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Technoculture (Volume 3)
Book by Penley, Constance
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
Constance Penley
23 books2 followersConstance Penley is Professor of Film and Media Studies and Co-Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is a founding editor of Camera Obscura and the author of The Future of an Illusion: Film, Feminism and Psychoanalysis.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 24, 2016
To be filed under "The exact moment that modern digital information saturation manifested", along with Crash: Nostalgia For The Absence Of Cyberspace and Marianne Trench's 1990 documentary Cyberpunk.
I've developed a bit of a fascination with this particular techno-historical moment and the theory surrounding its advent, as this is what set up pretty much everything we've been living through since. Considering that I'm writing from the midst of an election cycle being advanced via tweets and influenced by international government hacking operations, and just two days after a large scale DDOS attack conducted via our omnipresent Internet of Things stalled out the internet on the entire eastern seaboard for two hours. In that light, this collection, braced between ambivalence and intrigue, seems pretty optimistic, though perhaps because of the focus on the countercultural repurposing of the technological world that was just manifesting in its proto-present form at the time. Here technological savvy offers alternative AIDS treatment networks, feminist pop-culture takeovers (in an especially entertaining piece on slash fiction by the coeditor), cyborgs, office sabotage zines, etc. Honestly could have pushing into the higher-level conceptual territory, but as a document of these various emerging issues, it's pretty great.
I've developed a bit of a fascination with this particular techno-historical moment and the theory surrounding its advent, as this is what set up pretty much everything we've been living through since. Considering that I'm writing from the midst of an election cycle being advanced via tweets and influenced by international government hacking operations, and just two days after a large scale DDOS attack conducted via our omnipresent Internet of Things stalled out the internet on the entire eastern seaboard for two hours. In that light, this collection, braced between ambivalence and intrigue, seems pretty optimistic, though perhaps because of the focus on the countercultural repurposing of the technological world that was just manifesting in its proto-present form at the time. Here technological savvy offers alternative AIDS treatment networks, feminist pop-culture takeovers (in an especially entertaining piece on slash fiction by the coeditor), cyborgs, office sabotage zines, etc. Honestly could have pushing into the higher-level conceptual territory, but as a document of these various emerging issues, it's pretty great.
August 10, 2023
Back when it first came out, this was a stimulating and exciting book. It went into areas that I did not realize were being explored by people with humanities backgrounds, issues like AIDS, and the impact of computers and reproductive technology, and various science fiction concepts. This is a collection of essays, not all of them brilliant, but many of them well worth reading, full of intriguing ideas and observations.
The introductory essay is a good preface to what the editors are attempting here, it seems even to set up a considerably longer book, or perhaps series of books. This is followed by a strange choice for an opening essay ‑ an interview with one Donna Harraway, a bizarre feminist thinker who enjoys discussing technology from a wildly speculative point of view. She throws around trendy language and strange thoughts, with a clearly anti‑male bent, yet I have to admit that I found her willingness to forage into odd areas refreshing. Her specialty is the notion of cyborgs and what they may mean for humanity. This is followed by a piece by Valerie Hartouni concerning media debates on reproductive technologies (such as removing fetuses from dead mothers) which made for an interesting discussion, although from a rigidly feminist point of view. Following this was a 50 page history of AIDS treatments which read more like cultural criticism than medical and social history.
Then I came to the first piece that I really enjoyed, Andrew Ross's essay on the politics of computers, which was full of interesting information and insights. Co-editor Penley's article was next: a lively discussion of a bizarre phenomenon ‑ the spate of writings by female Star Trek fans on the imagined romance between Kirk and Spock, called K/S writing, or slash writing ‑ a weird business indeed, and Penley does a good job of exploring its implications and giving us a look into this subculture. Another fun topic is examined by Sandra Buckley in "Penguin in Bondage", which takes a look at the readily available (in Japan) pornographic Japanese comic book. Houston A. Baker then discusses rap music in an informal and enjoyable essay. DeeDee Halleck looks at the world of video, and the monolithic video culture (with references to the work of Lewis Mumford). Next is the most amusing of all, a description of a San Francisco-based slacker magazine called Processed World, a howl of alienation by the computer‑ridden temporary office worker with artistic hopes/pretensions, which is a world that I am all too well acquainted with.
Reebee Garofalo discusses rock events and pop music generally, followed by one of the best pieces in the book: "Black Box S‑Thetix" by Jim Pomeroy. Pomeroy delves into high tech art, taking a look at the general situation and then analyzing the work of several artists working in the field. The last piece is another enjoyable one, by Peter Fitting, a French professor with a thing for science fiction. He discusses cyberpunk SF, and gives the reader a good overview, with special attention paid to William Gibson.
At the time I read this it seemed to me that here was the criticism of the future, and that this was a bold new step into a lively and enjoyable area of textual criticism. Now it seems like cultural/textual criticism of this kind had its moment, but did not really become prominent, and instead identity-based approaches became the dominant approach. I could very well be wrong about that. I am not an academic (although I did have some academic training), and I have not followed the field closely enough to be able to say for sure.
The introductory essay is a good preface to what the editors are attempting here, it seems even to set up a considerably longer book, or perhaps series of books. This is followed by a strange choice for an opening essay ‑ an interview with one Donna Harraway, a bizarre feminist thinker who enjoys discussing technology from a wildly speculative point of view. She throws around trendy language and strange thoughts, with a clearly anti‑male bent, yet I have to admit that I found her willingness to forage into odd areas refreshing. Her specialty is the notion of cyborgs and what they may mean for humanity. This is followed by a piece by Valerie Hartouni concerning media debates on reproductive technologies (such as removing fetuses from dead mothers) which made for an interesting discussion, although from a rigidly feminist point of view. Following this was a 50 page history of AIDS treatments which read more like cultural criticism than medical and social history.
Then I came to the first piece that I really enjoyed, Andrew Ross's essay on the politics of computers, which was full of interesting information and insights. Co-editor Penley's article was next: a lively discussion of a bizarre phenomenon ‑ the spate of writings by female Star Trek fans on the imagined romance between Kirk and Spock, called K/S writing, or slash writing ‑ a weird business indeed, and Penley does a good job of exploring its implications and giving us a look into this subculture. Another fun topic is examined by Sandra Buckley in "Penguin in Bondage", which takes a look at the readily available (in Japan) pornographic Japanese comic book. Houston A. Baker then discusses rap music in an informal and enjoyable essay. DeeDee Halleck looks at the world of video, and the monolithic video culture (with references to the work of Lewis Mumford). Next is the most amusing of all, a description of a San Francisco-based slacker magazine called Processed World, a howl of alienation by the computer‑ridden temporary office worker with artistic hopes/pretensions, which is a world that I am all too well acquainted with.
Reebee Garofalo discusses rock events and pop music generally, followed by one of the best pieces in the book: "Black Box S‑Thetix" by Jim Pomeroy. Pomeroy delves into high tech art, taking a look at the general situation and then analyzing the work of several artists working in the field. The last piece is another enjoyable one, by Peter Fitting, a French professor with a thing for science fiction. He discusses cyberpunk SF, and gives the reader a good overview, with special attention paid to William Gibson.
At the time I read this it seemed to me that here was the criticism of the future, and that this was a bold new step into a lively and enjoyable area of textual criticism. Now it seems like cultural/textual criticism of this kind had its moment, but did not really become prominent, and instead identity-based approaches became the dominant approach. I could very well be wrong about that. I am not an academic (although I did have some academic training), and I have not followed the field closely enough to be able to say for sure.
June 12, 2015
Definitely suffers from uneven quality and is a bit dated. However, there are three pieces in here that really stand out to me:
"Hacking Away at the Counterculture" compares computer virus terminology with AIDS virus in interesting ways, examines cultural depictions of hackers as the good guys looking out for human freedoms, vs. political and academic responses to hackers (as terrorists etc). As an artifact of the late 80s and early 90s, this piece is especially interesting.
"Understanding Mega Events"provides a good critique of base/superstructure model and posits that many items not considered mass culture really are, and have political potential.
Finally, "Lessons from Cyberpunk" focuses primarily on Gibson's Neuromancer. Fitting argues that he breaks dichotomies common in SF like positive/negative views of the future and human v machine, and in doing so is effective at engaging with postmodernist ideas and elevating the genre.
"Hacking Away at the Counterculture" compares computer virus terminology with AIDS virus in interesting ways, examines cultural depictions of hackers as the good guys looking out for human freedoms, vs. political and academic responses to hackers (as terrorists etc). As an artifact of the late 80s and early 90s, this piece is especially interesting.
"Understanding Mega Events"provides a good critique of base/superstructure model and posits that many items not considered mass culture really are, and have political potential.
Finally, "Lessons from Cyberpunk" focuses primarily on Gibson's Neuromancer. Fitting argues that he breaks dichotomies common in SF like positive/negative views of the future and human v machine, and in doing so is effective at engaging with postmodernist ideas and elevating the genre.
January 6, 2016
Kind of outdated (its like 10 years old) to be used in a course imho.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews