Part 1
In this talk, called “Working the Stack”, Julian Oliver deals with the notion of the Internet, computer networking, and telecommunication in general as a material for critical and creative investigation. The problem with the cloud metaphor: it dematerializes technology, it depicts it as non problematic transnational infrastructure, it purports the ideology of seamless interaction, whilst it is designed to hide engineering. Seamlessness tends to hide edges, but we need them to orientate ourselves. Yet, we are not allowed to understand how networked machines (our curiosity may even be punishable, for example voiding the warranty). “I'm interested in the technopolitical border between the inside and the outside of the machine.”