Monthly Archives: February 2010

Not Everything, But… (Toyotatron)

By David Golumbia | Published: February 23, 2010

I don’t mean to blame every bad thing in the world on computerization–but I think it is crucial part of computationalist discourse that when a critique of computerization is offered, instead of rebutting the critique, the answer is usually to raise some putative good that computers do (this is a pattern I encounter in person, […]

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“Open Science,” “Climate Change,” “Transparency,” “Trust,” and the “Internet Age”

By David Golumbia | Published: February 23, 2010

Anyone about to cheer The Wall Street Journal‘s giving Evgeny Morozov a platform to speak will revert to their usual outrage at Rupert Murdoch’s flagship publication in today’s remarkable op-ed by “media and information industry advisor and executive” and former WSJ publisher L. Gordon Crovitz published under the heading: “Climate Change and Open Science: In […]

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Morozov on the “Digital Dictatorship”

By David Golumbia | Published: February 20, 2010

Sometimes, the truth is just out there. I’ve been learning a lot from Evgeny Morozov for a while and i’d like to think that his work fits with a slightly disturbing clarity with my recent book The Cultural Logic of Computation and the recent work of a number of other second (third?) wave digital theorists […]

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Fuchs on “The Empire of Economic Surveillance”

By David Golumbia | Published: February 16, 2010

The brilliant Christian Fuchs reflects on Google buzz in a posting distributed today on nettime-l and [idc] titled “Google Buzz: Economic Surveillance – Buzz Off! The Problem of Online Surveillance and the Need for an Alternative Internet.” Among the more interesting observations including what is becoming for me one of many indications that Eric Schmidt […]

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More Popular than Avatar

By David Golumbia | Published: February 13, 2010

The following hour-long satirical Chinese machinima video quickly garnered 10 million or more viewers. “New York City based trends research and innovation company” PSFK quotes this description from Chinese media blog DigiCha: The film tracks the fight between The9 and Netease over the renewal rights to Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, the requirement that skulls […]

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“They Called It the ‘Twitter Revolution'”

By David Golumbia | Published: February 13, 2010

A nice retrospective of new technology in recent Iranian politics on the BBC this week was advertised on radio in triumphalist terms, evidenced in the story’s first and second sentences. Follow the story to its end, though, and discover that it’s the repressive and invasive powers of computers that are most apparent, while the democratic […]

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Computational Precision, Almost (Rhetoric of Computation #2)

By David Golumbia | Published: February 11, 2010

from The New York Times, Feb 9, 2010http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/books/10mason.html?pagewanted=2&emc=eta1 A Calculus of Writing, Applied to a Classic By Larry Rohter Published: February 9, 2010 … In person, Mr. [Zachary] Mason is extremely soft-spoken and tends to talk in a flat, unemotional tone, though he does note with regret that he “turned down Google two weeks before […]

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