Control And Freedom: Power And Paranoia In The Age Of Fiber Optics

by Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

A work that bridges media archaeology and visual culture studies argues that the Internet has emerged as a mass medium by linking control with freedom and democracy. 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.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Academic, Theory, Research, Politics

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University's Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on digital media. She is author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016), and co-author of Pattern Discrimination (University of Minnesota + Meson Press 2019). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades and where she’s currently a Visiting Professor. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, Member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and she has held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She has been a Visiting Professor at AI Now at NYU, the Velux Visiting Professor of Management, Politics and Philosophy at the Copenhagen Business School; the Wayne Morse Chair for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon, Visiting Professor at Leuphana University (Luneburg, Germany), and a Visiting Associate Professor in the History of Science Department at Harvard, of which she is an Associate.

Reviews

[Thai Divone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. I can't say "wow" enough. I feel bad for not getting to this book earlier. It presents a very interesting and illuminating critique of Foucault's panopticon, and from there only improves. Combining both Lacan and feminist-postcolonialism, the shear breadth of her theoretical quest is almost intimidating in its magnitude and creativity. I can't write anything constructing about this book, for me, it pulls the ground under many of my most central beliefs and theoretical preconceptions. It is more than enough, as far as I'm concerned, to grant it five stars.

[ronan]

very important book for my thesis. a little outdated obviously (though Chun's other more recent books make up for it) but also really interesting.

[Steen Ledet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book on how internet freedom works through and as control.

[Tony Poerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Around the time I was in college, I got very interested in new media theory -- I was studying literature at the time. This is one of the best contemporary books examining the internet as a mass medium, and I'd strongly recommend it to anyone else interested in the subject.

The book is academic, so be prepared for that--and it's probably best read/used in a class about new media, college level. I read it purely out of interest and enjoyed it, but not everyone is as nerdy as me.

Eventually, I went on to study computer science--so I was always interested in the internet, its history, and the like. Wendy's work did shape my thinking for awhile, and it's been an influential book for me. So I'd say it's well worth the time investment for someone interested in the subject.

[Nissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

a less idealistic, more sort of "practical" study of new media (particularly compared to "Language of New Media"). also really interesting and thought-provoking. if you're interested in new media, I highly recommend reading both this book and LoNM. feel free to ask me more about either book, cuz I love talking about both of them.

[Al Matthews]

I can't say I loved the excerpt I read from this, but I'm giving it another shot on strength of prof recommendation.

[k8inorbit]

(http://www.controlandfreedom.net/)

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This looks very promising. Have any of you all new media folks read this one? (or anyone)

[Kristine · Rating 4 out of 5]

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