Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

  • 出版商: MIT
  • 出版日期: 2005-12-23
  • 售價: $1,140
  • 語言: 英文
  • 頁數: 352
  • 裝訂: Hardcover
  • ISBN: 0262033321
  • ISBN-13: 9780262033329
  • 相關分類: 光學 Optics光纖通訊 Fiber-optics
  • 立即出貨(限量) (庫存=5)

商品描述

Book Description

How has the Internet, a medium that thrives on control, been accepted as a medium of freedom? Why is freedom increasingly indistinguishable from paranoid control? In Control and Freedom, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun explores the current political and technological coupling of freedom with control by tracing the emergence of the Internet as a mass medium. The parallel (and paranoid) myths of the Internet as total freedom/total control, she says, stem from our reduction of political problems into technological ones.

Drawing on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and analyzing such phenomena as Webcams and face-recognition technology, Chun argues that the relationship between control and freedom in networked contact is experienced and negotiated through sexuality and race. She traces the desire for cyberspace to cyberpunk fiction and maps the transformation of public/private into open/closed. Analyzing "pornocracy," she contends that it was through cyberporn and the government's attempts to regulate it that the Internet became a marketplace of ideas and commodities. Chun describes the way Internet promoters conflated technological empowerment with racial empowerment and, through close examinations of William Gibson's Neuromancer and Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell, she analyzes the management of interactivity in narratives of cyberspace.

The Internet's potential for democracy stems not from illusory promises of individual empowerment, Chun argues, but rather from the ways in which it exposes us to others (and to other machines) in ways we cannot control. Using fiber optic networks -- light coursing through glass tubes -- as metaphor and reality, Control and Freedom engages the rich philosophical tradition of light as a figure for knowledge, clarification, surveillance, and discipline, in order to argue that fiber-optic networks physically instantiate, and thus shatter, enlightenment.

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature.

 

Table of Contents

Preface vii 
 
Acknowledgments ix 
 
Introduction 1 
 
Interlude 31
 
1 Why Cyberspace? 37
 
2 Screening Pornography 77
 
3 Scenes of Empowerment 129
 
4 Orienting the Future 171
 
5 Control and Freedom 247 
 
Epilogue 299 
 
References 303 
 
Index 327
 

商品描述(中文翻譯)

書籍描述

在《控制與自由》一書中,Wendy Hui Kyong Chun探討了互聯網作為一種控制的媒介如何被接受為一種自由的媒介。為什麼自由越來越難以區分出與偏執控制的不同?她追溯了互聯網作為大眾媒體的出現,並指出互聯網作為完全自由/完全控制的平行(並且偏執)神話,源於我們將政治問題簡化為技術問題。

她借鑒了吉爾·德勒茲(Gilles Deleuze)和米歇爾·福柯(Michel Foucault)的理論,並分析了網絡攝像頭和人臉識別技術等現象,主張網絡接觸中控制與自由的關係是通過性別和種族體驗和協商的。她將對虛擬空間的渴望追溯到了電腦朋克小說,並將公共/私人轉化為開放/封閉。通過分析“色情統治”,她認為正是通過色情網絡和政府對其監管的努力,互聯網成為了思想和商品的市場。春描述了互聯網推廣者如何將技術賦權與種族賦權混為一談,並通過對威廉·吉布森(William Gibson)的《神經漫遊者》和押井守(Mamoru Oshii)的《攻殼機動隊》的深入研究,分析了虛擬空間敘事中互動性的管理。

春認為,互聯網的民主潛力不來自於個人賦權的虛假承諾,而是來自於它以我們無法控制的方式將我們暴露給他人(以及其他機器)。《控制與自由》以光纖網絡(光通過玻璃管)作為隱喻和現實,從而參與了光作為知識、澄清、監視和紀律的豐富哲學傳統,以主張光纖網絡在物理上實現並因此粉碎了啟蒙運動。

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun是布朗大學現代文化和媒體副教授。她曾學習過系統設計工程和英國文學。

目錄

前言
致謝
引言
插曲
第一章 為什麼是虛擬空間?
第二章 篩選色情
第三章 賦權場景
第四章 定位未來
第五章 控制與自由
結語
參考文獻
索引