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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Beyond the Look of Age : The Eeriness of Early Digital Archives
- 2017
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Scholars in the humanities are increasingly using digital archives to do their work. Digital information is typically devoid of traces of use as well as the common signs of aging that we associate with physical things exposed to time. If we access archive materials on, say, floppy disks from the early 1980:s to study a computer game or a word processing document what we see on the screen is a new production of old files, not unlike a theatre ensemble performing a classic play. Old in one sense, new in another. Any vintage equipment used in the process may, of course, be dented and faded, the subject matter, cultural references, writing style, artistic design, technical limitations and so on will surely indicate time gone by. Hence, in the example above we would intellectually perfectly well recognize that we are working with material from the early days of personal computing by these marks of antiquity as David Lowenthal has called them. But the files displayed on the screen – be they symbols of the interface, a spreadsheet, a personal letter, items in the trashcan – will reveal no look of age. As archival materials from the late 20th century are coming within range of historical interest – an increasing number of scholars will experience the eeriness of a blinking cursor at the end of forty year old archival documents, awaiting further input as if last worked on forty seconds ago. This, I would argue, is an up until now scarcely considered aspect of digital archives. If the old documents we study in some respects look new, unused (or somehow beyond time, aging or decay) – does it matter?
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Data Exhaust in 1970s Biopolitics
- 2019
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We are used to think of labor and laboring bodies as being exhausted by the market and media both. But I wish to discuss another aspect of the term, namely that which is being released from the "exhaust system" itself – data. Building on two recent lectures sponsored by the Yale German Department by Nick Couldry on data colonialism and Leif Weatherby on data capital, I wish to bring a historical perspective to the notion of data as having an intrinsic value and, at the same time, being a trail of wastage; the exhaust of organic or machinic processing. Looking at how data was managed in 1970s environmental research and government administration, I argue that the figure of recycling served a key role in turning destructive processes into dynamic circles of regeneration. Using computer software to model citizens and the natural environment as patterns of information, these repositories of data came to be regarded as artificial ecosystems where erasure had no place. As the environment became data and data become an environment, the statistical value of wastage trails demanded their inclusion into recycling processes. As data, the exhausts of organisms and technical objects were no longer subject to decay or erasure. This can be seen as the beginning of a period where the mess we leave behind as we maneuver in the world – our data exhaust – is of higher value than any labor we might carry out. In this paradigm, we ourselves and the environment we inhabit are sources of data generation. According to this view, to erase data – the "natural" exhaust of the world – is to waste labor and destroy knowledge.
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Den upptagna rösten : Kassettbandets roll vid Foucaults Paris-föreläsningar och i hans Iran-reportage 1978
- 2015
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In: Lychnos. - 0076-1648. ; , s. 165-197
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In the fall of 1978 Michel Foucault went to Iran to study the revolutionary movements first handedly. Largely ignoring the scholarly debate regarding whether his observations were accurate, reasonable, embarrassing, critical, naïve, consistent or not, I wish instead to turn the attention of Foucault’s encounter with Iranian protests in a different direction. A closer study of Michel Foucault’s observations in Iran as published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della sera at the time will reveal his strong interest in the media technologies used in the revolutionary struggle. Foucault is particularly keen on tracking the informal infrastructures of cassette tape trading. He reports of an entire communications network based on cassette tapes and players with participants from commercial, religious and other social communities parallel to the government’s broadcasts. According to Foucault in 1978, these grass root technologies will ultimately determine the outcome of the revolution. To be sure, the usages of the cassette tape were no novelty to Michel Foucault. For years, his series of lectures at the Collège de France had been overcrowded not only with listeners but with tape players spinning on his desk by the dozen, like some intellectual counterpart to the bootlegging of rock music performances. In this article, I argue that Foucault did have something explicit to say about the power of media and that it was insightful yet limited in scope. In the process of this argument, I find it necessary not only to ask about the role of small media in political battle but also about the status of the lecture – taped or not – in the body of work of an author. From the vantage point of the compact cassette tape, I try to demonstrate how this technology ended up supporting profoundly different uses among activists and audiences in Paris and Iran in the seventies.
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Döden och författaren
- 2023
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In: Bildningsboxen no. 2. - Stockholm : Norstedts Förlag. ; , s. 5-64
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Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A chapter on the relationship between death and writing. Turning to the history of writing and supported by a number of readings of current authors, the tension between life's finality and the durability of writing is explored. If writing takes place in the face of death, is it to make its author part of an eternal canon or does he or she mainly write in order to understand the fact that life will end? Is writing a turning away from life to work in isolation or, is it a method to fully digest and come to terms with our condition?
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Environment, Privacy, History – Formation of the Data Landscape
- 2022
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- During the 1970s the problems of the environment and of the population were reframed in a manner that still much influences our conception of them. How to make sense of the interaction between forces of environmental pollution? How to uphold the privacy of individuals as the knowledge banks of governmental agencies were coordinated? In my doctoral disseratation Kretslopp av data [Cycles of Data] (Mediehistoriskt arkiv, 2021), I argue that we need to understand these problems – which superficially may seem far apart – as consequences of changes within data management. Beneath the political mobilization of environmental movements as well as the stormy debates of privacy during these years we find what I choose to call the infrastructures and cultural techniques of early digitalization. These, I argue, contributed to presenting the environment and the population as “data problems”. That, in turn, gave rise to a number of changes in administrative offices and state archives and the work carried out there. In my lecture I wish to highlight a few aspects of this development.
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Error in the Era of Artificial Intelligence
- 2022
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In: Paper presented at <em>The</em> <em>Berkeley Film & Media Seminar,</em> UC Berkeley, December 8, 2022.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this lecture I will present two studies. The first, which is a compressed version of my Ph.D. thesis, tells the history of how, in the 1960s and 70s, the environment and the population were turned into “problems of data” and how the cultural techniques to manage these areas – modeling, linking, and reuse – transformed the state’s perception of them as objects of knowledge. The second study is as an investigation of the history of artificial intelligence from the perspective of errors and mistakes. Not in the sense of failed AI projects or a general view of AI as a flawed undertaking, but as a study of how the notion of what constitutes a mistake has influenced what has counted as intelligence in humans and machines, respectively, during the first half century of AI work.
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Everything May Disappear, Nothing Must Be Discarded : The Recycling Trope On and Off Screen
- 2017
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In parallel with the wealthy part of the world becoming cycle-conscious and learning to sort waste, it has come to spend more and more time in front of computer screens. And even there we devote ourselves to arranging, sorting and throwing away. We clean our hard drives, delete memory cards and throw away junk mail. But what is the relationship between our digital cleaning practices and the trash can under the sink? The purpose of this study is to search for common patterns in the view of trash, dirt and abundance on and off the computer screen in Sweden during the last quarter of a century.
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- Fredrikzon, Johan, 1974-
(author)
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Fotot som blev hela mänsklighetens selfie
- 2017
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In: Svenska dagbladet. - 1101-2412.
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Journal article (pop. science, debate, etc.)abstract
- När vi kom till månen fick vi framför allt upp ögonen för – jorden. Det fotografi som Apollo 8-besättningen tog av ”jorduppgången” över månen julen 1968 blev en spegel såväl för mänsklighetens tekniska triumf som för planetens sårbarhet och vårt ansvar för dess framtid.
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