Bad phones, lost Internets, Sutro Tower, bell hooks and John Perry Barlow, the Harvard sentences
1. In praise of the shitphone, by John Hermann, who is on a tear.
“If shitphones were ready for everyone, they wouldn’t be shitphones. As devices, they’re nearly there; as buying decisions, they’re still exotic. They represent a compromise and a risk. They are classic shitworld. Still, smartphone shitworld is already encroaching on brands, and smartphone brandworld is ceding to shit. Major carriers offer cheaper devices, though many of them are older devices from familiar brands; ZTE and Alcatel sell affordable smartphones through pay-as-you-go carriers Cricket and Boost Mobile as well as T-Mobile. More and more casual phone-buyers — people who either can’t or don’t want to pay $80+ a month for a traditional contract, or who don’t have good credit, or who don’t care to enter into a multi-year contract just to Snapchat with their friends — could be tempted to pair such options with cheaper prepaid plans, pushing the industry toward some kind of populist tipping point.”
2. Interesting thoughts on archives, politics, what will be saved, and what will be lost.
“Jasbir Puar uses the term ‘trace body’ to describe a relationship between the physical and digital realms: When physical bodies cross through checkpoints, so do trace bodies. Both are subject to scrutiny and examination. Archived data guides the scrutiny, feeds the algorithms that rank and identify the outliers and system errors. Like physical bodies, trace bodies can be profiled, targeted or surveilled using categorical metadata: purchasing records, physical whereabouts, or the ethnic origins of one’s last name. Data collectors are building their own archives, and building schemas for surveillance, tracking, and segmentation that shape our everyday existence. We feed the algorithms by response.”
“The Sutro Tower digital antennas are located at the top of the transmission tower. Two auxiliary antennas serving 5 stations each are installed between 380 and 560 feet up the tower. A third back-up antenna for KGO is at the 180-foot level. As part of the permit for installing the digital antennas, Sutro Tower, Inc., reinforced the tower to accommodate the new equipment and to upgrade the structure to current wind and seismic codes for essential facilities. Outmoded analog antennas at the top of the tower were removed in 2009.”