Electronic Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice

VIS149

Winter 2010

Room: MANDE 106

Wednesday NOON - 2:50p .m

Professor: Ricardo Dominguez

Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

Office Hours: Wed. 1pm to 2pm (CAL IT2/Atkinson Hall 2nd fl - 2501)

 

Class Description:

 Electronic Civil Disobedience (ECD) as a theory will be compared with the multiple forms of ECD practice that have emerged since the early 1990's. We will investigate how ECD intersects with earlier definitions of civil disobedience (CD) by Henry David Thoreau to Ghandi. The class will also examine the trajectories of tactical media, digital zapatismo, hacktivism, cyberwar and social netwar that arose at the same time as ECD. Core questions for the class will be: is ECD a useful tactic for contemporary activism and if so how and when; and, to what degree have post 9/11 politics effected the practice of ECD. What new tactics and strategies have emerged with social networking and distributed video models. The readings and examples of ECD practice will only be on-line. Among the E-books on ECD that we will read sections from: The Electronic Disturbance and Electronic Civil Disobedience by Critical Art Ensemble; also, Hackitivism: network_art_activism by Electronic Disturbance Theater; and The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico by David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla. The core text that we will be reading is Tactical Media by Rita Raley. The class will also explore and develop an ECD performance in order to access and evaluate the arcs between theory and practice.

 

Grading Policies

Final Grade Evaluation:

25% Assignments: A Notebook Diary and One Midterm - 5 page essay (MLA Style).    

25% Attendance and Participation

25% The class will also learn how an ECD performance functions by learning the code, staging the code by deciding as a group what issue might be the focus of the ECD performance and then doing the the gesture in order to better understand the process, practice and outcomes of ECD.

25% Final Exam - Take home essay - 10 page essay (MLA Style).

 

Attendance:

You will be expected to attend every class. If you have more than 2 unexcused absences, your final grade will drop 1/2 a letter for every additional unexcused absence.  Two unexcused lateness will be considered an absence.

 

NEW LINKS - ON CD, ECD ACTIONS OR ANALYSIS DURING OUR CLASS WILL APPEAR HERE:



The protesters interrupted a presentation by Republican pollster Bill McInturff,
whose work for AHIP on the series of early-90s "Harry and Louise" anti-health-care reform
commercials has been called by Advertising Age Ôamong the best conceived and executed public
affairs advertising programs in history.



http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/


The CIGNA 7 Get Themselves Arrested
http://post.thing.net/node/2864



Military Abduction at the G-20 Friday, 25 Sep 2009
http://post.thing.net/node/2834

Yes Men Honcho Sprung from Clink
http://post.thing.net/node/2830


http://savingucsd.ning.com


NYTimes Cyberwar Section




http://savingucsd.ning.com



Operation Titstorm: hackers bring down government websites: CLICK HERE



January 6th - Introduction

 Class Over View.

Watch Ghandi

 
January 13th- Civil Disobedience (CD)  

Read:

Henry David Thoreau - 1849

Civil Disobedience

http://eserver.org/thoreau/civil.html

 
Read:

Mark Shepard - 1990

Civil Disobedience, Nonviolence, and Satyagraha in the Real World

http://www.markshep.com/nonviolence/Myths.html

 
January 20th - Teleporting CD to ECD - Electronic Disturbance

Critical Art Ensemble - 1994
 

Electronic Disturbance (Read Chapters 2, 4 and 6)

http://www.critical-art.net/books/ted/index.html



January 27th - Digital Zapatistas  

Dr. Harry Cleaver - February, 1994

 The Chiapas Uprising and the Future of Class Struggle

http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapasuprising.html

 
Jason Wehling - March, 1995

 Netwars and Activists: Power on the Internet

http://www.spunk.org/library/comms/sp001518/Netwars.html

 
Sites to Visit: 

Chase Manhattan Memo: Chase Manhattn Bank Urges Zapatista Wipe-Out

EZLN (Zapatistas On-Line)

Zapatistas in Cyberspaces

http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/

http://chiapas.indymedia.org


Herbert's Hippopotamus: Marcuse and Revolution in Paradise


Febraury 3rd   - Electronic Civil Disobedience  
Critical Art Ensemble - 1995

 Electronic Civil Disobedience (Chapter 1 and 2).

http://www.critical-art.net/books/ecd/index.html

 
February 11th  - Digital Zapatistas 2  

Dr. Harry Cleaver - 1998

 A Contribution to the Discussion of Electronic Civil Disobedience

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/harrycontrib.html

 
Performance Art in a Digital Age - 1998

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/nyu/ECDperformance.doc



Febraury 17th
  - Social Netwar


MID TERM DUE - 5 Pages. (Start to think about what the focus of our ECD performance should be?)

 
RAND - 1998

Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico (Chapter 2, 4 and 6)

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR994/

The Strength of Weak Ties Revisted

 Site to Visit

 Electronic Disturbance Theater

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/ecd.html

View Source - code development and organizing the ECD performance.

Febraury 24th
  - Social Netwar 2  

Dr. Dorothy E. Denning - 1999

 Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism

http://www.iwar.org.uk/cyberterror/resources/denning.htm

  Dr. Jill Lane - 2000

 Digital Zapatistas

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/DigitalZapatistas.pdf


March 4th   - Hacktivism  

Mapping ECD 2001
 

Steal This Modem

A Transparent and Civil Act of Disobedience

http://post.thing.net/node/304

Hight Court Says Online Demonstration is Not Force
http://post.thing.net/node/1370

ECD performance is up and running. Click Here to view and share http://bang.calit2.net. (Please note the mirroring component and process. Also keep track of any reponses from those involved and listed in the ECD performance petition and beyond).

Enjoy and see in the streets and on-line!

March 10th  - What Next?

  mobileactive.org

You Tube Actions


FINAL PAPER DUE - March 18th

MORE READINGS:

Trespassory Art: A Legal Study - Randall Bezanson and Andrew Finkelman

Hacktivism and the Future of Political Participation - Alexandra Whitney Samuel

Virtual Non-Violence - Andrew Calabrese

Resistance Studies Network

'Cyber terrorists'

Toronto ‘hactivists’ benefit from grant



More Suggested Books:  

William Bogard, The Simulation of Surveillance (1996)

 Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity (1993)

 Dorothy E. Denning, Information Warfare and Security (1999)

 Chris Hables Gray, Postmodern War (1997)

 Tim Jordan, Activism!: Hacktivism and the Future of Society (2002)

 Martha Mccaughey, Cyberactivism (2003)

 Graham Meikle, Future Active (2002)

 Nettime.org, Read Me! Read Me! Read Me! (1999)

 Michael Perelman, Class Warfare In The Information Age (1998)

 Benjamin Shepard, from ACT UP to the WTO (2002)

 Winn Schwartua, Cybershock (2000)

 Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler, Leaving Reality Behind (2002)

 

___________

 

Online Simulations and Performance: Interview with Ricardo Dominguez

 http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/onlinesimulations.pdf

 

The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

 http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/about/index.html

 

Tactical Media Reader

http://www.n5m.org/n5m4/dox/n5m_reader.pdf

 

Emergence of Noopolitik

http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1033/

 

More Suggested Essays

 

 Stefan Wray - 1999

 World Wide Web of Hacktivism

http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v4n2/stefan/index.html

 

 Dr. Jon McKenzie - 1999

 !nt3rh4ckt!v!ty

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/nyu/interhacktivity.doc

 

 the electrohippies collective occasional paper no.1 - February, 2000

 Client-side Distributed Denial-of-Service

http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/papers/op1.html

 

Hacktivists Stage Virtual Sit-In at WEF Web site 

http://www.alternet.org/story/12374

 

Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience

http://www.why-war.com/features/2003/10/diebold.html

 

Net Activism Tools

http://backspace.com/action


 

 (F]l‚”š›ÇÑ ¬