Tag Archives: Conferences

Googlization of Everything… (keynote, AoIR Conference)

  By netcrit | October 9, 2009 - 04:06 | See
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‘The Googlization of Everything and the Human Knowledge Project’ Keynote presentation by Siva Vaidhyanathan Blogging, Tweeting and backchanneling… hm… Books about the Internet are a challenge because of the time from completion to publication and the speed of change in things Internet. How long can you go without using Google? – Some google product will influence most of your online activities. Despite the short time of the company’s existence it has a profound impact on our lives. Focus of concern is from the commencement of the Google scanning of millions of library books; worrying for Siva and, moreover, positive reaction from commentators (Kelly, Lessig) also worrying. Is this transformational? Why is it claimed to be? Does it realise librarians’ dreams for perfect digital information sharing? And yet it seems Google is positively viewed – partly because they give so much, and no money changes hands. We are not Google’s customers, however, we are their product. Google learns from us. Googlization – “processed, rendered and represented by Google” – knowledge, communication and us can be Googlized. [Link to the notion of content-generated user I am developing]. Note the massive array of applications and services within Google. Brin says : perfect search … Click to read more →

ANZCA Conference 2009 – Qui Keynote

  By netcrit | July 9, 2009 - 12:36 | See
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Communication research in an era of recession: reflections from China Jack Linchuan Qui, Chinese University of Hong Kong Context provided by the global recession; do the new technologies and the new financial informatic processes matter when we see how the global recession developed and spread. This is a context of communications research, no longer in an era of apparent endless economic prosperity; not dissimilar to Frankfurt School in 1930s; wartime propaganda research in USA in 1940s. And, for Chinese scholars, very important, because communications research in China has always been conducted within prosperity (from 1990s onwards). Example: Uighur violence in China; revelation is this. China has control over Twitter; but not over the uploading of phone cam video via Youtube and related sites. CHhina now appears as a ‘broken picture’ – both modern and developed; also full of “ugly” strife. research in recession – “assumptions of scarcity, non-linear history, bottom-up action”; very different to research in prosperity; [I would note the interesting dialetical implication here; about the conditions of research and its purposes, counterposing approaches and needs based on whether we are in good or bad times; times determine the change in approach]. Continues to counterpose methods, motives depending on … Click to read more →

ANZCA Conference 2009 – Couldry Keynote

  By netcrit | July 9, 2009 - 09:04 | See
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Voice: Culture and politics beyond the horizon of neoliberalism Nick Couldry Goldsmiths, University of London His project is the “crisis of voice”, under the conditions of neoliberalism (market function as dominant concept in economics; but also, wider set of metaphors, practices etc – that embed the concept in operation of society). Also notes critical importance (citing Foucault) of regulation within the neoliberal project; cites Brown also – state needs to enforce market logics, extend them, inculcate them. What might come after neoliberalism? Neoliberalism simplifies, reduces; the critical stategy against it is also to simplify; provide a limit to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism’s obsession with competition creates an unstable form of social organisation. Neoliberalism has led, in various ways, to a form of network organisation in which people are not permanently ‘attached’ to groups or organisations, but are connected in a contingent and potentially fragile manner. Couldry is critical of the failure of proponents of networked digital media culture to see the link between neoliberalism and digital media networking (eg criticises Leadbeater); Hayek – neoliberalism involves the triumph of aggregations of individual ends; not social ends. Therefore, participatory network media – which appears to be all about aggregated individualism – seems to Couldry … Click to read more →