Davin Heckman’s RetroTechnics

I am working on a new project for Culture Machine’s Liquid Books series.  Please drop in and contribute…

This project presumes that the University is in crisis and that this crisis has been caused by the social and economic characteristics of “Neoliberalism.”  I am far from the first person to identify this crisis.  I do, however, feel that it has not been addressed adequately or consistently.  And, I am certain that it cannot be adequately or consistently addressed but in a systemic way, by many people, in many settings, with many relationships to the University, through multiple attempts at critique and action.  As a result, this project belongs to Liquid Books, a free and open wiki-based publication.  While I believe in such things as the “Creative Commons,” this project does not belong to everyone, rather, it can belong only to those who hold it in common.  Possession of such a project is not simply a given, rather it can only be had by those who care to make it.  Thus, I invite readers to participate actively, to build it from the ground up.

As readers will note, this first chapter provides a bit of personal background, a bit of theory, and concludes with a proposal.  What comes next is entirely to be determined.  I am not an authority on the University.  I am only one person teaching at one school.  But I do hope that the limited information in this first chapter is provocative enough to generate additional content, some of which might be incorporated into this first chapter, but much of which will likely result in new chapters.   My personal goal with this project is not a unitary answer, but possible answers suggested by a multitude of theories and experiences that can move us beyond the grim prospect of our inert state.

As you read, think about what you might write, and let us give our answers to the question: Is Another University Possible?

Read More…

I have started a Gmail Group to discuss the works of Bernard Stiegler.   

http://groups.google.com/group/stiegler/

You’ll have to request permission to join the group and read our postings, mainly because we are using the group to get work done and I want to leave it up to individual writers to share the fruits of their labor.  But if you are interested in doing some reading and writing, please let me know.

Jason Nelson’s new game: I made this.  You play this.  We are enemies.

Jason Nelson and Davin Heckman’s Strange Hollows: 15 Uses for Microscopic Black Holes and Endings Eventually End.

Here’s the link to Unraveling Identity, which has recently been published in Ctheory.  After writing the article, I have started deepening my research into this area, so if you have comments, send me an email (you can find it here).

Read Mike DuBose’s review in Reconstruction.

Read Ann McLean’s review in M/C.

Thank you for reading my book!  Bigger thanks for writing something about it!

A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day is here!

If you caught my poster session at the MLA and want to know more about the project, here are some important links to enjoy:

epoetica <http://www.hyperrhiz.net/symposium/>

[This is the online poetry symposium which I presented at the conference.  In general, I feel like the project was a mixed bag, successful and unsuccessful in some surprising ways.  Overall, it was a worthwhile project, but future attempts will certainly require more informal communication and a greater sense of community.]

Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures <http://www.hyperrhiz.net/>

[Helen Burgess and the rest of the gang at Hyperrhiz were gracious enough to offer us the space and technical support for running the symposium.  Visit and contribute to Hyperrhiz because they support great work.]

The Electronic Literature Organization <http://eliterature.org/>

[The ELO is the definitive professional group for those interested in electronic forms of literary expression.  I recieved Susan Schreibman’s CFP which inspired the project through the ELO’s mailing list.  And, I have met many supportive colleagues and collaborators.]

Personal Websites of Project Participants:

Jason Nelson, Craig Saper, Helen Burgess, and Zephyr Pfotehnauer. 

Call for papers - LEA New Media Subversion
Editors: Davin Heckman and Hai Ren

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (ISSN No: 1071-4391) is inviting papers and artworks that address aspects of “Subversion” in the era of New Media.

In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey defines “Neoliberalism” as the idea that “the social good will be maximized” by “bring[ing] all human action into the domain of the market” (3). Harvey continues, explaining that  Neoliberalism “requires technologies of information creation and capacities to accumulate, store, transfer, analyse, and use massive databases to guide decisions in the global marketplace” (3).  In other words, new models of liberty are tied to new technologies and new economic practices.

The avant-garde tradition in the arts, on the other hand, prides itself in its ability to resist, critique, and subvert the dominant order.  Art’s most tepid manifestations provide flights of fancy, its most radical manifestations call for revolution.   But in the age of Neoliberalism, what restrictions does art aim to subvert?  What liberty does it hope to achieve?  What strategies and tactics might it employ in pursuit of its goals?

This special issue of LEA aims to explore opportunities for and obstacles to subversion in the age of New Media.

Read the rest of the article »

My book, A Small World: Smart Houses and the Dream of the Perfect Day is tentatively scheduled for publication in early 2008 (January or February) by Duke University Press.  It’s my first book, so I am pretty excited.  You can email me if you want to know more.

With the rise of consumer culture, the advent of “postmodernism,” and the emergence of the information economy, the American home has undergone a transformation. From being a site of production, where good citizens are made and middle class values reproduced, to being a site of consumption, where media is consumed and lifestyles adopted; the dream house has been replaced with the “smart home,” enriching itself and its users through interactive processes of information exchange. Embarking on a discussion of industrial developments during the early Twentieth Century and the introduction of electric appliances and scientific management into the space of the home as a technique of “time management,” continuing through the postwar emergence of the digital computer and the advent of electronic household appliances and the space age “house of tomorrow,” and culminating in the automated house of today, the smart home, this book considers the home within the context lifestyle and consumer narratives.

Building on the tension between agency and control that are exist within the walls of the smart home, this project engages existing ethicopolitical debates about lifestyle and consumer culture, posthumanism and rights under the destabilizing influences of consumer technologies, and the utopian/dystopian potential of New Media forms. Considering interactivity as a refinement of disciplinary form, even as it liberates subjects from the constraints of more static media, this book concludes by introducing the concept of “the Perfect Day,” or, a technosocial attempt to institutionalize everyday life as the ultimate consumer practice and to remove or avoid undesired ethical impediments to the realization of the self in the consumer world.