ideometric

Here’s the rough draft proposal for my senior thesis. It’s vague and all, and needs some better vocabulary (global culture? what’s that?) but atleast it’s a place to start getting ideas for what I should be reading.

The flow of culture through international trade, migration, and new communications technologies is an important part of globalization. To a large extent, these flows are characterized by unequal power relations, privileging the cultural expansion of the dominant core countries, and the US in particular. This is reflected in critiques of ‘Americanization,’ ‘Western modernity,’ and global cultural homogenization. The globalization ofculture often results in a forced hybridization or negotiation of the global and the local, where global flows threaten to displace less powerful local cultures, challenging or expanding traditional identities, ways of life, and forms of expression.

However, new media and the information and communication technologies that underlie the emerging information society, such as the internet, computers, and cell phones, are often described as empowering and democratic. These technologies decentralize capability and control in the sense that individuals have greater capability to manipulate and create culture, as well as greater control over how and what they consume. At the same time, computer networks are opening alternative distribution channels that make marginal/niche cultures more viable.

Do these new technologies reshape transnational cultural relationships in ways that challenge existing inequalities by creating a more democratic, fragmented global culture? Or do they support the expansion of a homogenizing, hegemonic global culture? I will begin by surveying these two opposing views, followed by analysis illuminated by localized ethnographic detail, situated within a macro examination of transnational power structures.

An interesting story in Wired about life behind China’s “Golden Shield” aka the Great Firewall. Here’s a clipping.

For all its ambition, the gears of the giant surveillance machine keep getting fouled with sand. On one side of the Great Firewall, a small industry is sprouting up, dedicated to evading blocks and monitors. Libertarian software engineers, enterprising students, banned religious groups, and regular for-profit companies compete with one another to launch new downloadable tools that outfox the censors. They exploit proxy servers, deploy encryption technology, and ferret out holes in the wall. I have spent many afternoons in the Internet cafés of Beijing’s Haidian University district, learning from the students who live in this world. For a dollar an hour, they will help anyone hack the system: set up secure SSH and VPN connections, use a circumvention tool called UltraSurf developed by the banned Falun Gong group, access unregulated Chinese peer-to-peer networks. Their techniques confirm John Gilmore’s adage: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

Makes me wonder how high a priority enforcing the firewall is, if kids can hang out in a cafe offering these services. Maybe authorities are just resigned to the futility of enforcement except in cases that they perceive as threatening?  What type of people subvert the firewall, and for what purposes? To access, or to publish? Is this a trivial thing for the average person meeting their information needs, or does it constitute a radical act? What are these “unregulated Chinese peer-to-peer networks”? I need to read up on UltraSurf too.

Sources: Wired Article /BoingBoing

This gallery of Fred Herzog’s work from the 1950s and 60s caught my eye. I like his compositions and the saturated colors of the street. I think that most of the pictures are in and around Vancouver.

Sources: Equinox Gallery, Fred Herzog Official Site

An interesting article from a CIA publication about the use of the internet in North Korea. I wonder how the internet  is used by the (presumably few and priveliged) who have access. The article brings up points about how computers are easier, in some ways, to control than other technologies that have been repurposed with revolutionary intent inside totalitarian regimes. North Korea is an extreme case, and China’s leaky firewall is probably a more easily generalized case study on censorship, activism, and the net (my guess, anyway).

 ” While allowing researchers to use the Internet to keep current with global trends in science and technology, P’yongyang has been able to retain control over unwelcome political information. The government can promote scientific exploration while keeping researchers in country and under surveillance. Computers conducting Internet searches are more readily monitored than the photocopying machines that served to spread forbidden political tracts in the former Soviet Union. With Internet searches easily tracked and the penalties for political dissent grave, it is difficult to imagine scientists straying from technology sites. The same applies to the domestic Intranet, where technicians exchanging e-mail messages on political issues would run a serious risk of late-night knocks on the door by members of the security forces.”

Source: Mercado, Stephen. Hermit Surfers of Pyongyang. CIA Studies in Intelligence, VOL. 48, NO. 1, 2004 Unclassified Edition. Online version.

Don’t ask me. It was on Youtube.

Twittervision is one of the best visualizations/mashups I’ve seen, or atleast the most compelling. It gives you fast moving snap-shot of what people are thinking around the world: desires, mishaps, ponderings, mundane details, etc. The homogeneity is striking; I saw dozens of people all over the world talking about the Heroes TV show. But then again, it’s limited to data from twitter (never explored it), which is probably pretty narrow.