Research Journals

Die dunkle Seite von Twitter, Facebook & Konsorten

Warum das Umfeld von Social-Web-Applikationen eine Nutzung abseits von Spaß und Selbstinszenierung unterbindet.

Mit 20.000 Mitgliedern innerhalb einer Woche war die Gründung der Facebook-Gruppe Freiheit im MQ Anfang Juni – bescheiden ausgedrückt – ein Erfolg. Kein Wunder, ging es doch darum, die Gemütlichkeit und Offenheit des Wiener Museumsquartiers gegen die Wächter der MQ-Direktion zu verteidigen. Kein Konsum selbst mitgebrachter alkoholischer Getränke – wenn das kein Anlass ist auf die digitalen Barrikaden zu steigen?

45 Revolutions Per Minute (media history on heavy rotation)

This text riffs on the theme of revolutions thereby referring less to the political act of one class wrestling power from another one but rather to cycical motions caused by the interplay of industrial, scientific, cultural and political motive forces. This approach challenges the prevailing viewpoint according to which class struggle has been replaced by media technologies as the subject of history in technologically advanced free-market democracies. Instead, it tries to develop a more complex understanding of the forces that shape history by working out the dialectical relationship between technological rationality as a means of power and domination and as a means of human emancipation at the same time.

Part 1 of my Furtherfield case study chapter - Brit Art, Situationism, Fluxus...

This is Draft 2.5 of the first quarter of one of my 3 case study chapters, on the London-based Furtherfield art group.
Some weeks ago I posted a quarter of another of my case studies, the Hong Kong In-Media citizen journalism project.
It seems i can only work in quarter chapters - perhaps this is like semi-tones in music....

Casting a Net for Reflection

Belated notes après beach and back into real life, however I always wonder which one is madder (the juggler on a unicycle on a tightrope between two high rises must ask themselves, but where would I be if things were not so ordinary?)

Continental Drift hypothesis - the turning point?

About four years ago, after the disastrous US elections in 2004, a group of us meeting at 16 Beaver Street in New York launched the idea of Continental Drift. The hypothesis: a coming "tectonic" shift in the geopolitical system, precipitated by the mismanagement of neoliberal globalization under the Bush-Blair regime. What we saw on the horizon was some kind of collapse of dollar hegemony -- "hegemoney," as Arrighi puts it -- and the rise of a multipolar order, with new possibilities and challenges for grassroots egalitarian movements around the world.

Outline for a Book Chapter attached

Here is an outline of a chapter for my colleague Jon Marshall's book on It & Disorder. Like much of what I seem to be doing for uni stuff, I have clearly crammed way too many things into this chapter. probably i could reduce it by 2/3 and it could still make a good contribution to the book, which has otjer chapters on software and failure, IT and social movements, IT and financial disorder, and quite a lot of philosophy. anyway, armin's critique of my P2P text-in-progress reminded me about this other thing i am supposed to write this year, and i am thinking some of A's ideas could fit.

Sassen Interview

dear all,

as some of you may know, "world-information city" has been invited to paris at the beginning of the month (this was also scheduled in tnl-calender). there i had the chance to make an interview with saskia sassen which i wanted to share with you (s. attachment)...

a+ c

70% slow-cooked disorder

About 2 weeks ago it became horribly clear I was stalled on finishing my chapter on the Hong Kong case study. I had done 3/4 of it, but i had no ideas for the final section. Days of a blank screen.

So i eventually went to the library and borrowed some of those comforting books on how to write a thesis. many of them were quite dull, but one is great ..i had read it before but had forgotten some of the good, advice...title is "writing your dissertation in 15 minutes a day" by joan bolker

Notes on "The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge"

The Postmodern Condition, A Report on Knowledge, by Francois Lyotard, first published in French in 1979, was not the first book to carry the word postmodern in its title, but probably one of the most influential ones in the long term, with both its warnings and sometimes its overly optimistic assumptions about the future of knowledge in a computerised society. Reading it now what is perplexing is the rather one-sided reception it has got. While Lyotard's critique of meta-narratives and the proposed switch to language games has characterised the postmodern debate, his ambiguity about the development of science and the university under the condition of neoliberalism appears to have been given much less consideration by his followers.

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