Anti-computing explores forgotten histories and contemporary forms of dissent – moments when the imposition of computational technologies, logics, techniques, imaginaries, utopias have been questioned, disputed, or refused. It also asks why these moments tend to be forgotten. What is it about computational capitalism that means we live so much in the present? What has this to do with computational logics and practices themselves? This book addresses these issues through a critical engagement with media archaeology and medium theory and by way of a series of original studies; exploring Hannah Arendt and early automation anxiety, witnessing and the database, Two Cultures from the inside out, bot fear, singularity and/as science fiction. Finally, it returns to remap long-standing concerns against new forms of dissent, hostility, and automation anxiety, producing a distant reading of contemporary hostility. At once an acute response to urgent concerns around toxic digital cultures, an accounting with media archaeology as a mode of medium theory, and a series of original and methodologically fluid case studies, this book crosses an interdisciplinary research field including cultural studies, media studies, medium studies, critical theory, literary and science fiction studies, media archaeology, medium theory, cultural history, technology history.
Author(s): Caroline Bassett
Edition: 1
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF | Full TOC ⬅️
Pages: 265
Tags: Anti-Computing; Dissent; Media Archaeology; Medium Theory; Hannah Arendt; Automation Anxiety; Science Fiction; Digital Cultures; Interdisciplinary Research; Computers And Civilization; Computers: Social Aspects
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
1 | Anti-computing: a provisional taxonomy
Significance
Computing and anti-computing
Anti-computing instances
Anti-computing and its travels
An initial taxonomy of the anti-computational
Polarities/binaries
A general taxonomy: eight forms of anti-computing
Anti-computing (i): computer technology as control technology
Anti-computing (ii): computers becoming more lively
Anti-computing (iii): computerization and the hollowing-out of everyday life and social interaction
Anti-computing (iv): computer technologies and the threat to human culture
Anti-computing (v): the general accident/catastrophe theory
Anti-computing (vi): horrible humans
Anti-computing (vii): standardization/quantification
Anti-computing (viii): too much information
The emotional register?
A taxonomy of anti-computing computing?
Categorizing critical approaches?
Critical orientations and situations
Notes
Bibliography
2 | Discontinuous continuity: how anti-computing time-travels
Doing ‘computer history’
Making the cut: or why social history versus medium specifics isn’t good enough
Cuts and lines
Archaeology and media archaeology
Media archaeology: priority and determination
Ernst, priority (and the material conditions of legibility)
Linearity and recurrence?
Significance: media archaeology and its subject choices
Media archaeology versus cultural studies?
Forgetfulness and anti-computing
Compulsory technology?
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
3 | A most political performance: treachery, the archive, and the database
The archive
Identity
Collecting
Witnessing?
Lists and databases
Breaking off
The man ‘punching holes in computers’
Anti-computing: database anxiety and the anti-computing league (computerized collecting)
Appeal, reach
The end of ‘anti-computing’ …
Conclusion 1: culpability
Conclusion 2: computer history
Conclusion 3: media archaeological witnessing?
Notes
Bibliography
4 | No special pleading: Arendt, automation, and the cybercultural revolution
Cybernation and the automation ‘scare’
The Triple Revolution
Cybercultural partisans? Key strands in the debate
Work
Timing
Transition
The future society
Arendt and leisure
Leisure/idleness
Exergue: the human condition and technological condition of the world
Beyond the last stage? The deadliest passivity
After the event
Cyberculture to precarity?
Notes
Bibliography
5 | Polemical acts of rare extremism: Two Cultures and a hat
Occlusion
Obliteration?
The Rede Lecture
Bathos
Which England?
Leavis and his sword: the modern crisis
Non-inevitable consequences
All the old men and England too
Conclusions
Notes
Bibliography
6 | Apostasy in the temple of technology: ELIZA the more than mechanical therapist
Logical formalism?
Machine metaphors
Mechanical humans and ‘automatic good’
An afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
7 | Those in love with quantum filth: science fiction, singularity, and the flesh
Singularity
Critical and cognitive theory and singularity
The difference that makes a difference: bodies of glass in the 1990s
What language may speak that code may not
Quantum filth, merged minds, residual humans …
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Filmography
Conclusion: Upping the anti: a distant reading of the contemporary moment
Distant reading swallows Amazon
Notes from an annotated meta-bibliography
(i) Computer technology as control technology
(ii) Computers becoming more lively
(iii) Computerization and the hollowing-out of everyday life and social interaction
(iv) Computer technologies and the threat to human forms of culture
(v) The general accident/catastrophe theory
(vi) Horrible humans
(vii) Standardization/quantification
(viii) Too much information
A conclusion
Bibliography
Index
