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Footnote

Exploring John Hilliard's 1971 series of photographs, A Camera Recording it Own Condition (7 apertures, 10 speeds, 2 mirrors), Fuller argues that the camera's media ecology consists of the interplay between mathematical, material, and social powers, while demonstrating a medial will to power. Fuller shows how every apparatus is an ensemble of other apparatuses. Thresholds of visibility and disappearance are built into the camera's structure, of its material capacity. When the camera focuses on itself, it is engaged in a cybernetic circuit that brings together forces of form, programs, material structures: in short, a media ecology. Fuller marks out two sets of interconnected and antagonistic relations of force that "make" the camera in this act of recording itself. One, the problematic of the camera working on the condition of being a camera (a machine reflexivity). Second, it mobilizes the constraints and freedoms generated by the correlation of the intensive and extensive qualities embedded within the camera. Fuller expands his exploration of media ecologies by working with multiple "objects": the introduction of an on/off switch in a residential street, BITRadio, "phreaking" of radio broadcasts and others. Perhaps the most argumentative chapter of the book-certainly one of the most lucid ones!-this demonstrates how technology and the dynamics of media systems are appropriated for other, nonofficial purposes. Fuller shows how the "standard object"-a serial element such as an ISO standard shipping container whose "potential" has been stabilized, circumscribes knowledge itself, limiting all other forms of understanding. Standard objects, even as they work with other "forms" define the technicity and organizational frames of systems.
Moving on to Web pages-Heath Bunting's cctv-world wide watch, where users watching four Webcams are encouraged to report crimes on an HTML form, which is then sent to the nearest police station-Fuller shows how cultural and technological components mesh uneasily in the project. Fuller argues that the "meme" (a kind of replicator that mutates as it passes from person to person or media to media, and works in combination with its immediate environment) or "bit" of identity constitutes a problem for surveillance. Packets of information-often the most common "meme" in Web technology-is, for Fuller, the standard object around which an ecology gets built. Networks check packets as they pass isolating passwords, URLS, credit data, and items of interest. The packet is the threshold of operations. The meme's "monitorability" enables not only dissemination through the network, but also its control. Memes, or what Fuller calls "flecks of identity" are referents in the flows of information-they "locate" and "situate" a user. Fuller's work is full of rich insights, especially into the ways in which forces of power operate within media ecologies. Even when the material/technological object, such as the camera or the Webcam turns in on itself, it is situated within a series of interrelated forces, some of which are antagonistic to the object. This insight-that contemporary media technology works within a field of antagonistic forces too-is Fuller's major contribution. Fuller is alert also to the potential within such force fields for subversion. Pirate radio and phreaking, therefore, emblematize how media ecologies create the context, possibility, and even modalities of political and social protest. Unfortunately, Fuller's style is a shade too digressive and aleatory for us to discover these insights. In his eagerness to incorporate as many theorists and philosophers of media/technology-he moves from Nietzsche to Susan Blackmore, sometimes within the space of a single paragraph-Fuller often takes a long time to get to his contribution to the debate or analysis. The problem, therefore, is mainly with style rather than content, and the arguments would have been perfectly fine if they had been couched in easier forms."