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Abstract
This article proposes the techno-cultural workshop as an innovative method for opening up the materiality of computational media and data flows and order to increase understanding of the socio-cultural and political-economic dimensions of datafication. Building upon the critical, creative hacker ethos of technological engagement, and the collective practice of the hackathon, the techno-cultural workshops is directed at humanities researchers and social and cultural theorists. We conceptually frame this method via Simondon as a practice-led opportunity to rethink the contested relationship between the human, nature and technology, with a view to challenging social and cultural theory that ignores the human reality of the technical object. We outline an exemplar techno-cultural workshop which explored mobile apps as i) an opportunity to use new digital tools for empirical research, and ii) as technical objects and elements for better understanding their social and cultural dimensions. We see political efficacy in the techno-cultural method not only in augmenting critical and creative agency, but as a practical exploration of the concept of data technicity, an inexhaustible relationality that exceeds the normative and regulatory utility of the data we generate and can be linked anew into collective capacities to act.

This article proposes the techno-cultural workshop as an innovative method for opening up the materiality of computational media and data flows and order to increase understanding of the socio-cultural and political-economic dimensions of datafication. Building upon the critical, creative hacker ethos of technological engagement, and the collective practice of the hackathon, the techno-cultural workshops is directed at humanities researchers and social and cultural theorists. We conceptually frame this method via Simondon as a practice-led opportunity to rethink the contested relationship between the human, nature and technology, with a view to challenging social and cultural theory that ignores the human reality of the technical object. We outline an exemplar techno-cultural workshop which explored mobile apps as i) an opportunity to use new digital tools for empirical research, and ii) as technical objects and elements for better understanding their social and cultural dimensions. We see political efficacy in the techno-cultural method not only in augmenting critical and creative agency, but as a practical exploration of the concept of data technicity, an inexhaustible relationality that exceeds the normative and regulatory utility of the data we generate and can be linked anew into collective capacities to act.

This article proposes the techno-cultural workshop as an innovative method for opening up the materiality of computational media and data flows in order to increase understanding of the socio-cultural and political-economic dimensions of datafication. Building upon the critical, creative hacker ethos of technological engagement, and the collective practice of the hackathon, the techno-cultural workshops is directed at humanities researchers and social and cultural theorists. We conceptually frame this method via Simondon as a practice-led opportunity to rethink the contested relationship between the human, nature and technology, with a view to challenging social and cultural theory that ignores the human reality of the technical object. We outline an exemplar techno-cultural workshop which explored mobile apps as i) an opportunity to use new digital tools for empirical research, and ii) as technical objects and elements for better understanding their social and cultural dimensions. We see political efficacy in the techno-cultural method not only in augmenting critical and creative agency, but as a practical exploration of the concept of data technicity, an inexhaustible relationality that exceeds the normative and regulatory utility of the data we generate and can be linked anew into collective capacities to act.

This special issue offers a critical dialogue around the myriad political dimensions of Big Data. We begin by recognising that the technological objects of Big Data are unprecedented in the speed, scope and scale of their computation and knowledge production. This critical dialogue is grounded in an equal recognition of continuities around Big Data's social, cultural, and political economic dimensions.

Utopian Pedagogy is a critical exploration of educational struggles within and against neoliberalism. Editors Mark Coté, Richard J.F. Day, and Greig de Peuter, along with a number of innovative voices from a variety of different academic fields and political movements, examine three key themes: the university as a contested institution, the role of the politically engaged intellectual, and experiments in alternative education. The collection contributes to the debates on the neoliberal transformation of higher education, and to the diffusion of social movements that insist it is possible to create workable alternatives to the current world order.This critical examination of the educational dimension of social and political struggles is presented by both professional academics and activists, many of whom are directly involved in the very experiments they discuss. Rescuing and revaluing the concept of utopia, the editors and their international contributors propose that utopian theory and practice acquire a new relevance in light of the hyper-inclusive logic of neoliberalism. Utopian Pedagogy is a challenge to the developing world order that will stimulate debate in the fields of education and beyond, and encourage the development of socially sustainable alternatives.Contributors:Michael AlbertBrian AlleyneIan AngusAllan AntliffFranco BerardiMarkEdelman BorenGuido BorioEnda BrophyColectivo SituacionesMark CotéMariarosa DallaCostaRichard J.F. DayGreig de PeuterNick DyerWithefordHenry GirouxStuart HallKelly HarrisMartinImran MunirFrancesca PozziGigi RoggeroShveta SardaSarita SrivastavaRichard ToewsCarlos Alberto TorresSebastian TouzaJerry Zaslove.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Series Editors' Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Notes on Contributors -- Introduction: The Long Cold War -- I Pattern Recognition -- 1 The Future: RAND, Brand and Dangerous to Know -- 2 Simulate, Optimise, Partition: Algorithmic Diagrams of Pattern Recognition from 1953 Onwards -- 3 Impulsive Synchronisation: A Conversation on Military Technologies and Audiovisual Arts -- II The Persistence of the Nuclear -- 4 The Meaning of Monte Bello -- 5 Deep Geological Disposal and Radioactive Time: Beckett, Bowen, Nirex and Onkalo -- 6 Shifting the Nuclear Imaginary: Art and the Flight from Nuclear Modernity -- 7 Alchemical Transformations? Fictions of the Nuclear State after 1989 -- III Ubiquitous Surveillance -- 8 'The Very Form of Perverse Artificial Societies': The Unstable Emergence of the Network Family from its Cold War Nuclear Bunker -- 9 The Signal-Haunted Cold War: Persistence of the SIGINT Ontology -- 10 'Bulk Surveillance', or The Elegant Technicities of Metadata -- IV Pervasive Mediations -- 11 Notes from the Underground: Microwaves, Backbones, Party Lines and the Post Office Tower -- 12 Insect Technics: War Vision Machines -- 13 Overt Research -- 14 Smart Dust and Remote Sensing: The Political Subject in Autonomous Systems -- Index