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War Driving in Lhasa Vegas
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by
Oxblood Ruffin
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published
Aug 17, 2015
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last modified
Aug 17, 2015 08:19 AM
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filed under:
Histories of Internet,
RAW Blog
This post by Oxblood Ruffin is part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series. Oxblood Ruffin is a hacktivist and film maker. He joined the CULT OF THE DEAD COW in 1996 as its Foreign Minister. Colonel Ruffin is co-author of the Hacktivismo Enhanced Source Software Licencse Agreement (HESSLA), network curmudgeon, and line cook. He will publish a book on information warfare in 2016. In this essay, Colonel Ruffin traces the history of Internet access in Dharamsala, and the factors at play in shaping it - mundane and maverick, familiar and outlier.
Located in
RAW
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The Last Cultural Mile
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by
kaeru
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published
Dec 09, 2011
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last modified
Apr 03, 2015 10:59 AM
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filed under:
Digital Governance,
Internet Histories,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Publications
Ashish’s monograph follows the career of a priori contradiction, one that only mandates a state mechanism to perform an act of delivery, and then disqualifies the state from performing that very act effectively. This contradiction which he names as the Last Mile problem is a conceptual hurdle, not a physical one and when put one way, the Last Mile is unbridgeable, when put another, it is being bridged all the time.
Located in
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Blogs
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The Last Cultural Mile
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Porn: Law, Video, Technology
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by
Namita A Malhotra
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published
Sep 28, 2011
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last modified
Apr 14, 2015 12:43 PM
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filed under:
Researchers at Work,
Histories of Internet,
RAW Publications,
Publications
Namita Malhotra’s monograph on Pornography and Pleasure is possibly the first Indian reflection and review of its kind. It draws aside the purdah that pornography has become – the forbidden object as well as the thing that prevents you from looking at it – and fingers its constituent threads and textures.
Located in
RAW
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Histories of the Internet
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Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities
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by
Pratyush Shankar
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published
Sep 28, 2011
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last modified
Jun 29, 2016 09:41 AM
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filed under:
The Spaces of Digital,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Publications
The monograph on Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities, by Pratyush Shankar, is an entry into debates around making of IT Cities and public planning policies that regulate and restructure the city spaces in India with the emergence of Internet technologies. Going beyond the regular debates on the modern urban, the monograph deploys a team of students from the field of architecture and urban design to investigate how city spaces – the material as well as the experiential – are changing under the rubric of digital globalisation. Placing his inquiry in the built form, Shankar manoeuvres discourse from architecture, design, cultural studies and urban geography to look at the notions of cyber-publics, digital spaces, and planning policy in India. The findings show that the relationship between cities and cyberspaces need to be seen as located in a dynamic set of negotiations and not as a mere infrastructure question. It dismantles the presumptions that have informed public and city planning in the country by producing alternative futures of users’ interaction and mapping of the emerging city spaces.
Located in
RAW
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Histories of the Internet
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Re:Wiring Bodies
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by
Asha Achuthan
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published
Sep 28, 2011
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last modified
Apr 14, 2015 12:49 PM
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filed under:
RAW Publications,
Internet Histories,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Publications
Asha Achuthan initiates a historical research inquiry to understand the ways in which gendered bodies are shaped by the Internet imaginaries in contemporary India. Tracing the history from nationalist debates between Gandhi and Tagore to the neo-liberal perspective based knowledge produced by feminists like Martha Nussbaum; Asha’s research offers a unique entry point into cyberculture studies through a feminist epistemology of science and technology. The monograph establishes that there is a certain pre-history to the Internet that needs to be unpacked in order to understand the digital interventions on the body in a range of fields from social sciences theory to medical health practices to technology and science policy in the country.
Located in
RAW
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Histories of the Internet
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Archives and Access
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by
Prasad Krishna
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published
Sep 22, 2011
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last modified
Apr 17, 2015 11:06 AM
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filed under:
RAW Publications,
Publications,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Internet Histories,
Archives
The monograph by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, is a material history of the Internet archives. It examines the role of the archivist and the changing relationship between the state and private archives for looking at the politics of subversion, preservation and value of archiving. By examining the Tamil Nadu and Goa state archives, along with the larger public and state archives in the country, the monograph looks at the materiality of archiving, the ambitions and aspirations of an archive, and why it is necessary to preserve archives, not as historical artefacts but as living interactive spaces of memory and remembrance. The findings have direct implications on various government and market impulses to digitise archives and show a clear link between opening up archives and other knowledge sources for breathing life into local and alternative histories.
Located in
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Blogs
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Archive and Access
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We, the Cyborgs: Challenges for the Future of being Human
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by
kaeru
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published
Aug 02, 2011
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last modified
Apr 06, 2015 03:48 PM
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filed under:
Cyborgs,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Internet Histories
The Cyborg - a cybernetique organism which is a combination of the biological and the technological – has been at the centre of discourse around digital technologies. Especially with wearable computing and ubiquitous access to the digital world, there has been an increased concern that very ways in which we understand questions of life, human body and the presence and role of technologies in our worlds, are changing. In just the last few years, we have seen extraordinary measures – the successful production of synthetic bacteria, artificial intelligence that can be programmed to simulate human conditions like empathy and temperament, and massive mobilisation of people around the world, to fight against the injustices and inequities of their immediate environments.
Located in
RAW
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Histories of the Internet
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Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities - A Call for Peer Review
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by
Prasad Krishna
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published
Feb 14, 2011
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last modified
Apr 06, 2015 03:52 PM
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filed under:
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work,
Internet Histories
Pratyush Shankar's research project on "Internet, Society & Space in Indian Cities" is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. His monograph explores the trajectories of transformation and perception of cities in India in context with the rise of Information Technologies for communication and presence of an active digital space.
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Blogs
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Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities
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The Leap of Rhodes or, How India Dealt with the Last Mile Problem - An Inquiry into Technology and Governance: Call for Review
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by
Prasad Krishna
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published
Dec 14, 2010
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last modified
Apr 03, 2015 10:55 AM
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filed under:
Researchers at Work,
Histories of Internet,
Internet Studies
Re-thinking the Last Mile Problem research project by Ashish Rajadhyaksha is a part of the Researchers @ Work Programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. The ‘last mile’ is a communications term which has a specific Indian variant, where technology has been mapped onto developmentalist–democratic priorities which have propelled communications technologies since at least the invention of radio in the 1940s. For at least 50 years now, the ‘last mile’ has become a mode of a techno-democracy, where connectivity has been directly translated into democratic citizenship. It has provided rationale for successive technological developments, and produced an assumption that the final frontier was just around the corner and that Internet technologies now carry the same burden of breaching that last major barrier to produce a techno-nation. The project has fed into many different activities in teaching, in examining processes of governance and in looking at user behaviour.
Located in
RAW
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Blogs
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The Last Cultural Mile
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Attentional Capital in Online Gaming : The Currency of Survival
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by
Prasad Krishna
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published
Aug 25, 2010
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last modified
Apr 03, 2015 10:46 AM
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filed under:
Gaming,
Gaming Economy,
Internet Histories,
Histories of Internet,
Researchers at Work
This blog post by Arun Menon discusses the concepts of production, labour and race in virtual worlds and their influence on the production of attention as a currency. An attempt is made to locate attentional capital, attentional repositories and attention currencies within gaming to examine 'attention currencies and its trade and transactions in virtual worlds. A minimal collection of attention currencies are placed as central and as a pre-requisite for survival in MMOs in much the same way that real currency become a necessity for survival. The approach is to locate attentional capital through different perspectives as well as examine a few concepts around virtual worlds.
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Blogs
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Gaming and Gold
