Month: June 2013

  • Reason Against the Machine

    By Javier de Rivera Any technological device is the result of a social action, a certain set of relations, interests and motivations that produces it, even if the final result does not correspond to the original intentions of the creators. Mechanisms and devices do not have agency, because they do not have interests and are…

  • Non-human agency, but human after all

      By Javier de Rivera This paper, HUMAN AFTER ALL, overviews some issues addressed in Johanna Drucker\’s PhD seminar in Information Studies at UCLA (Spring 2013)  around the topic of New Materialisms. In it, I critique and argue against the influence of Latour\’s philosophy on some authors of New Materialisms and of some accounts of…

  • Networks Withouth a Cause, by Geertz Lovink – Book Review

    By Javier de Rivera Networks Without a Cause. A Critique of Social Media – by Geert Lovink. 2011. Polity Press Originally published on: Interactions UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies – Download PDF Networks Without a Cause offers a provocative and critical review of today\’s well established social media. The book departs from the…

  • Science, Technology and Society

      This is the final paper on Science and Technology Studies that I wrote for Jean François Blanchette class at the Information Studies Department at UCLA. It is a general reflection about the STS field that goes around the differences implied in the meaning of the acronym S.T.S. The main argument is that the name of…