<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2">Hi Martin,<br>My
presentation was actually on the orientalist imaginations inscribed in
the conceptions of the human machine assemblages. I used a media archaeological analysis to demonstrate the
role of the oriental other in the </font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2">18<sup>th</sup> century automata that incorporated the
mechanical animation of Muslim bodies for mediation of the key philosophical
discussions on Cartesian mind/body duality</font>.
Within the long history of human workers kept hidden behind the
machines, or as specters that animated the industrial machine, Amazon's
utilization of Kempelen's Mechanical Turk automaton as its metaphor for
branding and the model for exploitation in the age of cognitive labor
looks like a corporate Turret syndrome. <br>
<br>The cultural as you suggested is not a mere superstructure but it
is at the center of the evolution of these technologies. Before the
actualization of many technologies we see the efforts of imaginations
and conceptualizations through various devices that act as the cultural
apparatus for later reconfigurations. 18th century automata was among
such apparatus and many of the notions we discuss today were explored
through their proxies of that time, the chess playing Turk being one of
them. It was a safe proxy for exploring the uncanny possibilities of
the idea of autonomous machines. Interestingly today, it is still
relevant to such an extent that its vivid image is almost transparent
or outside of our field of vision as a factor in our analysis of the
alterity in the cognitive labor. <br>
Thank you for bringing this issue up. I also wanted to thank Trebor
for organizing this conference, it was a great experience for me and I
learned a lot. <br><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>Ayhan Aytes<br>
<br>Ph.D. Candidate<br>University of California San Diego<br>Department of Communication<br><br>Ayhan Aytes<br><br>Ph.D. Candidate<br>University of California San Diego<br>Department of Communication<br><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 2:45 PM, Martin Roberts <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:RobertsM@newschool.edu">RobertsM@newschool.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Once again, many thanks to Trebor for making this happen - Stuart Brand would be proud of you! Below are a few comments, intended as a somewhat devil's advocate account of what I saw as some of the aporias of the event, which was otherwise deeply thought-provoking, intellectually challenging, and, inevitably, Fun.<br>
<br>
What I found most immediately striking was the reluctance of most presenters - including, myself, I must acknowledge - to stray beyond the comfort zone of certain theoretical platforms, most obviously Marxism. While many of the issues relating to digital labor explored at the conference are transnational in nature, the theoretical frameworks deployed to analyze them remained centered on European and Anglo-American models, in spite of the growing availability of translated work by Latin American, South Asian, and East Asian media theorists.<br>
<br>
I was also troubled by the programmatic nature of certain statements, notably Christian Fuchs' call for a communist internet - as if one could somehow magically conjure it into existence merely by calling for it; as if it was something we all wanted - or should want - anyway. While such models seem overly normative, I'm interested in the emergent possibilities of the internet as a space for anarchist practices and organized resistance to capitalism. Unfortunately, anarchism - whether as an explanatory model or a political ideal - was entirely eclipsed by Marxist orthodoxy, in spite of the evident continuities between historical anarchist communities and contemporary piracy networks, both in terms of ideology and social organization. Siva Vaidhyanathan's works Copyrights and Copywrongs and The Anarchist in the Library explicitly characterize the contemporary struggle over digital property as one between anarchists and oligarchs, yet the role the internet has played as a medium for anarchist communities, and of anarchism itself as an alternative model to relations of capitalist production, were not explored. (If this sounds utopian to communists, to paraphrase Brecht, I would ask those who see it as such to explain why it is utopian.)<br>
<br>
A second concern was the apparent displacement - once again - of the cultural by political-economic perspectives, at least at the panels I attended. While the cultural was a phantom presence at most of these, from references to Chinese gold "farmers" (a term which the young men in question repudiate) to Amazon's Mechanical "Turk," it remained incidental, and the cultural politics of such terms, and the Orientalist mythologies inscribed and reproduced in some of them, remained unexamined. (I wonder, for example, what my Turkish media-theorist friend Aras Ozgun might have to say about Amazon's "Mechanical Turk.") While I do understand that the focus of the conference was primarily on (im)material political economies, the assumption that the cultural is merely a superstructural epiphenomenon of these is - or so I thought - by now an antiquated notion.<br>
<br>
In the latter context, a particular concern of mine has been the Japanization of the discourse on digital media, perhaps best exemplified in the Mac vs. PC commercial in which the two male protagonists encounter a mini-skirted Japanese "digital camera," with which the Mac, predictably, is magically able to communicate in fluent Japanese. Ludicrous as the ad is, it exemplifies the pervasiveness of gendered techno-Orientalist cultural mythologies in Western media, equally apparent in the cult of "Zen" on productivity blogs and the fetishization of Japanese culture by influential Western business "gurus" such as Gar Reynolds. But perhaps this is another paper (or conference).<br>
<br>
--------<br>
Martin Roberts<br>
Assistant Professor of Media Studies<br>
Eugene Lang College / BA Program in Liberal Arts<br>
The New School<br>
66 West 12th Street<br>
New York, NY 10011<br>
212.229.5119<br>
<a href="mailto:robertsm@newschool.edu">robertsm@newschool.edu</a><br>
<a href="http://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty.aspx?id=1738" target="_blank">http://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty.aspx?id=1738</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
--------<br>
Martin Roberts<br>
Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies<br>
Bachelors Program in Liberal Arts / Eugene Lang College<br>
The New School<br>
66 West 12th Street<br>
New York, NY 10011<br>
212.229.5119 (voice)<br>
212.229.2588 (fax)<br>
<a href="mailto:robertsm@newschool.edu">robertsm@newschool.edu</a><br>
<a href="http://www.newschool.edu" target="_blank">http://www.newschool.edu</a><br>
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