When Technocultures Collide

Gary Genosko

Description

When Technocultures Collide provides rich and diverse studies of collision courses between technologically inspired subcultures and the corporate and governmental entities they seek to undermine. The adventures and exploits of computer hackers, phone phreaks, urban explorers, calculator and computer collectors, “CrackBerry” users, whistle-blowers, Yippies, zinsters, roulette cheats, chess geeks, and a range of losers and tinkerers feature prominently in this volume. Gary Genosko analyzes these practices for their remarkable diversity and their innovation and leaps of imagination. He assesses the results of a number of operations, including the Canadian stories of Mafiaboy, Jeff Chapman of Infiltration, and BlackBerry users.

The author provides critical accounts of highly specialized attributes, such as the prospects of deterritorialized computer mice and big toe computing, the role of electrical grid hacks in urban technopolitics, and whether info-addiction and depression contribute to tactical resistance. Beyond resistance, however, the goal of this work is to find examples of technocultural autonomy in the minor and marginal cultural productions of small cultures, ethico-poetic diversions, and sustainable withdrawals with genuine therapeutic potential to surpass accumulation, debt, and competition. The dangers and joys of these struggles for autonomy are underlined in studies of RIM’s BlackBerry and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks website.

Sujets

• Technoculture
• Technocracy
• Autonomy
• Subculture
• Urban exploration
• Cultural Studies
• Phreaking
• Hacking

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• EAN13: 9781554588985
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

WHEN TECHNOCULTURES COLLIDE

Cultural Studies Series

Cultural Studies is the multi- and inter-disciplinary study of culture, defined anthropologically as a “way of life,” performatively as sym- bolic practice, and ideologically as the collective product of varied media and cultural industries. Although Cultural Studies is a relative newcomer to the humanities and social sciences, in less than half a century it has taken interdisciplinary scholarship to a new level of sophistication, reinvigorating the liberal arts curriculum with new theories, topics, and forms of intellectual partnership.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press invites submissions of manuscripts concerned with critical discussions on power relations concerning gender, class, sexual preference, ethnicity, and other macro and micro sites of political struggle.

For more information, please contact:

Lisa Quinn Acquisitions Editor Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5 Canada Phone: [phone] ext. 2843 Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail]

WHEN TECHNOCULTURES COLLIDE

Innovation from Below and the Struggle for Autonomy

Gary Genosko

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. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial sup- port of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Genosko, Gary, 1959–, author  When technocultures collide : innovation from below and the struggle for auton- omy / Gary Genosko. (Cultural studies series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-897-8 (bound).—ISBN 978-1-55458-899-2 (epub).—ISBN 978-1-55458-898-5 (pdf)  1. Technology—Social aspects. 2. Technological innovations—Social aspects. 3. Technology and civilization. I. Title. II. Series: Cultural studies series (Waterloo, Ont.) T14.5.G48 2013 306.4’6 C2013-903854-X C2013-903855-8

Cover design by Blakeley Words+Pictures. Front-cover photo:Anonymous, by Declan Roache. Reproduced with permission of the photographer. Text design by James Leahy.

© 2013 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca

This book is printe 100% post-consum energy.

Printed in Canada

d on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made er fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using b

from iogas

Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit- ted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

For Hannah and Iloe, my crafty daughters

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Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction 1 Beyond Hands Free: Big-Toe Computing 29 Cultures of Calculation: William Gibson Collects 41 Rebel with an IV Pole: Portrait of Ninjalicious as an Urban Explorer 57 Home-Grown Hacker 77 Hacking the Grid: Does Electricity Want to Be Free? 107 Whistle Test: Blindness and Phone Phreaking 121 In Praise of Weak Play: Against the Chess Computers 133 CrackBerry: Addiction and Corporate Discipline 145 WikiLeaks and the Vicissitudes of Transparency 153 Conclusion 171

References Index

181 201

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Acknowledgements

ver the course of the ten years that I ran the Technocul- O ture Lab, I was fortunate to have a number of very tal- ented graduate students who assisted me in several of the projects that appear as chapters in this book. I am indebted to the work of Scott Thompson (creator of the tables) during the period when I was writing about Mafiaboy, and to Andriko Lozowy, who helped me first define the issues around Crack- Berry abuse and really drill down theoretically into failure.  During his regular visits to the Lab, Paul Hegarty worked with me on redirecting concepts from Bataille and Baudril- lard towards info-tech objects and systems, especially the big toe as a way of productive disabling. Our Bletchley Park scav- enger hunt was a catalyst (http://www.ctheory.net/articles .aspx?id=613). I am also grateful to Roberta Buiani with whom I collaborated on a postdoctoral project concerning Italian Yippies (for the journalCultural Studies). Working on a book, and making a film with Franco Bifo Berardi (After the Future), proved to be transformative for my thinking about the direc- tion in which technoculture is headed, and about the fuzzy destinies of post-autonomist thought and practice. Greg Elmer, Ganaele Langlois, and Alessandra Renzi at the Infoscape Lab at Ryerson University were especially generous with their sup- port during Bifo’s visits to Toronto. I first aired my electrical dreams of utility hacks there. The participants in my WikiLeaks graduate seminar enthusiastically embraced the challenge of trying to make sense of a developing story and to analyze whistle-blowing. I will be revisiting the latest instalments of the WikiLeaks saga in a further seminar as it undertakes some of