Critical Digital Studies: A Reader, Second Edition

624 Pages·2013·3.638 MB·English

by  Arthur Kroker (editor), Marilouise Kroker (editor)

CRITICAL DIGITAL STUDIES
A Reader, Second Edition
Edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker
Since its initial publication, Critical Digital Studies has proven an indispensable guide to
understanding digitally mediated culture. Bringing together the leading scholars in
this growing ield, internationally renowned scholars Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
present an innovative and interdisciplinary survey of the relationship between hu-
manity and technology. This book ofers a study of our digital future and a means of
understanding the world with new analytic tools and modes of communication that
are deining the twenty-irst century.
This edition includes new essays on the impact of social networking technologies
and new media. A new section – “New Digital Media” – presents important articles on
topics including hacktivism in the age of digital power and the relationship between
gaming and capitalism. The extraordinary range and depth of the irst edition has been
maintained in this new edition. Critical Digital Studies will continue to provide the lead-
ing edge to readers wanting to understand the complex intersection of digital culture
and human knowledge.
arthur kroker is the director of the Paciic Centre for Technology and Culture
and Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory at the University of
Victoria.
marilouise kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the Paciic Centre for Technology and
Culture at the University of Victoria.
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Critical Digital Studies:
A Reader
Second Edition
Edited by
ARTHUR KROKER AND MARILOUISE KROKER
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Bufalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2013
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978-1-4426-4684-1 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4426-1466-6 (paper)
Printed on acid-free paper.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Critical digital studies : a reader / edited by Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker. – Second
edition.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4684-1 (bound). – ISBN 978-1-4426-1466-6 (pbk.)
1. Technology – Social aspects. 2. Technological innovations – Social aspects. I. Kroker,
Arthur, 1945–, editor of compilation. II. Kroker, Marilouise, 1943–, editor of compilation
T14.5.C75 2013 303.48'3 C2013-904362-4
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program
of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for
the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program,
using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 3
arthur and marilouise kroker
CODE BREAKERS
1 Traumas of Code 39
n. katherine hayles
2 A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies 59
donna j. haraway
3 Reframing the Cathedral: Opening the Sources of Technologies
and Cultural Assumptions 70
sara diamond
4 Romancing the Anti-body: Lust and Longing in (Cyber)space 85
lynn hershman leeson
NEW DIGITAL MEDIA
5 All Bugs Are Shallow: Digital Biopower, Hacker Resistance,
and Technological Error in Open-Source Software 101
matthew kelly
6 Contagion Theory: Beyond the Microbe 120
tony d. sampson
vi Contents
7 A Conversation with Spirits inside the Simulation of a Coast
Salish Longhouse 144
jackson 2bears
8 Empire@Play: Virtual Games and Global Capitalism 162
nick dyer-witheford and greig de peuter
9 Archaeologies of Media Art 179
jussi parikka in conversation with garnet hertz
TECHNOLOGY, IDENTITY, AND SURVEILLANCE
10 Precision + Guided + Seeing 193
jordan crandall
11 Understanding Meta-media 212
lev manovich
12 Black Box, Black Bloc 218
alexander r. galloway
13 Biophilosophy for the 21st Century 227
eugene thacker
14 Algebra of Identity: Skin of Wind, Skin of Streams, Skin of Shadows,
Skin of Vapour 238
d. fox harrell
POLITICS, GENDER, AND RELIGION
INFORMATION AND POWER
15 Communication and Imperialism 257
james tully
16 Occupology, Swarmology, Whateverology: The City of (Dis)order
versus the People’s Archive 283
gregory sholette
17 Tell Us What’s Going to Happen: Information Feeds to the War
on Terror 293
samuel nunn
Contents vii
18 Grammar of Terrorism: Captivity, Media, and a Critique of Biopolitics 312
michael dartnell
19 Virilio’s Apocalypticism 331
mark featherstone
GENDER AND SEXUALITY
20 The Cyborg Mother: A Breached Boundary 348
jaimie smith-windsor
21 Haptics, Mobile Handhelds, and other ‘Novel’ Devices:
The Tactile Unconscious of Reading across Old and New Media 357
rachel c. lee
22 Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study 373
micha cárdenas
RELIGION AND SOCIETY
23 Circuits, Death, and Sacred Fiction: The City of Banaras 393
mahesh daas
24 Digital Cosmologies: Religion, Technology, and Ideology 398
arthur kroker
25 Technologies of the Apocalypse: The Left Behind Novels and Flight
from the Flesh 408
stephen pfohl
CULTURE, ART, AND COMMUNICATION
PERCEPTION
26 The Aura of the Digital 433
michael betancourt
27 When Taste Politics Meets Terror: The Critical Art Ensemble on Trial 447
joan hawkins
28 Distraction and Digital Culture 465
william bogard
viii Contents
PERFORMANCE
29 Metal Performance: Humanizing Robots, Returning to Nature,
and Camping About 485
steve dixon
30 Prosthetic Head: Intelligence, Awareness, and Agency 519
stelarc
31 Simulated Talking Machines: Stelarc’s Prosthetic Head 532
julie clarke
32 Slipstreaming the Cyborg 542
francesca de nicolò in conversation with christina mcphee
SOUND
33 Black Secret Technology (The Whitey on the Moon Dub) 556
julian jonker
34 Material Memories: Time and the Cinematic Image 566
paul d. miller (dj spooky)
35 The Turntable 574
charles mudede
Bibliography 587
Contributors 601
Acknowledgments
Critical Digital Studies traces its origins to an interesting conlation of events. First and
foremost, the world itself has been transformed by the question of the digital.
Transformed not in a minor sense, but in the strikingly constitutive way by which
politics, economy, culture, and identity are increasingly enabled, and sometimes con-
strained, by the historical triumph of digital society. Where this will lead us, whether
or not the networked future will produce a new generation of upgraded minds, ac-
celerated bodies, and perceptually sharpened subjects, or perhaps the opposite, name-
ly the chilling efects of Big Data and total surveillance society, remains to be seen.
However, what we do know is that the threshold event of critical digital studies has to
do with writing and rewriting one’s own technological autobiography. How could it be
otherwise? What makes networked culture so fascinating is that its implications do
not stop at the surface of communication, identity, and consciousness, but somehow
slip beneath the human nervous system to become the real, living matter of the hu-
man sensorium. The question of technological autobiography, that point where we
study the complexity of digital inlections at the level of culture and body and society
and power, is the essence of Critical Digital Studies: A Reader.
Our exploration of critical digital studies has taken place in the intellectually stimu-
lating environment of the Paciic Centre for Technology and Culture at the University
of Victoria in British Columbia. A research and teaching university where the life of the
mind touches on the greater questions of the day, from climate change and Indige-
nous struggle to theories of power and bodies and genders and technology, the Uni-
versity of Victoria and its Faculty of Social Sciences is a remarkably congenial setting for
the study of technology and society. Arthur Kroker has been supported in his research
by his appointment as Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture, and Theory as
well as by grant support for a study of ‘Digital Inlections’ by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. Marilouise Kroker has engaged in critical
digital studies within a research facility that has efectively repurposed ‘streaming’
into a new language for relecting upon human uses of technology. Here, noted schol-
ars and digital visionaries including Stelarc, N. Katherine Hayles, Donna Haraway, Paul
D. Miller (DJ Spooky), William Leiss, and Taiaiake Alfred have made appearances,