TECHNOLOGY/COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKED PUBLICS CONTRIBUTORS Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, EDITED BY KAZYS VARNELIS Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis KAZYS VARNELIS is Director of the Digital media and network technologies are Network Architecture Lab, Graduate now part of everyday life. The Internet has “Networked Publics is the place to start for anyone seeking to understand the symbiotic changes in new School of Architecture, Planning, and become the backbone of communication, media and society today. Essential reading for both specialists and general readers.” Preservation at Columbia University, and commerce, and media; the ubiquitous a member of the faculty at the School Lev Manovich, author of The Language of New Media and Soft Cinema mobile phone connects us with others as it of Architecture, University of Limerick, removes us from any stable sense of location. Ireland. As architecture group AUDC, “The Networked Publics group brought together smart people across a range of disciplinary and theoretical Networked Publics examines the ways that together with Robert Sumrell, he is the perspectives to engage in a serious and sustained conversation about the current state and future the social and cultural shifts created by author of Blue Monday: Stories of Absurd directions of the new media landscape. The questions they ask are ones we all need to consider as we these technologies have transformed our Realities and Natural Philosophies. He learn how to live, work, collaborate, create, and engage as citizens in our new networked society.” relationships to (and definitions of) place, has also edited The Infrastructural City: Henry Jenkins, author of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide culture, politics, and infrastructure. Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles and The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by “Networked Publics is a lucid, timely, and broadly interdisciplinary look at the most important technological Four chapters—each by an interdisciplinary Robert A. M. Stern. Since 2000, he has and social change of our time: the sudden wiring and unwiring of the planet into a broadband network, team of scholars using collaborative maintained a blog at http://varnelis.net. with communication devices in the pockets of a significant proportion of the world’s population. There software—provide a synoptic overview along is very little that is more important, more discussed, and less widely understood than the meaning of the with illustrative case studies. The chapter on emerging technosocial networks that are adopting digital media for a wide range of social, cultural, place describes how digital networks enable political, and economic ends. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, economists, us to be present in physical and networked educators, designers, political scientists, computer scientists, legal and policy experts–the Networked places simultaneously (on the phone while on Publics group–was the only way to try to capture the meaning of a phenomenon that is interdisciplinary by the road; on the Web while at a café)—often its nature. The team project blog was a beacon of clear thinking while the project was in progress, and the at the expense of nondigital commitments. The book is a sound foundation for debates about what networked publics mean, how they can be encouraged, chapter on culture explores the growth how they should be regulated, how to protect against their dangerous aspects.” of amateur-produced and -remixed content online and the impact of these practices Howard Rheingold, author of Smartmobs: The Next Social Revolution VARNELIS, EDITOR VARNELIS, on the music, anime, advertising, and news industries. The chapter on politics examines the new networked modes OF RELATED INTEREST of bottom-up political expression HANDBOOK OF MOBILE COMMUNICATION STUDIES and mobilization, and the difficulty in EDITED BY JAMES E. KATZ channeling online political discourse into This volume offers a comprehensive view of the cultural, familial, and interpersonal consequences of mobile productive political deliberation. And communication across the globe. In it, leading scholars analyze the effect of mobile communication on all finally, the chapter on infrastructure notes parts of life, from the relationship between literacy and the textual features of mobile phones to the use the tension between openness and control of ringtones as a form of social exchange, from the “aspirational consumption” of middle class families in in the flow of information, as seen in the India to the belief in parts of Africa and Asia that mobile phones can communicate with the dead. current controversy over net neutrality. An The MIT Press introduction by anthropologist Mizuko Ito and Massachusetts Institute of Technology a conclusion by architecture theorist Kazys Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu Varnelis frame the chapters, giving overviews ISBN 978-0-262-22085-9 of the radical nature of these transformations. Networked Publics Networked Publics edited by Kazys Varnelis With contributions by researchers in the Networked Publics Research Group, the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California: Walter Baer, François Bar, Anne Friedberg, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, Mizuko Ito, Mark E. Kann, Merlyna Lim, Fernando Ordonez, Todd Richmond, Adrienne Russell, Marc Tuters, Kazys Varnelis The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any elec- tronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected]. This book was set in Garamond 3 by Graphic Composition, Inc. and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Networked publics / edited by Kazys Varnelis. p. cm. Product of a fellowship program at the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California, 2005–2006. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-22085-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Internet—Social aspects—United States. 2. Internet—Political aspects— United States. 3. Online social networks—United States. 4. Convergence (Telecommunication) I. Varnelis, Kazys. HM851.N4765 2008 303.48'330973—dc22 2008005365 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Mizuko Ito 1 Place: The Networking of Public Space 15 Kazys Varnelis and Anne Friedberg 2 Culture: Media Convergence and Networked Participation 43 Adrienne Russell, Mizuko Ito, Todd Richmond, and Marc Tuters 3 Politics: Deliberation, Mobilization, and Networked Practices of Agitation 77 Merlyna Lim and Mark E. Kann 4 Infrastructure: Network Neutrality and Network Futures 109 François Bar, Walter Baer, Shahram Ghandeharizadeh, and Fernando Ordonez Conclusion: The Meaning of Network Culture 145 Kazys Varnelis Notes on Contributors 165 Index 167 Preface Networked Publics is the product of the 2005–2006 research year at the Univer- sity of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communication. A team of thirteen scholars spent the year investigating how new and maturing network- ing technologies are reconfi guring the way we interact with content, media sources, other individuals and groups, and the world that surrounds us. This book accompanies the blog that we maintained during that period, now at http: // networkedpublics.org. It aims to be a scholarly introduction to the fi eld, synthesizing our own fi elds of research together with what we learned as a group. The book should also be understood as our response to the cultural material and debates that we brought together at the Networked Publics Con- ference and Media Festival at the Annenberg Center for Communication on April 28 and 29, 2006. Networked Publics was produced online, using tools such as Writely (now Google Docs) and, as such, is one of the fi rst books to be produced through collaborative software. Acknowledgments All of us would like to thank the University of Southern California’s Annen- berg Center for Communication for sponsoring the Networked Publics research year. The editor is especially grateful to Dean Mark Wigley and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation for giving precious time to edit the manuscript and write the conclusion. We also give thanks to the MIT Press and our editor, Douglas Sery, for believing in us and publishing this book. Special thanks to MIT Press’s Jessica Hosman for her keen eye, sharp intelligence, and good spirits. At the Annenberg Center for Communication, we would like to thank Directors Elizabeth Daley, under whose tenure this project was launched, and Jonathan Aronson, who oversaw its completion, as well as Todd Richmond, who was Managing Director dur- ing the project’s inception. For their help in making Networked Publics happen, we are indebted to Annenberg Center staff Steve Adcock, Josie Acosta, Chris Badua, Michael Goay, Claudia Gonzalez, JoAnn Hanley, Elizabeth Harmon, Lara Mazzoni, Bryan Schneider, and LaJuana Whitner. We would like to express our appreciation to the distinguished lecturers who provided