ulises mejias

(cross post with FLEFF’s Dissassembled Spaces blog)
Most people assume that if you Google something in the US and you do the same in another country, you will get the same results. It’s called the World Wide Web, right? Not so. Countries can and do exert influence on search engine companies to control the results that [...]

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I recently participated in a formal debating exercise as part of my school’s ALANA Conference. We were randomly assigned a position to argue, and I was part of the team debating that we have not seen the end of racism just because we have a black president. Since I believe that to be the case, [...]

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There’s a new piece in the online ‘Comment is Free’ section of the UK newspaper The Guardian by my wife that I think is (obviously) quite brilliant.
Only Muslims can change their society
The sub-heading is: “The US invasion of Afghanistan had nothing to do with its women – change in Islamic nations must come from within.”

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Andrea Batista Schlesinger is executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy (a non-partisan, non-profit think tank founded during the Civil Rights Movement that generates ideas that fuel the progressive movement). She is currently working on the forthcoming book The Death of Why, to be released in Spring of 2009. After looking at [...]

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Ambient Dominance and the Public — An Interview with Rob van Kranenburg

(Photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)
For the last interview in this series, I sat down to talk to Rob van Kranenburg. Rob works at Waag Society, a new media think-tank that “wants to be on the forefront of developments by creating [...]

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The networked society and its outsides: Interview with Geert Lovink
(photo and interview: Ulises Mejias, Creative Commons 2008)
Geert Lovink is a media theorist, net critic and activist (bio, blog, publications). He is the founding director of the Amsterdam-based Institute of Network Cultures, where I sat with him to chat on May 22.
SEARCH ENGINES AND [...]

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Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to travel to London to attend Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference, hosted by the New Political Communication Unit (NPCU), Department of Politics and International Relations, Royal Holloway, University of London.
The theme of the conference was summarized as follows:
Has there been a shift in political use of the [...]

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Perhaps it’s not surprising that Foucault, the “panopticon guy”, is characterized as a thinker of power, discipline, and punishment. But as Deleuze (1995) points out, Foucault also believed that we are increasingly moving away from being societies based on discipline to societies based on control. According to Deleuze’s reading of Foucault: “We’re moving toward control [...]

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A case can be made that Social Software contributes to the commodification of knowledge and social interactions, or that it is simply a way for companies to make money off your labor/data. But as we know, there’s more to it than that. Social Software can also embody a set of social practices that are downright, [...]

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[The following comments were presented during the War and (Computer/Video) Gaming session at the Occupied Spaces Symposium, Roy H. Park School of Communications, Ithaca College, April 8 and 9, 2005.]
First, I want to thank Patty Zimmerann for inviting me to this symposium. Patty played a vital role in my intellectual development when I was an [...]

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