Response to Hardt & Negri by Alex, Alexina & Emmanuel

The text describes the U.N. as a controlling structure with omnipotent power over the world. This structure is created in an effort to prevent world crisis. It is not only a protective measure for individuals but also for governments of the world. The U.N. is unfortunately an organization which decides what is universally good. They are the law upon which every subscribing state's law is based, inherited by the monarchy and liberal models proposed by Hobbs and Locke. It is not a collaboration, but rather another type of power entirely, an Empire, as the authors suggest. They talk about "just wars" as wars approved by a community for the "greater good". They have a right to make "peace wars", though the term is ironic because the U.N. says it is good and because it is good, the local government has to agree with them. War, to them, isbanalised and absolutised . Because it appears to be everlasting, the Empire cannot be overruled or overthrown by those few who disagree with them, but they are scared of that possibility. By undermining their authority, the latter begins to deplete. To remain successful, the empire must convey to the public that their power is necessary. The empire is not disconnected from local government. It is directly affected by the changes occurring in global populations. Their declines are related. Conditioning humans to the desires of the empire forms bio power. A power structure which is innately built and harvested in populations. The distinction between local and global is a false impression of the power situation. Humans revolt once they become aware of an internal conflict between the implanted laws and their beliefs. This is different from Foucault's point of view. Our world runs on money. Those who hold the most, are able to sway policies. They are the elite. Through communication media, the political power, imagination and symbolic forms influence humans. News media and non-governmental organisations identify universal needs and defend human rights, leaving the actual task of addressing the problem to the Empire. Moral intervention by theseNGO's prepares the stage for the Empire to make military interventions. Denouncing and peace-talking, in a sense, comes before the actual act of war-making to bring on that peace. "Just war" as well as rights are supported by the "moral police" (theNGO's ), just as they are supported by the local police. The UN is located in a space without borders. It is in a flexible environment, everywhere and nowhere and the same time. It has been created to fashion an illusion of security in the lower working class.

Stalin says "one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic". One death is tragic, personalised, it has a name. On the other hand, a million deaths are faceless, easier to swallow for the masses who are tuned in to the crisis or war. Those deaths are just as tragic, but rendered less so by the fact that we can't possibly imagine all those lives slipping away. We cannot think in or conceive such large terms or numbers, it is too overwhelming. Stalin killed approximately 20 millions Russians. There he dismisses those deaths as unimportant in the face of his campaign of power. Such words also make sense when contextualised with the U.N.'s "just war" concept. Do they happen to care how many die? We think not. Their goal is to police the world on their terms, regardless of the number of deaths. Canadians penetrated Iraq in an effort to keep "peace". This duty has become a cleanup of American devastation. Although there has been recent revolt against this, it mostly passed subtly thanks to the approval from the Empire. If we are to take this new knowledge to the next level, we must find a way to govern our planet effectively. One approach to this is an independent third party. Someone unbiased and uninfluenced by this planet's money would be a good candidate. Our governments could report to the independent third party for it to make uninfluenced suggestions. We believe the ideal implementation of this anti-empire is an alien race charged with managing our planet. Visions of the world will always be affected by social class. This is important in Marxist theory. The bourgeois class is more educated while the proletariat find it difficult to climb this ladder. This is not only a social problem, it is faced by many who wish to pursue post-secondary education. Foucault analyses the whole of society. In the video shown in class, it is normal that the two philosophers project different opinions as they come for different sociopolitical backgrounds. In the movie Equilibrium, everyone has to take a pill to eliminate their emotions and supervise them, make them more controllable. The society dominates all on earth. We mention this movie because, in the text, they mention that "the formation of a new right is inscribed in the deployment of prevention, repression, and rhetorical force aimed at the reconstruction of social equilibrium: all this is proper o the activity of police.".

In fact, is it possible that comtemporary society should revert to living without Empires like the UN in an effort to develop more humanly?

WHY CYBERSPACE? - Wendy Chun - Angela and Matthieu

In "Why Cyberspace?" Wendy Chun analyzes the construction of cyberspace and the Internet. She begins by exploring notions of space in cyberspace. Chun compares cyberspace to a shopping mall, a privately owned, publicly accessible space. Cyberspace emerged from Gibson's science fiction and thus it is a space imbued with mythical qualities. Cyberspace "is a free space in which to space out about space and place"(43). It challenges space and place. Chun investigates how the Internet is about time and points out that the Internet has erased the difference between viewing a storing data. Chun explores how different Gibson's Utopian cyberspace differs from the Internet. She shows how capitalist systems of control operate within the Internet and the broader computer industry, from the production of components by Asian women, to High-tech Orientalism, to the effect of the TCP/IP protocol. She interrogates the question: who is is the user who uses and who is the user who is used by the system? She also questions how the systems of control operating within the Internet effect democracy.

Wendy Chun, By Tomer, John and Chris

The main concept in the first chapter of Wendy Chun's "Control and Freedom", is "cyberspace"
Chun attempts to explain the term "Cyberspace", and brings up some difficulties that arise when approaching this concept.
One of the main difficulties is the notion of "space".
She shows that cyberspace is more of a tool, an apparatus, than an actual space.
Furthermore she states that there really is no basis to call this apparatus "space", and the only reason it is called so, is for legal reasons that apply to legislation over the internet.
Chan compares the lack of space when facing the internet, to the spatial aspect of television.
In this comparison Chun shows that a television program appears at a certain time, and on a certain channel, thus conforming to the idea of "space".
We thought that this idea does little to prove her point. Web pages can be seen as just as "spatial" as television channels. Furthermore time does affect the internet. So much so that there has been invented an "Internet Time", a clock specifically for the internet, to regulate it.
Chun sees the usage of the internet as a sort of "time travel", because a user can be in multiple places at once, browsing effortlessly between WebPages.
Again, we failed to see the novelty of this idea in comparison with the television. One can "channel surf", just as effortlessly on the television, and with picture in picture technology one can also view multiple channels at once.
Chun brings up Foucault's idea of heterotopia.
The heterotopia differs from the utopia in that a utopia is a fundamentally unreal space, while a heterotopia is a real space, which is simultaneously mythical and real.
We thought that this idea applies very well to the concept of "Cyberspace".
Cyberspace is by no means a utopia, but it is a heterotopia because it conforms to the two basic requirements:
It is undeniably "real", insofar that none can deny it exists.
It has many "mythical" aspects, not the least is the lack of physical "space", that Chun explains.
The idea that we thought about for our question is the following:
Can steps be taken to increase the "reality" and physicality of the "cyberspace"?
Can we forge physical space to the cyberspace? And if we do, will it still be considered "cyberspace", or a virtual reality?

Chun - by Morgan, Peter, Nic and JS

Summary
The first chapter of ‘Control and Freedom’ by Wendy Chun looks at the emergence of the Web through the birth and life of what we know as ‘cyberspace’. Explaining the legal context of the ‘official’ creation of a new electronic 'space' in which things 'happened', and that had originally no local standards. She addresses the notions of place and space in relation to a network that went from being public (government owned), to privately owned and being massively commercialized. Then she goes into the field of cybernetics, talking about controls systems and how cybernetics work, which is explained to be all about maintaining internal communications through an external central nervous system. She also talks about the origin of the word 'cyberspace' which came from literature (Gibson’s Neuromancer). The ‘cyberspace’ is described as unnamable and unlocatable, as a 'free' space, using symbolic addresses and naming systems to facilitates human comprehension. It is said that ‘space’ and ‘time’ are used interchangeably, and that while ‘cyberspace loosens place, place is no longer stable or proper, and disappear and move rapidly’ . It is question of Manovich’s 'database complex' , meaning the desire to store everything. Then talking about how new media and navigable spaces, throughout interfaces, establish new relations between space and tours.

Other ideas explored are : The notion of ‘time’ as much important as space, and the active participation required by the web, compared to non-interactive TV (passive).How most DSL offer download speed faster than upload (consumer mode). Example of spatialized web (VRML) where no space exists but only objects belonging to different individuals (just like in SecondLife). Virtual realities, and multiple persona, alter-egos, The web as a space for compensation, compensatory heteropias, or spaces of pure order. The example the of the e-commerce paradise, internet as a perfect other space. Foucaults example of the boat as the perfect heterotopian example, also in close relation with colonial moments. The use of the word 'pirate' , in relation to exploration and piracy, which may indicate or create radical changes. The web surfer, who feels as home while, constantly moving from place to place, (Beaudelair's Flâneur). The perfect spectator who can see but must not be seen, who leaves not trace, but reveals other people traces. The gawker, a commodity dependent being, that stands an stares. The myth of the superagent, leading you to think that you leave no trace. Controlling code, and the architecture of the internet, content and code as parallel systems. The founding principle of the net as being control and not freedom. Open source softwares.

Near the end, she mentions that , instead of exploring utopian possibilities, it would be better to see how the web can enable something similar to democracy.

Discussion
We began with a discussion on how we approach the internet. I told of how, for me, the internet is a space, be it social or utilitarian. My paths through the net are like my daily routines through the city. It is also a social space -- a place I go when in need of social interaction. For Nic, on the contrary, the internet is an information resource, like a book. What I consider to be social arenas (forums, lists, irc, social nets etc.) are merely sources to be mined for Nic.
He is a lurker. We then looked at the cyberpunk fantasy of cyberspace as an environment for heterotopia. How would it even be possible given current technology? Isn't it disappointing that the web has become private, commercialized, and homogenized? Was it ever possible for the web to have the richness (space) depicted in Neuromancer? Are "underground" hacker-type internet users closer to the cyberpunk aesthetic than the average user? How did the open source movement emerge from cyberpunk and in what way does it differ? Unrealized are the images of the lone hacker, roaming the net. The new power lies in mass emergence. Taxonomy. Web 2.0. Is the clean, user-friendly aesthetic of the web 2.0 (the antithesis of cyberpunk aesthetic) an effect of (response to) privatization? Perhaps open source is anti-cyberpunk in that the software is competing with commercial software. In an open cyberspace, the hegemony of dominant software configurations would disintegrate. But open source creates a "structure of sharing". This reminded us of Yuill who talks of "socially directed" creation.

Is cyber-space desirable? Should the advantages of the web be integrated into the real, or are the heterotopic benefits of the division between real and virtual worth the schism of the individual?

Empire - Alexis, Ramsy, Sean

Empire. World order brings an example, brought in our current times by, mainly, the UN. The UN was made as an ideological way of globalising the world [consequence of capitalist production?] however where it's theory fails to translate into practice is where our product of Empire begins. The Empire itself is the transition from nation-states to global entities validated through the juridical process of a supranational source. Empire itself constantly makes it's presence necessary, eternal and absolute and casts morality ethics and justice into new dimensions. Biopolitics is about the relationship of power applies to the individual. Foucault says that "life has become an object of power in itself". The indirect result of life is labor. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt make reference to Marx and talk about the de-substantiation of manual labor (commodification). This translates to power being an output of life and being intrinsic to society, therefore not requiring external groups: government, Empire as it were. Alternatives to an Empire talk about the possible evolution of empires on the local and global level. They write about alternatives to the empire as a method of illusionment, specifically, the ability for segments on the local level to create a sense of identity for its members. This is done as a way to defferenciate the new social structure from the old and its flaws.

The entire text is pretty good reflection of what is happening today, 20 years later. the new alternatives to Empire are a way to brake away from the mistakes of Empire as it was built on old models that do not apply to today's global political and economical structures.

Chun by Ben, Duy, Scott, Kevin

The Internet has gone through the process of metamorphosis to become some thing much more transcendent and abstract called the Cyberspace. In this cybernetic space, virtually no rules and no limits exist. Even human attain an ever ability to escape from the prison of the bodies and be free. Different from its sci-fi origins, cyberspace embraces ambiguity and contingency, one can navigate and control the interface but not the space, and the path they take in cyberspace. Cyberspace allows for an “imitation indistinguishable from the ‘real thing,’ yet completely separate from it.” Compensatory heteropias are ordered, perfect, and meticulous. Cyberspace does not adequately protect users from becoming spectacles; rather, it focuses their “gaze away from its own vulnerability and toward others as spectacle.” Whereas the flâneur is an impartial, unobserved observer, independent from the scene he/she witnesses; the gawker is not independent, “disappears, absorbed by the external world,” and becomes an impersonal being. TCP/IP is now a technical cornerstone of global telecommunications networks, as it makes it possible for networks that run on different physical media, and that use networking standards to communicate with each other. The Internet cannot be completely censored; however, its censorship depends on local configurations and routing protocols. Both of these are affected by the privatization of the Internet backbone.

As place is defined while space is undefined and contingent, getting lost in the cyberspace is like wondering in a jungle of black holes. Indeed, will this cyberspace is an exact replica of our bigger universe and consequently will inherit its charateristics? Our discussion led to whether informed emersion into Cyberspace should warrant the ability to see without being seen, or whether being seen is simply part of the agreement. The reason for this question is because it is arguably not mandatory to connect to this space, despite there being advantages.

Empire. Jos; Charlotte; Charles

In 'Empire' the key element to understand here is that globalization cannot be understood as a simple process of de-regulating markets. The term 'Empire' makes allusion to a very Foucault type of situation, where we are subjected to a power that is defused or decentralized but all seeing. The flow of people and information is deemed too unruly to be monitored from a single source. The world they describe is one that abandons the old idea of a ruling class for a more complex system of inequality. Everything is blurred beyond logical interpretation. This particular event (Empire) acts as a kind of prophecy.

Wendy Chun, Group response from Natalia, Fernando, Mike, and Martin.

In “Why Cyberspace” Wendy Chun discuses the internet and cyberspace, she refers to this system as a heterotopia this means that it posses all kinds of diverse content and homogenous which means that while it is accessible everywhere it is another system of control. She argues whether a system that homogenizes all information is good. Concerning Space she talks about the cyberspace not being one yet having its own illusion of time and space based on the real. We talked about our relationship to the internet and its potential to blur our notion of time. Spending a large amount of time on what it’s called cyberspace results on the user being a passive receiver with a sedentary lifestyle. So how much of internet time does it takes for it to affect someone’s reality. We agreed that code is a democratic tool because it can be disseminated through open source to people. But codes work somehow like different languages which are not approachable by most of people so the actual change that a democratic code can make is questionable.
Although time is a human construct how does cyberspace recreate our relationship with time?

Response to chun by alexina, emanuel, alex

The author asks the simple question: "why do we call cyberspace 'cyberspace'?". There is no physical location required for these disembodied interactions. Chun continues in describing the ownership of "cyberspace" from a private space, that is an expanse-less metaphor for space, owned by government authorities to a publicly accessible form owned by corporations. A binary definition which leaves little room for gradation. The concept humans used to comprehend this interconnected network of networks was through science fiction works. Cyberspace, in these works, was navigable - that is, the characters moved through its virtual reality much like video game characters - and tangible, and its size and scope were visible to the user. The use of the term Cyberspace is an abstraction of the technicality of the Internet. This abstraction manipulates the user to believe they are truly navigating a vast environment. This environment possesses even more abstraction as it uses names as virtually meaningless variables for human understanding. This area has been declared an area of freedom thanks to its name. This may be misleading. Cyberspace is build on memory and space as opposed to time like previous media. The Internet is a vulnerable space in that flooding, hacking, and otherwise harmful actions may occur perpetuated by its settlers (hackers) who claimed that environment. The cyberspace culture takes place in reality while all its signs and effects take place outside of it. This Internet does more than mirror reality. It is its own simulacra giving a person more importance than in real life. Chun mentions how the code is law. That is to say that once the code is established, users and programmers abide by it and create according to it. Even open codes are controlling as the final say relies on a certain power figure, whether by the government or a private "open" corporation. Therefore, the Internet is not a free playground. The Internet is a tool which those who are oppressed can use to be empowered. The Internet is the most efficient medium for communications. This is why humans, as suppressed beings, are driven to use the medium.

The new home of Mind is the following online applications: skyrock, digg, skyblog, myspace, youtube, facebook, livejournal, blogger, etc. They demand an implication of the user and his mind into his actions online. These are examples of the simulacra created to protect users' privacy although they often appear as a window into their lives. The medium is a liberation where users can reclaim their freedom. She questions who owns the Internet and how much freedom we have online. Is it truly open to any discussion? Is the content truly always 'there' for us to peruse? Website owners can take away content at any time, thus taking away the concept of public content. Discussions are more often than not moderated by individuals who censor content or take it off the site when it is not compliant with their own bias/position. When content is limited or available only through special conditions, it may require special permissions or payment to access. The internet satisfies the futuristic desire to teleport. It morphs space and time like a teleporting time machine. Humans get instant satisfaction from participating in cyberspace activities. We can see democracy on website like wikipedia where user have a grade depend of there implication and good reviews. We can also see a lot of of other examples like digg, deviantart (good example of freedom), newgrounds and forum but each website still with laws and regimentation. We think that the following phrase, "This virtual passing promises [...] to protect our "real" bodies and selves from the glare of publicity", is dated. Online advertising is more present than ever at this time, and young girls and young guys are faced with images of perfect bodies and perfect lives, thus telling them that they must change in order to be popular, etc.

Could the Internet be qualified as the first step to a "real" cyberspace? Is it merely a test to improve users' literacy regarding a bigger "place"?