E-Santé : Résistance, autonomie et environnements apomédiés
La quatrième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Corps et TIC : approches socio-anthropologiques des usages numériques a eu lieu le jeudi 27 janv. 2011. Le sujet traité : e-santé, médecine 2.0, le rôle des professionnels de santé, des collectifs de militants des droits des patients et des pouvoirs étatiques. Voici, comme d’habitude, les slides.
ATTENTION CHANGEMENT DE DATE : La prochaine séance (où il sera question de corps dans les médias sociaux) aura exceptionnellement lieu le VENDREDI 11 février 2011 de 17h à 19h en SALLE 2, EHESS, 105 bd Raspail 75006 Paris. Pour s’inscrire, il suffit de m’envoyer un petit mail gentil.
E sante – Résistance, autonomie et environnements apomédiés
Merchandising WikiLeaks
A long lineage of cultural critics, from Guy Debord to Carl Roscoe, have insisted on the unique ability of contemporary societies to ‘merchandise dissent’. Also, one man’s foe is another man’s icon. So, after Saddam Hussein’s card decks and the Osama Bin Laden Russian dolls, US new public enemy n. 1, WikiLeaks, spawns a series of novelty products. Here’s my – so to speak – favourites.
Category: dog clothing
Origin: USA
Price: $ 18.95Let’s say you have a small yappy dog. Which is admittedly already pretty annoying. What would you do to make it into an even more annoying little animal? Well buy a « I heart heart heart WikiLeaks » dog tee-shirt. Please note the Gothic font, which automatically adds a biker tattoo twist to the whole thing.
My article « A History of Virulence » finally published in Body and Society
Sage journal Body and Society vol 16, n. 4 is finally out! Pardon my enthusiasm, but this issue features my 30-page essay A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s: a killer mix of hackerdom, virality and computer nostalgia that also happens to be IMHO one hell of a contribution to the cultural history of the body in cyberculture.
Abstract: The recent turn in ubiquitous computing challenges previous theories of ‘technological disembodiment’. In a mediascape where technology permeates bodies, the current discourse of viral information insinuates elements of fear and risk associated with both physical presence and computer usage. This article adopts a socio-historical approach to investigate the factors underlying the early emergence of such features of our social imaginary by tracking them back to the computer culture of the 1980s. Analysing both mainstream and underground press sources from 1982 to 1991, a discursive core is revealed that revolves around the ‘computer virus’ metaphor. Popularized in this period, this notion came to resonate with mounting moral panic over the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Anxieties about the body in computer culture are then conceptualized (and historically contextualized) along two dimensions: first, the political proximity between HIV/AIDS activists and computer hackers during the FDA clinical trials controversy of 1987—8; and, second, the ideological reinforcement provided by academic progressive elements to these political actions. The implications of these results are discussed.
A few weeks ago, I published a « autor’s cut » version on this very blog (here part1 and part2) and you can download the unread proofs by clicking here (not for citation, please). Of course, if you want to download the published version, help yourself here. You might as well drop me a kind email and ask for a certain attachment ;) And if you want to cite the article, because that’s what academics do, please find enclosed the complete reference.
Casilli, Antonio A. (2010). A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s Body & Society, 16 (4), 1-31 DOI: 10.1177/1357034X10383880
A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s (part 2 – with illustrations)
From viral marketing to computer viruses, the cultural logic of virality permeates the Web. The December 2010 issue of the Sage journal Body & Society will publish my long-awaited 36-page essay « A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s ». The text that follows is the second part of the « author’s cut » version of the article: an archeology of computer-mediated moral panic, autonomist marxist hacking, and AIDS activism. Click here for the first part.
Computers – Viral or Visceral?
This ‘viral turn’ in mainstream computer narratives was absorbed in a somewhat paradoxical way into users’ milieus. The symbolic coincidence of the body and computing machinery, as well as the related viral motives, were enthusiastically adopted by computer amateurs. This appropriation can be read as a typical ironic strategy mirroring hegemonic taxonomies (Ang, 1985; Storey, 2006), a way of transcending labelling through self-stigmatization. In this sense, virulence developed into a cultural process of unapologetic ‘counterpride display’ typical of youth subcultures (Richards, 1988). In the context of 1980s computer culture, this can be interpreted as something that aimed not only to empower autonomous social practices through political recognition but also to normalize personal motivations and behaviours through the inscription of technological activity in the intimate sphere of the body. The mimicking of the media hype was not only performed with satirical intent. It also performed a deliberate distortion and amplification of the viral discourse into one of ‘viscerality’. The classical Cartesian superposition between body and machine – implied by the mainstream rhetoric of computer viruses – expanded into a thematic sequence that came to be dominated by the image of the machine penetrating the body.
Understanding how computer culture adopted the stigma of being a ‘virus’ and turning it into an asset requires first understanding the relative place and status of the computer in late 20th-century consumer culture. The process of miniaturization of computing technology that had led from the 13-ton UNIVAC (1951) to the 30-odd kilo IBM 5100 (1975), was also a process of re-territorialization. While the post-war ‘electronic giant brains’ (Berkeley, 1949) occupied military bunkers and industrial basements, the 1980s saw the infiltration of computing machines into the private sphere. Decades before ubiquitous computing, homeand family-computers took up residence inside the houses of a new generation of electronic amateurs1. Commercial names changed in step, evoking everyday life and homely informality. The most successful products had common male and female names like Lisa or Vic2. They conjured up the unthreatening pleasures of family life: children (Junior, Piccolo), small animals (Pet, Bee), and fruits (Apple, Acorn, etc)3. Products designating power, luxury and imposing size were destined to sell poorly4. Specialized press targeting computer users developed these motifs. Home privacy became synonymous with personal, bodily intimacy. In the media, there was an increasing trend to emphasize the association between autonomous computing and bodily performance, beauty and health. The well-known Apple 1984 TV commercial (Scott, 1984)5, for example, staged the liberating power of personal computers by opposing a young female athlete to a crowd of senile users living under the rule of an Orwellian Big Brother.
These initial remarks are corroborated and extended by the analysis of visual sources. At first glance, the depictions of computers associated with sports and physical activities duplicate this buoyant bodily imaginary. For example, Figure 2 clearly places the computer in a family setting. The presence of a father and his son suggests intergenerational unity and family ordinariness. The father wearing sports gear further indicates that computing can be seen as a substitute for physical exercise.
Figure 2. Family computer and physical exercise (Anon., 1983a – courtesy of old-computers.com)
- The domestication of computers, which some commentators date back to the mid 1990s (Cummings and Kraut, 2002; Frohlich and Kraut, 2003; Kraut et al., 2006), was actually a distinctive phenomenon of the previous decade. ↩
- One of the milestones in Apple’s rise to commercial supremacy was a computer christened Lisa, named after Steve Job’s daughter. In the 1980s, another big hitter was Commodore’s Vic20, whose name, according to its creator, ‘sounded like a truck driver’ (Bagnall, 2003). ↩
- Among the best-know nexamples of computer names inspired by childhood are: the IBM PC jr, the Japanese Junior100 and the Danish RC Piccolo. Animal and fruit names were also commercially successful: for example, the Commodore’s Pet was followed by BWV’s Husky and by Applied Technologies’ MicroBee; early European competitors of Apple included Acorn computers and Apricot PC. ↩
- After 1982, a number of short-lived home computers with pretentious names popped up: the Welsh Dragon Data, the English Atom, the Belgian Charlemagne 999, the French Orchidé́e as well as the American Vixen were all forced out of the market by 1984. ↩
- For a complete description see Linzmayer (1999) and Friedman (2005). ↩
A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s (part 1)
From viral marketing to computer viruses, the cultural logic of virality permeates the Web. The December 2010 issue of the Sage journal Body & Society will publish my long-awaited 36-page essay « A History of Virulence: The Body and Computer Culture in the 1980s ». The text that follows is the first part of the « author’s cut » version of the article: an archeology of computer-mediated moral panic, autonomist marxist hacking, and AIDS activism. Click here for the second part.
Ubiquity, Embodiment, Virality
The emergence of ubiquitous media and the focus on pervasive computer networks seem to have introduced a major shift in the way information and communication technologies are practised and represented in contemporary societies. Since the early 2000s, the consensus around theories of a virtual humanity ‘homesteading on the electronic frontier’ – the ethereal cyberspace where users were to be ‘uploaded’ (Lévy, 1994; Rheingold, 1993) – have progressively given way to approaches to computer-mediated social interaction centred on mixed realities. According to these new theoretical stances, digital technologies are to be regarded as a domain of affordances extending and enhancing physical presence rather than superseding it (Hansen, 2006). Significantly enough, the author who popularized the very notion of ‘cyberspace’, William Gibson, acknowledges this momentous development in his novel Spook Country: if the pre-ubiquitous technological paradigm can be described as ‘a state in which ‘‘mass’’ media existed, if you will, within the world’, in the ubiquitous one they ‘comprise it’ (2007: 121).
Ubiquitous computing does not transcend everyday experience, rather it pervades reality by saturating the actual space of the cities and by infusing physical bodies. Featherstone (2007: 320) describes this media ontology by suggesting that ‘as media become ubiquitous they become increasingly embedded in material objects and environments, bodies and clothing, zones of transmission and reception’. After Simondon, Bernard Stiegler defines social and ubiquitous media as a ‘human techno-geographical milieu’ (in Venn et al., 2007), that is, a socio-technological process converting human corporeality into information. Following Stiegler’s emphasis on the need to harmonize symbolic, technical and material milieus, new couplings of the body, social imaginaries and social practices come into view.
Scratch the surface of any vandal and you find a “regular” Wikipedia user
On August 13, 2010, a database of the most reverted English Wikipedia pages has been released by Dmitry Chichkov on the Wiki-research mailing list. « Reverts ratio » (i.e. the ratio of invalidated changes to a certain article / the total number of revisions) is considered as a reliable indicator of vandalism in Wikipedia. (In case you wanted a piece of the action, here is the link to the list of the most reverted pages and here is the python script used to calculate it). A preliminary analysis performed by one of the administrators, Utkarshraj Atmaram, provides us with a good insight as to who vandals are.
Source: Utkarshraj Atmaram, ut7.in / blog
Of course, the target pages fall in some predictable categories, like sex (16%), excrements (7%), and insults (7%). Read more
De l’informatique juridique au juges neuronaux : perspectives transdisciplinaires
L’intervention de Danièle Bourcier (CERSA CNRS) dans le cadre du séminaire EHESS « Transdisciplinarité et numérique » de vendredi dernier, 18 juin 2010, a représenté une excellente conclusion pour nos travaux de réflexion autour de l’impact de l’informatique sur la recherche au croisement de plusieurs disciplines. Voilà les slides de la présentation, en version pdf.
Je saisis l’occasion pour remercier Danièle pour son excellent travail d’encadrement théorique, mais aussi pour nous avoir présenté son parcours de chercheuse hors du commun, qui a traversé le droit de l’informatique, l’informatique juridique, le droit appliqué aux systèmes experts simulant les décisions des juges à travers des réseaux de neurones artificiels – jusqu’à arriver à la création du chapitre français de Creative Commons dont elle est la responsable scientifique. Non seulement l’exposé a été passionnant, mais la discussion, malgré une fin d’année universitaire particulièrement calme, a été très riche.
Powerpoint de Dominique Dupagne: médecine 2.0, e-santé et réseaux sociaux
Voilà les slides de l’intervention de Dominique Dupagne (atoute.org) dans le cadre de mon séminaire EHESS Transdisciplinarité et numérique. J’en profite pour remercier Dominique pour la passion et la pertinence de son intervention laquelle a été particulièrement appréciée par l’assistance, constituée cette fois-ci surtout par des citoyens, des patients, des militants de la médecine collaborative.
« Jamais-toujours »: an experiment in urban writing
by Antonio A. Casilli (Centre Edgar-Morin, EHESS) [1]
First off, the big news: Marianne Heier‘s exhibition Jamais-Toujours is now on at the Stenersen Museum, Oslo, Norway. It runs from January 14th to March 14th, 2010. If you are around, definitely go! If you are not, tell, tweet, email your friends who might be around – to definitely go!
Last time we met in Paris, Marianne Heier and Marco Vaglieri (her « partner in crime » and, incidentally, the gentleman you see writing in this picture) explained to me the central piece to the exhibition is a video-photo installation containing a reference to the famous graffiti « Don’t ever work » – Ne travaillez jamais – which philosopher Guy Debord inscribed on a wall in rue de Seine, somewhere in the 1950s. Marianne’s work has thus to be regarded as a détournement/reversal of the situationist slogan, a bitter commentary to the failure of a political attempt to « free men from labour ».
In this sense, one can understand the artist’s statement as to how the title « Never-Always » must « be read as a testimony of how the relation between production and investments has changed » since the post-WWII European youth movements. But Marianne Heier’s installation also plays out as an archeology of urban writing, one of the most relevant forms of expression within these movements. Jamais-Toujours is based on thorough bibliographical and fieldwork research in order to track down the exact address, down to the very same portion of the wall where Debord first wrote his situationist slogan – and to replace it by its contemporary actualization. Ironically, the immediacy, the quest for authenticity, the desire to represent « life as it is » which initially motivated these forms of écriture urbaine is here replaced by painstaking attention to the design of an artistic experience whose features and competencies match those required by – well, work.
Hitler, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the fading legitimacy of academic institutions
By Antonio A. Casilli (Centre Edgar-Morin, EHESS) [1]
Another day, another Hitler parody video. This one (courtesy of http://criticalcommons.org) is a rant about the rise of digital scholarship - a subjet I cherish and occasionally deal with in my seminar. The German dictator, now reborn as a grotesque Internet meme, highlights the existing cultural divide between the up-and-coming Internet-savvy « junior » scholars and the ageing generation of paper-intensive, book-prone professors and researchers. Bitterly, he claims academic teaching is « a dying profession » (why he’s not the only one: check here and here).
« We were great once », cries Hitler, voicing the disappointment of old time academics. « A proud institution. We controlled knowledge: we told everyone what and how to think. Now (…) we spend our time propping up our fading legitimacy ».
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What’s this blog about?
I'm an associate professor of Digital Humanities at the Paris Institute of Technology (ParisTech) and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS, Paris). Bodyspacesociety offers regular updates about my ongoing research, publications, and teaching. If you want updates on media features and conferences, please click here.
The views presented on this blog are solely mine and do not represent the positions of my institutions of affiliation.
New books out now!
The special issue of the journal 'Communications' Cultures du numérique is out. Also, you might want to check my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?. Both published by Editions du Seuil, both available in bookshops and online.
» Buy Liaisons numériques
» Visit the companion website
» Buy Cultures du numérique (Communications, n. 88)
All blog content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 France License.
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