I believe I have finally discovered the crux of my problems with the fundamental arguments with my dissertation. It is my hope that if I can work through this, I will be able to finally establish a structure and flow that enables me to write a solid amount and possibly … FINISH.

In my initial writings I had laid the groundworks of my dissertation around the premise that our REALITY is in part informed by our understanding and relations to SPACE. Our experiences of space are being changed because we are now living in technologically enhanced lives. My hope was that we can in fact alter our everyday usages of space, and create better ones. This was in part a call for Temporary Autonomous Zones a la Hakim Bey.

During the past year, in hiatus from writing, I have been gravitating toward what I lamely coin “party tech”, essentially how technology and the technologically enhanced can be integrated into and reinvent contemporary urban festivies. As I return to writing full time, my concern was how this work really integrates with my prior work in mobile. I have always felt that the two were somehow intertwined, but never fully put the two together.

Today I reflected on a statement my advisor Eugene Thacker had made to me, that my work is partially based around community. To be frank, I hear community and think hippy, and run far far away screaming. However, there is obviously something to this as it relates to parties. Understanding that parties are indeed temporary communities, then what is it that attracts me to them.

SWARMS/HIVES/COLLECTIVES.

I recently did a lecture series on the Avant Garde and Parties at a variety of colleges and universities in California as part of the Eyebeam Roadshow. The thesis to my lecture is that the act of partying was integral to the development of new work in the Avant Garde. I make some loose connections between Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow theory and the sort of phenomenon that occurs in groups at parties. This is a phenomenon that I continually observe at my parties, but am not 100% sure exactly what it is. People act more in unison, there is a “vibe”, etc. And this is where the connection between parties and mobile networks seem to intersect on the trajectories of my interests.

So the issue of being continually connected is important to my thesis. I think that it is sort of a meta-categories to the affordances and problems that are encountered, encapsulated by connectivity.

There are two other sort of meta-categories: perceptual reality and computation. Perceptual Reality is the influence that pervasive tech has on our perception. Computation is the ability to have an always on computer with us, aiding in everyday tasks. Both of these meta-categories are important in analyzing shifts to our everyday lives.

INVOKING ALTERNATIVES

The topic of my dissertation is to assert that intervention and bottom up action has changed in the pervasive network society. That instead of creating oppositions and protests to the powers that be, it has become far more effective to create alternatives. for instance peer to peer distribution networks provided alternative methods of media distribution. Open Source provides alternative economical models for technology development.

In the realms of intervening and challenging the everyday, a school with its roots in the avant garde, this means using pervasive technologies to create alternatives to everyday life. This is a point that I’m still not quite sure what I want to suggest. There are resources and tactics available. But this should not be a manual for contemporary intervention.

What my dissertation can be is an overview to the problem set of urban engagement in the pervasive network society. It can provide a historical reference of the avant garde and their strategies against the everyday and modernism. However, I am at a loss when it gets to the contemporary. Should I provide examples of pervasive tech? Of interventionists and political action?

I would LIKE to write about interesting issues in the field, such as the need for standardization in location based media. But I am not sure what it would be to create a scholarly contribution in this area.

SOCIOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

There is a secondary problem with my thesis, that I uncovered when I tried to reinsert connectivity into the picture. My thoughts on space are based around where technology is heading, not where it currently is. Wearing headsup displays, having remote tactility, control via brain waves are things that I experience in the labs at tech schools, but they are not yet everyday experiences.

Since my thesis is in part sociological, I believe that were I to continue evaluating the usage of future tech, I would be mostly SPECULATING. Yet, as I write 60% of all humans are connected to each other and a plethora of devices via mobile networks. There is a vast amount of information relating to issues in the Network Society. In short, by focusing on connectivity, I can write on our contemporary situation, and reserve my speculation on the future to the conclusion.

I still need to see how this sits a new outline. I think a lot of my work can be integrated into this format. However, I am not sure what this means in terms of new research, something my committee will likely frown upon.