Apprich Clemens - Technotopia: a media genealogy of Net cultures

Technotopia

Media Philosophy

Series editors: Eleni Ikoniadou, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the London Graduate School and the School of Performance and Screen Studies, King ston University .

Scott Wilson, Professor of Cultural Theory at the London Graduate School and the School of Performance and Screen Studies, Kingston University.

The Media Philosophy series seeks to transform thinking about media by inciting a turn towards accounting for their autonomy and eventness, for machine agency and for the new modalities of thought and experience that they enable. The series showcases the transcontinental work of established and emerging thinkers whose work engages with questions about the reshuffling of subjectivity, of temporality, of perceptions and of relations vis--vis computation, automation and digitalisation as the current twenty-first-century conditions of life and thought. The books in this series understand media as a vehicle for transformation, as affective, unpredictable and non-linear, and move past its consistent misconception as pure matter-of-fact actuality.

For Media Philosophy, it is not simply a question of bringing philosophy to bear on an area usually considered an object of sociological or historical concern, but of looking at how developments in media and technology pose profound questions for philosophy and conceptions of knowledge, being, intelligence, information, the body, aesthetics, war and death. At the same time, media and philosophy are not viewed as reducible to each other's internal concerns and constraints and thus it is never merely a matter of formulating a philosophy of the media; rather the series creates a space for the reciprocal contagion of ideas between the disciplines and the generation of new mutations from their transversals. With their affects cutting across creative processes, ethico-aesthetic experimentations and biotechnological assemblages, the unfolding media events of our age provide different points of intervention for thought, necessarily embedded as ever in the medium of its technical support, to continually reinvent itself and the world.

The new automatism is worthless in itself if it is not put to the service of a powerful, obscure, condensed will to art, aspiring to deploy itself through involuntary movements which none the less do not restrict it.

Eleni Ikoniadou and Scott Wilson

Titles in the series:

Software Theory , Federica Frabetti

Media After Kittler , edited by E leni Ikoniadou & Scott Wilson

Chronopoetics : The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media , Wolfgang Ernst , Translated by Anthony Enns

The Changing Face of Alterity : Communication , Technology and Other Subjects edited by D avid J. Gunkel , Ciro Marcondes Filho & Dieter Mersch

Algorithmic Catastrophe : On the Contingency and Necessity of Technical Systems , Yuk Hui

Technotopia : A Media Genealogy of Net Cultures , Clemens Apprich

Technotopia

A M edia Genealogy o f Net Cultures

Clemens Apprich

Translated by Aileen Derieg

London New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd

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Copyright 2017 Clemens Apprich

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB 978-1-7866-0313-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Apprich, Clemens, author.

Title: Technotopia : a media genealogy of Net cultures / Clemens Apprich.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017. | Series: Media philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017030697 (print) | LCCN 2017036039 (ebook) | ISBN 9781786603159 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781786603135 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: InternetSocial aspects. | CyberspacePhilosophy. | Digital media.

Classification: LCC HM851 (ebook) | LCC HM851 .A735 2017 (print) | DDC 302.23/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017030697

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

The author is grateful to the following institutions for their support in the writing of this book.

In Memory of Armin Medosch

Contents

Like net cultures, this publication is a hybrid. It is a translated, yet revised and substantially extended version of my German book Vernetzt Zur Entstehung der Netzwerkgesellschaft from 2015. The first and the last chapters of this edition are new, everything in between is a thoroughly modified version of what appeared in the original edition, in order to speak to a more international audience. I want to thank my publisher in Germany, transcript, for permitting me to rework the book, as well as my English publisher, Rowman & Littlefield International, for their substantial support throughout the whole process, in particular Isobel Cowper-Coles, Eleni Ikoniadou, Scott T. Wilson and the Project Manager, Jayanthi Chander. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the book proposal for their insightful comments, as well as my colleagues and friends Claus Pias, Timon Beyes, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Ned Rossiter, Orit Halpern, Felix Stalder, Gerald Raunig, Jussi Parikka, Ulf Wuggenig, Gtz Bachmann, Armin Beverungen, Marcell Mars, Tomislav Medak, Nishant Shah, Oliver Lerone Schultz, Josephine Berry, Anthony Iles, Felipe Fonseca, Paulo Lara, Nelly Y. Pinkrah and Inga Luchs for their comments and input. Special thanks to the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University of Lneburg, not only for the financial and institutional support of this book project, but also for the ongoing opportunity to work with so many outstanding people. The creative and unique atmosphere of the centre has greatly influenced this work.

This book has also been influenced by a number of other sites and people. First of all, there is the Institute for New Culture Technologies/Public Netbase in Vienna, which, during my studies in philosophy and politics, was the first place for me to go, seeking for answers regarding a society increasingly determined by new media technologies. Then there is the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Media Art Research in Linz, as well as the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, both of which were of great help to me. And most recently, there are the Post-Media Lab and Making Change, two projects to which I owe a lot. Last but not least, many of the ideas in this book are due to a multitude of encounters, conversations and discussions with people who actually shaped the history of net cultures. Although most of these are only presented in an abbreviated form here, this book would not have been possible without the thought-provoking impulses from Konrad Becker, Martin Wassermair, Wolfgang Stzl, Katja Diefenbach, Mike Bonanno, Pit Schultz, Diana McCarty, Andreas Broeckmann, Robert Sakrowski, Marleen Stikker, Joachim Blank, Karl Heinz Jeron, Brian Holmes, Rasa Smite, Eric Kluitenberg, David Garcia and Geert Lovink and, in particular, Armin Medosch, a true net pioneer and pirate, who was among the first I discussed my ideas on critical net cultures with and who offered me the opportunity to present them at an early stage. This book is dedicated to him.