creativity/machine

This Wiki is an invitation to collaborate on building a learning and research environment based on Yochai Benkler’s book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, available under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Sharealike license.

A good idea, and one that tests and amplifies the basic propositions of Benkler’s arguments. But I hope the space will also be used to generate a sustained critical dialogue around the issues raised in the book, as well as to “build a learning and research environment” based on it…

On the plan for ‘growing’ the Wiki

The basic idea is to make this Wiki a place for at least five things:

1. Collaborate on writing a summary of the ideas and claims of the book (see Table of Contents)
2. Collaborate on writing commentaries and elaborating and refining the presentation
3. Provide an easy platform through which to access underlying research materials:
   *those used in the book’s notes
   *and resources that are useful for further research, refinement, and updating
4. Describe, link to, and analyze examples of the phenomena the book describes
   *The purpose is not to “make the case” for the book or find “gotcha” counter examples. What we are trying to do is provide a real research tool, annotated bibliography, and platform for collaborative learning. Examples and counter-examples should be selected and described with that purpose in mind.
5. Demonstrate and discover what is valuable in a learning platform
   *Through separate pages devoted to ideas and experiments of what can be done with an online book to make it a learning platform, we hope to expand the range of uses to which this Wiki can be available.
   *Through creative, systematic and interactive uses of this wiki, we hope to enhance our individual and collective skills & experience in a wiki world

There is a link from the wiki to the Crooked Timber seminar on the book, which was an early site of critical dialogue, including responses from Benkler to the contributions of participants.

M/C Journal
Call for Papers: ‘mobile’
Edited by Larissa Hjorth & Olivia Khoo

Convergence has become part of burgeoning mobile media. The mobile phone
has come of age. As an integral component of visual media cultures, camera
phone practices are arguably both extending and creating emerging ways of
seeing and representing. In media footage of late, camera phones have been
heralded as providing everyday users with the possibility of self-
expression and voice in the once unidirectional model of mass media. In
addition, the “exchange” and gift-giving economy underpinning mobile phone
practices (Taylor and Harper 2003) is further enunciated by the camera
phone’s ability to “share” moments between intimates (and strangers)
through various contextual frameworks and archives from MMS, blogs, virtual
community sites to actual face-to-face digital storytelling.

This is particularly the case in the Asia-Pacific region, where mobile
practices in locations such as Tokyo and Seoul have brought about new forms
of media use; for example, mobile phones are increasing being deployed to
connect to, among other things, Web 2.0’s burgeoning landscape of social
software. In much of the rhetoric of current media criticism, users are
being interpellated as prosumers (producers plus consumers), but what is
the reality behind this so-called agency? Do users really feel empowered by
the structures of immediacy connected to user-generated content (UGC)? Are
they ‘liberated’ by the multi-media functions of the mobile phone or is the
increasing convergence of mobile media causing more complications than
pleasures?

This issue of M/C Journal seeks papers exploring the role of convergent
mobile technologies in the Asia-Pacific region. The issue aims to explore
the socio-cultural particularities of various adaptations of mobile media,
from case studies on mobile communication in the Asia Pacific, to cross-
cultural analyses of the transborder flows of mobile media production,
representation and consumption. Topics may include:

- Convergent mobile technologies
- The use of mobile technologies in the construction, regulation and upkeep
of social software and virtual communities
- Pervasive mobile gaming
- Mobile communication case studies in the region
- The role of co-presence and maintenance of intimacy and community through
mobile communication
- The “future” of mobile media
- Creativity and mobile media; the aesthetics of mobile media
- Critiques of prosumer rhetoric in mass media
- Emerging forms of techno-nationalism and governmental policies around
‘mobility’ and digital convergent cultures
- The changing role of temporality and spatiality in contemporary case
studies of mobile telephony

Submit your essays of 3000 words in length to the editors at
mobile@journal.media-culture.org.au

Article deadline: 17 January 2007
Issue release date: 14 March 2007

PS, yes I am still alive, but as my supervisor says, I am ‘great with thesis’ so no time for whimsical blog entries just now. Expect a Big Announcement in the next few weeks.

My friend and colleague Melissa Gregg’s book Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices is out now. Having already read it, I can tell you it’s a seriously significant contribution to cultural studies scholarship, and it’s got a beautiful cover to boot.

Blurb:

In a series of encounters with key figures in the field of cultural studies, this book draws attention to the significance of voice and address in enacting a political project from within ‘the Academy’. Combining a focus on theories of ‘affect’ lately dominant in the Humanities with a history of cultural studies as a discipline, Melissa Gregg highlights the diverse modes of performance that accompany and assist scholarly practice. Writing from the perspective of a new generation of cultural studies practitioners, she provides a missing link between the field’s earliest political concerns with those of the present. Throughout, the ongoing importance of engaged, public Intellectualism is emphasized.

Get your order in!

Uses of Blogs, an anthology of scholarly essays (include one by me on higher ed classroom blogging) edited by Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs, is now officially available.

Blurb:

As the first edited collection of scholarly articles on blogging by experts and practitioners in a wide range of fields, Uses of Blogs offers a broad spectrum of perspectives on current and emerging uses of blogs. While blogging is rapidly developing into a mainstream activity for Internet users, the actual application of blogs in specific contexts has so far been under-explored. Because there are a variety of styles of blogging – from de facto news sites to marketing blogs, blogs as learning tools, writers’ drafting blogs, corporate dark blogs and fictional blogs, to name a few – it can be difficult to imagine how blogs might be used in particular environments. This book demonstrates the take-up of blogs and blogging for a number uses in industrial and social contexts.

Go on, you know you want one!

Following the more timely examples of the two Mels (here is one, and here is the other) I (somewhat belatedly) have just submitted an abstract for this year’s CSAA conference, which will be held in sunny Canberra. I had the idea months ago but couldn’t wrangle it into a pithy enough form until now, plus it had to be something I could plug in or pull directly out of my thesis, otherwise it would just be irresponsible given that I am supposed to be submitting not too long after the conference, which is in early December. Also, it’s reassuring to see that my suckiness at making up titles is still alive and well.

Snapshots in the City: The Flickr meetup as a site of cultural citizenship
Contemporary digital culture is increasingly characterised by the convergence of social networks, online communities, and public platforms for ‘user-generated’ content. One of the effects of this convergence is the remediation as public culture of everyday social practices of material and symbolic ‘vernacular creativity’. The photosharing network Flickr is a prominent manifestation of this trend – it represents an ‘architecture of participation’ within which thousands of users explore photographic practice at the same time as they negotiate and participate in the social networks in which their creative content circulates. Some members of the network also participate in local ‘meetups’ – offline photographic excursions and opportunities for socialising.

The most active participation in Flickr, then, is a convergence of ‘offline’ everyday life in a particular local context with ‘online’ participation in digital culture. This form of participation has transformative effects on both photography as creative practice and vernacular creativity as a means of cultural participation.

In this paper, I draw on a detailed discussion of the Brisbane Flickr Meetup group to explore the ways in which such participation can and does take the form of what, translating Habermas into the language of the cultural public sphere, we might term ‘episodic publics’ – the ephemeral and everyday spaces where cultural citizenship is practised.

Some colleagues of mine have just started a new interdisciplinary email discussion list that should be of interest to anyone working on cities/urban spaces:

multipliCity — Conversations on cities

Multiplicity is an online discussion forum for all matters urban. As paradigmatic of the modern and postmodern experience, the city remains defiantly at the epicentre of a conflated, de-centred multitude of discourses and disciplines.

The aim of multiplicity is to generate discussion and foster ideas that can illuminate theoretical and creative approaches to the city.

Multiplicity, as its title suggests, celebrates the diversity and eclecticism that are irrevocably associated with actual cities as well as city discourses. A broad range of informed discussion topics, conversations and perspectives are sought.

Please join us!

Speaking of collaboration:

Monthly MACS is a cross-institutional network of early career researchers, postgraduate students, postdocs, RAs and sessional staff working in Media and Cultural Studies across Brisbane. We meet regularly during semester to discuss issues which relate to these roles, debate wider trends in the field and have a few drinks afterwards. You can read more about past MACS events here: http://cccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=22640&pid=21774

The next MACS meet will be held tomorrow, Friday May 5 in the seminar room of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, UQ.

Professor Stuart Cunningham (QUT) and Professor Graeme Turner (UQ) will lead a discussion on “collaboration” - how to do it, who to do it with, and why.

Collaborating with peers, colleagues and mentors can be a great way to establish a research profile at the beginning of your career as well as sharing expertise, resources and labour. At a time when the pressure to publish is real, and imaginative cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional links are encouraged, what skills are needed and what challenges are worth knowing about in the process of carrying out joint research? Experienced researchers in media and cultural studies will discuss these issues and we invite other academics, postdocs, postgrads and sessional staff to come along to share tips from their own past, current and future adventures in collaboration.

When: 2.00- 3.45pm, Friday 5th May
Where: CCCS Seminar Room, Level 4, Forgan Smith Tower, St Lucia Campus, University of Queensland, followed by drinks at the UQ staff club.

unAustralia: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Annual Conference, Canberra, 6-8 December, 2006.

If things are ‘un-Australian’ it must be because they come from UNAUSTRALIA.
Where is it?
Who lives there?
How does it come to be?
What is its past and what is its future?
While raising some very local questions of critique and desire, the theme is open to international perspectives and interpretations.
Do other places have their own unplaces? What goes on there?

The conference will feature both refereed and non-refereed papers, and a curated exhibition of creative visual works. The University of Canberra invites abstracts of up to 150 words for 20 minute papers. We welcome panel submissions, and we also welcome abstracts from scholars whose work who would not normally be considered within the ambit of Cultural Studies.

Closing date for submissions: 30th June, 2006

The Gendered Ties That Bind the ‘New Global Governance’ to the ‘New Information Economy’

Associate Professor Lisa McLaughlin

CENTRE FOR CRITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES
PUBLIC SEMINAR SERIES

Thursday 20th April, 2.00-3.30pm

CCCS Seminar Room, Level 4, Forgan Smith Building, University of Queensland St Lucia Campus

As the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) illustrates, the ‘new multi-stakeholderism’ and public-private partnerships work in concert to advance the ‘corporatization’ of international development initiatives. In this presentation, Assoc Professor McLaughlin maintains that the gender mainstreaming advocated by the UN and various gender-oriented organizations necessitates that summits such as the WSIS actively include gender advocates who adhere to formal, governmental modalities while passively excluding those who actively oppose market-led approaches to development, and she will link this to an agenda in which women of the Global South are offered the potential for emancipation and mobility through access to technology but instead are apt to become place-based informational labor.

About the Presenter:

Lisa McLaughlin is an Associate Professor at Miami University-Ohio, USA, where she holds a joint appointment in Mass Communication and Women’s Studies. She is also Director of Graduate Studies for the Master of Arts in Mass Communication Program. McLaughlin is editor of Feminist Media Studies, an international peer-reviewed journal published by Routledge. She teaches courses in international communications, global media governance, and feminist media theory and practice. Her recent work focuses on ICTs and the corporatization of development as it has emerged under the auspices of the United Nations. At present, McLaughlin’s research concentrates on Cisco Systems’ Networking Academy Programs and the corporation’s Gender Initiatives that have originated as public-private partnerships brokered through the UN.

Members of the university community and the general public are invited to attend this free seminar with refreshments to follow. For further information please visit the website at http://www.cccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=42734&pid=16094

The Ideas Festival, four days of ideas, innovation and invention will be held from 29 March to 2 April 2006 at Brisbane’s South Bank.

The Festival program includes:
o 100 national, international and local speakers
o 73 speaker sessions
o 23 sessions for secondary students in the new Ideas for Schools program
o a free four day program of Kids Ideas activities and workshops for 4-8 year olds
o free exhibitions and demonstrations
o the opening night event – the Ideas Debate- on Wednesday 29 March

Speakers include Cory Doctorow, Julian Burnside, Tristram Carfrae, Frank Furedi, Giselle Gass, Pat Kane, Elspeth Probyn, and Ingrid Van Beek.