Journal articles on the topic 'Photodraw 2000 (Computer file)'

Based on the European energy directives, the building sector has to provide comfortable levels for occupants with minimum energy consumption as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper aims to compare the impact of climate change on the energy performance of residential buildings in order to derive potential design strategies. Different climate file inputs of Madrid have been used to quantify comparatively the thermal needs of two reference residential buildings located in this city. One of them represents buildings older than 40 years built according to the applicable Spanish regulations prior to 1979. The other refers to buildings erected in the last decade under more energy-restrictive constructive regulations. Three different climate databases of Madrid have been used to assess the impact of the evolution of the climate in recent years on the thermal demands of these two reference buildings. Two of them are typical meteorological years (TMY) derived from weather data measured before 2000. On the contrary, the third one is an experimental file representing the average values of the meteorological variables registered in Madrid during the last decade. Annual and monthly comparisons are done between the three climate databases assessing the climate changes. Compared to the TMYs databases, the experimental one records an average air temperature of 1.8 °C higher and an average value of relative humidity that is 9% lower.

The relatively young field of ion mobility spectrometry has now advanced to the stage where the need to reliably exchange the spectroscopic data obtained worldwide by this technique has become extremely urgent. To assist in the validation of the various new spectrometer designs and to assist in inter-comparisons between different laboratories reference data collections are being established for which an internationally recognized electronic data exchange format is essential. To make the data exchange between users and system administration possible, it is important to define a file format specially made for the requirements of ion mobility spectrometry. The format should be computer readable and flexible enough for extensive comments to be included. In this document, we define a data exchange format, agreed on by a working group of the International Society for Ion Mobility Spectrometry at Hilton Head Island, USA (1998) and Buxton, UK (1999). This definition of this format is based on the IUPAC JCAMP-DX protocols, which were developed for the exchange of infrared spectra [1] and extended to chemical structures [2], nuclear magnetic resonance data [3], and mass spectra [4]. This standard of the Joint Committee on Atomic and Molecular Physical Data is of a flexible design. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry have taken over the support and development of these standards and recently brought out an extension to cover year 2000 compatible date strings and good laboratory practice [5]. The aim of this paper is to adapt JCAMP-DX to the special requirements of ion mobility spectra [6].

Background: Technology experts foresee that nanotechnology is the next industrial revolution and it has great potential to bring solutions to many challenges of global relevance in terms of a diverse range of applications. Efficiency-driven economies are transforming into innovation-driven economies where Intellectual Property (IP) plays a pivotal role in achieving a competitive advantage. Whereas industry analysts assert that IP roadblocks will be a severe detriment to the development of nanotechnology due to infringements and high-profile patent battles. Various authors have made a significant effort to analyse the implications of IP on nanotechnology but most of the published literature covers only the years 2000- 2010. Data and insights pertaining to recent developments are lagging behind. Therefore, the objective of this review was to explore cutting-edge empirical evidence towards emerging trends of Intellectual Property protection in nanotechnology, thereby to provide insights aimed at unleashing the full potential of nanotechnology innovation for socio-economic advantage. Materials and Methods: Patent information over the period 2000 to 2018 was collated and analysed to determine the latest trends. To gain a global perspective, nanotechnology patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and nanotechnology patents published in the ‘PatentScope’ of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) were surveyed along with literature in relation to nanotechnology commercialization and litigation. Results: Our study revealed that worldwide protection of Intellectual Property in nanotechnology has steadily been increasing year-on-year accounting 3.3 million patent applications filed in 2018 in which China and U.S. are dominating. The other main contributors are Japan, Germany Republic of Korea, France and U.K. Asia has emerged as the single region to file more than half of total filings for the first time thus shifting global IP landscape from Europe to Asia. Another notable finding is that there is a significant growth in trademark registration in many of the leading economies. Top five technology fields with high international patenting activity are computer technology, medical technology, digital communication, electrical machinery and pharmaceuticals where computer technology is dominating. More than 90% of the total patents are granted on materials, devices and processes developed as basic building blocks of nanotechnology at laboratory level which sound as more downstream innovations in the short-term. Amid the upward trends in nanotechnology patenting, newly emerging obstacles pose risks to innovation. A key finding of the present study is that the increasing trend of patent litigation almost follows the same path of patent grants indicating a positive correlation. A global prominence of middle-income and low-income countries in patent filing is yet to emerge which foreshadows an IP divide. Discussion: A secondary market for patent assets is pronounced with many new types of players leading to a high cost of patenting nanotechnology. These trends foreshadow a surge of patent filings in the years to come and.the patent offices will be confronted with that ‘surge’ of patent applications of increased complexity and multidisciplinary nature..Patent offices with inadequate efficacy will ultimately produce lowquality patents along with a difficulty to enter into markets and will facilitate exploiting of the IP legal systems to extract rewards for infringement without contributing to innovation or social prosperity of nations. Conclusion: Insights and recommendations given in this paper will enable nanotechnology researchers, inventors, technopreneurs and investors to understand recent trends and global perspectives on implications of IP in nanotechnology and intensifying IP battle thereby to contemplate and succeed in their roadmaps towards leveraging on nanotechnology.

To improve online learning pedagogy within the field of paralegal education, this study investigated how paralegal students and paralegal instructors perceived the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. This study intended to inform paralegal instructors and course developers how to better design, deliver, and evaluate effective online course instruction in the field of paralegal studies.Survey results were analyzed using independent samples t-test and correlational analysis, and indicated that overall, paralegal students and paralegal instructors positively perceived synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. Paralegal instructors reported statistically significant higher perceptions than paralegal students: (1) of instructional design and course content in synchronous online paralegal courses; and (2) of technical assistance, communication, and course content in asynchronous online paralegal courses. Instructors also reported higher perceptions of the effectiveness of universal design, online instructional design, and course content in synchronous online paralegal courses than in asynchronous online paralegal courses. Paralegal students reported higher perceptions of asynchronous online paralegal course effectiveness regarding universal design than paralegal instructors. No statistically significant differences existed between paralegal students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of synchronous and asynchronous online paralegal courses. A strong, negative relationship existed between paralegal students’ age and their perceptions of effective synchronous paralegal courses, which were statistically and practically significant. Lastly, this study provided practical applicability and opportunities for future research. Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. R. (2008). The development of a community of inquiry over time in an online course: Understanding the progression and integration of social, cognitive and teaching presence. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 12, 3-22. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ837483.pdf Akyol, Z., Garrison, D. R., & Ozden, M. Y. (2009). Online and blended communities of inquiry: Exploring the developmental and perceptional differences. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 10(6), 65-83. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/765/1436 Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2014). Grade change: Tracking online education in the United States. Babson Park, MA: Babson Survey Research Group and Quahog Research Group, LLC. Retrieved from https://www.utc.edu/learn/pdfs/online/sloanc-report-2014.pdf Alreck, P. L., & Settle, R. B. (2004). The Survey Research Handbook (3rd ed.) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin. American Association for Paralegal Education (2013, Oct.). AAfPE core competencies for paralegal programs. Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.aafpe.org/resource/resmgr/Docs/AAfPECoreCompetencies.pdf American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Paralegals. (2017). https://www.americanbar.org/groups/paralegals.html American Bar Association, Standing Committee on Paralegals (2013, September). Guidelines for the approval of paralegal education programs. Retrieved from https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/paralegals/ls_prlgs_2013_paralegal_guidelines.authcheckdam.pdf Astani, M., Ready, K. J., & Duplaga, E. A. (2010). Online course experience matters: Investigating students’ perceptions of online learning. Issues in Information Systems, 11(2), 14-21. Retrieved from http://iacis.org/iis/2010/14-21_LV2010_1526.pdf Bailey, C. J., & Card, K. A. (2009). Effective pedagogical practices for online teaching: Perception of experienced instructors. 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Background and Objective: Suicide attempts are 10-20X more common than completed suicide and an important risk factor for death by suicide, yet most people who attempt suicide do not die by suicide. The process of recovering after a suicide attempt has not been well studied. The Reasons to go on Living (RTGOL) Project, a narrative web-based study, focuses on experiences of people who have attempted suicide and made the decision to go on living, a process not well studied. Narrative research is ideally suited to understanding personal experiences critical to recovery following a suicide attempt, including the transition to a state of hopefulness. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize this work. This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. Material and Methods: A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery, a process which enabled participation from a large and diverse group of participants. The only direction given was “if you have made a suicide attempt or seriously considered suicide and now want to go on living, we want to hear from you.” The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Over 5 years, data analysis occurred in several phases over the course of the study, resulting in the identification of data that were inputted into an Excel file. This analysis used stories where participants described positive involvement with the mental health system (50 stories). Results: Several participants reflected on experiences many years previous, providing the privilege of learning how their life unfolded, what made a difference. Over a five-year period, 50 of 226 stories identified positive experiences with mental health care with sufficient details to allow analysis, and are the focus of this paper. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories, from suicidal ideation only to medically severe suicide attempts. Most described one or more suicide attempts. Three themes identified included: 1) trust and relationship with a health care professional, 2) the role of friends and family and friends, and 3) a wide range of services. Conclusion: Stories open a window into the experiences of the period after a suicide attempt. This study allowed for an understanding of how mental health professionals might help individuals who have attempted suicide write a different story, a life-affirming story. The stories that participants shared offer some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers, including immediately after a suicide attempt. Results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a tremendous difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. Key Words: web-based; suicide; suicide attempt; mental health system; narrative research Word Count: 478 Introduction My Third (or fourth) Suicide AttemptI laid in the back of the ambulance, the snow of too many doses of ativan dissolving on my tongue.They hadn't even cared enough about meto put someone in the back with me,and so, frustrated,I'd swallowed all the pills I had with me— not enough to do what I wanted it to right then,but more than enough to knock me out for a good 14 hours.I remember very little after that;benzodiazepines like ativan commonly cause pre- and post-amnesia, says Google helpfullyI wake up in a locked rooma woman manically drawing on the windows with crayonsthe colors of light through the glassdiffused into rainbows of joy scattered about the roomas if she were coloring on us all,all of the tattered remnants of humanity in a psych wardmade into a brittle mosaic, a quilt of many hues, a Technicolor dreamcoatand I thoughtI am so glad to be able to see this. (Story 187)The nurse opening that door will have a lasting impact on how this story unfolds and on this person’s life. Each year, almost one million people die from suicide, approximately one death every 40 seconds. Suicide attempts are much more frequent, with up to an estimated 20 attempts for every death by suicide.1 Suicide-related behaviours range from suicidal ideation and self-injury to death by suicide. We are unable to directly study those who die by suicide, but effective intervention after a suicide attempt could reduce the risk of subsequent death by suicide. Near-fatal suicide attempts have been used to explore the boundary with completed suicides. Findings indicated that violent suicide attempters and serious attempters (seriousness of the medical consequences to define near-fatal attempts) were more likely to make repeated, and higher lethality suicide attempts.2 In a case-control study, the medically severe suicide attempts group (78 participants), epidemiologically very similar to those who complete suicide, had significantly higher communication difficulties; the risk for death by suicide multiplied if accompanied by feelings of isolation and alienation.3 Most research in suicidology has been quantitative, focusing almost exclusively on identifying factors that may be predictive of suicidal behaviours, and on explanation rather than understanding.4 Qualitative research, focusing on the lived experiences of individuals who have attempted suicide, may provide a better understanding of how to respond in empathic and helpful ways to prevent future attempts and death by suicide.4,5 Fitzpatrick6 advocates for narrative research as a valuable qualitative method in suicide research, enabling people to construct and make sense of the experiences and their world, and imbue it with meaning. A review of qualitative studies examining the experiences of recovering from or living with suicidal ideation identified 5 interconnected themes: suffering, struggle, connection, turning points, and coping.7 Several additional qualitative studies about attempted suicide have been reported in the literature. Participants have included patients hospitalized for attempting suicide8, and/or suicidal ideation,9 out-patients following a suicide attempt and their caregivers,10 veterans with serious mental illness and at least one hospitalization for a suicide attempt or imminent suicide plan.11 Relationships were a consistent theme in these studies. Interpersonal relationships and an empathic environment were perceived as therapeutic and protective, enabling the expression of thoughts and self-understanding.8 Given the connection to relationship issues, the authors suggested it may be helpful to provide support for the relatives of patients who have attempted suicide. A sheltered, friendly environment and support systems, which included caring by family and friends, and treatment by mental health professionals, helped the suicidal healing process.10 Receiving empathic care led to positive changes and an increased level of insight; just one caring professional could make a tremendous difference.11 Kraft and colleagues9 concluded with the importance of hearing directly from those who are suicidal in order to help them, that only when we understand, “why suicide”, can we help with an alternative, “why life?” In a grounded theory study about help-seeking for self-injury, Long and colleagues12 identified that self-injury was not the problem for their participants, but a panacea, even if temporary, to painful life experiences. Participant narratives reflected a complex journey for those who self-injured: their wish when help-seeking was identified by the theme “to be treated like a person”. There has also been a focus on the role and potential impact of psychiatric/mental health nursing. Through interviews with experienced in-patient nurses, Carlen and Bengtsson13 identified the need to see suicidal patients as subjective human beings with unique experiences. This mirrors research with patients, which concluded that the interaction with personnel who are devoted, hope-mediating and committed may be crucial to a patient’s desire to continue living.14 Interviews with individuals who received mental health care for a suicidal crisis following a serious attempt led to the development of a theory for psychiatric nurses with the central variable, reconnecting the person with humanity across 3 phases: reflecting an image of humanity, guiding the individual back to humanity, and learning to live.15 Other research has identified important roles for nurses working with patients who have attempted suicide by enabling the expression of thoughts and developing self-understanding8, helping to see things differently and reconnecting with others,10 assisting the person in finding meaning from their experience to turn their lives around, and maintain/and develop positive connections with others.16 However, one literature review identified that negative attitudes toward self-harm were common among nurses, with more positive attitudes among mental health nurses than general nurses. The authors concluded that education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 This paper is one part of a larger web-based narrative study, the Reasons to go on Living Project (RTGOL), that seeks to understand the transition from making a suicide attempt to choosing life. When invited to tell their stories anonymously online, what information would people share about their suicide attempts? This paper reports on a secondary research question of the larger study: what stories do participants tell of the positive role/impact of the mental health system. The focus on the positive impact reflects an appreciative inquiry approach which can promote better practice.18 Methods Design and Sample A website created for The RTGOL Project (www.thereasons.ca) enabled participants to anonymously submit a story about their suicide attempt and recovery. Participants were required to read and agree with a consent form before being able to submit their story through a text box or by uploading a file. No demographic information was requested. Text submissions were embedded into an email and sent to an account created for the Project without collecting information about the IP address or other identifying information. The content of the website was reviewed by legal counsel before posting, and the study was approved by the local Research Ethics Board. Stories were collected for 5 years (July 2008-June 2013). The RTGOL Project enabled participation by a large, diverse audience, at their own convenience of time and location, providing they had computer access. The unstructured narrative format allowed participants to describe their experiences in their own words, to include and emphasize what they considered important. Of the 226 submissions to the website, 112 described involvement at some level with the mental health system, and 50 provided sufficient detail about positive experiences with mental health care to permit analysis. There were a range of suicidal behaviours in these 50 stories: 8 described suicidal ideation only; 9 met the criteria of medically severe suicide attempts3; 33 described one or more suicide attempts. For most participants, the last attempt had been some years in the past, even decades, prior to writing. Results Stories of positive experiences with mental health care described the idea of a door opening, a turning point, or helping the person to see their situation differently. Themes identified were: (1) relationship and trust with a Health Care Professional (HCP), (2) the role of family and friends (limited to in-hospital experiences), and (3) the opportunity to access a range of services. The many reflective submissions of experiences told many years after the suicide attempt(s) speaks to the lasting impact of the experience for that individual. Trust and Relationship with a Health Care Professional A trusting relationship with a health professional helped participants to see things in a different way, a more hopeful way and over time. “In that time of crisis, she never talked down to me, kept her promises, didn't panic, didn't give up, and she kept believing in me. I guess I essentially borrowed the hope that she had for me until I found hope for myself.” (Story# 35) My doctor has worked extensively with me. I now realize that this is what will keep me alive. To be able to feel in my heart that my doctor does care about me and truly wants to see me get better.” (Story 34). The writer in Story 150 was a nurse, an honours graduate. The 20 years following graduation included depression, hospitalizations and many suicide attempts. “One day after supper I took an entire bottle of prescription pills, then rode away on my bike. They found me late that night unconscious in a downtown park. My heart threatened to stop in the ICU.” Then later, “I finally found a person who was able to connect with me and help me climb out of the pit I was in. I asked her if anyone as sick as me could get better, and she said, “Yes”, she had seen it happen. Those were the words I had been waiting to hear! I quickly became very motivated to get better. I felt heard and like I had just found a big sister, a guide to help me figure out how to live in the world. This person was a nurse who worked as a trauma therapist.” At the time when the story was submitted, the writer was applying to a graduate program. Role of Family and Friends Several participants described being affected by their family’s response to their suicide attempt. Realizing the impact on their family and friends was, for some, a turning point. The writer in Story 20 told of experiences more than 30 years prior to the writing. She described her family of origin as “truly dysfunctional,” and she suffered from episodes of depression and hospitalization during her teen years. Following the birth of her second child, and many family difficulties, “It was at this point that I became suicidal.” She made a decision to kill herself by jumping off the balcony (6 stories). “At the very last second as I hung onto the railing of the balcony. I did not want to die but it was too late. I landed on the parking lot pavement.” She wrote that the pain was indescribable, due to many broken bones. “The physical pain can be unbearable. Then you get to see the pain and horror in the eyes of someone you love and who loves you. Many people suggested to my husband that he should leave me in the hospital, go on with life and forget about me. During the process of recovery in the hospital, my husband was with me every day…With the help of psychiatrists and a later hospitalization, I was actually diagnosed as bipolar…Since 1983, I have been taking lithium and have never had a recurrence of suicidal thoughts or for that matter any kind of depression.” The writer in Story 62 suffered childhood sexual abuse. When she came forward with it, she felt she was not heard. Self-harm on a regular basis was followed by “numerous overdoses trying to end my life.” Overdoses led to psychiatric hospitalizations that were unhelpful because she was unable to trust staff. “My way of thinking was that ending my life was the only answer. There had been numerous attempts, too many to count. My thoughts were that if I wasn’t alive I wouldn’t have to deal with my problems.” In her final attempt, she plunged over the side of a mountain, dropping 80 feet, resulting in several serious injuries. “I was so angry that I was still alive.” However, “During my hospitalization I began to realize that my family and friends were there by my side continuously, I began to realize that I wasn't only hurting myself. I was hurting all the important people in my life. It was then that I told myself I am going to do whatever it takes.” A turning point is not to say that the difficulties did not continue. The writer of Story 171 tells of a suicide attempt 7 years previous, and the ongoing anguish. She had been depressed for years and had thoughts of suicide on a daily basis. After a serious overdose, she woke up the next day in a hospital bed, her husband and 2 daughters at her bed. “Honestly, I was disappointed to wake up. But, then I saw how scared and hurt they were. Then I was sorry for what I had done to them. Since then I have thought of suicide but know that it is tragic for the family and is a hurt that can never be undone. Today I live with the thought that I am here for a reason and when it is God's time to take me then I will go. I do believe living is harder than dying. I do believe I was born for a purpose and when that is accomplished I will be released. …Until then I try to remind myself of how I am blessed and try to appreciate the wonders of the world and the people in it.” Range of Services The important role of mental health and recovery services was frequently mentioned, including dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT)/cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), recovery group, group therapy, Alcoholics Anonymous, accurate diagnosis, and medications. The writer in Story 30 was 83 years old when she submitted her story, reflecting on a life with both good and bad times. She first attempted suicide at age 10 or 12. A serious post-partum depression followed the birth of her second child, and over the years, she experienced periods of suicidal intent: “Consequently, a few years passed and I got to feeling suicidal again. I had pills in one pocket and a clipping for “The Recovery Group” in the other pocket. As I rode on the bus trying to make up my mind, I decided to go to the Recovery Group first. I could always take the pills later. I found the Recovery Group and yoga helpful; going to meetings sometimes twice a day until I got thinking more clearly and learned how to deal with my problems.” Several participants described the value of CBT or DBT in learning to challenge perceptions. “I have tools now to differentiate myself from the illness. I learned I'm not a bad person but bad things did happen to me and I survived.”(Story 3) “The fact is that we have thoughts that are helpful and thoughts that are destructive….. I knew it was up to me if I was to get better once and for all.” (Story 32): “In the hospital I was introduced to DBT. I saw a nurse (Tanya) every day and attended a group session twice a week, learning the techniques. I worked with the people who wanted to work with me this time. Tanya said the same thing my counselor did “there is no study that can prove whether or not suicide solves problems” and I felt as though I understood it then. If I am dead, then all the people that I kept pushing away and refusing their help would be devastated. If I killed myself with my own hand, my family would be so upset. DBT taught me how to ‘ride my emotional wave’. ……….. DBT has changed my life…….. My life is getting back in order now, thanks to DBT, and I have lots of reasons to go on living.”(Story 19) The writer of Story 67 described the importance of group therapy. “Group therapy was the most helpful for me. It gave me something besides myself to focus on. Empathy is such a powerful emotion and a pathway to love. And it was a huge relief to hear others felt the same and had developed tools of their own that I could try for myself! I think I needed to learn to communicate and recognize when I was piling everything up to build my despair. I don’t think I have found the best ways yet, but I am lifetimes away from that teenage girl.” (Story 67) The author of story 212 reflected on suicidal ideation beginning over 20 years earlier, at age 13. Her first attempt was at 28. “I thought everyone would be better off without me, especially my children, I felt like the worst mum ever, I felt like a burden to my family and I felt like I was a failure at life in general.” She had more suicide attempts, experienced the death of her father by suicide, and then finally found her doctor. “Now I’m on meds for a mood disorder and depression, my family watch me closely, and I see my doctor regularly. For the first time in 20 years, I love being a mum, a sister, a daughter, a friend, a cousin etc.” Discussion The 50 stories that describe positive experiences in the health care system constitute a larger group than most other similar studies, and most participants had made one or more suicide attempts. Several writers reflected back many years, telling stories of long ago, as with the 83-year old participant (Story 30) whose story provided the privilege of learning how the author’s life unfolded. In clinical practice, we often do not know – how did the story turn out? The stories that describe receiving health care speak to the impact of the experience, and the importance of the issues identified in the mental health system. We identified 3 themes, but it was often the combination that participants described in their stories that was powerful, as demonstrated in Story 20, the young new mother who had fallen from a balcony 30 years earlier. Voices from people with lived experience can help us plan and conceptualize our clinical work. Results are consistent with, and add to, the previous work on the importance of therapeutic relationships.8,10,11,14–16 It is from the stories in this study that we come to understand the powerful experience of seeing a family members’ reaction following a participant’s suicide attempt, and how that can be a potent turning point as identified by Lakeman and Fitzgerald.7 Ghio and colleagues8 and Lakeman16 identified the important role for staff/nurses in supporting families due to the connection to relationship issues. This research also calls for support for families to recognize the important role they have in helping the person understand how much they mean to them, and to promote the potential impact of a turning point. The importance of the range of services reflect Lakeman and Fitzgerald’s7 theme of coping, associating positive change by increasing the repertoire of coping strategies. These findings have implications for practice, research and education. Working with individuals who are suicidal can help them develop and tell a different story, help them move from a death-oriented to life-oriented position,15 from “why suicide” to “why life.”9 Hospitalization provides a person with the opportunity to reflect, to take time away from “the real world” to consider oneself, the suicide attempt, connections with family and friends and life goals, and to recover physically and emotionally. Hospitalization is also an opening to involve the family in the recovery process. The intensity of the immediate period following a suicide attempt provides a unique opportunity for nurses to support and coach families, to help both patients and family begin to see things differently and begin to create that different story. In this way, family and friends can be both a support to the person who has attempted suicide, and receive help in their own struggles with this experience. It is also important to recognize that this short period of opportunity is not specific to the nurses in psychiatric units, as the nurses caring for a person after a medically severe suicide attempt will frequently be the nurses in the ICU or Emergency departments. Education, both reflective and interactive, could have a positive impact.17 Helping staff develop the attitudes, skills and approach necessary to be helpful to a person post-suicide attempt is beginning to be reported in the literature.21 Further implications relate to nursing curriculum. Given the extent of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts and deaths by suicide, this merits an important focus. This could include specific scenarios, readings by people affected by suicide, both patients themselves and their families or survivors, and discussions with individuals who have made an attempt(s) and made a decision to go on living. All of this is, of course, not specific to nursing. All members of the interprofessional health care team can support the transition to recovery of a person after a suicide attempt using the strategies suggested in this paper, in addition to other evidence-based interventions and treatments. Findings from this study need to be considered in light of some specific limitations. First, the focus was on those who have made a decision to go on living, and we have only the information the participants included in their stories. No follow-up questions were possible. The nature of the research design meant that participants required access to a computer with Internet and the ability to communicate in English. This study does not provide a comprehensive view of in-patient care. However, it offers important inputs to enhance other aspects of care, such as assessing safety as a critical foundation to care. We consider these limitations were more than balanced by the richness of the many stories that a totally anonymous process allowed. Conclusion Stories open a window into the experiences of a person during the period after a suicide attempt. The RTGOL Project allowed for an understanding of how we might help suicidal individuals change the script, write a different story. The stories that participants shared give us some understanding of “how” to provide support at a most-needed critical juncture for people as they interact with health care providers immediately after a suicide attempt. While we cannot know the experiences of those who did not survive a suicide attempt, results of this study reinforce that just one caring professional can make a crucial difference to a person who has survived a suicide attempt. We end with where we began. Who will open the door? References 1. World Health Organization. Suicide prevention and special programmes. http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/index.html Geneva: Author; 2013.2. Giner L, Jaussent I, Olie E, et al. Violent and serious suicide attempters: One step closer to suicide? J Clin Psychiatry 2014:73(3):3191–197.3. Levi-Belz Y, Gvion Y, Horesh N, et al. Mental pain, communication difficulties, and medically serious suicide attempts: A case-control study. Arch Suicide Res 2014:18:74–87.4. Hjelmeland H and Knizek BL. Why we need qualitative research in suicidology? Suicide Life Threat Behav 2010:40(1):74–80.5. Gunnell D. A population health perspective on suicide research and prevention: What we know, what we need to know, and policy priorities. Crisis 2015:36(3):155–60.6. Fitzpatrick S. Looking beyond the qualitative and quantitative divide: Narrative, ethics and representation in suicidology. Suicidol Online 2011:2:29–37.7. Lakeman R and FitzGerald M. How people live with or get over being suicidal: A review of qualitative studies. J Adv Nurs 2008:64(2):114–26.8. Ghio L, Zanelli E, Gotelli S, et al. Involving patients who attempt suicide in suicide prevention: A focus group study. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2011:18:510–18.9. Kraft TL, Jobes DA, Lineberry TW., Conrad, A., & Kung, S. Brief report: Why suicide? Perceptions of suicidal inpatients and reflections of clinical researchers. Arch Suicide Res 2010:14(4):375-382.10. Sun F, Long A, Tsao L, et al. The healing process following a suicide attempt: Context and intervening conditions. Arch Psychiatr Nurs 2014:28:66–61.11. Montross Thomas L, Palinkas L, et al. Yearning to be heard: What veterans teach us about suicide risk and effective interventions. Crisis 2014:35(3):161–67.12. Long M, Manktelow R, and Tracey A. The healing journey: Help seeking for self-injury among a community population. Qual Health Res 2015:25(7):932–44.13. Carlen P and Bengtsson A. Suicidal patients as experienced by psychiatric nurses in inpatient care. Int J Ment Health Nurs 2007:16:257–65.14. Samuelsson M, Wiklander M, Asberg M, et al. Psychiatric care as seen by the attempted suicide patient. J Adv Nurs 2000:32(3):635–43.15. Cutcliffe JR, Stevenson C, Jackson S, et al. A modified grounded theory study of how psychiatric nurses work with suicidal people. Int J Nurs Studies 2006:43(7):791–802.16. Lakeman, R. What can qualitative research tell us about helping a person who is suicidal? Nurs Times 2010:106(33):23–26.17. Karman P, Kool N, Poslawsky I, et al. Nurses’ attitudes toward self-harm: a literature review. J Psychiatr Ment Health Nurs 2015:22:65–75.18. Carter B. ‘One expertise among many’ – working appreciatively to make miracles instead of finding problems: Using appreciative inquiry as a way of reframing research. J Res Nurs 2006:11(1): 48–63.19. Lieblich A, Tuval-Mashiach R, Zilber T. Narrative research: Reading, analysis, and interpretation. Sage Publications; 1998.20. Braun V and Clarke V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol 2006:3(2):77–101.21. Kishi Y, Otsuka K, Akiyama K, et al. Effects of a training workshop on suicide prevention among emergency room nurses. Crisis 2014:35(5):357–61.

This paper explores the coverage of file–sharing from before the RIAA/Napster trial of 2000, drawing on interviews with journalists from the New York Times, Wired, Salon and the Los Angeles Times and on analysis of their stories and columns of opinion. It argues the file–sharing story saw “establishment” journalists unapologetically move away from long–established norms of journalism — by relying on alternative sources and by frankly including their own points of view, for example. The course of the stories these journalists produced points to the tensions that continue to mount in the new–media news landscape and to the forces that shape stories in the mainstream press. For more than a decade U.S. journalists lingered on the margins of profound questions about the limits of freedom under the rule of the market. Yet, with the emergence of the recording industry into the online music scene, journalists backed off, leaving the questions they raised unanswered and the larger issues behind the questions mostly unaddressed.

This paper is included in the First Monday Special Issue: Music and the Internet, published in July 2005. Special Issue editor David Beer asked authors to submit additional comments regarding their articles. When I wrote this essay in late 2000, mobile Internet services via mobile telephone in Japan were booming. Meanwhile, young music lovers in the United States were enjoying a frenzy of music file sharing via personal computer. My central question was this: Would these two trans-pacific trends morph into a huge global mobile music phenomenon? I predicted in my essay that digital music over mobile telephones would indeed be very big, but that due to potholes and blind corners this inevitable ride would be difficult: the big bumpy shift. Looking back five years later, for Japan the shift to mobile Internet music has been big, but for the United States it has been bumpy. The key differences are (1) Japan’s 84 million mobile Internet users; (2) Japan’s lead in mobile telephone technology; and (3) Japan’s telecoms, music labels and third party developers quickly agreed to cooperate on ring tone services. But ring tones are yesterday. The future is full-song file downloads to mobile telephones. Already in Japan, one million full-song (AAC+) files per month have been downloaded since November 2004—and that is only for KDDI, one of Japan’s three major carriers. Now that is big. The promise and rise of mobile Internet technologies and markets will be remembered as one of the most profound global information technology developments of the next few years. Mobile Internet technologies and practical applications necessary for widespread public use are advancing rapidly in Japan and are likely to catch on quickly in other countries. The remarkable adoption of mobile Internet in Japan and the popularity of digital music file sharing services such as Napster in the United States create a situation in which powerful synergies are possible between these two fundamental forces. Digital music via mobile Internet creates attractive opportunities for music artists, music consumers, entrepreneurs, and major music labels facing an uncertain future for music industry distribution practices. The realization of such opportunities depends not only on technological and business innovations, but also on the willingness among all parties involved to collaborate in equitable and valuable ways.

AbstractWith ever-increasing computational power, larger computational domains are employed and thus the data output grows as well. Writing this data to disk can become a significant part of runtime if done serially. Even if the output is done in parallel, e.g., via MPI I/O, there are many user-space parameters for tuning the performance. This paper focuses on the available parameters for the Lustre file system and the Cray MPICH implementation of MPI I/O. Experiments on the Cray XC40 Hazel Hen using a Cray Sonexion 2000 Lustre file system were conducted. In the experiments, the core count, the block size and the striping configuration were varied. Based on these parameters, heuristics for striping configuration in terms of core count and block size were determined, yielding up to a 32-fold improvement in write rate compared to the default. This corresponds to 85 GB/s of the peak bandwidth of 202.5 GB/s. The heuristics are shown to be applicable to a small test program as well as a complex application.

In this paper, we present “FabSearch,” a prototype search engine for sourcing manufacturing service providers, by making use of the product manufacturing information (PMI) contained within a 3D digital file of a part product. FabSearch is designed to take in a query 3D model, such as the .STEP file of a part model which then produces a ranked list of job shop service providers who are best suited to fabricate the part. Service providers may have potentially built hundreds to thousands of parts with associated part 3D models over time. FabSearch assumes that these service providers have shared shape signatures of the part models built previously to enable the algorithm to most effectively rank the service providers who have the most experience to build the query part model. FabSearch has two important features that helps it produce relevant results. First, it makes use of the shape characteristics of the 3D part by calculating the Spherical Harmonics signature of the part to calculate the most similar shapes built previously be job shop service providers. Second, FabSearch utilizes metadata about each part, such as material specification, tolerance requirements to help improve the search results based on the specific query model requirements. The algorithm is tested against a repository containing more than 2000 models distributed across various job shop service providers. For the first time, we show the potential for utilizing the rich information contained within a 3D part model to automate the sourcing and eventual selection of manufacturing service providers.

Abstract Objectives To evaluate a therapeutic role for omega-3 fatty acid supplementation in the treatment of olfactory dysfunction associated with COVID-19 infection Trial design Randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial Participants Eligible patients are adults with self-reported new-onset olfactory dysfunction of any duration associated with laboratory-confirmed or clinically suspected COVID-19 patients. Exclusion criteria include patients with pre-existing olfactory dysfunction, history of chronic rhinosinusitis or history of sinus surgery, current use of nasal steroid sprays or omega-3 supplementation, fish allergy, or inability to provide informed consent for any reason. The trial is conducted at Mount Sinai Hospital Intervention and comparator The intervention group will receive 2000 mg daily of omega-3 supplementation in the form of two “Fish Oil, Ultra Omega-3” capsules (product of Pharmavite®) daily. The comparator group will take 2 placebo capsules of identical size, shape, and odor daily for 6 weeks. Main outcomes Each subject will take a Brief Smell Identification Test at study enrolment and completion after 6 weeks. The primary outcome will be change in Brief Smell Identification Test over the 6-week period. Randomisation Patients will be randomized by the Investigational Drug Pharmacy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Sinai via a computer-generated sequence in a 1:1 allocation to treatment or control arms. Blinding (masking) Both participants and researchers will be blinded. Numbers to be randomised (sample size) There will be 88 participants randomized to each group. A total of 176 participants will be randomized. Trial Status Protocol Version 1, 8/3/2020 Recruitment is ongoing, started 8/5/2020 with estimated completion 11/30/2020. Trial registration The trial is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov with Protocol Identifier: NCT04495816. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04495816. Registered 3 August 2020 Full protocol The full protocol is attached as an additional file, accessible from the Trials website (Additional file 1).

The carefully constructed record collection with detailed liner notes and displayable album cover art is little more than a quaint anachronism for the twenty-year-olds of 2003. For them, a music collection is more likely to be a fat, glovebox sized folder of anonymous CD ROMs. Affective investments in particular bands, releases, tracks, have been replaced by a desire for a sort of musical 'affluence' where the size and currency of the collection is valued, rather than the constituent components of the collection. The explanation for this transition from the collection of fetishised albums to the folder of disposable files lies in the increasing dissatisfaction with the CD album as a product, and the development of technology that enabled file sharing to become an effective music distribution method. A decade before music file-sharing became widespread, Frith (73) commented on “the changing place of music in leisure generally ... music is being used differently and in different, more flexible forms.” Frith was discussing home-taping. He recognised, as the record companies did not, that the explosion of home-taping was not simply a legal matter, a breach-of-copyright issue, but a production and marketing issue. The youth market, in particular, was using music in new and different ways, ways that demanded more flexibility in format and increased personalisation of music compilations. During the 90s music sales continued to decline, particularly in the youth segment. Fox & Wrenn report that “between 1991 and 2000, the overall market share of young consumers has declined substantially” dropping from eighteen per cent to thirteen per cent for fifteen to nineteen year olds, and with similar figures for the twenty to twenty-four year olds. (112). Global music sales fell from $41.5 billion in 1995 to $38.5 billion in 1999. While there is a good deal of market research that attempts to prove that file sharing was responsible for the declining CD sales, much of the analysis is suspect and there are indications that assuming a cause and effect relationship is inaccurate. The growth period for music file sharing was 2000 to 2001, and during this period CD sales actually rose five per cent. In 2002 one of the most downloaded artists was Eminem, with millions downloading The Eminem Show before its release, yet the CD went on to set sales records. Very little market research addresses consumer satisfaction with CDs as a music product. However, focus groups conducted with groups of first year university students suggest that young consumers in particular think that CDs are too expensive and that record companies are ripping them off, they don't like being forced to buy tracks that they do not want, in order to own the tracks that they like, many prefer a mix of artists rather than a whole CD of the same performer, some do not want the case and cover and resent having to pay for them, some want their music in chunks longer than the fifty minutes or so of the average CD, many feel that they get insufficient information about the artist and the track before they have to make the decision to buy. Overall the feeling was: "this is not a product I want, and it costs more than I think I should have to pay." Without a high level of consumer dissatisfaction with the music products on offer, peer-to-peer file sharing programs would not have been able to create the waves that they have in the music industry. Music file sharing is a social phenomenon, as well a technological revolution. Both the social function of music and the cooperative history of the Internet set the stage for music file sharing. Music consumption is grounded in a communal philosophy, and one of the pleasures of listening to music is that it connects the individual to a social group or subculture. The Internet’s first civilian uses were based in collective efforts, and content was made freely accessible to all users. Commercialisation came later. According to Segal, this development history has "bred an entitlement philosophy in Internet users" (97). From its beginning the Internet facilitated the sharing of files, text, graphics, software and music. However locating desired music files was only for the determined, and downloading them solely for the patient, until the development of compressed music formats like MP3 and specialised file sharing utilities such as Napster. Music consumers quickly discovered the benefits of music file sharing, and today's most popular services – KaZaA, Grokster, and Morpheus – have an estimated seventy million active users. Peer- to-peer music offers a different music consumption experience. First, it is free, and it is free in huge quantities. Endless numbers of tracks and albums are available from golden oldies to yet to be released, obscure examples of minor genres to the latest pop hit, major artists to you-haven't-heard-of-us-yet. This is inevitably changing consumers' relationship to music, with many "downloading music in an obsessive manner, without identifying with it or experiencing a passionate attachment" (Kasaras). Contributing to this is the uneven quality of files available for downloading – many have been uploaded with more enthusiasm than care, and may be misnamed, wrongly attributed, or of poor sound quality. Peer-to-peer music also provides an experience of community, as users chat about live performances and music related products, and exchange information on lyrics and concert listings. Another aspect of p-2-p music that has had an impact on the way consumers experience music is the play-list editor, which allows music files to be categorised and ordered into lists for playback. Play-lists can be organised by artist, genre, date or theme into several hours of back-to-back music – providing, in essence, a personal radio station. The music collection becomes an evanescent experience, rather than a valued commodity. The music industry's immediate reaction to changing consumer behaviour was to attempt to litigate the competition out of existence, or to buy them out. A belated response was to establish rival services. However MusicNet, PressPlay and the new commercial Napster have met with a lukewarm response from their target market. All have fairly limited lists of files available – no full albums, few recent releases – all are expensive for what they provide, and all have severe restrictions on how much can be downloaded, and how the downloaded files can be used. As a Time article commented “All three are so restrictive you would think you were downloading homeland‑security documents, not 'N Sync” (Taylor 74). The dissatisfaction with the commercial music file subscription services, and the decentralised nature of the new p-2-p networks has led the popular press to hail a democratic revolution in music distribution. However its optimism may be a little premature, as the current file-sharing networks are not without problems for the consumer. Industry providers will always have advantages over amateur file uploaders in the areas of standards, convenience and quality. Finding other than top‑forty tracks is still a time consuming activity, and downloading over a modem still takes time. When offered several choices of a track, only trial and error can determine which is the best choice. Making the wrong choice often means downloading an unplayable file. The current generation of file-sharing services may be more amorphous than those they replaced, but though they are distributed networks the file traffic is concentrated in a single direction. Only a small number of users actually contribute files, and of this group perhaps only 1% respond to requests for files. Because the music files are treated as a public good, most users feel entitled to download files without ever contributing files to the pool. When the majority ride free on the efforts of others the performance of the system is seriously degraded. Free riding also makes the system open to legal action. Though in theory the seventy million users are beyond law suits because of the anonymity of numbers, if only a few are uploading files then these few are vulnerable to service bans and litigation. As the number of users continues to grow the problem of free riding compounds, and if users don't contribute to the public good on which all depend, the system is in danger of collapse (Adar and Huberman). Peer-to-peer file sharing is therefore unlikely to replace industry mediated music consumption in the long term. However that does not mean that the CD will be restored to top place in consumer affections. The album is pretty much a seventies concept, largely dictated by the demands of producing, stocking and selling vinyl records. Increasingly young consumers are rejecting the concept. Digital technology and Internet distribution have made possible new ways of experiencing music, and consumers are becoming accustomed to new norms of music consumption: cheap or free, flexibility of formats, immediacy, breadth of choice, connections with artists and other fans, and access to related commodities. Increasingly they are looking to music as a service, rather than a product. The sheer amount and diversity of music available through p-2-p networks, has created a music consumer with immense, but reconfigured appetites. The industry's current business model is dependent on controlling the distribution of a physical product to a mass market. To meet the needs of the 'new' music consumer it will have to abandon this model and adopt the one-on-one interactive model of the Internet – music: any kind, anytime, anywhere. Works Cited Adar, Eytan, and Bernardo A. Huberman. “Free Riding on Gnutella.” First Monday 5.10 (2000). 13 Jan. 2003 <http://www.firstmonday.org/>. Fox, Mark, and Bruce Wrenn. “A Broadcasting Model for the Music Industry.” JMM 3.2 (2001): 112-9. Frith, Simon. “The Industrialisation of Popular Music.” Popular Music and Communication. Ed. James Lull. London: Sage, 1987. 53-77. Kasaras, Kostas. “Music in the Age of Free Distribution.” First Monday 7.1 (2002). 11 July 2002 <http://firstmonday.org/issue7_1/kasaras/index.php>. Segal, Adam. “Dissemination of Digitised Music on the Internet: A Challenge to the Copyright Act.” Computer and High Technology Law Journal 12 (1996): 97-138. Taylor, Chris. “Hitting All the Wrong Notes.” Time 159.8 (25 Feb. 2002): 74. Links http://firstmonday.org/issue7_1/kasaras/index.html http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_2/fox/index.html http://musicdish.com/mag/?id=7376 http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue5_10/adar/ http://www.firstmonday.org/ http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/teentrade.html http://www.pwcglobal.com/extweb/indissue.nsf/DocID/51457FCD520E3CC38525698800562CD http://www8.techmall.com/techdocs/TS0006151.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kibby, Marjorie. "Shared Files" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/05-sharedfiles.php>. APA Style Kibby, M. (2003, Apr 23). Shared Files. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/05-sharedfiles.php>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 30.6pt 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">According to the entertainment industry, the digital revolution is usurping its product and undermining its profit. Internet Service Providers have shown reluctance to interfere in the private domain of their users so at the behest of Hollywood, Congress in 1998 passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Nonetheless, the Recording Industry Association of America alleges that rampant Net piracy has precipitated a five percent worldwide decline of music sales in both 2000 and 2001.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The personal computer has become an expedient means of downloading songs from peer-to-peer file-sharing services or &ldquo;burning&rdquo; CD copies onto a blank disk. To ensure compliance with the Act, some record labels have embraced technology that distorts the error correction codes on illegally copied CDs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>However, this copy control solution is beset with various problems, including consumer aversion and technical fallibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After examining the dialectical tension between business cost and consumer choice, this paper proposes some other options.</span></p>

The significance of computer mediated communication in relation to the transmission and circulation of discourse is not restricted to the ways in which this relatively recent form of communication enables self-identifying and relatively homogeneous groups to articulate, diffuse and circulate meaning. While the Internet has certainly provided a vital medium for such activities, there is another aspect of transmission that is also significant: the transmission of codes and practices between previously unrelated cultural formations through processes of convergence that occur via their engagement in online media. Of interest here are the ways in which the codes and practices constituting various cultural formations may find their way into other such formations through online practices. Online venues which facilitate the formation of virtual communities act as scenes for the interweaving of participants’ varied interests and, in so doing, bring disparate cultural practices together in new and potentially transformative manners. Viewed from this perspective, online communication not only provides a platform for discursive acts, but constitutes a venue wherein the practical usage of the medium offers up new, and transferable, tactics of communication and cultural practice. One of the most obvious examples of this phenomenon of “convergent transmission” is the now famous case of Napster. Beyond the well-discussed implications for, and ongoing adaptive transformation of, the music industry lies a peculiar moment of convergence wherein Internet Relay Chat (IRC) groups provided a scene for the transmission of cultural codes, values, and practices between a hacking subculture built around online communication and a broader youth culture that was beginning to embrace digital media as a means to enjoy music. The lines of transmission between these two groups were therefore borne by practices related to music, gift economies, computer networking and digital media. The community constituted by the early Napster (as well as other music sharing sites and networks) and the IRC-based discussions that informed their development were more than simply the sum of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks and online communication. I would argue that when taken together, Napster and IRC constituted an online scene for the sharing and dissemination of the hacking subculture’s beliefs and practices through the filter of “music-obsessed” youth culture. To understand Napster as a scene is to define it in relation to practices related to both popular and alternative modes for the production and consumption of cultural artifacts. Lee and Peterson (192-194) note that online scenes exhibit many similarities with the geographically-based scenes analyzed by Hebdige: a fair degree of demographic cohesiveness (typically defined such things as age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class), shared cultural codes and worldviews, and a spectrum of participation ranging from the frequent and enduring relationships of a core constituency to the occasional participation of more peripheral members. As a combined P2P/IRC network, Napster is a means to circulate content rather than being, itself, some form content. Napster’s online circulation of cultural artefacts within and among various communities thus makes it a point of articulation between hacking subcultures and a broader youth culture. This articulation involves both the circulation of music files among participants, and the circulation of knowledge related to the technical modalities for engaging in file sharing. With regard to Napster, and perhaps subcultures in general, it is the formation of participatory communities rather than any particular cultural artefact that is paramount: the possibilities that the Internet offers young people for cultural participation now extend far beyond the types of symbolic transformation of products and resources … . Rather, such products and resources can themselves become both the object and product of collective creativity (Bennett 172). Shawn Fanning’s testimony to the judiciary committee investigating Napster notes at the outset that his reason for undertaking the development of the P2P network that would eventually become Napster was not driven by any intentional form of hacking, but was prompted by a friend’s simple desire to solve reliability issues associated with transmitting digital music files via the Internet: The Napster system that I designed combined a real time system for finding MP3s with chat rooms and instant messaging (functionally similar to IRC). The Chat rooms and instant messaging are integral to creating the community experience; I imagined that they would be used similarly to how people use IRC – as a means for people to learn from each other and develop ongoing relationships (Fanning). The notion of community is not only applicable to those who chose to share music over Napster, but to the development of Napster itself. As Andrews notes, Fanning participated in a number of IRC channels devoted to programming (primarily #winprog for the development of Napster) as well as to channels like #mpeg3 which discussed social and technical issues related to MP3s as well as advice on where and how to get them. Spitz and Hunter focus on the role of community in the development of Napster and point out that: the technology emerged gradually from interactions between and within social groups with different degrees of inclusion in multiple overlapping frames, as opposed to there being a single theoretical breakthrough. ... Based on their involvement in other spaces, such as online communities, Fanning and company’s immediate goals were much more personal and utilitarian—to provide a tool to help themselves and other enthusiasts find and access music on the Internet (171-172). Developed with the aid of numerous long-time and occasional participants to both #winprog and #mpeg3, Napster’s technical component was the product of (at least) two scenes constituted via IRC-based online communities. The first, #winprog, consisted of a subculture of “hardcore” Windows programmers (and hackers) freely sharing ideas, advice, expertise, and computer code in an environment of mutual assistance. While the participants on #mpeg3 represented a much wider community, #mpeg3 also demonstrates the qualities of a scene inasmuch as it constituted a virtual community based not only on shared interests in a variety of musical genres, but of sharing media content in the form of MP3s and related software. One obvious commonality among these two scenes is that they both rely upon informal gift economies as a means by which to transmit cultural codes via the circulation of material objects. With Napster, the gift economy that emerges in relation to he “hacker ethic” of sharing both code and expertise (Levy; Himanen; Wark) here combines with the more generalized and abstract gift economies constituted by the tendency within youth culture to engage in the sharing of media products related to particular lifestyles and subcultures. The development of Napster therefore provided a mechanism by which these two gift economies could come together to form a single overlapping scene combining computing and youth cultures. It should be noted, however, that while Napster was (and still is) typically branded as a youth-based phenomenon, its constituency actually encompassed a broader age demographic wherein membership tended to correlate more closely with “online tenure” than age (Spitz & Hunter 173). Nonetheless, the simultaneously rancorous and laudatory discourse surrounding Napster framed it as a phenomenon indicating the emergence of an IT-savvy youth culture. What occurred with Napster was therefore a situation wherein two scenes came together—one based on hacking, the other on MP3s. Their shared propensity toward informal gift economies allowed them to converge upon notions of P2P networking and IRC-based communities, and this produced a new set of cultural practices centred upon the fusion of file transfers and popular music. The activity of music sharing and the creation of networks to carry it out have, needless to say, proved to have a transformative effect on the circulation of these cultural products. The co-mingling of cultural practices between these two online scenes seems so obvious today that it often seems that it was inevitable. It must be remembered, however, that hacking and music did not seem to be so closely related in 1998. The development of Napster is thus a testament of sorts to the potential for computer mediated communication to effect convergent transformations via the transmission of tactical and communal practices among seemingly unrelated arenas of culture. References Andrews, Robert. “Chat Room That Built the World”. Wired News. Nov. 6, 2005. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,69394-0.html>. Bennett, Andy. “Virtual Subculture? Youth, Identity and the Internet”. After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett & Keith Kahn-Harris. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Fanning, Shawn. Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in Provo, Utah. Oct. 9, 2000. http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/1092000_sf.htm>. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1991. Himanen, Pekka. The Hacker Ethic. New York: Random House Books, 2001. Lee, Steve S., & Richard A. Peterson. “Internet-Based Virtual Music Scenes: The Case of P2 in Alt.Country Music.” Music Scenes: Local, Transnational, and Virtual. Eds. Andy Bennett & Richard A. Peterson. Nashville: Vanderbilt UP, 2004. Levy, Steven. Hackers. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Spitz, David & Starling D. Hunter. “Contested Codes: The Social Construction of Napster”. The Information Society 21 (2005): 169-80. Wark, McKenzie. A Hacker Manifesto. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bradley, Dale A. "Scenes of Transmission: Youth Culture, MP3 File Sharing, and Transferable Strategies of Cultural Practice." M/C Journal 9.1 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/05-bradley.php>. APA Style Bradley, D. (Mar. 2006) "Scenes of Transmission: Youth Culture, MP3 File Sharing, and Transferable Strategies of Cultural Practice," M/C Journal, 9(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0603/05-bradley.php>.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) service in which people can meet and chat in real time. Most chat occurs in channels named for a specific topic, such as #usa or #linux. A user can take part in several channels when connected to an IRC network. For a long time the only major IRC network available was EFnet, founded in 1990. Over the 1990s three other major IRC networks developed, Undernet (1993), DALnet (1994) and IRCnet (which split from EFnet in June 1996). Several causes led to the separate development of IRC networks: fast growth of user numbers, poor scalability of the IRC protocol and content disagreements, like allowing or prohibiting 'bot programs. Today we are experiencing the development of regional IRC networks, such as BrasNet for Brazilian users, and increasing regionalisation of the global networks -- IRCnet users are generally European, EFnet users generally from the Americas and Australia. All persons connecting to an IRC network at one time create that IRC network's user space. People are constantly signing on and off each network. The total number of users who have ever been to a specific IRC network could be called its 'social space' and an IRC network's social space is by far larger than its user space at any one time. Although there has been research on IRC almost from its beginning (it was developed in 1988, and the first research was made available in late 1991 (Reid)), resources on quantitative development are rare. To rectify this situation, a quantitative data logging 'bot program -- Socip -- was created and set to run on various IRC networks. Socip has been running for almost two years on several IRC networks, giving Internet researchers empirical data of the quantitative development of IRC. Methodology Any approach to gathering quantitative data on IRC needs to fulfil the following tasks: Store the number of users that are on an IRC network at a given time, e.g. every five minutes; Store the number of channels; and, Store the number of servers. It is possible to get this information using the '/lusers' command on an IRC-II client, entered by hand. This approach yields results as in Table 1. Table 1: Number of IRC users on January 31st, 1995 Date Time Users Invisible Servers Channels 31.01.95 10:57 2737 2026 93 1637 During the first months of 1995, it was even possible to get all user information using the '/who **' command. However, on current major IRC networks with greater than 50000 users this method is denied by the IRC Server program, which terminates the connection because it is too slow to accept that amount of data. Added to this problem is the fact that collecting these data manually is an exhausting and repetitive task, better suited to automation. Three approaches to automation were attempted in the development process. The 'Eggdrop' approach The 'Eggdrop' 'bot is one of the best-known IRC 'bot programs. Once programmed, 'bots can act autonomously on an IRC network, and Eggdrop was considered particularly convenient because customised modules could be easily installed. However, testing showed that the Eggdrop 'bot was unsuitable for two reasons. The first was technical: for reasons undetermined, all Eggdrop modules created extensive CPU usage, making it impossible to run several Eggdrops simultaneously to research a number of IRC networks. The second reason had to do with the statistics to be obtained. The objective was to get a snapshot of current IRC users and IRC channel use every five minutes, written into an ASCII file. It was impossible to extend Eggdrop's possibilities in a way that it would periodically submit the '/lusers' command and write the received data into a file. For these reasons, and some security concerns, the Eggdrop approach was abandoned. IrcII was a UNIX IRC client with its own scripting language, making it possible to write command files which periodically submit the '/lusers' command to any chosen IRC server and log the command's output. Four different scripts were used to monitor IRCnet, EFnet, DALnet and Undernet from January to October 1998. These scripts were named Socius_D, Socius_E, Socius_I and Socius_U (depending on the network). Every hour each script stored the number of users and channels in a logfile (examinable using another script written in the Perl language). There were some drawbacks to the ircII script approach. While the need for a terminal to run on could be avoided using the 'screen' package -- making it possible to start ircII, run the scripts, detach, and log off again -- it was impossible to restart ircII and the scripts using an automatic task-scheduler. Thus periodic manual checks were required to find out if the scripts were still running and restart them if needed (e.g. if the server connection was lost). These checks showed that at least one script would not be running after 10 hours. Additional disadvantages were the lengthy log files and the necessity of providing a second program to extract the log file data and write it into a second file from which meaningful graphs could be created. The failure of the Eggdrop and ircII scripting approaches lead to the solution still in use today. Perl script-only approach Perl is a powerful script language for handling file-oriented data when speed is not extremely important. Its version 5 flavour allows a lot of modules to use it for expansion, including the Net::IRC package. The object-oriented Perl interface enables Perl scripts to connect to an IRC server, and use the basic IRC commands. The Socip.pl program includes all server definitions needed to create connections. Socip is currently monitoring ten major IRC networks, including DALnet, EFnet, IRCnet, the Microsoft Network, Talkcity, Undernet and Galaxynet. When run, "Social science IRC program" selects a nickname from its list corresponding to the network -- For EFnet, the first nickname used is Socip_E1. It then functions somewhat like a 'bot. Using that nickname, Socip tries to create an IRC connection to a server of the given network. If there is no failure, handlers are set up which take care of proper reactions to IRC server messages (such as Ping-pong, message output and reply). Socip then joins the channel #hose (the name has no special meaning), a maintenance channel with the additional effect of real persons meeting the 'bot and trying to interact with it every now and then. Those interactions are logged too. Sitting in that channel, the script sleeps periodically and checks if a certain time span has passed (the default is five minutes). After that, the '/lusers' command's output is stored in a data file for each IRC network and the IRC network's RRD (Round Robin database) file is updated. This database, which is organised chronologically, offers great detail for recent events and more condensed information for older events. User and channel information younger than 10 days is stored in five-minute detail. If older than two years, the same information is automatically averaged and stored in a per-day resolution. In case of network problems, Socip acts as necessary. For example, it recognises a connection termination and tries to reconnect after pausing by using the next nickname on the list. This prevents nickname collision problems. If the IRC server does not respond to '/luser' commands three times in a row, the next server on the list is accessed. Special (crontab-invoked) scripts take care of restarting Socip when necessary, as in termination of script because of network problems, IRC operator kill or power failure. After a reboot all scripts are automatically restarted. All monitoring is done on a Linux machine (Pentium 120, 32 MB, Debian Linux 2.1) which is up all the time. Processor load is not extensive, and this machine also acts as the Sociology Department's WWW-Server. Graphs creation Graphs can be created from the data in Socip's RRD files. This task is done using the MRTG (multi router traffic grapher) program by Tobias Oetiker. A script updates all IRC graphs four times a day. Usage of each IRC network is visualised through five graphs: Daily, Weekly and Monthly users and channels, accompanied by two graphs showing all known data users/channels and servers. All this information is continuously published on the World Wide Web at http://www.hinner.com/ircstat. Figures The following samples demonstrate what information can be produced by Socip. As already mentioned, graphs of all monitored networks are updated four times a day, with five graphs for each IRC network. Figure 1 shows the rise of EFnet users from about 40000 in November 1998 to 65000 in July 2000. Sampled data is oscillating around an average amount, which is resulting from the different time zones of users. Fig. 1: EFnet - Users and Channels since November 1998 Figure 2 illustrates the decrease of interconnected EFnet servers over the years. Each server is now handling more and more users. Reasons for taking IRC servers off the net are security concerns (attacks on the server by malicious persons), new payment schemes, maintenance and cost effort. Fig. 2: EFnet - Servers since November 1998 A nice example of a heavily changing weekly graph is Figure 3, which shows peaks shortly before 6pm CEST and almost no users shortly after midnight. Fig. 3: Galaxynet: Weekly Graph (July, 15th-22nd, 2000) The daily graph portrays usage variations with even more detail. Figure 4 is taken from Undernet user and channel data. The vertical gap in the graph indicates missing data, caused either by a net split or other network problems. Fig. 4: Undernet: Daily Graph: July, 22nd, 2000 The final example (Figure 5) shows a weekly graph of the Webchat (http://www.webchat.org) network. It can be seen that every day the user count varies from 5000 to nearly 20000, and that channel numbers fluctuate in concert accordingly from 2500 to 5000. Fig. 5: Webchat: Monthly graph, Week 24-29, 2000 Not every IRC user is connected all the time to an IRC network. This figure may have increased lately with more and more flatrates and cheap Internet access offers, but in general most users will sign off the network after some time. This is why IRC is a very dynamic society, with its membership constantly in flux. Maximum user counts only give the highest number of members who were simultaneously online at some point, and one could only guess at the number of total users of the network -- that is, including those who are using that IRC service but are not signed on at that time. To answer these questions, more thorough investigation is necessary. Then inflows and outflows might be more readily estimated. Table 2 shows the all time maximum user counts of seven IRC networks, compared to the average numbers of IRC users of the four major IRC networks during the third quarter 1998 (based on available data). Table 2: Maximum user counts of selected IRC networks DALnet EFnet Galaxy Net IRCnet MS Chat Undernet Webchat Max. 2000 64276 64309 15253 65340 17392 60210 19793 3rd Q. 1998 21000 37000 n/a 24500 n/a 24000 n/a Compared with the 200-300 users in 1991 and the 7000 IRC-chatters in 1994, the recent growth is certainly extraordinary: it adds up to a total of 306573 users across all monitored networks. It can be expected that the 500000 IRC user threshold will be passed some time during the year 2001. As a final remark, it should be said that obviously Web-based chat systems will be more and more common in the future. These chat services do not use standard IRC protocols, and will be very hard to monitor. Given that these systems are already quite popular, the actual number of chat users in the world could have already passed the half million landmark. References Reid, Elizabeth. "Electropolis: Communications and Community on Internet Relay Chat." Unpublished Honours Dissertation. U of Melbourne, 1991. The Socip program can be obtained at no cost from http://www.hinner.com. Most IRC networks can be accessed with the original Net::Irc Perl extension, but for some special cases (e.g. Talkcity) an extended version is needed, which can also be found there. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Kajetan Hinner. "Statistics of Major IRC Networks: Methods and Summary of User Count." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/count.php>. Chicago style: Kajetan Hinner, "Statistics of Major IRC Networks: Methods and Summary of User Count," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/count.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Kajetan Hinner. (2000) Statistics of major IRC networks: methods and summary of user count. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/count.php> ([your date of access]).

This paper has been constructed in a variety of working environments; some physical, some virtual, some merely perceptual. At an ever increasing rate, both work and leisure for the informationally-overexposed in contemporary, "post-modern" western cultures are taking place in a heterogeneous assemblage of working and living environments. At this point, I want to specifically consider the personal computer as a domestic space, one that mirrors, oddly and specifically, the ways that we relate to our own personal living spaces. I'm considering the domestic because I want to get away from some of the more outlandish configurations of virtual spaces in critical writing. These configurations in such writing tend to suggest that virtual spaces are utopian and transform our relationships with mundane reality. The mirroring I want to talk about is instead an illustration of the way we incorporate the virtual with the real in quite prosaic ways. One of the traditional conceptualisations of the divide between the private and the public sphere is to consider it as a distinction between play and work, although obviously this kind of distinction has the greatest currency when gender roles are highly specified in different spheres (and indeed the notion of culture as a bifurcated structure at all has less currency in postmodernity). The personal computer, being a multi-purpose computational and communication system, is capable of taking on many roles, depending on how its software infrastructure has been furnished. The kinds of distinctions we impose on its use have much stronger interactions at the wider cultural level. In Europe and in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, the so-called "personal home computer" of the 1980s held a much greater sway over the domestic market than it did in the United States, simply because buyers at the time had much less invested in the distinction between machines for work and for play. But shifting working patterns have forced machines that can do the work to go into places where they might not have been accepted before. And the clear distinctions of usage (work vs. play) have begun to blur in quite complex ways. But certain aspects of a computer's function have not quite managed to catch up... Despite the now unremarkable ubiquity of the personal computer in the home, the metaphors for data organisation in modern operating systems are clearly evolved from business office layouts. Discrete packages of information are "files", organised into "folders", "directories", or "drawers". Graphical User Interface (GUI) based operating systems further the metaphor, drawing files as sheets of paper with the corner folded, stored in manilla folders or filing cabinet drawers, which are accessed from a "desktop". These metaphorical associations of data types and programs suit the corporate office environment rather better, it could be argued, than the domestic environment, regardless of whatever actual use the computer is put to at home. I want to parallel two quite distinct and seemingly very different activities, by way of an illustration of how we arrange our data and our personal lives. The first is moving house. The second is re-installing Windows. Long time computer users will know what I'm talking about here, but for other, more fortunate types, I'll explain. The Windows operating system for PCs controls everything about the computer, from the way a piece of software can save data to the hard drive, to making sure the cursor and the mouse are in sync. Before a piece of software, such as a word processor, can be used normally, it must be copied to the hard drive of the computer and made to communicate with the operating system. This, in Windows, involves the operating system registering the location and function of every file that makes the software work. The more programs the user adds, the more this "registry" gets filled up, and the greater the chance that the data held in the registry breaks in some way. Eventually, the operating system grinds to a halt, and the computer seems barely functional. At which point, the only solution is to save all the user's data to a separate location, wipe the contents of the hard drive, and reloading all the software, starting with the operating system. This process is intensely tedious, and occasionally disastrous. Sometimes, programs only work due to very precise and unrepeatable combinations of driver software. Occasionally, the user might forget to back up all their data, and lose important files. Idiosyncratic settings that give the machine a unique personality for the user will invariably vanish. There can be any number of important reasons for moving house, but typically they don't involve the fact that the owner has broken the old one. However, in some way, the house is less fit for residence than it was previously. So it is with a computer re-installation. The level of psychic trauma associated with a move may be far greater than that with a reformat, but it is quantitatively, not qualitatively so. And just as a new house can be a breath of fresh air (even literally), a newly installed operating system will seem to fly through activities that it once wheezed through, even if the underlying hardware is the same. A computer is a domestic space for power-users. It has to be cleaned, maintained, customised and made unique. Like a house, it is a text that has inscribed on it every change and renovation that the occupant has seen fit to implement within it. Although the metaphors of operating systems encourage us to think of data structures as we think of office stationary and equipment, the context of the usage and the attachments we form with these abstract structures colour the way we construct their environments. This is even starting to feed into the design of user interfaces. Music software is increasingly beginning to resemble hi-fi gear in its graphical designs. Image viewers have control panels like VCRs. I don't think that this can be reduced to a notion of form following function. Often these new interfaces actually get in the way of efficient operation of the software. But considered semiotically, they relate very strongly to our patterns of interaction with living environments. Computers are tremendously widespread in western nations, and yet we are in a transitional period. They are colonising domestic spaces, creating new forms of spatiality that are domestic but both physical and virtualised. Moves have been underway for several years to bring this colonisation to an apotheosis, a state of ubiquitous computing, whereby computers become seamlessly and invisibly integrated into all domestic and working environments. Early attempts have included the "WebTV" project, a mostly unsuccessful attempt to turn the TV into an Internet browser. If such a change does come about, it will almost certainly transform the way we interact with our computing technology again, and this time, in unrecognisable ways. References Poole, Steven. Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Video Games. London: Forth Estate, 2000. Weiser, Mark. "Ubiquitous Computing." 12 Dec. 2000 <http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/UbiHome.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Virtual Domesticity: Renewing the Notion of Cybernetic Living and Working Environments." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.6 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/virtual.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Virtual Domesticity: Renewing the Notion of Cybernetic Living and Working Environments," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 6 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/virtual.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (2000) Virtual Domesticity: Renewing the Notion of Cybernetic Living and Working Environments. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(6). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0012/virtual.php> ([your date of access]).

Artistic collaboration involves a certain loss of self, because it arises out of the merging of participants. In this sense collaboration questions the notion of the creative individual and the myth of the isolated artistic genius. As such, artistic collaborations can be subversive interventions into the concept of authorship and the ideologies that surround it (Smith 189-194). Collaborations also often simultaneously superimpose many different approaches to the collaborative process. Collaboration is therefore a multiplicitous activity in which different kinds of interactivity are interlinked; this process may also be facilitated by improvisation which allows for continuous modification of the interactions (Smith and Dean, Improvisation). Even when we are writing individually, we are always collaborating with prior texts and employing ideas from others, advice and editing suggestions. This eclectic aspect of creative work has led some to argue that collaboration is the dominant mode, while individual creativity is an illusion (Stillinger; Bennett 94-107). One of the reasons why collaboration tends to be multiplicitous is that contemporary creative endeavour sometimes involves collaboration across different media and with computers. Artworks are created by an ‘assemblage’ of different expertises, media, and machines in which the computer may be a ‘participant’. In this respect contemporary collaboration is what Katherine Hayles calls posthuman: for Hayles ‘the posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction (Hayles 3). Particularly important here is her argument about the conceptual shifts that information systems are creating. She suggests that the binary of presence and absence is being progressively replaced in cultural and literary thought by the binary of pattern and randomness created by information systems and computer mediation (Hayles 25-49). In other words, we used to be primarily concerned with human interactions, even if sometimes it was the lack of them, as in Roland Barthes concept of ‘the death of the author’. However, this has shifted to our concern with computer systems as methods of organisation. Nevertheless, Hayles argues, computers can never totally replace embodied human subjects, rather we need to continually negotiate between presence and pattern, absence and randomness (Hayles 25-49). This very negotiation is central to many computer-mediated collaborations. Our own collaborative practice—Roger is primarily a musician and Hazel primarily a writer but we both have interdisciplinary performance and technological expertise—spans 15 years and has resulted in approximately 18 collaborative works. They are all cross-media: initially these brought together word and sound; now they sometimes also include image. They all involve multiple forms of collaboration, improvised and unfixed elements, and computer interfaces. Here we want to outline some of the stages in the making of our recent collaboration, Time, the Magician, and its ‘posthuman’ engagement with computerised processes. Time, the Magician is a collaborative performance and sound-video piece. It combines words, sound and image, and involves composed and improvised elements as well as computer mediation. It was conceived largely by us, but the first performance, at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2005 also involved collaboration with Greg White (sound processing) and Sandy Evans (saxophone). The piece begins with a poem by Hazel, initially performed solo, and then juxtaposed with live and improvised sound. This sound involves some real-time and pre-recorded sampling and processing of the voice: this—together with other sonic materials—creates a ‘voicescape’ in which the rhythm, pitch, and timbre of the voice are manipulated and the voice is also spatialised in the performance space (Smith and Dean, “Voicescapes”). The performance of the poem is followed (slightly overlapping) by screened text created in the real-time image-processing program Jitter, and this is also juxtaposed with sound and voice samples. One of the important aspects of the piece is its variability: the video-manipulated text and images change both in order and appearance each time, and the sampling and manipulation of the voice is different too. The example here shows short extracts from the longer performance of the work at the Sydney 2005 event. (This is a Quicktime 7 compressed video of excerpts from the first performance of Time, the Magician by Hazel Smith and Roger Dean. The performance was given by austraLYSIS (Roger Dean, computer sound and image; Sandy Evans, saxophone; Hazel Smith, speaker; Greg White, computer sound and sound projection) at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, October 2005. The piece in its entirety lasts about 11 minutes, while these excerpts last about four minutes, and are not cross-faded, but simply juxtaposed. The piece itself will later be released elsewhere as a Web video/sound piece, made directly from the sound and the Jitter-processed images which accompany it. This Quicktime 7 performance video uses AAC audio compression (44kHz stereo), H.264 video compression (320x230), and has c. 15fps and 200kbits/sec.; it is prepared for HTTP fast-start streaming. It requires the Quicktime 7 plugin, and on Macintosh works best with Safari or Firefox – Explorer is no longer supported for Macintosh. The total file size is c. 6MB. You can also access the file directly through this link.) All of our collaborations have involved different working processes. Sometimes we start with a particular topic or process in mind, but the process is always explorative and the eventual outcome unpredictable. Usually periods of working individually—often successively rather than simultaneously—alternate with discussion. We will now each describe our different roles in this particular collaboration, and the points of intersection between them. Hazel In creating Time, the Magician we made an initial decision that Roger—who would be responsible for the programming and sound component of the piece—would work with Jitter, which we had successfully used for a previous collaboration. I would write the words, and I decided early on that I would like our collaboration to circle around ideas—which interested both Roger and me—about evolution, movement, emergence, and time. We decided that I would first write some text that would then be used as the basis of the piece, but I had no idea at this stage what form the text would take, and whether I would produce one continuous text or a number of textual fragments. In the early stages I read and ‘collaborated with’ a number of different texts, particularly Elizabeth Grosz’s book The Nick of Time. I was interested in the way Grosz sees Darwin’s work as a treatise on difference—she argues that for Darwin there are no clear-cut distinctions between different species and no absolute origin of the species. I was also stimulated by her idea that political resistance is always potential, if latent, in the repressive regimes or social structures of the past. As I was reading and absorbing the material, I opened a file on my computer and—using a ‘bottom-up’ approach—started to write fragments, sometimes working with the Grosz text as direct trigger. A poem evolved which was a continuous whole but also discontinuous in essence: it consisted of many small fragments that, when glued together and transformed in relation to each other, reverberated though association. This was appropriate, because as the writing process developed I had decided that I would write a poem, but then also disassemble it for the screened version. This way Roger could turn each segment into a module in Jitter, and program the sequence so that the texts would appear in a different order each time. After I had written the poem we decided on a putative structure for the work: the poem would be performed first, the musical element would start about halfway through, and the screened version—with the fragmented texts—would follow. Roger said that he would video some background material to go behind the texts, but he also suggested that I design the texts as visual objects with coloured letters, different fonts, and free spatial arrangements, as I had in some previous multimedia pieces. So I turned the texts into visual designs: this often resulted in my pulling apart sentences, phrases and words and rearranging them. I then converted the texts files into jpg files and gave them to Roger to work on. Roger When Hazel gave me her 32 text images, I turned these into a QuickTime video with 10 seconds per image/frame. I also shot a 5 minute ‘background’ video of vegetation and ground, often moving the camera quickly over blurred objects or zooming in very close to them. The video was then edited as a continually moving sequence with an oscillation between clearly defined and abstracted objects, and between artificial and natural ones. The Jitter interface is constructed largely as a sequence of three processing modules. One of these involves continuously changing the way in which two layers (in this case text and background) are mixed; the second, rotation and feedback of segments from one or both layers; and the third a kind of dripping across the image, with feedback, of segments from one or both layers. The interface is performable, in that the timing and sequence can be altered as the piece progresses, and within any one module most of the parameters are available for performer control—this is the essence of what we call ‘hyperimprovisation’ (Dean). Both text and image layers are ‘granulated’: after a randomly variable length of time—between 2 and 20 seconds or so—there is a jump to a randomly chosen new position in the video, and these jumps occur independently for the two layers. Having established this approach to the image generation, and the overall shape of the piece (as defined above), the remaining aspects were left to the creative choices of the performers. In the Sydney performance both Greg White and I exploited real-time processing of the spoken text by means of the live feed and pre-recorded material. In addition we used long buffers (which contained the present performance of the text) to access the spoken text after Hazel had finished her performed opening segment. I worked on the sound and speech components with some granulation and feedback techniques, throughout, while Greg used a range of other techniques, as well as focusing on the spatial movement of the sound around four loudspeakers surrounding the performance and listening space. Sandy Evans (saxophone)—who was familiar with the overall timeline—improvised freely while viewing the video and listening to our soundscape. In this first performance, while I drove the sound, the computer ‘posthumanly’ (that is without intervention) drove the image. I worked largely with MSP (Max Signal Processing), a part of the MAX/MSP/Jitter suite of platforms for midi, sound and image, to complement sonically the Jitter-mediated video. So processes of granulation, feedback, spatial rotation (of image) or redistribution (of sound)—as well as re-emergence of objects which had been retained in the memory of the computer—were common to both the sound and image manipulation. There was therefore a degree of algorithmic synaesthesia—that is shared algorithms between image and sound (Dean, Whitelaw, Smith, and Worrall). The collaborative process involved a range of stimuli: not only with regard to those of process, as discussed, but also in relation to the ideas in the text Hazel provided. The concepts of evolution, movement, and emergence which were important to her writing also informed and influenced the choice of biological and artificial objects in the background video, and the nature and juxtaposition of the processing modules for both sound and image. Conclusion If we return to the issues raised at the beginning of this article, we can see how our collaboration does involve the merging of participants and the destabilising of the concept of authorship. The poem was not complete after Hazel had written it—or even after she had dislocated it—but is continually reassembled by the Jitter interface that Roger has constructed. The visual images were also produced first by Hazel, then fused with Roger’s video in continuously changing formations through the Jitter interface. The performance may involve collaboration by several people who were not involved in the original conception of the work, indicating how collaboration can become an extended and accumulative process. The collaboration also simultaneously superimposes several different kinds of collaborative process, including the intertextual encounter with the Grosz text; the intermedia fusion of text, image and sound; the participation of a number of different people with differentiated roles and varying degrees of input; and collaboration with the computer. It is an assemblage in the terms mentioned earlier: a continuously modulating conjunction of different expertises, media, and machines. Finally, the collaboration is simultaneously both human and posthuman. It negotiates—in the way Hayles suggests—between pattern, presence, randomness, and absence. On the one hand, it involves human intervention (the writing of the poem, the live music-making, the shooting of the video, the discussion between participants) though sometimes those interventions are hidden, merged, or subsumed. On the other hand, the Jitter interface allows for both tight programming and elements of variability and unpredictability. In this way the collaboration displaces the autonomous subject with what Hayles calls a ‘distributed system’ (Hayles 290). The consequence is that the collaborative process never reaches an endpoint: the computer interface will construct the piece differently each time, we may choose to interact with it in performance, and the sound performance will always contain many improvised and unpredictable elements. The collaborative process, like the work it produces, is ongoing, emergent, and mutating. References Bennett, Andrew. The Author. London: Routledge, 2005. Dean, Roger T. Hyperimprovisation: Computer Interactive Sound Improvisation; with CD-ROM. Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 2003. Dean, Roger, Mitchell Whitelaw, Hazel Smith, and David Worrall. “The Mirage of Real-Time Algorithmic Synaesthesia: Some Compositional Mechanisms and Research Agendas in Computer Music and Sonification.” Contemporary Music Review, in press. Grosz, Elizabeth. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution and the Untimely. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2004. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Smith, Hazel. Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O’Hara: Difference, Homosexuality, Topography. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000. Smith, Hazel, and Roger T. Dean. Improvisation, Hypermedia and the Arts since 1945. London: Harwood Academic, 1997. ———. “Voicescapes and Sonic Structures in the Creation of Sound Technodrama.” Performance Research 8.1 (2003): 112-23. Stillinger, Jack. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Smith, Hazel, and Roger T. Dean. "Posthuman Collaboration: Multimedia, Improvisation, and Computer Mediation." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/14-smithdean.php>. APA Style Smith, H., and R. Dean. (May 2006) "Posthuman Collaboration: Multimedia, Improvisation, and Computer Mediation," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/14-smithdean.php>.

In "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!", Paul Virilio claims that telecommunications are ushering in the "invention of a perspective of real time" which results in "some kind of choking of the senses, a loss of control over reason". As users of this new technology, as the receptors of the stream of computer-mediated information, we need to figure out the terms and conditions of our acceptance of cyberspace as a space and realtime as a form of time, to understand the implications of this new mode of communication, for "no information exists without dis-information". In "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!", Paul Virilio claims that telecommunications are ushering in the "invention of a perspective of real time" which results in "some kind of choking of the senses, a loss of control over reason". As users of this new technology, as the receptors of the stream of computer-mediated information, we need to figure out the terms and conditions of our acceptance of cyberspace as a space and realtime as a form of time, to understand the implications of this new mode of communication, for "no information exists without dis-information". Even Virilio proclaims apocalyptically that "our history will happen in universal time, itself the outcome of instantaneity -- and there only". In fact, time also governs narrative choices: their availability, viability, desirability, relevance. Despite the hype surrounding the instantaneity of virtual travel, narrative in cyberspace is inherently subordinate to connection speed and loadtime. This is why the "loading screen" has become the standard welcome on Shockwave-heavy sites, developing into a kind of mini-genre of low-bandwidth animation. The possiblity of using temporality as a narrative catalyst has been exploited in cinema, as in classic Hollywood dissolves and fades. Metaphors of the passing of time are a familiar cliche: the pages of a daily calendar fluttering away, the changing of the seasons. Stanley Kubrick's bold cut from a spinning bone to a space station in orbit in 2001: A Space Odyssey is an extreme and unusual example of this sort of metaphor. These all function as temporal ellipses. The passage of time can also function as plot, as in Warhol's Blow Job and Richard Linklater's Slacker, both of which are ostensibly about merely the passage of time. Slacker lacks a traditional narrative and instead progresses through a series of vignettes, each one following seemingly random characters through seemingly random events (an idea developed further by the recent Magnolia). The change from one vignette to the next is motivated simply by the camera's movement from one character or event to another. The camera is like a nosy passerby, a voyeur, showing noncommittal interest in one thing, then another, and the viewer must give up interest in each vignette without the satisfaction of narrative closure. As the filmmaker tells the cabdriver in the beginning, each turn of events, each decision made, results in all possibilities going on to live out their potential realities. We, the viewers, in turn, follow the camera's gaze with the frustrating knowledge that other, unresolved realities are continuing without that gaze. The recent Timecode uses the same hypertext-type approach with four simultaneous screens, each a single shot capturing one part of an interlocked world. These are all extreme, overt examples of Deleuze's time-image. Online, similar moves have been made in Mark Napier's Shredder and Maciej Wisniewski's Netomat interfaces. Both function as alternatives to conventional browsing, Netomat even labelled an "anti-browser" that engages "an Internet that is an intelligent application and not simply a large database of static files". The above-mentioned devices for manipulating the perception and understanding of time as represented in film (fade, dissolve, et al.) exploited an inherently filmic problem: simply put, that there is a serious discrepancy between time as it happens and its perception, much like the time it takes to enjoy a Website's multimedia content and the length of its download. In the case of the fade, for instance, an inherent problem of the medium has been internalised in a non-transparent way and used overtly to further the narrative meaning. Likewise, the "loading screen" offers a morsel of content typically focussed on its function ("loading... 5 seconds to go..."). The existence of these filmic conventions makes us aware of when they are broken, as in the "realtime" films Nick of Time, Blow Job, and Timecode, and also in instances of extended time, as in the classic shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho. Think, too, of the last time you had to wait before you saw any of a Website's content. Just as filmic time is typically compressed for the sake of appearing real, navigational movement on the Web is in fact constrained while seeming free, and delayed while seeming instantaneous. The promise of instant access has instead been fulfilled by erratic connection speeds and server problems. Because Web time ostensibly passes almost in an instant (this is, after all, the industry in which a product might become passé while still at the beta phase), information ages just as quickly: "404 File not found" is a familiar sight, telling us that the link we followed may have been coded, not last year, but maybe even last week, or yesterday. Information loses relevance, even disappears, often in no time at all. These problems have been exploited by JODI, whose experimental online work foregrounds the nuts and bolts (and kinks) of the Web, instead of hiding it beneath a clean "other" design. The desirability of information over time is also the focus of Rhizome's Starry Night interface which, utilizing Java, shifts over time to emphasise popular links, eventually eradicating unpopular ones. In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin writes that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be" (220). But what of the Web art project, whose existence on a server somewhere does not need to be known for the work to be understood, whose duplication yields a copy that is indistinguishable from the original? What of the work that is both static and temporal, which is inherently mediated through time, including time (as in server and connection speed) which cannot be completely accounted for by the author? He goes on to say that technical reproduction "enables the original to meet the beholder halfway" (220), but what is the Website's point of departure? Its creator's computer? The server on which it lives? The end user's computer? How can we map the path from the "original" to its "reproduction" when the two are indistinguishable, when, in fact, there is no confirmable original? As if in response to Benjamin, Paul Virilio writes in "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" that "the specific negative aspect of these information superhighways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world". Virilio is concerned with the problem of orientation, that is, of the lack of geographical, historical, and temporal specificity and point of reference when experiencing a Web-based narrative. Compare that to Deleuze's claim that, in the time-image, "the brain has lost its Euclidean co-ordinates, and now emits other signs" (278), a notion similar to the "loading screen", a bit of content which exists merely to inform that content is forthcoming. Virilio sees this as a crucial problem facing us today and adds that "there is talk of substituting the term 'global' by 'glocal,' a concatenation of the words local and global". The Internet yields both seeming temporal instantaneity and spatial compression. We can be everywhere all at once, all the time; but what of the inevitable slippage of time involved? The World Wide Web has created a life of dead moments, of moments spent waiting for the instantaneous to happen. References Baudrillard, Jean. "Radical Thought." Trans. Francois Debrix in CTheory. Collection Morsure. Eds. Sens and Tonka. Paris: 1994. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Shocken Books, 1968. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. London: Rebel Press, 1992. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. Napier, Mark. Shredder. 27 June 2000 <http://www.potatoland.org/shredder/>. Rhizome. 27. June 2000 <http://www.rhizome.org/>. Virilio, Paul. "Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!" Le Monde Diplomatique Aug. 1995. Trans. Patrice Riemens in CTheory. Wisniewski, Maciej. Netomat. 27 June 2000 <http://www.netomat.net/>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Maya Drozdz. "Waiting for Instantaneity." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php>. Chicago style: Maya Drozdz, "Waiting for Instantaneity," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Maya Drozdz. (2000) Waiting for instantaneity. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/instantaneity.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction -- Making Sense of the (Virtual) World Computer games are never "just games". Computer games are models of reality and if they were not, we would never be able to understand them. Models serve three functions; they capture important, critical features of that which is to be represented while ignoring the irrelevant, they are appropriate for the person and they are appropriate for the task -- thereby enhancing the ability to make judgements and discover relevant regularities and structures (Norman 1993). Despite the inherently unvisualisable nature of computer code -- the flexible material of which all software constructs are built -- computer code is still the most "salient" ingredient in computer games. Less salient are those assumptions that are "built into" the software. By filtering out those parts of reality that are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary, different sorts of assumptions, different sorts of bias are automatically built into the software, reified in the very computer code (Friedman 1995, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1997). Here I will analyse some of the built-in structures that constitute the fabric of a special sort of game, a MUD. A MUD is an Internet-accessible "multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual" (Curtis, 1992). The specific MUD in question is a nine-year old Swedish-language adventure MUD called SvenskMUD ("SwedishMUD") that is run by Lysator, the academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden. I have done field studies of SvenskMUD over a period of three and a half years (Pargman, forthcoming 2000). How is the SvenskMUD adventure world structured and what are the rules that are built into the fabric of this computer game? I will describe some of the ways in which danger and death, good and evil, courage, rewards and wealth are handled in the game. I will conclude the paper with a short analysis of the purpose of configuring the player according to those structures. Revocable Deaths Characters (personae/avatars) in SvenskMUD can be divided into two categories, players and magicians. Making a career as a player to a large part involves solving quests and killing "monsters" in the game. The magicians are all ex-players who have "graduated" and gone beyond playing the game of SvenskMUD. They have become the administrators, managers and programmers of SvenskMUD. A watchful eye is kept on the magicians by "God", the creator, owner and ultimate custodian of SvenskMUD. My own first battle in the game, in a sunlit graveyard with a small mouse, is an example of a bit-sized danger suitable for newcomers, or "newbies". I correctly guessed that the mouse was a suitably weak opponent for my newborn character, but still had to "tickle" the mouse on its belly (a euphemism for hitting it without much force) 50 times before I managed to kill it. Other parts of this epic battle included 45 failed attempts of mine to "tickle" the mouse, 39 successful "tickles" of the mouse and finally a wild chase around the graveyard before I caught up with the mouse, cornered it and managed to kill it and end the fight. Although I was successful in my endeavour, I was also more than half dead after my run-in with the mouse and had to spend quite some time engaged in more peaceful occupations before I was completely healed. It was only later that I learned that you can improve your odds considerably by using weapons and armour when you fight... Should a SvenskMUD player fail in his (or less often, her) risky and adventurous career and die, that does not constitute an insurmountable problem. Should such a thing pass, the player's ghost only has to find the way back to a church in one of the villages. In the church, the player is reincarnated, albeit with some loss of game-related abilities and experience. The way the unfortunate event of an occasional death is handled is part of the meta-rules of SvenskMUD. The meta-rules are the implicit, underlying rules that represent the values, practices and concerns that shape the frame from which the "ordinary" specific rules operate. Meta-rules are part of the "world view that directs the game action and represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates" (Fine 1983, 76). Despite the adventure setting with all its hints of medieval lawlessness and unknown dangers lurking, SvenskMUD is in fact a very caring and forgiving environment. The ultimate proof of SvenskMUD's forgiveness is the revocable character of death itself. Fair Dangers Another SvenskMUD meta-rule is that dangers (and death) should be "fair". This fairness is extended so as to warn players explicitly of dangers. Before a dangerous monster is encountered, the player receives plenty of warnings: You are standing in the dark woods. You feel a little afraid. East of you is a small dark lake in the woods. There are three visible ways from here: east, north and south. It would be foolish to direct my character to go east in this situation without being adequately prepared for encountering and taking on something dangerous in battle. Those preparations should include a readiness to flee if the expected danger proves to be superior. If, in the example above, a player willingly and knowingly directs a character to walk east, that player has to face the consequences of this action. But if another player is very cautious and has no reason to suspect a deadly danger lurking behind the corner, it is not considered "fair" if that player's character dies or is hurt in such a way that it results in damage that has far-reaching consequences within the game. The dangerous monsters that roam the SvenskMUD world are restricted to roam only "dangerous" areas and it is considered good manners to warn players in some way when they enter such an area. Part of learning how to play SvenskMUD successfully becomes a matter of understanding different cues, such as the transition from a safe area to a dangerous one, or the different levels of danger signalled by different situations. Should they not know it in advance, players quickly learn that it is not advisable to enter the "Valley of Ultimate Evil" unless they have reached a very high level in the game and are prepared to take on any dangers that come their way. As with all other meta-rules, both players and magicians internalise this rule to such an extent that it becomes unquestionable and any transgression (such as a dangerous monster roaming around in a village, killing newbie characters who happen to stray its way) would immediately render complaints from players and corresponding actions on behalf of the magicians to rectify the situation. Meta-Rules as "Folk Ideas" Fine (1983, 76-8) enumerates four meta-rules that Dundes (1971) has described and applies them to the fantasy role-playing games he has studied. Dundes's term for these meta-rules is "folk ideas" and they reflect existing North American (and Western European) cultural beliefs. Fine shows that these folk ideas capture core beliefs or central values of the fantasy role-playing games he studied. Three of Dundes's four folk ideas are also directly applicable to SvenskMUD. Unlimited Wealth The first folk idea is the principle of unlimited good. There is no end to growth or wealth. For that reason, treasure found in a dungeon doesn't need a rationale for being there. This folk idea is related to the modernist concept of constant, unlimited progress. "Some referees even 'restock' their dungeons when players have found a particular treasure so that the next time someone enters that room (and kills the dragon or other beasties guarding it) they, too, will be rewarded" (Fine 1983, 76). To restock all treasures and reawaken all killed monsters at regular intervals is standard procedure in SvenskMUD and all other adventure MUDs. The technical term is that the game "resets". The reason why a MUD resets at regular intervals is that, while the MUD itself is finite, there is no end to the number of players who want their share of treasures and other goodies. The handbook for SvenskMUD magicians contains "design guidelines" for creating quests: You have to invent a small story about your quest. The typical scenario is that someone needs help with something. It is good if you can get the story together in such a way that it is possible to explain why it can be solved several times, since the quest will be solved, once for each prospective magician. Perhaps a small spectacle a short while after (while the player is pondering the reward) that in some way restore things in such a way that it can be solved again. (Tolke 1993, my translation) Good and Evil The second folk idea is that the world is a battleground between good and evil. In fantasy literature or a role-playing game there is often no in-between and very seldom any doubt whether someone encountered is good or evil, as "referees often express the alignment [moral character] of nonplayer characters through stereotyped facial features or symbolic colours" (Fine 1983, 77). "Good and evil" certainly exists as a structuring resource for the SvenskMUD world, but interestingly the players are not able to be described discretely in these terms. As distinct from role-playing games, a SvenskMUD player is not created with different alignments (good, evil or neutral). All players are instead neutral and they acquire an alignment as they go along, playing SvenskMUD -- the game. If a player kills a lot of mice and cute rabbits, that player will turn first wicked and then evil. If a player instead kills trolls and orcs, that player first turns good and then saint-like. Despite the potential fluidity of alignment in SvenskMUD, some players cultivate an aura of being good or evil and position themselves in opposition to each other. This is most apparent with two of the guilds (associations) in SvenskMUD, the Necromancer's guild and the Light order's guild. Courage Begets Rewards The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: More experienced characters gain experience points (xps) and rise in levels only by seeking out and overcoming danger and "there is a positive correlation between the danger in a setting and its payoff in treasure" (Fine 1983, 78). Just as it would be "unfair" to die without adequate warning, so would it be (perceived to be) grossly unfair to seek out and overcome dangerous monsters or situations without being adequately rewarded. And conversely, it would be perceived to be unfair if someone "stumbled over the treasure" without having deserved it, i.e. if someone was rewarded without having performed an appropriately difficult task. Taken from the information on etiquette in an adventure MUD, Reid's quote is a good example of this: It's really bad form to steal someone else's kill. Someone has been working on the Cosmicly Invulnerable Utterly Unstoppable Massively Powerful Space Demon for ages, leaves to get healed, and in the interim, some dweeb comes along and whacks the Demon and gets all it's [sic] stuff and tons of xps [experience points]. This really sucks as the other person has spent lots of time and money in expectation of the benefits from killing the monster. The graceful thing to do is to give em [sic] all the stuff from the corpse and compensation for the money spent on healing. This is still a profit to you as you got all the xps and spent practically no time killing it. (Reid 1999, 122, my emphasis) The User Illusion An important objective of the magicians in SvenskMUD is to describe everything that a player experiences in the SvenskMUD world in game-related terms. The game is regarded as a stage where the players are supposed to see only what is in front of, but not behind the scenes. A consistent use of game-related terms and game-related explanations support the suspension of disbelief and engrossment in the SvenskMUD fantasy world. The main activity of the MUD users should be to enter into the game and guide their characters through a fascinating (and, as much as possible and on its own terms, believable) fantasy world. The guiding principle is therefore that the player should never be reminded of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real, that SvenskMUD is only a game or a computer program. From this perspective, the worst thing players can encounter in SvenskMUD is a breakdown of the user illusion, a situation that instantly transports a person from the SvenskMUD world and leaves that person sitting in front of a computer screen. Error messages, e.g. the feared "you have encountered a bug [in the program]", are an example of this. If a magician decides to change the SvenskMUD world, that magician is supposed to do the very best to explain the change by using game-related jargon. This is reminiscent of the advice to "work within the system": "wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community" (Morningstar and Farmer 1991, 294). If for some reason a shop has to be moved from one village to another, a satisfactory explanation must be given, e.g. a fire occurring in the old shop or the old shop being closed due to competition (perhaps from the "new", relocated shop). Explanations that involve supernatural forces or magic are also fine in a fantasy world. Explanations that remind the player of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real ("I moved the shop to Eriksros, because all magicians decided that it would be so much better to have it there"), or even worse, that SvenskMUD is a computer program ("I moved the program shop.c to another catalogue in the file structure") are to be avoided at all costs. Part of socialising magicians becomes teaching them to express themselves in this way even when they know better about the machinations of SvenskMud. There are several examples of ingenious and imaginative ways to render difficult-to-explain phenomena understandable in game-related terms: There was a simple problem that appeared at times that made the computer [that SvenskMUD runs on] run a little slower, and as time went by the problem got worse. I could fix the problem easily when I saw it and I did that at times. After I had fixed the problem the game went noticeably faster for the players that were logged in. For those occasions, I made up a message and displayed it to everyone who was in the system: "Linus reaches into the nether regions and cranks a little faster". (Interview with Linus Tolke, "God" in SvenskMUD) When a monster is killed in the game, it rots away (disappears) after a while. However, originally, weapons and armour that the monster wielded did not disappear; a lucky player could find valuable objects and take them without having "deserved" them. This specific characteristic of the game was deemed to be a problem, not least because it furthered a virtual inflation in the game that tended to decrease the value of "honestly" collected weapons and loot. The problem was discussed at a meeting of the SvenskMUD magicians that I attended. It was decided that when a monster is killed and the character that killed it does not take the loot, the loot should disappear ("rot") together with the monster. But how should this be explained to the players in a suitable way if they approach a magician to complain about the change, a change that in their opinion was for the worse? At the meeting it was suggested that from now on, all weapons and shields were forged with a cheaper, weaker metal. Not only would objects of this metal "rot" away together with the monster that wielded them, but it was also suggested that all weapons in the whole game should in fact be worn down as time goes by. (Not to worry, new ones appear in all the pre-designated places every time the game resets.) Conclusion -- Configuring the Player SvenskMUD can easily be perceived as a "blooming buzzing confusion" for a new player and my own first explorations in SvenskMUD often left me confused even as I was led from one enlightenment to the next. Not everyone feels inclined to take up the challenge to make sense of a world where you have to learn everything anew, including how to walk and how to talk. On the other hand, in the game world, much is settled for the best, and a crack in a subterranean cave is always exactly big enough to squeeze through... The process of becoming part of the community of SvenskMUD players is inexorably connected to learning to become an expert in the activities of that community, i.e. of playing SvenskMUD (Wenger 1998). A player who wants to program in SvenskMUD (thereby altering the fabric of the virtual world) will acquire many of the relevant concepts before actually becoming a magician, just by playing and exploring the game of SvenskMUD. Even if the user illusion succeeds in always hiding the computer code from the player, the whole SvenskMUD world constitutes a reflection of that underlying computer code. An implicit understanding of the computer code is developed through extended use of SvenskMUD. The relationship between the SvenskMUD world and the underlying computer code is in this sense analogous to the relationship between the lived-in world and the rules of physics that govern the world. All around us children "prepare themselves" to learn the subject of physics in school by throwing balls up in the air (gravity) and by pulling carts or sledges (friction). By playing SvenskMUD, a player will become accustomed to many of the concepts that govern the SvenskMUD world and will come to understand the goals, symbols, procedures and values of SvenskMUD. This process bears many similarities to the "primary socialisation" of a child into a member of society, a socialisation that serves "to make appear as necessity what is in fact a bundle of contingencies" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 155). This is the purpose of configuring the player and it is intimately connected to the re-growth of SvenskMUD magicians and the survival of SvenskMUD itself over time. However, it is not the only possible outcome of the SvenskMUD socialisation process. The traditional function of trials and quests in fantasy literature is to teach the hero, usually through a number of external or internal encounters with evil or doubt, to make the right, moral choices. By excelling at these tests, the protagonist shows his or her worthiness and by extension also stresses and perhaps imputes these values in the reader (Dalquist et al. 1991). Adventure MUDs could thus socialise adolescents and reinforce common moral values in society; "the fantasy hero is the perfectly socialised and exemplary subject of a society" (53, my translation). My point here is not that SvenskMUD differs from other adventure MUDs. I would imagine that most of my observations are general to adventure MUDs and that many are applicable also to other computer games. My purpose here has rather been to present a perspective on how an adventure MUD is structured, to trace the meaning of that structure beyond the game itself and to suggest a purpose behind that organisation. I encourage others to question built-in bias and underlying assumptions of computer games (and other systems) in future studies. References Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1966. Curtis, P. "MUDding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." High Noon on the Electronic Frontier. Ed. P. Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1996. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/virtual-reality/communications/papers/muds/muds/Mudding-Social-Phenomena.txt>. Dalquist, U., T. Lööv, and F. Miegel. "Trollkarlens lärlingar: Fantasykulturen och manlig identitetsutveckling [The Wizard's Apprentices: Fantasy Culture and Male Identity Development]." Att förstå ungdom [Understanding Youth]. Ed. A. Löfgren and M. Norell. Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1991. Dundes, A. "Folk Ideas as Units of World View." Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Ed. A. Paredes and R. Bauman. Austin: U of Texas P, 1971. Fine, G.A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. Friedman, B. and H. Nissenbaum. "Bias in Computer Systems." Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Ed. B. Friedman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997. Friedman, T. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. S. Jones. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Morningstar, C. and F. R. Farmer. "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat." Cyberspace: The First Steps. Ed. M. Benedikt. Cambridge: MA, MIT P, 1991. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.communities.com/company/papers/lessons.php>. Norman, D. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pargman, D. "Code Begets Community: On Social and Technical Aspects of Managing a Virtual Community." Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Communication Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, forthcoming, December 2000. Reid, E. "Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace." Communities in Cyberspace. Ed. M. Smith and P. Kollock. London, England: Routledge, 1999. Tolke, L. Handbok för SvenskMudmagiker: ett hjälpmedel för byggarna i SvenskMUD [Handbook for SvenskMudmagicians: An Aid for the Builders in SvenskMUD]. Printed and distributed by the author in a limited edition, 1993. Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel Pargman. "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php>. Chicago style: Daniel Pargman, "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel Pargman. (2000) The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]).

I Usually, when reading or literature is being discussed, the contents of that discussion (like themes, symbols, poetic means, etc.) are focused. The humanities or academic criticism have rarely drawn their attention to the material media of literature. However, in recent years some of the conversation concerning literature has shifted the focus from contents to the material side. It has been a matter of working in a good cause: this conversation has been aroused by digital culture and its fearsome threat to print culture and books in general. It is evident that digitalization has given rise to a certain rhetorical system among the defenders of the traditional book and print. These are easily distinguished in discussions dealing with the advantages and favoured traits of print and book. This kind of traditionalist argumentation is based firstly on the claimed interruption and deep differences between print culture and digital culture. Secondly, it emphasizes the emotional and sensual factors of reading and tends to adore books as objects, and – third – by doing that, it also takes a somewhat nostalgic or mystifying approach to reading fiction. Because inventing neologisms is always amusing, this rhetorical system could be called intimism. The new word is coined from ‘intimacy’ and ‘intimate’, because the print-defending arguments always reduce their main idea to thoughts of close, warm, private, safe, and familiar nature of reading. Intimism wants to see the “traditional” culture in opposition to the “new” culture that threatens to destroy the print culture and even literacy. It sees print as the language of culture and civilization, which is under threat of becoming extinct. It is questionable, though, whether print culture needs advocates in the first place. It is possibly the most victorious and pervasive innovation throughout human history and shows no signs of fading or collapsing whatsoever. When I claim that intimism attaches nostalgic and mystifying approaches to print, the point is not to nullify the value of subjective reading experiences or the inexplicable features always present in reading. Also, I am not “defending” digitalization. Rather, I am aiming to highlight some tropes cast at reading as an act, and see how reading printed books is figured rhetorically. Intimism bases its argumentation on the thought of deep interruption between print-orientated culture and digitalization. Cultural periods (orality, print, digital) are not clearly consecutive, but overlapping. Orality has lived side by side with print, and will live with and in digital culture too. There’s plenty of resemblances and residues to oral culture in digital forms of communication. Print culture is deeply entangled with digital culture, technologically as well as content-wise. Book-printing is so utterly digitalized that only thing in the production process of books that is not digital is the book itself. Furthermore, it is not fair to treat the existing digital literature as one “lump”. Electronic literature is divided in different categories. Digitalization of (already) printed literature – conserving classic literature and making it electronically available – is very different from genuinely digital texts, new literature published as a digital file (to be read from computer screen or hand-computer) or texts that take full advantage of digital opportunities, such as interactivity, linking, updating, programming, multimedia, or internet. These sorts of “originally digital” texts base their logic of functioning and textual dynamics on digital technology – thus being impossible to print. Digital text is not a clear-cut object in the same way we can think print is. In short, electronic text is fluent; print is static. According to Jay David Bolter, “all information … in the computer world is a kind of controlled movement” (Bolter 31). Electronic text can be transported into thousands of computers simultaneously; it can be renewed, updated, or destroyed from a distance. Text on the computer screen is one possible instantiation of the coding we do not usually associate with the text “itself”. What is the equivalent for coding of the text in print? The physical appearance of the text does not identify itself in the same way with the reading surface as in print, where the text is literally pressed into the surface making these two inseparable. II William Gass, among many others, sees the charm of the book connected very closely to the charm of the physical, material nature of book. Gass argues that We shall not understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons have, and is even less replaceable than a person, if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold its lines of language safely together. For Gass, digital texts are texts without bodies. They wander endlessly in the digital space, restless, so that they seem to be like textual ghosts (and maybe therefore be fearsome?). Gass sees digital texts as pale shadows of their printed forerunners. Words on paper patiently wait to be reread, but words on a screen are transient, “they only wait to be remade, relit” (Gass). The very essence of the book lies in its material body, which keeps its lines “safely together” and identifies its contents with the medium, the beloved paper object. In this light, Amy Tan’s formulation is significant. (Her comments were adopted from Koskimaa 2000. This TV panel discussion with Tan, Harold Bloom and Dick Brass is yet to pin down.) She said that books, unlike electronic texts, are charmingly sensual. The term sensual can be understood in two ways, which are both interesting from the standpoint here. When we read, books as objects are in permanent contact with our senses. Sight, feeling, and even hearing are important factors in reading, the first mentioned crucially so, with smelling or tasting more rare (even though some hard-core biblio-fetishists enjoy sniffing their loved ones). Secondly, sensual can be understood as in sentence “her lips are sensual”. Sensual in this meaning connects reading with something that is both emotional and aesthetic: emotional, because it is hardly definable; simultaneously unattainable, but clearly present in its internality. Something present only for me. “Aesthetism” claims that reading (and specifically reading book) is in itself aesthetic deed – some sort of modelled cultural act. Treating books and print as if they had human characteristics, in other words to anthropomorphise them, seems to be typical to this manner of speaking. Books consist of two crucially human denominators – body and soul. The bond between the book and its reader resembles to friendship. Books love us almost as much as we love them. They are “even less replaceable than a person”. They supply “warmth of the word”, as Gass puts it, almost like you’d have a close friend next to you to share your feelings. And, is not the previously-mentioned sensuality also closely connected to carnal pleasures? These argumentation lines both entangle contents and subjective experiences with a certain medium, the printed book. They evaluate form with content by claiming that a medium an sich has positive impacts on the message. Intimism makes reading an external ceremony of cultivation to which certain feelings can be attached. W.J. Ong has described writing as internalized technology (Ong 81-83). We could now reverse this thought – intimism externalizes the subjective and private value of reading into acceptable reading of printed book. It thus technologises the internal, inexplicable and obscure core of reading. III In a digital context, according to Gass, reading itself cannot shape the book like in print, where an avid reader leaves traces and marks on the body of book. This makes electronic text impersonal, distant to the reader and, in a way, overdetermined by the technology it’s based on. This overdetermination is something that makes us irritatingly conscious of the technological ground we are working on when we are reading an electronic text. Technology pushes itself through to the fore from between the lines, it makes itself extremely present, more present than with reading in the technology of print, or so it feels to us. The printed book seems to be more able to efface, to obscure, its technological nature. We are so used to the book as a form of presentation, that we can easily ignore its technological and material bases. Maybe the feeling of absence makes for the high feeling of presence in the technology of print and book? As intimism foregrounds the material aspects of literature, which are usually backgrounded, some writers have underlined this material paradox by hoisting the very technology of book and print, even revelling in it, and throwing the medium of the book, the machine of literature, usually so lame and tame, in your face. This kind of overdetermination of the technology of the printed novel begins at least in the Baroque period or with Laurence Sterne, traversing through the nouveaux roman and American metafictionists such as Barth, Federman, and Sukenick. For intimism, print is an intimate technology. It is a seemingly paradoxical concept, because usually technology is thought to be something formal or external. The intimist argumentation projects contents into the form, and unlike the mentioned authors who fool around with our literal automatisms, it takes a moral, restrictive and colonizing stance to reading and its technologies. Note Based and re-written on the paper held in Baltic Ring: International Writing and Reading Seminar, 11.- 13. April 2002, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. References Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale: Laurence Erlbaum, 1991. Gass, William H. “In Defense of the Book.” Harper’s Magazine November 1999: 45-51. Koskimaa, Raine. ”King-efekti ja kirjallisuuden sähköinen tulevaisuus.” Nuori Voima 4-5, 2000. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: Technologizing of the Word. 1982. London: Routledge, 1988. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Joensuu, Juri. "Intimate Technology?: Literature, Reading and the Argumentation Defending Book and Print." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/02-joensuu.php>. APA Style Joensuu, J. (Jun. 2005) "Intimate Technology?: Literature, Reading and the Argumentation Defending Book and Print," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/02-joensuu.php>.

Obsolescence in Conversation Knick-knacks of uncertain use,[Omitted for space]Somber pictures and distant blues,Faded pastels, hard cameos,Phials still smelling of perfume,Jewelry, rags, rattles, puppets,What a great clutter in this chest!All for sale. Accept my offer,Reader. Perhaps these old thingsWill move you to tears or laughter.You’ll have to pay, and as for me,I shall buy some nice fresh roses. (Cros and Corbière) Orlando, in his book Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination, interprets the listing of the objects in this sonnet as intensifying “the primary defunctionalization of the things” (18). Until line 5, the old objects in the chest seemed to bring good reminiscence. In line 6, on the contrary, these objects suddenly turn into “great clutter”, which needs to be sold in order to be replaced with “some nice fresh roses”. This is a representative example of how obsolescence is construed in our everyday lives. Obsolete objects bring memories, warmth, and nostalgia, yet we often view them as the defunctionalized, impractical, uncertain, or worthless that will eventually have to be replaced with the new. When it comes to technological objects, functionality, efficiency, and usefulness are the central reasons for their existence. Accordingly, becoming obsolete poses a great challenge towards the reason for their existence, raising our perception about obsolete technology as a waste. Strasser (Strasser) wrote in the 1920s — “economic growth was fueled by what had once been understood as waste.” This notion carries over to today’s computing environment in which the high rate of machine turnover translates into tremendous profitability for the computing industries. Hence planned obsolescence, planning and engineering the obsolescence, became a long-established principle in American consumer economics (Sterne). The ways in which computing devices are designed today are good resulting representations of planned obsolescence. A study in 2007 showed that American consumers use their phones for only 17.5 months before replacing them (U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study), and worldwide sales of mobile phones are expected to exceed one billion by 2009 (Gartner). Huang and Truong called the trend of usage lifetime being much shorter than their functional lifetime the disposable technology paradigm. As environmental sustainability became an important issue in our daily lives, the awareness of planned obsolescence and the disposable technology paradigm alarmed researchers to actively engage in the questions of supporting sustainability in computing devices. Because of the notion that obsolescence equals waste, the conversations in designing for sustainability have been based on the view that obsolescence is something that is problematic and need to be prevented. For example, sustainable interaction design (Blevis) suggested ways in which design can prolong the life cycle of the product in order to delay or prevent the product from becoming obsolete. So far we have discussed how the notion of obsolescence is perceived in our everyday lives, what it means to the computing industry, and how it is utilized for economic profit or, in contrary, attempted to be prevented for environmental sustainability. Rather than viewing obsolescence as having negative power, however, we challenge the notion that obsolescence is worthless and furthermore discuss the social and individual values that were surfaced through a case study of a user community that maintained an obsolete machine for over nine years after the product’s discontinuation. HP200LX User Community HP200LX (LX) is a PDA introduced by HP in 1994. It is MS-DOS compatible and comes with 2 or 4 MB of memory including the RAM. Housed in a clamshell-style case, it comes with 640x200 monochrome display, QWERTY keyboard, serial port, and PCMCIA slot. A user claimed that an AA battery would run his LX for up to two weeks. The user community for the LX communicated and shared information through an email list. The email list started in late 1996 and thrived until September 2008. By January of 2008, there were approximately 90,000 accumulated messages that were archived online since 1996. We sampled roughly 35,000 messages from the beginning of the archive, around discontinuation (November, 1999), and later in the archive, and analyzed using standard qualitative analysis through coding and probed for emerging patterns. The LX was discontinued in 1999, officially making the LX to be obsolete. To the LX users, however, the LX was more effective than any other PDAs at the time. Because the LX was running DOS, it allowed the users to flexibly develop and share custom applications that fit their everyday practices. Besides, the LX users considered the LX useful due to it being lightweight and having long lasting battery life. In the attempt to push back against the obsolescence of the machine, during the first few years after discontinuation, the LX user community was actively building resources that would help prolong the life of the rapidly aging LX. This included solutions in dealing with fixing and upgrading hardware and software, adding new features, and maintaining compatibility with the surrounding computing environment. For example, the members shared their know-hows on fixing broken hinges or finding the right memory card that communicated the best with the LX. As well, a user developed a do-it-yourself kit that allowed end users to install backlight to the LX, which was not an existing feature in the original LX. Actively Participating in Building Up the Resources Around the time the LX was discontinued, the LX community was pushing back against the notion of obsolescence that was given to the LX. The LX was still useful to them and they could not find the alternatives that would replace the kinds of functionalities and features that the LX provided. Accordingly, it was up to the members themselves to maintain the LX, which required active participation from the members. The core members of the list shared the knowledge they had accumulated while using the LX. If a member asked a question to the email list, a variety of solutions was followed. This way, over many years, the community had collectively built up resources that were necessary in order for the LX users to maintain the LX on their own. In 2001, a member volunteered to aggregate members’ contact information and their core knowledge skills in maintaining the LX. He wanted to use the database for the newcomers and for those who will continue to use the LX long after the list died when the resources would no longer be available: “…we could create a database which all people who are so kind to support the HPLX community even after they leave the list (if ever) can add their contact information and a short HPLX-related skills profile, so that, when you have a s[p]ecific problem with (for example) an Internet connection with cel[l] phone you simply do a search for "cell phone" and it appears, besides others, the entryname: [David Wong]email: [dw]@epost.deURL: www.[david-wong].deskills: cell phones, LaTeX, Synchronization, serial port,.....”(User EI, Sep. 2001) The responses were favorable, showing that the members valued participation as an important part of sustaining the community and the obsolete machine. A few months later, in February 2002, a member suggested the list to introduce themselves to the list in 80 minutes. The thread continued for about a month from users around the world: [Stanley Bower], New ZealandOwner of one well travelled single speed unit featuring a Hinge Crack and a rubber band modified latch. (User TG, Jan. 2002) [Dan], I hail from Los Angeles, CA, originally from Roseburg, Oregon. USA All the Way! I posted several months ago a suggestion that we set up an HPLX conference to get everyone on the list in a convenient location. Anyone else interested? [John Bulard] (User KC, Feb. 2002) 105 members have responded to the thread. Then user EI suggested to merge the contact information gathered from this email thread to the knowledge database. Currently, the database is offline due to privacy concerns, but this event showed how much the list was conscientious about using the collective knowledge for those who need help in maintaining the obsolete machine that essentially have little resources to depend on. The fact that the LX was obsolete pushed users to actively engage in collectively building resources for maintaining the LX. Unveiling Invisible Collective Creativity Because of the members’ active participation, it also unveiled the creativity of the members in getting around the problems that were created due to the obsolescence. For example, reading a PDF file on the LX was a big issue since existing DOS based PDF readers required higher system requirements than the LX. Accordingly, the members had to come up with their own ways of reading PDF files, and these were shared on the email list starting 1998 through 2005. In February 1999, user UP suggested printing PDF files from a fax driver and reading the output from the fax viewer. However, this fax viewer solution did not seem to get much attention. Instead, user EO followed up saying that some PDF files could be read directly without the viewer while others do not. Because this solution had uncertainties, his second suggestion was to convert PDF files into images from other computers and import them into the LX. From this point on, the members discussed a variety of ways in which PDF files could be read. The members found downloadable programs that could convert PDF files to .TXT or ASCII files as well as email addresses to which the members could send PDF files and receive text files back. In March 2001, a member introduced using Google to open PDF file as a text file and downloading the HTML file to the LX. Later, instead of the PDF to TXT or HTML solution, user CN shared his know-how of viewing PDF files through image capture: you can open it in Acrobat on your desktop, capture a screenshot to your clipboard (I think on a Windows box you press PrtScrn), then trim it neatly in a graphics program before saving the image to .pcx or some other format. Then you can view it in LXPic on your palmtop. It's easier than it sounds. (User CN, Jul. 2001) In April 2005, a member distributed an application that converted PDF files directly into the image files. Another member then complained about the size of the resulting image file, which he then solved through manually getting rid of the white bordering around the text. The LX users were constantly adapting their own ways of solving problems. Aside from viewing PDF files problem, there were many other challenges such as breaking hardware and outdating software that the users had to deal with. However, this very process of overcoming the LX becoming obsolete and losing compatibility with the advancing computing environment has unveiled the collective creativity of the LX users that would otherwise have been hidden. Becoming Well-Informed Even with active knowledge sharing and creative work-arounds, maintaining the LX was still challenging. Accordingly, the members had to constantly look out for alternatives that could replace the LX: I just picked up one of these beasties [Zaurus] at HSN.COM for $180-ish shipped. I was wondering if I could get some feedback from anyone who has used it and can compare/contrast with an LX. There are obvious differences in battery life, color, etc but I was wondering about built-in applications. So far this thing seems like a good alternative for those who want a "modern" color PDA but find PocketWindows too bloated and PalmOS too primitive. The coolest part is that you can use the SD slot form flash mem and the CF slot for ethernet or other periph. (User F, Mar. 2003) During the course of researching the alternatives and sharing experiences on the list, the members became well-informed about the alternative products and their pros and cons of the detailed aspects. Examples included how keyboard touch feels, what available customized as well as built-in applications are, how easy it is to back up, how long the battery life is, or what daily usage practices are. Because the LX was an intricate part of the members’ lives, daily resources and practices were built around the LX, making it one of the impeding factors for the LX users to move on to an alternative device. Thus, it was important to know the degree to which the alternative device can continue to support the workflow that was established around the LX. This forced the members to actively engage in conversations to be well informed about alternative devices beyond features and machine performances. As a result, the members became well aware of the choices they have as consumers and perceived themselves to be able to make well-informed decisions than other general consumer groups. Co-Construction of Group Identity Because the members became well-informed consumers and the LX was not something that anybody could use (it required minimum programming knowledge), the members begun to distance themselves apart from the general group of users. HP200LX becoming abandoned in place of a new mobile platform WinCE, which was supposedly user-friendlier than DOS, pushed the members even further away from “the normal users”, which opened up another space for the LX users to co-construct their group identity. Here is an exemplary conversation thread in which user BN responds to user TE: › HP are NOT making a big mistake by discontinuing the 200LX any more › than your girlfiend was whe[n] she dumped you for the nerd with pots › of money.Yeah, yeah, we react like the dumped boyfriend. But hey, rejection is tough. :)› It's their choice and their problem. _We_ don't have a problem.A little yes… (User BN, July 1999) Notice here how user BN and TE refer to the list members as “we” who react to the discontinuation like the dumped boyfriend, and HP as “they” who abandoned the LX over the new mobile platform. Similarly, in the following, by grouping the users “these days” that buy “crappy computer hardware and software”, user TE contrasts the LX users from the general group of users and characterizes the LX users as those who make informed decisions: They [the companies] don't care if the machines are a pain in the butt and the users are frustrated. These days, users are willing to accept crappy computer hardware and software... (User TE, 1999) However, another user argued that the general group of users, in fact, prefers WinCE or computing devices that they consider “crappy”, placing themselves further away from the general users: No, no, no. They [users] love that [WinCE]. There's nothing better than a big installed base who thin[k]s that a bug fix is properly referred to as an "upgrade." (User MD, 1999) Watkins, in his book Throwaways (Watkins), argued that distancing between the new and the old gave a means of maintaining dominance through distinction from others. For example, rather than being viewed as true progression, to Watkins, avant-gardism was merely another means of social distinction, a way to stay one step ahead. In the case of the LX community, the use of old, instead of the new, has been placed as their ways of staying techno-culturally one step ahead. This process of social distinction played an important part in the formation of the group identity, which in turn tightened the community and brought them closer together. Obsolescence Uncovers Values in Technology Use When we picture obsolete computers, they are dusted, big, heavy, slow, and clunky – they are perceived to have little ability to perform as newer computers do. However, obsolescence is such a situated notion that it may be construed arbitrarily depending on how, to whom, and when an object becomes obsolete. Although planned obsolescence may reclassify a machine as obsolete, its actual disuse may come later. Even if the disuse occurs, again, throwing away may happen later. The LX community showed a representative example of the constant re-interpretation of the obsolescence through the tight tension between reclassification of the LX as obsolete by the corporate and perceived obsolescence by the end-users. For the LX users, the LX was not obsolete – it was still the most functional device they could find at the time. The LX users were then committed to maintain the LX over eight years after discontinuation, challenging the notion of obsolete computers as worthless. The LX users maintained the obsolete machine not solely because of the nostalgic purposes but arguably because of the quality and functionality the machine possessed. In fact, the LX community was merely a representative of many user communities of discontinued computing artifacts (Muniz Jr. and Schau, Frauenfelder) that could attest to the arbitrary notion of obsolescence. The constant tension between the forced obsolescence and the refusal towards obsolescence, in return, allowed the LX community to discover values that may not otherwise have been revealed. In the process of pushing back the notion that the LX is obsolete, the community was able to bring to the surface the active participation of the community, the hidden forms of collective creativity, constant efforts in becoming well informed, and the formation of group identity. References Blevis, E. "Sustainable Interaction Design: Invention & Disposal, Renewal & Reuse." ACM CHI New York, 2007. Cros, Charles, and Tristan Corbière. Œuvres Complètes [de] Charles Cros [et] Tristan Corbière. Bibliothèque de La Pléiade. Paris: Gallimard, 1970. Frauenfelder, M. "Never Say Die." Wired March 2000. Gartner. "Gartner Says Mobile Phone Sales Will Exceed One Billion in 2009." 2005. 15 July 2009 ‹http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_132473_11.html›. Huang, E.M., and K.N. Truong. "Sustainably Ours - Situated Sustainability for Mobile Phones." Interactions-New York 15.2 (2008): 16-19. Muniz Jr., A.M., and H.J. Schau. "Religiosity in the Abandoned Apple Newton Brand Community." Journal of Consumer Research 31.4 (2005): 737-47. Orlando, Francesco. Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination : Ruins, Relics, Rarities, Rubbish, Uninhabited Places, and Hidden Treasures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Sterne, Jonathan. "Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media." Residual Media. Ed. Charles R. Acland. Illustrated ed. Minneapolis: University of Minessota Press, 2007. 16-31. Strasser, Susan. Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash. 1st ed. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999. U.S. Wireless Mobile Phone Evaluation Study. J.D. Power and Associates, 2007. Watkins, E. Throwaways: Work Culture and Consumer Education. Stanford University Press, 1993.

"For most of us, if we do not talk of ourselves, or at any rate of the individual circles of which we are the centres, we can talk of nothing. I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world." -- Anthony Trollope, Framley Parsonage This issue of M/C explores the notion of 'chat', examining its contexts, forms, functions and operations. 'Chat' appears to be a descriptive subset of 'talk', often characterised somewhat unfairly as idle or frivolous 'small talk', 'gossip' -- the kind of tête-à-tête that is mediated through cups of tea (alluded to in Jen Henzell's cover image). However, 'chat' is not only an extremely prevalent activity, but, as Trollope implies, a primary social activity. Serious academic regard for 'chat' can be traced to Malinowski's (150) coining of the term "phatic communion" to refer to talk that expresses the "ties of union", a notion later taken up by Laver ("Communicative Functions"; "Linguistic Routines"). Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson made a similar distinction between the content level of communication (contains assumptions that are communicable) and the relationship level (which reveals the speaker's attitude to the assumptions communicated and the speaker's relationship with and opinion of the hearer). 'Chat', they argue, is more about building and solidifying relationships between interactants than imparting information. Even gossip, probably the most content driven form of 'chat', lets hearers know that they are regarded well enough by the speakers to be drawn into confidence. We have divided the M/C 'chat' issue into two sections along the lines of context. The first section deals with what might be termed 'traditional' or 'more general' forms of chat, where the interactants are either physically (face-to-face) or acoustically (telephone) copresent. Given both the period and the medium in which M/C 'chat' is being published, it should not be surprising that the second section deals with computer-mediated communication (CMC). With the advent of CMC, 'chat' -- and research on it -- has been transformed, taking with it much of the old formula and leaving behind some of its trappings. M/C 'chat' is introduced by Charles Antaki's Feature Article "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'". In this insightful and highly accessible piece, Antaki explores the paradoxical manner in which the description of a discursive event as 'chat' may be used to socially persuasive ends. Antaki takes as his starting point the fact that some uses of the word 'chat' demonstrate an old-fashioned view of spoken discourse as an inefficient information-transmission system ('mere talk' and 'gossip'). This, he argues, belies -- and belittles -- its use in actual talk. Analyses of four transcripts containing the descriptor 'chat' illustrate how speakers deploy it as a tactic to promote a description of an informal and blameless event, when in fact the episode in question might be categorised as something rather different. As befits an article by a member of Loughborough University's influential Discourse and Rhetoric Group, folded into the analysis is a persuasive demonstration of the methodological and theoretical strength of Conversation Analysis (CA) for describing language-in-use. However, as Antaki concludes, this is not just a game for analysts - we are all fundamentally sensitive to the power of the 'chat' descriptor. M/C 'chat' is introduced by Charles Antaki's Feature Article "Two Rhetorical Uses of the Description 'Chat'". In this insightful and highly accessible piece, Antaki explores the paradoxical manner in which the description of a discursive event as 'chat' may be used to socially persuasive ends. Antaki takes as his starting point the fact that some uses of the word 'chat' demonstrate an old-fashioned view of spoken discourse as an inefficient information-transmission system ('mere talk' and 'gossip'). This, he argues, belies -- and belittles -- its use in actual talk. Analyses of four transcripts containing the descriptor 'chat' illustrate how speakers deploy it as a tactic to promote a description of an informal and blameless event, when in fact the episode in question might be categorised as something rather different. As befits an article by a member of Loughborough University's influential Discourse and Rhetoric Group, folded into the analysis is a persuasive demonstration of the methodological and theoretical strength of Conversation Analysis (CA) for describing language-in-use. However, as Antaki concludes, this is not just a game for analysts - we are all fundamentally sensitive to the power of the 'chat' descriptor. In a turn away from the micro-level world of Conversation Analysis (CA), Mark Frankland's "Chatting in the Neighbourhood: Does It Have a Place in the World of Globalised Media?" is a broad diachronic and synchronic overview of the place local media such as 'chat' and community newspapers fit into an evolving and increasingly global media-scape. The first half of Frankland's article is an historical demonstration of the almost inevitable links between the rise of the urban form and moves away from local media to media globalisation. Given this history, in the second half of the article Frankland asks what effect the absence of local forms of media might have. He argues that local media forms are important sense-making mechanisms, operating at the level of personal effectivity, for assimilating the constantly changing media-scape. Local news media, and the even more micro level of 'chat' may act as "transition discourses", meaningful local contexts in which we may discuss the global. Most of the articles in this collection are about forms of chat to which both parties consent. "Invitation or Sexual Harassment? An Analysis of an Intercultural Communication Breakdown" by Zhu Yunxia and Peter Thompson considers quite the opposite -- unwelcome 'chatting up' or verbal sexual harassment. Zhu and Thompson examine a series of three telephone invitations to a party from a male Chinese tutor to a female Australian student, which resulted in an accusation of sexual harassment. Through an analysis combining Searle's speech acts, Austin's felicity conditions and Aristotle's rhetorical strategies, Zhu and Thompson suggest that different cultures use different tactics in the speech act of an invitation and they believe that the potential for miscommunication is increased when intercultural differences are present in the interaction. "The Naturally-Occurring Chat Machine" is Darren Reed and Malcolm Ashmore's interesting methodological reflection on the nature of the data collection and transcription processes of Conversation Analysis (CA), in order to "provoke a reconsideration of the marginal status of textually conducted interaction as a proper topic for CA". The worked-up complexities of CA transcripts, they argue, produce a myth of an unmediated origin, when in fact 'machinic-productive processes' are used to produce data considered 'studiable' in the CA of face-to-face conversations. Analogous processes produce data for the CA of Internet newsgroup messages. Ironically, in terms of CA's claim of using 'naturally occurring' data, Reed and Ashmore make the controversial counter-claim that newsgroup data might be considered superior to transcribed data, as the textual character of Internet newsgroups is the result of participants' work. In effect, therefore, Internet newsgroup data is considerably less mediated than recorded and transcribed conversations. Reed and Ashmore provide a neat link between bring the first section of M/C 'chat', dealing with what might be termed 'traditional chat media', and the second section concentrating on computer-mediated communication (CMC). The boom in CMC also marks the renaissance of Conversation Analytic research. Interestingly, both Reed and Ashmore, who end this section, and Paul ten Have, who we asked to introduce the CMC section, note that the proliferation of new interaction media not only provides new contexts in which to investigate human interaction, but also very conveniently produce easy-to-use data as a natural process of participation. Paul ten Have begins the CMC section with an introduction to some of the fundamental features and concerns of CMC research in his ethnographic investigation of how to find someone to talk to in a chat room. From the standpoint of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA), "Computer-Mediated Chat: Ways of Finding Chat Partners" takes us through a description of the more or less generic categorisation features of most chat rooms, and then into the three primary concerns that CMC users often make apparent very early in an interaction: age, sex and location, indicated by the acronymic "a/s/l please". Interestingly, his conclusion is that while it is clear that pre-existing communication procedures must be adapted to the new environment -- manifested perhaps most obviously by a more explicit questioning when searching for chat partners -- current media do not provide much scope for radical change in the fundamentals of 'chat'. Paul ten Have begins the CMC section with an introduction to some of the fundamental features and concerns of CMC research in his ethnographic investigation of how to find someone to talk to in a chat room. From the standpoint of Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA), "Computer-Mediated Chat: Ways of Finding Chat Partners" takes us through a description of the more or less generic categorisation features of most chat rooms, and then into the three primary concerns that CMC users often make apparent very early in an interaction: age, sex and location, indicated by the acronymic "a/s/l please". Interestingly, his conclusion is that while it is clear that pre-existing communication procedures must be adapted to the new environment -- manifested perhaps most obviously by a more explicit questioning when searching for chat partners -- current media do not provide much scope for radical change in the fundamentals of 'chat'. Miranda Mowbray continues this theme of the false perception of restrictiveness. She notes that most interactive CMC systems place certain restrictions on the way in which a person may present themselves on arrival in the room. In her article, "Neither Male nor Female: Other -- Gendered Chat in Little Italy", Mowbray notes that the Little Italy's system (created by Pavel Curtis originally for Lambda MOO) gives participants the opportunity to broaden their gender presentation options from 'female' or 'male' to a range of 'other genders'. Mowbray observes that a fifth of the inhabitants of Little Italy opt to choose a gender other than that of the traditional 'female' or 'male', and, significantly, that half of users presenting as 'other genders' are still participating after a year -- more than the traditionally gendered Little Italians. Through 28 responses from these Little Italians, Mowbray investigates why these other-gendered participants are more likely to remain in the one space than those who chose 'female' or 'male'. She concludes that it is "the personal creative investment by the other-gendered citizens in Little Italy that makes them especially likely to remain active citizens." Mowbray considers Little Italy's system to be an excellent demonstration of a "stickiness" feature -- a feature of a CMC system that attracts long term use. Her results should be of interest to software companies wanting to design popular -- and profitable -- chat rooms. Since interactive synchronous and quasi-synchronous CMC systems became popular with the release of IRC, ICQ, Webchat and various ISP chat rooms, a flood of research about the transformation of language in computer-mediated situations has resulted. However most of this work has concentrated on chat between strangers. Campbell and Wickman observe this bias in their article, "Familiars in a Strange Land: A Case Study of Friends Chatting Online", choosing instead to concentrate on computer-mediated chat between acquaintances. In this autoethnographic account, the authors note that although they have adopted some of the more common conversational CMC strategies, they have also created their own, relevant to their particular circumstances. Historically, CMC research has argued that the 'cues-filtered-out' nature of CMC systems leads to depersonalisation and the lack of necessity to adhere to social conventions of politeness. However, Campbell and Wickman note that in their own chat as online and offline familiars, they observe a strong need to adhere to politeness conventions, due to the face-to-face consequences of their online actions. This interesting finding suggests that politeness theory may be of great value in future CMC research, particularly that comparing and contrasting chat between familiars and strangers, and/or face-to-face and online interaction. As Ylva Hård af Segerstad points out, most CMC research is conducted on English language forums. M/C 'chat' is pleased to help redress this balance with the publication of investigations on the impact of computer-mediation on languages other than English, in this case Swedish. Given the English focus of the Internet, however, CMC research on languages other than English must, of course, take account of the variations between the language-specific and 'international' (read English-language) forums. This being the case, Hård af Segerstad discusses the result of questionnaire data and logged conversations to determine if written online Swedish is being adapted in ways particular to it, or if Swedish written language is being developed in analogy with adaptations observable in international chat rooms. While the surprisingly uniform results of the two data sources indicate that Swedish written language is being adapted for online chat (rather than using one language offline and another online), the actual adaptation strategies are much the same as those observed in other adaptations of writing in general. In their paper "Chatting to Learn and Learning to Chat in Collaborative Virtual Environments", Teresa Cerratto and Yvonne Wærn discuss the importance of conversation to educational contexts and the communication problems inherent in using an electronic medium as an educational tool. These authors are more concerned with the information transmission aspect of chat rather than its dominant relationship characteristics. They examine two groups of teachers in Sweden who are learning to use the new collaborative virtual environment, TAPPED IN™. Cerratto and Wærn note some of the strategies that the teachers adopt in attempting to gain the floor in this CVE where there are a number of people vying for attention. At the same time, tactics used by teachers for communicative collaboration are also discussed by these authors. Finally, on the basis of an analysis of their data, Cerratto and Wærn provide arguments for the importance of leadership in these particular learning environments, arguing a leader helps maintain the informational coherence of the discussions. In terms of redressing imbalances in CMC research, not only has language been particularly biased to English, but in some media -- Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in particular -- most research has been qualitative in nature. We may know how users manage their interactions online, but how many are doing so? The bases of many generalisations about adaptation strategies are somewhat shaky on the quantitative front. Much can be gained by combining the quantitative with the qualitative, and with this in mind, Hinner has taken it upon himself to not only create a system capable of capturing usage statistics for all the major IRC networks, but also to provide two years of these statistics and make this system available on his Website. His article details the processes involved in creating the Socip statistical program and sample graphs of the kinds of information that his system can provide. The CMC section of M/C 'Chat' brought to our attention many more articles than we could publish in the already quite expanded issue, and we were sorry to have had to pass over promising work in this popular field. The contributions included, however, represent a turning point in CMC research, in which our wonder -- and glee -- of describing findings of social interaction in what were assumed to be anti-social media, has turned to the detailed consideration of just how socialisation is accomplished in what promise to be increasingly common media. What has not changed, as Paul ten Have notes, and, indeed, as Charles Antaki began the issue, is that all human life can be found in language-in-use -- wherever it takes place. Hinner's article brings the CMC section of M/C 'chat' to a close, but is not quite the last blast. Very early in the article submission process, Ulf Wilhelmsson contacted us about including his "Dialogue on Film and Philosophy". Wilhelmsson wanted to translate -- from the original Swedish -- his Socratic dialogue about film in which Quentin Tarantino moderates a discussion involving numerous influential philosophers, film-makers, film-scholars and the odd Beatle (John Lennon). While we were somewhat taken aback, the rough translation of the first few lines was interesting, and, as it turns out, quite entertaining. Unfortunately, due to its length, the dialogue can not be supplied in regular M/C 'bits', and so we have made it available as a downloadable Rich Text Format file. See the Editor's Preface to Wilhelmsson's article for more information on its content and to download the file itself. This very global issue of M/C brings together people in Germany to New Zealand, Sweden to the UK, all chatting about chat. We hope you enjoy this collection of articles. Felicity Meakins & E. Sean Rintel -- 'Chat' Issue Editors References Laver, John. "Communicative Functions of Phatic Communication." The Organisation of Behaviour in Face-to-Face Interaction. Eds. Adam Kendon, Richard M. Harris, and Mary Ritchie Key. The Hague: Mouton, 1975. 215-38. ---. "Linguistic Routines and Politeness in Greeting and Parting." Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardised Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech. Ed. Florian Coulmas. The Hague: Mouton, 1981. 289-304. Malinowski, Bronislaw. Supplement. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and the Science of Symbolism. C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trebner, 1923. 451-510. Rpt. as "Phatic Communion." Communication in Face-to-Face Interaction. Ed. John Laver and Sandy Hutchinson. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1972. 126-52. Trollope, Antony. Framley Parsonage. New York: Oxford UP, 1980. Watzlawick, Paul, Janet Helmick Beavin, and Don D. Jackson. Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. New York: Norton, 1967. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Felicity Meakins, E. Sean Rintel. "Editorial: 'Chat'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/edit.php>. Chicago style: Felicity Meakins, E. Sean Rintel, "Editorial: 'Chat'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Felicity Meakins, E. Sean Rintel. (2000) Editorial: 'chat'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

Since the first days of the World Wide Web, artists like myself have been exploring the new possibilities of network interactivity. Some good tools and languages have been developed and made available free for the public to use. This has empowered individuals to participate in the media in ways that are quite remarkable. Nonetheless, the future of independent media is clouded by legal, regulatory, and organisational challenges that need to be addressed. It is not clear to what extent independent content producers will be able to build upon the successes of the 90s – it is yet to be seen whether their efforts will be largely nullified by the anticyclones of a hostile media market. Not so long ago, American news magazines were covering the Browser War. Several real wars later, the terms of surrender are becoming clearer. Now both of the major Internet browsers are owned by huge media corporations, and most of the states (and Reagan-appointed judges) that were demanding the break-up of Microsoft have given up. A curious about-face occurred in U.S. Justice Department policy when John Ashcroft decided to drop the federal case. Maybe Microsoft's value as a partner in covert activity appealed to Ashcroft more than free competition. Regardless, Microsoft is now turning its wrath on new competitors, people who are doing something very, very bad: sharing the products of their own labour. This practice of sharing source code and building free software infrastructure is epitomised by the continuing development of Linux. Everything in the Linux kernel is free, publicly accessible information. As a rule, the people building this "open source" operating system software believe that maintaining transparency is important. But U.S. courts are not doing much to help. In a case brought by the Motion Picture Association of America against Eric Corley, a federal district court blocked the distribution of source code that enables these systems to play DVDs. In addition to censoring Corley's journal, the court ruled that any programmer who writes a program that plays a DVD must comply with a host of license restrictions. In short, an established and popular media format (the DVD) cannot be used under open source operating systems without sacrificing the principle that software source code should remain in the public domain. Should the contents of operating systems be tightly guarded secrets, or subject to public review? If there are capable programmers willing to create good, free operating systems, should the law stand in their way? The question concerning what type of software infrastructure will dominate personal computers in the future is being answered as much by disappointing legal decisions as it is by consumer choice. Rather than ensuring the necessary conditions for innovation and cooperation, the courts permit a monopoly to continue. Rather than endorsing transparency, secrecy prevails. Rather than aiming to preserve a balance between the commercial economy and the gift-economy, sharing is being undermined by the law. Part of the mystery of the Internet for a lot of newcomers must be that it seems to disprove the old adage that you can't get something for nothing. Free games, free music, free pornography, free art. Media corporations are doing their best to change this situation. The FBI and trade groups have blitzed the American news media with alarmist reports about how children don't understand that sharing digital information is a crime. Teacher Gail Chmura, the star of one such media campaign, says of her students, "It's always been interesting that they don't see a connection between the two. They just don't get it" (Hopper). Perhaps the confusion arises because the kids do understand that digital duplication lets two people have the same thing. Theft is at best a metaphor for the copying of data, because the original is not stolen in the same sense as a material object. In the effort to liken all copying to theft, legal provisions for the fair use of intellectual property are neglected. Teachers could just as easily emphasise the importance of sharing and the development of an electronic commons that is free for all to use. The values advanced by the trade groups are not beyond question and are not historical constants. According to Donald Krueckeberg, Rutgers University Professor of Urban Planning, native Americans tied the concept of property not to ownership but to use. "One used it, one moved on, and use was shared with others" (qtd. in Batt). Perhaps it is necessary for individuals to have dominion over some private data. But who owns the land, wind, sun, and sky of the Internet – the infrastructure? Given that publicly-funded research and free software have been as important to the development of the Internet as have business and commercial software, it is not surprising that some ambiguity remains about the property status of the dataverse. For many the Internet is as much a medium for expression and the interplay of languages as it is a framework for monetary transaction. In the case involving DVD software mentioned previously, there emerged a grass-roots campaign in opposition to censorship. Dozens of philosophical programmers and computer scientists asserted the expressive and linguistic bases of software by creating variations on the algorithm needed to play DVDs. The forbidden lines of symbols were printed on T-shirts, translated into different computer languages, translated into legal rhetoric, and even embedded into DNA and pictures of MPAA president Jack Valenti (see e.g. Touretzky). These efforts were inspired by a shared conviction that important liberties were at stake. Supporting the MPAA's position would do more than protect movies from piracy. The use of the algorithm was not clearly linked to an intent to pirate movies. Many felt that outlawing the DVD algorithm, which had been experimentally developed by a Norwegian teenager, represented a suppression of gumption and ingenuity. The court's decision rejected established principles of fair use, denied the established legality of reverse engineering software to achieve compatibility, and asserted that journalists and scientists had no right to publish a bit of code if it might be misused. In a similar case in April 2000, a U.S. court of appeals found that First Amendment protections did apply to software (Junger). Noting that source code has both an expressive feature and a functional feature, this court held that First Amendment protection is not reserved only for purely expressive communication. Yet in the DVD case, the court opposed this view and enforced the inflexible demands of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Notwithstanding Ted Nelson's characterisation of computers as literary machines, the decision meant that the linguistic and expressive aspects of software would be subordinated to other concerns. A simple series of symbols were thereby cast under a veil of legal secrecy. Although they were easy to discover, and capable of being committed to memory or translated to other languages, fair use and other intuitive freedoms were deemed expendable. These sorts of legal obstacles are serious challenges to the continued viability of free software like Linux. The central value proposition of Linux-based operating systems – free, open source code – is threatening to commercial competitors. Some corporations are intent on stifling further development of free alternatives. Patents offer another vulnerability. The writing of free software has become a minefield of potential patent lawsuits. Corporations have repeatedly chosen to pursue patent litigation years after the alleged infringements have been incorporated into widely used free software. For example, although it was designed to avoid patent problems by an array of international experts, the image file format known as JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) has recently been dogged by patent infringement charges. Despite good intentions, low-budget initiatives and ad hoc organisations are ill equipped to fight profiteering patent lawsuits. One wonders whether software innovation is directed more by lawyers or computer scientists. The present copyright and patent regimes may serve the needs of the larger corporations, but it is doubtful that they are the best means of fostering software innovation and quality. Orwell wrote in his Homage to Catalonia, There was a new rule that censored portions of the newspaper must not be left blank but filled up with other matter; as a result it was often impossible to tell when something had been cut out. The development of the Internet has a similar character: new diversions spring up to replace what might have been so that the lost potential is hardly felt. The process of retrofitting Internet software to suit ideological and commercial agendas is already well underway. For example, Microsoft has announced recently that it will discontinue support for the Java language in 2004. The problem with Java, from Microsoft's perspective, is that it provides portable programming tools that work under all operating systems, not just Windows. With Java, programmers can develop software for the large number of Windows users, while simultaneously offering software to users of other operating systems. Java is an important piece of the software infrastructure for Internet content developers. Yet, in the interest of coercing people to use only their operating systems, Microsoft is willing to undermine thousands of existing Java-language projects. Their marketing hype calls this progress. The software industry relies on sales to survive, so if it means laying waste to good products and millions of hours of work in order to sell something new, well, that's business. The consequent infrastructure instability keeps software developers, and other creative people, on a treadmill. From Progressive Load by Andy Deck, artcontext.org/progload As an Internet content producer, one does not appeal directly to the hearts and minds of the public; one appeals through the medium of software and hardware. Since most people are understandably reluctant to modify the software running on their computers, the software installed initially is a critical determinant of what is possible. Unconventional, independent, and artistic uses of the Internet are diminished when the media infrastructure is effectively established by decree. Unaccountable corporate control over infrastructure software tilts the playing field against smaller content producers who have neither the advance warning of industrial machinations, nor the employees and resources necessary to keep up with a regime of strategic, cyclical obsolescence. It seems that independent content producers must conform to the distribution technologies and content formats favoured by the entertainment and marketing sectors, or else resign themselves to occupying the margins of media activity. It is no secret that highly diversified media corporations can leverage their assets to favour their own media offerings and confound their competitors. Yet when media giants AOL and Time-Warner announced their plans to merge in 2000, the claim of CEOs Steve Case and Gerald Levin that the merged companies would "operate in the public interest" was hardly challenged by American journalists. Time-Warner has since fought to end all ownership limits in the cable industry; and Case, who formerly championed third-party access to cable broadband markets, changed his tune abruptly after the merger. Now that Case has been ousted, it is unclear whether he still favours oligopoly. According to Levin, global media will be and is fast becoming the predominant business of the 21st century ... more important than government. It's more important than educational institutions and non-profits. We're going to need to have these corporations redefined as instruments of public service, and that may be a more efficient way to deal with society's problems than bureaucratic governments. Corporate dominance is going to be forced anyhow because when you have a system that is instantly available everywhere in the world immediately, then the old-fashioned regulatory system has to give way (Levin). It doesn't require a lot of insight to understand that this "redefinition," this slight of hand, does not protect the public from abuses of power: the dissolution of the "old-fashioned regulatory system" does not serve the public interest. From Lexicon by Andy Deck, artcontext.org/lexicon) As an artist who has adopted telecommunications networks and software as his medium, it disappoints me that a mercenary vision of electronic media's future seems to be the prevailing blueprint. The giantism of media corporations, and the ongoing deregulation of media consolidation (Ahrens), underscore the critical need for independent media sources. If it were just a matter of which cola to drink, it would not be of much concern, but media corporations control content. In this hyper-mediated age, content – whether produced by artists or journalists – crucially affects what people think about and how they understand the world. Content is not impervious to the software, protocols, and chicanery that surround its delivery. It is about time that people interested in independent voices stop believing that laissez faire capitalism is building a better media infrastructure. The German writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger reminds us that the media tyrannies that affect us are social products. The media industry relies on thousands of people to make the compromises necessary to maintain its course. The rapid development of the mind industry, its rise to a key position in modern society, has profoundly changed the role of the intellectual. He finds himself confronted with new threats and new opportunities. Whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not, he has become the accomplice of a huge industrial complex which depends for its survival on him, as he depends on it for his own. He must try, at any cost, to use it for his own purposes, which are incompatible with the purposes of the mind machine. What it upholds he must subvert. He may play it crooked or straight, he may win or lose the game; but he would do well to remember that there is more at stake than his own fortune (Enzensberger 18). Some cultural leaders have recognised the important role that free software already plays in the infrastructure of the Internet. Among intellectuals there is undoubtedly a genuine concern about the emerging contours of corporate, global media. But more effective solidarity is needed. Interest in open source has tended to remain superficial, leading to trendy, cosmetic, and symbolic uses of terms like "open source" rather than to a deeper commitment to an open, public information infrastructure. Too much attention is focussed on what's "cool" and not enough on the road ahead. Various media specialists – designers, programmers, artists, and technical directors – make important decisions that affect the continuing development of electronic media. Many developers have failed to recognise (or care) that their decisions regarding media formats can have long reaching consequences. Web sites that use media formats which are unworkable for open source operating systems should be actively discouraged. Comparable technologies are usually available to solve compatibility problems. Going with the market flow is not really giving people what they want: it often opposes the work of thousands of activists who are trying to develop open source alternatives (see e.g. Greene). Average Internet users can contribute to a more innovative, free, open, and independent media – and being conscientious is not always difficult or unpleasant. One project worthy of support is the Internet browser Mozilla. Currently, many content developers create their Websites so that they will look good only in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. While somewhat understandable given the market dominance of Internet Explorer, this disregard for interoperability undercuts attempts to popularise standards-compliant alternatives. Mozilla, written by a loose-knit group of activists and programmers (some of whom are paid by AOL/Time-Warner), can be used as an alternative to Microsoft's browser. If more people use Mozilla, it will be harder for content providers to ignore the way their Web pages appear in standards-compliant browsers. The Mozilla browser, which is an open source initiative, can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.org/. While there are many people working to create real and lasting alternatives to the monopolistic and technocratic dynamics that are emerging, it takes a great deal of cooperation to resist the media titans, the FCC, and the courts. Oddly enough, corporate interests sometimes overlap with those of the public. Some industrial players, such as IBM, now support open source software. For them it is mostly a business decision. Frustrated by the coercive control of Microsoft, they support efforts to develop another operating system platform. For others, including this writer, the open source movement is interesting for the potential it holds to foster a more heterogeneous and less authoritarian communications infrastructure. Many people can find common cause in this resistance to globalised uniformity and consolidated media ownership. The biggest challenge may be to get people to believe that their choices really matter, that by endorsing certain products and operating systems and not others, they can actually make a difference. But it's unlikely that this idea will flourish if artists and intellectuals don't view their own actions as consequential. There is a troubling tendency for people to see themselves as powerless in the face of the market. This paralysing habit of mind must be abandoned before the media will be free. Works Cited Ahrens, Frank. "Policy Watch." Washington Post (23 June 2002): H03. 30 March 2003 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27015-2002Jun22?la... ...nguage=printer>. Batt, William. "How Our Towns Got That Way." 7 Oct. 1996. 31 March 2003 <http://www.esb.utexas.edu/drnrm/WhatIs/LandValue.htm>. Chester, Jeff. "Gerald Levin's Negative Legacy." Alternet.org 6 Dec. 2001. 5 March 2003 <http://www.democraticmedia.org/resources/editorials/levin.php>. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus. "The Industrialisation of the Mind." Raids and Reconstructions. London: Pluto Press, 1975. 18. Greene, Thomas C. "MS to Eradicate GPL, Hence Linux." 25 June 2002. 5 March 2003 <http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.php>. Hopper, D. Ian. "FBI Pushes for Cyber Ethics Education." Associated Press 10 Oct. 2000. 29 March 2003 <http://www.billingsgazette.com/computing/20001010_cethics.php>. Junger v. Daley. U.S. Court of Appeals for 6th Circuit. 00a0117p.06. 2000. 31 March 2003 <http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=00a0... ...117p.06>. Levin, Gerald. "Millennium 2000 Special." CNN 2 Jan. 2000. Touretzky, D. S. "Gallery of CSS Descramblers." 2000. 29 March 2003 <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery>. Links http://artcontext.org/lexicon/ http://artcontext.org/progload http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=00a0117p.06 http://www.billingsgazette.com/computing/20001010_cethics.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/DeCSS/Gallery http://www.democraticmedia.org/resources/editorials/levin.html http://www.esb.utexas.edu/drnrm/WhatIs/LandValue.htm http://www.mozilla.org/ http://www.theregus.com/content/4/25378.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27015-2002Jun22?language=printer Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Deck, Andy. "Treadmill Culture " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/04-treadmillculture.php>. APA Style Deck, A. (2003, Apr 23). Treadmill Culture . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/04-treadmillculture.php>

Introduction The recent AOL/Time-Warner merger invites us to re-think the relationships amongst content producers, distributors, and audiences. Worth an estimated $300 billion (US), the largest Internet transaction of all time, the deal is 45 times larger than the AOL/Netscape merger of November 1998 (Ledbetter). Additionally, the Time Warner/EMI merger, which followed hard on the heels of the AOL/Time-Warner deal and is itself worth $28 billion (US), created the largest content rights organisation in the music industry. The joining of the Internet giant (AOL) with what was already the world's largest media corporation (Time-Warner-EMI) has inspired some exuberant reactions. An Infoworld column proclaimed: The AOL/Time-Warner merger signals the demise of traditional media companies and the ascendancy of 'new economy' media companies that will force any industry hesitant to adopt a complete electronic-commerce strategy to rethink and put itself on Internet time. (Saap & Schwarrtz) This comment identifies the distribution channel as the dominant component of the "new economy" media. But this might not really be much of an innovation. Indeed, the assumption of all industry observers is that Time-Warner will provide broadband distribution (through its extensive cable holdings) as well as proprietary content for AOL. It is also expected that Time-Warner will adopt AOL's strategy of seeking sponsorship for development projects as well as for content. However, both of these phenomena -- merger and sponsorship -- are at least as old as radio. It seems that the Internet is merely repeating an old industrial strategy. Nonetheless, one important difference distinguishes the Internet from earlier media: its characterisation of the audience. Internet companies such as AOL and Microsoft tend towards a simple and simplistic media- centred view of the audience as market. I will show, however, that as the Internet assumes more of the traditional mass media functions, it will be forced to adopt a more sophisticated notion of the mass audience. Indeed, the Internet is currently the site in which audience definitions borrowed from broadcasting are encountering and merging with definitions borrowed from marketing. The Internet apparently lends itself to both models. As a result, definitions of what the Internet does or is, and of how we should understand the audience, are suitably confused and opaque. And the behaviour of big Internet players, such as AOL and MSN, perfectly reflects this confusion as they seem to careen between a view of the Internet as the new television and a contrasting view of the Internet as the new shopping mall. Meanwhile, Internet users move in ways that most observers fail to capture. For example, Baran and Davis characterise mass communication as a process involving (1) an organized sender, (2) engaged in the distribution of messages, (3) directed toward a large audience. They argue that broadcasting fits this model whereas a LISTSERV does not because, even though the LISTSERV may have very many subscribers, its content is filtered through a single person or Webmaster. But why is the Webmaster suddenly more determining than a network programmer or magazine editor? The distinction seems to grow out of the Internet's technological characteristics: it is an interactive pipeline, therefore its use necessarily excludes the possibility of "broadcasting" which in turn causes us to reject "traditional" notions of the audience. However, if a media organisation were to establish an AOL discussion group in order to promote Warner TV shows, for example, would not the resulting communication suddenly fall under the definition as set out by Baran and Davis? It was precisely the confusion around such definitions that caused the CRTC (Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator) to hold hearings in 1999 to determine what kind of medium the Internet is. Unlike traditional broadcasting, Internet communication does indeed include the possibility of interactivity and niche communities. In this sense, it is closer to narrowcasting than to broadcasting even while maintaining the possibility of broadcasting. Hence, the nature of the audience using the Internet quickly becomes muddy. While such muddiness might have led us to sharpen our definitions of the audience, it seems instead to have led many to focus on the medium itself. For example, Morris & Ogan define the Internet as a mass medium because it addresses a mass audience mediated through technology (Morris & Ogan 39). They divide producers and audiences on the Internet into four groups: One-to-one asynchronous communication (e-mail); Many-to-many asynchronous communication (Usenet and News Groups); One-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many synchronous communication (topic groups, construction of an object, role-playing games, IRC chats, chat rooms); Asynchronous communication (searches, many-to-one, one-to-one, one to- many, source-receiver relations (Morris & Ogan 42-3) Thus, some Internet communication qualifies as mass communication while some does not. However, the focus remains firmly anchored on either the sender or the medium because the receiver --the audience -- is apparently too slippery to define. When definitions do address the content distributed over the Net, they make a distinction between passive reception and interactive participation. As the World Wide Web makes pre-packaged content the norm, the Internet increasingly resembles a traditional mass medium. Timothy Roscoe argues that the main focus of the World Wide Web is not the production of content (and, hence, the fulfilment of the Internet's democratic potential) but rather the presentation of already produced material: "the dominant activity in relation to the Web is not producing your own content but surfing for content" (Rosco 680). He concludes that if the emphasis is on viewing material, the Internet will become a medium similar to television. Within media studies, several models of the audience compete for dominance in the "new media" economy. Denis McQuail recalls how historically, the electronic media furthered the view of the audience as a "public". The audience was an aggregate of common interests. With broadcasting, the electronic audience was delocalised and socially decomposed (McQuail, Mass 212). According to McQuail, it was not a great step to move from understanding the audience as a dispersed "public" to thinking about the audience as itself a market, both for products and as a commodity to be sold to advertisers. McQuail defines this conception of the audience as an "aggregate of potential customers with a known social- economic profile at which a medium or message is directed" (McQuail, Mass 221). Oddly though, in light of the emancipatory claims made for the Internet, this is precisely the dominant view of the audience in the "new media economy". Media Audience as Market How does the marketing model characterise the relationship between audience and producer? According to McQuail, the marketing model links sender and receiver in a cash transaction between producer and consumer rather than in a communicative relationship between equal interlocutors. Such a model ignores the relationships amongst consumers. Indeed, neither the effectiveness of the communication nor the quality of the communicative experience matters. This model, explicitly calculating and implicitly manipulative, is characteristically a "view from the media" (McQuail, Audience 9). Some scholars, when discussing new media, no longer even refer to audiences. They speak of users or consumers (Pavick & Dennis). The logic of the marketing model lies in the changing revenue base for media industries. Advertising-supported media revenues have been dropping since the early 1990s while user-supported media such as cable, satellite, online services, and pay-per-view, have been steadily growing (Pavlik & Dennis 19). In the Internet-based media landscape, the audience is a revenue stream and a source of consumer information. As Bill Gates says, it is all about "eyeballs". In keeping with this view, AOL hopes to attract consumers with its "one-stop shopping and billing". And Internet providers such as MSN do not even consider their subscribers as "audiences". Instead, they work from a consumer model derived from the computer software industry: individuals make purchases without the seller providing content or thematising the likely use of the software. The analogy extends well beyond the transactional moment. The common practice of prototyping products and beta-testing software requires the participation of potential customers in the product development cycle not as a potential audience sharing meanings but as recalcitrant individuals able to uncover bugs. Hence, media companies like MTV now use the Internet as a source of sophisticated demographic research. Recently, MTV Asia established a Website as a marketing tool to collect preferences and audience profiles (Slater 50). The MTV audience is now part of the product development cycle. Another method for getting information involves the "cookie" file that automatically provides a Website with information about the user who logs on to a site (Pavick & Dennis). Simultaneously, though, both Microsoft and AOL have consciously shifted from user-subscription revenues to advertising in an effort to make online services more like television (Gomery; Darlin). For example, AOL has long tried to produce content through its own studios to generate sufficiently heavy traffic on its Internet service in order to garner profitable advertising fees (Young). However, AOL and Microsoft have had little success in providing content (Krantz; Manes). In fact, faced with the AOL/Time-Warner merger, Microsoft declared that it was in the software rather than the content business (Trott). In short, they are caught between a broadcasting model and a consumer model and their behaviour is characteristically erratic. Similarly, media companies such as Time-Warner have failed to establish their own portals. Indeed, Time-Warner even abandoned attempts to create large Websites to compete with other Internet services when it shut down its Pathfinder site (Egan). Instead it refocussed its Websites so as to blur the line between pitching products and covering them (Reid; Lyons). Since one strategy for gaining large audiences is the creation of portals - - large Websites that keep surfers within the confines of a single company's site by providing content -- this is the logic behind the AOL/Time-Warner merger though both companies have clearly been unsuccessful at precisely such attempts. AOL seems to hope that Time- Warner will act as its content specialist, providing the type of compelling material that will make users want to use AOL, whereas Time- Warner seems to hope that AOL will become its privileged pipeline to the hearts and minds of untold millions. Neither has a coherent view of the audience, how it behaves, or should behave. Consequently, their efforts have a distinctly "unmanaged" and slighly inexplicable air to them, as though everyone were simultaneously hopeful and clueless. While one might argue that the stage is set to capitalise on the audience as commodity, there are indications that the success of such an approach is far from guaranteed. First, the AOL/Time-Warner/EMI transaction, merely by existing, has sparked conflicts over proprietary rights. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America, representing Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI, recently launched a $6.8 billion lawsuit against MP3.com -- an AOL subsidiary -- for alleged copyright violations. Specifically, MP3.com is being sued for selling digitized music over the Internet without paying royalties to the record companies (Anderson). A similar lawsuit has recently been launched over the issue of re- broadcasting television programs over the Internet. The major US networks have joined together against Canadian Internet company iCravetv for the unlawful distribution of content. Both the iCravetv and the MP3.com cases show how dominant media players can marshal their forces to protect proprietary rights in both content and distribution. Since software and media industries have failed to recreate the Internet in the image of traditional broadcasting, the merger of the dominant players in each industry makes sense. However, their simultaneous failure to secure proprietary rights reflects both the competitive nature of the "new media economy" and the weakness of the marketing view of the audience. Media Audience as Public It is often said that communication produces social cohesion. From such cohesion communities emerge on which political or social orders can be constructed. The power of social cohesion and attachment to group symbols can even create a sense of belonging to a "people" or nation (Deutsch). Sociologist Daniel Bell described how the mass media helped create an American culture simply by addressing a large enough audience. He suggested that on the evening of 7 March 1955, when one out of every two Americans could see Mary Martin as Peter Pan on television, a kind of social revolution occurred and a new American public was born. "It was the first time in history that a single individual was seen and heard at the same time by such a broad public" (Bell, quoted in Mattelart 72). One could easily substitute the 1953 World Series or the birth of little Ricky on I Love Lucy. The desire to document such a process recurs with the Internet. Internet communities are based on the assumption that a common experience "creates" group cohesion (Rheingold; Jones). However, as a mass medium, the Internet has yet to find its originary moment, that event to which all could credibly point as the birth of something genuine and meaningful. A recent contender was the appearance of Paul McCartney at the refurbished Cavern Club in Liverpool. On Tuesday, 14 December 1999, McCartney played to a packed club of 300 fans, while another 150,000 watched on an outdoor screen nearby. MSN arranged to broadcast the concert live over the Internet. It advertised an anticipated global audience of 500 million. Unfortunately, there was such heavy Internet traffic that the system was unable to accommodate more than 3 million people. Servers in the United Kingdom were so congested that many could only watch the choppy video stream via an American link. The concert raises a number of questions about "virtual" events. We can draw several conclusions about measuring Internet audiences. While 3 million is a sizeable audience for a 20 minute transmission, by advertising a potential audience of 500 million, MSN showed remarkably poor judgment of its inherent appeal. The Internet is the first medium that allows access to unprocessed material or information about events to be delivered to an audience with neither the time constraints of broadcast media nor the space limitations of the traditional press. This is often cited as one of the characteristics that sets the Internet apart from other media. This feeds the idea of the Internet audience as a participatory, democratic public. For example, it is often claimed that the Internet can foster democratic participation by providing voters with uninterpreted information about candidates and issues (Selnow). However, as James Curran argues, the very process of distributing uninterrupted, unfiltered information, at least in the case of traditional mass media, represents an abdication of a central democratic function -- that of watchdog to power (Curran). In the end, publics are created and maintained through active and continuous participation on the part of communicators and audiences. The Internet holds together potentially conflicting communicative relationships within the same technological medium (Merrill & Ogan). Viewing the audience as co-participant in a communicative relationship makes more sense than simply focussing on the Internet audience as either an aggregate of consumers or a passively constructed symbolic public. Audience as Relationship Many scholars have shifted attention from the producer to the audience as an active participant in the communication process (Ang; McQuail, Audience). Virginia Nightingale goes further to describe the audience as part of a communicative relationship. Nightingale identifies four factors in the relationship between audiences and producers that emphasize their co-dependency. The audience and producer are engaged in a symbiotic relationship in which consumption and use are necessary but not sufficient explanations of audience relations. The notion of the audience invokes, at least potentially, a greater range of activities than simply use or consumption. Further, the audience actively, if not always consciously, enters relationships with content producers and the institutions that govern the creation, distribution and exhibition of content (Nightingale 149-50). Others have demonstrated how this relationship between audiences and producers is no longer the one-sided affair characterised by the marketing model or the model of the audience as public. A global culture is emerging based on critical viewing skills. Kavoori calls this a reflexive mode born of an increasing familiarity with the narrative conventions of news and an awareness of the institutional imperatives of media industries (Kavoori). Given the sophistication of the emergent global audience, a theory that reduces new media audiences to a set of consumer preferences or behaviours will inevitably prove inadequate, just as it has for understanding audience behavior in old media. Similarly, by ignoring those elements of audience behavior that will be easily transported to the Web, we run the risk of idealising the Internet as a medium that will create an illusory, pre-technological public. Conclusion There is an understandable confusion between the two models of the audience that appear in the examples above. The "new economy" will have to come to terms with sophisticated audiences. Contrary to IBM's claim that they want to "get to know all about you", Internet users do not seem particularly interested in becoming a perpetual source of market information. The fragmented, autonomous audience resists attempts to lock it into proprietary relationships. Internet hypesters talk about creating publics and argue that the Internet recreates the intimacy of community as a corrective to the atomisation and alienation characteristic of mass society. This faith in the power of a medium to create social cohesion recalls the view of the television audience as a public constructed by the common experience of watching an important event. However, MSN's McCartney concert indicates that creating a public from spectacle it is not a simple process. In fact, what the Internet media conglomerates seem to want more than anything is to create consumer bases. Audiences exist for pleasure and by the desire to be entertained. As Internet media institutions are established, the cynical view of the audience as a source of consumer behavior and preferences will inevitably give way, to some extent, to a view of the audience as participant in communication. Audiences will be seen, as they have been by other media, as groups whose attention must be courted and rewarded. Who knows, maybe the AOL/Time-Warner merger might, indeed, signal the new medium's coming of age. References Anderson, Lessley. "To Beam or Not to Beam. MP3.com Is Being Sued by the Major Record Labels. Does the Digital Download Site Stand a Chance?" Industry Standard 31 Jan. 2000. <http://www.thestandard.com>. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen, 1985. Baran, Stanley, and Dennis Davis. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth 2000. Curran, James. "Mass Media and Democracy Revisited." Mass Media and Society. Eds. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch. New York: Hodder Headline Group, 1996. Darlin, Damon. "He Wants Your Eyeballs." Forbes 159 (16 June 1997): 114-6. Egan, Jack, "Pathfinder, Rest in Peace: Time-Warner Pulls the Plug on Site." US News and World Report 126.18 (10 May 1999): 50. Gomery, Douglas. "Making the Web Look like Television (American Online and Microsoft)." American Journalism Review 19 (March 1997): 46. Jones, Steve, ed. CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. Kavoori, Amandam P. "Discursive Texts, Reflexive Audiences: Global Trends in Television News Texts and Audience Reception." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 43.3 (Summer 1999): 386-98. Krantz, Michael. "Is MSN on the Block?" Time 150 (20 Oct. 1997): 82. Ledbetter, James. "AOL-Time-Warner Make It Big." Industry Standard 11 Jan. 2000. <http://www.thestandard.com>. Lyons, Daniel. "Desparate.com (Media Companies Losing Millions on the Web Turn to Electronic Commerce)." Forbes 163.6 (22 March 1999): 50-1. Manes, Stephen. "The New MSN as Prehistoric TV." New York Times 4 Feb. 1997: C6. McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997. ---. Mass Communication Theory. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 1987. Mattelart, Armand. Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture. Trans. Susan Emanuel and James A. Cohen. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. Morris, Merrill, and Christine Ogan. "The Internet as Mass Medium." Journal of Communications 46 (Winter 1996): 39-50. Nightingale, Virginia. Studying Audience: The Shock of the Real. London: Routledge, 1996. Pavlik, John V., and Everette E. Dennis. New Media Technology: Cultural and Commercial Perspectives. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. Reid, Calvin. "Time-Warner Seeks Electronic Synergy, Profits on the Web (Pathfinder Site)." Publisher's Weekly 242 (4 Dec. 1995): 12. Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper, 1993. Roscoe, Timothy. "The Construction of the World Wide Web Audience." Media, Culture and Society 21.5 (1999): 673-84. Saap, Geneva, and Ephraim Schwarrtz. "AOL-Time-Warner Deal to Impact Commerce, Content, and Access Markets." Infoworld 11 January 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/ic/xml/00/01/11/000111icimpact.xml>. Slater, Joanna. "Cool Customers: Music Channels Hope New Web Sites Tap into Teen Spirit." Far Eastern Economic Review 162.9 (4 March 1999): 50. Trott, Bob. "Microsoft Views AOL-Time-Warner as Confirmation of Its Own Strategy." Infoworld 11 Jan. 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/pi/xml/00/01/11/000111pimsaoltw.xml>. Yan, Catherine. "A Major Studio Called AOL?" Business Week 1 Dec. 1997: 1773-4. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel M. Downes. "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php>. Chicago style: Daniel M. Downes, "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel M. Downes. (2000) The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]).

History of Seal and Printing Cultures Implications of the four important Chinese inventions, the compass, gun powder, papermaking, and printing, have far-reaching significance for human civilisation. The Chinese seal is intimately related to printing. Seals have the practical function of duplicating impressions of words or patterns. This process shares a very similar concept to printing on a small scale. Printing originated from the function of seals for making duplicated impressions, and for this reason Wang believes that seals constitute the prototype of printing. Seals in Traditional Commere Seals in certain Asian countries, such as Taiwan and Japan, play a vital role similar to that played by signatures in Western society. Particularly, the Chinese seal has been an integral part of Chinese heritage and culture. Wong states that seals usually symbolise tokens of promise in Chinese society. Ancient seals in their various forms have played a major role in information systems, in terms of authority, authentication, identification, certified proof, and authenticity, and have also been used for tamper-proofing, impression duplication, and branding purposes. To illustrate, clay sealing has been applied to folded documents to detect when sealed documents have been exposed or tampered with. Interestingly, one of the features of digital signature technology is also designed to achieve this purpose. Wong records that when the commodity economy began to develop and business transactions became more frequent, seals were used to prove that particular goods had been certified by customs. Moreover, when the goods were subject to tax by the government, seals were applied to the goods to prove the levy paid. Seals continue to be used in Chinese society as personal identification and in business transactions, official and legal documents, administrative warrants and charters. Paper-based Contract Signing with Seal Certificates In Taiwan and Japan, in certain circumstances, when two parties wish to formalise a contract, the seals of the two parties must be affixed to the contract. As Figure 1 illustrates, seal certificates are required to be attached to the signed and sealed contract for authentication as well as the statement of intent of a voluntary agreement in Taiwan. Figure 1. Example of a contract attached with the seal certificates A person can have more than one seal; however, only one seal at a time is allowed to be registered with a jurisdictional registration authority. The purpose of seal registration is to prevent seal forgery and to prove the identity of the seal owner. Namely, the seal registration process aims to associate the identity of the seal owner with the seal owner’s nominated seal, through attestation by a jurisdictional registration authority. Upon confirmation of the seal registration, the registration authority issues a seal certificate with both the seals of the registration authority and the registration authority executive. Digital Signatures for Electronic Commerce Handwritten signatures and tangible ink seals are highly impractical within the electronic commerce environment. However, the shift towards electronic commerce by both the public and private sector is an inevitable trend. ‘Trust’ in electronic commerce is developed through the use of ‘digital signatures’ in conjunction with a trustworthy environment. In principle, digital signatures are designed to simulate the functions of handwritten signatures and traditional seals for the purposes of authentication, data integrity, and non-repudiation within the electronic commerce environment. Various forms of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) are employed to ensure the reliability of using digital signatures so as to ensure the integrity of the message. PKI does not, however, contribute in any way to the signatory’s ability to verify and approve the content of an electronic document prior to the affixation of his/her digital signature. Shortcomings of Digital Signature Scheme One of the primary problems with existing digital signatures is that a digital signature does not ’feel’ like, or resemble, a traditional seal or signature to the human observer; it does not have a recognisably individual or aesthetic quality. Historically, the authenticity of documents has always been verified by visual examination of the document. Often in legal proceedings, examination of both the affixed signature or seal as an integral part of the document will occur, as well as the detection of any possible modifications to the document. Yet, the current digital signature regime overlooks the importance of this sense of visualisation. Currently, digital signatures, such as the OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) digital signature, are appended to an electronic document as a long, incomprehensible string of arbitrary characters. As shown in Figure 2, this offers no sense of identity or ownership by simple visual inspection. Figure 2. Example of a PGP signature To add to this confusion for the user, a digital signature will be different each time the user applies it. The usual digital signature is formed as an amalgam of the contents of the digital document and the user’s private key, meaning that a digital signature attached to an electronic document will vary with each document. This again represents a departure from the traditional use of the term ‘signature’. A digital signature application generates its output by firstly applying a hash algorithm over the contents of the digital document and then encrypting that hash output value using the user’s private cryptographic key of the normal dual-key pair provided by the Public Key cryptography systems. Therefore, digital signatures are not like traditional signatures which an individual can identify as being uniquely theirs, or as a recognisable identity attributable to an individual entity. New Visualised Digital Signature Scheme Liu et al. have developed the visualised digital signature scheme to enhance existing digital signature schemes through visualisation; namely, this scheme makes the intangible digital signature virtually tangible. Liu et al.’s work employs the visualised digital signature scheme with the aim of developing visualised signing and verification in electronic situations. The visualised digital signature scheme is sustained by the digital certificate containing both the certificate issuer’s and potential signer’s seal images. This thereby facilitates verification of a signer’s seal by reference to the appropriate certificate. The mechanism of ensuring the integrity and authenticity of seal images is to incorporate the signer’s seal image into an X.509 v3 certificate, as outlined in RFC 3280. Thus, visualised digital signature applications will be able to accept the visualised digital certificate for use. The data structure format of the visualised digital certificate is detailed in Liu. The visualised signing and verification processes are intended to simulate traditional signing techniques incorporating visualisation. When the signer is signing the document, the user interface of the electronic contracting application should allow the signer to insert the seal from the seal image file location into the document. After the seal image object is embedded in the document, the document is referred to as a ’visually sealed’ document. The sealed document is ready to be submitted to the digital signing process, to be transmitted with the signer’s digital certificate to the other party for verification. The visualised signature verification process is analogous to the traditional, sealed paper-based document with the seal certificate attached for verification. In history, documents have always required visual stimulus for verification, which highlights the need for visual stimulus evidence to rapidly facilitate verification. The user interface of the electronic contracting application should display the visually sealed document together with the associated digital certificate for human verification. The verifier immediately perceives the claimed signer’s seal on the document, particularly when the signer’s seal is recognisable to the verifier. This would be the case particularity where regular business transactions between parties occur. Significantly, having both the issuing CA’s and the signer’s seal images on the digital certificate instils confidence that the signer’s public key is attested to by the CA, as shown in Figure 3. This is unlike the current digital signature verification process which presents long, meaningless strings to the verifier. Figure 3. Example of a new digital certificate presentation Conclusions Seals have a long history accompanying the civilisation of mankind. In particular, certain business documents and government communities within seal-culture societies still require the imprints of the participating entities. Inevitably, the use of modern technologies will replace traditional seals and handwritten signatures. Many involved in implementing electronic government services and electronic commerce care little about the absence of imprints and/or signatures; however, there is concern that the population may experience difficulty in adapting to a new electronic commerce system where traditional practices have become obsolete. The purpose of the visualised digital signature scheme is to explore enhancements to existing digital signature schemes through the integration of culturally relevant features. This article highlights the experience of the use and development of Chinese seals, particularly in visualised seals used in a recognition process. Importantly, seals in their various forms have played a major role in information systems for thousands of years. In the advent of the electronic commerce, seal cultures still remain in the digital signing environment. References Housley, R., et al. RFC 3280 Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure: Certificate and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) Profile. The Internet Engineering Task Force, 2002. Liu, V., et al. “Visually Sealed and Digital Signed Documents.” 27th Australasian Computer Science Conference. Dunedin, NZ: Australian Computer Science Communications, 2004. Liu, V. “Visually Sealed and Digital Signed Electronic Documents: Building on Asian Tradition.” Dissertation. Queensland University of Technology, 2004. Wang, P.Y. The Art of Seal Carving. Taipei: Council for Cultural Planning and Development, Executive Yuan, 1991. Wong, Y.C., and H.W. Yau. The Art of Chinese Seals through the Ages. Hong Kong: The Zhejiang Provincial Museum and the Art Museum of the Chinese University Hong Kong, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Liu, Vicky. "Seal Culture Still Remains in Electronic Commerce." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/03-liu.php>. APA Style Liu, V. (Jun. 2005) "Seal Culture Still Remains in Electronic Commerce," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/03-liu.php>.

From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond Homo sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting Homo sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. British Broadcasting Commission. “Films ‘Fuel Online File-Sharing’.’’ 22 Feb. 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3890527.stm>. Bretherton, I. “The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.” 1994. 23 Jan. 2005 http://www.psy.med.br/livros/autores/bowlby/bowlby.pdf>. Bunniesormaybemidgets. Chat Room Comment. “What Did Those Girls Do to Rhonda?” 28 Mar. 2005 http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/>. Chinese Graphic Arts Net. Mantras of the Dharani Sutra. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.cgan.com/english/english/cpg/engcp10.htm>. Ewins, R. Barkcloth and the Origins of Paper. 1991. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.justpacific.com/pacific/papers/barkcloth~paper.html>. Grassl K.R. The DVD Statistical Report. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.corbell.com>. Hahn, C. M. The Topic Is Paper. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.nystamp.org/Topic_is_paper.html>. Harper, D. Online Etymology Dictionary. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.etymonline.com/>. Mask of Zorro, The. Screenplay by J McCulley. UA, 1920. Muriel’s Wedding. Dir. PJ Hogan. Perf. Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, and Jeannie Drynan. Village Roadshow, 1994. O’Hagan, Jack. On The Road to Gundagai. 1922. 2 Apr. 2005 http://ingeb.org/songs/roadtogu.html>. Poole, J.H., P.L. Tyack, A.S. Stoeger-Horwath, and S. Watwood. “Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are Capable of Vocal Learning.” Nature 24 Mar. 2005. Sanchez, R. “Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy.” 14 Sept. 2003. 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. Schultheiss, O.C., M.M. Wirth, and S.J. Stanton. “Effects of Affiliation and Power Motivation Arousal on Salivary Progesterone and Testosterone.” Hormones and Behavior 46 (2005). Sherry, N. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols. London: Jonathan Cape 2004, 1994, 1989. Silk Road. Printing. 2000. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml>. Smith, T. “Elpida Licenses ‘DVD on a Chip’ Memory Tech.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. —. “Intel Boffins Build First Continuous Beam Silicon Laser.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. Watson, R. S. “Eyes And Ears: Dramatic Memory Slicing and Salable Media Content.” Innovation and Speculation, ed. Brad Haseman. Brisbane: QUT. [in press] Watson, R. S. Visions. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>. APA Style Watson, R. (Jun. 2005) "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>.

In “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” urban planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber outline what they term “wicked problems.” According to Rittel and Webber, wicked problems are unavoidably “ill-defined,” that is, unlike “problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable…[wicked problems] are never solved. At best they are only re-solved—over and over again” (160). Rittel and Webber were thinking specifically of the challenges involved in making decisions within immensely complex social circumstances—building highways through cities and designing low income housing projects, for example—but public policy-making and urban design are not the only fields rife with wicked problems. Indeed, the nub of Rittel and Webber’s articulation of wicked problems concerns a phenomenon common to many disciplines: interdisciplinary collaboration. As anyone who has collaborated with people outside her area of expertise will acknowledge, interdisciplinary collaboration itself is among the wickedest problems of all. By way of introduction, we direct the Learning Games Initiative (LGI), a transdisciplinary, inter-institutional research group that studies, teaches with, and builds computer games. In the seven years since LGI was inaugurated, we have undertaken many productive and well-received collaborations, including: 1) leading workshops at national and international conferences; 2) presenting numerous academic talks; 3) editing academic journals; 4) writing books, book chapters, journal articles, and other scholarly materials; 5) exhibiting creative and archival work in museums, galleries, and libraries; and 6) building one of the largest academic research archives of computer games, systems, paraphernalia, and print-, video-, and audio-scholarship in the world. We thus have a fair bit of experience with the wicked problem of collaboration. The purpose of this article is to share some of that experience with readers and to describe candidly some of the challenges we have faced—and sometimes overcome—working collaboratively across disciplinary, institutional, and even international boundaries. Collaborative Circle? Michael Farrell, whose illuminating analysis of “collaborative circles” has lent much to scholars’ understandings of group dynamics within creative contexts, succinctly describes how many such groups form: “A collaborative circle is a set of peers in the same discipline who, through open exchange of support, ideas, and criticism develop into an interdependent group with a common vision that guides their creative work” (266). Farrell’s model, while applicable to several of the smaller projects LGI has nurtured over the years, does not capture the idiosyncratic organizational method that has evolved more broadly within our collective. Rather, LGI has always tended to function according to a model more akin to that found in used car dealerships, one where “no reasonable offer will be refused.” LGI is open to anyone willing to think hard and get their hands dirty, which of course has molded the organization and its projects in remarkable ways. Unlike Farrell’s collaborative circles, for example, LGI’s collaborative model actually decentralizes the group’s study and production of culture. Any member from anywhere—not just “peers in the same discipline”—can initiate or join a project provided she or he is willing to trade in the coin of the realm: sweat equity. Much like the programmers of the open source software movement, LGI’s members work only on what excites them, and with other similarly motivated people. The “buy-in,” simply, is interest and a readiness to assume some level of responsibility for the successes and failures of a given project. In addition to decentralizing the group, LGI’s collaborative model has emerged such that it naturally encourages diversity, swelling our ranks with all kinds of interesting folks, from fine artists to clergy members to librarians. In large part this is because our members view “peers” in the most expansive way possible; sure, optical scientists can help us understand how virtual cameras simulate the real properties of lenses and research linguists can help us design more effective language-in-context tools for our games. However, in an organization that always tries to understand the layers of meaning-making that constitute computer games, such technical expertise is only one stratum. For a game about the cultural politics of ancient Greece that LGI has been working on for the past year, our members invited a musical instrument maker, a potter, and a school teacher to join the development team. These new additions—all experts and peers as far as LGI is concerned—were not merely consultants but became part of the development team, often working in areas of the project completely outside their own specialties. While some outsiders have criticized this project—currently known as “Aristotle’s Assassins”—for being too slow in development, the learning taking place as it moves forward is thrilling to those on the inside, where everyone is learning from everyone else. One common consequence of this dynamic is, as Farrell points out, that the work of the individual members is transformed: “Those who are merely good at their discipline become masters, and, working together, very ordinary people make extraordinary advances in their field” (2). Additionally, the diversity that gives LGI its true interdisciplinarity also makes for praxical as well as innovative projects. The varying social and intellectual concerns of the LGI’s membership means that every collaboration is also an exploration of ethics, responsibility, epistemology, and ideology. This is part of what makes LGI so special: there are multiple levels of learning that underpin every project every day. In LGI we are fond of saying that games teach multiple things in multiple ways. So too, in fact, does collaborating on one of LGI’s projects because members are constantly forced to reevaluate their ways of seeing in order to work with one another. This has been particularly rewarding in our international projects, such as our recently initiated project investigating the relationships among the mass media, new media, and cultural resource management practices. This project, which is building collaborative relationships among a team of archaeologists, game designers, media historians, folklorists, and grave repatriation experts from Cambodia, the Philippines, Australia, and the U.S., is flourishing, not because its members are of the same discipline nor because they share the same ideology. Rather, the team is maturing as a collaborative and productive entity because the focus of its work raises an extraordinary number of questions that have yet to be addressed by national and international researchers. In LGI, much of the sweat equity we contribute involves trying to answer questions like these in ways that are meaningful for our international research teams. In our experience, it is in the process of investigating such questions that effective collaborative relationships are cemented and within which investigators end up learning about more than just the subject matter at hand. They also learn about the micro-cultures, histories, and economies that provide the usually invisible rhetorical infrastructures that ground the subject matter and to which each team member is differently attuned. It is precisely because of this sometimes slow, sometimes tense learning/teaching dynamic—a dynamic too often invoked in both academic and industry settings to discourage collaboration—that François Chesnais calls attention to the fact that collaborative projects frequently yield more benefits than the sum of their parts suggests possible. This fact, says Chesnais, should lead institutions to value collaborative projects more highly as “resource-creating, value-creating and surplus-creating potentialities” (22). Such work is always risky, of course, and Jitendra Mohan, a scholar specializing in cross-cultural collaborations within the field of psychology, writes that international collaboration “raises methodological problems in terms of the selection of culturally-coloured items and their historical as well as semantic meaning…” (314). Mohan means this as a warning and it is heeded as such by LGI members; at the same time, however, it is precisely the identification and sorting out of such methodological problems that seems to excite our best collaborations and most innovative work. Given such promise, it is easy to see why LGI is quite happy to adopt the used car dealer’s slogan “no reasonable offer refused.” In fact, in LGI we see our open-door policy for projects as mirroring our primary object of study: games. This is another factor that we believe contributes to the success of our members’ collaborations. Commercial computer game development is a notoriously interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavor. By collaborating in a fashion similar to professional game developers, LGI members are constantly fashioning more complex understandings of the kinds of production practices and social interactions involved in game development; these practices and interactions are crucial to game studies precisely because they shape what games consist of, how they mean, and the ways in which they are consumed. For this reason, we think it foolish to refuse any reasonable offer to help us explore and understand these meaning-making processes. Wicked Problem Backlash Among the striking points that Rittel and Webber make about wicked problems is that solutions to them are usually created with great care and planning, and yet inevitably suffer severe criticism (at least) or utter annihilation (at worst). Far from being indicative of a bad solution, this backlash against a wicked problem’s solution is an integral element of what we call the “wicked problem dialectic.” The backlash against attempts to establish and nurture transdisciplinary collaboration is easy to document at multiple levels. For example, although our used car dealership model has created a rich research environment, it has also made the quotidian work of doing projects difficult. For one thing, organizing something as simple as a project meeting can take Herculean efforts. The wage earners are on a different schedule than the academics, who are on a different schedule from the artists, who are on a different schedule from the librarians. Getting everyone together in the same room at the same time (even virtually) is like herding cats. As co-directors of LGI, we have done our best to provide the membership with both synchronous and asynchronous resources to facilitate communication (e.g., conference-call enabled phones, online forums, chat clients, file-sharing software, and so on), but nothing beats face-to-face meetings, especially when projects grow complex or deadlines impend mercilessly. Nonetheless, our members routinely fight the meeting scheduling battle, despite the various communication options we have made available through our group’s website and in our physical offices. Most recently we have found that an organizational wiki makes the process of collecting and sharing notes, drawings, videos, segments of code, and drafts of writing decidedly easier than it had been, especially when the projects involve people who do not live a short distance (or a cheap phone call) away from each other. Similarly, not every member has the same amount of time to devote to LGI and its projects despite their considerable and demonstrated interest in them. Some folks are simply busier than others, and cannot contribute to projects as much as they might like. This can be a real problem when a project requires a particular skill set, and the owner of those skills is busy doing other things like working at a paying job or spending time with family. LGI’s projects are always done in addition to members’ regular workload, and it is understandable when that workload has to take precedence. Like regular exercise and eating right, the organization’s projects are the first things to go when life’s demands intrude. Different projects handle this challenge in a variety of ways, but the solutions always tend to reflect the general structure of the project itself. In projects that follow what Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede refer to as “hierarchical collaborations”—projects that are clearly structured, goal-oriented, and define clear roles for its participants—milestones and deadlines are set at the beginning of the project and are often tied to professional rewards that stand-in for a paycheck: recommendation letters, all-expenses-paid conference trips, guest speaking invitations, and so forth (133). Less organized projects—what Lunsford and Ede call “dialogic collaborations”—deal with time scheduling challenges differently. Inherently, dialogic collaborations such as these tend to be less hampered by time because they are loosely structured, accept and often encourage members to shift roles, and often value the process of working toward the project’s goals as highly as actually attaining them (134). The most common adaptive strategy used in these cases is simply for the most experienced members of the team to keep the project in motion. As long as something is happening, dialogic collaborations can be kept fruitful for a very long time, even when collaborators are only able to contribute once or twice a month. In our experience, as long as each project’s collaborators understand its operative expectations—which can, by the way, be a combination of hierarchical and dialogical modes—their work proceeds smoothly. Finally, there is the matter of expenses. As an institutionally unaffiliated collective, the LGI has no established revenue stream, which means project funding is either grant-based or comes out of the membership’s pockets. As anyone who has ever applied for a grant knows, it is one thing to write a grant, and another thing entirely to get it. Things are especially tough when grant monies are scarce, as they have been (at least on this side of the pond) since the U.S. economy started its downward spiral several years ago. Tapping the membership’s pockets is not really a viable funding option either. Even modest projects can be expensive, and most folks do not have a lot of spare cash to throw around. What this means, ultimately, is that even though our group’s members have carte blanche to do as they will, they must do so in a resource-starved environment. While it is sometimes disappointing that we are not able to fund certain projects despite their artistic and scholarly merit, LGI members learned long ago that such hardships rarely foreclose all opportunities. As Anne O’Meara and Nancy MacKenzie pointed out several years ago, many “seemingly extraneous features” of collaborative projects—not only financial limitations, but also such innocuous phenomena as where collaborators meet, the dance of their work and play patterns, their conflicting responsibilities, geographic separations, and the ways they talk to each other—emerge as influential factors in all collaborations (210). Thus, we understand in LGI that while our intermittent funding has influenced the dimension and direction of our group, it has also led to some outcomes that in hindsight we are glad we were led to. For example, while LGI originally began studying games in order to discover where production-side innovations might be possible, a series of funding shortfalls and serendipitous academic conversations led us to favor scholarly writing, which has now taken precedence over other kinds of projects. At the most practical level, this works out well because writing costs nothing but time, plus there is a rather desperate shortage of good game scholarship. Moreover, we have discovered that as LGI members have refined their scholarship and begun turning out books, chapters, and articles on a consistent basis, both they and the organization accrue publicity and credibility. Add to this the fact that for many of the group’s academics, traditional print-based work is more valued in the tenure and promotion economy than is, say, an educational game, an online teachers’ resource, or a workshop for a local parent-teacher association, and you have a pretty clear research path blazed by what Kathleen Clark and Rhunette Diggs have called “dialectical collaboration,” that is, collaboration marked by “struggle and opposition, where tension can be creative, productive, clarifying, as well as difficult” (10). Conclusion In sketching out our experience directing a highly collaborative digital media research collective, we hope we have given readers a sense of why collaboration is almost always a “wicked problem.” Collaborators negotiate different schedules, work demands, and ways of seeing, as well as resource pinches that hinder the process by which innovative digital media collaborations come to fruition. And yet, it is precisely because collaboration can be so wicked that it is so valuable. In constantly requiring collaborators to assess and reassess their rationales, artistic visions, and project objectives, collaboration makes for reflexive, complex, and innovative projects, which (at least to us) are the most satisfying and useful of all. References Chesnais, François. “Technological Agreements, Networks and Selected Issues in Economic Theory.” In Technological Collaboration: The Dynamics of Cooperation in Industrial Innovation. Rod Coombs, Albert Richards, Vivien Walsh, and Pier Paolo Saviotti, eds. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1996. 18-33. Clark, Kathleen D., and Rhunette C. Diggs. “Connected or Separated?: Toward a Dialectical View of Interethnic Relationships.” In Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research. McDonald, Trevy A., Mark P. Orbe, and Trevellya Ford-Ahmed, eds. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2002. 3-25. Farrell, Michael P. Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Lunsford, Andrea, and Lisa Ede. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990. Mohan, Jitendra. “Cross-Cultural Experience of Collaboration in Personality Research.” Personality across Cultures: Recent Developments and Debates. Jitendra Mohan, ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. 313-335. O’Meara, Anne, and Nancy R. MacKenzie. “Reflections on Scholarly Collaboration.” In Common Ground: Feminist Collaboration in the Academy. Elizabeth G. Peck and JoAnna Stephens Mink, eds. Albany: State U of New York P, 1998. 209-26. Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Weber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.” Policy Sciences 4 (1973): 155-69. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Ruggill, Judd, and Ken McAllister. "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration." M/C Journal 9.2 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>. APA Style Ruggill, J., and K. McAllister. (May 2006) "The Wicked Problem of Collaboration," M/C Journal, 9(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0605/07-ruggillmcallister.php>.

The Virtual and the Physical A wide range of ritual practices have accompanied the ‘rise of the network society’. This is witnessed in the secular and non-secular magic and mysticism that is endemic in contemporary science fiction, in war-chalking, in new forms of compulsion, neurosis and addiction, or just in the everyday use of networked technologies. Such ritual practices are often only seen as interesting diversions or attachments to the main social issues involved in networking. Indeed, some might see these diversions precisely as attempts to cope with the network society, or even to flee from its apparent technicity and reassert identity against the network (Castells). Yet many of these ritual activities suggest complex ritual engagements with the network. What happens when we consider these ‘diversions’ as central to the ongoing dynamic of networks – technical and social?I shall not be providing an anthropology of these ritual activities. Neither shall I be documenting case studies of the shamanistic, the mystical, neuroses, and so on, as all these find their accommodations with the network society. I shall only, via the work of philosopher of anthropology José Gil, give reasons for the importance of the understanding of ritual to a more general understanding of networks. For networks bring together not just copper wires, Ethernet, optic fibre and electromagnetic radiation, but also other fibres (such sinew and neurons), and other radiations (such as affects, the chemicals and hormones of the nervous system). Ritual is at the heart of this ‘bringing together’. Following Gil, I will suggest that rituals do not just facilitate network operations, they also translate and transform networks in the process. For Gil, ritual space 'has a symbolically overloaded, polysemic topography' (80) in which every site (paralleling neurons in the brain or points in the P2P network) is 'overdetermined'. This allows an over-riding of linear 'technical causality' with ritual ‘magic’, something akin to the over-riding of logical theories of cognition with theories of emergence and the superpositionality of potentials throughout the circuits of the brain or network. Within this superpositionality, symbolism is not so much a series of meanings as a series of actions. Symbols, as enacted in rituals (or in the firing of the patterns of the brain, the movement of packets through Internet), 'designate realities, they set forces into motion, they are "in the present"' (81). Gil also points out that these ritual acts are accompanied by 'particularly intense affective experience' (81). When signs are not focussed directly upon the production of meaning, but are over-determined in ritual, this is 'in order that powerful energies are released that will become the main power source for the cure'. Indeed, in ritual there is a 'regime of energies' along with the 'regimes of signs'. Moreover, the meshing of the two suggests that either term is probably inadequate to explain what is occurring. Signs form constellations of forces that partner other constellations of forces (including other signs), 'separating' or 'condensing' energy fluxes' (82), or enabling 'translation' between them (and between signs as forces). Both the flow of these forces and their translations are, of course, seldom ‘smooth’. There is rather a constant re-writing – or in the context of networks, better, re-wiring – of shifting, contingent and contesting networks of forces. The constant heterogeneous flow of forces only adds to both the intensity of networks and the drive towards more forms of active ‘translation’ found in the proliferation of rituals within networks. It is in this dialogics of intensity and translation that we find the politics of networks. This is a politics that is far from being a politics of pure information. Returning to Gil, it is not only that signs translate forces on behalf of the body. I would add that it is not only the technical nodes in general (and signs are precisely technical nodes) that translate these forces on behalf of the body. The body is itself the crucial 'operator translating signs [and forces] in the ritual'. With this devaluing of symbolic processing qua symbols (so long crucial to so many of the myths and sciences of cognition and information), the brain becomes participant in (though not director of) this bodily translation of signs - and the forces assembled and disassembled. Through, and as, networks of assembled and disassembled forces, brain/body relations and distributions are assembled and disassembled within the concatenation of brain, body and world that is technics. This occurs over the time of evolution but equally over the time of the formations of habits, in the body in general, or as weights of connection between neurons or nodes in the network. It is partnered in the formation of socio-technical evolutions, specific socio-technical assemblages and the weights according to connections between these assemblages. Of course, the more networked things are, the faster the weights of connection change. The network takes the ritual place of the gods. As Gil writes, 'the gods can do what people can't do. They can make energy circulate freely, since they embody both loose and overcoded energy, the loosest and most overcoded of all' (84). This is why we still find magic - or at least something that is effectively like magic - at the heart of any exercise of power. Indeed, the ambiguity of the relations between ‘secular’ and variations of ‘spiritualist’ magic have long been an under-recognised part of media/technological development (as recently documented with regard to the nineteenth century development of the cinema and the entertainment industries in general by Simon During, or in Chris Chesher’s notion of computers as ‘invocational media’). This is not so much a question of metaphysics versus a more directly materialist approach to technical power as a question of directing forces by the necessary means. In order for 'action to have effects…words must release forces in the body; these forces must react directly on the organs' (143). Indeed, Gil claims that it is only with the notion of 'magical-symbolic thought' that we can resolve some of the ambiguities surrounding the material operation of forces and signs, where cultural analysis quite contradictorily seems at one time to assume the priority of one, and at another time the other. Gil points out that ritual magic is precisely that which works at the border between power and discourse, force and sign. This is not an unintelligible border. Even at its apparently most disorganized in terms of its philosophical or scientific coherence (in ritual ecstasy for example), ritual magic is in reality extremely organised (although an organisation of forces and translations rather than one of stable states). As Gil writes, even the 'gestures, words, or cries of the possessed are coded' (137). Indeed, the codes involved are precisely those of possession, but of a possession by networks rather than of them (thus the legal and commercial confusion surrounding file-sharing and so on, in that networks may be undone, but they cannot be possessed). Yet if those subject to ritual – or to networks – are coded, this is not initially within a semiotic structure but within a structure of active transformations. Therefore, 'magical words are action' (84) and ritual (the rituals of science and materialist metaphysics as much as 'primitive' ritual) is an 'actual activity' (137). In ritual there is 'more than a text, more than a semiotic structure [and more than information or communication]…one had to keep in mind the link that unites forces to signs, and the investment of energy that the body imposes on symbols'. Gil's conceptual envelope for this 'more than text' is 'infralanguage'. The 'infralanguage is the [real but] abstract body' (136). I would suggest that this ‘infralanguage’ is also, at least in part, the body registering its immersion in technics – a registration that occurs before cognition, before communication. Or, it is the body – considered in the posthuman sense as any dynamic assemblage. Infralanguage is the assumed of networked engagement, perhaps the libidinal condition of the network (science fiction is clear on this – why else the fascination with plugging leads into our heads and closing our eyes to enter a different world – a different libidinal economy). Like a posture or a series of movements in rituals, infralangage is 'both learned and given' as it translates 'codes and contexts'. Moreover, as here we are talking about a networked learning (and perhaps a dynamic archive as ‘given’), we are not just talking about human learning, or the distribution of weights within the network of the brain, but also about the way that there is a distribution of weights across nodes between brain, body and world – across networks. Particularly important here are 'abstract rhythms' (Felix Guattari has labelled these 'refrains') as these are basic elements of processual structure that can cross codes and contexts, bring them together, translate them in, we could say, polyrhythms, syncopation or simple rhythmic transformation and variation. It is perhaps no wonder that computer games and music have been so central to the expansion of networks – both deal intensely with these rhythmic transformations of codes and posture at the interface of the networks of technics, brain and body. Infralanguage works with codes, bodies, the organs of the body and with a 'complicity' between 'bodily forms and the form of things'. Fibre meets fibre. The shifting investments and assemblages of the body meet a network cast precisely as the enhanced ability of technics (including technics as the human) to shift and reassemble its own investments. Again it is important to note that these investments never come together smoothly – not even, perhaps, into Baudrillard’s smooth if vapid ‘ecstasy of communication’. Rather the constant reconstitution and reassemblage of investments only adds to the intensification of the drive towards connection – and further reassemblage, translation of heterogeneous and contesting aspects of these investments. Thus reassemblage – in a parallel to ‘real-time’ media’s ongoing reformulation of time – is ongoing within networks, as the intensification of connection brought about by enhanced networking constantly reconfigures networks themselves. Infralanguage only gains more importance. It performs the necessary work with the 'condensation of energy on an exfoliated surface' (exfoliation is the opening of the body into spaces as it structurally and dynamically couples with them). Within networks surfaces are exfoliating in more and more complexity. In this ongoing reorganization there is a surprising immanence to networked cognition, situated perhaps in what Pierre Lévy has called ‘collective intelligence’. This is a technically enabled - but not technically delimited - reorganisation of cognitive forces within a heterogeneous collectivity. Lévy’s work possesses the advantage of demonstrating that, although the flow of networks is always in flux, always ‘political’, this in itself contains the positive political potential of intensity and heterogeneity. In these multi-directional flows, the collective intelligence that could emerge (but it would always be a struggle) would be a ‘fractal’ collectivity of: ‘macrosocieties, transindividual psyches of small groups, individuals, intra-individual modules (zones of the brain, unconscious ‘complexes’), agencies which traverse intra-individual modules that move between different people (sexual relations, complementary neuroses)’ (107-108). For Lévy, ‘the collective hypercortex contains … a living psychism, a sort of dynamic hypertext traversing the tensions and energies of affective qualities, conflicts, etc’. In this networked cognition, that beyond the brain seems to take up many of the functions often ascribed to the brain. And the thought that eludes the individual - the thought that for the individual is famously withdrawing in time and space even as it appears - does not elude the network or the activity of ritual magic as a working with these networks. Gil notes that in ritual, …thought coincides with being… time and space do not impede the grasping of the thing in itself - because, on the contrary, they [time and space] are organized in such as manner that they can be transformed by appropriate techniques and at the same time remain linked to their normal perception—in order to create from it the conditions of possibility and the formal framework for knowledge of the absolute. (84) What is this knowledge of the absolute through 'magic words' and rituals? It relates to 'the possibility of capturing the free forces that traverse bodies' (85). In other words, the absolute is reworked immanence rather than a totality that is given once and for all. Throughout his book Cyberculture, Lévy calls this the ethic of ‘universality without totalization’ – global coverage that is receptive to every local difference. Feedback and autopoiesis - crucial terms within many investigations of the cognitive and informational - become the very affective substance of ritual techno-magic. For Gil, ritual autopoiesis addresses the famous 'failure to understand how to know the "thing in itself"' as per Kant. For Gil, this failure is in fact a 'negative proof' of 'the success of magical-symbolic thought in capturing fleeting time in the links of its spatial representations, making it a recurrent or a cyclic system'. Perhaps it is a matter of loving the network through ritual at the junction of perceptual and world, spaces and affective or cognitive fields. I mean ‘loving’ in the sense taken up by John Scannell in M/C when he remarks that ‘graffiti writers love the city more than you ever will’. All acts of love are drenched in ritual (such as graffiti writing) because all acts of love are intense translations of forces. Perhaps those who embrace the network through ritual show others the way. Hackers, war-chalkers, technopagans utopians, perceptual experimentalists, the new techno-neurotics – all these are willing to explore the affective, intensity of the new rituals. All ‘love’ the network with all the difficulties and complexity that love implies. For them, the network is not just an information or communications conduit, but a partner in ritual becoming. Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean (1988) “L’Extase de la Communication” trans. Bernard Schutze and Caroline Schutze, in Mediamatic 3, 2:81-5. Castells, Manuel (2000) The Rise of the Network Society 2nd Edition, Oxford:Blackwell. Chesher, Chris (1996) ‘CD-ROM Multimedia's Identity Crisis’ in Media International Australia 81, August. During, Simon (2002) Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Cambridge MA:Harvard University Press. Gil, José (1998) Metamorphoses of the Body, trans. Stephen Muecke Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. Lévy, Pierre (1995) Qu’est-ce que le virtuel? La Decouverte:Paris. Lévy, Pierre (2001) Cyberculture, trans. Robert Bononno Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. Scannell, John (2002) 'Becoming-City: Why Graffiti Writers Love the City More than You Ever Will' in M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, 2 < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php> (accessed June 12th, 2002). Links http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Murphie, Andrew. "When Fibre Meets Fibre " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/04-fibremeetsfibre.php>. APA Style Murphie, A. (2003, Aug 26). When Fibre Meets Fibre . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/04-fibremeetsfibre.php>

In the summer of 1944, American Sergeant Paul Dorsey was hired by the Naval Aviation Photography Unit (NAPU) to capture “the Marines’ bitter struggle against their determined foe” in the Pacific islands (Philips 43). Dorsey had been a photographer and photojournalist before enlisting in the Marines, and was thus well placed to fulfil the NAPU’s remit of creating positive images of American forces in the Pacific. Under the editorial and professional guidance of Edward Steichen, NAPU photographers like Dorsey provided epic images of battle (especially from the air and sea), and also showed American forces at ease – sunbathing, swimming, drinking and relaxing together (Bachner At Ease; Bachner Men of WWII). Steichen – by now a lieutenant commander – oversaw the entire NAPU project by developing, choosing and editing the images, and also providing captions for their reproduction in popular newspapers and magazines such as LIFE. Under his guidance, selected NAPU images were displayed at the famous Power in the Pacific exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York at the end of the war, and distributed in the popular U.S. Navy War Photographs memorial book which sold over 6 million copies in 1945.While the original NAPU photographers (Steichen himself, Charles Kerlee, Horace Bristol, Wayne Miller, Charles Fenno Jacobs, Victor Jorgensen and Dwight Long) had been at work in the Pacific since the summer of 1942, Dorsey was hired specifically to document the advance of American Marines through the Marianas and Volcano Islands. In line with the NAPU’s remit, Dorsey provided a number of famous rear view shots of combat action on Guam, Saipan and Iwo Jima. However, there are a number of his photographs that do not fit easily within that vision of war – images of wounded Marines and dead Japanese soldiers, as well as shots of abject Japanese POWs with their heads bowed and faces averted. It is this last group of enemy images that proves the most interesting, for not only do they trouble NAPU’s explicit propaganda framework, they also challenge our traditional assumption that photography is an inert form of representation.It is not hard to imagine that photographs of abject Japanese POWs reinforced feelings of triumph, conquest and justice that circulated in America’s post-war victory culture. Indeed, images of emaciated and incarcerated Japanese soldiers provided the perfect contrast to the hyper-masculine, hard-bodied, beefcake figures that populated the NAPU photographs and symbolized American power in the Pacific. However, once Japan was rehabilitated into a powerful American ally, and the decision to drop the atomic bomb was questioned once again in America’s Culture Wars of the 1980s and 90s, it was no longer acceptable to feel triumphant in the face of Japanese abjection and suffering. Instead, these images helped foster a new kind of belated patriotism – and a new global disposition – in which Americans generated their own magnanimity by expressing pity, compassion and sympathy for victims of their previous foreign policy decisions (Lisle).While that patriotic interpretive framework tells us much about how dominant formations of American identity are secured by the production – especially the visual production – of enemy others, it cannot account for images or viewer interpretations that exceed, unwork, or disrupt war’s foundational logics of friend/enemy and perpetrator/victim. I focus on Dorsey because he offers one such ‘deviant’ image: This photograph was taken by Dorsey on Guam in July 1944, and its caption tells us that the Japanese prisoner “waits to be questioned by intelligence officers” (Philips 189). As the POW looks into Dorsey’s camera lens (and therefore at us, the viewers), he is subject to the collective gaze of the American marines situated behind him, and presumably others that lay out of the frame, behind Dorsey. What is fascinating about this particular image is the prisoner’s refusal to obey the trope of abjection so readily assumed by other Japanese POWs documented in the NAPU archive and in other popular war-time imagery. Indeed, when I first encountered this image I immediately framed the POW’s return gaze as defiant – a challenging, bold, and forceful reply to American aggression in the Pacific. The problem, of course, was that this resistant gaze soon became reductive; that is, by replicating war’s foundational logics of difference it effaced a number of other dispositions at work in the photograph. What I find compelling about the POW’s return gaze is its refusal to be contained within the available subject positions of either ‘abject POW’ or ‘defiant resistor’. Indeed, this unruliness is what keeps me coming back to Dorsey’s image, for it teaches us that photography itself always exceeds the conventional assumption that it is a static form of visual representation.Photography, Animation, MovementThe connections between movement, stillness and photography have two important starting points. The first, and more general, is Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectic image in which the past and the present come together “in a flash” and constitute what he calls “dialectics at a standstill” (N3.1; 463). Unlike Theodore Adorno, who lamented Benjamin’s Medusa-like tendency to turn the world to stone, I read Benjamin’s concept of standstill – of stillness in general – as something fizzing and pulsating with “political electricity” (Adorno 227-42; Buck-Morss 219). This is to deny our most basic assumption about photography: that it is an inert visual form that freezes and captures discrete moments in time and space. My central argument is that photography’s assumed stillness is always constituted by a number of potential and actual mobilities that continually suture and re-suture viewing subjects and images into one another.Developing Benjamin’s idea of a the past and present coming together “in a flash”, Roland Barthes provides the second starting point with his notion of the punctum of photography: “this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me” (25). Conventional understandings of the punctum frame it as a static moment – so powerful that it freezes the viewer, stops them in their tracks, and captures their attention. My point is that the affective punch of the photograph is not a frozen moment at all; rather, the punctum – like the dialectic image – is fizzing with political electricity. Therefore, to suggest that a viewing subject is arrested in the moment of perception – that they are somehow captured by a photograph’s meaning – is to mistakenly understand the act of looking as a static behaviour.I want to use Dorsey’s image of the POW to push these theoretical starting points and explore the mobile dispositions that are generated when a viewing subject encounters a photograph. What most interests me about Dorsey’s photograph is the level of animation it produces. The POW’s return gaze is actually rather blank: it is unclear whether he is angry, weary, bored, insane or none of the above. But it is the viewing subject’s anxiety at such ambivalence – such unknowability – that provokes a powerful desire to name it. The visceral sensations and emotional responses provoked in viewers (are we taken aback? Do we sympathize with the POW? Are we equally blank?) very quickly become settled interpretations, for example, “his defiant gaze resists American power.” What I want to do is explore the pre-interpretive moment when images like Dorsey’s reach out and grab us – for it is in that moment that photography’s “political electricity” reveals itself most clearly.Production, Signification, InterpretationThe mobility inherent in the photograph has an important antecedent at the level of production. Since the Brownie camera was introduced in WWI, photographers have carried their mode of representation with them – in Dorsey’s case, his portable camera was carried with him as he travelled with the Marines through the Pacific (Philips 29). It is the photographer’s itinerary – his or her movement prior to clicking the camera’s shutter – that shapes and determines a photograph’s content. More to the point, the action of clicking the camera’s shutter is never an isolated moment; rather, it is punctured by all of the previous clicks and moments leading up to it – especially on a long photographic assignment like Dorsey’s – and contains within it all of the subsequent clicks and moments that potentially come after it. In this sense, the photographer’s click recalls Benjamin: it is a “charged force field of past and present” (Buck-Morss 219). That complicated temporality is also manifested in the photographer’s contact sheet (or, more recently, computer file) which operates as a visual travelogue of discrete moments that bleed into one another.The mobility inherent in photography extends itself into the level of signification; that is, the arrangements of signs depicted within the frame of each discrete image. Critic Gilberto Perez gives us a clue to this mobility in his comments about Eugène Atget’s famous ‘painterly’ photographs of Paris:A photograph begins with the mobility, or at least potential mobility, of the world’s materials, of the things reproduced from reality, and turns that into a still image. More readily than in a painting, we see things in a photograph, even statues, as being on the point of movement, for these things belong to the world of flux from which the image has been extracted (328).I agree that the origin point of a photograph is potential mobility, but that mobility is never completely vanquished when it is turned into a still image. For me, photographs – no matter what they depict – are always saturated with the “potential mobility of the world’s materials”, and in this sense they are never still. Indeed, the world of flux out of which the image is extracted includes the image itself, and in that sense, an image can never be isolated from the world it is derived from. If we follow Perez and characterize the world as one of flux, but then insist that the photograph can never be extracted from that world, it follows that the photograph, too, is characterized by fluctuation and change – in short, by mobility. The point, here, is to read a photograph counter intuitively – not as an arrest of movement or a freezing of time, but as a collection of signs that is always potentially mobile. This is what Roland Barthes was hinting at when he suggested that a photograph is “a mad image, chafed by reality”: any photograph is haunted by absence because the depicted object is no longer present, but it is also full of certainty that the depicted object did exist at a previous time and place (113-15). This is precisely Benjamin’s point as well, that “what has been comes together with the now” (N3.1; 463). Following on from Barthes and Benjamin, I want to argue that photographs don’t freeze a moment in time, but instead set in motion a continual journey between feelings of absence in the present (i.e. “it is not there”) and present imaginings of the past (i.e. “but it has indeed been”).As Barthes’ notion of the punctum reveals, the most powerful register at which photography’s inherent mobility operates is in the sensations, responses and feelings provoked in viewers. This is why we say that a photograph has the capacity to move us: the best images take us from one emotional state (e.g. passive, curious, bored) and carry us into another (e.g. shocked, sad, amused). It is this emotional terrain of our responses to photography that both Roland Barthes and Susan Sontag have explored in depth. Why are we moved by some images and not others? Are documentary or artistic photographs more likely to reach out and prick us? What is the most appropriate or ethical response to pictures of another’s suffering?Sontag suggests a different connection between photography and mobility in that it enables a particular touristification of the world; that is, cameras help “convert the world into a department store or museum-without-walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted to an item for aesthetic appreciation” (On Photography 110). While Sontag’s political economy of photography (with its Frankfurt School echo) continues to be explored by anthropologists and scholars in Tourism Studies, I want to argue that it offers a particularly reductive account of photography’s potential mobilities. While Sontag does address photography’s constitutive and rather complex relationship with reality, she still conceives of photographs themselves as static and inert representations. Indeed, what she wrestled with in On Photography was the “insolent, poignant stasis of each photograph”, and the photograph’s capacity to make reality “stand still” (111-12; 163). The problem with such a view is that it limits our account of interpretation; in short, it suggests that viewers either accept a photograph’s static message (and are thus moved), or reject it (and remain unmoved). But the moving, here, is the sole prerogative of the viewer: there is no sense in which the photograph and its contents are themselves mobile. I want to argue that the relationships established in the act of looking between viewing subjects and the objects contained within an image are much more complex and varied than Sontag’s framework suggests. Photography’s Affective MobilityTo reveal the mobilities underscoring photography’s affective punch, we must redistribute its more familiar power relations through W.J.T. Mitchell’s important question: what do pictures want? Such a question subverts our usual approach to photographs (i.e. what do we want from photographs?) by redeploying the privileged agency of the viewer into the image itself. In other words, it is the image that demands something of the viewer rather than the other way around. What it demands, of course, is a response. Certainly this is an emotional response, for even being bored by a photograph is a response of sorts. But an emotional response is also an affective response, which means that the punch carried by a photograph is as physical as it is metaphorical or visual. Indeed, it is precisely in the act of perception, where the emotional and the affective fuse, that photography’s assumed stillness is powerfully subverted.If Mitchell animates the picture by affording it some of the viewer’s agency, then Gilles Deleuze goes one step further by exploring what happens to agency in the act of perception. For Deleuze, a work of art – for our purposes, a photograph – is not an inert or still document, but rather a “block of sensations” (Deleuze; Deleuze & Guattari; Bogue). It is not a finished object produced by an autonomous artist or beheld in its entirety by an autonomous viewer; rather, it is a combination of precepts (initial perceptions) and affects (physical intensities) that passes through all subjects at the point of visual perception. This kind of relational encounter with an image not only deconstructs Modernity’s foundational distinction between the subject and the object, it also opens up an affective connection between all subjects engaged in the act of looking; in this case, the photographer, the subjects and objects within the photograph and the viewer.From Deleuze, we know that perception is characterized by common physical responses in all subjects: the movement of the optic nerve, the dilation of the pupil, the squint of the eyelid, the craning of the neck to see up close. However small, however imperceptible, these physical sensations are all still movements; indeed, they are movements repeated by all seeing subjects. My point is that these imperceptible modes of attention are consistently engaged in the act of viewing photographs. What this suggests is that taking account of the affective level of perception changes our traditional understandings of interpretation; indeed, even if a photograph fails to move us emotionally, it certainly moves us physically, though we may not be conscious of it.Drawing from Mitchell and Deleuze, then, we can say that a photograph’s “insolent, poignant stasis” makes no sense. A photograph is constantly animated not just by the potentials inherent in its enframed subjects and objects, but more importantly, in the acts of perception undertaken by viewers. Certainly some photographs move us emotionally – to tears, to laughter, to rage – and indeed, this emotional terrain is where Barthes and Sontag offer important insights. My point is that all photographs, no matter what they depict, move us physically through the act of perception. If we take Mitchell’s question seriously and extend agency to the photograph, then it is in the affective register that we can discern a more relational encounter between subjects and objects because both are in a constant state of mobility.Ambivalence and ParalysisHow might Mitchell’s question apply to Dorsey’s photograph? What does this image want from us? What does it demand from our acts of looking? The dispersed account of agency put forward by Mitchell suggests that the act of looking can never be contained within the subject; indeed, what is produced in each act of looking is some kind of subject-object-world assemblage in which each component is characterised by its potential and actual mobilities. With respect to Dorsey’s image, then, the multiple lines of sight at work in the photograph indicate multiple – and mobile – relationalities. Primarily, there is the relationship between the viewer – any potential viewer – and the photograph. If we follow Mitchell’s line of questioning, however, we need to ask how the photograph itself shapes the emotive and affective experience of visual interpretation – how the photograph’s demand is transmitted to the viewer.Firstly, this demand is channelled through Dorsey’s line of sight that extends through his camera’s viewfinder and into the formal elements of the photograph: the focused POW in the foreground, the blurred figures in the background, the light and shade on the subjects’ clothing and skin, the battle scarred terrain, and the position of these elements within the viewfinder’s frame. As viewers we cannot see Dorsey, but his presence fills – and indeed constitutes – the photograph. Secondly, the photograph’s demand is channelled through the POW’s line of sight that extends to Dorsey (who is both photographer and marine Sergeant), and potentially through his camera to imagined viewers. It is precisely the return gaze of the POW that packs such an affective punch – not because of what it means, but rather because of how it makes us feel emotionally and physically. While a conventional account would understand this affective punch as shocking, stopping or capturing the viewer, I want to argue it does the opposite – it suddenly reveals the fizzing, vibrant mobilities that transmit the picture to us, and us to the picture.There are, I think, important lessons for us in Dorsey’s photograph. It is a powerful antecedent to Judith Butler’s exploration of the Abu Graib images, and her repetition of Sontag’s question of “whether the tortured can and do look back, and what do they see when they look at us” (966). The POW’s gaze provides an answer to the first part of this question – they certainly do look back. But as to what they see when they look back at us, that question can only be answered if we redistribute both agency and mobility into the photograph to empower and mobilize the tortured, the abject, and the objectified.That leaves us with Sontag’s much more vexing question of what we do after we look at photographs. As Butler explains, Sontag has denounced the photograph “precisely because it enrages without directing the rage, and so excites our moral sentiments at the same time that it confirms our political paralysis” (966). This sets up an important challenge for us: in refusing conventional understandings of photography as a still visual art, how can we use more dispersed accounts of agency and mobility to work through the political paralysis that Sontag identifies. AcknowledgementsPaul Dorsey’s photograph of the Japanese POW is # 80-G-475166 in the NAPU archive, and is reproduced here courtesy of the United States National Archives.ReferencesAdorno, Theodore. Prisms. Cambridge: MIT P, 1997.Bachner, Evan. Men of WWII: Fighting Men at Ease. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2007.———. At Ease: Navy Men of WWII. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2004.Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage, 2000.Benjamin, Walter. “On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress.” In The Arcardes Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1999. 456-488.Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts. London: Routledge, 2003.Buck-Morss, Susan. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project. Cambridge: MIT P, 1997.Butler, Judith. “Torture and the Ethics of Photography.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25.6 (2007): 951-66.Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Trans. Daniel W. Smith. London: Continuum, 2003.Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. New York: Columbia U P, 1994.Lisle, Debbie. “Benevolent Patriotism: Art, Dissent and The American Effect.” Security Dialogue 38.2 (2007): 233-50.Mitchell, William.J.T. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004.Perez, Gilberto. “Atget’s Stillness.” The Hudson Review 36.2 (1983): 328-37. Philips, Christopher. Steichen at War. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1981.Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. London: Penguin, 2004.———. On Photography. London: Penguin, 1971Steichen, Edward. U.S. Navy War Photographs. New York: U.S. Camera, 1945.

1. Make a list of things to do2. Copy list of things left undone from previous list3. Add items to list of new things needing to be done4. Add some of the things already done from previous list and immediately cross off so as to put off the feeling of an interminable list of never accomplishable tasks5. Finish writing list and sit back feeling an overwhelming sense of listlessnessIt started so well. Get up: make list: get on. But lists can breed listlessness. It can’t always be helped. The word “list” referring to a sequence of items comes from the Italian and French words for “strip”—as in a strip of material. The word “list” that you find in the compound “listlessness” comes from the old English word for pleasing (to list is to please and to desire). To be listless is to be without desire, without the desire to please. The etymologies of list and listless don’t correspond but they might seem to conspire in other ways. Oh, and by the way, ships can list when their balance is off.I list, like a ship, itemising my obligations to job, to work, to colleagues, to parenting, to family: write a reference for such and such; buy birthday present for eighty-year-old dad; finish article about lists – and so on. I forget to add to the list my necessary requirements for achieving any of this: keep breathing; eat and drink regularly; visit toilet when required. Lists make visible. Lists hide. I forget to add to my list all my worries that underscore my sense that these lists (or any list) might require an optimism that is always something of a leap of faith: I hope that electricity continues to exist; I hope my computer will still work; I hope that my sore toe isn’t the first sign of bodily paralysis; I hope that this heart will still keep beating.I was brought up on lists: the hit parade (the top one hundred “hit” singles); football leagues (not that I ever really got the hang of them); lists of kings and queens; lists of dates; lists of states; lists of elements (the periodic table). There are lists and there are lists. Some lists are really rankings. These are clearly the important lists. Where do you stand on the list? How near the bottom are you? Where is your university in the list of top universities? Have you gone down or up? To list, then, for some at least is to rank, to prioritise, to value. Is it this that produces listlessness? The sense that while you might want to rank your ten favourite films in a list, listing is something that is constantly happening to you, happening around you; you are always in amongst lists, never on top of them. To hang around the middle of lists might be all that you can hope for: no possibility of sudden lurching from the top spot; no urgent worries that you might be heading for demotion too quickly.But ranking is only one aspect of listing. Sometimes listing has a more flattening effect. I once worked as a cash-in-hand auditor (in this case a posh name for someone who counts things). A group of us (many of whom were seriously stoned) were bussed to factories and warehouses where we had to count the stock. We had to make lists of items and simply count what there was: for large items this was relatively easy, but for the myriad of miniscule parts this seemed a task for Sisyphus. In a power-tool factory in some unprepossessing town on the outskirts of London (was it Slough or Croydon or somewhere else?) we had to count bolts, nuts, washers, flex, rivets, and so on. Of course after a while we just made it up—guesstimates—as they say. A box of thousands of 6mm metal washers is a homogenous set in a list of heterogeneous parts that itself starts looking homogenous as it takes its part in the list. Listing dedifferentiates in the act of differentiating.The task of making lists, of filling-in lists, of having a list of tasks to complete encourages listlessness because to list lists towards exhaustiveness and exhaustion. Archives are lists and lists are often archives and archived. Those that work on lists and on archives constantly battle the fatigue of too many lists, of too much exhaustiveness. But could exhaustion be embraced as a necessary mood with which to deal with lists and archives? Might listlessness be something of a methodological orientation that has its own productivity in the face of so many lists?At my university there resides an archive that can appear to be a list of lists. It is the Mass-Observation archive, begun at the end of 1936 and, with a sizeable hiatus in the 1960s and 1970s, is still going today. (For a full account of Mass-Observation, see Highmore, Everyday Life chapter 6, and Hubble; for examples of Mass-Observation material, see Calder and Sheridan, and Highmore, Ordinary chapter 4; for analysis of Mass-Observation from the point of view of the observer, see Sheridan, Street, and Bloome. The flavour of the project as it emerges in the late 1930s is best conveyed by consulting Mass-Observation, Mass-Observation, First Year’s Work, and Britain.) It was begun by three men: the filmmaker Humphrey Jennings, the poet and sociologist Charles Madge, and the ornithologist and anthropologist-of-the-near Tom Harrisson. Both Jennings and Madge were heavily involved in promoting a form of social surrealism that might see buried forces in the coincidences of daily life as well as in the machinations and contingency of large political and social events (the abdication crisis, the burning of the Crystal Palace—both in late 1936). Harrisson brought a form of amateur anthropology with him that would scour football crowds, pub clientele, and cinema queues for ritualistic and symbolic forms. Mass-Observation quickly recruited a large group of voluntary observers (about a thousand) who would be “the meteorological stations from whose reports a weather-map of popular feeling can be compiled” (Mass-Observation, Mass-Observation 30). Mass-Observation combined the social survey with a relentless interest in the irrational and in what the world felt like to those who lived in it. As a consequence the file reports often seem banal and bizarre in equal measure (accounts of nightmares, housework routines, betting activities). When Mass-Observation restarted in the 1980s the surrealistic impetus became less pronounced, but it was still there, implicit in the methodology. Today, both as an on-going project and as an archive of previous observational reports, Mass-Observation lives in archival boxes. You can find a list of what topics are addressed in each box; you can also find lists of the contributors, the voluntary Mass-Observers whose observations are recorded in the boxes. What better way to give you a flavour of these boxes than to offer you a sample of their listing activities. Here are observers, observing in 1983 the objects that reside on their mantelpieces. Here’s one:champagne cork, rubber band, drawing pin, two hearing aid batteries, appointment card for chiropodist, piece of dog biscuit.Does this conjure up a world? Do we have a set of clues, of material evidence, a small cosmology of relics, a reduced Wunderkammer, out of which we can construct not the exotic but something else, something more ordinary? Do you smell camphor and imagine antimacassars? Do you hear conversations with lots of mishearing? Are the hearing aid batteries shared? Is this a single person living with a dog, or do we imagine an assembly of chiropodist-goers, dog-owners, hearing aid-users, rubber band-pingers, champagne-drinkers?But don’t get caught imagining a life out of these fragments. Don’t get stuck on this list: there are hundreds to get through. After all, what sort of an archive would it be if it included a single list? We need more lists.Here’s another mantelpiece: three penknives, a tube of cement [which I assume is the sort of rubber cement that you get in bicycle puncture repair kits], a pocket microscope, a clinical thermometer.Who is this? A hypochondriacal explorer? Or a grown-up boy-scout, botanising on the asphalt? Why so many penknives? But on, on... And another:1 letter awaiting postage stamp1 diet book1 pair of spare spectacles1 recipe for daughter’s home economics1 notepad1 pen1 bottle of indigestion tablets1 envelope containing 13 pence which is owed a friend1 pair of stick-on heels for home shoe repairing session3 letters in day’s post1 envelope containing money for week’s milk bill1 recipe cut from magazine2 out of date letters from schoolWhat is the connection between the daughter’s home economics recipe and the indigestion tablets? Is the homework gastronomy not quite going to plan? Or is the diet book causing side-effects? And what sort of financial stickler remembers that they owe 13p; even in 1983 this was hardly much money? Or is it the friend who is the stickler? Perhaps this is just prying...?But you need more. Here’s yet another:an ashtray, a pipe, pipe tamper and tobacco pouch, one decorated stone and one plain stone, a painted clay model of an alien, an enamelled metal egg from Hong Kong, a copper bracelet, a polished shell, a snowstorm of Father Christmas in his sleigh...Ah, a pipe smoker, this much is clear. But apart from this the display sounds ritualistic – one stone decorated the other not. What sort of religion is this? What sort of magic? An alien and Santa. An egg, a shell, a bracelet. A riddle.And another:Two 12 gauge shotgun cartridges live 0 spread Rubber plantBrass carriage clockInternational press clock1950s cigarette dispenser Model of Panzer MKIV tankWWI shell fuseWWI shell case ash tray containing an acorn, twelve .22 rounds of ammunition, a .455 Eley round and a drawing pinPhoto of Eric Liddell (Chariots of Fire)Souvenir of Algerian ash tray containing marbles and beach stonesThree 1930s plastic duck clothes brushesLetter holder containing postcards and invitations. Holder in shape of a cow1970s Whizzwheels toy carWooden box of jeweller’s rottenstone (Victorian)Incense holderWorld war one German fuse (used)Jim Beam bottle with candle thereinSol beer bottle with candle therein I’m getting worried now. Who are these people who write for Mass-Observation? Why so much military paraphernalia? Why such detail as to the calibrations? Should I concern myself that small militias are holding out behind the net curtains and aspidistra plants of suburban England?And another:1930s AA BadgeAvocado PlantWooden cat from MexicoKahlua bottle with candle there in1950s matchbook with “merry widow” cocktail printed thereonTwo Britain’s model cannonOne brass “Carronade” from the Carron Iron Works factory shopPhotography pass from Parkhead 12/11/88Grouse foot kilt pinBrass incense holderPheasant featherNovitake cupBlack ash tray with beach pebbles there inFull packet of Mary Long cigarettes from HollandPewter cocktail shaker made in ShanghaiI’m feeling distance. Who says “there in” and “there on?” What is a Novitake cup? Perhaps I wrote it down incorrectly? An avocado plant stirs memories of trying to grow one from an avocado stone skewered in a cup with one “point” dunked in a bit of water. Did it ever grow, or just rot? I’m getting distracted now, drifting off, feeling sleepy...Some more then – let’s feed the listlessness of the list:Wood sculpture (Tenerife)A Rubber bandBirdJunior aspirinToy dinosaur Small photo of daughterSmall paint brushAh yes the banal bizarreness of ordinary life: dinosaurs and aspirins, paint brushes and rubber bands.But then a list comes along and pierces you:Six inch piece of grey eyeliner1 pair of nail clippers1 large box of matches1 Rubber band2 large hair gripsHalf a piece of cough candy1 screwed up tissue1 small bottle with tranquillizers in1 dead (but still in good condition) butterfly (which I intended to draw but placed it now to rest in the garden) it was already dead when I found it.The dead butterfly, the tranquillizers, the insistence that the mantelpiece user didn’t actually kill the butterfly, the half piece of cough candy, the screwed up tissue. In amongst the rubber bands and matches, signs of something desperate. Or maybe not: a holding on (the truly desperate haven’t found their way to the giant tranquillizer cupboard), a keeping a lid on it, a desire (to draw, to place a dead butterfly at rest in the garden)...And here is the methodology emerging: the lists works on the reader, listing them, and making them listless. After a while the lists (and there are hundreds of these lists of mantle-shelf items) begin to merge. One giant mantle shelf filled with small stacks of foreign coins, rubber bands and dead insects. They invite you to be both magical ethnographer and deadpan sociologist at one and the same time (for example, see Hurdley). The “Martian” ethnographer imagines the mantelpiece as a shrine where this culture worships the lone rubber band and itinerant button. Clearly a place of reliquary—on this planet the residents set up altars where they place their sacred objects: clocks and clippers; ammunition and amulets; coins and pills; candles and cosmetics. Or else something more sober, more sombre: late twentieth century petite-bourgeois taste required the mantelpiece to hold the signs of aspirant propriety in the form of emblems of tradition (forget the coins and the dead insects and weaponry: focus on the carriage clocks). And yet, either way, it is the final shelf that gets me every time. But it only got me, I think, because the archive had worked its magic: ransacked my will, my need to please, my desire. It had, for a while at least, made me listless, and listless enough to be touched by something that was really a minor catalogue of remainders. This sense of listlessness is the way that the archive productively defeats the “desire for the archive.” It is hard to visit an archive without an expectation, without an “image repertoire,” already in mind. This could be thought of as the apperception-schema of archival searching: the desire to see patterns already imagined; the desire to find the evidence for the thought whose shape has already formed. Such apperception is hard to avoid (probably impossible), but the boredom of the archive, its ceaselessness, has a way of undoing it, of emptying it. It corresponds to two aesthetic positions and propositions. One is well-known: it is Barthes’s distinction between “studium” and “punctum.” For Barthes, studium refers to a sort of social interest that is always, to some degree, satisfied by a document (his concern, of course, is with photographs). The punctum, on the other hand, spills out from the photograph as a sort of metonymical excess, quite distinct from social interest (but for all that, not asocial). While Barthes is clearly offering a phenomenology of viewing photographs, he isn’t overly interested (here at any rate) with the sort of perceptional-state the viewer might need to be in to be pierced by the puntum of an image. My sense, though, is that boredom, listlessness, tiredness, a sort of aching indifference, a mood of inattentiveness, a sense of satiated interest (but not the sort of disinterest of Kantian aesthetics), could all be beneficial to a punctum-like experience. The second aesthetic position is not so well-known. The Austrian dye-technician, lawyer and art-educationalist Anton Ehrenzweig wrote, during the 1950s and 1960s, about a form of inattentive-attention, and a form of afocal-rendering (eye-repelling rather than eye-catching), that encouraged eye-wandering, scanning, and the “‘full’ emptiness of attention” (Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order 39). His was an aesthetics attuned to the kind of art produced by Paul Klee, but it was also an aesthetic propensity useful for making wallpaper and for productively connecting to unconscious processes. Like Barthes, Ehrenzweig doesn’t pursue the sort of affective state of being that might enhance such inattentive-attention, but it is not hard to imagine that the sort of library-tiredness of the archive would be a fitting preparation for “full emptiness.” Ehrenzweig and Barthes can be useful for exploring this archival mood, this orientation and attunement, which is also a disorientation and mis-attunement. Trawling through lists encourages scanning: your sensibilities are prepared; your attention is being trained. After a while, though, the lists blur, concentration starts to loosen its grip. The lists are not innocent recipients here. Shrapnel shards pull at you. You start to notice the patterns but also the spaces in-between that don’t seem to fit sociological categorisations. The strangeness of the patterns hypnotises you and while the effect can generate a sense of sociological-anthropological homogeneity-with-difference, sometimes the singularity of an item leaps out catching you unawares. An archive is an orchestration of order and disorder: however contained and constrained it appears it is always spilling out beyond its organisational structures (amongst the many accounts of archives in terms of their orderings, see Sekula, and Stoler, Race and Along). Like “Probate Inventories,” the mantelpiece archive presents material objects that connect us (however indirectly) to embodied practices and living spaces (Evans). The Mass-Observation archive, especially in its mantelpiece collection, is an accretion of temporalities and spaces. More crucially, it is an accumulation of temporalities materialised in a mass of spaces. A thousand mantelpieces in a thousand rooms scattered across the United Kingdom. Each shelf is syncopated to the rhythms of diverse durations, while being synchronised to the perpetual now of the shelf: a carriage clock, for instance, inherited from a deceased parent, its brass detailing relating to a different age, its mechanism perpetually telling you that the time of this space is now. The archive carries you away to a thousand living rooms filled with the momentary (dead insects) and the eternal (pebbles) and everything in-between. Its centrifugal force propels you out to a vast accrual of things: ashtrays, rubber bands, military paraphernalia, toy dinosaurs; a thousand living museums of the incidental and the memorial. This vertiginous archive threatens to undo you; each shelf a montage of times held materially together in space. It is too much. It pushes me towards the mantelshelves I know, the ones I’ve had a hand in. Each one an archive in itself: my grandfather’s green glass paperweight holding a fragile silver foil flower in its eternal grasp; the potions and lotions that feed my hypochondria; used train tickets. Each item pushes outwards to other times, other spaces, other people, other things. It is hard to focus, hard to cling onto anything. Was it the dead butterfly, or the tranquillizers, or both, that finally nailed me? Or was it the half a cough-candy? I know what she means by leaving the remnants of this sweet. You remember the taste, you think you loved them as a child, they have such a distinctive candy twist and colour, but actually their taste is harsh, challenging, bitter. There is nothing as ephemeral and as “useless” as a sweet; and yet few things are similarly evocative of times past, of times lost. Yes, I think I’d leave half a cough-candy on a shelf, gathering dust.[All these lists of mantelpiece items are taken from the Mass-Observation archive at the University of Sussex. Mass-Observation is a registered charity. For more information about Mass-Observation go to http://www.massobs.org.uk/]ReferencesBarthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Translated by Richard Howard. London: Fontana, 1984.Calder, Angus, and Dorothy Sheridan, eds. Speak for Yourself: A Mass-Observation Anthology 1937–1949. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1985.Ehrenzweig, Anton. The Psychoanalysis of Artistic Vision and Hearing: An Introduction to a Theory of Unconscious Perception. Third edition. London: Sheldon Press, 1965. [Originally published in 1953.]---. The Hidden Order of Art. London: Paladin, 1970.Evans, Adrian. “Enlivening the Archive: Glimpsing Embodied Consumption Practices in Probate Inventories of Household Possessions.” Historical Geography 36 (2008): 40-72.Highmore, Ben. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, 2002.---. Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday. Abingdon: Routledge, 2011.Hubble, Nick. Mass-Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History, Theory, Houndmills and New York: Palgrave, 2006.Hurdley, Rachel. “Dismantling Mantelpieces: Narrating Identities and Materializing Culture in the Home.” Sociology 40, 4 (2006): 717-733Mass-Observation. Mass-Observation. London: Fredrick Muller, 1937.---. First Year’s Work 1937-38. London: Lindsay Drummond, 1938.---. Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1939.Sekula, Allan. “The Body and the Archive.” October 39 (1986): 3-64.Sheridan, Dorothy, Brian Street, and David Bloome. Writing Ourselves: Mass-Observation and Literary Practices. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, 2000.Stoler, Ann Laura. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1995. Stoler, Ann Laura. Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009.