Sign-In
Cart
Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
Paperback
General ComputersGeneral Sociology
ISBN13: 9780262533065
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: Oct 1 2008
Pages: 364
Weight: 1.20
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.60 Depth: 8.70
Language: English
How has the Internet, a medium that thrives on control, been accepted as a medium of freedom? Why is freedom increasingly indistinguishable from paranoid control? In Control and Freedom, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun explores the current political and technological coupling of freedom with control by tracing the emergence of the Internet as a mass medium. The parallel (and paranoid) myths of the Internet as total freedom/total control, she says, stem from our reduction of political problems into technological ones.
Drawing on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and analyzing such phenomena as Webcams and face-recognition technology, Chun argues that the relationship between control and freedom in networked contact is experienced and negotiated through sexuality and race. She traces the desire for cyberspace to cyberpunk fiction and maps the transformation of public/private into open/closed. Analyzing pornocracy, she contends that it was through cyberporn and the government's attempts to regulate it that the Internet became a marketplace of ideas and commodities. Chun describes the way Internet promoters conflated technological empowerment with racial empowerment and, through close examinations of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, she analyzes the management of interactivity in narratives of cyberspace.
The Internet's potential for democracy stems not from illusory promises of individual empowerment, Chun argues, but rather from the ways in which it exposes us to others (and to other machines) in ways we cannot control. Using fiber optic networks--light coursing through glass tubes--as metaphor and reality, Control and Freedom engages the rich philosophical tradition of light as a figure for knowledge, clarification, surveillance, and discipline, in order to argue that fiber-optic networks physically instantiate, and thus shatter, enlightenment.
Also from
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong
Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong
Paperback
Also in
General Sociology
I Can't Believe I Did That: The Game That Gives You Points for Sharing Awkward, Awesome, and Unforgettable Memories: Card Games
Nadelberg, David
Katcher, Neil
Other
Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America
Schroeder, Jonathan
Borgerson, Janet
Paperback
Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities & Cultures of Anti-Fascist Resistance in Spain
Marco
Paperback
Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context
Kipfer, Stefan
Paperback
The Destiny of Modern Societies: The Calvinist Predestination of a New Society
Zafirovski, Milan
Paperback
The Agrarian Seeds of Empire: The Political Economy of Agriculture in Us State Building
Bauerly, Brad
Paperback
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
Revolution and Its Alternatives: Other Marxisms, Other Empowerments, Other Priorities
Brass, Tom
Paperback
How to Be Less Stupid about Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Fleming, Crystal M.
Hardcover
The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans--And Other Possible Phenomena
Pearl, Mike
Paperback
Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets
Kretzmann, John P.
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
Angus, Ian
Butler, Simon
Paperback
Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry
May, Lary
Paperback
The Clash of Globalizations: Neo-Liberalism, the Third Way and Anti-Globalization
Kiely, Ray
Paperback
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old
Schiller, Lucy
Hardcover
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
Yudkowsky, Eliezer
Soares, Nate
Hardcover
Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
Katz, Catherine Grace
Hardcover
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Paperback
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Tyrangiel, Josh
Hardcover
Pay Attention: How the Algorithms and Media Wars Are Suppressing Truth and Rewiring Your Brain
Pakman, David
Hardcover
The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything
Jezer-Morton, Kathryn
Hardcover
American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
Lockhart, Chris
Hardcover
The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society
Marriott, James
Hardcover
The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself
Fiamengo, Janice
Paperback
Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World
Eubank, Sharon
Hardcover
An American Girl: How a Billion-Dollar Doll and Its Unlikely Founder Changed Girlhood Forever
Fitzsimons, Amanda
Hardcover
Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
Grant, Stephen Starring
Paperback
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know
Oster, Emily
Paperback
The Culting of America: What Makes a Cult and Why We Love Them
Mestyanek Young, Daniella
Reed, Amy
Hardcover
Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online
Latifi, Fortesa
Hardcover
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Hardcover
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Davis, Angela Y.
Paperback
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
Gladwell, Malcolm
Paperback
The Tribe and I Have Spoken: The Definitive (Unofficial) Lore and Legacy from the Game's Smartest Surviving Loser
Cesternino, Rob
Kavutskiy, Alex
Hardcover
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
Gilbert, Sophie
Paperback
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Hayes, Kelly
Kaba, Mariame
Paperback
The Power Broker (Pulitzer Prize Winner): Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Caro, Robert A.
Paperback
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile
Naparstek, Aaron
Goodyear, Sarah
Gordon, Doug
Hardcover
Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)
Johnson, Eleanor
Hardcover
Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand
Lombrozo, Tania
Hardcover
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
Veliz, Carissa
Hardcover
Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse
Wong, Norma Kaweloku
Paperback
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Higginbotham, Adam
Paperback
The Unsettling of America (50th Anniversary Edition): Culture and Agriculture
Berry, Wendell
Paperback
Our Minds Were Always Free: A History of How Black Brilliance Was Exploited--And the Fight to Retake Control
Davis, Lisa E.
Hardcover
The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me about Life
Rentzenbrink, Cathy
Hardcover
The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Strauss, William
Howe, Neil
Paperback
How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan
Price, Catherine
Paperback
From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan
Hansen, Suzy
Hardcover
Andy's Bravo Scrapbook: Twenty Years Behind the Scenes of the Real Housewives and the Bravoverse
Cohen, Andy
Hardcover
Te vas a morir y todavía no has empezado a vivir: 29 principios para vivir mejor (y con más sentido)
Falces, Laura
Moreno Montana, Uli
Paperback
One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate
Dickson, Ej
Hardcover
Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us--And How to Stop It
Lovely, Garrison
Paperback
Street Smarts: Trust Your Instincts, Outsmart Danger, and Stay Safe in a World That Isn't
Eve, Dannah
Hardcover
In Sickness and in Health: Love Stories from the Front Lines of America's Caregiving Crisis
Mauldin, Laura
Hardcover
One Nation Under Blackmail - Vol. 1: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, Vol.1
Webb, Whitney Alyse
Paperback