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MECCSA-PGN  September 2013

MECCSA-PGN September 2013

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Subject:

Sep 25: CAMRI Seminar with Vincent Mosco: To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World

From:

Christian Fuchs <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Christian Fuchs <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 18 Sep 2013 11:47:38 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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Parts/Attachments

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Vincent Mosco: To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World
Sep 25, 2013
2.00pm - 4.00pm
Harrow Campus, University of Westminster
Room A7.03
Registration: email to [log in to unmask], at latest until Sep 22

Abstract

This presentation offers an account of the political, economic, social 
and cultural issues emerging from the growth of cloud computing. It 
starts by situating cloud computing as a major force in the 
globalisation of informational capitalism and in the advance of a 
particular way of knowing, what I call digital positivism. It proceeds 
to examine the origins of cloud computing in the movements that arose in 
the pre-internet era to create an information utility.

The presentation then defines cloud computing, describes its major 
characteristics, and identifies the leading corporate, and government 
cloud players. In doing so, it describes the battles for market power 
among a handful of companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, 
Facebook, and Rackspace, the rapid and, for some, worrisome, expansion 
of the government cloud, the internationalisation of cloud computing, 
and the emergence of bottom-up community cloud projects.

Next, it considers how the cloud is being marketed and mythologised 
through advertising, social media, corporate and government research, 
industry lobbying, and marketing events. Massive promotion is essential 
because dark clouds are gathering over the industry including the 
environmental problems created by data centres; concerns over privacy, 
security, and surveillance; and labour issues, particularly the impact 
on IT departments, and more generally on knowledge workers whose jobs 
are threatened by the cloud. The presentation concludes by offering a 
technical and a cultural critique of big data, digital positivism, and 
the cloud’s “way of knowing.”
Biography

Dr Vincent Mosco is Professor Emeritus, Queen's University, Canada. He 
is formerly Canada Research Chair in Communication and Society and 
Professor of Sociology. Dr Mosco graduated from Georgetown University 
(Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in 1970 and received a Ph.D. in 
Sociology from Harvard University in 1975.

Dr Mosco is the author of numerous books on communication, technology, 
and society. His most recent include Marx is Back – The Importance of 
Marxist Theory and Research for Critical Communication Studies Today, 
ed. with Christian Fuchs and published as a special issue of 
tripleC–Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 
(http://www.triple-c.at) 2012, Getting the Message: Communications 
Workers and Global Value Chains (co-edited with Catherine McKercher and 
Ursula Huws, Merlin, 2010), The Political Economy of Communication, 
second edition (Sage, 2009), The Laboring of Communication: Will 
Knowledge Workers of the World Unite (co-authored with Catherine 
McKercher, Lexington Books, 2008), Knowledge Workers in the Information 
Society (co-edited with Catherine McKercher, Lexington Books, 2007), and 
The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace (MIT Press, 2004). The 
Digital Sublime won the 2005 Olson Award for outstanding book in the 
field of rhetoric and cultural studies.

Dr Mosco is a member of the editorial boards of academic journals in the 
North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has held research 
positions in the US government with the White House Office of 
Telecommunication Policy, the National Research Council and the US 
Congress Office of Technology Assessment, and in Canada with the Federal 
Department of Communication. Dr Mosco is a founding member of the Union 
for Democratic Communication, served as head of the Political Economy 
section of the International Association for Media and Communication 
Research, and was a longtime research associate of the Harvard 
University Program on Information Resources Policy. In addition, he has 
been a consultant to trade unions and worker organisations in Canada and 
the United States. In 2004 Dr Mosco received the Dallas W Smythe Award 
for outstanding achievement in communication research.

Dr Mosco is currently working on an edited collection, Critical Studies 
in Communication and Society, ed. with Cao Jin and Leslie Reagan Shade, 
to be published by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and a book 
on the political, economic, and cultural significance of cloud computing.

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