Wendy Hui Kyong Chun‘Control and Freedom’ Power and the paranoia in the age of fiber optics'

Control Society FlexibilityCodesModulationsPotential health risksPrisoners with more freedom of movement,more precise tracking

Discipline SocietyConfinement

Mass individuationMolds

PatientsFour-walled prison

VS

Control SocietyUserFreedom

Discipline SocietySubjectLiberty

VS

The two ways a user is controlled:2)a part of a two-way system that she's often not aware of3)is proliferating images of herself that she can't control

Key ideas: Control-freedom as techno-determinist critiquea. theory-come-true moments

Key ideas: Control freedom astechno-determinist critiqueb. technology as solution to political problems

Key Ideas: Software Myth ‘Software cannot be physically separated from hardware, only ideologically’ (Chun, 2006: 19)

Key ideas: Software Myth Kindle example (tethered devices)

Key Ideas: SexualityPower relations in this control-freedom coupling in the context of fiber-optic networks, for Chun, are often experienced through sexuality.

Total freedom Paranoid view of online surveillance

National Security Agency (NSA) and Data-miningGive feeling of freedom Controling your freedom

Facebook Do you have a Facebook?

Net NeutralityThere are always processes of control even when the underlying hardware provides freedom and openness.

Other examples- Google / Google profile- OV- chipkaart- More???

DISCUSSION

What now? How can we come up with a useful ratio between power and freedom?

Software as ideology Can we swallow that software doesn't exist? (a materialist reduction similar to neurobiologists (Heinz von Foerster) and roboticists (Rodney Brooks and Lynn Stein).

Freedom-control dynamic debate -Galloway: the founding principle of the net is control - protocological control – freedom resides in possibility of resistance (counter-protocol)-Chun: openness in these protocols can point towards a certain freedom.