Zombie labour: Send me your mailing address if you are into collectors editions

In response to the paper I wrote:

How have I come to learn, love, then reject, and now use ‘Free Labour’ (aka. You Tube) to tap into the media generation’s collective intelligence in my own practice?

I am shooting a new video piece that is inspired by our class and fearless leader . . .Prof. Chun.


This video takes place in Houston, TX and is tentatively titled Labour. It is about a woman who comes home from work every day and does the same thing. Her house is filled with red balloons floating on the ceiling and on the floor. In this house she paints images of post-apocalyptic scenes that are neon, vibrating, sparkling, and fantastic. She is in constant labour until she falls asleep. The work must be done, shown, and shared. The viewer senses the acceleration of time towards something. Maybe a deadline? The pace increases and this is her routine till one day she finds a zombie right before she goes to bed in her apartment. The zombie makes gestures with paint. She focuses the zombie’s gestures on her work and channels the activity. This then becomes her routine. She comes home from work, she works, she finds the zombie in the apartment, the zombie gestures, she channels, and she goes to sleep. In the morning the paintings are done. One day the balloons begin to pop and a man in a suit appears at the door he represents the zombie in legal action against her.

My intention is to dedicate the video to our class and share collector editions of the work with those that provide mailing addresses in January once I can finish postproductions. I will send links to all once the website is done.
rosalindagonzalez@gmail.com

Obama, Network Neutrality, Network Politics

For students, merchants, and companies with large stakes in the internet and its culture, the concept of network neutrality has proven to be a fundamentally divisive issue in recent American politics. Because of the nature of existing FCC-guidelines, which necessitated that all calls in the United States be connected with equal speed (so that no call could be privileged above any other), the speed at which one is connected to a website is theoretically equal to any other. This idea of "network neutrality" is very much an artifact of what Tiziana Terranova has called "network politics ... the existence of an active engagement with the dynamics of information flow" (3). The question of network neutrality, as then-Presidental candidate outlined to google in the video above, surely takes on this "network politics," as the network neutral individual fears a sort of manipulation of these "dynamics of information flow," to privilege certain sites over others.

I am perpetually interested by the network neutrality debate because of just this sort of embedded fear and distrust located at its core. On one hand, the idea of network neutrality works by characterizing the existing net as "open," and by virtue of this 'openness,' the internet is presented as ideal if not utopicly perfect. On the other hand, the non-neutral network is presented as an object of fear, a place where ruthless economic darwinism would quickly promote the already successful into the more successful. In short, a non-neutral network would further the schism between big business and small business.



Obama's own rhetoric, in a conversation with students at an MTV discussion, posits this opennes as a "level playing field," enabling "mom & op" operations to co-exist alongside "Fox News." Obama's depiction of the small website as familial clearly is meant to stand for both a manifestation of the American Dream, and the idea of something intimate and personal. This site is thus contrasted with (very pointedly) Fox News, which represents an overwhelming, media giant. The implication follows that the "mom & pop" entreprise is willing and able to co-exist with Fox News, but that the News Corporation will clearly crush the family company were the rules to be changed. Ironically, Obama also posits that his website barackobama.com as another example of the "small" web site that would be threatened by a non-neutral network. This seems highly unlikely, as Obama's site routinely attracted more hits than competitors, and Obama's operating budget was so ample (and his advertising so extensive) that it seems a non-neutral network would hardly present a major threat.

The essential concern of network neutrality is that the network remain 'unintelligent' and 'non-discriminatory.' This is built upon the assumption that when connections are made in the existence network technologies behind the internet, no political or economic inputs influence the speed of the connection. Which of course, is patently false. As Terranova writes "communication technologies do more than just link different localities ... They actively mould what they connect by creating new topological configurations and thus effectively contributing to the constitution of geopolitical entities such as cities and regions, or nations and empires" (40). Following this analysis, it is clear that politics are already at play in any connection. The way internet culture has shaken these existing politics off, however, is by virtue of their supposed consistency and pre-existence. Because they were the rules when people started playing the game, any change of the rules is dangerous for all existing business. It follows then, that maintaining the status quo is the only way to protect the "open" internet, which can only be "open" when it becomes opposed to a model of a "closed" network. It is in this way that the network neutrality debate works strangely like a conservative, fear-based administration, fearing change simply because it is change, and trying to justify its qualities by villifying alternative models. Terranova in fact, might argue that the real fear in reconfiguring a network's politics and dynamics, is that it would be "linked to the emergence of new geopolitical formations" (40).

This is not to say the Netwok Neutrality is an inappropriate consideration of existing economic and political interests surrounding the future of the internet. It is simply to problematicize the polarizaing simplification with which the issue is generally presented. On barackobama.com, Obama's official position on network neutrality reads:

• Barack Obama will protect the openness of the internet:

  Obama and Biden strongly support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet

How they will protect it is uncertain, except that Obama claims he will install an FCC minister who is likewise committed to network neutrality. The fascinating thing about these statements, and this position, is that in fact Barack Obama has put himself in a position to promise people what they already have, and that worked.

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This is an overdue post on the final reading