Money, Credit, and Digital Payment 1971/2014: From the Credit Card to Apple Pay

NFC terminal with iPhone 6, video still, 2014The article intertwines the history of the American credit card, its standardization, and interactional realization with the latest developments in payment systems. Understanding both credit cards and systems like Apple Pay or blockchain-based applications as part of an administrative longue durée, it argues for a different understanding of the Internet of Things. It should be understood both as a technical-informational and as an accounting infrastructure, with tensions arising between both segments.

Check out the full text, published in Administration and Society’s special issue on ICT@Administration at https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399718794169.

„A philosophy of weaving the web“ – NECSUS Interview with Geert Lovink [reblog]

by Geert Lovink
[originally published in the Spring 2016 edition of NECSUS, „Small Data“
Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]

Unlike predictions, ‘networks’ are on their way out. The reason for this is the unprecedented concentration of money, power, and infrastructures in the hands of a few monopoly players. Instead of ‘social networks’ we speak of ‘social media’, and that is no coincidence. In fact, ‘network theory’ has followed this trend for some time and has been in relative decline for longer than we might be aware. We can consider the 1990s the golden period of network theory, dominated by a scientific-mathematical method (Barabasi, Watts) and also a social science approach (Castells). Since the crisis of the rhizomatic and productivist Deleuze and the subsequent rise of ‘dark Deleuze’ (Culp), the question has become: why connect, if machines will connect us regardless?

„„A philosophy of weaving the web“ – NECSUS Interview with Geert Lovink [reblog]“ weiterlesen

Fluctuating Networks, Un/stable Platforms, and the Internet of Things

So here is what I wrote as an abstract for a talk on April 14, 2015. It was hosted by the fabulous Digital Cultures Research Lab and took place at the Stadtarchiv of Lüneburg.

My talk is go­ing to pre­sent some preli­mi­na­ry thoughts on the no­ti­on of “boun­da­ry ob­jects” in di­gi­tal in­fra­struc­tu­res. I am going to reconsider the relation “networks” and “platforms” from a network historical and STS point of view. The “Internet of Things” is actually fairly old, if confronted with earlier special purpose digital networks. But how may we speculate already on its remediating qualities in terms of new objecthood, networked agencies, and platform regulations?

I always wanted to refurbish the slides which I had written with the LaTeX beamer class for a change. But now we have got  the audiovisual documentary – splendid. Huge thanks to all the great people at DCRL! (And I still have to rework the slides at some point).

Hier klicken, um den Inhalt von Vimeo anzuzeigen.
Erfahre mehr in der Datenschutzerklärung von Vimeo.

DCRLecture: Sebastian Gießmann – Fluctuating Networks, Un/stable Platforms, And the Internet of Things from Centre for Digital Cultures on Vimeo.

Credit Card Mobilities

The Swiss Federal Archives have been publishing a video documentation of their „ICT@Admin“ conference. I had the privilege of being a part of this, so I include the video and abstract of my talk here. A complete documentation is also online, and the overall YouTube playlist is highly recommended.

CREDIT CARD MOBILITIES (Sebastian Gießmann, Siegen, March 26 2015)

The talk sketches out a praxeological history of the credit card, with an emphasis on its mediating qualities and operational status within bureaucratical frameworks. Temporal borrowing via credit card is regarded as a highly dynamic social technology that produces emergent topologies through distributed mobile payments. The formative years of the American credit card (1950-1975) are analyzed along with approaches from ethnomethodology (Harold Garfinkel) and actor network theory (Michel Callon). Cooperative media practices are key to understanding the relation between the administrative handling of „accounts“ and emerging social networks. This includes (1) Dining, traveling, and charging, (2) Accounting for trust and credit, (3) Mass mailing and advertising new ways of payment, (4) Building „co-opetitive“ platforms for networks and (5), the digital momentum of credit cards as immutable mobiles.

 

Hier klicken, um den Inhalt von YouTube anzuzeigen.
Erfahre mehr in der Datenschutzerklärung von YouTube.