This week’s presentation will cover both Exchange & Law – I couldn’t pick just one! I will start with a review of the readings on Exchange and Law, with opportunities for us to discuss how these ideas manifest in today’s technologies. The readings certainly left me pondering the idea of information as an emerging media of exchange today.
I will also draw on David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, which asks,
“What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal? What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? What changes when the one turns into the other? And how do we speak about them when our language has so been shaped by the market?”
And, more simply, These ideas of morality, justice, and language run throughout the readings.
The articles on Wikileaks and Snowden with further help frame our discussions on contemporary issues, like the impact of Facebook quizzes on the Brexit vote and the US election, and artwork, such as Trevor Paglen’s work that explores counter surveillance as well as the visible and invisible of secret sites and satellites.
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