SPEED
AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY, MEDIA AND SOCIETY


http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~speed
email: _speed_@alishaw.ucsb.edu
CALL FOR PAPERS, October 1995
_SPEED_ provides a forum for the critical investigation of technology, media, and society. Our intention is to contribute toward a democratic discourse of technology and media, one that is always focused upon the material conditions of life that technologies and media constitute and demand, and yet does not lose sight of the power of ideas to change those conditions. We feel that as media of various kinds become more ubiquitous, what it means to live with and talk about a "medium" changes and expands, and so do the critical vocabularies of interpreting what those transformations indicate. Our primary goal in that effort is to foster a cross- fertilization of ideas between communities of people in the "academy" and "industry" too often separated, not by interest or common concern, but by artificially imposed disciplinary and organizational boundaries. We think that _SPEED_ is a promising step toward making these institutional boundaries more permeable, and a critical politics of "mediated sociality" more powerful.

Upcoming issues for which we are currently reviewing abstracts and submissions:

SPEED 1.3: AIRPORTS AND MALLS

Publicity, it seems, is always a matter of circulation. Likewise, circulation finds itself as a matter of publicity. What then is the circulation of publicity in a "private space," like a mall, or an airport? Where is the social located, if at all? Is it completely a matter of trajectory, velocity and disappearance; is it or is it not an even more sinister militarization of what used to be called the "civilian sector?" "Malls," whether near a highway off-ramp, or an "information superhighway" off-ramp, are more than architectural generica, they are nodes in the global circulation of commodities, culture and community. Malls as "places," are where some people go to be amongst the fruits of other people's invisible labor. "Airports" as "places," are where some people go to be themselves circulated amongst networks of global circulation, as the content of transportation-as-medium. We are currently reviewing abstracts for inclusion in a special transmission of _SPEED_ (non-fiction, fiction, both; www-specific projects encouraged) that will help answer some of these questions and conundrums.

SPEED 1.4: SPECIAL ISSUE: ON PAUL VIRILIO

We are currently reviewing abstracts and proposals for articles for a future transmission of _SPEED_ (WWW-specific projects encouraged) on the critical significance of the work of Paul Virilio. In extremely diverse arenas Virilio's cybernetic systems theory of the social has arranged the horizons of wildly unlikely moments of questioning. As his vision of interpretation/accusation crosses the spectrum of disciplinary knowledges (while being at "home" in none), we now hear literary critics speaking of the military origins of the city-state, newscasters phrasing a "Nintendo War," historians of science commenting on the phenomenology of electronic banking, architectural theorists conceiving "the velocity" of airport space, and computer industry professionals discussing the political history of the film projector. Certainly these peculiar arrangements are not to be entirely credited to (blamed on?) Virilio, but they do suggest that his vocabulary is significant beyond the relatively narrow concerns of a "Virilio Studies." We hope, therefore, to both interrogate and expand what it is possible to make "Virilio" say.


** TO SUBSCRIBE TO _SPEED_, send e-mail to _SPEED_@alishaw.ucsb.edu with "subscribe" in the subject header. In addition to receiving all future issues, you will be kept up to date on developments regarding the journal.
VERSION 1.2 "SCIENCE AND RE-ENCHANTMENT" INCLUDES:

BENJAMIN BRATTON (U.C. SANTA BARBARA) "INTRODUCTION: THE POLITICSAND POETICS OF THE FANTASTIC IN AN AGE OF MACHINES"

"TECHNO-PROSTHETICS AND EXTERIOR PRESENCE" A CONVERSATION WITH ALLUCQUERE ROSANNE STONE

AKIRA MIZUTA LIPPIT (U.N. LINCOLN) "THE DEAD EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES: TELEVISION, JAPAN, AND THE SUBJECT OF MULTIPLICITY"

SHELI AYERS (U.C. SANTA BARBARA) "VIRILE MAGIC: BATAILLE / BAUDELAIRE / BALLARD"

GALEN MEURER (EMORY UNIVERSITY) "DN2K"

"SEX ON A SILVER PLATTER" A CONVERSATION WITH MIKE SAENZ

LAURA GRINDSTAFF AND ROBERT NIDEFFER (U.C. SANTA BARBARA) "CUMING SOON ON CD-ROM: ON THE PROMISE AND THE PITFALLS OF 'VIRTUAL' PORNOGRAPHY"

ADAM ZARETSKY (U. SALZBURG) "ENDOSYMBIOTIC FORMATION OF ORGANELLES: THE SPIROCHETAL CASE"


EDITORIAL BOARD FOR _SPEED_1.2

Benjamin Bratton
Laura Grindstaff
Robert Nideffer

TECHNICAL IMPLEMENTATION

Gopher:

Robert Nideffer

World-Wide-Web:

Robert Nideffer

_SPEED_Links:

Benjamin Bratton

CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

Jason Brown
Robert Nideffer
Gabriel Watson
Adam Zaretsky

SOUND ENGINEERING

Ken Fields


HOW TO GET _SPEED_

_SPEED_ can be accessed and/or downloaded several different ways: 1) World-Wide-Web; 2) Anonymous ftp; or 3) Gopher.

1. To Get _SPEED_ via World-Wide-Web just open the following URL from within your favorite Web-browser: http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~speed

2. To get _SPEED_ via Anonymous ftp just type the following at your local prompt: ftp alishaw.ucsb.edu

--when asked for a login name type: anonymous

--when asked for a password type the first part of your e-mail address. For example: myname@nowhere.pcp

--change directories by typing: cd /pub/_SPEED_

--at the ftp> prompt you can type the normal "get" and "put" commands. For example: get _SPEED_1.2 (or: mget* to get the whole directory)

3. To get _SPEED_ via Gopher just type the following at your local prompt: gopher alishaw.ucsb.edu (you can also type in the IP address directly as follows: gopher 128.111.222.10)

Once there, you will see the familiar Gopher menu structure with _SPEED_ being one of your options. At that point you can choose to browse individual items, or mail them to yourself and/or others.

(You have to Gopher directly to us because the Social Science Computing Facility at U.C.S.B. where _SPEED_ is archived is not a registered Gopher server. That's why if you happen to be looking for _SPEED_ over your regular Gopher server you won't have much luck finding it. _SPEED_ uses roughly a 65-character line, so your margins should be set accordingly. Set your font type to Courier, 9pt if you want to retain formatting after downloading.)


HOW TO CONTACT _SPEED_

e-mail:

Please send all submissions, criticisms, praise, suggestions, or anything else you have on your mind to _SPEED_@alishaw.ucsb.edu. We want to hear from you!

snail-mail:

If for whatever reason you need to communicate with us via the U.S. Postal Service, please send your correspondence to:

_SPEED_
c/o Robert Nideffer
Department of Art Studio
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA. 93106


SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Submissions to the journal can be made by electronic mail (preferred), on disk (please indicate the program and operating system used), or by hard-copy (not preferred). No matter what form your submission takes, please:

--do not use any special characters

--use endnotes instead of footnotes. To indicate an endnote in the body of your text set it off like this: "blah, blah, blah."[1]

--use the MLA (Modern Language Association) format for references


ISSN 1078-196X