Creative Crowds wiki - User contributions [en]

Pdf:Toward a Minor Tech

2023-01-20T16:29:18Z

Nnsshh:

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<h1 class="outline cell-height-one font-director" id="h1-editorial">Toward a Minor Tech</h1>

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<h1 class="outline font-gothique" id="h1-p1-a">Scaling Up, Scaling Down: Racialism in the Age of ‘Big Data’</h1>
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{{Toward a Minor Tech:Toward a Minor Tech:Crichlow 500}}

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<h1 class="inline font-bold">Rendering Minor Worlds</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Teodora-500 }}
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{{ Toward a Minor Tech:HermeticKnowledge }}
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<h1 class="outline cell-height-one cell-width-two font-school" id="h1-contributors">Contributors</h1>
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<h1 class="outline font-gothique" id="h1-p2-a">Minor Tech, Major Problem: QAnon’s Scales</h1>
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{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Wilson 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-bold">Small Talk: About the Size of Language Models</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Susanne 500 }}
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[[File:Fig.1._bigger_text.png]]
<div class="caption">fig.1. Find it on the server in HQ as 'file: Fig.1. bigger text'</div>
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[[File:Horseshoe_transparent.png]]
<div class="caption">fig.2. Find it in on the server in HQ as 'Horseshoe transparent'.</div>
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<h1 class="inline font-italic">Between philosophy of mind and the planetary</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Miln500 }}
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<h1 class="outline font-school" id="h1-p3-b">The Democratization of Machine Learning</h1>
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{{ Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Inga-500 }}
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<h1 class="outline font-bold" id="h1-p3-c">Blockchains otherwise</h1>

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{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Inte }}
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<h1 class="outline font-gothique" id="h1-p4-a">Edoardo Lomi & Macon Holt title</h1>
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Edoardo Lomi & Macon Holt text
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[[File:Feminist_servers_federation.png]]
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<h1 class="inline font-italic">Feminist Federating</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:FeministServers-500 }}
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<div class="item outline" id="img-p4-c">
[[File:Nerds-for-nerds.png]]
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<h1 class="outline font-school" id="h1-p4-c">Minor User: Subjectivity of small technology</h1>
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{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Shusha-500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-italic">But does it scale?</h1>
{{ Toward_a_Minor_Tech:RRA_500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-bold">Spirit Epistemics: (Techno)magic and Resistant Tech Practices</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Xenodata-500 }}
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<div class="item font-inria-sans" id="item-p5-c">
<h1 class="inline font-gothique">The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-school">Feeling short on time? PhD Researcher claims it's because of digital optimisation</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Yu 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-bold">What Weaving Can Teach Us</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Kim 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-gothique">Misplaced, disrupted, dysfunctional – artistic tactics for reconsidering digital scale</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Kir 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-bold">Lightning strikes the earth up to 100 times a second!</h1>
{{ Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Mateus_500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-italic">Moving Textures</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Menotti-500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-school">How to face face recognition?</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Pold 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-gothique">The Digital Pastoral: a Minor Critique of Minor Tech</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Chavez Heras 500 }}
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<h1 class="inline font-gothique">wiki-to-print</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Wiki-to-print }}
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<h1 class="inline font-school">Fermenting Data Journal - locations, bodies, good life</h1>
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:MagdaTC 500 }}
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<h1 class="outline font-italic" id="h1-p8-c">Writing an Article as if Writing a Piece of Software</h1>
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{{ Toward_a_Minor_Tech:Soon-500 }}
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'''Bibliography'''
{{ Toward a Minor Tech:Shared bibliography }}
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'''Colophon'''
{{ Toward_a_Minor Tech:Colophon }}
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Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-20T15:16:36Z

Nnsshh:

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

= The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects =
'''Anna Mladentseva'''

Big tech products and platforms are proliferating and expanding with unprecedented speed, finding their way into cultural heritage collections. Indeed, some institutions have already started collecting objects manufactured by industrial giants, giving rise to the phenomenon of “big tech heritage”. These institutions include the Victoria & Albert museum in London, who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative, dedicated to preserving contemporary objects from the world of design and manufacturing.

The sheer scale of these objects—coupled with precarious conditions generated by the industry of big tech—presents tensions with regards to their future conservation. Many of the older cultural objects built with obsolete technologies—including artistic experiments with technology, videogames and MMORPGs—are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. For instance, enthusiasts of the early, online social world CyberTown have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks.

Moreover, the conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. Conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116).

With so much of knowledge and labour required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities—with notions of affect and desire at the core of their motivations for care—it is important to question whether some of the more contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did.

In the climate of uninterrupted attention economies and imposed libidinal forces, big tech products proliferate through a careful, curated construction of subjectivity and desire. Franco Berardi notes this and argues for an emergent category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’ that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Although, historically, certain categories of workers, such as craftsmen, have also been motivated by desire, Berardi argues that it takes a more malignant form with contemporary ‘info-workers’, ‘producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’ (2009, 86).

It seems as though desire and affect, while at the core of care, are more closely interlinked with exploitation than one might think. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the same way as some of the earlier technologies, given how precarious the conditions of desire in these products and platforms are? Should we “scale down” these objects in order to preserve them and create a more equitable dynamic of care?

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-20T15:11:11Z

Nnsshh: /* The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects */

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

= The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects =
'''Anna Mladentseva'''

Big tech products and platforms are proliferating and expanding with unprecedented speed, finding their way into cultural heritage collections. Indeed, some institutions have already started collecting objects manufactured by industrial giants, giving rise to the phenomenon of “big tech heritage”. These institutions include the Victoria & Albert museum in London, who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative, dedicated to preserving contemporary objects from the world of design and manufacturing.

The sheer scale of these objects—coupled with precarious conditions generated by the industry of big tech—presents tensions with regards to their future conservation. Many of the older cultural objects built with obsolete technologies—including artistic experiments with technology, videogames and MMORPGs—are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. For instance, enthusiasts of the early, online social world CyberTown have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks.

Moreover, the conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. Conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116).

With so much of knowledge and labour required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities—with notions of affect and desire at the core of their motivations for care—it is important to question whether some of the more contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did.

In the climate of uninterrupted attention economies and imposed libidinal forces, big tech products proliferate through a careful, curated construction of subjectivity and desire. Franco Berardi notes this and argues for an emergent category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’ that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Although, historically, certain categories of workers, such as craftsmen, have also been motivated by desire, Berardi argues that it takes a more malignant form with contemporary ‘info-workers’, ‘producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’ (2009, 86).

It seems as though desire and affect, while at the core of care, is more closely interlinked with exploitation than one might think. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the same way as some of the earlier technologies, given how precarious the conditions of desire in these products and platforms are? Should we “scale down” these objects in order to preserve them and create a more equitable dynamic of care?

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-20T15:10:23Z

Nnsshh: /* The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects */

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

= The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects =
'''Anna Mladentseva'''

Big tech products and platforms are proliferating and expanding with unprecedented speed, finding their way into cultural heritage collections. Indeed, some institutions have already started collecting objects manufactured by industrial giants, giving rise to the phenomenon of “big tech heritage”. These institutions include the Victoria & Albert museum in London, who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative, dedicated to preserving contemporary objects from the world of design and manufacturing.

The sheer scale of these objects—coupled with precarious conditions generated by the industry of big tech—presents tensions with regards to their future conservation. Many of the older cultural objects built with obsolete technologies—including artistic experiments with technology, videogames and MMORPGs—are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. For instance, enthusiasts of the early, online social world CyberTown have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks.

Moreover, the conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. Conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116).

With so much of knowledge and labour required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities—with notions of affect and desire at the core of their motivations for care—it is important to question whether some of the more contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did.

In the climate of uninterrupted attention economies and imposed libidinal forces, big tech products proliferate through a careful, curated construction of subjectivity and desire. Franco Berardi notes this and argues for an emergent category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’ that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Although, historically, certain categories of workers, such as craftsmen, have also been motivated by desire, Berardi argues that it takes a more malignant form with contemporary ‘info-workers’, ‘producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’ (2009, 86).

It seems as though desire and affect, while at the core of care, is more closely interlinked with exploitation than one might think. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the same way as some of the earlier technologies, given how precarious the conditions of desire in these products and platforms are? Should we “scale down” these objects in order to preserve them and create a more equitable dynamic of care?

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-20T14:41:22Z

Nnsshh:

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

= The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects =
'''Anna Mladentseva'''

Big tech products and platforms are proliferating and expanding with unprecedented speed, finding their way into cultural heritage collections. Indeed, some institutions have already started collecting objects manufactured by industrial giants, giving rise to the phenomenon of “big tech heritage”. These institutions include the Victoria & Albert museum in London, who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative, dedicated to preserving contemporary objects from the world of design and manufacturing.

The sheer scale of these objects—coupled with precarious conditions generated by the industry of big tech—presents tensions with regards to their future conservation. Many of the older cultural objects built with obsolete technologies—including artistic experiments with technology, videogames and MMORPGs—are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. For instance, enthusiasts of the early, online social world CyberTown have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks.

Moreover, the conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. Conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116).

With so much of knowledge and labour required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities—with notions of affect and desire at the core of their motivations for care—it is important to question whether some of the more contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did.

In the climate of uninterrupted attention economies and imposed libidinal forces, big tech products proliferate through a careful, curated construction of subjectivity and desire. Franco Berardi notes this and argues for an emergent category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’ that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Although, historically, certain categories of workers, such as craftsmen, have also been motivated by desire, Berardi argues that it takes a more malignant form with contemporary ‘info-workers’, ‘producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’ (2009, 86).

It seems as though desire and affect, while at the core of care, is more closely interlinked with exploitation than one might think. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the same way as some of the earlier technologies, given how precarious the conditions of desire in these products and platforms are? Should we “scale down” these objects in order to preserve them and create a more equitable dynamic of care?

Toward a Minor Tech:Contributors

2023-01-20T14:36:57Z

Nnsshh:

List of contributors here

'''Inga Luchs''' is a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. In her research, she deals with questions of data classification and discrimination from a cultural and technical perspective.

'''Søren Bro Pold''' Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University, works with the arts of the interface and interface criticism.

'''xenodata co-operative''' investigates image politics, algorithmic culture and technological conditions of knowledge production and governance through art and media practices. The collective was established by curator Yasemin Keskintepe and artist-researcher Sasha Anikina.

'''Jack Wilson''' is a PhD researcher at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. He is not a conspiracy theorist.

'''Winnie Soon''' is a Hong Kong-born artist coder and researcher, engaging with themes such as Free and Open Source Culture, Coding Otherwise, artistic/technical manuals and digital censorship.

'''Christian Ulrik Andersen''', Digital Aesthetics Research Center, Aarhus University, is attempting to bring the knowledge and practices of digital culture and art to the fore.

From a network of '''Feminist Servers''' the following authors contributed: mara karagianni - artist, software, sysadmin, ooooo - Transuniversal constellation, nate wessalowski - PhD student at Münster University, vo ezn - sound && infrastructure artist.

'''Shusha Niederberger''' is a PhD researcher based at Zurich University of the Arts and working on user subject positions in datafied environments and aesthetic strategies of using otherwise.

'''Inte Gloerich''' (Utrecht University & Institute of Network Cultures) researches sociotechnical imaginaries around blockchain technology as they appear in for instance memes, startup culture, and art.

'''Gabriel Menotti''' is Associate Professor in Film & Media at Queen's University and an independent curator.

'''Sandy Di Yu''' is a PhD researcher at the University of Sussex and co-managing editor of DiSCo Journal (www.discojournal.com), using digital artist critique to examine shifting experiences of time.

'''Magdalena Tyżlik-Carver''' ferments data and investigates Critical Data and related practices through curating. She is Associate Professor in Digital Design and Information Studies at Aarhus University.

'''Geoff Cox''' should probably decalre to be Professor of Art and Computational Culture at London South Bank University, and co-director of Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) but thinks this sounds a bit pompous.

'''Susanne Förster''' is a PhD candidate and research associate at the University of Siegen. Her work deals with imaginaries and infrastructures of conversational artificial agents.

'''Anna Mladentseva''' is a PhD researcher at University College London whose project focuses on the conservation of software-based works of art and design from the Victoria & Albert museum.

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-20T14:33:45Z

Nnsshh:

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

= The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech Heritage” Objects =
'''Anna Mladentseva'''

Big tech products and platforms are proliferating and expanding with unprecedented speed, finding their way into cultural heritage collections. Indeed, some institutions have already started collecting objects manufactured by industrial giants, giving rise to the phenomenon of “big tech heritage”. These institutions include the Victoria & Albert museum in London, who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative, dedicated to preserving contemporary objects from the world of design and manufacturing (see <nowiki>https://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/rapid-response-collecting</nowiki>).

The sheer scale of these objects—coupled with precarious conditions generated by the industry of big tech—presents tensions with regards to their future conservation. Many of the older cultural objects built with obsolete technologies—including artistic experiments with technology, videogames and MMORPGs—are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. For instance, enthusiasts of the early, online social world CyberTown have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see <nowiki>https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter</nowiki>).

Moreover, the conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. Conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116).

With so much of knowledge and labour required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities—with notions of affect and desire at the core of their motivations for care—it is important to question whether some of the more contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did.

In the climate of uninterrupted attention economies and imposed libidinal forces, big tech products proliferate through a careful, curated construction of subjectivity and desire. Franco Berardi notes this and argues for an emergent category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’ that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Although, historically, certain categories of workers, such as craftsmen, have also been motivated by desire, Berardi argues that it takes a more malignant form with contemporary ‘info-workers’, ‘producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’ (2009, 86).

It seems as though desire and affect, while at the core of care, is more closely interlinked with exploitation than one might think. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the same way as some of the earlier technologies, given how precarious the conditions of desire in these products and platforms are? Should we “scale down” these objects in order to preserve them and create a more equitable dynamic of care?

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva 500

2023-01-19T16:09:02Z

Nnsshh: Created page with " Category:Toward a Minor Tech Category:500 words"

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:500 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T18:05:54Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="MMMladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div>
== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.

<nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T18:05:32Z

Nnsshh: /* The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects */

<div class="pad"><eplite id="MMladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div>
== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.

<nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:59:47Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="MMladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div>
== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.

<nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:58:28Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="Mladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div>
== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.

<nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:52:46Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="Mladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:51:45Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="Mladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:50:21Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="Mladentseva" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:49:35Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="CHANGEME" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:47:28Z

Nnsshh: /* The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects */

<div class="pad"><eplite id="CHANGEME" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see <nowiki>https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter</nowiki>).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:46:04Z

Nnsshh:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="CHANGEME" show-chat="false" /></div><nowiki>[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]</nowiki>

<nowiki>[[Category:1000 words]]</nowiki>

== The Problem of Scale in the Conservation of “Big Tech” Heritage Objects ==

As “big tech” products and platforms proliferate and become increasingly present in our lives, it is important that we consider whether and how these technologies will become part of our cultural heritage. The somewhat mundane hardware and software objects such as smartphones, social media sites and mobile applications may offer valuable cultural insight to future generations. Indeed, museums have already started integrating objects that may be described as “big tech heritage” into their collections, including the Victoria & Albert museum who have collected the iPhone 6 and the instant messaging service WeChat as part of their ‘Rapid Response Collecting’ initiative. At the same time, in media studies, we observe a renewed interest in, what Melanie Swalwell refers to as, a ‘vernacular digitality’: ‘computing and computer culture as it was practiced by “ordinary” people’ (Swalwell 2021, 12). Although Swalwell’s formulations of a vernacular digitality are rooted in a media archaeological exploration of microcomputing practice from the 1980s and its associated “homebrew” games, someday the sites and applications that we use daily today will, without doubt, also age and become part of computing history.

Yet there is one key factor that divides these new technologies from the old ones: scale. This essay problematises the scale of big tech heritage objects in the context of their future conservation by expanding on Franco Berardi’s explorations on psychopathology and exploitation founded on speed. I revise Berardi’s argument using Anna Tsing’s formulations on scale; and in particular, the tension that manifests between the “bigness” of capitalism and difference. With the rise of information technologies, Berardi notes a shift of manual labour into cognitive labour (Berardi 2009, 79). What makes this shift problematic is speed, as manifested in flexibility, “just-in-time” production and other precarious and insecure working conditions (Berardi 2009, 86). Besides speed, desire becomes an essential characteristic of this new category of labourers—the ‘cognitariat’—that ‘[put] their [souls] to work’ (Berardi 2009, 24). Interpreting communities of technology enthusiasts as a category of labourers whose work is underpinned by desire, I question whether contemporary technologies, in line with Berardi’s argument, position this desire as exploitative—rather than genuine—and thus unsustainable. Tsing, on the other hand, writes on ‘supply chain capitalism’: a theory that addresses both the scale of capitalism—‘global integration’—and the diverse niches—'varied class niches and racial, ethnic, national, sexual, and religious positions’—that it forms, suggesting that it thrives on difference (Tsing 2009, 150-152). I argue that these readings offer insight into the problematic landscape of affect that big tech products and platforms craft, which may have lasting effects on the way in which the objects that emerge out of these technologies are conserved. With so much of knowledge required for the conservation of born-digital artefacts being dispersed across self-organising fan or enthusiast communities, it is important to question whether contemporary computer technologies allow for a genuine construction of desire in the way that earlier technologies did. Many cultural objects built with obsolete technologies are cared for by communities that are nostalgic over the times they spent interacting with them. Will objects that emerge out of products created by industrial, big tech giants be cared for in the future in the same way?

The conservation of software and other time-based media has long relied on knowledge possessed by ordinary communities of users that have once interacted with a given technology in one way or another. For example, conservators at the Preservation & Media Archaeology Lab (PAMAL) in Avignon, France, when restoring a series of artworks made by Eduardo Kac for the Minitel terminal, have re-appropriated the underground practice of Minitel hackers to create their own single-channel micro-servers that the terminal can communicate with today, despite the original infrastructure being obsolete as of 2012 (Guez et al. 2017, 116). In other instances, these communities take it upon themselves to perform the conservation work. CyberTown is one of the earliest massive multiplayer online role-playing games that was built with VRML (virtual reality modelling language) and a plug-in developed by Blaxxun Interactive. As a three-dimensional standard, VRML has been superseded by X3D, while the Blaxxun plug-in that turned single-user VRML into multi-user environments has become defunct together with the company that supplied it. Nonetheless, CyberTown enthusiasts have been independently migrating the world, giving it a second life with the help of contemporary JavaScript frameworks (see <nowiki>https://www.cybertownrevival.com/#/place/enter</nowiki>).

Both restoration projects are undoubtedly laborious and other alternative, less time-consuming restoration pathways—such as emulation—exist. Yet these projects appear to be driven not by productivity or efficiency but nostalgia, desire and other systems of affect. Indeed, Jack McConchie, time-based media conservator at the Tate, writes that caring for objects supposes an ‘often hidden mode of personal relating: connecting through, feeling and showing ''love''’ (McConchie 2022). Although, for Berardi, capitalist productivity and personal affect are becoming increasingly entangled by virtue of contemporary information technology. Berardi notes a significant disparity between ‘craftsmen’ and ‘info-workers’:

<blockquote>‘The investment of desire, which for the craftsman deeply connected to its local community and its needs used to have a reassuring character, for the info-worker develops along very different lines, producing anxiety, incertitude and constant change’

(Berardi 2009, 86).</blockquote>

In this way, although both craftsmen and info-workers apply creativity in their work, the latter are subjected to psychopathological outcomes such as anxiety, panic and depression—the ultimate antithesis to desire.

It is interesting that Berardi identifies speed—or ‘constant change’—as comorbid with cognitive labour, as I would suggest that scale is far more significant. After all, many of the products and platforms on which we perform such cognitive work are manufactured by industrial giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. Moreover, following Tsing, these giants rely on global supply chains for the assembly of their devices, many of which are made up of precious metals and minerals mined all over the world, sometimes in disadvantaged communities. The psychic stress that Berardi describes results from a ‘constant exploitation of attention’ (Berardi 2009, 105)—machine learning algorithms that manifest in curated timelines designed to capture and exploit our attention for data and profit. The outcome is a somewhat artificial manifestation of desire—celebrating difference in a cruel way and exploiting diversity for the sake of generating clicks and capital. Most importantly, this sort of desire is unsustainable.

To conclude, it is difficult to imagine that ordinary users of contemporary, big tech products will possess a personal attachment to technology in the same way that CyberTown restorers do over the relatively unknown, early internet technology of VRML. This raises issues with regards to the sustainability of cultural objects that depend on these technologies. Despite the highly problematic landscape that these technologies engender, they form a significant part of computing history and are therefore worth preserving. Perhaps we should start a process of ‘scaling down’ these objects in order to preserve them.

=== References ===

Berardi, Franco “Bifo”. 2009. ''The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Guez, Emmanuel, Stricot, Morgane, Broye, Lionel and Bizet, Stéphane. 2017. ‘The afterlives of network-based artworks.’ ''Journal of the Institute of Conservation'' 40, no. 2: 105-120.

McConchie, Jack. 2022. ‘‘Nothing Comes Without its World’: Learning to Love the Unknown in the Conservation of Ima-Abasi Okon’s Artworks.’ Tate Papers, no. 35. Accessed 16 December 2022. <nowiki>https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/35/learning-to-love-the-unknown-conservation-ima-abasi-okon-artworks</nowiki>.

Swalwell, Melanie. 2021. ''Homebrew Gaming and the Beginnings of Vernacular Digitality''. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Tsing, Anna. 2009. ‘Supply Chains and the Human Condition.’ ''Rethinking Marxism'' 21, no. 2: 148-176.
[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]
[[Category:1000 words]]

Toward a Minor Tech:Mladentseva

2022-12-16T17:42:07Z

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