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FCJManager

FCJManager has written 10 posts for The Fibreculture Journal : 25

FCJ-187 The Droning of Experience

Mark Andrejevic Pomona College Recent debates over the fate of automated weaponry raise the question of pre-empting pre-emption: might it be possible to thwart the seeming ineluctable development of so-called ‘killer robots,’ that can respond to perceived threats more efficiently and rapidly than humans? The processes of disarmament and pre-emption collided in the ‘bold action’ […]

FCJ-186 Hack for good: Speculative labour, app development and the burden of austerity

Melissa Gregg Intel Corporation, USA In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. (Reagan, 1981) At a time when the technology sector offers hope for a revitalised economy, particularly in the United States, the working conditions typical in this highly prized industry take on special significance. This […]

FCJ-185 An Algorithmic Agartha: Post-App Approaches to Synarchic Regulation

Dan Mellamphy and Nandita Biswas Mellamphy Western University, Canada Let us begin with indefinition (the indefinite): specifically the question of information —proceeding from there to the myriad methods and mechanisms used to capture and control (or ‘net’) it. There is no single, unified mechanism governing the definition and distribution of information today, and this may […]

FCJ-184 Interpassive User: Complicity and the Returns of Cybernetics

Svitlana Matviyenko University of Western Ontario …cybernetics gets more and more complicated, makes a chain, then a network. Yet it is founded on the theft of information, quite a simple thing. Michel Serres, The Parasite (2007: 37). No boundaries This essay explores the properties of mobile apps – and ‘smart’ technologies in general – that […]

FCJ-183 iHootenanny: A Folk Archeology of Social Media

Henry Adam Svec Millsaps College Introduction It has been tempting, for fans of folk music, to celebrate the creative possibilities afforded by Web 2.0 as a sign of the resurgence of something like a folk revival. [1] David Dunaway (2010), for instance, has divided the history of folk revivalism in the United States into three […]

FCJ-182 Middlebroware

Frédérik Lesage Simon Fraser University Introduction In the introductory chapter to Software Takes Command, Lev Manovich (2012: 31) justifies his decision to focus his study on software applications instead of ‘the activity of programming’ by arguing that the former – for the most part commercial application software like Photoshop, AfterEffects, and Final Cut Pro – […]

FCJ-181 There’s a History for That: Apps and Mundane Software as Commodity

Jeremy Wade Morris and Evan Elkins University of Wisconsin-Madison Introduction I Am Rich was first released in August 2008 in Apple’s iOS App store for $999 (Milian, 2008). The program’s only function, other than displaying an image of a jewel, was a self-congratulatory message that read ‘I am rich, I deserv it, I am good, […]

FCJ-180 ‘Spotify Has Added an Event to Your Past’: (Re)writing the Self through Facebook’s Autoposting Apps

Tanya Kant University of Sussex, Brighton, UK ‘The film you quote. The songs you have on repeat. The activities you love. Now there’s a new class of social apps that let you express who you are through all the things you do’ (Facebook, 2014). Introduction: Performing the Self in the ‘Like’ Economy Facebook’s apps network […]

FCJ-179 On Governance, Blackboxing, Measure, Body, Affect and Apps: A conversation with Patricia Ticineto Clough and Alexander R. Galloway

Svitlana Matviyenko University of Western Ontario Patricia Ticineto Clough Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY Alexander R. Galloway New York University Introduction The work of these two authors is well known to anyone whose research concerns matters of affect and biopolitics, software, networks and gaming, interface culture and communication, political economy of media and […]

Issue 25: Apps and Affect

Introduction [1] In William Gibson’s recent futurist novel The Peripheral, the planet has been devastated by a massive eco-techno-political catastrophe (‘the jackpot’) but remaining inhabitants are still able to enjoy the luxury of activating digital devices simply by tapping their tongues on the roof of their mouths. This touch is sufficient to set into play […]