Failed ARST Proposal

For my first entry, I want to post up an extended abstract that I submitted for the ARST pre-conference at NCA later this year. The abstract wasn't accepted. I'd like to think the rejection is at least partially due to the fact that the thesis doesn't closely fit the theme of the pre-conference workshop, which emphasizes questions about "environment." However, I recognize that there are also enough problems with these hastily assembled paragraphs to warrant its omission.

The key question here is: To what extent can the notion of technological determinism be problematized by a rhetorical theory of aesthetics? That is, how might we think about how the aesthetic elements of a technology shape rhetorical processes (uptake, argument, criticism, etc.)? Is it possible to replace determinist logics with a non-determinsit view of how aesthetics function culturally?

Of course one of the problems with the abstract below is that I never state these questions as straightforwardly as I have here. In any case, here's what was running through my mind in early March. Should this post find interested readers, I'd welcome your comments.

EXTENDED ABSTRACT:
War and Digital Aesthetics: The Military Roots of Information Communication Technologies

“The Internet is of military origin and has military purposes. In the field of information it plays more or less the same role as the jamming of enemy broadcasts in earlier world conflicts.” - Paul Virilio, Strategy of Deception

The ubiquity of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) at the outset of the 21^st Century is well documented; in countries across the world there exists both a widespread usage and continual high demand for the newest and best in digital technologies. As more human communication is mediated through digital technologies, communication scholars have taken notice. A quick glance at recent conference programs or journal article indexes reveals the increasing attention paid to scholarship addressing the internet, GPS systems, cell phones, video games, PDAs, email, biotechnology, and similar technological advances. Importantly, the research in communication studies extends across the discipline; quantitative, qualitative, and critical methods have been used to engage ICTs by experts in interpersonal and small group communication, media studies and mass communication, rhetoric, and everything in between. In fact, it is the very ubiquity of the technology that seems to make ITC so well suited to the inter-disciplinary character of Communication Studies.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the current proliferation of ICTs is relatively recent. Those devices which we now associate with daily communication were not always available for a large public audience. Instead, many of the same technologies that we now use to call family members or communicate with college friends were once developed for military use. And while changes in end-user features, aesthetic appearances, technological capabilities, and so on have produced consumer versions of military machines, the initial and ongoing development of many types of ICTs as tools for more efficient military attacks and/or defense is a legacy that continues to shape civilian engagement with these technologies. In other words, our use of the internet, GPS, and the like as consumer products cannot and should not be dissociated from the original military uses of these same technologies.

Exactly what the consequences of this legacy might be is the subject of this essay. In brief, I will argue that when military communication technologies are re-envisioned, sold, and used as consumer products, civilian populations must find ways to adapt the militaristic aspects of these technologies to everyday life. I want to suggest that the result of this process is human communication that still partially reflects a militaristic view of the world. More specifically, the militaristic origins of many ICTs end up shaping the strategies adopted by institutional and non-institutional (or anti-institutional) political groups. What Paul Virilio refers to as the increasing “authority of machines” in politics is observable; knowing the history of these machines is important to understand how they might function.

More specifically, this essay takes as a point of departure the question of how our view of the contemporary political environment, one marked by digital technologies, is shaped by the adoption and adaptation of military machines to mediate many of our daily discursive interactions.

I will begin by briefly discussing the origins of several specific types of ICTs as development projects by the American military-industrial complex. Here, I will highlight the features of the technologies that made them significant military advances. In other words, I will discuss the military justifications for the development of satellite and cellular technology, email and the internet, and various forms of encryption; each of these advances contribute more efficient and successful of military operations. Following the work of Paul Virilio, I discuss how these technologies produce a corresponding aesthetic, one that shapes a user’s perspective of the enemy, the battlefield, and more broadly, the world as a whole.

Second, the paper moves to discuss the impact on political discourses as these technologies move into the public sector and private lives. That is, I track what I argue to be a series of shifts in perception that can be fruitfully read in and against the spread of those ICTs discussed above. Drawing on Jonathan Crary’s work on the relationship between subjectivity and technologies of perception and rhetorical studies scholarship addressing aesthetics, the essay argues that our view of the possibilities of political agency in or through new media technologies are closely aligned to their military development.

An obvious trap here is one of technological determinism; it is tempting to make the argument that new technologies are solely or primarily responsible for our shift in understanding the world around us. The essay attempts to escape this trap by constantly pushing against the tendency of drawing a line straight from technology to political action. Instead, it attempts to problematize this kind of approach by reading the rhetorical construction of digital aesthetics as one tied to a number of cultural sites, including but not limited to the history of military action and technological innovation.