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Railway gauge
by Ken Friedman 27 Jan '02

27 Jan '02

Friends, The Snopes article on railway gauge is correct as far as it goes, http://www.snopes2.com/history/american/gauge.htm but it doesn't cover all the ground. Railway gauge has never been uniform anywhere. To this day, there remain multiple widths of railway track in use that prevent smooth transfer among systems between blocs of nations, between nations, and even -- in some cases -- between parts of single nations. A good case in point is the Australian railway network, first built by British expatriate engineers. Australia runs on four different track widths. So do the Indian railways, also built by British engineers, and the Pakistani railroads use three different widths of track line. Even though 60% of the world's track is based on the original gauge of the Liverpool and Manchester railroad, there have always been many exceptions. Even today, Russia and Spain run wider track, Japan narrower. This urban legend also fails to account for different widths of chariot, and the different kinds and widths of horse-drawn and ox-drawn carriages that travelled European roads during the centuries between Rome and the railways.) were several width of goes back to the Roman chariot. Railway width obviously has little to do with the width of a Roman chariot. It is also notable that much railway width was never even based on the first British railways. Ken -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Technology and Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management Visiting Professor Advanced Research Institute School of Art and Design Staffordshire University

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Confession and technologies of the self
by Ken Friedman 27 Jan '02

27 Jan '02

Dear Jeremy, The thread on confession and technologies of the self has been interesting. I would like to add a few thoughts in the light of your original query that have not been raised. Jeremy Crampton wrote, "Has anybody done work on Foucault's idea of the 'technologies of the self' in cyberspace? My own take on this (for a book) is that cyberspace forms subjectivities between the axes of authenticity-confession, i.e., that cyberspace is another confessional regime where we can attempt to recover our 'true selves' outside the reach of power relations (a chimera according to Foucault)." To understand the issue of "technologies of the self," - and the role of confession in discovering or recovering a true self -- it may help to look beyond Foucault. Even though Foucault created the TERM, many thinkers have addressed the CONCEPT. To get a better understanding of what you mean, I visited your excellent web site at URL http://monarch.gsu.edu/jcrampton/foucault/tos-1.html You discuss technologies of the self as first, "A set of techniques and practices that can be deployed to modify or affect the self." While you go on to locate this in Foucault's views, I would like to focus on the strict meaning of the term outside Foucault's vocabulary. As you note, Foucault's view locates the technologies of the self as" historically situated within power relations," adding that they "can mix one's own knowledge with that of the rule." I used one of the links you provided to visit David Gauntlett's theory site for more definitions of technologies of the self at URL: http://theory.org.uk/ctr-fou6.htm There are many definitions from high level and general definitions to definitions very deeply rooted in Foucault's' views. Gauntlett himself provides one of the best. He states that the term technologies of the self "basically refers to ways in which people put forward, and police, their 'selves' in society; and ways in which they are enabled or constrained in their use of different techniques by available discourses." Starting with this general definition, you will find discussions of different technologies of the self through history. The first of these in the West go back to the time of the Egyptian wisdom schools. (Some of their writings survive in the wisdom books of the Bible. fragments of Amenophet can still be read in Proverbs 22:17-24:22). The ancient Chinese had such technologies, as did the pre-Socratic Greeks. These themes recur repeatedly in philosophy from the first times to the most recent, and in theology. This is an essential area of psychology. Several rich streams of research address these issues. When you locate the question on the axis of authenticity-confession, you will find a vast a serious literature at both ends, and in the linkage. While it is often true that these issues arise in the context of power relations and abusive invasion of privacy, they also arise in voluntary and constructive contexts. Unless one accepts the idea that Foucault is always right about power relations, there are possibilities of an authentic self that are not always determined by power and power relations. In theology, confession serves many purposes. At its best, confession permits a state of transparency from which - and through which - an authentic self emerges in relation to the divine. If one wishes to ascribe power relations to this, it may involve power relations in the sense that a divine entity is by definition a being of power. If, instead, one wishes to consider the divine as the ultimate ground of being, it is authenticity, rather than power, that is the core element of confession. Confession is act through which one become transparent and therefore aligned with the ultimate ground of being. This is what is meant by the state of grace that one should achieve through confession. Grace is rooted in authenticity, not in subjugation. Existential theologies from Kierkegaard to Buber are based on this concept. The idea of confession and atonement is also a powerful focus of Jewish theology, and this constitutes a central theme of the high holy days during which each individual human is invited to seek authentic relations with other human beings and with God. Outside the traditional Christian and Jewish theologies, open or liberal churches base individual authenticity on this issue in a theological sense. The Quaker meeting tradition of personal speech is an example of this. Direct speech does not always involve confession. It may do so, however, and confession does not always lad to judgment or a shift in power relations. This kind of confession does not involve power relations as a necessary consequence. The humanistic psychology that began with the work of Maslow, Jourard, Moustakas, and others also addresses these possibilities. Social psychologists and sociologists from Simmel to Goffman and beyond have also addressed the theme. The authenticity-confession axis is also central to many forms of psychology and psychotherapy. The nature of confession involves a wide range of issues in understanding and recovering the self. These are related to transparency and dialogue on several levels. Because communication in cyberspace involves speech and communication of many kinds, the technologies of cyberspace can be technologies of the self in several senses. Your site notes, "a very productive side (producing the self after all) as well as a constraining side." Both are possible in cyberspace. Several philosophical and theological traditions, and many research streams offer a starting point for developing this theme. Best regards, Ken -- Ken Friedman, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design Department of Technology and Knowledge Management Norwegian School of Management Visiting Professor Advanced Research Institute School of Art and Design Staffordshire University

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Re: Tragedy of the Commons/Tragedy of Capital, some notes
by Lachlan Brown 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

Re the Commons Its important to make a distinction between American models for 'the commons' and British/Commonwealth takes on 'the commons'. The 'commons' in the American imaginary seems to be equated with 'the frontier- middle landscape' transistion in Turner's Frontier Thesis. The notion of 'the commons' in Britain inflects, among other things a tradition of public service altrusim (and of course Internet can be understood only in terms of the translations of this British and Commonwealth public service altrusim in several different contexts.) If Internet governance is to employ 'the commons' as a metaphor in the management of change in Internet, then the several genealogies of 'the commons' as well as contemporary articulations of 'the commons' need to be known; to help inform one or two insightful, and one would hope foresightful, re-articulations of an idea of 'the commons' that might be cited in a combined social/natural contract. Lachlan -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup 1 cent a minute calls anywhere in the U.S.! http://www.getpennytalk.com/cgi-bin/adforward.cgi?p_key=RG9853KJ&url=http:/…

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A general query re 'archives'.
by Lachlan Brown 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

A general query re 'archives'. Someone in AoIR felt that the onus for deciding which digital content or properties in digital form should be kept and which should be erased ought to lie with the Sys-Op. Beside the fact that general policy dictated at most universities a six month period beyond the end of contract of staff member or student - this varied depending upon the storgage capacities of different institutions as well as their different levels of polity in these matters, is this not a difficult contract for the management of digital properties, in the industries of education and of media at large? 1. the 'world view' of the sys-op is, the sys-op would be the first to agree, a fairly narrow one. Hence the sys-op, blessed with heightened 'wisdom' or not, is perhaps not the best person to make judgement concerning such properties. 2. This onus on the sys-op puts him or her (but of course most often him) in a position of legal responsibility that he or she would nor the industry would like to bear. 3. the combination of fairly narrow world-view with heightened legal responsibility compromises our digital properties to abuses of power. I have a few instances in mind. I wonder what the general level of perception, understanding and insight is among the Association of Internet Researchers about this question. I mean, are there any legal minds in AoIR, and if not would AoIR like connection with some? Lachlan Brown (416) 826 6937 VM (416) 822 1123 -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup 1 cent a minute calls anywhere in the U.S.! http://www.getpennytalk.com/cgi-bin/adforward.cgi?p_key=RG9853KJ&url=http:/…

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Bring me my Bow.
by Lachlan Brown 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

>was Re: my email archives >>One day no doubt the world will mourn the >loss of my juvenilia. <cubitt> >I doubt the world will mourn, Sean, the loss >of your juvenilia, as long as it did not >and does not impact the rights of others. Turn yourself in Cubitt and stop babbling. You are distracting, but then this is your ideological function in the field of new media and digital culture, the purpose of my intervention in AoIR. 1. The Primary producer has a right to the fruits of his or her labour. We cite sources in scholarship for a range of reasons that I am sure scholars of AoIR would like to list. 2 Yes, erasure is an art of power. However the trace of erasure leaves an impression that has permanance. My research has teased out instances far more remarkable than any you may presently have in mind. So, shut up and let things unfold. 3. Contemporary Culture is a wee bit less ephemeral than you might like it to be, matey. There are memories, there are histories and as I am sure you will dimly recall, there is foresight. I shall introduce myself to the scholars of AoIR. Shut up and sit at the back. Lachlan Brown >Hey Lachlan >Yes but 1. there are engines for the storage of our missives that we wot but little of (I'm constantly ego-surfed by students checking my credentials who then ingratiate themselves by quoting 'publ,ications' I never knew I had, a common enough thing, and) as Cap'n Beefheart once said I'd like to give my music away for free, it didn't cost anything where I got it from. The internet is a self-archiving entity by nature, so why privatise memory when it can be socialised? 2. the privilege of the personal archive reduces to one thing only: the right to erase. Exercise of this right reveals only a hankering for a pre-modern Enlightenment privacy. Unless of coursxe you are an Enron executive, member of the unelected government of the USA, recovering alcoholic in charge of genocide against the Palestinians or otherwise disgraced person, in which case you have forfeited the right to be treated with the usual ethical obligations reserved for mammals 3. The contemporary culture is intensely ephemeral. Those dull Derrideans who wrte endless preambles to the foreward before the preface believe they are writing in the sprit and style of the events they understand to be a-foundational. Perhaps we shd on principle delete everything in the intray on the principle that because it is in the intray it is obviously out-of-date (incidentally a phrase which first appeared in popular journalism circa 1896 . . . ) Now keep out of trouble, and delete this message s Sean Cubitt Screen and Media Studies Akoranga Whakaata P=FCrongo The University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 Hamilton New Zealand T (direct) +64 (0)7 856 2889 extension 8604 T/F (department) +64 (0)7 838 4543 seanc(a)waikato.ac.nz http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film/ Digital Aesthetics http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/digita The Dundee Seminars http://www.imaging.dundee.ac.uk/people/sean/index.html was Re: my email archives > I'm not quite sure what you mean by "archiving." <warschauer> >anyone else archived all their incoming and outgoing emails, <hunsinger> >How do we keep it secure (both in the sense of "private" and in the sense of "safe")? How do we think about it, if at all, right now? That is, I suspect we all have this sense of the "stuff" that we have on our disks and hard drives, but how does that intersect and interplay with how we feel about the box of letters we keep in the closet? Will we encrypt stuff, or keep it open? Will we erase some? <jones> >One day no doubt the world will mourn the loss of my juvenilia. <cubitt> I doubt the world will mourn, Sean, the loss of your juvenilia, as long as it did not and does not impact the rights of others. Forgive me for crashing in, but a little bird told me I should take time out of my intervention in Nettime (I think I have pitched things about right over there), to check to see what AoIR was doing under the duress of contemporary cultural events and the impact of emergency legislation. I sense unease. This e-mail archive thread reads a little like an annual general meeting of the Intellect and Imagination Temperance Society and I would remind you four of your duties and responsibilities not merely as scholars, but as members of an international intellectual community. After seven or eight years in which questions of archival, catalogue, identity, access and availability of information and knowledge, gender, ethnicity, uneven distributions of information, uneven accumulations of knowledge, new relations of distribution of media and communications and new relations of mediation in a tremendous cultural contest that cast new perspectives on the nature of governance, institution, scholarship, democracy, not to mention an economy led like a pig with a ring in its nose by the mere idea of Internet, youd think wed have got a little further along in an understanding of technology in contemporary culture. What, one wonders, have you all been doing? Yes, I kept all of my files and email communications 1993-present. Saved, time-locked, stored, periodically. I thought this was a simple matter of research scholarship, quite in line with the Social Sciences Methods and Approaches course I took at Goldsmiths College as a requirement in undertaking PhD work. Given the intense contests already apparent in 1993-94 perhaps rather more apparent then than they are now -- around the meanings and governance of the technology, I would have been remiss in my scholarship to not do so. >>>It was easy to imagine a scenario in which, say, The National Security State employed archives to influence government, commerce and public opinion to help render compliance to the agenda of the National Security State, alternatively imagine a situation in which commercial or alternative interests employed these archives to the same end. Or rather, easy to anticipate the nature of a contest between these interests (its called the pretzel debate apparently) and you, pretty much, have something closely resembling contemporary culture>>> Lachlan Lachlan Brown Thirdnet Ltd Cultural Studies Goldsmiths College University of London Toronto: M.(416) 826 6937 VM: (416) 822 1123 lachlan(a)london.com http://third.net -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup 1 cent a minute calls anywhere in the U.S.! http://www.getpennytalk.com/cgi-bin/adforward.cgi?p_key=RG9853KJ&url=http:/…

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M-viruses?
by David Palfreyman 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

Thanks for the mobile phone references Nalini. I have a query related to this. I just got my mobile connected in the UK (don't know about the US) and the operator sent a couple of text messages which supposedly, just by my reading them, activated my account. Does this mean the text messages did something to my phone? If so, does this mean an SMS message could carry a virus? :-o :-D

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Re: foucault and selves
by Jeremy Crampton 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

Ann, Steve, Geoff, Many interesting comments. I'm intrigued by the interest this topic has generated. Some scattered responses: Foucault and blogs as self-writing: yes.... the self-writing paper (which Jeremy H. mentioned), along with a lot of other techniques of the self material can be found in the Rabinow Essential Foucault Vol. 1. It also includes the annual course summaries, which are all going to be published in full in French and English. The Greeks called self-writing "hupomnemata". Here is the definition on my Webpage: Notebooks and reminders [and diaries] used in the practice of the self. F. differentiates the Greek use of these (in Stoic times at least) from the later Christian practice of confessional texts. On the contrary, says F., hupomnemata were used not to uncover the hidden self through disclosure and confession, but to record the already-said. Self-Writing, in Essential F; Cours 1981-82 [corrections welcome!] A good related Website (by Camille Duchene) is www.foucault.info because it focuses on parrhesia or frank speaking of the truth and also provides his 1983 lectures on these (now available as "Fearless speech", 2001, Semiotext[e]). Finally, I would recommend Jeremy Carrette "Religion and culture" which collects a lot of Foucault's "spiritual" writing, esp. on Christianity. Ann: thank you for the constructive post. I should say that Foucault is interested in confession insofar as it has been constructed as an activity for producing the truth. This probably does not exhaust the topic and a historical analysis might show how that relationship changes and becomes more or less pronounced, as you indicate. I tend to think cyberspace might have revived it. But I think your idea of the creation of the self as resistance to be quite provocative, and certainly a route worth pursuing (it is the theme of McWhorter's excellent book, Bodies and Pleasures). F. called this "the ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom" a bit of a mouthful, but with the essential elements of practice (askesis), ethics (as ethos) and freedom. You might also recall his famous saying "there is no power without resistance", ie power is not domination but productive. So the question is what are these practices of freedom? thanks for the thoughts, Jeremy C.

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Re: [Air-l] Lurking
by E. Sean Rintel 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

Hi all, I suppose it is poetic justice that I feel the need to de-lurk to add to the lurking thread... Responding to Karim R. Lakhani's comments: >I guess there are no costs involved in someone lurking on an e-mail list >but what about the opportunity cost to the community by that person not >participating. Are they just free riding on the effort of the dedicated >contributors? Would their participation and information provision help >the community members? The implication here is that everyone on a list should be active, which seems neither probable, reasonable, or desireable. Probable: Not everyone has an interest in every topic discussed on a list. Reasonable: If A agrees with B entirely, why should A waste the list's time by simply posting in an "I agree". Not wasting bandwidth in that fashion has, indeed, been part of netiquette for a long time. Desireable: Adding to both the above points, imagine the immense traffic involved with everyone on this list posting just once to every comment... it would be an expoentially disasterous situation of information overload. Furthermore, is it not somewhat draconian to expect everyone to voice an opinion to everything? Social life simply does not work like that. Not everyone offers an opinion about everything said at a party, and despite the difference in system-level structure an email list is not so different as to either negate deeply entrenched social norms, nor to impose new ones. If that was the case, I suspect people would stop using such systems. This brings us to: >What would happen if those 15% started their own private list? Completely closed lists, like completely closed clubs, have limited shelf-lives. Without an influx of new members a list goes stale. Also, if an active 15% started a new list, the chance that every member would stay active would be very limited. In fact, perhaps 15% activity holds for almost any sized list - I doubt it's so clear cut, but judging by previous posts on group activity, it is more probable than, to take the opposite, 85% activity. Furthermore, to revitalize a closed list new members are needed - even if only by invitation - and when that occurs, the notions of probability, reasonableness, and desireability are likely to apply once again. Personally, I value being able to drop in and out of lists. And, I might add, when I'm new to a list I wait a fair while before posting for the first time, to get the flavor of the social group that I'm dealing with and also to make sure I have something to say. I've also noted that my list activity is cyclical. Sometimes I'm a list maniac, other times I prefer to a monitor. Why this is I'm not sure - a combination of personal circumstances and the topics on the list, I suppose. Actually, that brings me to a final point: I like to do other things than being an active list-member, but I like to know what's going on, so I monitor. I am part of the 'interested' community, so I don't feel that I am 'sponging from the list'. Opportunity cost, if that is going to be a notion used to calculate list-member value, has a problem in that it must involve the opportunity costs of the rest of my life. Speaking of which, I must dash, and thus Until Anon, Sean -- E. Sean Rintel Communication Department University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY, USA, 12222 http://www.albany.edu/~er8430/

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foucault and selves
by GP 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

Hi all, and it takes Msr Foucault and the lurking threads to draw me out again... I've been doing some work, trying to relate Foucault to weblogs - specifically in terms of how his work on ideas of improving the self, not confessing, but the writing of the self especially in ancient greece can be reflected in part in the use and widespread phenomena of blogs. The need to atone seems to have gone, replaced by the appearence of these online identities which may or may not reflect the off-line people behind them... However there are expecations of truth that go along with weblogs, and this creates something of a power structure between author/creator and reader/commentator which adds tto the muddle I seem to be in right now.... Never the less I do think St Michel is an excellent starting point in looking at how online writings in terms of creating selves work. I hope I've added not detracted something to the conversation with my AOIR coming out. Best regards Geoff Parkes

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Oh Dear, there goes scholarship.
by Lachlan Brown 26 Jan '02

26 Jan '02

was Re: my email archives > I'm not quite sure what you mean by "archiving." <warschauer> >anyone else archived all their incoming and outgoing emails, <hunsinger> >How do we keep it secure (both in the sense of "private" and in the sense of "safe")? How do we think about it, if at all, right now? That is, I suspect we all have this sense of the "stuff" that we have on our disks and hard drives, but how does that intersect and interplay with how we feel about the box of letters we keep in the closet? Will we encrypt stuff, or keep it open? Will we erase some? <jones> >One day no doubt the world will mourn the loss of my juvenilia. <cubitt> I doubt the world will mourn, Sean, the loss of your juvenilia, as long as it did not and does not impact the rights of others. Forgive me for crashing in, but a little bird told me I should take time out of my intervention in Nettime (I think I have pitched things about right over there), to check to see what AoIR was doing under the duress of contemporary cultural events and the impact of emergency legislation. I sense unease. This e-mail archive thread reads a little like an annual general meeting of the Intellect and Imagination Temperance Society and I would remind you four of your duties and responsibilities not merely as scholars, but as members of an international intellectual community. After seven or eight years in which questions of archival, catalogue, identity, access and availability of information and knowledge, gender, ethnicity, uneven distributions of information, uneven accumulations of knowledge, new relations of distribution of media and communications and new relations of mediation in a tremendous cultural contest that cast new perspectives on the nature of governance, institution, scholarship, democracy, not to mention an economy led like a pig with a ring in its nose by the mere idea of Internet, youd think wed have got a little further along in an understanding of technology in contemporary culture. What, one wonders, have you all been doing? Yes, I kept all of my files and email communications 1993-present. Saved, time-locked, stored, periodically. I thought this was a simple matter of research scholarship, quite in line with the Social Sciences Methods and Approaches course I took at Goldsmiths College as a requirement in undertaking PhD work. Given the intense contests already apparent in 1993-94 perhaps rather more apparent then than they are now -- around the meanings and governance of the technology, I would have been remiss in my scholarship to not do so. >>>It was easy to imagine a scenario in which, say, The National Security State employed archives to influence government, commerce and public opinion to help render compliance to the agenda of the National Security State, alternatively imagine a situation in which commercial or alternative interests employed these archives to the same end. Or rather, easy to anticipate the nature of a contest between these interests (its called the pretzel debate apparently) and you, pretty much, have something closely resembling contemporary culture>>> Lachlan Lachlan Brown Thirdnet Ltd Cultural Studies Goldsmiths College University of London Toronto: M.(416) 826 6937 VM: (416) 822 1123 lachlan(a)london.com http://third.net -- _______________________________________________ Sign-up for your own FREE Personalized E-mail at Mail.com http://www.mail.com/?sr=signup 1 cent a minute calls anywhere in the U.S.! http://www.getpennytalk.com/cgi-bin/adforward.cgi?p_key=RG9853KJ&url=http:/…

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