New Robot Revolution, Multi-Agency and the Machinic: Review of Gerald Raunig's A Thousand Machines

Abstract

First, a couple of anecdotes: While I was working on a class lecture a few days ago in my office, a “flash mob” showed up on the quadrangle in front of my window and danced to their iPods for a while before dispersing. Flash mobs were (briefly) a concern for police and other authorities in places like Minsk (Shirky, 2008, p. 165), Philadelphia (Urbina, 2010) and elsewhere, where the alarmingly sudden presence of people loosely coupled through their text messaging or blogging triggered fears of anarchy. But, watching them dance, I remembered another, similar term: flash crowds—the sudden surge of internet traffic associated with, for example, a denial-of-service attack. The similarity is not just incidental—they appear to both derive, New Robot Revolution, Multi-Agency and the Machinic: Review of Gerald Raunig’s A Thousand Machines