from our research in IRI/Paris.

We are in the epoch of networks. The world is now rapidly being perceived as a vast space of interlocking networks of seemingly infinite variety: biological, productive, cy- bernetic, and – most important of all – social. The image of the network, with its obvi- ous bias towards vision, has become the paradigmatic representation of understand- ing our present technological society as a holistic entity that would otherwise escape our cognitive grasp. Yet no image is ideologically neutral, for the image of the network is also a mediation between the subject and object that inscribes – or pre-programs – a certain conceptual apparatus onto the world, namely that of nodes and links (or in graph-theoretic terms, vertices and edges). This is not without consequences: due to its grasp over our imagination, the network constitutes the horizon of possible inven- tion, as Simondon showed in Imagination et Invention.1 Yet where did the concept of the network itself come from? Despite the hyperbole over the dominance of digital social networks like Facebook, the concept of the quantified social network pre-dates digital social networks, originating from the work of the psychologist Moreno in the late 1930s, and we argue that what the advent of the digital computer has done has primar- ily been the acceleration of the pre-digital conceptual apparatus of networks. Although no one can deny its now global influence, the fundamentally ontological presumptions of the social network have yet to be explored despite its present preponderance. To borrow some terms from Bernard Stiegler, how does the what of Facebook constitute our who?2

1. Gilbert Simondon, Imagination et Invention, Chatou: Editions de la Transparence, 2008.

2. Bernard Stiegler, ‘Who? What? The Invention of the Human’, in Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 134-180.

Read more…

You can download the whole book from Lovink’s Institute of Network Culture: UnLikeUs Reader.

A great honor to be invited by Erich Hörl to talk in Bochum, and thank labkultur.tv for the recording, Sebastian Drumfish Fischer for the images, the original report can be found here

Die Kollektivität von sozialen Netzwerken

Einer für Alle und Alle für Einen? Oder nur eine One-Man Show?

From Hayle’s website/UCLA

Originally posted at the Hybrid Publishing Lab Notepad

Publications expect readers, unless the author ignores the publicin his publication. Understanding reading is one of the major conditions for imagining new ways of publishing. The condition of reading also depends on means of writing, writing means publishing, then we enter a circle of reading-writing, that constitutes without exaggeration the social, political, economical condition for acting and thinking. Jack Goody has explored in The Domestication of the Savage Mind, how the emergence of writing, in its most primitive form, transform these conditions in human history. The use of tablets in the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamian as writing system become today we may call the first system of metadata, that record stocks of potteries, cattle, etc. And David Graeber further in his Debt- The First 5,000 Years, showed that such a writing system is actually a book-keeping system, usually a new conquerer destroyed this annotation-writing system to resettle all debts, and restarts a new economic, social and political regime (And it is from this example, Graeber proposed a destruction of the current global accounting system to start anew). It is also true when writing spread out in ancient Greece, it made laws accessible to citizens in the polis, that is also to say the concept of democracy.

These technics of writing are in constant progress, from pictogram, phonogram, to stamp making, to printing, and now we arrive at digital publication at the mid of last century. We have to bear in mind that technical innovation always underlines displacement, displacement doesn’t mean replacement, displacing something means rendering something before it obsolete, but it doesn’t mean it could replace it, including all its values and functions. The emergence of the web brought us a new perspective of publication which is no longer linear, but one that allows one jumps from one reading to another. This vision of hypertext was already imagined by Ted Nelson before the invention of the web. In order words the web realized some of the visions of Nelson, particularly on the aspect that the web is a hypertext system that links all relevant literatures together. Then came the war of reference-searching (or an economy of links), this is what we know today as search engines, and then we have the history of Yahoo, Archie, Veronica, Altavista, Google, etc. Searching is an experience which cannot be separated from online reading today, it can be searching the definition of a word, searching theory of an person not well explained in the reading, etc. The new possibilities, not only those of business and innovation but also new way of acquiring knowledge – reading – open a new terrain to reconsidering the condition of reading-writing and the social-political transformation corresponding to these conditions. And these questions are are the core of digital humanities, if we still want to keep this name. Read the rest of this entry »

Parce que c’est un séminaire de muséologie, je voudrais parler des musées, et ainsi commencer par parler du Google Art Project, avant de parler plus généralement des digital studies. Je vais diviser cette présentation en trois parties : dans la première, je proposerai une interprétation du Google Art Project, dans la deuxième, je parlerai des objets numériques et de ce que l’on peut appeler « la technique des relations », avant de proposer quelques pistes de réflexions à ce sujet.

Le Google Art Project procède de la volonté de constituer des musées sur le web. Mais on doit se demander quel est le sens d’un tel projet ? Est-ce un simple projet de collection ? Comment penser la nature des choses qui seront ainsi présentées sur le web ? Par exemple : puisque ces choses seront des copies numériques, seront-elles moins authentiques ? Je pense que ce projet contient au fond la proposition suivant laquelle toute chose peut-être convertie en chose numérique – je ne parle pas encore d’ « objet numérique », mais bien de « choses » numériques. Le Google Art Projet est aussi un site social où l’on peut signer et collectionner les tableaux, et partager cela avec d’autres, via des réseaux sociaux tels que Facebook ou Google+. De ce fait ce projet crée un nouvel espace, un « environnement », qui déplace l’espace physique. Je dis déplace et non pas remplace : car la création de cet espace ne veut pas dire que l’espace physique va disparaître, mais qu’il devient lui-même inséparable de l’espace en ligne. Peut-être les mots « espace » ou « environnement » ne suffisent pas pour décrire ce changement de phase – ce déplacement. Je propose de comprendre cette situation en fonction de ce que Jacob Von Uexküll appelle « Umwelt » – et que l’on traduit le plus généralement en Français par le terme de « milieu ». Le « Umwelt » c’est ce qui situe entre l’environnement et les contextes, dans lequel les animaux interprètent le Umgebung, c’est à dire l’espace objectif, afin de produire leurs propres mondes. Von Uexküll donne l’exemple de la tique : la tique est un insecte qui n’a pas d’yeux, mais qui réagit à un certain nombre de signaux. Ces signaux, ce peut-être par exemple l’approche d’une vache : en fonction de ce signal, la tique se laisse tomber de l’arbre, et se retrouve sur le dos de l’animal. Un autre ensemble de signaux vont lui permettre ensuite de décider de l’endroit où elle va venir se loger. Suivant qu’elle trouve ou non cet endroit, elle décidera de rester – pouvant alors se nourrir – ou bien de retourner vers l’arbre. C’est au niveau de ces signaux que Von Uexküll trouve le lieu d’unification de ces espaces, et à partir duquel sont produits des mondes singuliers. Ce que l’on appelle le virtuel n’est pas, de ce point de vue, en opposition au réel – mais dans un rapport réciproque défini par ces signaux.

Read the rest of this entry »

What exactly is information in the thoughts of Gilbert Simondon? Is it different from what has been understood by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener? This question seems to be crucial to understand firstly the concepts of transduction, individuation, amplification, disparity etc; secondly the relation between Simondon and cybernetics: is Simondon a cybernetician? But it seems to me that the responses from the commentators of Simondon remain unsatisfactory, firstly there is a misunderstanding of “information” in cybernetics; secondly Simondon tries to distant himself from his fellow cyberneticians, but in fact in his lecture notes and conference papers [60s and 70s] Simondon spoke like a neuroscientist today.

This series of notes attempt to understand the notion of information in Simondon and its relevant implications to address the current technological development. In fact, the misunderstanding of information seems to be normal, because even in cybernetics Shannon and Wiener share two different understandings of ‘information’. It seems that some commentators of Simondon tend to propose such correlation: Cybernetics- form, Simondon- information even though the term information was firstly made known by the cyberneticians. For example in Muriel Combes’s Simondon Individu et collectivité –Pour une philosophie du transindividuel, while explaining Simondon’s critique of hylomorphism Read the rest of this entry »

O Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa (ICS) acolhe dia 17 e 18 de Junho na Sala Polivalente a Conferência Internacional Rethinking Jaques Ellul and the Technological Society in the 21st Century.

ABSTRACT: Jacques Ellul provides us a rigorous method into the investigation of the technological reality. Ellul proposes that one must think of a technological system instead of a specific technology or collections of technical objects. That is to say, one should investigate systems or subsystems instead of arguing whether, for example the internet or television is good or bad, or seeing the technological reality as a composition of different independent technologies. Ellul further proposes some critical concepts such as autonomy, unity, universality and totality that allow us to further explore these systems . This paper want to proposes that (1) Ellul’s proposal is not only valid today, but also is the only useful method which allows us to understand the complexity and reassess our reality, especially at the moment we are witnessing the rapid convergence of technology and the process of globalization which is mainly technologically driven. This paper also wants to (2) reflect on the nature of the technological system described by Ellul: de-symbolization, which however was not made clear by Ellul. Drawing from Gilbert Simondon, Ellul proposes that the development of a technological system is the process of de-symbolization, in which ‘man’s inherent power of symbolizing is excluded’, he further complicated that ‘on the other hand, all consumption is symbolic’. The dialectical relation between the de-symbolization and re-symbolization constitutes the dynamic of Ellul’s technological system. The technological system is not a product of the capitalistic system, but rather the latter is engulfed by the former. Ellul in this sense reconstitutes the relationship between the technological and capitalistic system, technology correlates to the capital flow, but they don’t share a simple causality. This paper want to juxtapose this dialectics and suggest that we should take desymbolization further, and indeed in the current internet driven technological system, we are witnessing two more forms of de-symbolization that go further than the re-symbolization of consumption. The paper suggests that firstly the de-symbolization also implies the process of materialization, which is not what Simondon and Ellul perceived, the production of technical objects which are associated by different industrial standards and technical elements . Instead we are witnessing the materialization through creation of the universality of data especially under the current open data movement, which is not only technical objects, but also digital objects. Digital objects are subsumed under calculation and algorithmic control. Secondly, the desymbolization is also an externalization, which Ellul took from Andre Leroi Gourhan while he did not carry it further. This aspect of externalization is explored by the philosopher Bernard Stiegler . Stiegler calls this form of externality ‘tertiary retention’, which doesn’t only constitute the coherence and lineage of a technical system, but also man’s ability to mediate and anticipate . Through these two further dimensions of de-symbolization, the paper proposes to bring Ellul’s technological system back to the technological reality.

The Theatre of Engineers – Materialism on an uncanny Stage, YUK HUI

An invited speech given at the Atelier “Philosophie et Ingénierie”, at Chambery, France, 16 May, 2011. This is also a drafted paper in preparation for publication.

This talk is a reflection on what Tim Berners-Lee calls ‘philosophical engineering’. There are several ways we can discuss about philosophy and engineering. For example, we can talk about the philosophical implication within the discipline engineering, especially how philosophical logic and philosophical understanding of language can be used to build machines, in this sense, philosophy becomes kind of conceptual-engineering, and engineering is necessarily philosophical. We can also work on the question of ethics and technology which is becoming more and more important. We can also have a philosophical reflection on engineering in order to discover a cultural history, and also to reflect on its development. For examples, we can see in the works of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ellul, Gilbert Simondon, Carl Mitcham etc. But it is surprising to note that there hasn’t been much discussion about engineers, what we can find are only historical materials or biographies of genius engineers, for example Leonardo da Vinci. In most of the philosophical reflections, it seems as if the engineers didn’t exist or do not have a place to act, but only machines and humans. But such carelessness nevertheless ignores that engineers are the one who are building the world, they do it by projecting their own ways of seeing, and hence transformed the way of our seeing. On the one hand we have to ask how can we understand their practice, and engage more with the engineers’ work? On the other hand, the engineers have to reflect on the reality and their way of acting. This paper attempts to tackle this ignored question, and sketch a possible way of interventions. It starts and ends with a reflection on what Tim Berners-Lee calls philosophical engineers:

We are not analyzing a world, we are building it. We are not experimental philosophers, we are philosophical engineers. We declare “this is the protocol”. When people break the protocol, we lament, sue, and so on. But they tend to stick to it because we show that the system has very interesting and useful properties.

This title ‘philosophical engineers’ is probably one of the most dangerous words if we understand it intuitively. Though Berners-Lee proposed this term since physics was once called practical philosophy, so engineering can be related to philosophy as well. But isn’t engineering itself philosophical at the very beginning? This is one of the things I wanted to demonstrate. Also, having the prefix ‘philosophical’ kind of suggests that engineers are now judges of truth, and that makes it dangerous. In fact, we can easily associate Berners-Lee’s statement with Marx’s thesis on Feuerbach. In this famous short text, Marx criticized Feuerbach’s materialism that he only concerns how humans are affected by the world, but forgets that humans are the one who change the world. The criticism is concretized in the last sentence: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’. Marx’s tone is repeated today not by the revolutionaries, but Tim Berners-Lee: engineers build the world, even if you refuses, finally you will have to live with it. But if we didn’t clarify the above questions, the word ‘philosophical engineer’ remains obscure. We may want to ask do these philosophical engineers with Marx’s gesture, miss Feuerbach’s point? This demands a hermeneutics interpretation of the engineering culture, which is always a looking back (après coup) and also a projection (le projet).
Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/events/?id=443
Thursday 12 May 2011 13:00 – 14:00
Location: Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, 1 St Giles Oxford OX1 3JS
Registration: Please email your name and affiliation to events@oii.ox.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1865 287209

Speakers

Yuk Hui, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University of London

Abstract

We find ourselves in a media intensive milieu comprising networks, images, sounds and text, which we generalize as data and metadata. How can we understand this digital milieu and make sense of these data, not only focusing on their functionalities but also reflecting on our everyday life and existence? For example, how can we understand a facebook invitation beyond an ‘invitation’? How do these material constructions demand a new philosophical understanding?

Instead of following the reductionist approaches, which understand the digital milieu as abstract entities such as information and data, this talk proposes to approach it from an embodied perspective: objects. The talk contrasts digital objects with natural objects (e.g. apples on the table) and technical objects (e.g. hammers) in phenomenological investigations, and proposes to approach digital objects from the concept of ‘relations’, on one hand the material relations that are concretized in the development of mark-up languages such as GML, HTML, XML, and web ontologies, on the other hand the temporal relations that are produced and conditioned by the artificial memories of data.

Atelier “Philosophie et Ingénierie” (IC 2011)
Philosophie & Ingénierie.

Le formel face à l’histoire, la technologie et la matérialité.

Atelier des 22èmes Journées Francophone d’Ingénierie des Connaissances, 2 demi-journées, 16 mai 2011, Chambéry (infos pratiques)

Responsable : Alexandre Monnin (contact : Alexandre DOT Monnin AT malix.univ-paris1.fr)
Inscription : http://afia2011.org/dotclear2/index.php?pages/Inscription
Sponsors :
International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP)
International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA)
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

9h00-9h15 : Présentation de l’atelier.

9h15-10h15 : Keynote (conférencier invité) : The Theatre of Engineers – Materialism on an uncanny stage
Yuk Hui (Goldsmiths, Londres)
Read the rest of this entry »

The following interview was conducted on behalf of the Theory, Culture and Society website, original post here.

Interview with Jeffrey Shaw (Part 1) from Yuk Hui on Vimeo.

Yuk Hui: For many years, your works have been dealing with the relation between the viewer and moving images, and especially the embodiment experience. For example, Mark Hansen has a very interesting essay on your works articulated in this aspect. Instead of others’ interpretations of your works, what do you yourself understand by experience in relation to new media?

Jeffrey Shaw: My fascination with new media is largely to do with the way it can constitute a new relationship between the viewer and the image, that is to say between the participants and the authored art experience. Two aspects are important to me; one is the notion of embodiment, the way media art can offer a full body experience to the viewer and participant. The other aspect is interactivity, the way in which the work itself is open for the viewer /users’ manipulation and exploration.

YH: You are also interested in the idea of augmented space; for example, you use panorama in quite a few of your works. How do these augmented spaces contribute to experience?

JS: We are bodies that occupy real space, and the projection of a fictional artefact into that space creates a vicarious tension between the real and virtual. There is a conversation that takes place at that boundary and a lot of excitement is generated because that is where the space of representation makes contact with you. In the late 60’s and early 70’s I created numerous expanded cinema experiences that were to do with testing the boundary between the cinema screen and the viewing space that the audience occupies. I was looking for ways to transcend the conventional movie theatre’s separation between the projection window and the built environment. So typically these performances involved screens that would burst open and inflatable tubes would move out into the audience carrying the projected images with them. A paradigmatic work of that time was the CORPOCINEMA, where the screen was no longer a flat surface but a transparent inflatable dome. Films were projected into its domed space, which were then visualized by means of material actions such as smoke, confetti and fire extinguisher foam. Thus the fictional space-time of the film was conjugated with the real space-time of a corporeal performance, thereby redefining cinematic representation as a live situation of augmentation and interaction.
Read the rest of this entry »