This paper was presented by Rosalynn and Adam Rothstein for MediaCities 4, as part of the panel "Uncommon Occupations".  Introduction/Abstract The Occupy protests of 2011 and 2012, in addition to contesting the control of physical space, created a public realm of media space different than any other direct action political movement in the United States thus far. While there were a number of positive effects of this topological shift, this media space became more complex than the initial political narratives generated by the movement, and the movement failed to fully “occupy” this space, at the expense of its political success. Narratives are the lifeblood of politics; they set the context for interpersonal, social, state-level, cultural, and strategic actions by prescribing possibilities, and describing limitations. The narrative of the Occupy movement made possible by its technological means of publication was largely that of social media: individual expression without any further…

A Vine--a six second looped video--shows the moment of a bombing on a crowded street, recorded off of a television screen. What does it mean? It must mean something, because we’re talking about it. We’re watching it, again and again. This is something that is important to think about, because the way we watch things affects the way that we think about things. Whitney Boesel wrote about the Vine, and what she thinks it means: Yes, the fact that someone shot a vine of this news broadcast probably got that explosion footage in front of more people, and in front of more people more quickly, than the television broadcast and subsequent YouTube (etc) videos would have alone. But in shooting a vine of the explosion footage, the person who did so created an easily sharable short story of this afternoon’s events that reduces the tragedy of a violent act down to a bright orange flash. Vine being what it is, this visual short story also does its own work to rapidly become the image of these…

Among all the questions that Google Glass is raising even before the thing is really out in the wild, most interesting to me are those problematics involving the social implications of the thing. The literal use of the tech has been discussed, as have the surveillance implications. I've thought about my own sneaking suspicion that much of the discomfort about Glass is due to the uncanny cyborg body horror of putting digital equipment on the face. Even more awesomely, it is shaping up the be the incarnate bogeyman of everything anyone has ever worried about technology. But now Adrian Chen raises the important issue: does wearing Google Glass just straight up make you an asshole? Now we're on to the main course. In addition to all the other things this gadget might do and not do, as a highly visible and highly hyped object referencing science-fiction from Neuromancer to Robocop, the cultural weight of this thing will be off the charts. (And yes, he argues.)  Chen cites Ta-nehisi…

Survival is always dependent upon physical conditions, but the knowledge of whether or not our global neighbors are surviving, and how well, is a matter of the received distribution of data. It is this group consciousness that ensures free societies. While there are other human necessities more threatened that those we label as “free speech”, the ubiquity of communication in the information age means that defending it has become a universal issue in principle, said to “affect us all equally”. This glosses over the fact that from the outset, the presence and lack of privilege prevents a level plane for this expression. We all equally deserve “free speech”, but what that means to a fair-skinned man in San Jose, a dark-skinned woman in Mississippi, a businessman in Dubai, and a college student in Egypt, are all radically different things. For both those in danger of losing their ability to communicate and for those who never had it to begin with, it is important to map this tactical…

"Generative Sigil" by Joshua Madara The spread of advanced technology in everyday life has accompanied a retreat of religious language from mainstream culture. Not long ago, religion was more than a means of attaining amoral compass, the source of "values" that it is today. Although it still does take this tendency in certain cultures and circumstances, religion once was, throughout the world, the text of a cosmology that describes the way the world works. Religion was the key to explaining the mysteries of life, and even when its cosmology was proved wrong, its larger cultural weight served as a point of departure for more detailed, scientific discoveries. The motion of the spheres, the aetheric whispers of the electromagnetic spectrum, the heaving and quaking of the ball of matter we live upon--historically, these phenomena were not correctly understood by religious or spiritual explanations, but at least they were a place to start. The Galileos of the world needed a cosmology to…

In the shadows of myths, a new entity builds itself. It is called Dark Theory, and in the dark, it grows. From the broken pieces rubble, it constructs a new mortar, pasting itself up from the midden pits of cultural discards, the unwanted substance of thousands of years of stories and folktales, naming conventions, official designations, and jurisprudence. This excised material, this societal negative space, reassembles into a sprawling favela of unmapped streets. Like ancient books resurrected into new artwork by a counter-culture with insurgent spirit and a taste for its own blood, the darkness is cataloged, analyzed, and bootlegged, becoming dangerous and feral, in that it has been pried out from its history, and set upon new, machined legs.It is with myths that we color the outlines of our cultural terrain. We collide with the shapes whether we like it or not, but it is with narratives that we shade in the fields, providing us with a sense of depth at a distance. With this color,…

Our sense of vision is acutely human, because it is by our perception of the visible that we orient our world, and understand ourselves within it. We are creatures of light, who move within light, who build their lives out of light and its plethora of shadows, glimmers, reflections, and obscurities. And in this cast flame we judge each other, we attack each other, we watch each other, condemn each other, rule each other, and rape each other. We not only speak of our inner selves as illuminated, but we use spotlights to chase down other bodies. Whether it be the eyesight of a group of men facing down a single woman moving down the same sidewalk at night, a telephoto lens attempting to peer through the shroud of a person’s clothing, a police officer’s flashlight, a drone’s camera, or simply the contemporary presence of CCD sensors in our pockets and on our architecture, vision connotes a certain power, that is used negatively just as often as it can be positive. When we are critical of…

My partner, Rosalynn, is not only a senior dispatcher and calltaker at the Bureau of Emergency Communications [BOEC] here in Portland, but she is finishing up her Master’s Thesis as a candidate for her MA in Folklore, which is about the narrative structures in her workplace and the impact of multi-modal forms of communication on narrative in the workplace. We’ve had several conversations to record her own thoughts about the workplace, and for me to provide a point of perspective about certain technological aspects. This conversation is part of her forthcoming thesis, and with her permission, I’m publishing it here, because I think the things we are discussing about the unavailability of technologically distinct narratives for important strategic and emergency positions are very important. Interview with Adam Rothstein33:15 to 43:00October 8th, 2012Location: The Nighthawk, North Portland A: (33:15) (Unknown song playing in the background, sounds of other patrons at the bar talking)…

This is an introductory essay and explanation of the Open Card Deck Standard, and the Library and License that will support it. As you might be able to tell, I’ve spent some time thinking about this, in conjunction with conversations with a number of people on related topics. But this is only the beginning. I’d like to continue the discussion on this in a Google Doc, so if you are interested in this or anything related to various types of open-ended social gaming, please join in. Definitions Before we detail the actual standards, let’s make some axiomatic definitions. Card A single database entry, with defined content fields (name, artwork, etc.). Each entry is designed to be printed on a single piece of generally flat material, using either one or both sides. Deck A collection of cards, selected with particular use in mind, to be the limited pool for that use. A deck might be created, added to, split, or diminished in various ways, but the deck defines the difference between the…

drawing of a UFO encounter from Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore Editor’s Note: This theory piece on UFO documentation is by my partner. I’m posting it here because it is relevant to many issues that I am interested in related to authenticity and phenomenal evidence, and the work that she and I do together regarding technologically-informed revaluations of semiotic value (more on that soon, I hope). Also posted here because she does very excellent work, and because she isn’t quite as “network self-promotion focused” as I am, I feel it’s underexposed to people who might find it interesting. Enjoy! And do check out the UFO images linked from Photocat, these especially are worth looking at. Visual Documentation of UFOs: A New Question of Authenticity by Rosalynn Rothstein Documentation of UFO encounters demonstrate conflict between acceptable channels for observing natural phenomena created by science and the observational powers of any one individual. Margaret…