When Technocultures Collide: Innovation from Below and the Struggle for Autonomy

By Gary Genosko

When Technocultures Collide provides rich and diverse studies of collision courses between technologically inspired subcultures and the corporate and governmental entities they seek to undermine. The adventures and exploits of computer hackers, phone phreaks, urban explorers, calculator and computer collectors, “CrackBerry” users, whistle-blowers, Yippies, zinsters, roulette cheats, chess geeks, and a range of losers and tinkerers feature prominently in this volume. Gary Genosko analyzes these practices for their remarkable diversity and their innovation and leaps of imagination. He assesses the results of a number of operations, including the Canadian stories of Mafiaboy, Jeff Chapman of Infiltration, and BlackBerry users.

The author provides critical accounts of highly specialized attributes, such as the prospects of deterritorialized computer mice and big toe computing, the role of electrical grid hacks in urban technopolitics, and whether info-addiction and depression contribute to tactical resistance. Beyond resistance, however, the goal of this work is to find examples of technocultural autonomy in the minor and marginal cultural productions of small cultures, ethico-poetic diversions, and sustainable withdrawals with genuine therapeutic potential to surpass accumulation, debt, and competition. The dangers and joys of these struggles for autonomy are underlined in studies of RIM’s BlackBerry and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Release date: Oct 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781554588985

Gary Genosko

Gary Genosko is currently Canada Research Chair in Technoculture at Lakehead University in Canada. He is the author of several books on Felix Guattari, including Felix Guattari (Pluto, 2009).

Reviews for When Technocultures Collide

[davidwineberg · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is confused. It gives the impression – from the title and the Guy Fawkes character on the cover – that it will be about subversive dissent using technology in innovative ways. Leveraging technology the way the mainstream wishes you hadn’t. Or couldn’t.But this is not what the book is about at all.Genosko takes mostly minor players who didn’t accomplish much, and uses them to show a pattern of “weakness and failure”. I don’t know what he expected, but I appreciate any sort of attempt at innovation because you never know where it might lead. I particularly liked phone phreaking in its day, because it put the blind front and center for their 15 minutes of fame and respect (and employment). Allowing mass live chats by everyone phoning the same numbers at the same time was brilliant. I met many people that way. It was the rave invitation of the 70s. Subversive, illegal of course, and great, totally harmless fun.In “Hacking the Grid”, Genosko makes the simple mistake of greed vs good. In internet hacks, there is no immediate gain for the hacker. Same for urban explorers; their wanderings profit no one and are interesting at all only to a tiny subset of readers. Whistleblowers not only don’t profit, theyface persecution. Hacking your electric meter though, is straight theft for immediate personal gain. It doesn’t belong in the same book.But the most confusion comes from the first chapter, lovingly dedicated to the (non existent) toe mouse. That a computer mouse manipulated by a toe would free our two hands is interesting, but hardly the leadoff for a book called“When Technocultures Collide”. It gets plenty of play in the (endless, dense) intro, and the conclusion too. It’s important, I guess.At the other end he goes on at length about whistleblowing, without ever mentioning Edward Snowden. This is like profiling Hitler without ever mentioning World War II. Lots of Manning,Assange, even Ellsberg, but no Snowden. I guess he was just another failure in Genosko’s terms. Or maybe Snowden was a success and would ruin the flow. He never breathes the name, so we’ll never know.I’m not sure why anyone should buy this book. Its conclusions are weak and negative. There’s nothing to take away, no discovery to cite.There are no collisions of technocultures. David Wineberg