wendy chun
intro’d to Wendy here:
@tansmedial
Updating to remain the same: Watch our #tm17 keynote speaker @whkchun commenting on habitual new media:
why is .. it’s the network.. the answer to any question.. why networks.. why networks now
book modestly seeks to change way we talk about new media.. away from virality .. rather than new media something we need to contain for sake of privacy.. whether internet fosters democracy.. empowerment or the opp..
2 min – think of new media as wonderfully creepy.. because it messes with distinction between public and private..
3 min – students shopping for courses as horrible..
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4 min – expansion and contraction of privacy.. new media a function of you.. not mass media.. also.. perversely points to possibilities of collectivities..
question that drives the book: is habit what society can be in an era where there is no society.. can we view ourselves as characters (not marionettes) in a series of dramas that we so poorly call big data..
5 min – term new media implies that what matters is new.. rather than new media matter most when move from new to habitual.. from the new to the everyday
exactly.. a nother way
7 min – repetition breeds expertise even as it breeds boredom
society reduced to habit.. individual habit/ticks that scale..
8 min – what’s remarkable isn’t that new media is called into question.. rather the fact that they continue to spread even as they disappoint.. to call something new is to guarantee that it will someday will be old/obsolete
so habit+crisis=update
9 min – with these numerals.. 1.0.. 2.0.. 3.0.. new media will never die.. will always be updated… so trying to displace this logic of the update.. the language of disruption.. ie: sv loves the term disruption.. which is allegedly what drives new media..
think of habit as something that attenuates the viral.. as disrupting disruption.. because gets us away from very notion of disruption
10 min – virality targets individuals.. makes individuals responsible for collective actions.. and habitual moves us away from this logic of targeting.. now.. if something repeats.. it’s assumed because someone is copying someone else..
11 min – why would we be shocked..ie: that facebook is involved in social engineering.. isn’t that it’s business plan
18 min – viruses reveal connections and enable us to conceive/experience/imagine world as particular kind of network.. wanting to expand our notion of why/how things repeat.. this assumes that what matters most is tracing containment/surveillance.. this makes surveillance what you cannot not want..somehow knowing who patient zero is.. solves the problem of viral spread
huge…
19 min – this outbreak narrative.. erases questions of infrastructure.. ie: impact of crumbling med system.. globalization on migration on population spreads.. and importance on cold/civil war..
2o min – what would happen if we shift focus away from the viral to the habitual.. 1\ would reveal that what we assume to be connections don’t always arise from this kind of contagion but rather habit..
21 min – hard to tell difference mathematically between contagion and homophile…homophile – people who are a like act a like
22 min – what is info if not habit…info originally meant formation of individuals.. couldn’t be separated.. tech meaning.. info is what lies under meaning.. repetition which enables communication to take place..
best way ..we are told.. to avoid virus.. get better habits.. wash hands.. practice safe sex..
habits allow us to ignore while also engaging the environment..
23 min – habit allows us to focus on what remains.. rather than on what spreads.. habit + crisis = update
24 min – importance of seeding of habit.. i look at habit and crisis as temporality of networks.. habit no longer habituates..the moment you become comfortable with something that it’s updated.. in bizarre way habit has become addiction as to have has become to lose..
25 min – new media replaces the mass with the you.. you in english.. a shifty shifter.. both singular and plural.. not i become a we.. in this plural you.. you are still targeted as individuals…so now everyone empowered to speak et al.. this is what dominated hype around the early web
26 min – snowden blames us govt for destroying internet.. but more important.. if snowden’s info was valuable.. precisely because of way private corps have been using unique identifiers to create historical trails.. surveillance now a co production.. corps and govt.. ie: password unique identifier..
so go deeper.. (and for good of humanity/globe).. idiosyncratic jargon as id er
28 min – rather than being totally creeped out by this.. think of selves as characters.. distance between readers and characters is what’s been called into question.. by the force of how we like something..
29 min – flip between public and private.. ie: privacy of home looking out into public space.. liberal democracy based on idea of this window.. window separating private and public.. now behind window.. no longer silent.. you can speak.. the question though.. if this is the silence fixed by new media.. need to address the flipping of this entire structure..
30 min – the subject who acts.. is increasingly on the inside rather than the outside.. so subjects increasingly caught in public acting privately and private subject increasingly viewed as the most powerful..
ie: trump.. reality tv come to define power/celebrity..
31 min – what’s important.. now.. in private behind window.. never secluded.. never silent..
33 min – whether or not live tweeting.. always promiscuously sharing
35 min – netflix experiment – your predictability from extreme likes/dislikes from norm.. winning algo didn’t predict the future it predicted the past.. had to predict what was hidden
h u g e
36 min -.there’s an. odd difficulty w/verification in these systems that are all allegedly about verification.. there’s no knowing how many people would have clicked on next movie.. these systems proliferate false positives..
this is something clear in collab filtering systems used to deter terrorism.. the proof in these systems is that there is no proof.. oscar gandy jr argues: these systems about efficiency .. not justice..
this is also how global climate change predictions are supposed to work.. if we believe they’re true.. we’ll act in such a way that they’ll become unverifiable.. an interesting gap.. that space for political action/characters to operate..
37 min – netflix not using winning algo.. rather using principal component anal.. can do that because it now streams films.. *so can base all on live time actions
so.. let’s do *this for good (not for consumerism/money et al)..host-life-bits of everyday life
38 min – what systems assume is that your actions matter more than your words.. don’t care about how you rate things.. words oddly devalued in these systems.. but what you do is not what you singly do.. your body.. not just you.. your history is not your own.. singular actions are never singular..
39 min – the fact that target (finding out pregnancy – buying unscented lotions or vitamins) needed big data to figure out that female human procreators suffer from morning sickness is really amazing.. imagine money could have saved if they could have just hired female procreator..
40 min – big data is all about predicting difference finding gender/sex.. and then denying it by hiding it w/in these banal proxies.. ie: fico med adherence score.. can be used by co’s to determine how much you should pay for health care.. one determining factor.. whether or not you pay for car ins… which really depends on class/race.. more gross and refined at same time
think of someone who buys organic bird feed.. proxies bringing race…class.. together..
42 min – discriminating data.. my new project.. to imagine diff kinds of algos..
perhaps imagine diff kinds of data. ie: self-talk as data
capability leads to anxieties.. trying to separate public and private.. leads to epistemology of outing.. to revelation of mainly open secrets.. this discourse of outing has become dominate way we talk about engagement with the web
43 min – snowden movie clip.. glen on when ed comes out..
44 min – glenn – if we say.. here’s who this is.. we’re doing govt work for them..
45 min – ed: i don’t want to hide on this and skulk around..
outing as rupturing public private.. think of leaks.. structure of new media..
46 min – what would happen if instead of focusing on the leak.. we embraced.. constant exchange of packets that makes our networks operate.. creating/inhabiting public space.. rather than seeking out privacies that are anything but private.. as if trust = transparency..
47 min – dream activist video – i’m a tax payer.. why did i take part in act of disobedience.. because i’ve had enough.. industries drove us here.. strip people of humanity.. remaining in shadows is no longer acceptable.. protesting/rallying is no longer enough.. come out.. undocumented and unafraid.. no neutral ground.. speak out with me or silently join our oppressors
48 min – activists risk deportation because privacy offers no shelter..against surveillance and prosectution.. not a rejection of privacy but a rethinking of privacy so not reduced to notion of house arrest
50 min – what does it mean to confess in a medium in which we are always confessing.. what does it mean to confess to something that is already known..
given fact that undocumented can’t attend uni because money.. or given fact that they pay taxes…. this notion of being undocumented is a fantasy.. status at best is an open secret… important that thru these stories.. they create a diff kind of documentation..
host-life-bits via self-talk as data
thru repetition.. build habitation/shelter.. what this repetition is doing.. a mode of inhabitation..
exactly.. a nother way
shift focus away fro protecting/condemning private individuals.. toward sheltering public subjects whose habits are currently privatized.. that is.. placed under house arrest by states/corps
book ends with call to fight for public rights.. a wary embrace of publicity that is networks..so we can be exposed.. and not be attacked.
how to hide and still be out there… snowden private in public law.. via gershenfeld sel..
53 min – question by loerer.. on vitality
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2014 – 52 min talk
new media at bleeding edge of obsolescence.. perversely..if product does what it promises to do.. it fails.. if analysis is interesting/definitive.. too late.. by time understand something.. already changed.. updating to remain same..
what’s remarkable..not that media are called into question.. but that they continually resurge even after they disappoint
3 min – remain manically the same.. constant change as direction… revolution: whirlwind tour back to same spot..
4 min – undebt of info.. we respond asyncrously.. habit is a way to mediate morality.. the ubiquitous update.. update software..not to remain up to date.. but to remain period..viable/secure.. in this sense..hackers best thing that ever happened to software co’s…. out of fear of hackers constantly downloading latest version of corp spyware..
ubiquitous update.. beyond software.. to be is to be updated.. people no longer updated are no longer people in trouble.. things no longer updated are things no longer cared for.. crisis become ordinary to drive updates..
5 min – lauren berlant: [cruel optimism] what happens to fantasies of the good life when the ordinary becomes a landfill for overwhelming and impending crises of life-building and expectation whose sheer volume so threatens what it has meant to ‘have a life’ that adjustment seems like an accomplishment…
to update is to survive..
because we hold onto dreams of good life.. good life is undermined.. but w/o dreams we couldn’t survive.. if new media are new.. new as in constantly renewed.. doesn’t mean wondrous for first time.. but w/in is repetition..
transformation of something already known.. but new in renewal is always new as in decay.. ie: the new is filling the landfills..
to call into question new media is new.. saying it’s really old.. is not even close to good enough.. anticipation coupled with knowing disappointed is key.. combo of boredom and excitement
even after newness faded.. remains way we reshape imagination..
new media can’t survive.. if strange for first time.. people ignore
grocery stores.. redo entire store.. so you’ll notice new commodity.. habituation dulls us to environment..
9 min – turning habit: to have.. into addiction: to lose
new media matter most when they seem not to matter at all..
11 min – habit + crisis = update
12 min – have to know habits in order to change them.. habits are dependencies rather than things that offer shelter
rest of talk swirls around this formula.. habit+crisis=update.. perpetual motion in terms of silence..
p1\ new media again – digital media became new media in mid 1990s.. as mass media to end mass media…. we’ve always been trying to rid of term.. new media
13 min – newness of new media didn’t coincide with newness of tech.. it coincided with massive deregulation of us telecommunications industry.. new media became new when it became fictional.. ie: cyberspace and matrix
14 min – i argue in control and freedom: the idea of digital media is progress.. had everything to do with bad yet not entirely unfaithful reading of cyberpunk fiction.. problems that tech could/should solve..
alleged bodilessness of cyberspace became the solution to racism… no gender.. no age..
15 min – on commercials always showing happy people of color saying they are online.. get online if want to avoid being discriminated against.. but.. weren’t a lot of people online .. so message.. was saying .. thru paranoid logic.. get online because all these people already are..
17 min – clear in barlow’s cyberspace manifesto.. assumption.. that if one is silent one is coerced into conformity.. on internet free.. because no one knows who you are.. good.. online inner authentic selves could coincide.. bodies no longer matter.. true equality/democracy could finally be realized…
18 min – this is a really bizarre understanding of the internet.. given internet is a control protocol.. sharing of mis info.. new media not simply about leaks.. new media are leaky.. threshold between public/private.. wonderfully creepy.. machines work by leaking..
23 min – commercial … leaky ness.. reads all data.. but then deletes all not needed.. monogomous.. discretely erases indiscretion.. but devices are deceptively sealed.. but constantly leak.. not accidental.. w/o constant writing back and forth there’d be no internet.. no communication..
25 min – while exchange is necessary… not necessary it be stored.. constantly read/ripped forward compared.. diff between message and storage .. between captur and capture.. if tcsp.. key to surveillance not because of inherent nature of tech.. but political decisions to store and secure.. to reduce trust to authenticity..
if internet has become space of surveillance.. because no one knows your a dog.. replaced by.. semi private space of true names/images.. freedom stands from knowing who’s a dog.. authentic stems from the privately authenticating.. use value..
26 min – series of poorly gated communities put us at risk because give us illusion of boundaries.. illusion of log ins/privacy.. make it seem if worst danger from stranger.. rather than friends.. knife edge diff between friend/enemy.. from friendship come the greatest betrayals..
27 min – you as plural is not i’s become we’s..
28 min – participation does not automatically equal freedom/democracy.. need to ask.. why/how did freedom/democracy become reducible to participation.. where participation allegedly marked by production of diff.. so more diff more democracy.. where presence of nastiest comments become evidence/proof of democracy
29 min – diff between encoding and decoding..
ps in the open ness
30 min – critique isn’t going for that one false thing.. it’s taking what you think is true.. that moment you find yourself nodding the most.. and trying to figure out its limitations and possibilities.. does this still hold..
algo’s need mistakes/deviations to learn.. crises aren’t exceptions.. but opps to improve.. they feed the algo.. crisis+habit=update.. deviations are encouraged.. decoding drives encoding..
31 min – rethink assumption that silence is bad.. turn to jean baudrillard at his most perverse: in the shadow of the silent majorities + the masses implosions of the social in the media…. masses: an opaque yet translucent reality; anonymous, innumerable, unnameable… return here not to decide if silence is good or bad but to ask.. is silence still possible..in these two texts.. the strength of masses lies in silence.. non response as strategic resistance.. refusing choice/rationality all together..
although masses measured.. et al.. they are a black hole..
silence is an absolute weapon..no one can be said to rep the silent majority and that is its revenge.. no longer being subject they can no longer be alienated..
strength of masses.. is lack of verifiable perception.. lack of vocal participation..
32 min – lot of problems with baudrillard..ie: one of his ie’s of silence is mass watching of football game.. has issues around indifference/silence that need to be thought through..
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but silence as a positive brutality.. now impossible.. due to constant measures of testing that b dismisses as incapable of capturing masses because on side of simulation/representation..
so silence is now impossible.. not because of implosion of social in the media.. but because of the implosion of the media in the social.. because of rise of sm in which reception automatically coupled with response.. reading no longer private but tracked.. even when silent .. constantly betrayed by people like you.. because medium no longer the mass.. but you..
new media is new media.. not because you’re always always chattering.. but because of how you/your reception.. how you’re captured/compared.. how your deviation from medium is measured and appraised (?).. that is valued
34 min – so whole rhetoric around empowerment/security/transparency has been exposed as a farse.. not because we can all now speak and the world is not yet right.. what matters is not what we say.. but how we cannot not say things even when we’re silent.. ie: reading on kindle.. highlights.. even time spent on page measured..
silence impossible.. not only because constantly being captured but constantly being compared to people who like us and who are like us.. friends knit us more closely into networks.. internet of big data relies on nodes of liking/unliking
part 3 – like/like or the revenge of the valley girl.. notion of virality.. it tends to privilege everything.. everything spreads.. becomes a virus..
36 min – very difficult mathematically to know diff between contagion and tendency of people who are like each other to act alike..ie: between viral spread and habituation.. if want to stop virus.. wash hands..
37 min – this like like in making reality analog.. strange..analogy.. used to describe the real thing.. analog returning w vengeance.. everything like.. correlating habits.. combining ticks to larger social phenom.. ie: netflix.. challenge to improve recommend system
39 min (stopped)
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find/follow Wendy:
new media theorist. professor of modern culture and media
on brown site:
https://vivo.brown.edu/display/wchun
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), and Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016).. She is co-editor (with Tara McPherson and Patrick Jago
her book – updating to remain the same.. via mit press:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/wendy-hui-kyong-chun
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, who has studied both systems design and English literature, is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She is the author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics and Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, both published by the MIT Press.
the book – updating to remain same:
New media—we are told—exist at the bleeding edge of obsolescence. We thus forever try to catch up, updating to remain the same. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. But what do we miss in this constant push to the future? In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they seem not to matter at all—when they have moved from “new” to habitual.
another book – programmed visions via mit press
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-visions
New media thrives on cycles of obsolescence and renewal: from celebrations of cyber-everything to Y2K, from the dot-com bust to the next big things—mobile mobs, Web 3.0, cloud computing. In Programmed Visions, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun argues that these cycles result in part from the ways in which new media encapsulates a logic of programmability. New media proliferates “programmed visions,” which seek to shape and predict—even embody—a future based on past data. These programmed visions have also made computers, based on metaphor, metaphors for metaphor itself, for a general logic of substitutability.
Chun argues that the clarity offered by software as metaphor should make us pause, because software also engenders a profound sense of ignorance: who knows what lurks behind our smiling interfaces, behind the objects we click and manipulate? The combination of what can be seen and not seen, known (knowable) and not known—its separation of interface from algorithm and software from hardware—makes it a powerful metaphor for everything we believe is invisible yet generates visible, logical effects, from genetics to the invisible hand of the market, from ideology to culture.
be you. 