Before the emergence of internet governance bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Nam... more Before the emergence of internet governance bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), early network designers learned how to govern the internet in their work building the Domain Name System (DNS). Using original archival research, this article follows conversations among network designers in their daily struggle to keep the Advanced Research Project Agency Network (ARPANET) and early internet in working order. Drawing from social constructivism and path dependence theory, this history helps to conceive " internet governance " beyond its institutional focus, considering how the work of ordering the internet necessarily exceeds the parameters of governance authorities.
Scholarship on digital identity has historically reflected a Protean discourse, framing arguments... more Scholarship on digital identity has historically reflected a Protean discourse, framing arguments in terms of fluidity and constraint. After explicating the Protean discourse that has framed critical approaches to digital identity, this article exposes how the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in order to justify its centralized authority of the Domain Name System, itself mobilizes a Protean discourse, representing digital identity as a finite supply of water in need of proper management. From its formation in 1998 until 2009, when the US Department of Commerce effectively released the corporation from its official supervision, ICANN assembled a regime for the management of digital identity, which is itself an infrastructure for a global identity industry. By adopting an infrastructural disposition, this article situates global Internet governance in relation to the academic corpus on digital identity, interrogating the discursive conditions by which we have come to understand ourselves in relation to the Internet's most basic addressing schema, the enclosures within which all virtual communities congregate.
How do policymakers and governments effectively safeguard digital privacy in the cloud? How do go... more How do policymakers and governments effectively safeguard digital privacy in the cloud? How do governments protect data stored in “the cloud” in a policy landscape that is simultaneously local, national, and global? In this article, we examine what we term “the privacy ecosystem”—the extensive global network of infrastructure, policies, legal rights, and cultural preferences that create privacy affordances for our digital information stored remotely. With these questions in mind, we look at some of the differing regulatory strategies of the European Union and United States, and the resulting contrast between policies governing privacy in the digital space.
Since the world saw proof of US and UK digital surveillance practices, the Internet has been imag... more Since the world saw proof of US and UK digital surveillance practices, the Internet has been imagined in public discourse not so much as a digital frontier than as a strictly delimited identity management system. While it is no doubt productive to think about this political crisis in terms of the Internet’s post-1968 countercultural history, that history is itself embedded within a larger intellectual history of mathematical logic. By taking a detour through the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, this article examines the historical basis for a cyberspace of identity.
In vivo, in silico: Ark Codex ± 0 and the vital forms of bookwork abStract This article examines ... more In vivo, in silico: Ark Codex ± 0 and the vital forms of bookwork abStract This article examines a central aspect of bookishness in the digital age, wherein the coexistence of paper codices along with their electronic counterparts fosters the interaction of life and code, as code is the inscription of life, and life the instantiation of code. Ark Codex ± 0 exemplifies this feedback loop. Ark Codex ± 0 traces the development of biological organisms through scientific notation, language and math, all while illustrating a bloody collage of the biblical myth. The Calamari Press, its vanity publisher, situates itself as a codex-maker in a time of digital production by privileging the book form over the digital file, while simultaneously fostering a print culture through digital paratexts, such as videos of the production process, on its website. While you can purchase the book for $40 on the Calamari site, a pdf of Ark Codex ± 0 is also offered at a 'pay what you want rate'. Ark Codex ± 0 is a remix with multiple channels of distribution, a text you encounter in multiple ways. This article argues that the new environment of print culture elicits not only the act of reading, but an embodied encounter with the text both in vivo and in silico, the vital forms of bookwork in the digital age. Ark Codex ± 0 (Anon. 2012) is indescribable. One critic called it 'a deformed retelling of Noah's Ark, mashed together with math and feedback loops and blood' (Butler 2012). True enough, yet such a description still leaves the
Before the emergence of internet governance bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Nam... more Before the emergence of internet governance bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), early network designers learned how to govern the internet in their work building the Domain Name System (DNS). Using original archival research, this article follows conversations among network designers in their daily struggle to keep the Advanced Research Project Agency Network (ARPANET) and early internet in working order. Drawing from social constructivism and path dependence theory, this history helps to conceive " internet governance " beyond its institutional focus, considering how the work of ordering the internet necessarily exceeds the parameters of governance authorities.
Scholarship on digital identity has historically reflected a Protean discourse, framing arguments... more Scholarship on digital identity has historically reflected a Protean discourse, framing arguments in terms of fluidity and constraint. After explicating the Protean discourse that has framed critical approaches to digital identity, this article exposes how the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), in order to justify its centralized authority of the Domain Name System, itself mobilizes a Protean discourse, representing digital identity as a finite supply of water in need of proper management. From its formation in 1998 until 2009, when the US Department of Commerce effectively released the corporation from its official supervision, ICANN assembled a regime for the management of digital identity, which is itself an infrastructure for a global identity industry. By adopting an infrastructural disposition, this article situates global Internet governance in relation to the academic corpus on digital identity, interrogating the discursive conditions by which we have come to understand ourselves in relation to the Internet's most basic addressing schema, the enclosures within which all virtual communities congregate.
How do policymakers and governments effectively safeguard digital privacy in the cloud? How do go... more How do policymakers and governments effectively safeguard digital privacy in the cloud? How do governments protect data stored in “the cloud” in a policy landscape that is simultaneously local, national, and global? In this article, we examine what we term “the privacy ecosystem”—the extensive global network of infrastructure, policies, legal rights, and cultural preferences that create privacy affordances for our digital information stored remotely. With these questions in mind, we look at some of the differing regulatory strategies of the European Union and United States, and the resulting contrast between policies governing privacy in the digital space.
Since the world saw proof of US and UK digital surveillance practices, the Internet has been imag... more Since the world saw proof of US and UK digital surveillance practices, the Internet has been imagined in public discourse not so much as a digital frontier than as a strictly delimited identity management system. While it is no doubt productive to think about this political crisis in terms of the Internet’s post-1968 countercultural history, that history is itself embedded within a larger intellectual history of mathematical logic. By taking a detour through the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, this article examines the historical basis for a cyberspace of identity.
In vivo, in silico: Ark Codex ± 0 and the vital forms of bookwork abStract This article examines ... more In vivo, in silico: Ark Codex ± 0 and the vital forms of bookwork abStract This article examines a central aspect of bookishness in the digital age, wherein the coexistence of paper codices along with their electronic counterparts fosters the interaction of life and code, as code is the inscription of life, and life the instantiation of code. Ark Codex ± 0 exemplifies this feedback loop. Ark Codex ± 0 traces the development of biological organisms through scientific notation, language and math, all while illustrating a bloody collage of the biblical myth. The Calamari Press, its vanity publisher, situates itself as a codex-maker in a time of digital production by privileging the book form over the digital file, while simultaneously fostering a print culture through digital paratexts, such as videos of the production process, on its website. While you can purchase the book for $40 on the Calamari site, a pdf of Ark Codex ± 0 is also offered at a 'pay what you want rate'. Ark Codex ± 0 is a remix with multiple channels of distribution, a text you encounter in multiple ways. This article argues that the new environment of print culture elicits not only the act of reading, but an embodied encounter with the text both in vivo and in silico, the vital forms of bookwork in the digital age. Ark Codex ± 0 (Anon. 2012) is indescribable. One critic called it 'a deformed retelling of Noah's Ark, mashed together with math and feedback loops and blood' (Butler 2012). True enough, yet such a description still leaves the
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Papers by Steven Malcic
Union and United States, and the resulting contrast between policies governing
privacy in the digital space.
that history is itself embedded within a larger intellectual history of mathematical logic. By taking a detour through the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, this article examines the historical basis for a cyberspace of identity.
Union and United States, and the resulting contrast between policies governing
privacy in the digital space.
that history is itself embedded within a larger intellectual history of mathematical logic. By taking a detour through the emergence of computer science as an academic discipline, this article examines the historical basis for a cyberspace of identity.