James G. R. Cronin

We are experiencing a digital hive-mind in these the early decades of the twenty-first century as manifested by the speed and spread of participatory cultures created by online user-generated content. Currently, this manifestation is being ideologically and commercially sold as a utopian vision unfolding with unquestioning certainty. However, are we sweeping away our familiar yesterdays in our rush to embrace global digital cultures? North American scholarship has adopted the rhetoric of “digital citizenship” as an umbrella term enfolding social participation that goes beyond just working with digital tools. This term’s ideological assumption echoes the tradition of democratic scholarship that leads us back to the social utopias of participatory democracy as expressed in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” (1837). Emerson, in this essay, outlined the scholar’s responsibility, as a member of democratic society, to participate in the betterment of society as a whole.  E...

Returning to Reality: Thomas Merton’s Wisdom for a Technological Age, by Phillip M. Thompson, Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 2013, pp. 112, ST £15.00 (paper), £13.80 (e-book). Reviewed by James G.R. Cronin Technological anxieties haunt our age of hypermodernity as illustrated by a renewed interest in classic publications by authors from an earlier period of neurosis, namely, Ivan Illich (Cayley, 2005), Erich Fromm (2013), Paul Virilio (2009), and Jacques Ellul (Jerónimo et al., 2013). Thomas Merton’s critique of the technological society captured the zeitgeist of technological anxiousness threading through discourses of the New Left in France, Britain, and America during the height of the Cold War. Phillip Thompson, an American interdisciplinary scholar who fuses science with religion and religion with technology, argues that Merton’s mid-century reflections on technology deserve greater critical consideration as part of a wider intellectual history of mid-century techno...

The contemporary political unrest flaring across North Africa has made Leah A. Lievrouw’s recent book, Alternative and Activist New Media , essential reading for anyone attempting to conceptually frame the dynamic role that communications technology plays in activating popular dissent. Seismic shifts currently rupturing this region’s geopolitical landscape are, essentially, examples of Lievrouw’s discussion of “mediated mobilization” in action. Read the full review .

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HIDDEN HISTORIES: SYMPOSIUM ON METHODOLOGIES FOR THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES, C1949-1980 A one-day symposium at University College London, 17 September 2011. (Sponsored by HKFZ and UCLDH ) Speakers include: Opening Keynote: Beyond chronology and profession: discovering how to write a history of the Digital Humanities, Willard McCarty, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London; Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. Knowledge Spaces and Digital Humanities, Claudine Moulin, Universitaet Trier, Germany Unwriting the history of Humanities Computing, Edward Vanhoutte, Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature - Ghent, Belgium Crowd sourcing: beyond the traditional, boundaries of academic history, Melissa Terras, Dept. Information Studies, UCL Different stories to be lived and told: recovering Lehmann James Oppenheimer (1868-1916) for the narrative of the Irish Arts & Crafts movement (1894-1925), James G.R. Cr...

The characteristic of the contemporary age, says Ivan Illich (1926-2002), is “system”, understood through the science of cybernetics as a comprehensive metaphor to describe the computer world "information revolution". This term “system” marks the end of, what Illich calls, “The Age of Instrumentality” which he understood as a time in which our relationship to the world was mediated, primarily, by our tools. Using the term "tool" in its widest possible sense to signify any engineered instrumental means of mediation, Illich argues that what characterises a tool is what makes it distinct from its user. By contrast, the “system” lacks this distinction because it integrates its user within it. In cybernetics the world system, metaphorically, becomes a "network" and an "ecosphere" whereby the computer becomes increasingly identified with the self. Paradoxically, for Illich, this does not lead to holistic integration, but rather to disembodiment. In...

International media are reporting that President Obama was watching on a TV screen as a commando gunned down Osama bin Laden ( White House released image ) Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a U.S. Navy Seal, White House chiefs of staff watched as bin Laden was shot in the left eye. This sequence of events has already been anticipated and rehearsed, as far back as 1984, in Paul Virilio’s prophetic vision of the prosthetics of technology whereby the eye itself, through technological mediation, becomes a weapon: 'The Eye-Tracked synchronization system fixes the pilot’s gaze, however sudden the movement of his eyes, so that firing can proceed as soon as binocular accommodation is achieved. Finally, there is the “homing image”, which joins together an infra-red ray and an explosive projectile fitted with a special device. This device acts in the manner of an eye, picking up the image of the infra-red-lit target. The projectile that makes its way towards the image – and thus towa...