Three+Literatures,+Thirty+Citations

__**1. Historical IT Literature**__ The Historical IT literature focuses on an examination of political-economic elements as they pertain to IT. This literature can be classified as an approach that focuses on physical technologies and physical world discourses. It is exemplified by the works of Peter Galison (1994), Paul Edwards (1997), and David Mindell (2002). Its main focus is a critical evaluation of the work and impact of Norbert Weiner and Vannevar Bush in the development of computing and cybernetics. As such, it pays close attention to the role of military discourses in fashioning the ways in which ITs operate and interact with the world. Galison's early study was one of the first social scientific studies that linked the historical appearance of computing technologies to the existence of particular military problems, most notably the difficulty of tracking enemy aircraft with anti-aircraft artillery. Edwards extends Galison's insights to the level of discourse. He argues that w ith the Cold War, centralization and rationalization were extended to everything. This extension was enacted through strategies of containment. In order to accomplish this, new technologies, such as the computer, were internalized by close world discourses in order to create a manageable world. This created a world where humans and machines work as a seamless manageable web. Finally, Mindell builds upon Galison's and Edwards' studies by arguing the anti-aircraft artillery problem was part of a discourse of communication and control that has emerged gradually throughout history. In the inter-war period notions of control and feedback began to be be spread throughout many fields. However, it was not until the Second World War that these notions were applied to military uses, which lead to the increased militarization of IT discourses. As such, closed-world discourses embody essential militaristic values. Besides its interest in cybernetics, the Historical IT literature also focuses on the early development of the Internet. Here, scholars such as Howard Rheingold (2000), Ronald Kline (2000), and Fred Turner (2006) attempt to understand the interplays between communications technologies and the cultures within which they find themselves imbricated. This particular literature will be useful to me because of its focus on the historical political-economy of IT. As such, it will allow me to understand the historically specific events that have led to the ubiquitous and, often, unquestioned use of IT in many aspects of everyday life. I see myself contributing to this particular literature by extending its political-economic approach to the micro-level of everyday life and practice. As such, this literature will help me understand how identity and technology are at work in a political-economic of subject formation.

__**Citations:**__ Castells, Manuel. 2000. //The Rise of the Network Society//. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Edwards, Paul N. 1997. //The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America//. Cambridge: MIT Press. ———. 2010. //A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming//. Cambridge: MIT Press. Galison, Peter. 1994. “Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.” //Critical Inquiry// 21 (1): 228-266. Kline, Ronald. 2000. //Consumers in the Country: Technology and Social Change in Rural America//. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Lessig, Lawrence. 2005. //Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity//. New York: Penguin Press. ———. 2006. //Code Version 2.0//. New York: Basic Books. Mindell, David. 2002. //Between Human and Machine: Feedback, Control, and Computing Before Cybernetics//. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rheingold, Howard. 2000. //The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier//. Revised Edition. Cambridge: MIT Press. Turner, Fred. 2006. //From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism//. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

__**2. Critical IT Literature**__  The Critical IT literature explicitly challenges the structural barrier erected between physical and virtual worlds. This particular approach takes its inspiration from Michel Foucault's (1978) study of biopolitics at a time when the focus of the application of power became the regulation of live as opposed to the application of death. Another point of inspiration for this particular approach is the work of Gilles Deleuze (1997) on societies of control. Deleuze argues that since the Second World War, Euro-American societies have seen an extra layer of power grafted on top of the disciplinary framework elaborated upon by Foucault. Now, Deleuze argues, movement and embodiment is regulated every step of the way by gates and passwords that only let through those who have interiorized the dominant discourse; others are fed back into the loop and are not allowed to continue forward.  Foucault and Deleuze have created the theoretical and conceptual framework utilized by proponents of the Critical IT literature. By understanding cyberspace as networks of control, this body of literature attempts to understand the relationship between dominant discourse and actors as mediated through technology. Exemplars of this approach include Alexander Galloway (2006)and Christopher Kelty (2008). Galloway adds a refinement to Deleuze's societies of control by digging down through the network architecture. He argues that protocols, or standards of implementation, are the means by which control is establish after decentralization. It argues that protocols are not coercive mechanisms. Rather, they point to the path of least resistance; they offer advantages to those who follow them and disadvantages to those are chose to walk besides them. As such, the text argues that the Internet, despite possessing a decentralized structure, remains a highly hierarchical network by virtue of the very standards of implementation that make up its very fabric. Kelty, on the other hand, is concerned with the ways that meanings are produced within cyberspace. Taking the Free Software movement as his case study, he argues that the Internet provide them with an opportunity to consider and enact a reorientation of power and knowledge. They accomplish this be critically experimenting with the public sphere through the configuration of recursive publics that can actively contribute the the form and content of that which makes them a public in the first place. By being espousing values of availability and modifiability, recursive publics are able to reorient power and knowledge through the active modification of the avenues in which these objects circulate, and are able to create a self-leveling environment that enhances social justice and decreases inequality. Another theme espoused by the Critical IT literature is the ways in which technologies will impact the very modes of social organization that are possible. Here, scholars such as Adrian Mackenzie (2006) and Langdon Winner (1986) occupy themselves with the political dimension of technology. Both argue that the shape a technology takes will greatly impact the forms of social organization that can exist.  This literature's focus on technological structures will help me understand the possibilities that are enabled and disabled as information and knowledge circulate across highly technologized media. I hope to possibly contribute to this literature by extending their argument to the micro-level realm of everyday life and practice. As such, I see this literature helping me understand how the technologies we use influence the personhood we can achieve.

__**Citations:**__ Deleuze, Gilles. 1997. //Negotiations 1972-1990//. New York: Columbia University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1978. //The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction//. New York: Vintage. Galloway, Alexander. 2006. //Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization//. Cambridge: MIT Press. Galloway, Alexander, and Eugene Thacker. 2007. //The Exploit: A Theory of Networks//. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press. Haraway, Donna. 1997. //Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium: FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse//. New York: Routledge. Kelty, Christopher. 2008. //Two Bits : the Cultural Significance of Free Software//. Durham: Duke University Press. Mackenzie, Adrian. 2006. //Cutting Code: Software and Sociality//. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. 1995. //The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age//. Cambridge: MIT Press. Virilio, Paul. 2007. //The Original Accident//. Cambridge: Polity. Winner, Langdon. 1986. //The Whale and the Reactor : a Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology//. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

__**3. Real/Virtual Divide Literature**__  The Real/Virtual Divide Literature concerns itself primarily with the deconstruction of the absolute division between physical and virtual environments. It focuses on technological structures to examine the relationship between technology and humanity. This particular literature perhaps is exemplified best by Benedict Anderson (2006), Nicole Constable (2003), and Tom Boellstorff (2008). Anderson's early study of the role of the newspaper in the formation of the British Empire set the tone by openly challenging the given existence of an imperial identity. Rather, Anderson argues that it was through the newspaper – through the simultaneous consumption of this communication technology – that British imperial ties were strengthened. Constable builds upon Anderson's work by examining the role of the Internet in the formation of transnational marriages. She argues that this new medium allows new expressions of agency in the formation of personal relationships. Boellstorff continues along this line of inquiry by arguing that the division created between physical and virtual serves to depreciate the value of action and life in cyberspace. To oppose this differentiation, he conceptualizes // actual // – as opposed to virtual – spaces as lived spaces that produce real meaning. A second line of inquiry present within the Real/Virtual Divide literature is the role of new communication technologies in the establishment and continuation of political-economic entities. Within this sub-theme, scholars such as Victoria Bernal (2005), Meg McLagan (1996), and Mark Whitaker (2004) argue that the new communication technologies allow for the creation of spaces where public discourse and deliberation can take place in order to influence political-economic events in physically defined nation-states.  This literature's focus on the deconstruction of the real/virtual divide will be helpful in my study of technological interfaces and identity. It will be an entry point into my proposed examination of the impact of knowledge and data modeling and virtualization. I hope to contribute to this particular literature by focusing my efforts at the micro-level of everyday life and practice, as opposed to the macro- or meso-level approach espoused by most of these works.

__**Citations: **__ <span style="display: block; font-family: Times New Roman,serif; text-align: justify;">Anderson, Benedict. 2006. //Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism//. New Edition. London: Verso. Bernal, Victoria. 2005. “Eritrea On-line: Diaspora, Cyberspace, and the Public Sphere.” //American Ethnologist// 32 (4): 660-675. Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. //Coming of Age in Second Life : an Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human//. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Castells, Manuel. 1998. //The Power of Identity//. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Constable, Nicole. 2003. //Romance on a Global Stage : Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages//. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dibbell, Julian. 1998. //My Tiny Life : Crime and Passion in a Virtual World//. New York: Holt. Gajjala, Radhika. 2004. //Cyber Selves : Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women//. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press. Galloway, Alexander. 2006. //Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture//. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McLagan, Meg. 1996. Computing for Tibet: Virtual Politics in the Post-Cold War Era. In //Connected : Engagements with Media//, ed. George Marcus, 159-194. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Whitaker, Mark. 2004. “Tamilnet.com: Some Reflections on Popular Anthropology, Nationalism, and the Internet.” //Anthropological Quarterly// 77: 469-498.