Monthly Archives: April 2006

nomads online

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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  My colleague ↑Birgit Bräuchler, author of ↵Cyberidentities at War, courteously invited me to send in a proposal for a workshop called ↑Understanding media practices, which she will organize together with John Postill at the ↑9th EASA Biennial Conference which will take place from September 18th through September 21st 2006 in Bristol, UK. As the deadline is tomorrow, I today got the seats of my pants dirty and went to the writing desk. In case of the EASA rejecting my proposal, feel free to contact me and to talk me into my writing the paper for your conference or publication … Continue reading →

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equilibrium

Posted on by October 14, 2012
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  The aficionados of course ↑can not accept cyberpunk to be a “long-since dead relic of the 80s,” but “consider it to be alive and well.” Not surprisingly I completely second that. Although ↑Bruce Sterling himself ↑sees it to belong to the 80s’ “Movement” and calls for a new generation, and although the terms “cyberpunk”, “cyberspace” and the like have virtually no meaning within my tribe’s, the ↵MP-community’s discourse [in said context “Gibson” again—or still—is associated with &uarrguitars and not with ↑a writer], I deem cyberpunk alive and well, too. Furthermore I think it to still be dramatically influential—and important … Continue reading →

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idoru going anime

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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  Simon from ↑CyberpunkCafe posted a ↑news item in the meatspace about this. ↑Now Playing Magazine is reporting that ↑William Gibson’s novel, Idoru [↵Gibson 1996], is going to be coming to anime. ↑Alex Steyermark, a relative unknown has been given the reigns. Apparently, there was some discussion of turning this into a live-action movie but it was cost-prohibitive. ↑Read more at cyberpunkreview. via entry at cyberpunkreview … Continue reading →

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Favorite writing culture and cyberpunk

Posted on by October 22, 2012
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The above picture is a clipping from a photography by Martha G. Tyler, which served as a frontispiece in ‘Writing Culture’ (↵Clifford & Marcus 1986). It shows ‘↑Stephen Tyler in the field’, concentrated on his writing, looking away from the world, and shielding his eyes from the light by a kerchief stuffed beneath the earpiece of his ↵matte black mirrorshades ;-) ↑Evans-Pritchard allegedly once voiced that anthropology was not so much a science, but an art. ↑Hortense Powdermaker stated that the anthropologist had no instrument, that she was her instrument herself. She did not think in terms of measuring instruments, … Continue reading →

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anthropology voight-kampff style

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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  Some nights ago I got a friend of mine, a hopeful young anthropologist, well sloshed and had him suffer some expert interrogation—sorry for the evening’s script’s mean psychological twists, pal ;-) Among some other things I squeezed out of him, he confessed that recently he had done some payed-for business anthropology assignments. The handbook they gave him contained a heap of pages filled with questionnaires seemingly right out of “Notes and queries in anthropology”—from the pre-Rivers era he meant. Stated so quite vehemently, in fact. All of this reminded me, again, of Philip K. Dick’s ↵“Do androids dream of … Continue reading →

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online communities

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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  Now the website of my seminar ↑Onlinegemeinschaften [online communities] is online as well. Here’s the seminar’s English abstract:  The Internetinfrastructure is the basis for a whole range of sevices (like e.g. www, e-mail, IRC, IM, P2P, Usenet, ftp, etc.). This “new media”—mediators unknown before—do not only enable communication, but especially interpersonal and social interaction. If said interaction reaches a certain density, if the familiarity and mutual trust among the members of a group grows beyond a certain point, then something akin to social structure and culture begins to emerge—things anthropologists are interested in. Compared to the traditional “objects” of … Continue reading →

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stability online

Posted on by October 3, 2012
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  The final draft of my paper ↑The stability of cyberspace [.pdf | 32KB], which will be published—this month, they say—in the Proceedings of the ↑Cyberspace 2005 Conference, is now online. If you’re interested, help yourself and consider the thing to be CC-licenced—same licence as this blog has. Here’s the paper’s somewhat self-aggrandizing and preposterous—blame my youthful levity—abstract:  The lack of a suitable understanding of reality experienced by human beings hampers the discourse on social and cultural phenoma triggered by information and communication technologies (ICTs). This lack generates misunderstandings which accumulate in the notion of ICT-induced realms as a Gegenwelt, … Continue reading →

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computergames

Posted on by July 6, 2012
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  It’s up; the website of my seminar ↑Computerspiele [computergames], which I will celebrate during the upcoming term is online. The seminar’s complete reading list consists of texts which are available online. Full bibliographical references and links are at the site. Here’s the seminar’s English abstract:  With contemporary sociocultural anthropology’s opening-up towards modernity, commodities, their consumption, appropriation, and meaning in diverse cultural milieus and contexts came into focus. Computergames are a true global commodity which not only diffuses via container-shipment, but via the Internet, too—and they are by no means manufactured and played in Europe and North-America only. The artefact … Continue reading →

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