CRDM 701
Week 11 - Kathy
About a year ago, I began to notice large grey poles along my normal driving routes, which upon further inspection had cameras attached to them. They must have been put up overnight, since I never saw the people who put them there. Yes, things are different after 9/11. Yes, I want to feel safe. I wonder, though, if a massive deployment of cameras along the roads of a suburban community with virtually no crime is a little excessive. Is this an indication of something more than simply "montoring traffic"? After reading Becoming Bombs: Mobilizing Mobility, it is making more sense - perhaps it is a symptom of the shift from a logic of safety to one of security, in this case, "activated through a particular mode of mobility, the automobile" (Packer, 2006, p. 380).
Talking about the shift to a security society, Packer notes that with the development of communications, command, and control networks (C3) "rather than being treated as one to be protected from an exterior force and one?s self, the citizen is now treated an always potential threat, a becoming bomb" (p.382). What immediately came to mind was the Matrix (1999), and the idea that at any time, an average citizen in the Matrix could become an Agent, posing an insurmountable threat. The Matrix could instantly become a dangerous place for those on the side of the resistance, and so needed to be constantly monitored from the Nebuchadnezzar -- a mobile command unit -- to ensure the safe movement of Morpheus and his crew.
The discussion of mobile command units - the Ford prototype and the Hummer Militia (scary thought) - made me think about Carey's (1989) discussion of the expansion of European Empires via the printing press*. With the printing press, Carey highlights the centralization of authority as well as the decentralization of national administration (p. 158). When any vehicle can be a bomb, it makes sense that any other vehicle should become an extension of the State, like an Agent in the Matrix. The idea of making truck drivers and commuters or an assemblage of electronic devices and software a decentralized extension of the centralized State at first seems like a logical choice - until, that is, we take into account what constitutes "suspicious activity." If, as Packer writes the recognition is dependent on "risk assessment algorithms of mobilities" (p. 392), there is a lot of wiggle room on what could be "suspicious". In a world where C3 networks could also track credit card purchases, phone calls, and library records, a simple run to Target for cleaning supplies and a stop at Lowes for some plywood could be suspicious - maybe more so if said vehicle has also been located at a Green Peace meeting. Maybe you aren't spending the weekend cleaning and doing a little home fix-up - maybe now you are explaining your patterns of automobility to the feds.
I am also interested in another kind of mobility - virtual mobility. What web sites you visit, your virtual mobility, could indicate a future threat. As someone who did research on hacking, I can't help but think that my Internet histories could be seen as having interesting future trajectories - perhaps as a L337 H4X0R? While I would be flattered, I certainly lack the skills. I still wonder sometimes if my patterns of virtual mobility will ever compel someone to ask me politely to change my research topics, or to come to different conclusions.
Something that I would like to discuss more in class is the move from disciplinarily to control societies, and I am interested in learning more about the idea of control societies in general. Packer (2006) cites Deluze as calling for us to "see into and before the dawning of this control society in order to prepare modes of resistance" (p. 384). Effective resistance to the control society is more than sabotage, but (again, citing Deluze) to "create vacuoles of noncommunication, circuit breakers, so we can elude control" (p. 396). I'm thinking lately about re-visiting my thesis topic (hackers) and feel like this might be an interesting way to pick up where I left off, and perhaps look at hackers as a circuit breaker.
Switching gears real quick: At the point that Innis discusses the format change from papyrus roll to parchment codex and the "system of censorship" involved (1951, p. 48), I was reminded of how changes in format can leave valuable information behind, deliberately or not. In that case, it was a ban on secular learning - these days, what gets lost seems to have a lot to do with profitability. As in, don?t trash those LP's, VHS tapes, and books - not everything makes the cut, and the move to digital means a lot of things might get lost. There are a lot of cool preservation projects out there - check out this one that asks people to send in all kinds of moving images for archiving: http://www.archive.org/details/movies.
See you all tomorrow!
*for you, Dawn.
Posted at 04:45PM Nov 07, 2007 by kfoswald in Week 11 | Comments[44]
Week 11 - Jon
Jeremy Packer opens "Becoming Bombs: Mobilizing Mobility in the War of Terror" with an extension of the battlefield proper to the homes and streets of Americans: "In the US?s new war of terror a specific formation of the war machine has been turned upon its own citizenry. Citizens and non-citizens alike are now treated as an always present threat. In this sense all are imagined as combatants and all-terrain the site of battle" (378). Post 9/11, many individuals have willingly accepted restrictions on certain freedoms in exchange for a sense of safety and security. Supporters of giving unrestricted power to Homeland Security must rationalize the presence of an "Empire 'based on a state of permanent exception and police action'" (380). Images of what might happen without such a symbolic entity of security ? film clips and audio from overseas, simulations both realistic and virtual, and media speculation ? all seem to be contributing factors to why one would make sacrifices for a sense of safety.
Despite such fears, there is certainly a fascination with the potentiality of war in the streets. Many video games, for example, provide the imagery of monuments and skyscrapers as the ultimate battleground. For example, a student of mine is writing a paper on an advertisement for a video game, "World in Conflict." The ad, a two page spread, features planes engaged in a hyper-real air battle. The planes are surrounded with explosions, some of which mirror the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb. The setting for the missile exchange is a national monument: the Statue of Liberty. At the top of the page are the words, "America the Battleground." Thus, it seems like many Americans fear a terror attack and look to Homeland Security for protection, but are, at the same time, strangely fascinated with the idea of war in our country. Of course, regardless of who is purchasing these games and simulating a virtual war in the streets, every citizen is seen as a threat: "Citizen?s become bombs, not simply by choice or through cell propaganda and training, but by Homeland Security itself" (381). It seems the virtual allows our fears to become interactive fantasies.
I was also interested in how, in a control society, mobility is limited through access to space. For one, obviously, I can only go where the road will take me (unless I'm off-roading in my Civic). So, I am protected from driving off of a cliff or into the ocean in Looney Tunes-esque fashion. However, mobility controls are beyond just the network of roads to which our cars seem to be affixed. Packer describes other restrictions on mobility: "the ability to be mobile, to move from one place to another, can be governed at the level of the individual" (383). These restrictions exist, but, even in the post 9/11 era of increased security, they seem to be lax, which, I assume, is a result of prioritization. There are speed limits posted everywhere, yet few people follow them. Drivers even have an assumed rule with police that 5ish mph over is not considered speeding. And, I am not going to lie, I drove my car with an expired inspection sticker for two months. So, we are constantly trouncing upon mobility restrictions and experiencing no consequences. As technology and its use for control continues to evolve, it seems we will have less and less control over mobility and will move toward what Packer terms "the dystopic vision of a control society future; all individuals fully remotely controllable" (384). The idea of remotely controlled mobility reminds me of a toy I had as a child that was a "remote control" car attached to a wire. So, the car was always grounded to a central authority, never truly mobile beyond an arm's reach. What was termed ?remote? wasn't really remote at all. Moreso in the post 9/11 era, the wire between our means of mobility and bodies of control seems to be tightening.
In "Space, Time, and Communications," James Carey provides an interesting discussion of Innis's groundbreaking interdisciplinary research. The following quote seemed particularly useful in the context of the Packer article discussed above: "Even if society were like an organism, there would be some controlling element, some centralized brain in the body, some region and group that would collect the power necessary to direct the nerves of communication and the arteries of transportation" (152). Thus, the organism, our means of mobility, the remote control car, are always being controlled and manipulated by an outside force. The means of this direction and its purpose are determined by historical and theoretical contexts. Packer and Robertson's introduction to Thinking with James Carey: Essays on Communications, Transportation, History puts the inseparable bond between history, communications, and theory nicely: "Communications theory is never to be ahistorical and communications history is never to be atheoretical" (3). Given the difficult situation surrounding resistance outlined in the conclusion to Packer's essay, how do we resist control society? Do individuals and groups of resistance run the risk of being labeled as terrorists?
Posted at 02:23PM Nov 07, 2007 by jtburr in Week 11 | Comments[0]