Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT Press)

"Excellent synthesis of a number of important topics. The first 100 pages are amazing." according to 7Excellent synthesis of a number of important topics. The first 100 pages are amazing. 740 W. The first 100 pages tie together a number of important concepts and idea, including sovereignty, habit formation, data capture vs surveillance,as well as some historical perspectives that, even though I have lived through them, have been long forgotten (remember Pokemon Go?).I think she is arguing that we need to create new norms (and laws) which allow us to thrive with the newer media, much like we did with mail tampering and wire tapping laws in previous generations. Just not sure how to do this.Attached is a photo of the number of page folds I made in the book - which means I want to go back and refer to . 0 W.. The first 100 pages tie together a number of important concepts and idea, including sovereignty, habit formation, data capture vs surveillance,as well as some historical perspectives that, even though I have lived through them, have been long forgotten (remember Pokemon Go?).I think she is arguing that we need to create new norms (and laws) which allow us to thrive with the newer media, much like we did with mail tampering and wire tapping laws in previous generations. Just not sure how to do this.Attached is a photo of the number of page folds I made in the book - which means I want to go back and refer to . Great look at today's trends in the networked society KF6GPE Chun presents a fast-paced and well thought out analysis of some of the leading trends in today's network society, backed both by current events and thinking in media theory.I especially appreciated her formulation of Habit + Crisis = Update, a look at how in today's online media we have moved from the reporting of news and catastrophes to a state of constant crisis driving endless calls for action and updates. It captures my (not nearly so clear) experiences very well, and she articulates her case for the model very well.If you're used to STEM-style writing, some of Chun's analogies and connections may be a

She is the author of Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics and Programmed Visions: Software and Memory, both published by the MIT Press. . Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, who has studied both systems design and English literature, is Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University

Networks have been central to the emergence of neoliberalism, replacing "society" with groupings of individuals and connectable "YOUS." (For isn't "new media" actually "NYOU media"?) Habit is central to the inversion of privacy and publicity that drives neoliberalism and networks. But what do we miss in this constant push to the future? In Updating to Remain the Same, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun suggests another approach, arguing that our media matter most when they seem not to matter at all -- when they have moved from "new" to habitual. Meanwhile, analytic, creative, and commercial efforts focus exclusively on the next big thing: figuring out what will spread and who will spread it the fastest. Smart phones, for example, no longer amaze, but they increasingly structure and monitor our lives. Through habits, Chun says, new media become embedded in our lives -- indeed, we become our machines: we stream, update, capture, upload, link, save, trash, and troll. Chun links habits to the rise of ne

(N. Katherine Hayles, James B. The key to this transformation is that we have become both habituated to and inhabitants of new media. The update, Chun argues, is central to creating new habits of dependency at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. Instead, she digs deep into the meaning of our digital habits, showing how the productive, generative everydayness of the habitual gets corroded in so much of new media into a pervasive sense of addictive updating to cope with threats -- condensed in her formula habit + crisis = update. (Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor in History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University)In Updating to Remain the Same Wendy Chun offers a provocative analysis of how the internet, once praised as an anonymous, utopian space of the mind, has by the late 2010s become a space of total surveillance and privatized social media. Just when we thought there was nothing new to say about the internet, Wendy Hui Kyong Chun a